“Unravelling Jaina and Buddhist View of Consciousness: From a Psycho-Spiritual and Contemporary Perspective”

Paper Presented on the topic International Conference on “Positivism”,

Amity University, Jaipur

           Lord Mahavir was born in 599 B.C. Lord Mahavir was born in 599 B.C. at Vaisali Bihar and died at Pawapuri in 527 B.C. at Pawapuri Bihar.  Sacred language of Jains was ardhmagadhi which is a Prakrit dialect.  According to Jaina philosophy five kinds of knowledge: mati, sruti, avadhi, manah paryaya and Kevala exists.  Mati is ordinary cognition obtained by normal means of sense perception.  Matijnana is distinguished into three kinds viz. upalabodhi or perception, bhavna or memory, upayoga or understanding.  Matijnana is knowledge by means of Indriya’s or senses and mind which is called anindriya to distinguish it from senses.  We always have sense presentation or darsana prior to the rise of Mahjana.  Sruti or testimony is knowledge derived through signs symbols or words.  Srutanjana is of four kinds namely labdhi or association bhavna or attention, upayoga or understanding and naya or aspects of the meaning of things.

            Avadhi is direct knowledge of things even at a distance of time and space.  It is knowledge by Clairvoyance.

            Manahparyaya is direct knowledge of thoughts of others as in telepathic knowledge of other’s minds.

            Kevala or perfect knowledge comprehends all substances and their modifications.

            Caitanya or consciousness is the essence of jiva, and the two manifestations of Caitanya are perception (darsana) and intelligence (jnana).  The existence of an objective reality beyond and beside consciousness, apprehended by perception and understood by intelligence, is asserted by the Jainas.  The attributes and relations of things are directly given in experience and are not products of thought or imagination.  The process of knowing does not modify the object of knowledge.  The consciousness of Jiva is ever active, and this activity reveals its own nature as well as that of the object.  In case of self-consciousness the relation between knowledge (Jnana) and the object of knowledge (Jneya) is very intimate.  Jnanin and Jnana the subject of knowledge and knowledge are inseparable, though indistinguishable.  In self-consciousness, the subject of knowledge, the object of knowledge and knowledge itself are different aspects of a single concrete unity.  There are no jivas without jnana, since that would take away the Cetana or conscious character of the Jivas and reduce them to the level of ajiva dravyas and there could be no jnana without selves, for that would make jnana foundationless.  All knowledge is in the soul, though it manifests itself when disturbing factors of emotions and passions are removed.

            Knowledge is of two forms, pramana or knowledge of a thing it is in itself, and naya or knowledge of a thing in its relation.  The doctrine of standpoints is a peculiar feature of the Jaina logic.  A naya is a standpoint from which we make a statement about a thing.  We define and separate our standpoints by abstraction.  The result of abstraction and concentration on particular ends is the relativity of knowledge.  Jainism makes basic and fundamental the principle that truth is relative to our standpoints.  The artha (object or meaning) nayas are the following:

Naigamanaya: It tells us of the general purpose which controls the series of acts and emphasises the teleological character of life.

Sangrahanya: emphasise the common features.  Vyavharanya is the popular conventional point of view based on empirical knowledge.

Rjusutranya: It takes into account the state of thing at a particular point of time.  It does not regard all continuity and identity.

Sabdanaya: Back name has its own meaning and relationship between terms and their meanings is a relative one, if we forget this fallacies arise.

Samabhirudhanaya: distinguishes terms according to their roots.  Evambhutanaya is a specialized form of the sixth kind.

            The nayas are also distinguished into dravyarthika from the point of view of substance and paryayarthika, from the point of view of modification or condition.  This doctrine of standpoints is described with help of a story six behind men, who each laid hands on a different part of the elephant and tried to describe the whole animal.  The man who caught the ear thought that the creature resembled a winnowing fan, the holder of the leg imagined that he was clinging to a big round pillar etc.  It was he who saw the whole that perceived that each had only a portion of the truth.  The most important use of standpoints is Syadvada, which holds all knowledge to be only probable.  Every proposition gives us only a perhaps, or may be or Syad.  There can be seven different points of view of speaking a thing:

(i)                Is

(ii)             Is not

(iii)           Is and Is not

(iv)            Is unpredictable

(v)               Is and Is unpredictable

(vi)            Is not and is unpredictable

(vii)          Is, Is not and Is unpredictable.

            The different types of consciousness depend on the operation of the opposing forces of matter ranging from that in which these forces are actually in full play, in which case the knowing power of the soul can manifest itself only through the one sense of touch as in metals and the like, to that in which all of them are removed, when the bull-blaze of omniscience is reached.  Jainism admits a dualism between mind and body.  Three forms of consciousness are recognized knowing, feeling or the experiencing of the fruits of karma and willing.  As a rule we have first feeling, then conation and lastly knowledge.  The omniscience of the Sidhatman involves the reflection of the universe in consciousness, though the soul is not necessarily in bondage.  The subjection of desire and consequently to bondage is not essential for jiva, since it is possible to be saved from desire.  That which has consciousness is jiva that which has not consciousness but can be tasted, touched and seen and smelt is a jiva.

            Time or Kala is sometimes recognized as a quasi-substance.  It is an all pervading forms of the universe on which are strings the successive movements of the world.  It is not a summation of a series of discontinuous changes, but a process of persistence, an enduring from the past into the present.  Time has existence but no Kayatva or magnitude.  It has no extension being unilateral.  A distinction is made between eternal time, without form, beginning or end, and relative time with beginning and end and variations of hour, minute etc.  The former is called Kala and the latter Samaya.  Kala is the substantial cause of Samaya, Vartana or continuity of changes is inferred from parinama or modification.  Relative time is determined by changes or motion in things.  These changes themselves are effects of absolute time.  Time is called a cakdra, a wheel.  Whatever is perceived by the senses organs, the various kinds of sariras (or bodies of Jiva’s) the physical mind the karma’s etc. are murta or figured objects.  Sound, grossness, shape, darkness, brightness, heat and cold are modifications of the substance known as pudgala.  Jaina physics also talks of the atomic structure of the universe.  The objects of the physical world are comprehended by atoms or parmanus which has no beginning, middle or end.  It is neither created nor destroyed and it is amurta (formless) but the basis of all murta (form).  According to Jainism karma is of material nature (paudgalika).  Karma has the peculiar property of developing effects of merit and demerit.  When the soul enters into commerce with the outer world retards the radiance of the soul.  In usual state of things Karma has cause and effect relationship.  But when Karma is prevented from warming and annihilated altogether the soul reaches Ksayika state which leads to Moksa.  The ajiva consists of five entities of which four are immaterial or amurta – space, time, dharma, adharma and fifth one is murta which is material or figured or pudgala.  These five categories constitute the loka and beyond it is imme asuralite infinite called aloka.  There are various types of jiva’s and some of them are a prey to illusion and are condemned to submit to the yoke of matter through an infinite succession of lives.  But mukta or liberated jiva dwells in a state of supermundane perfection unconcerned with worldly affairs.  The essential characteristic of all the jiva’s is consciousness or cetana, which is never destroyed by whatever obscurity from external causes.  A peculiar feature of the jaina theory is its doctrine that there are souls even in inorganic objects like metals and stones.  The potter has the idea (bhava) and the pot exists in his consciousness, and there arises the actual pot with material clay.  Soul can maintain its existence independent of the body consciousness is a reality independent of matter and in no sense its product.  The cause of the soul’s embodiment is the presence in it of Karmic matter.  At death the soul, with its Karmna-Sarira goes in a few moments to the place of its new birth, and there assumes a fresh body, expanding or contracting according to the dimensions of the latter.  The mundane souls are divided into four classes according to the place of their birth: (i) those born in hell (ii) those in the animal world (iii) those in human society and (iv) these in the divine kingdom.  It deliverance is to be achieved; the lower matter is to be subdued by the higher spirit.  When soul is free from the weight which keeps it down, it rises up to the top of the universe where the liberated dwell.  Morality is necessary to bring about the reformation of man’s nature and prevent the formation of new Karma.  The way to nirvana lies through the three jewels (triratna) of faith on Jina, knowledge of his doctrine and perfect conduct.  Belief in real existence or tattvas is right faith, knowledge of real nature without doubt or error is right knowledge.  An attitude of neutrality without desire or aversion towards the objects of the external world is right conduct.  The three should be pursued together as they form one path.

