Blissful Life

Category: sociology

  • ‘Democracy’ is a Useless Word

    Democracy is a word that’s vague and has multiple meanings. It is often used as an excuse for not doing anything. The use of the word should raise suspicion about the intentions of the speaker.

    Most people when explaining democracy start with an even worse definition of the word: “government of the people, by the people, for the people“. This was uttered by an American politician in 1863. Like most political speeches, it is designed to sound profound but leaves enough room to play soccer within that definition, let alone misinterpret it according to convenience.

    The clearest word in that sentence is “government”. Democracy is seen there as a system on how to operate an extremely large group of people (known as a “country” or a “nation”). But the 4 remaining words — “of”, “by”, “for”, and “the people” — give us very little information about what democracy is.

    The words of the people can either mean it is a system of governing the people, which would make it redundant considering that there’s already government before it which means the same, or it could mean it is a system which is composed of people, which would make it mean the same as by the people.

    When it comes to by the people, we have to think about the history of when this was being used. It was used at a time when some people were considered royal, or of a different class, and these people were operating the government. In that context by refers to redistribution of power.

    For the people can also be understood in the same context as having a direction and purpose which is in the benefit of the people as opposed to only benefiting the royal class.

    By far the most disturbing word there is the people. It was 57 years later in 1920 that women could vote in national elections in the United States of America. So when Abraham Lincoln said “of the people, by the people, and for the people” it didn’t include women. And that’s the only definition of democracy that most of us can recite.

    To be fair, today’s NCERT textbook seems to be really trying to make us think past that useless definition. Quoting Ribiang and Lyngdoh Madam from it:

    Ribiang: But why do we need to work on a definition? The other day you quoted Abraham Lincoln to us: “Democracy is government of the people, by the people and for the people”. We in Meghalaya always ruled ourselves. That is accepted by everyone. Why do we need to change that?

    Lyngdoh Madam: I am not saying we need to change it. I too find this definition very beautiful. But we don’t know if this is the best way of defining unless we think about it ourselves. We must not accept something just because it is famous, just because everyone accepts it.

    Such a fascinating call for critical thinking in Class IX social science textbook! The rest of the chapter is fantastic too and it talks about free & fair elections and constitutional rights. It ends by saying that there is an expanded notion of what’s democracy when people say sentences like: “We are a very democratic family. Whenever a decision has to be taken, we all sit down and arrive at a consensus. My opinion matters as much as my father’s.“

    When I say democracy is a useless word, I’m mostly concerned about this expanded scope of the word which is applied not at nation-state levels, but at smaller levels like organizations and groups. In discussing that, we will look at the meaning of the word in its form-of-government sense too.

    What people mean by democracy

    A large number of people mean “majority rule” when they say democracy. This is where you have fascists destroying institutions and putting political opponents behind bars. In smaller groups, this attitude translates to “let us put this to vote”. If a “democratic” organization makes decisions based on what wins a majority vote, it is a majoritarian organization.

    Some others explicitly call this out as majoritarianism and consider a democracy as one where the rights of the minority are upheld. There is greater emphasis on a previously agreed set of rights and protection of these rights. In smaller groups this operates as a “consensus-based decision making”. Every individual will have the right to veto a decision and there will be an attempt to form a consensus.

    We can already see how complicated the latter would be. Regardless of how much emphasis there is on consensus, it is easy for a dedicated individual to prevent consensus formation. Consensus formation requires a shared desire to reach consensus. And this becomes disproportionately more difficult in larger groups.

    There’s another reason why consensus is difficult.

    “Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realise that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.”

    ~Dr B. R. Ambedkar

    If democracy is a decision making process, and it is a consensus based decision making process and not majoritarianism, then there’s a value system that’s required to be shared by everyone such that there is consensus. That value system is called constitutional morality.

    Constitutional morality is composed of values like liberty, equality, and fraternity. Non-majoritarian democracy can exist only when these values exist.

    Can non-majoritarian democracies exist?

    At the scale of a nation state, it is impossible to have a non-majoritarian democracy. Let’s take India even before Narendra Modi. The Aadhaar project, for example, came up in that India. It was vocally vetoed by several thousands of people. Even the Supreme Court eventually declared it unconstitutional. Yet, Aadhaar was made a reality by a government that wasn’t even called fascist.

    It is with that realization that the constitution of India goes to great detail about fundamental rights and how to protect them. While the decision making shall always be majoritarian, the fundamental rights and institutions like judiciary leave a loophole through which those left behind can negotiate.

    And as long as the majority has not gone fascist, these loopholes allow enough space for those others to live peacefully. And vice versa, the moment majority turns fascist, these other things crumple and the majoritarianism shows its true colors.

