Thinking Ecologically than thinking of ecology-IV

After posting the last article on this series, somebody asked me, “What does that mean ‘somebody thinks for you’; is it equivalent to love? To answer straight, it may be love but I would try to save this conclusion from any simplistic kind of understanding. Love is generally assumed to be equivalent to compassion and benevolence but a relationship in ecological terms may not be a very soft relationship. For example, to a person immersed in addictive aspects of a relation, it's not very easy to convey the true meaning of love without being hard or harsh. Similarly, to a person stuck deep in the systems of violence, it would be impossible to communicate the language of compassion and justice. Again, for a person untrained in the domain of aesthetics, it would be amateurish to make him understand the beauty of love. That is why the ecological relationship may be an exact replica of love but here Love needs to be contextualised. Any general treatment of love outside its context may be a total failure of understanding the ecological nature of a relationship. In certain terms, we cannot necessitate the form of relationship because all forms are in sustained communion with their surroundings and hence keep undergoing a substation shift every time. Love is more about the deep awareness of this communication and resultant change. Any kind of essentiality stops the entire process there and then. Whatever I have said about love can also be said about the exact opposite of love which is enmity. Here, somebody thinks against you instead of thinking for you. For a person who is too much afraid of his enemy, it is ridiculous for him to think of anybody other than the enemy. Similarly, if the person doesn't know the art of self defence or cannot make the strategy of defence, any kind of reaction can possibly mean lacking total commonsense. Again, if one of the characters has a historical record of being exploited or impoverished, the possibility of a genuine response is quite limited. Such kinds of perception can actually lead to totally unpredictable kind of behaviour which can stall the possibility of a dialogue in a permanent fashion. In these cases, if other is not the enemy, the eventuality may tend to create one out of a non-situation. That is why to define an ecological relationship both as love or enmity may lead us into a direction of total irrelevance. Setting one kind of idea against the other kind is not the route I am suggesting. Such frameworks shall remain addictions of two extreme kinds-one is extremely schizophrenic and the other is extremely narcissistic. Our precise objective is to avoid both these two extremes because they are isolationist in form as well as texture. People find it very difficult to understand this kind of philosophical suggestion because they find it very difficult to bypass the overrated-ness of the self. To give an attribute to Gramsci, I would put it closer to the distinction he offers between the traditional thinking and the organic thinking. To him, organic thinking is a result of deep understanding of history and the present while the traditional thinking is a result of the conditioning done by the structures of hegemony. It's a kind of position without an identity, a kind of “subaltern” definition as given by Gayatri Spivak. Both Gramsci and Spivak would have defined ecological as rising from the darkness of earth. It is quite supporting for me with just one caution that the directional essential should not be taken too literally. Of late, thinking ecologically is turning out to be an activity less of brain and more of being.

Thinking Ecologically than thinking of ecology-III

After my last post on this series, a student friend of mine, Gaurav Bajaj once expressed his difficulty in understanding the concept of ecological thinking. He's a young man who is trying to explore his own way through the life. He finds himself a deep misfit within the so-called material growth all around himself. He tries to find substance in the relationships but they turn out to be as material as the world around is. He seems to be caught in a thinking trap which makes him dream of natural farming on the one side and deeply disillusioned with the concrete structures of urban life. The whole thinking is built upon a dichotomy of inside and outside. There is a world inside which is not finding its way out and there is a world outside not giving up its hegemony.

