November 11, 2018 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Human Nature is No Secret - Religious or Not
In Sanskrit language there is this strange
word ‘Trikaranasuddhi’ (you can break it apart as tri – karana – suddhi or as
three – actions – purity) that indicates both unity and purity of thought, word
and deed.
It indicates and suggests a congruence of
three and this may have some connection with the concept of integrity.
The point that I am trying to make is that
there can exist integrity without morality of scriptures and apparent moral values
can exist in society with widespread dishonesty, corruption and hypocrisy.
It is not rare (some may even argue it to
be common) to find such hypocritical behavior among apes proliferating in
apparently religious and spiritual societies.
The subject of hypocritical behavior and
mendacity among human apes is of great interest to both psychologists and
biologists alike since it is a general consensus that any trait, may be
biological or behavioral, if it has managed to survived and be retained over tens
and hundreds of thousands of years must be beneficial to the individuals of
that species.
Niccolò Machiavelli who we had come across
earlier in our story on perspective that involved Luca Pacioli and Leonardo de
Vinci had something to say about hypocrisy too.
He had observed that “the mass of mankind
accept what seems as what is; nay, are often touched more nearly by appearances
than by realities.”
Biologists and more specifically
evolutionary psychologists who specialize in the study of human behavior in the
light of Darwinian evolution agree that human apes have evolved to play the
game of life the Machiavellian way that is quite contrary to what is depicted
commonly in romantic movies and fairy tales.
This is what Steven Pinker, the linguist
and evolutionary psychologist, had to say in his book “How the Mind works”
(1997):
“Some people think that evolutionary
psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked.
But they are flattering the researchers and
anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite.
No one needs a scientist to measure that
whether humans are prone to knavery.
The question has been answered in the
history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann
Landers.
(Ask Ann Landers was a syndicated advice
column which featured regularly in many papers of North America for 56 long
years.
Ann Landers was a pen name of the Chicago
Sun-Times advice columnist Ruth Crowley and later of Eppie Lederer).
But people treat it like an open question,
as of someday science might discover that it’s all a bad dream and we will wake
up to find that it is human nature to love one another.”
In spite of the selfishness and dishonesty
ingrained in our nature we apes need to thrive on continuous transactions that occur
each time one ape meets another.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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