In many an earlier post, I have made the statement that “the goal of a society is the maximum satisfaction of its needs and desires.” This is seen as something very obvious, an axiom really. One argues about the best methodology (socialism, capitalism, etc.) to achieve this goal, but not about this goal itself.
\nI must confess I don’t think much of this goal at all.
\n
\nIndeed, this “goal” has had acceptance in common-society only recently. Historically, the goal of human-society was deemed loftier – to do actions that would lead one to heaven, to become a part of the Divine, to get good Karma. Luckily for humanity, the central-planners – the ruling class – never undertook the logical execution of this “divine” goal (with the possible exception of poor India). The ruling class has always considered the lesser goal of maximum-need-satisfaction in all its central planning objectives.<\/p>\n
But recently, even common man has come to accept the more earthly maximizing-satisfaction-in-a-society as the ultimate goal.<\/p>\n
Now, deeming the “ultimate goal” of humanity to be happiness is a bit jarring. One’d reckon it’s more the means than the end. That is, satisfying the needs of the human society is the “means” to a goal, rather than the goal itself. Happiness, satisfaction all these are secondary, compared to the “goal”.
\nWhich is, simply put, progress.<\/p>\n
I shall nudge off the arguments (evolution, etc.) to a later post, and merely present two gendanken<\/i>(thought experiments).
\nSuppose God [this is a thought experiment remember?] were to come to you, just before you were going to be born, and give you two options. One is for you to get born in 4004 where humans have progressed a lot and control the entire galaxy or something. But in which you shall (obviously) have to face a lot more pressure, stress, and you won’t be as happy<\/i>. And one is for you to be born in 0004, in a farm. Not much progress in human society, but you’d live an idyllic happy existence, rearing sheep, enough to eat etc. What would you choose? I’d choose the first. And so would most.
\nBut why? If happiness was the goal, why not the latter? [For those who believe that they would choose the latter, note that you can go live a simple, idyllic existence in a farm even now in 2004. Quitting reading this, go now!]<\/p>\n
Consider this second more powerful gendanken. Suppose in the future, humans are able to invent a braincap which can send electric impulses directly to the pleasure centre of the brain. Upshot of that is that one can experience direct pleasure and happiness with the push of a button. Note that this is not outlandish – our feelings of happiness and pleasure are just impulses and excitations of parts of our brain. Basically, happiness is just a chemical state of the brain. If this chemical\/electrical state is indeed humanity’s goal, here is the question: shouldn’t the logical action of humanity then be to all sit in a chair and put on the braincap, and remain in blissful inertia?
\nSeems abhorrent doesn’t it? One would consider a person permanently sitting on a chair with a braincap as a vegetable rather than a person who has achieved the “ultimate” goal of humanity. <\/p>\n
The ultimate “goal”, then, is progress (which I judiciously leave undefined for now). Thus when people argue for either maximizing the minimum happiness [communism] or maximizing the average happiness [democratic-statism] or allowing each individual to maximize his individual happiness even at the cost of average happiness [libertarianism], I think they are missing the point – the “goal” function should be expressed in “progress” terms, happiness is merely a tool.<\/p>\n
And the sad thing is that the mass of humanity is more interested in subsistence, and maximizing happiness rather than progress. In part II of this post, I shall show how this ironically leads to an unhappy society. About how paradoxically, that only by eschewing happiness for progress can a society be happy. This is somewhat similar to what many ancient Indian sages were saying, albeit in different terms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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