    In other words, a non-majoritarian democracy is a make-believe game played by a majoritarian democracy when there’s no crisis. The moment there’s a crisis, those who hold power will come out and sort things out in ways they want.

    At the scale of nation-states this happens through raw physical power, through police, army, gun, and machines. People are physically put in jail, or murdered. Some of this power is now operational through virtual spaces and can manifest as blocking website, taking down channel, and so on. But even these blocks are enforced through physical network infrastructure that’s operated by human beings.

    It is also interesting to note what happens when there is a military coup in a “democratic” nation. The constitution, the election, the institutions, the people, they’re all the same. But the guy with the gun is now ruling the country. How’s that possible?

    It is possible, because at its core, there’s nothing called a democratic government. There is raw physical power, and in a complicated series of social role-plays, this is often held by a power center which also happens to be elected by a majority. If the social role-plays are gone, then the whole thing collapses into its true form.

    Surely these don’t apply to small groups, right?

    One could be mistaken that smaller groups — like an online discussion group, or an NGO — do not have such central power. After all, how many times have we heard “this is a democratic space” being used in these contexts?

    Look at how decisions are made and enforced in these spaces, and you’ll see the same pattern as in nation-states. There is a complicated social role-play. But eventually the decision making power is vested with whoever legally controls the NGO, or whoever is the administrator of the group. If you can kick someone out, you hold the ultimate power in that space.

    So, all of the consensus process and “democratic decision-making” in these spaces are actually power delegated by the ultimate authority.

    For a thought-exercise, let us imagine that there is an online group, and through some technical glitch nobody can get kicked out of it. Isn’t that the ideal democratic group?

    As long as there are no decisions to make, this works out. And in a large number of online groups which are merely spaces for people to spend time talking to each other, there are no decisions to be made. And therefore this works out.

    But if there is the tiniest decision to be made, it no longer will work. Say someone says “let us change the group name”. Suddenly there’s the need for a decision making process. And till that is established first, the name will likely remain the same.

    Democracy is biased towards the status quo

    Akshay

    Let us do say the group is really interested in this problem. There are several possibilities.

    If everyone in the group likes a new name, the problem vanishes. The name gets changed. This is perfect consensus. But this rarely happens. This is easier to happen in very small groups. This is easier when the group is largely comprised of people thinking similarly or like each other.

    If a large number of people like a new name, but a few like the old name, the problem takes on a new dimension.

    • Those who are in the minority could face social pressure and agree to go with the new name — consensus through social pressure — and the name gets changed.
    • The group might decide that till everyone agrees on the name, it won’t be changed, and the name will remain the same.
    • The group might just decide that the majority vote will decide the new name — majoritarian democracy.

    Did you notice how I sneaked in “group might decide”. How will the group decide how to decide this problem? How will the group know whether to go with a majoritarian vote or a consensus process?

    This is where no group is void of power hierarchies.

    Even in a group where everyone is an administrator, those who joined first or those who are more senior in real world could hold more power. If, say, this is Beast Games and a hundred people were randomly picked into a group at once, there would still be differences in physical attributes that give some people more “power”. Someone might look more intimidating, someone might speak more persuasively. These “natural” leaders tend to gain power.

    The other possibility is that there are two or more leaders who emerge and they have different ideas as to what should happen. In this situation, if the stakes are high, the group will split into factions.

    But often what happens is that there is no high stakes, there’s not much to gain by splitting the group, and things will just continue based on the energy of the most vocal person/group. Those who disagree might either live with the choice, or just leave the group.

    Over time this will lead to the group degrading in what it seeks to achieve by retaining the energy and enthusiasm of a very small “core” active group. And they become the power center, and the group now has a power hierarchy.

    Let’s do a different thought experiment. What happens if one member of the group just unilaterally decides to change the name? Social norms prevent this from happening usually, but there can still be people who violate this. The following could happen:

    • The action can get reverted by someone else
    • The group just discusses it for a while and moves on (with the name remaining changed)

    What if the name change is indeed reverted, and the deviant person changes the name again?

    These might seem esoteric situations, but a lot of “norms” are violated consistently in various groups. And whether these are problematized depends on the people in the group. And whether these are addressed depends on the power hierarchies in the group.

    And remember we are operating in the ridiculous constraints of our thought experiment. In most groups, there’s real power that’s obvious and straightforward to see. And all decisions ultimately are enforced through these power structures. And the decision making process is consequently determined by these power structures.

