Sunday, August 9, 2009

The rationale for struggle

The time human race came into existence we had been continually striving to better our life. We struggled with all living beings and among ourselves for nature’s gifts. That competition is continuing even today. We have been dominating the earth for thousand of years. We have grown in numbers, in science and technology. Even our successes haven’t stopped us from improving further. We want to move on and on. But this is not making us happier. Our desires are sky high. We are struggling. Every body wants to be successful at any cost. Where this zeal for moving on will take us? We don’t know? We get frustrated seeing other go to the top. We are naturally programmed for this. The basic instinct for survival is behind all this. Advances all we made are attributed to this instinct. But we don’t think where we are going. Life is getting miserable. People with equal capability, doing equal hard work, gain more or less in life. We should understand that chance plays an important role in our life. Let’s take an example of gamma rays from physics. Due to dual nature we can consider it as particle. Every gamma particle has equal energy. When they fall on one foot thick wall only ten percent of gamma particles could pass. Hence success rate is ten percent only. But every particle had equal probability of success. The particles crossing the barrier are randomly selected. We can draw an analogy here. The same random selection plays an important role in our lives. We call it luck. Who will be able to pass a barrier? Whom does the divine random process select. If this mean we should stop working for being successful. No is the answer. When we do hard work that is same as gaining more energy, improving the probability of success.
One subtle question is what’s success? Every body could have different answer to this question. But the most important thing is satisfaction. But we can’t get satisfied. Nature has built us in this way. We have to better ourselves to survive. The basic instinct for survival turns into a brutal race. When one gains something other has to lose. There is no win-win situation. When man became civilized he tried to establish equality between everyone. Karl Marx raised voice against capitalization (inequality) but our basic instinct proved it unnatural. Taking example of distribution of wealth among people we can draw a graph, with amount of wealth in X-axis and number of people having that much wealth in Y-direction. The graph drawn will somewhat resemble energy distribution curve for gas particles in an isolated system. Number of people with wealth in mid range is higher then those in high wealth band and low wealth band. It is quite natural. This is the state of a capitalist economy in equilibrium. The analogy I made can be used to understand the working mechanism of a capitalist economy. People are gas particles, wealth is analogous to energy, and the economy of a country is an isolated system. Now lets equal amount of wealth was distributed among every person. People do business and wealth is transferred, this is same as collision of two gas particles. Economy has to reach an equilibrium state that has the maximum randomness. The wealth distribution curve takes the shape of energy distribution curve for gas particles. The analogy is not that perfect due to great difference between particles and humans but clearly explains the role of randomness in our economy. We can change this state forcefully. That’s what Marx tried to do. Capitalist economy promises greater development due to competition. But we have to choose between mankind’s materialist development and mankind’s happiness. Only equality to certain extent can make us happy. This can stop exploitation of the weaker, with that we have to maintain rate of development. We have to redefine development and success. We have to define a rational path. It’s difficult to be happy and successful at the same time but it’s not impossible. Again we need to understand that perfect equality is against universal laws. We have to work out our way to success. The race is never going to stop. Humans have urge to struggle for taking hold of the resources, the wealth. This is the difference between the gas particles and us. But similar to them we can’t escape the law of chance and divine randomness.

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