            Jaina’s refute the theory of the creation of the world out of nothing or series of accidents.  The systematic working of the laws of nature can’t be a product of luck or accidents.  If it is argued that everything that exists must have a maker, then that maker himself would stand in need of another maker, and we should landed in an infinite regress.  The whole universe of being consisting of mental and material factors has existed from all eternity, undergoing an infinite number of revolutions produced by the power of nature without the intervention of any eternal deity.  The diversities of the world are traced to the five cooperating conditions of time (Kala) nature (Svabhava), necessity (Niyati), activity (Karma) and desire to be and act (Udyama).  Nirvana or deliverance is not annihilation of the soul, but its entry into a blessedness that has no end.  It is an escape from the body not from existence.  Liberated being is neither long nor small, nor black, nor blue, nor bitter, nor pungent, neither cold nor hot, without body, without rebirth... he perceives he knows, but there is no analogy, its essence is without form, there is no condition of the unconditioned.  The Sidha state is not the cause or effect of the Samsara series.  It is absolutely unconditioned.  Causality has no hold on the redeemed soul.

            In my opinion for a better understanding of consciousness religious thought of Buddhism are noteworthy to mention.  According to Buddhism mind is a way in which the man valued things.  They looked on mind as a more (bhuya, bhiyyo) than the body but as a somewhat working the body.  The ways in which man valued things were either two fold: ways of body and mind or threefold: thought, word and deed or action of body, of speech, of mind; kaya karma-vali-karma, mano-karma.  In an Abhidhamma commentary which took its form in 5^th century A.D. language too if it points to one thing more emphatically than to others shows the man trying to reveal himself in relation to this and that, trying to get from the self-‘within’ to the other listening self not ‘within’.  Always it is the ‘agent acting’ that language ultimately means.  Even when man has wrong heartedly substituted mind or other abstraction: consciousness, desire, will and what not for the self or man, language invests the dummy with the functions of an agent, when the dummy is put a collective name for the ways, the modes in which the agent acts.  In the five-fold list of senses, a sixth sense and its object are often appended mano and dhamma’s a crude effort of analysis inferior to that Sankya in which Mano Mana’s are not ranked in the same category as bare sense, but is with two other faculties that which handles conveys, interprets sense.  For our word mind, thought and consciousness equivalent in Pali terms are mano (variant of manasa), litta and vinnana.

            In mano we have the man valuing, measuring, appraising and also purposing, intending.  In citta we more usually have the man as affecting and affected, as experiencing.  In Vinnana we have the man as not of this world only, as soul.  Mano was somehow informed with tendency to act, and if we see in our own world, the will as not the servant of mind, dictated to by it, but the one active principle, engaged, when called mind, on a certain intensive form of activity.  Citta is also found in a wide range: variety, inquisitiveness, instability, impulsiveness as well as contrast with body and as both thinking and thought.

            The terms reflection, inference and scrutiny have the prefix of repetition and collection pati-pacchave-kkhati, patisancikkhati.  Both words belong to the vocabulary of vision.  The term reflection had the double usage the founder is recorded as administering his son Rahula: What is the use of mirror (adasa)? ‘To reflect Sir’.  Even so must we reflect and reflect in all our work of body, speech or thought namely, this that I want to do would be harmful to myself and others.’

            Nana meant just knowledge in either a next to hand or a lofty sense.  Thus the thirsty man comes to a well and sees water.  He knows, he sees, as the old religious refrain for he had nana.  But he can’t get at the water.  Thus refrain in one version of the men message inspiring the founder is described as coming to be! Coming to be! at that thought there arose in him a vision into things not called before to mind and knowledge (Nana) arose wisdom (panna), lore (vijja), light (aloko) arose.  In Adhidhamma no term has attracted so many accessory terms or quasi equivalents as has panna.  The eye of panna or panna vision is thus described:

The eyes of flesh,

the deva eye

And eye of wisdom

best of all (anuttaram).

            He who has panna is said ‘to know’ (pajanati): what does he know? Buddhism speaks of Vinnana – in how many ways is there vinnana? One is aware of what? Panna is to be made to become; Vinnana is to be understood.  Vedana (expeiencing) and Sanna (perceiving) are also stated to be bound up with and not different from Vinnana.  By what does one know (Pajanati) the knowledge? One knows by the eye of Panna? What is the aim of panna? Panna has the aim of higher knowledge (abhinna), thorough knowledge (parinna) and of eliminating (pahana).

            “All comments Budhaghosa, are modes of knowing: only prefix is different.”  He then by a similie which whether original or not, he uses in at least three of this works.  Compares Sanna, Vinnana, Panna to the different reaction provoked, at right of the precious metals, in a child, a citizen and a metallurgical expert.  The first sees in them coloured objects, the second seeds also in then tokens representing utilities to be got, the third is also able to judge as to their origin and their origin and their fashioner.  Thus Vinnana includes the work of perception and also general notions.  But Panna includes both these and also “by an uplift of energy attains to a revelation of the way.”  The verb-bhevetabba is literally “must be made to become.”  Panna was not simply exercise of thought on matters of general knowledge and practice, nor was it dialectic, nor desultory reverie.  It was intelligence diverted by or rather as concentrated volition, from lower practical issues till, as a fusion of sympathy, synthesis, synergy, it made to become that spiritual vision which had not been before.  Panna is no mere intellectual convolution of thought for the very man as growing: not only as coming to know but also as coming to be.  In Buddhism preoccupation with analysis of mind, resulted in an interesting, unmistakable increment in terms for “mind-ways” or “mindings”.  These two terms are fitter than ‘mind’ – a dangerous ward as tending to be conceived as substance more than as process: as an ‘is’ rather than a ‘becoming’ and to be used as a dummy-man.  Everyone of the mind-terms cited is process or way rather than state.

