While I like to be happy by doing the right things, I am constantly puzzled in meeting those goals.
- How do I be happy?
- Can I control what makes me happy? Should I do so? What are the limits?
- Is there anything more important than my own happiness? Is it of my family or is it my social circle? Does it expand to my country, is it future generations or the entire human species? Is it the nature and environment? Who is to define that happiness and how?
- Is happiness more important than ethics or law?
- What does it mean if my happiness is at odd with my wellbeing?
- What is the basis of morals, ethics and law and what should I follow if they are at odds with each other?
- What is the reasonable course of action if they are at odds with my happiness or wellbeing.
- Where do I look for answers? Is it power and politics or is it in finance and economy? Is it in science, religion or spirituality?
When I look to the world for answers, I find a heavily opiniated and polarized world staring back at me. They entice me with promise of better answers but expect me to trust that they are right while others are wrong. The voices of the more reasonable ones are drowned by the loudness of those who are impatient opiniated loud. The “openly and explicitly” vile extremes may get shunned by humanity. The rest of the heavily opiniated ones, who are quite articulate and polished, hold a great sway in public conversation. Through them, well organized groups seem to covertly and indirectly extend their influence for over larger sections of the populace. When looking at the world for answers to my question, I find myself at risk of this influence because it may not be in my best interests. While such influence may be positive, the risk of it being dangerous is not insignificant. Whether the influence was driven for their personal gains or by their misunderstood sense of morality etc, there is a risk of corruption. When I unquestioningly yield to any of those opinions, I run the risk. The risk of trusting something that may lead to my own downfall and that of those I care about.
So, what should I do? How do I find the answers to the questions? How do I reliably learn to decide the best choices in the everyday practical life? What can guide me towards securing the long term future for myself and others I care about? Where do I seek answers for the most fundamental questions of life like defining my “self,” consciousness? How to evaluate and decide on questions about morality, ethics, etc? How do I understand the origin of our creation and personal implications about the time after my death? I need a way to seek answers. I need some reasonable path with following characteristics
- It has enough scope for self-reliance so that I can consistently make sensible and productive choices to meet my fundamental goals even in the face of unforeseen situations of such nature that it can bring to question any and all of my previously held believes
- Enables me to take help from others and benefit from their experience, analysis and understand but also have practical tools and measures to mitigate both intentionally malicious influence as well as the influences driven by mistaken sense of morality
- It is practical to adopt
- A tool with means to periodically and objectively review its validity and effectiveness
The question that started out as “I” has now evolved into “we,” and “me” became “us.” This is not just a question for it, it is a question for all of us. It is not for just my benefit, it is for our benefit. Those of us who recognizes the challenges of the “heavily opinionated” discussions and the potential disastrous consequence of letting it shape the law or denying its progress, we need a solution, a path of progress.
In my mind, the answer is that which will lead us to
“SatyaVichar” is my answer for us. It may not completely address all of our questions, but it can at least be our next few steps and in those few steps. My hope is for it to grow so that in itself can give answers to such questions or at least lead us into a path that can yield better tools.
SatyaVichar is a process, a pathway to wisdom. A means for recognizing and adopting a “moral ethical practical philosophy” and driven by cooperation and harmony. It is centered around the continuous refinement of how we think about reality and practice what we learn.
We learn form reality to shape our thoughts and we use our refined thoughts to better understand reality. This can be said to work positively as well as negatively. This is how we learn, but this is also the process that leads to biases. Without a deliberate conscious deep dive, without a recognition of the potential of our bias as and a genuine intent to counterbalance it, we may be led astray by that very same process which is essential to our ability to learn and grow.
In our hectic life, unless we take time and prioritize our own need to understand ourselves, keep our biases in check, and focus on understanding of objective reality, we are likely to be lost. We may sacrifice our own welfare and that of those we care about simply because we served our momentary emotional needs. Even if we reign in our temptations and kneejerk emotional reactions, and work for a better future, we may end up actually corrupting it for us and our loved ones and everyone else. This can be because we were misled by our biases resulting from misunderstandings, hasty judgements, inaccurate information, etc.
SatyaVichar is the antidote. It may not be able eliminate biases but reduce them. It may not prevent any corruption of the future, but can at least weaken the extent and amplify our progress.
SatyaVichar is a process, a pathway to wisdom. It is how we shape our own thoughts to improve our understanding of reality.
Its objective is the “meaningfully long lasting harmony and peace“
Satya (Truth)
⇅
Vichar (Contemplation)
Contemplation using truth and contemplation of truth
Contemplation can take form of introspection within ourselves as well as well reasoned deliberations in objective collaboration with others. Even if our experiences are vast, It is the tool to not just help us learn, but to help us dive deeper in our search for truth. It is by honoring the depth of the truth that we can facilitate the solutions we create to effectively serve its intended objectives.
Without personal knowledge about us, other people can only understand us the way they understand those who appear similar to us and we can expect nothing better. People who are closer to us, they can only understand us from their perspective of our interactions and those perspectives are shaped by their biases and other personal experience as well as external influences.
