The last one decade has been a decade of revelations. The nature’s furry through COVID 19 and now unprecedented floods in some parts and dry spells unknown before in many regions have shown how humans are compelled to engage with nature, rather than shunning it. The Russian invasion too has exposed the myth of being super power and delusion of predictability of world order.
It has been an era that has made virtual world questioning the actual world of primary groups and its established systems, including confessionalism. Artificial intelligence has made a big leap bound to tell us that even the diseases can be predicted in advance, remedies could be formulated straight to know the date of death.
No wonder, if peace remains to allow scientific community to work as it does, death might be conquered. Religion had given meaning to life, for making to believe that life after death, somewhat, linked to this world. Vision, speech, recognition and generation all were fields of religion. This has been taken up by Artificial Intelligence.
The focus is now on predictive analysis, digital avatars, control and inventing military weapons. Data is god and there is massive advancement in computing technology. Recurrent neural networks use sequential data to take information from prior inputs to produce the current outputs.
It has made control discipline and consumption on predictable lines, which can be corrected and resurrected on flowing information from the data bank. This indulgence of computer technology through AI has played with the boundaries of religion and the receipts of pure science.
Although, history is classified in different periods, from ancient to modern, in reality it has a connection in continuity to the realm of power and domination though control and discipline. The shift from pre-modern to post-modern is not abrupt. It is shaped by an epistemological lag of two centuries known as Modern. Modern had created social and lived religion from separation of state and formal religion.
The state and the institutions would strengthen the moral intrinsic core to the material advancement. Science is blessing so long it remains pure science and religion would morally guide as long as it would be inherent with social making. Post Modern is a rupture of boundaries and its centrality. Instead of giving us frontiers back with social trust, its multicultural and transcended world is a division of rich and poor, ignorant and well informed with crudity and surveillance on constructed boundaries. It is a strange world.
We are all wanderers, watched and observed from homes to workplaces, from roads to buildings from air to seas, finally gathered in chips. In the past too, we empowered clergy, believed in it with unconditional loyalty and now we help the data bank with our wilful participation in social media through electronic gadgets and mobile phones.
This in turn has exposed our belief system that we are no longer the masters of our being. And in this asymmetrical social order ramparts of past and present have converged to hyphen religion and science.
Science has turned to scientism, goal rationality for power and domination, while, religion to religiosity for supremacy and dominance. This has generated populism all over the world, a combination of primordialism with nationalism. It is mixing of macho nationalism with rudimentary religiosity. Have a look at the international scenario for the last one decade, it has same scene everywhere.
A leadership that denies the contributions of the past governance in nation building , a leadership that works on the wash off effect of modernity and places emphasis on security apparatus rather than welfarism and a leadership that that believes in autocracy under the apparel of democracy.
It has worked in creating the new social political consciousness, which initially helped the aggressive populism that cloud our sight and shroud our vision to go beyond image.
This has come to halt with the intervention of nature in an uncontrollable manner This era of populism cannot be selective, in view of the unprecedented human sufferings persistently for the last couple of years.
The devastating fires, catastrophic infectious diseases, shattering floods and lessons of wars direct or asymmetrical have made power elites also vulnerable. It is a time to reform.
Functionality has not only to serve powerful. It has to be a shift from the policies of neo-capitalism to shared capitalism, reaching each strata of the society with common reception of wellbeing. This needs reformation in religion and in the institutions, as well.
It has to be shared responsibilities by those who hold religious authority, by those who have economic power and by those who have state power. It has to be a movement from down supported by the elite. It needs charismatic morally recognised humans to initiate and lead the societal transformation on human values and sustainable livelihood.
The messages and their personal conduct can convert cultural social capital in a reformation capital that could rebuild the society with new moral and material structural edifice. We need internal reformation by altruistic mind-set. Imagine how our institutions have been wilfully permitted to be weakened to sustain our power elite.
It has bled one and all. We have lost internal cohesion of our institutions. This can be corrected only through reformative movements. We have witnessed such reformative movements after each cultural crisis. Bhakti Movement of thirteenth and fourteen centuries and then early reform movements of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are the exceptional illustrations.
Our society in the past has given birth to the charismatic reformers, who have invoked human values and blended it with religion- cultural capital for the good of society. It is possible, if each rung of the civil society with power elite could sense the peril. We are in a different world now, where control of our mind is wilfully accepted in allure of virtual world.
Its source is invisible and perceived everywhere like religion presumes God. The convergence of invisibility is reinforced by the religiosity and scientism. It needs cessation and replacement by moral core by human agency and not by machine. That is reformation, which can overcome trust deficit and minimize the scope of scarcity.
The human agency can make a difference between ritualism and perpetuating of reformative capital. It is vulnerable to jump in sustainable livelihood frame without out reformation at its micro level. It is easy to propagate about human capital, point out distant financial capital, its openings and conversion with social and natural capital, but it is difficult to find sustained realm of wellbeing.
It has its limitation to understand the functioning of power realm. The network allure has made a migrant, all the more, cut with roots and resource less wanderer in the social corners at unknown sites. Gender equality is a cherished dream, but without lasting marriages and family evolved organic cultural capital, its purpose to empower women and children is lost. It has resulted discord in mutual relationships.
The children of such families are either depressed or turn to be rebel. It has been observed that patriarchy is more enforced by religiosity and scientism. We need family integration though our inherited cultural capital, where women and men have equal esteem and are together bound by trust and mutual attraction. Sustainability of relationship on parity without mutual trust and security has created a weak manhood.
This in turn has affected adversely the children’s behaviour. It has been observed that children in such families, where father is not central and friendly with children, the moral control vanishes.
The children gradually turn rebel and become highly individualistic with unrealistic ambitions. Internal communication and openness in the family are the necessary ingredients to make a child positive and responsible, so that he or she can draws the boundaries, where security with freedom is assured.
Discord between the spouses and trust deficit is for the children a stepping ground in to the realm of scarcity and uncertainty. The institution of family has to be prime and consecrated to make our children confident and positive in this era of vulnerabilities.
We need a new crop of leadership rooted in reformation, rather than religious populism. Populism has come to its peak. The family is the basic unit, it alone can serve older and groom children to make them responsible citizens.
Ashok Kaul, Emeritus Professor in Sociology at Banaras Hindu University
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.