Whenever we create an “other” particularly in the political and social terms, we also create an element of fear from this “other”. What we think, we assume to think of ourselves and what the other thinks, we assume to think that it is against ourselves. The element of fear distorts the natural reality of the entire ecosystem spread around ourselves. If we just remove the element of fear, we can tend to understand that thinking is not only a domain of personal control. The others also think for you and not always against you/not necessarily against you/rarely against you. They may even think without any trace of you being there. The point to mention here is that the immediate space around us is an ecosystem of multiple thinkings. Hence, thinking transforms into existence and that's why the space around us is an ecosystem of multiple forms of existence. No amount of good thinking or moral thinking is big enough to qualify any equivalence with this kind of vastness. When we think of the other, we generally tend to think of only human beings but I would say that not only human beings but the animals, the plants, stones, rivers and roads also think. The only problem is that we don't think that they really think. There is a certain kind of streak in the educational grooming of our minds where we tend to focus more and more upon the human beings and tend to forget the nonhuman spaces as the intangible and hence the unimportant spaces. The problem of too much of “I” does not allow the growing of “We”. This precise limitation of our dominant method of thinking creates so many layers of problems for us that the entire struggle becomes an intellectual and moral trap for us. While the reality of the situation always is that these traps are very minor locks where the energy and the movement meets a dead-end and the vast frame of the ecosystem around us keeps up its vitality as usual. For example, when we distinguished between mainstream history and the subaltern history, we had to dig out one form of history against the other form while history was being there in all its forms. What to talk of subaltern, there were private histories against the public history. There were human histories against the national histories. There were religious histories against the material histories. So, the moot point is that thinking as a method has remained a very restricted potential. The sense of morality defines its structure but I would say the sense of being ecological should define its existence. A structure may come out of that existence but we should not expect it to be a controlled structure; it may be as complex an ecosystem as a jungle is. To live in a jungle, one must accept that there is no life outside jungle. Hence, the sanctity of a jungle has to be maintained at all costs. The fear in jungle may be a procedural reality but the fear of jungle as a substantive reality has no point to exist. Still, if we want to cling to our fears, we shall never understand the jungle.

Thinking Ecologically than thinking of Ecology-II

After putting one post on my website yesterday, I still felt the need of elaborating on the same theme a bit in detail. The main point behind that is the so-called notion of moral achievement or moral success that we have got conditioned to. The fact is that within an achievement, there are so many layers of non-achievements and failures that it's never possible to develop a singular definition of the eventual result of any action. When I tried my hands at organic farming, it was an achievement for me but deep down, I could notice that there are so many failures which were really hurting my target of holistic course of development. The very first was that the land never belonged to me in a proprietary sense of the term. It limited my options to go deeper into my experiments. It was a question of serious debate between private and public property which I was struggling to handle. The second question was the availability of seeds which was again limited because of my non-training in the realm of natural farming. The third question was to take my professional career along with my ideal choice. The final was that me, my family and my society were not in total sync with one another over this issue. This kind of set of problems can be found in any kind of moral choice or a moral success. That's why I started feeling that thinking should be more than a moral activity. It has to be organic and somewhat in correspondence with the contemporary history. It is not possible to think ecologically when the society around you is not thinking the same way. The predominant method of social thinking currently available to us is monotheistic and pursues the path of mono-linear morality. When an individual makes a choice, he/she has to get entangled into the immediate web of external ecosystem of the contemporary times. This eventfulness is very mixed in nature because it can be simultaneously progressive and regressive. Here begins a story of partial movements, partial compromises, partial failures and partial successes. I'm not pessimistic about this kind of existential reality or the resultant action but what I want to point out is that there is a serious need to understand the limited nature of current methods of thinking. To be honest, any method of thinking has to be a partial choice of what human beings can achieve by interacting with reality. If the method of thinking is replaced with the ecological nature, we face the problem of not having a conscious structure of thinking. This is something that we are not used to and that's why we keep building structure after structure. Thinking has to be taken into the organic domain so as to make it not just unlimited but also interconnected with the counter possibilities. It has to be potent and in sync with its ecosystem. That shall make it ethical and moral instead of vice-versa. The question of morality is the question of judgement but the question of living is the question of continuity. Any rupture in this process of continuity demands the emergence of justice but any principle of justice cannot be imposed permanently upon this continuity. By sticking to judgements, we keep sticking to the ruptures and hence, we keep sticking to the fractures of reality. This kind of conditioning makes the life a serious mono-crop affair. We might desire to live in the jungle of human possibilities but we trap ourselves into artificial worlds of so-called moral thinking.

