Destiny of Choice 006

God-dependent Choice

G: It seems that you believe that God makes all choices. Human beings chooses what they are destined to choose as individuals or as groups or societies.

S: Yes, but even God’s choices are part of a process that I call the Destiny Principle.

G: A Nobel Laureate says that societies and people should have the opportunity and ability to consider alternative choices available. You seem to say that he is incorrect!

S: No, I do not say that. What he says is what he is destined to say. He is correct in what he says. That is how human civilization progresses. The impact of what he says on others now and in future will be as per the Stochastic Destiny Process. The exercise of choice is the process through which Mankind advances. But the choices taken actually taken are not independent decision of any man or a group. The discovery of choices, the willingness to make choices and the actual choice making are all outcomes of forces beyond the independent control of an individual or a group. We choose that we are destined to choose given the past, the forces of prevailing circumstances and the properties/ inclinations in built in each of us.

G: Isn’t that contradictory?

S: No. It is part of the destiny process that most people continue to think about making choices, generate alternative choices and feel that they make choices. Destined choices by any person do not come from out of the blue: they come out of the destined process. People may think about alternatives but choose the one that is best according to some criteria. Some one decides to do something to maximize his self-interest. Some others decide to do something in the interest of someone else or the society. These criteria have also evolved over time. If some people do not think about making choices, and someone advises them to empower themselves by making choices as result of which those people become choice-making people, this is what is in the destiny. I believe in Destiny Principle and simultaneously make choices and advise other to make rational choices. I do not find any conflict. I do whatever I do in making choices and advising others on making choices only because I am destined and compelled to do so by the forces that have been operating on my body and mind since my birth.

G: I thought that those who would believe in your Destiny Principle are irrational, unscientific minds attached to old scriptures that are no more relevant to modern civilizations.

S: You are destined to think like that. You are as correct as I am about Destiny Principle.

G: But over the centuries, Human Society has expanded its stock of knowledge that gives the power to control destiny. So, nowadays we should be saying that we make our destinies.

S: Man has acquired great knowledge no doubt. That was destined to happen. Man did not acquire knowledge by choice but by the forces of destiny. Even that knowledge acquired so far is far, far inadequate for Man to be able to alter his destiny even a little. Assume that a man-made computer clock knows how it keeps time. Would that make it change the time? No. Even if one had the entire knowledge, one cannot control one’s destiny.

G: Isn’t Man’s life different now than what was centuries back because of the expansion of Man’s knowledge? Can we not say that Man has changed his destiny?

S: No. You cannot logically claim that. In the history of natural evolutionary process, man is of recent origin. This process has imparted many properties in human beings. One such property is to discover what goes on in the environment, acquire knowledge and apply knowledge to change the way Man lives. This is the working out of the Destiny Principle. Man was destined by the process to discover numerous properties of the physical world and destined to use this growing knowledge to light fire, grow food, hunt animals, kill fish, cook food, construct better shelter, weave clothes, build machines, defend against natural calamities, fly airplanes, communicate long-distance through radio frequency, invent computer and internet, formulate drugs to cure diseases and help extend life expectancy, send manned and unmanned spacecraft to probe the planets and the stars in the skies. All this was destined. Man had no control over the process.

G: Such an explanation would rob Man of his great achievements.

S: Do we have to give credit to children as they grow up slowly in to full grown adult bodies and acquire mental capabilities to deal with complex concepts and various languages. This happens naturally because it is a natural process. Most babies are destined to grow up into adult bodies: babies do not choose to become adults.

G: You seem to make Man as an integral part of Nature as all other things in the Universe.

S: Is there any specific reason that one must consider human beings as autonomous entities outside the Natural System?

G: The Universe has been expanding. It shows that completely new things can emerge independent of the Natural System.

S: No. It does not show that. The discovery that Universe is expanding means that the distances among galaxies are increasing. But this expansion is taking place in what? When you walk east and I walk west the physical distance between us increases. But the distance exists on the surface of the land. When fire expands in size, the expansion takes place over a three-dimensional space that always exists. Similarly, the previously known Universe can expand only within the hitherto unknown Universe. The distances among galaxies can increase if the galaxies drift apart in space that already existed even if unknown to us so far. It is a completely endogenous system in which nothing can emerge independent or nothing exogenous can arrive from outside.

