Nov. 18, 2005
Capacity and Culture
Hard work for survival creates capacity. When the latest
technology is marshalled to the enterprise, its success is spectacular. It is a
vast great accomplishment in itself without any reference to society outside or
its law. That capacity is colossal but brute. It refuses to put itself under
the benevolent canopy of law, but tries to bend the law to its requirements.
The emerging social consciousness of law is essentially more powerful but is
always thwarted in the beginning. It is at this stage corruption grows and
organises itself on a nationwide scale. There is no country or civilisation
that has not passed through this coarse stage. The formation of the family, its
attachments and values that compel men in affluence slowly turn towards the
rule of Law. In earlier centuries, marriage between royal families of
feuding states restored them to peace. The English, Prussian, Russian,
Spanish, French, Danish, Italian, Greek kingdoms were ruled almost by the same
royal family. These ties of blood stemmed the fury of war to a great extent for
a long period. Raw capacity is brutal; culture acquires capacity over long
centuries of patient wisdom and plodding organisation. That capacity which
rides on the wave of an evolutionary drive is enormously rewarded with
accomplishment but it is always devoid of culture. Rather it rises to heights
by destroying the rigidities of long established habits of civilisation.
In today’s world, America is the shining symbol of such a success.
Demands of work disregard culture, law, family and all else except that of
results. It is a theoretical necessity followed practically. It is new, coarse,
brutal, unvarnished and uncivilised. It is in this condition that abundance
arises, and prosperity becomes plentiful. It is a law unto itself. If there is
extant culture around, it hastens to acknowledge the vast wealth lending its
social endorsement readily. If not, over the centuries some remnants of
restraint gather into manners, behaviour, law, civilised life and finally
culture. It is education that hastens this process or shapes it into a cultural
form. All civilisations began thus. Egypt, China, Persia and India had over the
past millennia arrived at a stage of culture that enjoyed a language, a court,
a tradition of family, a religious worship, etc. culminating in standards
ethical and spiritual. The Europeans who were living in tribes during such
ascendancy of world civilisation were largely barbarians. The advent of science
gave them an affluence with which they set out to civilise Asia. Now they
suffer the Americans who are impatient to civilise them. The phenomenon in
every nation cultured or not is the best part of the population there equates
Americanisation with cultural advancement. America has that right today as
Europe had it in the previous century. To the older, richer, more mature
civilisations, it appears to be a pity but they are helpless. The truth is
when capacity to accomplish is rare, unaided by a social wave of awakening to a
civilising effort, capacity that shapes within the chastening influence of
culture is non-existent.
Not that culture is incapable
of acquiring capacity but that the capacities of the world preceded the birth
of any trace of culture. Now the world has two options. One is the emerging
capacity that is raw should acquire a modicum of culture through education and
values. The other is the older civilisations have to acquire the latest social
capacities within their ambit of culture. Both are formidable efforts. They
combine in the emerging Spirit in work. Man shifting to the Spirit in work from
work or Spirit in culture from culture for culture’s sake will have the
advantage of work as well as culture. It is the spiritual awakening of Mankind.
Successful wars ended in diplomacy all over the world. Now diplomacy is at its
wit’s end. When diplomacy fails, the centre of power shifts to public opinion
when it is formed. In its absence, there is an impasse. There are occasions
when public opinion fails. The next recourse is public conscience that comes
into existence from the seed of private conscience. It is spiritual. Sri
Aurobindo said that one Man’s perfection could save the world. He practised it
during his lifetime. India today is in a kind of ferment that is an awakening.
Sporadic symptoms of progress are breaking out in different parts of the
nation. The above theme is fully relevant to her present political status. It
is worth dilating on it.
America represents the
emerging Individual in the plane of physical accomplishment. She has outrun all
the world. To her aid came the enormous physical resources of that continent. Should
India wake up to her heritage and draw upon what she has all along stored, the
Infinite will throw at her disposal the infinite resources of the material,
vital, physical and spiritual planes. In the physical plane, she will
discover all the material resources she ever needs, as the silicon chip
revealed in one dimension. In the vital field she would stumble upon all the
monetary resources she needs as they are waiting to be tapped in the
atmosphere. It is not graduates she will produce in the mental plane, but
Ramanujans will be the order of the day. A disciple of Saint-Simon caught a
glimpse of this possibility in the 19th century and declared that 37
million Newtons would be thrown up.
Beyond all these physical
material achievements, India will reveal to the world the Spiritual riches of
the inner life. She would be showing the world that evil is not part of
creation. She has a hoary past of the Spirit. Sri Aurobindo has taken that
ideal further and shown that Spirit’s domain is more in this world of ours than
its native heaven. Mother has explored it further and lived that possibility in
Her own inner life. She became the Supreme. She invites us all to follow Her
path. Nor is it necessary to trail behind Her. One can choose one’s own path as
long as the goal is the same.