    Just think about the work of Women in Cinema Collective in Kerala film industry. Most woman were facing harassment from men. This could be considered “violation of social norm”. And after a lot of hard work and deep politics things perhaps changed a tiny bit. WCC problematized the issue. But who can “address” it? Problematizing helps and is only the first step. But enforcement of justice is left to those who wield real power, which in case of Malayalam film industry is those who hold the money (or those who hold the guns).

    Democratic groups are groups playing social role-play under benevolence of power

    As in the nation-state, a group which describes itself as “democratic” is just a group which plays the social game of democracy under the supervision of benevolent power structures. The rules of the game are often ad-hoc, made by and imposed by the power structures.

    We might consider that human beings are social animals, and such social constructs are how we always operate. But in this essay what I’m trying to argue is that this fact — that a democracy is just a game of entertaining participants under the supervision of a kind dictator — is often not realized by the participants themselves. And that has to do with the vagueness and uselessness of the word democracy.

    Nobody is allowed to question what a democracy means. It falls like a command that stops all further discussions.

    • Does it mean that everyone will agree with everyone else?
    • If there are disagreements, how will those be resolved?
    • Are there some basic rules everyone is expected to follow?
    • If so, are these rules themselves amenable to change?

    What use is this analysis?

    You might see groups that don’t have answers to these questions that still exist. And then you might show that as examples of why these questions are irrelevant.

    And I will agree with you when it comes to certain groups.

    There are groups whose purpose is to be a space where a large number of people will put their attention. The idea is to just be a notice board where things can move. A ‘digital town square’ or a ‘digital public square’, an example of which is the now defunct Twitter.

    For such a space decision making is unnecessary. Anyone can post anything. Free speech is the only right to protect.

    But if any group claims to be anything more, like:

    • Pro-people, pro-poor
    • Action group
    • Movement group
    • For a fairer world
    • Safe space
    • Caring space

    If anything more than “a public square” is in the group’s description, then the use of the word “democracy” is a red flag.

    If you are pro-people or pro-poor, you have to do things and change things for people. You have to necessarily be an action group. And an action group needs to have clear decision making structures.

    If you are a safe space, you have to ensure that there’s psychological safety for everyone involved. And that requires very strict ground rules, quickly enforced, about how one can speak and what one can say.

    When people do not have the energy or commitment to make a space pro-people, or make it a caring safe space, they hide behind words like democracy. And this leads to the group becoming just a public square.

    A public square is not bad in itself. But being a good public square requires its own commitment. Again, if you lack energy for that commitment, just hide behind the word “democracy”.

    Democracy in that sense is a very useful word. It helps people avoid spending energy. When you’re confused about what to do with a group, just call it a democracy and be done with it.

  • The Logic of Social Justice

    Today in a discussion at IPH, Meena said “we should all fight against discrimination”. And Prashanth asked “Isn’t that your personal politics? What if people don’t agree with it?” What Prashanth was really asking was “Is there any logic to the demand for social justice?” “Isn’t it just politics?”

    This is the same discussion I had over lunch with Viswanathan (CVN) at MFC’s mid-annual meet in Kozhikode. CVN is widely known for saying “Science is the only way of knowing” which I have wrote about in the past. In the meet also CVN made the same point (I have posted a transcript of the comment here). CVN told about the enlightenment project

    […]By the term “modern society”, I mean a society that upholds the values of “liberty, equality, fraternity and justice”. These values, which we call constitutional values, are really values of ‘Enlightenment’ – or ‘European Enlightenment’ if you insist.

    Enlightenment project is a sociopolitical project that nobody likes in today’s India. The right wing hates it, the left wing has only contempt for it. Of course, this was always a minority’s concern in our country, historically speaking. Unlike the ‘National movement’, this ‘movement’ – if you can call it that name – came up from the ‘depressed castes’. If I am to name a few ‘big names’ that would represent this camp, almost everyone comes from the Dalit-Bahujan background. Mahatma Phule, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Thanthai Periyar, Mahatma Ayyankali, Sahodaran Ayyappan – all from the depressed castes. This is a movement that developed as a response to the day-to-day existential insults heaped upon the depressed caste people over millenia.[…]

    So while eating chicken and ghee rice, I asked CVN, “if you say science is the only way of knowing, how do you know that the values of enlightenment is what we need to work towards?” I was asking what’s the “logic” of working for social justice. 

    CVN initially said “This is outside the realm of science. It is a question for morality.”

    But I wouldn’t relent. I was like “We KNOW that social justice is the right thing. And ‘science’ is the only way of knowing. Then what’s the logic with which we say social justice is the right thing?” I said it was important for us to articulate that logic or if not we wouldn’t have any way to convince others that it was important to fight for social justice.*

    *I actually said that we do have a few other ways. One is to use guns. Another is to use love. And that I am exploring the latter. But the quest for a logic was so important.