Thinking Ecologically than thinking of Ecology

For quite some time, I have been thinking about how we think. This is a question which is not even thought of what to talk of it’s being raised. We almost forget that there is a method behind thinking and over a period of time, this method becomes not just invisible to us but we also turn oblivious of it but it doesn't mean that method has stopped working. It keeps working right there but our relationship with this method undergoes a serious decline. This is not just true of an individual human being but it is also equally true of societies and communities. There is an automatic development of a uniform nature of thought among groups conditioned by caste, colour, gender, culture, religion or any other factor. This uniformity does create a certain sense of composite way of living life but this kind of development should be questioned and decoded simultaneously. Of late, I have been suffering with a strange development. I would prefer to call it strange because of a certain kind of private selfishness. I don't feel the burden of morality pangs as I used to do over a pretty long period of time. The first morality pang which I suffered from was that of “an impossibility of being a good son”. I tried my best before my family and realised that despite achieving a good sense of son-ness, I never wanted to be acknowledged as just a good son. I wanted to be something else. The second morality pang which I suffered from was that of “an impossibility of being a good male”. I tried my best, failed a lot in many cases; succeeded a bit in a few cases and ultimately I realised that goodness of a male can be determined by a female first, a range of social or cultural factors second and finally by my attempt of being good. My trials and tribulations in this domain were so limited by the factors of ‘otherness’ that I could be a good male even if I don't try to be the one. Gradually, over a period of couple of decades, I could understand that trying to be a good male was the greatest illusion of morality which I had imposed upon myself and the fact was that a female and her environment together define a major chunk of my goodness. The third morality pang which I suffered from was “an impossibility of being a true Indian/Oriental.” In the beginning, this attempt/crisis took me into the domain of cultural nationalism which later on turned out to be the majority fascism. Then I shifted into the domain of spiritual nationalism which took me into the domain of serious Indology. This was a bit satisfactory period of my intellectual journey but soon I realised that all spiritual journeys have to be based upon the material lives. One has to develop one's own Mahabharata, one long battle and one's own wars. This brought me down from the domain of spiritualism into the domain of essential materialism. I could learn to respect people like Gramsci, naxalites, grassroot activists, ecological warriors and libertarians. These three morality pangs were basically the fundamental methods of thinking which I had developed rights since my birth and had almost forgotten that my entire action was being dictated by these fundamental forms of thought. The series of successes and failures were actually driven by these hidden forces of judgement which were always in operation though I was almost ignorant of them. It's only recently that I have realised that these three morality pangs don't bother me as they used to do earlier. The fourth morality pang which I started suffering from was around a decade back when I started realising the cost of an urbanized and consumerist living style which I had got used to. I had no training in rural habitat or the method of natural life. I kept saying to myself that I am only consuming and consuming but I'm not creating the natural wealth. I'm not saving water, am not saving greenery, am not doing enough to save the ecology. This morality pang took me into the world of natural farming, organic farming, permaculture, sustainable development and alternative forms of human habitat. A couple of years back, I tried my hands at organic farming and after a series of minor experiments, I realised that my enterprise may give a lot of satisfaction, vegetables and fruits to me and my family but I was not able to design a system which was truly ecological because of so many factors that I could not even see. This was the final morality pang with which I decided not to be conditioned by. These deep-rooted methods of thinking which seemed to give a direction actually constrain the vast scope of human action. They seem to provide a direction in the beginning but they don't solve the question- Who you are and what you want to be? These methods are mono-crop, mono-tonous, mono-theistic, mono-polistic and mono-chromatic. Why a method cannot be based upon a model of biodiversity? Instead of thinking of ecology, why the method itself cannot be ecological? Why it has to be constrained by only one kind of predominant value system? Perhaps, our problem is that we tend to believe in clean, moral and synthetic methods of thinking. Rather I feel that no method can really fulfil these three criteria. The human consciousness does not operate as designed by these limited doctrines. It draws its strength and vitality from a much deeper resource of thinking which is made up of very deeply interconnected, deeply rooted and biologically joined ecosystem which may be called a jungle, as good as a rainforest. A forest is life source of human habitat but a forest as a method of thinking is yet to be registered in human mind. That's why I believe that we need to learn to be aware of what is called ecological thinking.

