#3: Tradition to Science

Recap

Quiz on Asch conformity experiments – but only one or two actually did the homework, so i skipped.

We have seen previously:

1. For a human being, survival and insecurity is always on the back of its mind, constantly.
2. Society and groups help comfort the insecurities, hence are essential to its being.
3. Its then obvious that, larger the group size – larger the sense of security. This was discussed.

What could happen as the group size increases? From say 2 people to 5, 10, 200 and so on.

1. Most commonly mentioned was rising differences between the group members as numbers go high, because everyone is an individual ultimately.
2. Rising insecurities due to resource sharing concerns.
3. Unfortunately did not strike then and so could not discuss – the larger a group, more variety of members and hence more chance of matching of needs, desires and interests. This could lead to formation of more friendships, relationships within.

We touched upon last time that traditions could be a binding force within a group, and also that leadership comes in. Here’s my take on it, though it was NOT discussed in class.

1. Small sub-groups based on “grouping” differences between individuals.
2. Sub-groups could have conflicting requirements, and hence clashes.
3. Two ways that could be necessary to define and sustain large groups:
   1. Common Traditions are set, which is the skeleton of the group. Needed to ensure individuals and subgroups obey the overall big group’s objectives and ideas, despite their inner differences. Also could act as unwritten laws to ensure clashes are kept at minimum.
   2. Common Leadership comes into play, charisma plays important role, non-human leadership comes in like belief in higher power, etc. But that’s another story.
4. It seems very interesting – the power and nature of traditions:
   1. Traditions could begin from observations and analysis of cause and effect by our ancestors. Does this happen always? – research required.
   2. Because everyone has many things on their minds, and attention span is limited, so one must believe that traditional practices are good and will remain good in the long run, and just follow them.
   3. Tradition also has an immense glue effect that keeps the social group’s identity and hence ensures its stability in time.
   4. Tradition spreads very easily because:
      1. Limited attention span.
      2. Conformity tendency – Our need to be included as part of group to relieve our insecurities, for assurance from our peers, etc.
      3. Tradition creates commonality – common ground for sub-groups or individuals to agree upon – hence averaging out major differences in groups = cohesiveness of the group.
      4. It feels safe if large number of followers of a tradition, it feels good to socially bond through a tradition, there’s no uncertainty to deal with as everything is laid out plain and simple.
      5. Its non taxing to the brain.
   5. But people are also interested in the basis of a tradition:
      1. Original context could often be too dull and dry.
      2. If it has to be orally repeated, and it would take all that effort to do so to the new-comers into the group, then why not spice it up? Its entertaining and benign right? All the while, the essence of the tradition is maintained with all its benefits (above). Also helps the tradition become more appealing to everyone because its a beautiful story of human beings.
      3. Add up some, kings and queens, some angels and demons with superpowers and all the fascination a kid can imagine but an adult dies and fails to see in its life.
      4. But what does not spread easily is THE ORIGINAL CONTEXT, the dull and dry facts.

We discussed on the issue of communication between members. As number of members of group increase, given the short attention span, one could only speak in minimal details to other. It would then be upto the other to pass on interpreted stuff to another and so on. Also the details of the message not felt relevant would need to be skipped, because time was short.

To test this within the class, we played a little game. I asked everyone to face away so one can not see the other. The idea was to pass around a secret message from one end of the class to the other and see if it changes. Then i conjured up 2 tricks and a statement : A) a pen play between the fingers, B) a trick that makes a coin appear as heads on both the sides and C) A statement “Do this and you will be enlightened”.

This was fun. First i delivered this message to MM who bluntly said “I cant do that”, but nonetheless it was passed around. Finally it came to PK, the last person in the chain, to display to the class what he received. It was very funny, he shook the pen, showed the coin but said correctly that if you do these actions you will be enlightened. We discussed then what were the observations, why was the message modulated? The common answer was that the remaining stuff was not important, important was the enlightenment part, and so that got passed around. KG observed interestingly that this behavior was similar to that of a tradition, where only the relevant stuff is passed around. However, there was one thing i felt was essential, the keyword of the exercise, which is : easy. Only those things that were easy to pass around got passed. Like the statement, the objects pen and coin. The tricks were lost. Why was this?

1. The tricks seemed irrelevant to the beautiful and ‘main’ aspect of “enlightenment”.
2. It would have taken hours of practice for one to learn those tricks.
3. The other way would have been to write it down and describe those tricks accurately, so that the written document atleast could have been passed down.

Could this argument be extended to traditions too? Only those things that can be packaged as a story have come to bear upon us from many generations. Traditional practices are those that are passed on through oral and demonstrated acts. Yes, they are written down to keep them from changing much. Here’s the catch, if things are written down, they are preserved for longer time in the original form.

One observation was that writing of traditions and knowledge in India are scarce as compared to the length and number of people. It was only later that some of the traditional stories were written down. In a very interesting article in FirstPost it was the correct recitation of Vedas by the Brahmins, which helped them keep the authority of knowledge to themselves, and to maintain the topmost position in the Varna system. So reading and writing were discouraged, not only for other casts but as well as within the Brahmins. But its hard to capture the so many nuances written up in the article, i will stop here about it and refer to the reader to read it instead. Conclusion: If things are written down, they can also be propagated easily in the original form.

