A Reformulation of the Existence of Entities

Around two years back, I had been attending sessions dedicated to the exposition of the Bhagavad Gita by a professor at university. A very interesting topic came up at one of the sessions. We were discussing the rapid proliferation of application of the Bhagavad Gita. For example, the ancient text was being used in lessons for business, teachings for living, ideas of service, and so on. Although it is difficult to assign the core goal of the scripture, i.e., whether it is intended for spirituality, duty of an individual, or something else, it was well understood that modern world applications of the text have extended far beyond its scope.

Recently, I was attending a university lecture on tourism, and a fascinating aspect was contemplated upon. Various dimensions of a destination contribute to different needs of tourism. For example, in the words of the professor, in Innsbruck, Austria, a popular destination for winter and adventure sports, the mountain, a topographic feature of nature, became a “sports device”. A community space becomes a tourism hotspot, becoming immensely popular during the tourist season, and becomes a desolate wilderness thereafter.

There is a powerful idea underlying these two discussions. The idea is that of “utility” or “function”. In today’s world, any entity’s existence is primarily being defined by its utility or function. Let’s say there’s an old architectural building in a city. Very often, it is torn down to reconstruct something of supposed utility, perhaps a mall or a parking space. A fundamental question arises, “Can something exist without utility or function”?

A particular observation here is that most entities’ utility is mainly defined in economic or financial terms nowadays. A lot of things have to do with how much money comes out of it, does it help with economic growth, are the gains commensurate with the effort or investment, and such features. Not all are economic though, as evidenced by the Bhagavad Gita example, but a primary characteristic would be, creating more utilities where there aren’t any or fewer, and the benefit of the utility could be (is supposed to be) economic, intellectual, or otherwise.

In the previous year, I did a course of independent study on the philosophy of mathematics, and dabbled a bit in ontology. “Ontology” is a branch of philosophy which is the study of “being” or “existence”. An interesting concept is called “ontological dependence”, and it’s about the existence of an entity depending one or more things for its identity.

It has become the case that an entity’s existence is defined by some contribution, and the meaning-making of existence has become dependent on consumption of utility. There is no ontologically independent entity, and anything that exists, should exist to provide functions of various sorts.

This notion of defining existence by utility presents the common flaws related with the concept of utilitarianism, a school of thought in philosophy related to maximizing the objectives of actions or entities. It is concerned with the results, and not the underlying paths themselves. Therefore, it is about what benefit can you derive, and not really about what is the true nature of something, affecting communities, nature, and the society in the process.

Why? I think this majorly arises from a need of humans seeking to make their life better, or at least, it is a perception of making things better through various ways. And unfortunately, this is equated with progress as well. Different types of hedonistic creations arise, and when you think of new ideas, they have superfluous goals in mind. For example, a university starts building a garden not for creating a shared community, but to present itself as more green and sustainable for the rankings.

I will conclude with a question worth pondering upon – A lot of analysis in economics starts with an objective function – pertaining to preference or monetary utility. What if there is no objective function? What if, fundamental being or existence, is the cornerstone of harmonious identity?

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