    CVN sought more time to think about it.

    And that brings me to an important fight with the postmodernists. In mfc group, I’ve had several sleepless days debating with a bunch of people who think that we have no way of knowing whether homeopathy, ayurveda, etc could be bullshit. That there’s a “possibility” that these are true. That our ability to know the “truth” will always be influenced by where we’re coming from. They think we’re living in some crazy world where we can never know anything, and just everything could be true.

    In that fight, it became clear to me that there is some sort of “logic” which I was looking for in everything. That it is this “logic” or rationality that I was calling science. In another discussion with Prashanth we decided to not call it ‘science’ because it was confused by several people to mean the establishment, but to call it ‘jnana’ or so.

    So, science (broadly construed), or rationality, or ‘jnana’ whatever you call it, is how we tend to get answers to everything.

    Then what’s the science of social justice? What’s the logic of social justice? 

    How do we ‘know’ that social justice is necessary?

    That’s the crux of the challenge.

    One way to answer this would be that this is beyond the realm of science. That it is politics. Or morality.

    If you’ve gone through Michael Sandel’s famous course or book on “Justice”, you’ll notice that MS gives many different “logics” – utilitarianism, libertarianism, Kant, Aristotle, etc. But again, the choice is left to us. So we’re again left with the question of “what’s the logic of our choice to work for social justice and how do we objectively describe it to a skeptic?”

    Let’s do the 2024 thing, and ask Claude.ai what it thinks.

    You’ve raised a profound and challenging question that gets to the heart of moral philosophy. You’re correct that there’s no universally agreed-upon, objective foundation for pursuing justice or any other moral goal. This leads us to the realm of metaethics – the study of the nature of ethical statements and judgments.
    There are several perspectives on this:

    • Moral Realism: Some philosophers argue that objective moral truths exist independently of what any individual or culture believes. Under this view, pursuing justice could be objectively right, even if we can’t always discern what justice entails.
    • Moral Relativism: This view holds that moral truths are relative to cultures or individuals. From this perspective, justice is indeed optional, as it’s just one of many possible value systems.
    • Moral Non-Cognitivism: This approach suggests that moral statements aren’t truth-apt (capable of being true or false) but are expressions of emotion or prescriptions for action.
    • Evolutionary Ethics: Some argue that our sense of justice and morality evolved because it was beneficial for group survival, but this doesn’t necessarily make it objectively “true.”
    • Pragmatism: This view suggests we should pursue justice because it leads to better outcomes for societies, even if we can’t prove it’s objectively correct.

    You’re right that, in a sense, all moral frameworks are “optional.” There’s no physical law of the universe that compels us to be just or moral. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that morality is arbitrary or unimportant.
    Many philosophers argue that even without an objective foundation, we can still have robust, rational discussions about ethics and justice. They suggest that we can use reason, empathy, and shared human experiences to build ethical frameworks that, while not objectively provable, are defensible and beneficial.
    Moreover, from a practical standpoint, societies need some shared ethical framework to function. While the specifics of what constitutes justice may vary, the concept of justice itself seems to be a near-universal feature of human societies.
    In the end, whether to pursue justice (or any moral goal) is a choice we make as individuals and societies. But it’s a choice with profound implications for how we live and interact with others. The lack of an objective foundation doesn’t negate the importance of these choices; if anything, it makes our moral deliberations even more crucial.

    That should settle it. If generations of philosophers haven’t found an answer, can we really find a logic to social justice?

    But there’s an alluring charm to the search for a logic. If only we had an objective way to say justice is right, we could go about our lives much more easily. We just have to tell everyone the logic and abracadabra they are now working for social justice too. The whole world could just be transformed.

    Yet there’s no logic. And therefore the fight for social justice is hard. It is an illogical choice. It is something we enter into through our own free will. And so all the methods of how we transfer “knowledge” comes of no use for us. Because it is not “knowledge”. Social justice is a choice. How do we convey our choice to someone else? That’s the question we actually need to answer. 

    As I’ve written before, after exploring power and realizing it doesn’t work I’ve been exploring love as a framework for this. I’ll write soon about how this has been working out for me in the last two years.

  • Ambedkar and Gandhi — They Couldn’t Have Been Friends

    For plenty of reasons, Ambedkar never considered Gandhi as “Mahatma”. And “naturally”, Gandhi rarely understood Ambedkar. In my experience of understanding how my privileges influence how I act, I believe that I’ve been able to appreciate where the difference between Ambedkar and Gandhi arise from. This is perhaps obvious to many scholars. But it was a shower-thought for me.