G: So you do not believe that the Universe is expanding?

S: The Universe is Infinite. The things within the universe can expand or contract within the universe. If the Universe has to expand it has to expand within the Universe. Ask yourself where is it that the Universe is expanding? If you admit of anything separate where the expansion takes place, then it must be already in existence whether previously known to exist or not. The entire universe is filled with something or the other, whether we can observe them or not, whether they have mass or not. The size of the Universe is Infinity. Where are the limits of the Universe? There are none. If something within the universe expands it must be within the previously known parts of the Universe or newly dioscovered, hitherto unknown parts of the Universe.

G: OK. For a moment let us assume that you are correct that your Stochastic Destiny Principle operates as a process over the domain of this infinite Universe System that is completely endogenous and does not admit of any external, outside shock. Now, please explain how would you design such a process and system that is ever lasting.

S: I am sure you do not require me to write a treatise on this subject and detail the design of an infinite system and its inherent process or processes. You probably want to visualize the feasibility of such design. I suggest that you do some small experiments. For instance, you may take a big graph paper. Take a red pencil, a blue pencil and an eraser that can remove marks on graph paper without affecting the strength of the paper. Toss a coin. When a head comes, put a red dot on any one of the small blank squares on the graph paper. When a tail occurs, put a blue dot on any one of the small blank square within the distance of three small squares from any previously coloured small squares or if that is not possible choose any other blank square to put the blue dot mark. After you have done this for four dots, in every fifth draw erase any two squares already coloured. Go on doing this to see how long you last. Now, record the destiny of different squares and colours in terms of their longevity in terms of number of tosses a square remains coloured and number of blue dotted and red dotted small squares.

G: Such games may be never ending. But how does this help me.

S: It will help you design endogenous systems that last forever without external shocks and without giving any part of the system any real discretion to choose.

G: When did God design the system and how? Or, does he continually design and redesign the system.

S: I really do not know. But I do not believe that God, like a design engineer, works on his system. The entire universe or the creation is filled with something or other, whether we can see, feel or discover them or not. Each infinitesimal point in the Universe is filled with some mass-less thing that let us call OM rather than atom or sub-atomic particles like neutrinos. Conceptually, no vacuum exists. All that we see and feel or cannot see or feel are floating in the media called OM. The natural process takes place in this OM. The OM is constant, indivisible, limitless infinity. God Himself is the System that evolves and adapts in this OM. The natural system design is a process that evolves and adapts. That is why the ancient sages believed that God splits Himself in to many forms and then integrates back into one form or become formless. The division and multiplication process continues continuously in sub-atomic particles, in atoms, in living beings, in oceans, mountains, in air, in the Sun ad stars, in the cosmos within the known universe and within that part of the universe that is yet unknown, undiscovered by Man. As with anything else, the emergence and evolution of Mankind and human civilization is nothing but the result of that never-ending natural process. What Man comes to know about the Universe at what point of time is also part of the same stochastic Destiny Process. No one can be independent of that process.

G: Even God is not independent of that process?

S: Right.

G: So, even God does not exercise independent choice.

S: Correct. See, most people will agree that there should not be any War or military conflict in the World. Wars have always had a devastating effect on the minds of people only after Man came to know how to protect them form storms, fire, earthquakes, floods, rains, volcanoes, epidemics and etc. These physical/ natural calamities had a beneficial effect on Man. The benefits were immense in terms of progress of science and technology as well as religion and philosophy. The Wars have tremendous benefits that people do not want to count. These benefits again take the form of progress in science and technology, greater understanding of the sources of conflict leading to war, development of better methods of negotiations for peace, enabling people to learn their mistakes and foolishness, the embarrassment to the false pride of people/ nations or their leaders of both the fighting parties.

G: It is amusing to think of benefits of War! Are Wars fought because the benefits are substantially higher than the costs?

S: Alexander the Great forced wars on other countries if they had not agreed to become part of his Empire without a fight. People have learnt lessons from such wars including the World War I and II. Today, people do not fight wars to expand their territories. But they fight because both parties are unable to give up the attachment to their past and accept the reality as in Palestine. Or, they take uncompromising stance to belittle each other as in the case of the US and Saddam (and now some of the divided Iraqi groups). Maybe, people would take lessons in future and learn not to act so foolishly as Saddam, France, Germany and Russia did. Maybe, future US administration and military would learn to develop effective strategies to deter the rise of oppressive tyrants like Saddam who threaten World peace without going to war or win wars against such tyrants without causing human casualty or avoiding human sufferings.

