Quest for knowing the unknowns-a rising call of human

Indian mythological belief system hails the birth of a new born as bodily arrival of a living God, brings euphoria to the community, augur prosperity to all. This so-called maiden angel does not take side of any race, religion, caste or confined to any physical country’s boundary - reason being this tiny living body (cells, neurons, muscles etc) yet to accumulate enough memories to personify oneself through its own ideology, belief, rational thinking etc etc (what we call ‘buddhi’) other than what has been inherited to pally oneself to a particular set of values, tradition, cultures or other higher order identities that every human fall pray as they grow up and identify self with social similes. As days, months goes by - this very innocent, non-commune person discovers own notion mostly from parents, social settings where it belongs; lays foundation in building instincts to identify oneself that helps to develop, grow right passion that ignites an urge to become either a player, a doctor, a teacher, a professor, a writer, a singer, a poet, a farmer, a music composure, a lyricists, a script writer, an engineer, a vice chancellor, a judge, an administrator, a jury, a soldier, a fighter pilot, a cleric, a social reformer, an actor, a CEO or a managing director, a surgeon, an antisocial, a businessman, an entrepreneur & owner, an Industrialist, a minister, a prime minister or a president of country or a personality beyond boundaries and what not and the whole world is open to fulfill the individual aspirational dream.

Question is why such a desire flares-up in oneself to attain so much of things in first place in any human mind and what good it does do to self and to the community or to the nation at large or to the planet or what perils does it bring to self and to the society. What larger impact it does or larger woos’ it creates? Who should be legislating what is right or what is wrong aspiration to pursue, who to articulate dos’ & don’ts on this journey; who should implement, monitor, oversee, control, reward/punish to uphold social harmony, ecological global governance? The obvious impromptu answer would be there is no such angel figure or institution on earth - the mightier takes the lead, enjoy the larger share of worldly favors whereas the logical, rational, compassionate, accommodative, caring, hardworking human takes the most plunge out of it and mostly remain as a laggard.

I thought to pen down my thought process for a larger purpose bothering me for a longtime based on embedded influence I have from my mother Nilema Sur whom I lost at an early age, my school teacher, Dilip babu and? later on from professors in my college in Presidency college, Kolkata and there after other two Alma mater of mine (NIT DGP & IIT KGP) who conferred professional degree on me and hence the effort was to be in the larger social context so that society gets benefited out of it. Since Childhood I have been observing personality traits, virtues of people keenly and tried to internalize, relate it with their motives which somehow or the other manifests in their behavior traits that every human fall pray; reflects in their actions in various social settings. Many a time my analytical root to discern the truthful behaviour has proved to be right on various social contexts.

To explain my thought process, I would like to draw analogies from fundamental Chemical Engineering principles (synthesis & simulation) and apply human behavioral sets of various context, do positioning on time, space and bring all sorts of guna's on top it, super impose all onto a multi-dimensional plot; segment, classify and then analyze as if like a polarized convex lens being used to magnify each miniaturized social entities and do characterization (Bengali we call charitrayan) onto a model built for outcome led behavioual interpretaion study- then we will get plethora of information on social dynamics and its engine of operation. The so-called societal norms, its embedded core values of functionaries that give every situation a life to it but many a time it remains invisible (implicit motives) to many - what we often term them as culture.

Since I have not taken any cues from standard text book for articulating, plotting human characters that transcends into their behavior, actions they display; I shall make attempt try to explain each of the prominent character-set in common and lucid language so that everybody could relate them well what is happening with their surroundings. In my opinion such illustrations with its underlying meaning may not be available in any social domain or in any text book but it might help to study such a complex subject of human psychic behavior and provide some primary findings, an impetus in framing, designing long-drawn process of social reengineering concepts for systematic infusion of upright traits commensurate to their culture and then into their consciousness in transforming global values, virtues (guna’s) bothering every aspect of human life for creating a better world of tomorrow. Results of my findings are described through a set of characters once made to aware in social settings, many may take it to transform community someway or the other; in the process it will leap forward to a progressive, vibrant, fear free atmosphere transcending harmony and prosperity to all. If the larger malaise of society which I shall be elaborating in greater details later and if not addressed in right earnest sooner or later then the same society will disproportionately grow, multiply social evils sporadically where autocracy, demon led culture having nice attaire, person-centric progress with specificity, all sorts of corruption (implicit, explicit form of control) ultimately derails the core; create more woo’s than good to people; shall be doing enormous harm, torn societies apart, damages the foundation of good ecosystem.??? ?

