Cause Effect Paradigm 007

Everywhere, Globally Operating

G: All examples you have given so far on public or societal or national policy choice and decisions are from your local Indian or West Bengal context. We are yet to see examples of the three forces of Cause-Effect Paradigm, Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome and Cause-Effect Inverses operating in other countries or internationally.
S: You are right. The examples that come to my mind first are conditioned by my limited knowledge. I know virtually little about hat goes on other countries or internationally. But if you insist I will make an attempt.
G: It seems that I have developed considerable patience with your ramblings; I can tolerate some more of your lectures. But please try to cover examples relevant to such issues as conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, international fight against terrorism, globalization and World Trade negotiations, the rise of China and India as emerging, super economic power, spread of Western culture, international cooperation in eradication of environmental pollution, elimination of poverty and establishment and protection of human rights.
S: I will try. Let us first consider the issue of human rights. Probably, Man started off with Might is Right. Once some men or women had discovered that they had greater might in terms of physical or mental power compared with others, they developed a notion of what rights they should enjoy. They felt hungry and had the might to pluck fruits from trees who could not resist them had developed the right to eat fruits. It is through a long history that the concept of Right against Might has evolved. And, now we also have recognized Right against Plight. The development of the concept of right is only a reflection of the Natural Process. Each human being is given the right to live, to get food, shelter and clothes, to get educated, to work and earn livelihood, to get protection against insult, oppression and torture, to express opinion without fear of oppression or assault by others and so on. The only way we can justify these rights is to say these are good things most of us like and with these rights recognized the society will be happier.
G: Isn’t that good enough justification.
S: But is this relationship between human rights and societal happiness a scientific truth?
G: Do you have doubts?
S: I would be happy in a world in which human rights are fully in force. But here I am seeking a scientific proof of the proposition that human rights and happiness are positively correlated.
G: This proposition does not require proof. Everyone understands.
S: Not exactly. Some fools may still fail to understand. As for example, I do not know how a person who is oppressing others and happy today will become happy when enforcement of human rights stops him from oppressing others. I also do not know how those people who are making sincere and tireless efforts to protect human rights remain happy when despite their efforts violation of human rights continue to take place.
G: Since you do not know let me explain. The number of oppressors is few and the number oppressed is many. The happiness of many relieved from oppression is greater than the loss of happiness of the few who loses their power to oppress. And, the people who care for human rights become happy as the incidence of human rights violation reduces.
S: Has incidence of human rights violation gone down over the years? If it has, the happiness of the World must have increased. But it does not seem so. With the spread of education and respect for fellow human beings, the incidence of violation must have gone down. But the lower incidence itself should cause greater unhappiness. When the incidence is high, each incident is of low value in terms of happiness. When incidence is low, each incident is much more painful. In civilized societies, a single incidence causes great pain. In less civilized societies with poor education, violations are so many that people do not bother much.
G: You are talking about differences in values across societies. These issues are finer issues like beauty. They are not dealt with in numerical or quantitative terms.
S: I do not agree. Human rights are not a subjective matter like beauty. They are real practical matters. If we are to protect human rights, most people should be concerned and involved with such protection mechanism. The human rights commission should ideally be a network of the majority of the people involved directly in anticipating and preventing human right violation from taking place. And, we cannot have human rights commissions with infinite life. They have to die when most people in the society are so caring about others. When will we reach that stage?
G: We have to struggle all the time to ensure human rights.
S: That means we are assuming that violation of human rights is a natural tendency among human beings however few. What you therefore wish to do is to delegate this task to a permanent policing force. It would be better if we find why human rights violations take place at all. Once we understand that correctly, we can know how exactly we can prevent people from desires that lead to behaviour of violating human rights. We need a Scientific Cause-Effect Paradigm on human rights violation. All of us would need to be educated on this before really meaningful public policy can be designed to eradicate such violation. Only laws and commissions cannot solve the problem.
G: You are essentially talking about spread of awareness and strengthening the capability of human rights commissions and agencies.
S: Yes. But, I am talking about not merely of such awareness and capabilities. I am more concerned about developing attitudes and behaviour that automatically help prevent human rights violation. If the attitudes and behaviour practices are not based on an understanding of and commitment to human rights, we cannot eradicate violations. How do we ensure that all persons in the society understand and appreciate human rights? If we can ensure that no one would act in any way that leads to violation of human rights. We need a cause-effect inverse starting from a state where everyone protects every other one’s human rights to an earlier state where many people think that it is legitimate to violate human rights in selfish interest.
G: I understand what you are saying. If most people love each other, why should people have tendency to cause harm to other people in any way? This is the way to get to the solution.
S: But at ant point of time there would be at least a few persons who would violate human rights. Not all persons in the World will simultaneously become sages or saints.
G: So what? We must try to approach towards the ideal state.
S: We must. But we are destined to fail. All our efforts to reduce the percentage of population committing human rights violation will succeed up to a time. There may exist a low floor below that the percentage refuses to go down and before that floor is reached the percentage may start rising again. Thus, the percentage may move like a sinusoidal curve over time. At a very high/ ceiling percentage, societal system would tend to breakdown and people may be forced by circumstances to cleanse. More and more people will slowly start respecting human rights. Again, when the percentage of population committing human rights violation reaches a floor cut-off, more and more younger generation persons may start violations because of strong self-interest overwhelming the traditions and values their past generations tried to inculcate in them. It goes on like this over time again and again.
G: I see what you are trying to hint at. That these oscillations occur within a boundary of upper and lower limits would tend to imply that these are determined by natural law. But in this session you have cleverly chosen an example that helps you return to your Natural Law Stochastic Destiny Principle.
S: Thank you for your accusation. But I felt that this example illustrates how Cause-Effect Paradigm establishes that growing incidence of human right violations over time causes the effect of societal order breakdown. It illustrates also how this cause-effect relationship develops a Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome to believe that if we can be fully successful in our efforts to cleanse the society of human rights violations. Then, we may suddenly find a Cause-Effect Inverse that shows that societies that exist today and advanced materialistically still suffer from human rights violations. This would imply that the phenomenon of variations over time in the intensity of human right violations is as natural a law as the variations in the intensity over time of human efforts to cleanse the society of human right violations. No wonder the human incarnation of Hindu God, Lord Krishna, had said that He had to take birth again and again to restore order in the society. He would not have to come again and again if the any one knew how to permanently cleanse the society of human right violations! It is all part of the Natural Law or Stochastic Destiny Principle.
G: See, you were to give more international examples of the Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome and Inverse. Instead you started with one example and digressed into your pet Destiny Principle that negates the existence of freedom of choice to human beings. Why do you go into issues or theories that are not relevant to giving more examples of cause-effect obsession syndrome in the international context?
S: I am sorry that I have limited ability to generate examples and a tendency discuss in a manner that makes Destiny Principle resurface. But is this limited ability and tendency irrelevant? We need to take up the issue of Relevance and Irrelevance to generate more illustrations you sought.
G: For that better we have another round of serial dialogue sessions later.