            In Pali and Jain scriptures we find the triplet action of body: action of speech, action of mind (Kaya Kamma, Vaci Kamma, mano kamma) as we roughly say word, thought and deed.  We know that the triplet is a feature in the early Persian thought which we associate with the work of Zarathustra, but it is not found in early upanishads nor in the Bible which does not get beyond linking of work and deed, nor in the plays called of Shakespeare, albeit it emerges in the book of common prayer.  Self is a vantage point and a dear friend for those whose conduct in deed and thought and word is virtuous.  Because man associated himself in plain terms with his deeds without surveying him as a static beholder nor a passive creature of destiny but as actor, as doer and as such willer – as a chooser, that is and as a becomes.

            Any sense-feeling or emotion may, as determining action, where uneasiness is persistent, be called desire.  Desire is wishing as opposed to willing.  Chanda is the word for wish or want.  Chanda is also synonym to Kattu-Kamayta ‘state of desire to act’.  Viriya is mental inception of energy striving, onward effort, exertion, endeavour, zeal, ardour, vigour fortitude, unfaltering verve, sustained desire, unflinching endurance and firm grasp of the burden, right padhana.  It is impossible to describe Buddhism without a sense of injustice done because of the widening gap between teachings of Buddha and the aftermen, the overshadowing interest in mind, the role that language plays in interpretation or the agent acting and language invests the dummy with the function of an agent points to one thing more emphatically them to others.

            Becoming which the man is shown as experiencing in himself, in psychic generosity, (b) willing to bring about in other man.  He is said to act with a mind (citta) accompanied by amity, or the rest.

            An outstanding term ‘suffuse’ (pharati) described by Sakyan poets thus: Passion for him gone by, hatred he should repress, He should make became mind that is friendly the boundless, Ever with zest by night and by day let him spread (pharate), Overall quarters the thing that is infinite (Sutta-Nipata 507).

            Buddhism has even been rapped over the knuckles for a benevolence limited to sentiment in meditation.  But originally the act described as “amity accompanied thought” was an effort to transmit love or pity or comfort by will.  A psychic phenomenon of becoming different from that of ‘average’ man through procedure of mental analysis is mentioned in the steps at (or to) idhi (idhipada).

            These four steps to idhi made to become, practised, advance the going further and further: what four? (i) Here a monk brings about a step-to-idhi accompanied by combining concentrated effort with a mantra (Chanda) (ii) by combining concentrated effort with energy (iii) by combining concentrated effort with thought (iv) by combining concentrated effort with examination (Vimamsa).

            According to a Buddhist monk “A man is only the coordinate combination of human activities and matter.  We can’t get very distant in an adequate notion of will without a willer.  We may cheat ourselves with thought by figuring this as an objective inner world of impressions and ideas.  We may cheat ourselves with “feelings” by figuring this as waves of somatic resonance and what not.  But we can’t get on thus with “will” because will is self-directing.  According to one sutta will, expressed as ‘element of initiative’ of necessity implied the agent.  Will without willer is meaningless.  But the Buddhists, in diverging from Brahmanism, on the grand (judging by the suttas) of protest against ritual and birth monpolies, first stripped the man of the brahmanic divine immanence, then finally stripped the “activities and matter” of the man i.e. self.

            It was mentioned in the Buddhist compendium that however swiftly an act of sense-perception may be performed, it was held that in every such act, seventeen moments or flashes (the metaphor is mine) of consciousness took place, each moment being considered to involve three time-phases of all becoming, namely a nascent, static and dissolving phase.  Thus the process of sense-cognition is like: when say, a visible-object after one citta moment (1) has passed enters the avenue or focus of sight, the life-continuum (bhavanga) vibrating twice (2) (3) its stream is interrupted then the adverting moment rises and ceases (4).  Immediately after, there arise and cease in order, the visual impression (vinnana) aware of just that visible object(s) recipient consciousness (6) investigating consciousness (7) determining or assigning consciousness (8) then seven flashes of full perception’s or apperception (javana) (9-15), finally if the percept is sufficiently vivid, two moments of retention or registering consciousness (16, 17).  This phase etymologically is very differently named: taddarammana or that object that and not another = identifying.  “After that comes subsidence into life-continuum.”

            There commentaries illustrate the above mentioned multiple a state of momentary psychosis in the following similie: A man lies asleep with covered beneath a mango tree (stream of unconscious life or bhavanga).  A mind stirs the branches (preceding citta I and vibrating bhavanga 2, 3).  This causes a mango to fall by him (arrest or disruption of unconscious life.  The man is waked by the falling fruit (adverting 4).  He uncovers his head (sense-impression of fruit 5) picks up the fruit (receiving 6), inspects it (investigating 7) determines what it is (determining 8) eats it (full perception 9-15) swallows the last morsels (registering 16, 17), recovers his head and steeps agains (subsidence into bhavanga).  (After-taste had perhaps been more about for 16, 17).

            Citta (consciousness), mano 9mind), manasa (intelligence), vinnana (awareness) are really one in meaning they are various modes of coming to know (Ledi Sayadaw).

            Dr. Ledi Sayadow in commenting has illustrated by a new and ingenious parable, the functions of five Khandha’s in vindication of the adequacy of this ancient category to take into account all human activities in such spheres are governed by natural desire.

            Why did the exalted Buddha when classifying conditioned experience under the concepts of aggregates (Khandha) make the number five?  According to Ledi Sayadaw these five groups of phenomena our acts regarded as felicific, on occasions where natural desires have play find accomplishment.  The following parable may illustrate.  A wealthy man, seeking wealth builds a ship and equips it with a crew of fifty-two sailors.  By transport of passengers he amasses money, of the crew one is expert in all works relating to the ship, and has these carried out, and one is acquainted with the parts to be visited and the routes thither and he from a commanding position directs the steering.  The answer, maintaining boat and crew receives and enjoys the ensuring wealth.

            “Now by the sea we may understand the way of life ever renewed (Samsara), by the ship owner, a person pursuing natural and worldly desires.  By the ship we may understand the material aggregate (rupakhanda) by the wealth it brings in, the aggregate of feeling, by the former officer, the aggregate of perception, by the crew carrying out his orders the mental properties labelled as Sankgara aggregate, and by the latter officer, who directs the ship’s course, the Vinnana aggregate.