For studying such a complex subject, few distilled thoughts in the form of core traits personified through characters play aimed at bringing simplicity to complexity and then classify them based on my internal understanding from observations made from a larger set of people that I interacted, saw their behaviours of all sorts over the years. My illustrated logic on classifying people is generic and may apply across societies, Institutions, organizations across geographical boundaries where human to human interactions are the bedrock of functioning of any social organ, where work activities are performed by a group of people associated with worldly gains, incentives closely linked to their activities (professional, social, political, technical etc) closely held among humans. There is no specific name or ranking has been attached to the individual illustrated classification.

First set of character are of easygoing people who tries to do things to fulfill their day-to-day needs, accumulate some wealth to maintain a healthy life without involving them in variety of groups and not akin to large expenditure, not partying too many occasions in various groups but are very traditional, not involved in great degree of associations, not worrying much about what is happening in their surroundings. They concentrate more on self to have a peaceful life and in turn they remain largely happy within their own comfortable social settings of family, friends etc.

2nd set of character are from the ordinary set of humans who are very much showy, wants to have dazzling presence everywhere attention seeking, always on lookout to grab power by whatever means (good or bad) disregarding any societal consequences, nests with power centers for benefitting self, magnifies self, manipulates and eventually does significant harm to social settings, takes shelter to attain one’s own goal by any means and keeps on shifting positions as the center of gravity shifts, mystify people who matters in the process does significant harm, hinders healthy growth of community and camaraderie and very harmful for larger community.

3rd set of character who are extremely lazy, have no zeal, shaky and looks for material comforts, highly conscious of benefits, privileges; do not put effort in overall growth for community, avoid taking responsibility, least interested in any milestone, targets etc and then the life goes on, craves for all good things to happen in their favor through pallying, pursuing, garnering support by playing all sorts of cards and spent their life around it.

4th set of character who bully everything, acts as dictator, has no time to lend ears for others. They think what has been conveyed must be done on time, keeps performing member in the dark, does not provide any background i.e purposes, reason on how the output of the activity will be used. They do not have the capacity or appetite to absorb contrarian views, does not allow people to explain their view point; mis-represent, distort facts to decision makers. They make sure that any new ideas are watered down, takes short-cuts, dominate if others are not aligned to their views, practices cult of one way communication; lacks decency, propagate an environment of mistrust, propagate confrontation led culture, agnostic to advancement of social and cultural fervor that are conducive to healthy growth of people, community, society. These set of people are always on the lookout for propelling growth of self (money, power, position) while preventing others to come up by all mean. They will not allow any system to develop, abstain people from creating new platform for larger good, hampers long-term growth of society, destroyer of merit resulting to diminishing returns to society, blind to larger global good and prosperity. They continue to derail the societal growth in a big way and feels world without them will cease to operate.

5th set of character are of high power mongers, devoid of capabilities to see futuristic common good, unfurling larger opportunities of societal growth; deploy clones, agents in key location of the ecosystem and give birth to parallel channel of manipulation, information gathering and deploy unethical practices; empowers, encourages, rewards clones and discourages human growth oriented culture, distorts, adulterate facts, mis-feed in mainstream, does good package for their prosperity, attain significant worldly favours, accumulate wealth disproportionately and proclaims themselves as the watchdog of system. They are well versed in manipulation of all kinds, propagate corrupt practices, inject longer term malaise in system build rapport with who’s who of society, remain cling to power centers, influence key decision making process some-way or the other and does enormous harm to engine of growth in the long-term, build colony of them. They remain invisible but very powerful having ulterior motives, does have some follower base, keep themselves invisible and prop up when needed very shroud and damages the larger ecosystem, derail the long-term societal growth in a big way and harmful for people.

6th set of character are the people who are mastermind, engaged in forming close group for spreading a cult of miss-feed, silently interferes and hinders natural functioning of society; influences smooth functioning of designed social structure for benefiting self and establishes a strong secondary network for benefiting, extract material gain for self and for near and dear ones, maintain close allies and in the process enjoy the non-legitimate power. They are groomed by 5th set of character pool for their benefit so that their penetrating layer becomes stronger in root and work hand in hand to establish their supremacy.? They eventually become successful in reaching to the core of power mongers. This intimacy helps to do manipulation better and intensity increases over time which make them easier reaching close to power center. These lot of characters are those who did have nothing at their first place and once reached to a stage, run the show work as a spoiler of people, actively engaged in damaging the spirit of long-term growth by placing people of their choice in key places to control day-to-day functioning. They are the cause of miseries for the people, by the people and of the people. They will do everything and even topple the designed social hierarchy and quickly turn their side by influencing power center to strengthen their positions.