G: You imply that Wars cannot ever be banished from Earth?

S: So far wars seem to have been inevitable. Even Lord Rama had to fight and inflict a great cost to his followers and Ravana's Kingdom. Lord Krishna could not stop the Kurukshetra War and its devastating consequences. But successive generations have learnt highly beneficial lessons from these Wars.

G: If the costs are so huge, why should your God System make Wars inevitable?

S: We estimate only the costs of War. We must also learn to estimate the benefits of War. So long as there exists a fair chance (in probabilistic sense) that the benefits of a war may far exceed the costs of War, Man is likely to remain potentially violent to slip into Wars from time to time.

I personally think the cost of Iraq war is much lower as compared to some other wars US engaged herself in the past. The War benefits to society may have been much bigger. Man has made considerable progress and continue to do so in reducing the costs of war and enhance the benefits from war.

G: The war in Iraq still continues in 2006 with US Military actively present. The US has failed to win the war.

S: The Iraq war, according to me, is over. US military can withdraw from Iraq, if the war was to unseat and banish Saddam and destroy weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The remaining people fighting in Iraq will continue to fight civil wars because they are still intoxicated by the warring spirit and selfishness.

G: Even not counting the damages after the fall of Saddam regime, the cost of the War is substantial. The money could have been better spent for human welfare.

S: But war benefits are also to be counted. Just by allowing the War in Iraq to happen the way it has many Arab World countries have become further wealthier through rise in crude oil prices and poorer countries like China and India continued to get more of their citizens employed and become richer by providing the American cheap supply of cheap food, clothing, furniture, software services etc and all these on loan. It is not so easy to calculate costs and benefits of War to Humanity as easily as some think because they believe that there are no benefits from Wars.

G: Are you a warmonger?

S: No, I am not. Lest others misunderstand, I must state that I do not want wars to happen even if the benefits far exceed costs of wars. I am among those who are frightened by wars. But ex-post evaluation of the desirability of a war by estimating only the costs and ignoring benefits, to my mind, is dishonesty or trick or simple ignorance.

G: Can you prove that the cost of Iraq War is much less than the benefit of the war?

S: I probably can, but only after a few years when the benefits become clearly evident. However, when man or a nation makes a choice to go in for war, it can only make a forecast of likely costs and benefits. The forecasts may not always come true as all forecasts of the future are probabilistic and can never be made with certainty. All wars may not necessarily result in positive net benefits, even if ex ante forecasts anticipated net benefits.

G: So, you hedge your position by introducing probabilities. That’s clever but not convincing.

S: I welcome your comment. It is exactly the same comment that applies to any other ex-ante or ex-post attempt to evaluate the desirability of war based on estimates of cost. They are all clever attempts that fail to convince.

G: But the US had launched war in Iraq to get a strong hold over Iraq’s large oil reserves.

S: I do not have any idea about what goes on in the minds of the US administration or the Americans. Maybe, you know better. But I would not consider that such an objective for Iraq war is really in the feasible zone in the modern day world. Rather such an objective may be feasible through less costlier non-war methods. A perpetual UN sanction regime with UN-operated sale of Iraqi oil auction to multinational oil companies could have been designed to suit US interest in Iraqi Oil. In any case, the war was destined to happen as per the Destiny Principle. The choice of the War by the US and Saddam was destined.

G: So you may agree that both political and economic interests may lead to wars.

S: Anyone will agree to such a Statement. But these causes have in turn some fundamental causes that are related to the tendencies human beings have been imparted by the Destiny Principle. Wars are the result of the same Grand Process that yields natural phenomenon like sunami, hurricanes, earthquakes, burning of the Sun, the planetary motion, the emergence of life on earth, the reproduction of life forms, the growth of children and the death of human beings.

G: While I do not agree with you that wars are nothing but another form of natural calamities, can I shift to another area where Man has proved his independence? Man has designed new systems and policies to improve his economic conditions. These economic decisions are not forced by any destiny principle: they are of Man’s own.

S: Should we shift this new area of your choice to the next session of our dialogue?

G: That is what it seems destined.