The mixture of cooperative and competitive human instincts, the subtle but potent quest for status, has played a very important role in evolution of mankind towards better and more beautiful. In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant noted the "unsocial sociability" of man, with special emphasis on the "unsocial" part and its ironic consequences.
Kant's in his essay "Idea for a universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" writes the following -
"Through the desire of honor, power or property, it drives him to seek status among his fellows, whom he cannot "bear" yet cannot "bear to leave". Via this quest for status, "The first true steps are taken from barbarism to culture, which in fact consists in the social worthiness of man". This commences "a continued process of enlightenment" as "all man's talents are gradually developed, his taste cultivated".
Without these "asocial qualities" human beings "would live an Arcadian, pastoral existence of perfect concord, self-sufficieny and mutual love. But all human talents would remain hidden forever in a dormant state, and men, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would scarcely render their existence more valuable than that of their animals". In that event, "the end for which they were created, their rational nature, would be an unfilled void. Nature should thus be thanked for fostering social incompatibility, enviously competitive vanity, and insatiable desires for possession or even power".
Perhaps as history unfolds, Kant wrote, we will see "how the human race eventually works its way upward to a situation in which all the germs implanted by nature can be developed fully, and in which man's destiny can be fulfilled here on earth."
This was all conjectures, Kant stressed. Writing in 1784, before the harnessing of electricity, before the telegraph of typewriter or computer, he admitted that so far there was just "a little" evidence of such a "purposeful natural process". Only time would tell. "For this cycle of events seems to take so long a time to complete, that the small part of it traversed by mankind up till now does not allow us to determine with certainty the shape of the whole cycle, and the relation of its parts to the whole".
Well that was back then - in 1784, when the great Immanuel Kant had this visionary thought.
Today in the era of facebook, google, apple, durex, cloud computing, space exploration, quantum physics revolutions, path breaking advances in neuro-science, the human civilization has certainly come a long way towards a highly complex evolved state with a future more glorious than the Roman Gods.
In this globalized world closely knit with internet, things are much more easier to do than in those dark ages of Kant. Being alive at this point of the evolution of this planet and its inhabitants, we have this utmost privilege to build upon with more beauty on the legacy we already have.
The need of the hour is for the general demography to understand and appreciate that they belong to an inflection point of human destiny, and the way they spend their lives today will determine the degree of greatness humanity reaches tomorrow. The choice is yours - use this life for something bigger than your own existence- something which enables mankind to achieve further complexity and beauty, or just wade away in the life aimlessly - drugged with the genetic urge of indulgence. Also it is in urgent need that mankind shakes off its age old propensity to cling to idealistic perception of morality and goodness - giving mystical turns - making a good myth out of humanity - but of negligible pragmatic importance. As Kant had rightly pointed out 3 centuries ago that it was in Natural Selection's interest of human to be "humane" and NOT "divine". We certainly would have lost the race and be "good and harmonious herd of sheep" today, haven't we had the humane tendency to be better and more beautiful - sometimes labeled as "asocial" the attributes of envy, jealousy, being possessive, and enamored by the lust of respect and status.
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Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar
Kant's in his essay "Idea for a universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" writes the following -
"Through the desire of honor, power or property, it drives him to seek status among his fellows, whom he cannot "bear" yet cannot "bear to leave". Via this quest for status, "The first true steps are taken from barbarism to culture, which in fact consists in the social worthiness of man". This commences "a continued process of enlightenment" as "all man's talents are gradually developed, his taste cultivated".
Without these "asocial qualities" human beings "would live an Arcadian, pastoral existence of perfect concord, self-sufficieny and mutual love. But all human talents would remain hidden forever in a dormant state, and men, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would scarcely render their existence more valuable than that of their animals". In that event, "the end for which they were created, their rational nature, would be an unfilled void. Nature should thus be thanked for fostering social incompatibility, enviously competitive vanity, and insatiable desires for possession or even power".
Perhaps as history unfolds, Kant wrote, we will see "how the human race eventually works its way upward to a situation in which all the germs implanted by nature can be developed fully, and in which man's destiny can be fulfilled here on earth."
This was all conjectures, Kant stressed. Writing in 1784, before the harnessing of electricity, before the telegraph of typewriter or computer, he admitted that so far there was just "a little" evidence of such a "purposeful natural process". Only time would tell. "For this cycle of events seems to take so long a time to complete, that the small part of it traversed by mankind up till now does not allow us to determine with certainty the shape of the whole cycle, and the relation of its parts to the whole".
Well that was back then - in 1784, when the great Immanuel Kant had this visionary thought.
Today in the era of facebook, google, apple, durex, cloud computing, space exploration, quantum physics revolutions, path breaking advances in neuro-science, the human civilization has certainly come a long way towards a highly complex evolved state with a future more glorious than the Roman Gods.
In this globalized world closely knit with internet, things are much more easier to do than in those dark ages of Kant. Being alive at this point of the evolution of this planet and its inhabitants, we have this utmost privilege to build upon with more beauty on the legacy we already have.
The need of the hour is for the general demography to understand and appreciate that they belong to an inflection point of human destiny, and the way they spend their lives today will determine the degree of greatness humanity reaches tomorrow. The choice is yours - use this life for something bigger than your own existence- something which enables mankind to achieve further complexity and beauty, or just wade away in the life aimlessly - drugged with the genetic urge of indulgence. Also it is in urgent need that mankind shakes off its age old propensity to cling to idealistic perception of morality and goodness - giving mystical turns - making a good myth out of humanity - but of negligible pragmatic importance. As Kant had rightly pointed out 3 centuries ago that it was in Natural Selection's interest of human to be "humane" and NOT "divine". We certainly would have lost the race and be "good and harmonious herd of sheep" today, haven't we had the humane tendency to be better and more beautiful - sometimes labeled as "asocial" the attributes of envy, jealousy, being possessive, and enamored by the lust of respect and status.
_____________________________________________
Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar
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