The radical must be wary of ‘logic’

These notes on radicalism, based on our Budun Wahanse’s Charter on Free Inquiry, the Kalama Sutta, are based on certain assumptions about the creature under consideration, namely the radical.  The ‘radical’ relevant to this discussion is one endowed with integrity and an aversion to sloth.  He/she would not shove into footnote, ‘superstructure’ and other convenient dismissal-categories such as imponderable and externality that which doesn’t fit theory but rather seek to explain and failing which return critically to text and equation, adjust or even abandon if these prove to be wanting in explanatory and predictive power. 
The slothful will always twist and turn to fit fact to theory, typically getting by and away with turn of phrase, half-truths, irrelevant quote and such.  Rhetoric is useful in political practice but a rhetorician is no radical. 

The true radical will eschew convenience and will constantly question premise and assumption and moreover subject theory to the scrutiny required by each and every piece of information encountered. 
It is in this context that Siddhattha Gotama’s discourse on inquiry can be of use to radical and would-be radical.  The constant call to question is a striking feature of Buddhist philosophy and indeed is unique in that it openly invites critical consideration of the philosophy itself.  The Kalama Sutta by suggesting that a person should not take as logical or true or wholesome something just because some wise person said this was the case, immediately invites a dissection of this very claim as well as the entire corpus of the Buddha Vacana.  

Typically, the radical, once enamoured with a particular doctrine and sufficiently acquainted with relevant quotes, truisms, the if-thens, either-ors etc., ceases to take into account the possibility that the theoretical body is framed by a set of assumptions, which may or may not be completely true or universally applicable across time and space.  The relevant ‘logic’ naturally persuades the radical to see mismatch and contradiction in other doctrines and equations that are based on different sets of assumptions and/or flow from different logical apparatuses.  A couple of examples might be useful at this point. 

Marxism is a grand narrative that is replete with grand constructions.  In its more puerile articulations (which are what radicals reference for the most part, or at least are referenced most frequently by those who believe ‘revolution’ is coterminous with regime-change and tend to be fixated with altering names and the structures of exploitation and suppression but typically end up replacing one set of thugs by another), Marxism spawns lots of quote-buffs who are fascinated by and frequently trip over binaries.  So we have structure and superstructure, culture predicated on economy, production modes bleeding into production relations and an ‘inevitable’ movement from feudalism through capitalism to communism.  This determinism has buried many ‘revolutions’ but at great cost in terms of human life, cultural vandalism and intellectual suffocation. 

All doctrines tend to come with or develop along the way magnificent archives that hold both fundamental teachings as well as interpretive narratives.  Those fixated with relevant doctrinal logic are automatically burdened by blinders which make for tunnel vision.  They tend to throw chapter and verse at adversaries, often paying no attention to the relevance of context. 

The same holds for other ‘radicals’ as well.  History is full of ‘radicals’ who draw from the ‘logic’ of revolutionary text, religious dogma and political philosophy, convinced that these are error-free and reliable. 

The problem is often exacerbated by the fact that the interpreter, hampered by human frailty, is prone to erroneous reading of what may be a reasonable proposition (relevant of course to time-space specifics).  It is hard to believe that Jesus Christ would have condoned the Crusades or what some of his followers did and do in terms of ‘spreading the good news’. It is hard to believe that Prophet Mohammed would bless those who wage Jihad in the name of Allah. It is hard to believe that Siddhattha Gotama, our Budun Wahanse, would condone those who attack ill-intentioned individuals hell-bent on converting people to Christianity in the by-any-means-necessary mode of operation.  But all these individuals do take refuge in doctrine and the ‘logic’ therein, often violating many fundamental tents of the very same teachings. 