            Feeling covers all our enjoying, partaking of perception, include our conversation with our intelligence of our competence respecting all experience in the range of things human, divine or intra-human.  That which we call Sankhara’s covers all that we do by thought, word or deed according to what we have perceived.  And Vinnana, or the aggregate of consciousness or cognitions is all those sense-impressions sense-cognitions, which act as heralds and guides wherever we happen to be, pointing out, as it were, in our daily activities and saying “this here that is there.”  Thus it is that the five aggregates cover all that is wrought within the range of natural and worldly desires.

            Buddha’s teachings can help the thoughtful of the next generation to look on the things in truer and more historical perspective.  Buddha’s teachings should not be merely perceived as a sort of great doctor, seeking to save the body (and with it the weilding instrument, the mind) from disease, old age and death, as summed up in the word dukkha, but also as a gardener of the growing plant that the man or soul really is.  He is the one to have taught us.  Becoming as, not this, but growth – growth not of the impermanent body and mind but of the very man, of whom we have no scientific right to say, he must after growing decay: this is passed over.  It is for us of today and tomorrow to be inspired by Buddha not as telling men to seek the God-in-self of his day and His monitions as a lamp, a refuge and nothing else, but as telling man in modern parlance to walk by his own little imperfect light and save himself unaided by that.

Understanding Expectations and Fulfillment Gap Dynamics of School Education: A Psycho-Socio-Economic & Technological Perspective

-->Paper presented at International Conference on Enhancing Human Potential, Punjab University, Chandigarh :- 

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The process of dissemination of education has been systematically undertaken by central and state governments and a lot of programmes and policies have been implemented to achieve the goal of universalization of primary education to all and providing a quality education that can equip our citizen’s becoming a potential human resource.  It is not the purpose of this presentation to look into historical and political processes involved in education policies rather the focus of this paper will limit itself in highlighting some of the important facets of psycho-social-economic and technological importance that can throw light on better or at least diverse understanding of this subject.  Education like health, is often seen as an unproblematic social good to which everyone is entitled as a fundamental right.  However there is a difference between education and schooling.  Education is defined as a social institution, which enables and promotes the acquisition of skills, knowledge and extension of our qualities in a more enriched and meaningful way.  Schools on the other hand refers to formal process through which certain types of knowledge and skills are delivered normally through predesigned curriculum in specialized settings.  How far schools are playing the role of best educators it is creating obstacles in useful learning needs serious introspection?

            Psychological aspects which needs attention is that of values, growth of actual competence, curriculum, modes of teaching and recreational and reflective activities, raising emotional and ecological aspects, opportunities for teacher for self-growth in terms of independence from authority and research activity.  The other psychological aspects include role of assessment techniques, growth of individualistic/collectivistic orientation and vicarious reinforcement merits attention.  Values, attitudes and beliefs are important predictors of human action at any given point of time.  Values are a relative concept and it is fashionable to ignore all values other than narrowly self-interested reasons.  It is clearly discernible among majority of young-generation a strong preference for material well-being ignoring the hardships of their parents generation.  It is important to notice that can a child sensibly value other than his/her own well-being.  The opportunity aspect what a child gets can’t divorced from the valuing of different responsibilities.  This narrow view of intelligent pursuit of self-interest dissociates child’s behavior from values and ethics.  The presence of evolutionary survival does not indicate the absence of ethnically reasoned selection of behavior and values.  Broader social goals orientation collaborative altruism behavior pattern are diminishing the breadth of our values to claim individualistic, exciting ubiquitous selfishness.

            There may exist interpretational and contextual variations regarding methods adopted in an educational institution and individual choice may be in conflict with the parents-principle.  The cornerstone of welfare economics which insists that unanimous individual preference rankings must be reflected in social decisions but there can’t be a debate that we want accrual of fundamental competence in our children.  We may have the freedom of closing the different aspects and sub-aspects for ability improvement but we should not allow a singular track which lacks critical components of personality improvement.

            There should be enough freedom be granted to each child to develop ability to achieve in their area of interest and process through which things are imposed upon the child should be minimal.  I don’t wish to rule out the existence of overlaps between the two aspects.  The diversity of choice which is not a bad thing is strongly opposed by educators in the garb of parametric variation.  It is no strange fact that there is little room for freedom to children instead linking all other external considerations while deciding their preferences.  The goal of expanding “the range of human choice” is considered as prime objective of development of child’s potential hence in examining and deciding the choice for our children attention must be paid to children’s interest.

            Curriculum: Over dosage of politics and social education curriculum is strongly correlated in Indian context.

            To Foucault, power and knowledge are closely tied together and serve to reinforce one another.  The claims to knowledge of a doctor, for example, are also claims to power as they are put into practice in an institutional context, such as hospital.  Sociologist Stephen Lukes view is pertinent to mention here that ‘ideological’ exercise of power is not explicitly observable or measurable, but can be inferred when people act in ways that against their own interests.  Even desires of our children is being shaped by capitalist’s exercise of power to secure the compliance by controlling thoughts and desires.  The age old traditional wisdom principles are being relegated to the background and role learning, alien language with least connectivity with reality of lives of children are being imposed.  The result that few of our young children leave school thinking, our school children have to continuously fight for adjustments rather than working it from an alien norms that they find great difficulty in relating and connecting.  There is a need to bring into focus more empirical studies as to our children studying a language and culture which is remotely connected to their nativistic perceptions.  John Taylor Gatto (2002) a retired school teacher with 30 years of experience concluded that the hidden curriculum in USA teachers seven basic lessions.  This includes information confusion, teacher children to accept status quo, teaches indifference-rule of class bell at the start and end of lessons, emotionally and intellectually dependent on authority figures, provisional self-esteem based on report cards and under constant surveillance.  Austrian anarchist and philosopher, Ivan Illich (1926-2002) gradually deskilling the population as they come to rely on products of industry and less and less on their own creativity and knowledge.  It is no surprise this over enthusiasm has propelled our school educator to have a mail-Id of even five year old child.  This uncritical acceptance of status quo and the connection between development of education and requirements of capitalist economy has reached a custodial symbol that even merely six years old daughter of nine a student of DPS spends more time on internet than me.  I don’t intend to prescribe doing away with schooling but to accept this as inevitable and submitting to a curriculum mostly alien to our cultural norms needs a serious relook.  I wish to submit that Buddha, Gandhi, Lord Mahavir, Vivekanand, Guru Nanak Dev have not been and certainly can’t be a product of such type of regimented system.  Why Vedic mathematics, meditation, yoga and other traditional resources are being sacrificed and our education system is forcing our children to adjust their attitudes and aspirations dependent on lofty material circumstances of success and failure.  Best of our mythological creations like Bhagvad Gita, Vedas and Ramayan are product of oral constructions and reconstructions.  But our story-telling acts have been replaced by mechanical CDS and pen-drives and it is no wonder that teacher’s take extra-pride having adopted to this mode.  Again I do not want to generalize only demerits in it but at the same time giving importance to story telling by children can be a good account of their narrative comprehension.  It is always better to enhance children’s scientific skills in a field situation rather than laboratories.  Children’s instant promoting descriptions can be a far better method to gauge the child’s ability to understand their own and others perspective than to encouraging them to work on preset options.