7th set of character are the people who lend their ears easily to 4th, 5th and 6th category character pool enjoys the power of all types, indulge all the above pool to grow and utilize them to run the system by using their channels. They support to prosper those pool member in the process discrimination grows disproportionately in the systems, resulting to failure of core architecture, infuse process of degradation in the larger ecosystem sooner or later day by day. They are highly egoist which apparently may not be visible from naked eye but their actions speak. They accumulate significant wealth in short time, cherish to stay at the helm of affairs always, highly suspicious in nature; spread the message of fear through their agents who they consider as loyal in face and remain blind which eventually carnage in roots, encourage mediocrity away from progressive culture, proliferate short-term, less progressive system of governance. These set of people lacks 360-degree views, surrounded by opportunists always and believe in dynastic system of governance not akin to diversified, long-term growth of human society and not fit for global good. They fail to realize that perils of societal evils are gradually creeping through acts of their agents and degradation is inevitable in the medium term.? ?

8th set of character are of those who are citizens of the globe, aligned towards all round development having modern outlook, believe in science & technology (S & T) led wellbeing of society, lead technological advancement at an affordable cost for the masses that are legitimate need of the society of tomorrow. They think new generation should invest and channelize their time and energy to improve quality of life, create wealth for society, generate more engagement opportunities for people through innovation & discovery which will help to fulfill unmet demand that the society shall be looking for in near future. They believe in creating a guardrail against disruption to maintain the basic fabric of society in the form of have and have nots. Obviously, this pool of people is limited, believe in creating future for all. They strongly believe that advancement of S&T to spread beyond physical boundaries to spur trade & commerce and in the process attain global good. They also feel that S&T should not be deployed for harming people rather use them as opportunity creator to serve humanity, correct ecological imbalances being created by corrupt means.

They are focused, ready to lend ears to other for creating, generating more and more of new ideas, gives freedom to think, allows talent to grow and building capacities of future, ready to collaborate across systems, platforms, regions and beyond geographical boundaries for a larger purpose. They are aspirational, possibly no one can keep off chasing their goal, not designed to compromise, do not get involve on any foul-play, utterly futuristic. They live for global good, believe in countries progress, prosperity to nation and can see through larger picture with ease. They think that every human has the right to live fairly with equal rights and prosperity, wealth creation for self and near and dear ones should not be the only motto in life.

9th set of character will be found in this planet who will be always available, volunteering and come forward to do free services through their labor and engagement of time for those who needs the most in various situations not available in time. Their services are not paid and happened to be noble the for decades, used to come from lesser-known unemployed lot engaged providing service to many social issues at local level are not rewarded financially nor appreciated across the rank and file. These set of people used to be essentially caregiver to the society, gradually getting extinct as competition growing, social pressures making them to earn livelihood else their life will be at stake, society no longer adore their contribution but those needs the most are feeling the heat now. But with the passage of time, there is a ray of hope that such services are made available, getting monetized through several start-ups, NGO’s etc at a cost yet to be standardized for those who needs them. In future more and more such services will be in demand as life span of people are getting increased and nobody is there to look after them.

10th set of character who are the backbone of the society, their services are vital for humanity and used to be treated as untouchables for centuries but situations are changing now with the passage of time. Discriminatory treatment in terms of social status, pay and privileges, benefits etc quite common but degrees have gone down as awareness being created by governments, NGO’s, media etc to bridge the historical misunderstanding. Society cannot sustain without their support. In future technology led innovations likely to occupy this space and will enhance wellbeing of modern society but dependency on this set of people will still be there for decades.

It is worth noting here that the character sets described above are pre-dominantly seen in most social settings and plays a pivotal role in operating any social, political, commercial, other formal organizational functioning; each works as a subsystem that forms the building block of the larger societal ecosystem. There are few more character pool who are also present in the society, possesses some common behaviors which can cut across the character pools in various proportion and hence not categorized separately.

Here I would like to take side of an analogy from thermodynamic principles put into theory - ‘Entropy is increasing’ for all natural process, to explain disrupting changes forcing mother planet to carry unbearable pain originating from perils of unabated, limitless destruction of key resources causing a huge ecological and environmental imbalance. The same principle can be extended to human where the premise is, most human are very selfish, many of them are extremely greedy, garnering wealth for self and for dear ones; craving for power to rule the society and the larger ecosystem, practically remained uncontained. Hence in corollary to thermodynamic principle we can say that it is natural act of human behaviour to degrade guna's with time. Now the question is there any alternative where human is at the core and an integral part of this planetary ecosystem? Having said so what should be the universal good that the planet should be asking for - from human for society to survive and to uphold the planetary equilibrium?