Even if, for argument’s sake, one believes that The Teacher relevant to the particular politics/radicalism was all-knowing or spoke/wrote with astral authority, there is no escaping the fact that follower is in the final instance a ‘reader’ and that reading is necessarily done through the blurred glass that is location in the matrix of culture, aspiration, ego, preferred-outcome, intellectual capacity, personality quirk and so on.  Even ‘logic’ is read through such flawed interpretive lenses, which is why the same equation is differently read by different people in different contexts.  All the more reason, then, for the radical to treat with healthy suspicion and to inquire and interrogate relentlessly the logic he/she subscribes to.

Pierre Bourdieau, the French Sociologist put it nicely when he said ‘that which goes without saying, comes without saying’. It is a call for inquiry, for treating the ‘givens’ critically.  Bourdieau’s proposition refers to something that is perceived to be external and externally pernicious, something which can tweak mind-set and grow within.  The Kalama Sutta suggests that the principle can be applied not only to the invasive ‘logic’ by the subscribed-to logic as well.  An excellent rule of thumb, I believe, for the young radical as well as to the more mature practitioner who has to sooner or later comes to terms with the fact that life has a wicked way of tripping word.

Let us reflect awhile on the crux of the Charter:

Kalamas, when you yourselves know [that] 'these things are unwholesome, these things are blameworthy; these things are censured by the wise; and when undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them.  Kalamas, when you know for yourselves [that] these are wholesome; these things are not blameworthy; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness, having undertaken them, abide in them.’

Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukhitatta. May all beings be happy!

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Radicalism must tread gently on legend and tradition

The revolutionaries of the 20^th century were, admittedly, influenced mostly by the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Germanic notion of ‘stages’, the on-the-ground example of the Russian Revolution and the voluminous theories it engendered, Euro-Centric, deterministic and in other ways flawed of course. 

The formulation included an observation that the capitalist epoch would obliterate things ancient and even new-formed opinions and prejudices would themselves be antiquated instantaneously (Communist Manifesto: section on ‘Bourgeois and Proletarians’).  What we witnessed is the opposite, but perhaps we are still not yet as far into the capitalist age as warranted by the description ‘late capitalist’ frequently used by some Marxists. 

Marx also rubbished history and tradition and created the impression that revolutionaries and revolutions are ‘revolution-bound’ to abandon/destroy everything touched or smeared by the ‘past’.  In the ‘18^th Brumaire of Louis Napolean’, Marx plays on Hegel’s claim, ‘all great world-historic facts and personages appear twice,’ offering that the first time it is tragic and the re-enactment a farce.   What he failed to anticipate was that Marxism and its adherents would end up creating their own histories, develop their own iconography, temples and holy cows, and consequently their own tragedies and farces, although not in the order of Marx’s formulation. 

What did make sense and indeed made for healthy revolutionary practice was the question mark that he stamped on ‘the past’, including tradition, customs, prejudices and opinions.  His know-all followers, handicapped by the yes-no, black-white, either-or logical frame on which their gurus built the theoretical edifice that they came to regard as temple and consequently worship, unfortunately read question-mark as revolutionary license to rubbish and destroy.  They’ve not progressed much either in the elimination of ‘tradition’ or in bringing the exploited closer to emancipation. 

What is pertinent to this discussion is the fact that Marx had a point, even though it was vulgarized by his followers.  Marx predicted or at least hoped that man would in the end be ‘compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind’.  There is very little in life that is ‘compelling’ and the compelling is as influenced by reason as by emotion, as much by cold logic as by burning blood.  The sobriety that Marx would have liked quickly gave way to fixation. The doctrine of approximation was replaced by the erroneous ‘finality’ of exactitude and consideration of context ditched for parroting of convenient quote and the inevitable abandonment of question mark in favour of exclamation mark.    

It is perhaps an indicator of colonial servility that prevented many Marxists from discovering and/or acknowledging that Siddhartha Gauthama, our Budun Wahanse, had in less dogmatic and therefore more ‘compelling’ and sober ways outlined the importance of questioning ‘tradition’ and ‘legend’.  ‘Do not believe in traditions and legends simply because they have been handed down for many generations,’ the Compassionate One told the Kalamas in outlining the pithy and telling Charter of Free Inquiry, the Kalama Sutta.  What is recommended is not the wholesale abandonment of tradition and legend, but an informed and critical engagement with these elements.