On Indian writing PK observed that there can be two forms of interpretation – the literal way and the metaphoric way. We had a discussion about it.

Somewhere during above discussions, KG mentioned her study on women not being allowed to enter sacred places during their menstruating cycles. She mentioned that original reason for this could have been so that since in such times the body is weak and requires rest, it could have been advised that such women take rest rather than follow the physically taxing rituals. PK countered that since the discharge of blood was involved, so the priests and men in general would shun such “impure” women out of the way. I didn’t know much about this, so i searched. Here’s an interesting paper :  Menstruation related myths in India: strategies for combating it which details the taboos in India about menstruation.

I cant recollect the context, but SD mentioned “The ethics of authenticity”  – by Charles Taylor and in it the first chapter “Three Malaises“. It was a very interesting read, thanks to SD and PK for bringing it up in class. However this was not discussed much because no one had any reading on it, except PK and SD. Here’s a summary of “Three Malaises“:

1. Individualism: Individualism at the cost of loss of a larger context. Following quotes:
   1. People used to see themselves as part of a larger order.
   2. But at the same time as they restricted us, these orders gave meaning to the world and to the activities of social life.
   3. The discrediting of these orders has been called the “disenchantment” of the world. With it, things lost some of their magic.
   4. People no longer have a sense of a higher purpose, of something worth dying for.
   5. In other words, the dark side of individualism is a centering on the self,
      which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society.
2. Instrumental reason: 
   1. By “instrumental reason” I  mean the kind of rationality we draw on when we
      calculate the most economical application of means to a given end. Maximum efficiency, the best cost-output ratio, is its measure of success.
   2. …once the creatures that surround us lose the significance that accrued to their place in the chain of being, they are open to being treated as raw materials
      or instruments for our projects. 
   3. The fear is that things that ought to be determined by other criteria will be decided in terms of efficiency or “cost-benefit” analysis, that the independent ends that ought to be guiding our lives will be eclipsed by the demand to maximize output.
   4. The primacy of instrumental reason is also evident in the prestige and aura that surround technology, and makes us believe that we should seek technological solutions even when something very different is called for.
   5. Patricia Benner has argued in a number of important works that the
      technological approach in medicine has often sidelined the kind of care that involves treating the patient as a whole person with a life story, and not
      as the locus of a technical problem.
   6. Hannah Arendt … argued that “the reality and reliability of the human world rest
      primarily on the fact that we are surrounded by things more permanent than the activity by which they are produced.” This permanence comes under
      threat in a world of modern commodities.
   7. A manager in spite of her own orientation may be forced by the conditions of the market to adopt a maximizing strategy she feels is destructive. A bureaucrat, in spite of his personal insight, may be forced by the rules under which he operates to make a decision he knows to be against humanity and good sense.
3. Citizen’s political apathy or loss of freedom
   1. … has also been widely discussed, most memorably by Alexis de Tocqueville. A society in which people end up as the kind of individuals who are “enclosed in
      their own hearts” is one where few will want to participate actively In self-government.
   2. This opens the danger of a new, specifically mod­ern form of despotism, which Tocqueville calls “soft” despotism. It will not be a tyranny of terror and oppression as in the old days. The government wil be mild and paternalistic. It may even keep democratic forms, with periodic elections. But in fact, everything will be run by an “immense tutelary power,” over which people will have little control. 
   3. Once participation declines, once the lateral associations that were its vehicles wither away, the individual citizen is left alone in the face of the vast bureaucratic state and feels, correctly, powerless.

Very very interesting. Although i cant recollect, i guess the mention of this “Three Malaises” was a reaction to my undermining traditions as being easy to spread and with intention to be spread rather than having an intent to spread knowledge. Some students, i now remember complained that traditions were also knowledge, which i must agree.

RR asked if one can say that all superstitions could be based on improper observations? Well, interesting question. Rather than building on it, i cut it short saying that on one hand this could be true but on the other this was necessary. Having all knowledge before hand is a tall order. For a body of knowledge to develop it takes huge amount of time, centuries and probably millennia, as we can very well see from our past (modern science is only 500 years old whereas humanity is at least more than 2 million years old). So more discussion on this would have been absolutely great.

So coming back to traditions, and science i think:

• Traditions helped us get this far by saying do this and this and you will be happy and safe and that you are a very important part of this universe. It helped us bond, generate communities and identities. Probably gave us meaning and made us part of bigger social picture dating back to millennia.
• But traditions suffer from lack of verifiable reason, and so science comes in. Scientific argument begins from “why?”. It kind of strikes at its basis saying we are but insecure and insignificant (as compared to the universe) pieces, bound by hearsay and authority of religions (which could be said as composed of traditions?), conformity and so on. But we can challenge all that and that challenging for the sake of truth is good.

Too short and inadequate a summery but that’s probably what it is. I realize i am too negative on traditions, while myself enjoying and made up of many. What a hypocrite!