शून्य

यह शून्य क्या है? बहुत बार शून्य को एक अंकगणित की रचना से आगे देखने की कोशिश नहीं होती या फिर यूँ कहें कि हो नहीं पाती क्योंकि शून्य उस गतिविधि का, जिसमे हम रत हैं, की अपूर्णता का हमेशा ख्याल करवाता है। यहाँ 'अपूर्णता' शब्द की बजाए यूँ कहना भी ठीक होगा कि वो पूर्णता के भान को ही तोड़ता है। इससे भी बेहतर यह कहना होगा कि शून्य तर्कसंगत होने की प्रणाली की नींव में एक छेद बनकर बैठ जाता है जो उस तर्क की विकासशीलता पर एक निरंतर प्रश्न चिन्ह की तरह ताकता रहता है। यह भी कह सकते हैं कि तर्क घबराता है शून्य से। यह घभ्राहट तर्क का स्वभाव हो या न हो पर क्या इसका छिपाव नहीं है?


यह एक विचित्र बात है कि गणित के रूप में एक निरंतर उपस्तिथि के बावजूद सामान्य जीवन-दर्शन में शून्य की कोई जगह नहीं होती। हमारे सपनों में शून्य का अस्तित्व एक निषेध की तरह होता है। राजनितिक विचारधाराओं में इसकी छाया तक को पास नहीं फटकने दिया जाता। बाज़ारों में तो छोडिये, हमारे घरों में भी शून्य के लिए कोई स्थान नहीं है। शायद हमारे संसार की रचना का कोई भी तारतम्य शून्य को मानने के लिए राजी नहीं है क्योंकि शून्य यानी 'जो नहीं है' को 'है' की श्रेणी में माना ही क्यूं जाए! यह बहुत ही सर्वमान्य सिद्धांत है जिसको लेकर वाद-विवाद की कोई जगह नहीं मानी जाती।


पर .........................


जब-जब रामू गाँधी (रामचंद्र गाँधी) की दर्शन-शाला (फिलोसोफी वर्कशॉप) की बात याद आती है तो जो बल उन्होंने शून्य पर दिया है, वो बार-बार स्मृति में उभर आता है। एक बार उनकी क्लास में कुछ कुर्सियाँ पड़ी थीं, एक कुर्सी छोड़ कर बाकी सब पर लोग बैठे थे और सब का एक-एक करके परिचे हो रहा था। एक- एक करते-करते जब आख़िर में खाली कुर्सी तक पहुंचे तो रामू गाँधी बोले,"अब मिलिए शून्य जी से "। उसके बाद की हसीं में गंभीरता गायब नहीं थी।