            We shall attempt to improve the quality of our school teachers and utilise their experience in more meaningful way.  Most of our teachers are engaged in keeping exhaustive track records of tests administered on the basis of rigid framework.  From the very beginning the children begin to develop a growing sense of distrust and constraint leaving less room for the accomplishment of natural growth.  Right from, school bags, to heavy dosage of home-works and class-tests the children find interest item missing which further demotivates them.  Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence has clearly demonstrated that a single IQ score can’t describe intelligence of the child.  According to Goleman ‘The brightest among US can founder on schools of unbridled passion and unruly impulses: people with high IQs can be stunningly poor Pilot’s of their priest lives (1996: 34).  One of my neighbourhood child Prasoon Mishra (age-5-a student of Nursery) narrated man tortures emphasing role learning (Maam ratwate-ratwate Dum nikal Desi hain).  There seems to less motivational interconnectedness to share the individuality of each child at school level and school teachers are mostly involved in the improvement of grades.  Teacher’s are rarely encouraged to engage in research activity and willingness to do something innovative is discouraged and they enter a stage of paralysis of will that it is hopeless to try new at this not be appreciated.  Pictorial representations are highly influential source of learning is still being ignored in our class-rooms.  The regular curriculum does not provide enough time for sports to our school children.  The over academic burden in schools often leads to demotivation of spontaneous attraction for games.  Vicarious reinforcement occurs when child witnesses someone else experience reinforcing consequences for a behavior, and that child anticipates similar consequences if he or she produces the same behavior.  Bandura (1962, 1977b, 1986) proposed that a fundamental way human’s acquire skills and behaviours is by observing the behavior of others which is governed by attention, retention production and motivation.  There is a distinction even between acquisition and performance because people do not enact everything they learn.  Performance of observed behavior is influenced by three kinds of incentives: direct, vicarious and self-administered.  Personal influences, environmental forces and behavior itself function as interdependent determinants of behavior.

Gender and School Education

            Now a days school education does not distinguishes between boys and girls in any systematic way however such differences persists.  Although rules are gradually loosening but hidden practices, rituals and even teacher’s expectations compel girls to behave in gender specific way.  Even parents committed to raising their children in a non-sexist way find existing patterns of gender stereotyping difficult to combat.  Gender identities emerge, in relation to perceived sex differences in society and in turn help to shape those differences.  Gender relations are the product of everyday interactions and practices and teacher’s need to be cautious and sensitive while addressing issues of stereotyped social arrangements.

Technology and Children’s Education

            The spread of information technology is already influencing education in schools in a number of different ways.  Will the digital media increasingly replace the school book? Are children listening more to computers than listening to a teacher? Can computer or desktop virtual reality replace our traditional methods of teaching or they need to supplement the process of education.  The flexibility and convenience of internet-based learning can’t be denied but is that good and enough for our young minds for the development of abstract reasoning.  Can this formal education escape the face to face learning which is truly interactive may lead to emergence of computer underclass devoid of any emotional component.  Television is an early window.  That it allows children to see the world well before they are capable of competently interacting with it.  Joshua Meyrowitz explained, television “escorts children across the globe even before they have permission to cross the street” (1985, p. 238).  What happens to children’s social development when television treats them as “little adults”.  The widespread use of television and internet is equivalent to a broad social decision to allow young children to be present at wars and funerals, courtship and seductions, criminal plots and cocktail parties.

            The other important factor of multinational corporations reaching every corner of our country.  Our intra-individual and inter-personnel communication is isolating us from social cohesion.  Necessary characteristics of education are being altered in the name of elite education which is hampering the growth of well-equipped potential in our children.  Children should not be understood as social robots acting and reacting in a mechanistic manner instead they should be allowed to become autonomous, active seekers of meaning, capable of pursuing creativity not merely pursuing narrowly constrained goals.  It is essential to make our school learning system more contextual, more realistic that can optimize the abilities and skills for critical thinking.  The education system should also gear up to link our aesthetic social and ethical values codes and conventions that can help inculcate better modes of negotiation and a concept of expanded literacy which can enable and enrich children as unique and valued citizen’s of this country.  An education content that provides role of catlayzer to stimulate the cognitive, emotional, aesthetic moral and interpretational domain of our children.  The role of social education should be to widen the perspectives of young children and cultivation of enhanced enjoyment in learning.

Ecological Intelligence

            Ecological refers to an understanding of organisms and their ecosystems and intelligence connotes the capacity to learn from experience and deal effectively with our environment.  Ecological intelligence allows our sensibility to see inter-connectedness between our actions and their impacts on the planet, our health and our social systems children should be taught collective intelligence, one that they learn and master as individuals, and that resides in a distributed fashion among far-flung networks of people.  Radical transformation of attitude can change each child becoming a far more effective agent of amelioration.  Once it gets started, it can become self-perpetuating because of intrinsic pleasures of mindfulness.

 

THE ABC OF MANAGING ORGANIZATIONS BY ETHICS & VALUES

Paper Presented National Seminar, University of Delhi

The central purpose of this presentation is to highlight and stimulate the discussion on isolated aspect of Indian corporate values.  There is no use of dogmatising the very premises of my discussion.  But at the same time I have borrowed heavily to nurture my analysis from Indian mythological sources to understand ethics and values.  It is possible for us to interpret and speculate conception of corporate values.  Breaking up values into corporate, social, cultural and so on to my mind is something like if we drop the subject, the object vanishes.  But the subject does not vanish even though the object disappears.

            Every system of thought embodies and reflects the tendencies of the time, and cannot be understood unless we realise the point of view from which it looked at the world, and the habit of thought which made it possible.  The exuberant fancy of management theorists propagating a congeries of conflicting theories, accepted by some and denied by others.  There is no admitted fact or principle that is recognized by Indian corporate only dissolving views and intuitions become the success saga of Indian corporate.  In India there is so much of diversification that gods and ghosts with powers to injure and annoy, as well as to bless and glorify, govern the life of the peoples.  Many good men do devils work in the belief that it has divine sanction.  It is difficult to overestimate the amount of evil which has resulted from a confusion of morality and religion.  Our tendency is to generalize small empirical contingency to a large set of people and this results in creation of a reality which is partly or completely unreal.  Every time we try to maintain that the preceding thing is the cause of succeeding thing or that the latter is the effect of the former.  In order to understand the dynamics of corporate ethics it would be apt to highlight some of the profound views by various thinkers.  Aristotle takes the view that virtues are means to an end, namely happiness.  Friendship is only possible between the good and it is impossible to be friends with many people.  Does our ethical propositions are consonant to our existing socio-cultural reality.  Like Bentham, Locke, was a man filled with kindly feelings, who yet held that everybody (including) himself must always be moved, in action, solely by desire for his own happiness or pleasure.  If pleasure is our sole motive and if we avoid rationality it is bound to create dissatisfaction if not in present them in distant future.