An illustration of simplified universal Maslow’s law of hierarchy become an eye opener, come in handy to our rescue and quickly relate with human need. It is self-explanatory when we see the need hierarchical example given below (Fig-1) referred from open literature.

Figure-1: Example on Maslow’s law of hierarchy

It relates to how organizations are fulfilling human need from a societal perspectives and it proved to be proven universally for any social setting where human to human interaction is taking place for get worldly favour and for material wealth creation in private so as to become disproportionately rich in shortest time.

To exemplify what is good for larger societal ecosystem and its governance, I would like to bring fundamental behavioural theory applied in standardizing social norms that the Chinese culture built in ancient time and thought of bringing once again to the fore from their ancient culture what they call as ‘Social credit’ system used for ranking individual character. It was used to be the bedrock of Chinese culture in the history dated back in 551 BCE or even before which was formally?announced once to again in recent time by Chinese government in 2014 for its introduction in functioning of state. By the year 2023 more than 80% of Chinese states has some up with some form of ‘Social Credit’ system which could be put into practice but it has not been legalized by Chinese government yet. They claim it is quite mature now, ran through deep experimentation process where enormous volume of data getting recorded and pros and cons are being worked out.

The philosophy behind the social credit system, can be traced back to Chinese history. At that time, various schools of thought competed for dominance and gist of each is provided below from the open domain for reference

Confucianism: Confucius (551–479 BCE) advocated a ‘holistic’ conception of human nature where individual well-being was connected to good character and the proper functioning of society as a whole.

Mohism: Mozi (470 BC–391 BCE) suggested that all humans should care for each other equally and advocated a society where all were treated impartially.

Legalism: This school (approximately 400-300 BC),?emphasized the importance of laws, strictly enforced from above in order to preserve social order.

Glimpses of Social credit rating system has been provided here not to blindly follow the Chinese way of doing things but utilize this as a concept and then build modalities based on our cultural diversity, it’s ethos and from the rich Indian heritage, traditions we inherited from our ancient rich civilization so that the social order of ours does not fall pray what the modern cultural foot-print driving us forcefully in piling up into miseries at a lightning speed and creating major ecological & environmental imbalances perpetually to destabilize and destroy human society within few decades or in few centuries if - we human fail to act in establishing right social order starting now on. Indian Social order may imbibe, designed to operate on the foundation of two extremes on a linerar scale: One end of the scale ought to have Euphoria built-up in Croatita after reaching to world cup football final, display superb team spirit and finally upon arriving home citizen gave them a heroic wellcome across rank and file of rarely seen of highest order in modern times. Second end of the scale is the principle of integrity of character displayed in a Indian hindi feature film ‘Shakti’ directed by renowned film maker Shakti Samanta where Mr. Dilip kumar played the role of a father of convict son and a police officer and Mr. Amitabh Bachchan played the role as his son. Despite having father-son relationship, Dilip kumar shot his son after repeated attempt of persuation failed to disengage his son a antisocial from wrongdoing, asked him to surrender to police but he did not. At the end when the convict tries to flee from the spot- the police officer started chasing him (here Mr Dilip Kumar) showed no no restraint and shot his son on ground to uphold the social order and finally Mr. Amitabh died. In our wild imagination how can we think it is possible despite having father-son relationship in any society, yes this is abundantly seen in Indian culture true when any soldiers dies in Indian army, we see many parents, spouses feel proud that their son or husband has given life for the nation.?Unless such rigor and sacrifices made to return of goog over evil in every spheres of society, allows organizational governance having ingrained in their DNA where society, puts national interest is first and invest everything in that direction; start selecting characters, deploy those characters formally in organizations key functions based on social credit ranking system and entire ethical ecosystem is built around it, then the basic fabric of society and its social order will fail sooner or later. Society must not be built on false foundation, common people in the society must be viglant and destroy, weed out beehives, spider nets of all types in right time else subsystems of any region or national organization of all forms cannot sustain for global good what the futuristic society should be looking for global wellbeing with allround prosperity.??? ??