एक दार्शनिक की शून्य के बारे में यह कथनी करनी के लोक में एक बड़ी तीखी और गहरी सेंध की तरह आज भी भिन्धि हूई है। जब-जब अपनी ज़िंदगी के सुचारू रूप पर मुग्ध होता हूँ , अभी उसकी खुशी के कुछ पल गुजरे ही होते हैं और वो सेंध मेरे सामने आकर ठहर जाती है। मैं ख़ुद को एक रूपहीन डर के भीतर कैद महसूस करता हूँ। शायद शून्य और डर- यह दो समानार्थी शब्द मान लिए गए हैं। शायद यही कारण है जिसकी वजह से शून्य के ऊपर चिंतन शुरू होने से पहले ही खेल खत्म हो जाता है। जबकि सच केवल इतना है, शून्य बस 'नहीं है' और जो नहीं है, उससे डरने की भी क्या ज़रूरत है? पर हमारी ज़िन्दगिओं का दुखांत यह है -इस मूलभूत गड़बड़ को ही हमने अपने यथार्थ का आधार बना लिया है। हमारे पूर्वाग्रहों की गिनती चाहे जितनी भी क्यूं न हो, पर उनकी सबकी मूल प्रकृति शून्य-विरोधी है क्योंकि शून्य पूर्वाग्रह नहीं है, मात्र आग्रह है, जिसका हम आमतौर पर मुहं मोड़ कर एक चुपचाप वापसी के रूप में जवाब देते हैं।
आज अगर कोई सबसे बड़ी चुनौती है तौ वो इसी आग्रह का उत्तर देने की है। देहात्मबोध इस आग्रह से पीठ किए बैठा है। जबकि गहरे में वो जानता है की वो बस एक नमक की गुडिया है। जो देर-सवेर काल के पानियों में घुल जाएगा। किस में? उसमे 'जो नहीं' है। सो, चिरंतन शरण किस्में है? शून्य में। पर आज उसी को नकार कर हम जी रहे हैं। एक बड़ी ही सरल अंक-गणितीय इकूअशन है।
१ + ० = १
२ + ० = २
इस इकूअशन के दायीं और बांयी और की संख्याएँ गणितीय सिद्धांतों के अनुसार बराबर हैं, पर जिस तरह गणित में जमा शून्य लिखना सम्भव है, ठीक उसी तरह क्या जमा शून्य के सच को स्वीकार कर सकते हैं? मुझे ऐसा लगता है की उपरोक्त सच किसी न किसी रूपक के तौर पर हमारे जीवन में कार्यशील रहता है जिसकी अनदेखी देहात्मबोध को एक कैद बना देती है पर इसके विपरीत उसकी स्वीकृति उसी कैद का एंटी-डॉट बन जाती है। ध्यान रहे यहाँ पर रेखांकन सिर्फ़ स्वीकृति का है। बल्कि कैद या एंटी-डॉट का नहीं । क्योंकि दोनों ही पूर्वाग्रहों की दुनिया के शब्द हैं, जबकि शून्य मात्र आग्रह की दुनिया का जिसका कोई रूप नहीं , कोई आकार नहीं। अगर कोई गुन है तौ बस पुकारने का गुन । बस इतनी ही सम्पदा है उसकी पोटली में। इस गरीब को अपने राज्लोक में थोडी सी जगह देने से हमारा क्या बिगड़ जाएगा?