            Turning to the ethics of Rgveda, we find the conception of Rta is of great significance.  Rta denotes the order of the world.  It is anticipation of the law of karma, one of the distinguishing characteristics of Indian thought.  The good are those who follow the path of Rta, the true and the ordered.  Kindness to all is enjoined, hospitality is reckoned a great virtue.  The riches of one who gives do not diminish.  According to the principles of karma there is nothing uncertain or capricious in the moral world.  We reap that we sow.  The good seed brings a harvest of good, the evil of evil.  The attempt to overlap the law of karma, is as futile as attempt to leap over one’s shadow.  Upanisads hold that we can be free from karma only by social service.  So long as we perform selfish work we are subject to the law of bondage.  When we perform disinterested work we reach freedom.  What binds us to the chain of birth and death is not action as such but selfish action.  What looms over us is no dark fate but our own past.  If law is all, then there is no real freedom possible.  Man’s life is not the working of merely mechanical relations.  There are different levels, the mechanical, vital, the sentient, the intellectual and the spiritual – these currents cross and recross and interpenetrate each opener.  The infinite in man helps him to transcend the limitations of finite.  Life is something bigger than mere succession of mechanically determined states.  This distinction of spirit and karma oscillates us between freedom and necessity but the danger lies in falling trap to greeds.  We have a tendency to forget large part of our sincere efforts to attain meagre goals of success.  Snobbery, exclusiveness have replaced humility and inclusiveness still we hope to innovate for better.  The sexual acts create the conditions in which a new life is defined by the development of a cell but it is not true for the birth of consciousness.  If our realization grows strong we should feel that joy and suffering are there for the progressive education of character.  As long as we identify ourselves with definite centre generated by the accidents of time and space we can’t acquire a centre as well as circumference that is within and that is without.

            According to Jainism ethics the apparatus of morality is necessary to bring about reformation in man’s conduct and an attitude of neutrality without aversion to other realities in the world is right conduct.

            Innocence, charity, honourable conduct, chastity and renunciation has been emphasized as virtues in the fivefold conduct of a person.  Nowadays progress is considered as dissociational development that comes into bits and pieces.  But Lord Krsna when asked about particular method to be adopted says that different pathways are distinct but not ultimately distinct but in the end they are all converging and correlating to the same road and same goal.  In Bhagvadgita three methods have been suggested jnanamarg or wisdom, Bhaktimarg or the path of devotion and karma marg through divine service or karma we can reach the highest level.  Antagonisms of isolated wisdom and the passion of selfishness hinders the real truth.  We are moving towards incompleteness as long as we are not assimilating the viewpoints emanating from various academic as well as social and cultural disciplines.  In order to progress intellectually we are trying create distinctions of narrow standpoints that has led to distorted understanding of comprehensive truth.  We have also indulged into the habit of adoration, praise and periodical reinforcements from external sources that has led to erosion of originality and innovativeness in each one of us.  In the process we are loosing the fire and experience of self-certifying in character or swayam pramanam.  The moment we bring here and there variations in right conduct we start getting drawn in an attitude of false claim and justify our wrong view with that of others.  Withdrawal tendencies restricts us from engaging ourselves trying best.  Doing work in a spirit of detachment has became significantly low as passion imprisons our spiritual nature.

            Egoism and preference for special forms of work-culture are loaded with subtle shades of selfishness which may bring temporary applause but may not survive in the long-run.  Corporate values can’t be conceived in isolation with existing reality and the moment we start dissecting such imaginary values-problems, emerges.  The constitution of the social order is said to be divine.  The emergence of a corporate group with massive displacement of tribals can’t go together.  Water is the common substance of ice and steam.  The phases are momentary, but the substratum is permanent.  The social realities have an existence independent of our perception although they may cease to exist for a brief duration.  Similarly corporate culture can’t be isolated from core social-cultural values and it may be termed as hyposatiated imaginary phenomenal manifestation of the underlying reality.  There seems to me and I may be wrong a larger inconsistency emanating from advocates of corporate culture and values that is somehow and in some ways not addressing to the core realities.  Had it not been the case why number of central universities, number of business schools, number of media channels, activists from various walks have not been able to advance our overall moral well-being.  If this not be the case why our corporates have not moved to villages of India.  Although they are manifesting a duality of profit and corporate social responsibility but still they are far from the real welfare which contained differential practices.  Corporates are trying to project a picture of dual reality but reality can be only one.  This dual reality is based upon differential treatment of its citizens.  Huge population of unorganized sector who work very hard far construction of roads and buildings do not have any medical cover.  Their children do not have any place for education.  Contractual labourers daily wages appointments are on the rise so as to avoid any responsibility of compensation in case of any mishappening with the workers.  Thousands of labourers become victims of working under hazardous situations which largely goes unreported.  Corporate of India have brought of luxurious five-star hotels, luxury cars and owner’s of such car’s don’t hesitate to kill people on the pavement’s who do not have any shelter to sleep.  Why is it the case that a number of corporates joining politics.  If you minutely care for the people being nominated in the Rajya-Sabha you will be surprised that distinguished categories people are mostly corporate people.  What social good or values they are serving can be best answered by them.  If we need to get a true picture of corporate Indian values we will have to try straight instead of approaching it in hypocrite manner.  How many people have become millionaire in last one or two decades.  What is the contribution of such people in larger welfare of the society.  Best of our talents in the IIT’s and IIM’s are compelled to go abroad in search of a good job.  The most important sporting extravaganza of common wealth is in the hands of people whose credibility is being questioned not by me but by whole of media fraternity and the government itself and last but not least it was criticized by one of the corporate wizard Azim Premji in his interview with TOI 26^th Aug. 2010.  Personally I am also in support of organizing such events provided it gives a boost to our image as brand India not to denigrate it.  Why is that common man tax payment is misused in the name of IPL matches any such event which has hardly anything to do with welfare.

            Malignant spirit playing the predominant role among the corporates and instead of awaking our masses it is further isolating them from reality.  There is no necessity and urgency to dispose the good that may have accrued due to corporate world contribution in the Indian context but the larger good is yet to be realized.  As long as we consciously break-up values in corporate, rural, urban, feminine, masculine we can only confuse the matter from better to worse.  Endless variety of ideas, feelings, creativity can be found among the inhabitants of Uttranchal, Jharkhand and Northeast.  The moment we keep discussing all lofty ideals in the seminar rooms and FICCI auditoriums the social reality will continue to be deprived of independence and reduced to a mere dance of ideas or thought relations.  The seeming and telling reality of a common man where even an ordinary life is a struggle and reality of a world in which thousands of crore are vanished without much murmur amounts to talk of a naive realism that can’t coexist for a long.  The empirical accounts produce a rosy picture of corporate India marching in terms of GDP rate but the distinction between the imaginary and real growth is also widening at an alarmist pace.  It is open to us to debate as to why who are real builders of new India are still fighting for their bread and it will be a Himalayan blunder to mistake rope for a snake instead of recognizing rope as a rope.

