The Quest for Happiness: Two Cultural Paradigms

Culture was not always pitted against Nature as it is in today’s modern world. Nature-conducive cultures existed all over the world, but its most expansive expression was seen in Bhāratavarṣa dictated by the values of Sanātana Dharma.

Conflict Paradigm

Culture in various modern definitions is seen as a tool of man to mold Nature for his own needs. In this Man vs. Nature narrative, culture and technology are always pitted against the forces of Nature. It is a patently Judeo-Christian and Biblical narrative where the entire Earth and all its inhabitants are given in dominion by God to man for his personal use. According to this narrative, there is an eternal struggle between Culture and Nature. Culture is actually a tool of man to help win this battle and make a conquest of Nature. This paradigm of culture is better understood as the Nature-Culture Conflict Paradigm.

Continuum Paradigm

This is not how culture is understood in a dharmic society like Bhāratavarṣa. The word for culture is ‘saṃskṛti ’ संस्कृति, while the word for Nature is प्रकृति. saṃskṛti is the refinement and elevation of prakṛti. Culture is an elevation of Nature.

In the Judeo-Christian paradigm Nature is pitted against Culture in an eternal struggle. In Bhāratavarṣa, Culture goes in harmony with Nature and even improves on it, not by destroying it, but by observing its physical rules while spiritually transcending it. Dharma, the carrier of saṃskṛti, overseas the balance of Culture and Nature and keeps them in harmony and not conflict. This paradigm of culture can be called the Nature-Culture-Continuum Paradigm.

This paradigm is seen in various disciplines and dimensions. For example, while the language of the Vedas and the language of the cultural elite in India was Sanskrit, the language of common people was Prākṛta. The word Prākṛta simply means, ‘that which is natural’ and referred to the common language/s which came naturally to people. Saṃskṛta was the language of the gods, language of the ultimate knowledge, and language of high culture, and that is why it was called ‘Saṃskṛta’, which means ‘that language which has been refined and made perfect’.

In the West, classical languages, like Latin or Roman have always been in conflict with the vernacular languages, while in India, no such struggle has historically been witnessed.

Similarly, the vernacular culture is pitted against the national culture in the West, while in India, the mārgiya/ national culture does not oppose and in fact enriches and elevates the desīya/ folk culture. The same is true about the Loka and the Shāstra. While the scripture in the West has declared the folk literature as evil and base, in India, Saṃskṛta literature has enriched the folk literature and has been enriched by it in return.

By acknowledging the vernacular traditions, customs and languages, Sanātana Dharma made sure that Bhāratavarṣa would never generate universalizing theologies which were dehumanizing and destructive of native diversity and variety. On the other hand, they created one of the greatest mārgiya/ Saṃskṛta cultures which made sure that the vernacular cultures do not become anarchic and the spirit of Sanātana Dharma unites them all.

If one were to use just a single expression to explain the civilization of Sanātana Dharma and Bhāratavarṣa then it would be a civilization of balance, where Culture and Nature; individual and institutions; national and vernacular culture; Saṃskṛta and vernacular languages; material and spiritual progress are in balance. Dharma is the wheel of balance, where even the opposites find a harmonious co-existence.

This balance was achieved by paying equal attention to various aspects of life as seen in the vision of varṇāśrama dharma. Artha and Kāma, the pursuit of material prosperity and pleasure was not discouraged in Bhāratavarṣa at all. Instead they were two of the four pillars of a dhārmic life. But they were balanced with the goal of mokṣa and the path of dharma. A dynamic balance was created in which one aspect of life did not overwhelm the other. Culture in such a setting acted as a thermostat which kept human life in a perpetual dynamic equilibrium.

Breaking of the Second Order

In a nutshell, we can say that almost all modern problems that we discussed above exist because currently the Nature-Culture Conflict Paradigm reigns supreme, and is trying to completely obliterate cultures, societies and institutions which espouse and propagate Nature-Culture Continuum Paradigm.

We know that the natural order no longer binds man. The natural order was broken when man’s ancestor broke out of the food chain by discovering technology and becoming the apex predator. But there was something different about this new apex predator. All species in a food chain are limited by their natural environment, even the apex predator. The new technology that man discovered allowed him to thwart most natural rules. The natural order was the First Order, which man broke.

Initially there was much destruction of Nature, eco-systems and habitats. But gradually an arbitrary system rose in human society itself which re-instated the natural order by mimicking it in social laws and customs. This system in human society came to be called as Culture. Culture was stand-in nature, it was the scaffolding which patched up the gaps that had opened up by the breaking of the First Order. This Nature-conducive culture was the Second Order which created balance in society.

The tragedy of the contemporary world is that in the global society created after the post-industrial world man has broken both the orders of Nature and Culture. As Loren Eiseley says:

Man’s second rock of certitude, his cultural world, that had gotten him out of bed in the morning for many thousand years, that had taught him manners, how to love, and to see beauty, and how, when the time came, to die – this cultural world was now dissolving even as it grew. The roar of jet aircraft, the ugly ostentations of badly designed automobiles, the clatter of the supermarkets could not lend stability nor reality to the world we face. EISELEY 129

This destructive paradigm is the Conflict Paradigm and under the garb of globalization it comes in conflict with all traditional orders and systems. Working through the institutions implanted on native cultures during colonial times, policy in most of the world today furthers the Conflict Paradigm, destroys Nature, dehumanizes man and destroys avenues of artistic redemption.

The Conflict Paradigm was germinated in the Judeo-Christian world; came to perfection in the creation of the modern post-Enlightenment West; exported to the entire world during the heyday of European colonialism; and universalized during the post-war era in the name of liberal democracy, globalized planet and the bill of individual human rights. The State, the market, and all the attendant institutions of global democracy collude in the continued imposition of the Conflict Paradigm over the rest of the world.

Culture Against Policy in Traditional Societies

In the case of countries like Bhāratavarṣa this conflict can be seen very sharply as most of its society and most of its individuals are still governed by traditions of Sanātana Dharma. Meanwhile all of its modern institutions including the State, the market, the media, the academia and the healthcare system are all governed by imported institutions which are part of the global West. There is a direct clash between Indic society and culture on one hand and all its modern institutions on the other. Its Culture is in deep dissonance with its Policy.

While the policies of the Indian State further the Conflict Paradigm, its Culture tries to scramble defense against it. But being excluded from power it is at a serious disadvantage, and continuously pushed to margins, it is eventually headed for complete dissolution if there is no course correction and the dissonance between India’s Culture and Policy isn’t solved.

Bhāratavarṣa undoubtedly had one of the most evolved cultures in the world but it was not the only one. Almost every region across the globe had an indigenous knowledge tradition which existed in harmony with Nature and guided the daily lives of its inhabitants. These knowledge traditions got destroyed one by one under the onslaught of universalizing theologies which first came in the wake of religious conquests, then European colonialism and finally as globalization. India apart from a handful of other cultures still boast of a living knowledge tradition, although it is heavily under attack from the universalizing global forces.

Endnotes

Eiseley, Loren. The Firmament of Time. Bison Books, 1999.

Dehejia, Harsha. The Advaita of Art. Motilal Banarsidas, 1996.

Sri Aurobindo. The Hour of God and Other Writings. Centenary Edition, Volume 17, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, 1971.

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. Harper & Row, 1973.

Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Marion Boyars, 1996

Authored by Pankaj Saxena. Published by Brhat.