Marx wrote that the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living and warned that they are particularly heavy in ‘revolutionary’ moments, with ‘revolutionaries’ conjuring up the spirits of the past, borrowing from them names, battle slogans and costumes.  Marxists are as guilty of this error as any other ‘revolutionaries’.

It is true, is it not that we tend to treat legend and myth as fact?  Are we not reluctant to examine and determine the true dimensions of event and personality by stripping account of frill? Are we not selective when we refer to history, prone to valourization of that which feeds our political project and suppression of that which is uncomfortable or disconcerting?   How ready are we to obtain a narrative of some reasonable degree of approximation by peeling off rhetoric and poetry? 

Is it not true that people whose accounts of community and lineage are short on acceptable evidence often depend on ballad and slogan while rubbishing history as irrelevant? Don’t those who belong to communities whose track record is made of bloodletting and pillage prefer political discourse to be limited to the here-and-now and do they not call for the virtual burning of books (that survived the arsonist adventures of fellow-practitioners of an earlier era) by outlawing ‘history’ from school curricula?  Is it not true that some faiths happily embellish the relevant doctrine by borrowing artifact, symbol and even tenet from other traditions and thereafter treat these as ‘god-given’, sacrosanct and exclusively owned by the faith from then to now and all time? 

The importance of questioning legend and tradition stems from a simple observation, i.e. such things are not cast in stone but are in fact products of contexts and histories.  That which makes sense in one context, i.e. in a particular time-space matrix need not necessarily have meaning in another.  The difference between the Marxian formulation and that of our Budun Wahanse is that the former is dogmatic and lends to finality whereas the latter advocates the exercise of reason and the application of logic taking into consideration all available facts pertaining to the context.  Underlining it all is the call for equanimity.  Budun Wahanse neither recommended the hard grip or fixation, nor did he advocate out of hand rejection. What is stressed is ‘critical engagement’. 

What is advocated is not blind acceptance of word (which is what legend and traditional amount to) or the callous rejection of something simply because it is a ‘legend’ or is ‘traditional’.  It is always a judgment call but one predicated on the exercise of reason and not a response to some emotional impulse.  This is the spirit in which ‘legend’ and ‘tradition’ should be considered by those who want to change things as they are. 

To the Kalamas he said, "When through the exercise of the intellect and the testing through observation and practice you discover that these things are bad, these things are blamable, these things are censured by the wise and these things when undertaken and observed lead to harm and ill, abandon them’.  That which is and that which was, by virtue of existence in the ‘now’ or in the ‘past’, respectively, are not necessarily good and/or wholesome.  In the case of traditions and legends, the revolutionary would do well, I believe, to assess their dimensions, relevance and benefits. If they are indeed good, if they are not blamable, if they are indeed praised by the wise, and if, when undertaken and observed, they lead to benefit and happiness, then, as Siddhartha Gauthama advocated it would be logical to enter on and abide in them.  Not otherwise. 

A revolutionary, accordingly, is by definition, called upon to apply his/her critical gaze not only on that which he/she seeks to change but that which he/she considers ‘articles of faith’ as represented by relevant legends, myths and traditions. 

Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukhitatta. May all beings be happy!

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Buddhism, radicals and radicalism: a necessary preamble

The adjective ‘radical’ has two principal definitions. In common usage, ‘radical’ conjures images of or alluding to Che Guevara.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be about those who think like Che or for whom Che is hero. Anyone favouring fundamental or extreme change, especially in the social, political and economic order, or expressing related sentiments, is taken to be a ‘radical’.  In general ‘radical’ denotes ‘going against the grain’ or ‘swimming upstream’.  Some would say ‘banging head against wall’ but let’s be more optimistic.

There is a more interesting and perhaps less known definition of ‘radical’: ‘of or from the root or roots; going to the foundation or source of something; fundamental; basic: a radical principle.’