            Necessity of corporate values demands thought for reality not to further betray and weaken its integral masses by its frequent denial of rights which they deserve to receive. 

            It is difficult to imagine to provide a complete liberation from all fetters to our dwelling masses but giving a thought in this direction may also give rise to a virtue of relationship that the two co-exist.

            Management by values can overcome obstacles and minimise the deficiencies our organizations are facing.  The impediments yet to be overcome are material pleasures and ignorance of true nature of inter-connectedness among different socio-cultural systems.  Conquest over narrow path of knowledge, wealth, power and craving for individual success needs to be replaced by sublimated selfishness and compassion for the suffering of others.  To say and prescribe a thinking of organization citizen behavior and values is preaching of a half truth.  The conditions of virtue makes little difference whether you are CEO or peasant and sincere efforts be made to achieve uniting consciousness that may lead to development of attainment of unity across all sections.  Corporate culture and values have added to the darkening influence of passion and impulse as a prime possession of merit.  But the corporate value is not something to be packed away as exclusive property of the corporate giants instead it should have over-mastering power of freedom of expansion into the common-mass.  Corporate values are truths at second-hand on the authority of some people but do not become part of the lives of many others.  Desire builds the house of existence.  I don’t wish to suggest corporate rights to flee endlessly and restlessly from all that it has.  I don’t intend to prescribe the suppression of emotion and desire but at the same time this glowing emotion of corporate must take into account good or bad effects on the well-being of our masses.  Simply singing the tune of glory of the corporate would amount to mystic contemplation without practical goodness.  There is a good deal of misconception that is intentionally or unintentionally spread to glorify corporate values that can lead to well-being.  We have corporate life-style not only in academics, business but also its adherents are growing significantly among spiritual preachers.  Corporate values should give voice to the inarticulate forces which are neglected.  Corporate of India is gradually maturing in accumulation of wealth but its social implications aspect is being neglected.  That is the reason that corporates like Satyam Computers become giants within very short span of time and looses its very existence.

            The idea of freedom to engage in business and profit maximization is governing the corporates independent of strong preference for values.  But rationality of ethics demands that diversity of social context must be sensible enough to motivate choice among different sections of the people.  It is important here to distinguish between culmination outcome and comprehensive outcome.  It is not only important to gain success and maximize profit but it is more important this process is not antithetical to the progress of our common mass.  What we are observing today is mostly self-centred welfare without any sympathy or antipathy towards others.  Although in many cases sympathy is shown by our corporates but what is lacking is the commitment.  Commitment involves violation of self-centred welfare which involve recognition of other people’s goals.  Therefore there is enough room to scrutinise goals of the corporate exclusively reduced to one’s own welfare and ignoring the goals of others living in the society can’t lead to a sustainable future.  Alleged grounds are propagated that government of the day is not doing enough amounts to gloss the reality.  I don’t intend to be biased in appreciating some of the good efforts and high standard of values shown by some of the corporates.  But a closer look at the mushrooming growth of corporates in health sector, banking, education, entertainment, infrastructure poses more questions of a credo of welfare of the masses.  If we observe consumers and customers in various walks of the corporates one can easily notice these institutions distancing itself from the common mass.  Examples are many and naming them will amount to reflecting my bias and it is for all of us to introspect and throw light on this subject.

            The ABC of corporate values is nothing but common sense which aims at interconnectedness. The question whether corporate Indian values succeeds in gathering up different sections of society in a truly Indian outlook remains to be answered in future course of time.

Reciprocal Altruism and Psychological Sources of Will and its Impact on Soldiers Preparedness

Paper presented at ICAMP - 2011

Altruistic behavior is that behavior which benefits other organism.  If a person jumps into water at some danger to himself to save another distantly related human being from drowning it may be considered as an act of altruistic behavior.  But if a person leaps into water to save his own child, the behavior would not be considered as an instance of “altruism” because the person is contributing to the survival of his own gemes invested in the child.  There are several factors that favors the exchange of altruistic behaviors.  Long-lifetime of individuals of a species maximizes the chance that any two individuals will encounter many altruistic situations and instances of reciprocal altruism in long-lived species.  All other things being equal interdependence of members of a species increases the possibility to keep individuals near each other and encounter of altruistic situations also increases.  Aid in combat in which a dominance oriented species is aided in aggressive encounters with other individuals by help from a less dominant individual.  The relationship between two individuals repeatedly exposed to symmetrical reciprocal situations is analogous to what game theorists call the prisoner’s dilemma (Luce and Raiffa, 1957, Rapoport and Chammah, 1965) which is characterized by payoff.

            Reciprocal altruism can also be viewed as a symbiosis each partner helping the other while he helps himself.  Reciprocal altruism is a common behavior that takes place across cultures and contexts.  Any act that means small cost to the giver and greater benefit to the taker may be called as an act of altruism and its list may contain following types of behavior:

(i)                Helping in times of danger (e.g. accidents, predation, aggression)