It is a universal truth that every resource needed by living creatures on this planet like food, energy, shelter, other worldly materials for life originates from Mother Earth and hence possession of them for private use ideally should not be considered as privately held wealth. No living creature that we know has the capability to produce any of these resource without the mercy of Mother Earth but humans know their utility, know how to take possession, accumulate wealth privately. It is a profound truth that this very human body was constructed from materials has the origin of Mother Earth. Hence, we the humans are blessed from all direction to harness, extract and utilize every natural resource for our living, aid in maintaining superior lifestyles. On the contrary plant & trees have abilities to do synthesis and grow food from water, energy from sun, carbon dioxide from atmosphere where chlorophyl does the wonder for producing food. Therefore, we should be grateful to our Mother Earth that she is supplying all resources for our living. Therefore, living human on this planet should feel extremely fortunate; should allow, cooperate with every other human and all living animal (small or big) on this planet earth to use essential resources freely and optimally for their healthy living and without any bias or restriction of any kind, above all we should not proclaim that wealth accumulated privately is belong to any one of us, rather it is for the society and for the nation at large.

Second, we human must acknowledge that foundation of all miseries on this planet starts with human at the core, reasons being the character pool described above constantly fight, coerce power to accumulate material wealth disproportionately in private, grappling with power to extract all sorts of resources for wealth creation for self and for dear ones without acknowledging the severity of pain the Mother Earth is carrying through, failed to acknowledge this universal truth, correct self what we are blessed with. Unholy greed to become rich through all sorts of manipulation continues, remained unmitigated rather creates multiplier effect that storms into devastating climatic disruption damages like floods, hurricanes, erupting volcanos, earth-quake,? droughts, wild forest fires, melting of ice in glacial, global warming effects etc; making people homeless, starvation, death, fighting for war etc. Should the existence of greedy human not there in the first place in the quest of becoming disproportionately rich by amassing material wealth, then this planet would have been a wonderful place for every other habitat. Such disrupting changes has put this planet into enormous suffering, creating all sorts of miseries that the civilization is facing today getting multipled and will destroy the civilization eventually if not attended to by reversing the social order.

In short to uphold larger social order it has become a necessity to take a larger system centric view to eliminate the most greedy, manipulative character pool described above, weigh cost of coercive, manipulative power having deeper-roots of working channel with ulterior motives that has profound consequences on societal miseries - needs rebalancing act by standing tall against; redesign the social structure by eliminating all forms of corrupt practices seemingly not visible from outside but runs deep, has strong footing inside (Implicitly controlled & Explicitly controlled) as shown in feature film ‘Article 370’ (Only select narratives has specific relevance to explain the context relationally) have larger impact than those who are in correction home. All planetary principle of efficiency ought to perform and accomplish like a Carnot Engine where the motto of every human will be not to extract, harness natural resources disproportionately for self but do consciously for the larger society, create some surplus for society where every human will be designed to motivate self for larger purpsoe, deploy their physical and intellectual labour based on individual potential, allow everyone function as Carnot Engine for harbouring limitless prosperity what possibly the Indian mythological god the Bramha, the Bishnu and the Lord Shiva collectively intended to create or would have done in building a sustainable world ?for the planetary system. Finally allow nature to rule for prosperity for global good where every society flourishes for every living and non-living creatures would have found their home in this planet.

Leader of society must acknowledge that human talent is blessed with so much of every-thing by birth but are rarely used in right time, right place and right manner, in right space that finally go as waste to Nation. Corrupt practices of social settings are responsible for not utilizing talent in time and derails the precious talent capital for benefitting few and in the process dishonesty sets in every society, multiply miseries of all kinds to common people in multi-fold. When we take account for entirety of non utilization of precious talent capital originates from greed of various form for wealth accumulation, power etc as opposed to talent pool allowed to function with their potential for global prosperity, then the results would have been thousand times superior excceding all miseries put together for global good. When each segment of society and their subsystems realizes and dedicate fully for society or nation, works on this larger theme then we can say with certainty that the sustainable climate will no longer be a distant dream but stand tall ahead of us, attainable within few decades.

Name of the Author: Partha Sur

Present organization: Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd

Designation: Senior General Manager

(Disclaimer-this article of mine is written based on my understanding and on personal capacity from visualization of human behaviour of all types that I came across over the years and many news feed naturally flowing in social media, from community settings and other larger ecosystem and from broader understanding of mine inherited since childhood. Haldia petrochemicals is in no way responsible or tied to any facts, context etc on the core human issues which I been dealt with in this article. It is primarily intended for knowledge sharing so that the larger ecosystem of society can get benefitted from it and the process get a value added insight on the functioning of modern day larger societal ecosystem).