भारतीय चिंतन की कन्धराओं से

पिछले एक लंबे समय से दर्शन की गलियों से गुजरता रहा हूँ। कई बार किसी नुक्कड़ पर ठहरा तो बस ठहरा ही रह गया। फिर अचानक शून्यों की एक भीड़ आती थी और मुझे आगे को धकेल देती थी। यात्रा फिर से शुरू हो जाती थी। इस बीच एक सवाल हर थोड़ी देर बाद आकर सिर पर बैठ जाता था कि क्या दर्शन की कोई भारतीय पहचान भी हो सकती है? हालांकि मुझे पिछले सौ सालों में लिखे गए भारतीय चिंतन के काफी दिग्गजों की जानकारी है पर मामला सिर्फ इतना नहीं है। स्वामी रामकृष्ण परमहंस, विवेकानन्द, श्री अरविंदो घोष, मह्रिषी दयानंद, महात्मा गाँधी, सावरकर, ऍम ऍन रोय, जयप्रकाश नारायण, जे कृष्णामूर्ति, आचार्य रजनीश, स्वामी रामतीर्थ, के जे शाह और रामचंद्र गाँधी की रचनाओं को पढ़ने का मौका मिला है पर ऐसा कुछ अजीब है भारतीय होने के चक्कर में कि हम अपने दर्शन की परम्पराओं को अपनी समकालीनता में देखने में लगभग असमर्थ हैं। गाँधी को लेकर तो एक विशेष किस्म की अपराधिक कुंठा तो नज़र आती ही है। परन्तु शायद ही कोई ऐसा अन्य चिन्तक हमारे सामने हो जिसकी बात करके हम अपने भारतीय और मानव होने के सवाल पर चिंतन भी कर सकें। चाहे वो पर्यावरण का मुद्दा हो, चाहे वो अर्थव्यवस्था और वैश्वीकरण का सवाल हो, चाहे वो धर्म और राजनीति का मसला हो, चाहे वो मीडिया और इसकी मसालेदार खबरों का तूफ़ान हो, चाहे वो एकोंणमुखी नैतिकता का प्रश्न हो, हर बार हमारे पास जवाब के रुप में भारतीय दार्शनिक संदर्भ कहीं नज़र ही नहीं आ रहा । क्या इस देश के चिन्तक इतने गए-गुज़रे थे कि आज हम उनके काम के किसी भी पक्ष का अपनी समस्याओं को समझने के लिए इस्तेमाल नहीं कर सकते! हज़ारों सालों की प्रतिभा को जिंदा रखने वाले लोग एक समय में आकर अचानक अप्रासंगिक हो जाते हैं। राजनीति के लिए अप्रासंगिक , संस्कृति के लिए अप्रासंगिक, साहित्य के लिए , सिनेमा के लिए अप्रासंगिक ! और तो छोडिये कहीं वामपंथी भी ऍम एन रोय या फिर जयप्रकाश नारायण की बात करते नज़र नहीं आते और न ही दक्षिणपंथी कभी अरविंदो घोष की बात करते नज़र आते हैं। रामचंद्र गाँधी को हमने दार्शनिक की कुर्सी पर तो चढाया ही नहीं है। उसे दिल्ली का पागल कहकर रास्ते पर उसकी याद को भटकने छोड़ दिया है।
एक गहरा अकाल है किसी भी विचार की परम्परा का।

ऐसी स्तिथि में क्या किसी भी चिंतन परम्परा की बात हो सकती है? अनकही दीवारों में सिमटे तर्क लहुलुहान हुए बैठे रहते हैं। संवाद की कोशिशें संसारिकता को अर्थहीन साबित करती चली जाती हैं। हम तलाश करते हैं एक और वाद की । और विचारधाराओं के बाज़ार में सेंसेक्स फिर बढ़ना-घटना शुरू कर देता है। बुद्धिजीवी अपनी जीविका का इंतजाम करने फिर निकल लेते हैं नए माल की खरीद-दारी करने। बुद्धि के आयाम में यही एक रोड़ा है जो सिवाय एक रास्ते के और कोई विकल्प नहीं छोड़ता?
वो है मृत्यु !
एक सामाजिकता की मृत्यु, एक इतिहास की मृत्यु और एक आशावाद की मृत्यु!
मात्र मृत्यु एक कल्प के रुप में सामने खड़ी होती है और आप को सिर्फ एक पल दिया जाता है फ़ैसला करने के लिए।
इतिहास का आसरा काम नहीं आता, राष्ट्रीयता का झांसा भी नहीं चलता और विचारधारा का साथ भी नहीं रहता।
बचती है तो बस एक इच्छा !
नवजात इच्छा! जिसका धर्म अभी बनेगा, जिसका कर्म अभी बनेगा और जिसकी नियति अभी बनेगी।
क्या पता भारतीय बने, क्या पता अभारतीय बने और क्या पता वो भारतीय होने के किसी सांचे के अन्दर आने को भी राज़ी न हो!
अगर कहीं किसी पहचान की शुरुआत हो सकती है, तो उस इच्छा के ही रुप से हो सकती है।