    Gandhi comes from privilege. Gandhi’s thoughts and ideas are all related to those privileges. That Gandhi chooses to wear lungi is because Gandhi wants to shun those privileges to be able to be able to feel right. I had/have the same thought process when it comes to clothing. I don’t like dressing up smart. Because I think from the privileged position of Gandhi. For me, losing my privilege is what gives me mental satisfaction. 

    When mfc was organizing the annual meeting on discrimination in healthcare, there was this debate on whether to put “Dr” prefix on people’s names. The philosophy that drives mfc is mostly Gandhian. They consider calling each other by first name and stripping titles as natural. I also think like this. I never put “Dr” next to my name. Shunning privileges.

    In another group, in Dalit History Month, there was a poster shared about an event related to remembering Ambedkar. It referred to Ambedkar as “B. R. Ambedkar” and not as “Dr. B. R. Ambedkar”. And some people rightly pointed out how stripping Ambedkar of the “Dr” title is a deliberate act. Ambedkar has to be referred to as “Dr”. And Ambedkar will always appear well dressed with a suit and a tie. These are revolutionary acts with immense meaning to Dalits.

    When there is no privilege to shun, what point is shunning privilege going to make?

    The same philosophy appears in a few other places too. At the mfc meet Anoop Kumar spoke about their life journey and gave incredible examples on how to change things for Dalits. Among the questions posed was a mediocre one as to what his thoughts on “Dalit Capitalism” were. Anoop brushed the question aside saying how not every battle can be fought at once and how Dalits should also get a chance to oppress now — obviously exposing the caste insensitive framing of the question.

    On the next day, the moderator of the concluding session, out of nowhere, made a comment saying how they disagreed with Anoop’s point. And Gandhi was quoted for assistance — “An eye for an eye will leave everyone blind.” Setting aside the fact that this was a misrepresented position being argued against, one can look critically at non-violence as Gandhi professed.

    Fasting, one of the most used “weapons” of Gandhi, makes no sense to people who are already starving. Imagine people being denied PDS through Aadhaar going on a fast unto death! They’re already starving to death. In non-violent methods, essentially, one can see people with privilege converting the every day violence faced by others into a method of protest.

    Non-violence also requires infinite tolerance of the status quo. If you’re frustrated with the way things are and lash out, that’s not Gandhian. If you are tired of the bullshit and call out the crap, you’re being violent. Again, the methods of patience are easier for those who aren’t mentally or physically affected by the problems.

    Ambedkar and Gandhi could never have been friends. Because Gandhi spoke the language of privilege. And Ambedkar spoke from the lived experience of oppression. If Gandhi would acknowledge privileges and own up the influence of those in the Gandhian methods, Ambedkar might have been okay to be friends. But Gandhi’s insensitivity towards caste would never make that possible. And neither would Ambedkar’s methods be okay for Gandhi. And that’s why they couldn’t have been friends. Because of Gandhi’s ignorance.

  • Book Review: Everything is Obvious – Once You Know The Answers

    I first saw this book in the Internet Freedom Foundation thread on which books people there were reading. Then I saw it on Scott Young’s blog which I have been following since childhood. I never got around to reading it till yesterday when I got into a 19 hour train ride to reach Sevagram for medico friend circle’s annual meeting.

    There was no better time to read the book because mfc’s meeting this year is on caste; caste is one of those sociological phenomenons that defy common sense thinking every day; and this book is about “how common sense fails us” and why sociology is not  merely common sense.

    What Duncan Watts has done is write a book specifically for a particular niche of people. This niche includes those people who become so used to straightforward deterministic sciences that they start seeing the limitations of it and look at larger and more comprehensive studies of human kind. Duncan went from learning physics to becoming a sociologist. This is exactly the route that Nihal is taking (from law to policy). And the route I’m taking from medicine to history. And the biggest issue that we face when we take this route is this unprecedented predominance of uncertainty.

    That sociology is more complicated than rocket science. That there are no grand rules waiting to be discovered which will solve all questions. That there are no silver bullets. This is a hard realization. Not one that’s impossible. With enough interdisciplinary exploration and generalization people like Nihal and I do discover that the world is full of uncertainties. But it’s just so difficult to settle for that. “It feels wrong”. 

    And this book makes it feel right. Well, not exactly. But at least it makes it a palatable truth that the world is extremely complicated. It also protects us from common sense thinking that makes us settle for simplistic explanations that push us into silver bullet solutions. This book, you must read, if you have asked this question “What on earth does a sociologist do?” Once you read it, you’ll feel like the contents of the book itself is obvious. And that’s the whole point of the book. Everything is obvious, once you know the answers.