(ii)             Sharing food

(iii)           Helping the sick, the wounded or the very young and old

(iv)            Sharing implements and knowledge

Anthropologists have recognized the importance of reciprocity in human behavior, but when they have done so in terms of group benefits, reciprocity cementing group relations and encouraging group survival.  The individual sacrifices so that group may benefit.  The term reciprocity refers to giving and taking without the use of money: it ranges from pure gift giving to equalized barter and to self-interested cheating.  In other words, reciprocity may take three forms generalized reciprocity, balanced reciprocity and negative reciprocity.  Generalized reciprocity is gift giving without any immediate returns or conscious thought of return.  Each thing in nature provides something without expecting an equal or immediate return.  In balanced reciprocity, the exchange is usually motivated by desire or need for certain objects.  Negative reciprocity is an attempt to take advantage of another for one’s own self-interest.  The human altruistic system is a sensitive and unstable one: Individuals will differ not in being altruists and cheaters but in the degree of altruism they show and in the conditions under which they will cheat.  Sawyer (1966) has shown that all groups in all experimental situations tested showed more altruistic behavior toward friends than toward neutral individuals.  Much of human aggression has moral overtones.  Injustice, unfairness and lack of reciprocity often motivate human aggression and indignation.  A behavior is to said to be altruistic in the evolutionary sense of that term if it involves a fitness cost to the donor and centers a fitness benefit on the recipient.  Evolutionary altruism describes the fitness effects of a behavior not the thoughts or feelings, if any, that prompt individuals to produce those behaviors.  In contrast psychological altruism concerns the motives that cause a behavior, not its actual effects.  In the Descent of Man Darwin (1871) discusses the behavior of courageous men who risk their lives to defend their tribes when a war occurs.  George C. William (1966) in his book Adaptation and National Selection proposed that traits evolve because they promote the replication of genes.  W.D. Hamilton published a paper in 1964, which explains that the classical notion of Darwinian fitness – an organisms prospects of reproductive success – can explain virtually none of the helping behavior we see in nature.  It can explain parental care, but when individuals help individuals who are not their offspring, a new concept of fitness is needed to explain why.  This led Hamilton to introduce the mathematical concept of inclusive fitness.  The point of this concept was to show how keeping a relative and helping one’s offspring can be brought under the same theoretical umbrella: both evolve because they enhance the donor’s inclusive fitness.  Many biologists conclude that helping behavior directed at relatives is therefore an instance of selfishness not altruism.  Helping offspring and helping kin are both in one’s genetic self-interest, because both allow copies of one’s genes to make their way into the next generation.  Motivational pluralism involved in acts of self-sacrifice when a soldier throws himself on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades or citizen’s can be explained on the basis of a systematic understanding.  Batson’s (1991) empathy-altruism hypothesis asserts that empathy causes people to have altruistic ultimate desires.  Phenomena that require discussion and research on altruism is generated by acts of apathy and acts of dramatic altruists.  Biblatane and John Darley, among others, attempted to bring this phenomenon into laboratory to determine the varieties that affect the likelihood of intervention.  There are instances of charity actions, people helping more in small towns than big cities and sometimes people’s apathy when a person is beaten and dozen’s of neighbor’s look on from their apartments.  Altruism is still the predominant mode in most of the societies.  In the contemporary context where attitude of individualism is on the ascendant, psychological egoism is on the rise when most our activities are self-directed it becomes all the more necessary to identity the common grounds that connect us with a feeling of belongingness with our follow citizens.  There are individual differences in the acts of altruism.  Human parents vary, some take better care of their children than others, and some even abuse and kill their offspring.  Given this multitude of possibilities, how might one predict how altruism will evolve? Three principles are relevant-availability, reliability and efficiency.  Natural selection acts only on the range of variation that exists ancestrally.  Helping, comforting, sharing and co-operating occur among acquaintances and strangers but how this devotion to the interest of others is affected needs a closer scrutiny.  One variable that is positively related to altruism and other forms of pro-social behavior is self-esteem.  If one is sure of oneself, it seems easier to extend oneself to others.  However there are exceptions to this generalization.  People with an extremely high opinion of themselves may feel no need to be connected to others and people with a low opinion of themselves may be helpful just to garner social support.  In political domain, there is some evidence that liberals score higher than conservatives on tests of moral reasoning.  Daniel Batson and colleagues distinguished among religious people those who see religion as a means to extrinsic ends, those who see it as an end in itself and those who see it us a quest.  Only among people in the latter group was helping positively related to religiosity.  Altruistic acts are also affected by group identification in which people are more inclined to help those who are perceived as similar to themselves than those who are perceived as different.  The assumption of troika factors of individualism, atomism and egoism plays a great deal in the development of altruism.  In an influential account of development of altruism Martin Hoffman suggests that altruism has two requirements one affective and cognitive.  Genuine altruism requires empathy (affective) and perspective taking (cognitive).  Although home and family is the central domain for socialization in childhood but much socialization occurs outside home-setting.  Cooperative learning and play-settings in the class-room seem to enhance the children’s perspective taking abilities.  Conversely, explicitly competitive class-room situations seem to reduce prosocial effects.  There are also some evidences that in addition to providing opportunities for cooperation and schools can facilitate altruism by putting children into mixed age groups.  According to Amartya Sen to act out of commitment is to do what one thinks is right, what will promote public welfare, quite part from whether it promotes one’s own.  It is to act out of a sense of responsibility as a citizen.  This include doing one’s job to the best of one’s ability – going beyond the terms of the contract even if no one is watching and there is nothing to be gained from it.

It is pertinent to note that how our soldier’s derive their will-power to act in difficult circumstances of physical, social and geographical adversities.  In the social attributional realm, too, consistency is evident in the inclination perceivers have to attribute causality for behaviors to people whose personalities are seen as consistent with the behaviors (Jones & Davis, 1965).  The principle of consistency in the experience of will draws on the observation that the thoughts that serve as potential causes of action typically have semantic associations with the actions.  A thought that is perceived to cause an act is after the name of the act or an image of its stimulus execution or consequence (Wallabher & Wegner, 19855).

A basic principle of causal inference is what we tend to discount the causal influence of one potential cause if there are other available (Kelly, 1972, McClure, 1998).  The causes that complete with thoughts are of two kinds – internal and external.  The plausible internal causes for an action might include one’s emotions, habits, traits or other unconscious action tendencies.  Plausible external causes for an action might include other people or external forces that impinge on us even when we are thinking of action in advance.  The extensive contemporary literature on causal attribution in social situations (e.g. Gilbert, 1995) has suggested the presence of others and of situational forces provides an intricate causal context that could influence the individual’s experience of will in a variety of ways.  The experience of will can be an indication that mind is causing action, if the person is a good self-interpreter.  Believing that our conscious thoughts cause our action may not be always true and research suggest a fundamental role for automatic processes in everyday behavior (Bargh, 1997).  In fact, the mental systems, that introduces thoughts of action to mind and keeps them coordinated with the actions is itself an intriguing mechanism.

The processes underlying factors altruism and conscious experience of will power are far more important attributes that can give rise to actions necessary for soldiers preparedness.  Self-attention may indeed be associated with perceived control or responsibility for action (Gibbons, 1990) but this effect is a general feature of a specific process.  This specific process is the perception of a causal link between one’s own thought and action.  It makes sense that we tend to see ourselves as the authors of an act primarily when we had experienced relevant thoughts about the act at an appropriate interval in advance, and so could infer that our own mental processes had set the act in motion.  Actions we perform that are not presaged in our minds, in turn, would appear not to be caused by our minds, in essence, then this view suggests a connection between what Michotte (1963) identified as the two forms of conscious evidence we have for the causality of self in action.  The first is our ability to foresee the result before it actually takes place, the second the presence of a feeling of activity.  There is a need to focus such behavior aspects which is not at the center of traditional approaches of military psychology.  There is much more important reason to diversify our research in military psychology to explore inclinations of altruism and psychological forces of experience of will power that may go a long way to go beyond our traditional attempts to understand military psychology.  In human cultural life, however, there is sometimes a trade off between short-term and long-term goals, and much of the success of the human species is based on our ability to sacrifice short-term goals for the long-term ones, as in delay of gratification (Mischel & Ayduk, 2004).  Psychological experience of will power may be most useful in fostering the pursuit of enlightened self-interest.  Psychologists can explore and elucidate the factors that underlie the processes of altruism and psychological experience of will power that may have enormous significance to better and more conducive behavior patterns among the military personnels.