The second definition functions as a prerequisite for earning the label ‘radical’ in terms of the first formulation.  It is easy to rant and rave about system and ruler but system-change and ruler-ousting (the latter being the easier of the two) can only benefit by examining the fundamental sources of support, including but not limited to configuration of political forces, ideological persuasions and the degree of support enjoyed, structural factors that inhibit or make easier the obtaining of desired outcome. 

Today the term ‘radical’ and its oft interchanged twin ‘revolutionary’ have become overused and abused to much that they’ve lost meaning and been divested for the most part of operative power, especially in the ideological arena.  Che, after all, is not just a revolutionary icon, but a catch-all visual for any old product or brand that wants to position itself as ‘new’, ‘radical’, ‘great’, ‘revolutionary’ etc.  Similarly those who call themselves ‘radicals’ tend to grapple with the frills of the system they are determined to overthrow and even on the rare occasion that they do effect ‘change’, the transformation is more in the cosmetics rather than substance.  Name-change and face-change don’t connote ‘revolution’ even if marketed as such.  Regime change may take a lot of work and even require a blood-price but the amount of plasma shed and hours of sleep sacrificed are not qualification enough for the outcome to be called ‘radical’. 

My contention is that the necessary disappointment that follows flows from the ready embrace of illusion, the uncritical acceptance of received ‘knowledge’ and manifest sloth in the matter of going beyond rhetoric.  It is in this context that I offer the Kalama Sutra, the Charter on Free Inquiry proposed by Siddhartha Gauthama, the Enlightened One, our Budun Wahanse as an excellent guide to more effective, judicious and efficient engagement. 

The Compassionate One cautioned the Kalamas thus: ‘Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher’.' 

The Buddha did not use the word ‘radical’ to my knowledge.  He stated things as they are, elaborated on the human condition, the vicissitudes of life and proposed a pathway out of sorrow.  One of the enduring beauties of the doctrine expounded by the Buddha is the multiple applicability of tenet flowing from observation and commentary.  It is strictly in this sense that I have found the Kalama Sutra to have immense utility value for all those who profess a predilection towards radicalism, in thought and deed as well as in multiple spheres of engagement, including overhauling of social and political order.  

Each of the cautions articulated by the Buddha to the Kalama merit separate treatment, but even a cursory glance at the above set of qualifiers when used as instrument of assessing expediency of action would indicate that for all self-righteous claim and even braggadocio, ‘radicals’ and ‘radicalism’ for the most part are creatures that nibble at systems raged again.  Indeed some could argue that in a certain sense radicals and radicalism are necessary ingredients of system sustainability in the absence of a deep consideration of these conditions for they often and at best affect little more than regime change; the terms of inequality and other anomalies persist beyond ‘moment of victory’ and the replacement of one flag with another.  

Do we not, after all, more often than not, go by reports, depend on traditions and scripture, the power of logic (based naturally on certain assumptions that may not be completely true or at least only applicable in certain conditions and not others), indulge in inference, wallow in analogy, play the numbers game of chance, or defer to reputation of book and author, leader and saint?  How often do we probe that which is taken as self-evident, tease out the assumptions, un-frill it of rhetoric, verbosity and fudge-spot?

I propose to examine each of the above clauses with reference to ‘radicalism’ and ‘radicals’ here and abroad.  Such an examination, I hope, would make for a more honest and wholesome understanding of the terms and their operative potential (or lack thereof as the case may be).  

For now, I shall leave the reader with the thought that pinning the word ‘revolution’ on an event, moment and apparent transformation in political order does not necessarily imply that a fundamental change has taken place.  The ‘radicalism’ implied in the latter definition of ‘radical’ (stated above) could provide an interrogative stand point that helps shed light on revolutions and revolutionaries.  The last thing that those seeking to overturn a draconian social and political order need is illusion. The Kalama Sutra can help, I believe.  

Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukhitatta (May all beings be happy).

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