It is in us to take the responsibility to understand ourselves deeper than others. What others believe to be good in general or good for others is shaped by their understanding. It is a mistake to completely delegate the ownership of our welfare to others and inefficient to for ourself to take complete ownership of the same. With the help of collaboration with others, we should drive towards our welfare. And for that, it is our duty to introspect and learn more deeply about ourselves. It is in us to exhibit our qualities which should shape the understanding about us by others. It is our responsibility to be able to penetrate the biases and external influence governing others’ view about us and help them understand us better. Only then can we reasonably and responsibly expect others to be capable of correctly contributing to our wellbeing. It would be obvious that similar to biases from other people shaping a skewed understanding of us, our own biases will also result in our skewed of them. It is our responsibility to recognize that and mitigate the same. It is also in our interest to encourage others to also adopt similar attitude.
In any society, welfare is a shared responsibility. We are not in isolation and our choices affect each other. Rashness of some irresponsibly driver can lead someone else into accident despite driving responsibly. Similarly, our irresponsible/ignorant choices can negatively impact others and their irresponsible/ignorant choices can negatively impact us. So, we share the responsibility to at least not harm others. But when we are cooperative, and understanding, we can help each other.
SatyaVichar is intended to be a forum. One where we help each other to learn, practice the qualities of wisdom described here. It is intended to become a community where we cooperatively help each other dive deeper into age old questions that has evaded humanity and shape a future. It is a process where each of us seek the truth and with that, bring in ourselves a positivity to purge the negative influence of all forms of polarized world.
SatyaVichar website and social media platforms are tools that I employ to reach out to those who may be interested in being part of such a community. As the community grows, we shall together leverage or build other tools that could be helpful.
This is a medium which recognizes that entertaining an expectation that other people act responsible by considering our welfare, we have to fulfill crucial prerequisite for such expectations. They are
- We should be able to recognize what is in our welfare
- We should responsibly make choices that are in our welfare
- We should be considerate and act responsibly towards the welfare of others
- We should take responsibility to identify where and why our notions about welfare differ and cooperatively work with others to refine all our understanding of “mutual welfare” so that we can work in the interest of each other.
SatyaVichar will explore various critical facets of life. It will look collate differing views across the board. Barring taboo of extremely dangerous and sensitive topics like those that encourage or glorify genocide, sexual assault etc., this forum is open to almost any conversation of generic importance as well as seeking assistance from members of the community. While I may not be able to clearly defining the contours of limit in terms of what can be considered to “encourage or glorify genocide, sexual assault etc.,” by no means do I encourage convoluted interpretations to arrive at such correlation to silence the views I would disagree with.
A freedom to express and explore are forefront of our ability to find answers. In this, we shall explore the importance and limits of the scientific method. We shall explore the questions about our consciousness, reality, identity, legacy and more. We shall explore topics in multiple directions. For instance, we will look at why it makes sense to say that there is no “divine almighty” but also look at the reasons that make sense to say the very opposite. We shall explore the origin of evil, foundations for morality, purpose of life. We shall explore the rights of animals and plant. We shall explore if or when we can consider AI as sentient and at what point should we consider their rights. We will also explore about public policy, security from govt vs privacy from govt, need for corporate independence and the need for regulation. We will also explore questions on temptations, distractions etc. We shall look at impacts of historic oppression as well as that of policies intended to tackle them.
The number of topics to be explored are numerous and most of these are not exactly new. The difference should come in how they are discussed and explored.
As described in “What is SatyaVichar”, this is a medium which recognizes that before entertaining an expectation that other people act responsible by considering our welfare, we have to fulfill crucial prerequisites. They are
- We should be able to recognize what is in our welfare
- We should responsibly make choices that are in our welfare
- We should be considerate and act responsibly towards the welfare of others
- We should take responsibility to identify where and why our notions about welfare differ and cooperatively work with others to refine all our understanding of “mutual welfare” so that we can work in the interest of each other.
I vigorously and vehemently encourage cooperation over compulsion, advocate for transformation by inspiration over manipulation, engaging in collaboration instead of confrontation. Unfortunately, I those qualities seem dead in any many potentially meaningful conversations with strongly held views.
“SatyaVichar”, the website and social media are the forefront of my desire to revive them. So, its style should be guided by a few principles. But these principles are not exactly rules of conduct. Freedom to express and intellectually explore cannot be under the shadow of social pressure but self regulated by personal code of conduct. It is for each of us to follow these principles.
The guiding principles are to strive to adopt and promote an attitude of
desire for wisdom | emotional resilience | empathy | self confidence with humility | patience without apathy | engagement without aggression | caring without imposing | progression over perfection | seeking truth respecting harmony | respect and compassion towards those we disagree with | original thinking along with the learnings from others | acquiring mastery even in the stances contrary to notions | acknowledging and accounting for a possibility that we are wrong