This Part 4 of the Ethics Series – What is Good and What is evil?
Part I can be read from here – Click Here
Part II can be read from here – Click Here
Part III can be read from here – Click Here
Note :- Not all names of philosophers to be remembered or used. The idea is to show the under current of thought and processes that shaped the idea of good and evil. So, a word of caution, don’t be over-whelmed by the reference to various philosophers.
According to Mill, Bentham, and Spencer :-
Recent philosophic thought regarding the problem of good and evil has been concerned with man’s social relationships. It has been an ethics of the human group rather than that of divine laws.
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Consequently, it has taken on the tinge of relativity. Goodness and evil become qualities of acts relative to the situation In which they are performed
JOHN STUART MILL is a good representative of the Utilitarian school in his contention that the measure of good Is in terms of “the greatest good of the greatest number*.
One must ask of an act, Will it bring much good to a great number of individuals? This eliminates selfishness and makes the criterion of good the social consequences of die proposed act. Further, Mill holds that “goods* differ in quality and that the goods of the intellect are better than the goods of the senses.
JEREMY BENTHAM is very close to Mill In his thinking about good and evil. He too bases good upon the Utilitarian principle of “the greatest good of the greatest number* But he does not admit that goods differ in quality. His only criterion is the number of Individuals affected by the act Bentham Justifies this position on the basis of selfinterest, holding that to so act will actually bring the greatest good to the one acting.
In this modern treatment of the subject, good and bad are not written in the nature of the universe, but are determined by social factors. The emphasis to placed upon the consequences of one’s act in the experiences of others. The idea of a God setting down absolutely defined moral laws is gone. Also the idea that an evil act angers God while a good act makes Him happy is missing. Here is a relative morality, and the determiner of good and bad is the effect of the act upon the lives of other human individuals now living or to live in the future.
HERBERT SPENCER attacks the problem from the point of view of the scientist and seeks to discover a scientific basis for right and wrong in conduct at large. From the point of view of evolution, conduct is a developing, evolving thing, a matter of adjustment of acts to ends.
For him, the most highly developed conduct, and therefore the best, is that which makes living richer for the individual and for those among whom he lives and those who will come after him. The social group, for Spencer, is the ultimate end of morality.
Goodness is to be determined in those terms. But he distinguishes between conduct that is absolutely right and that which is relatively right. Absolutely right conduct is that which is immediately pleasurable and at the same time produces future happiness for the individual and the group. Relative right is productive of future happiness, but is not immediately pleasurable. The goal is, of course, absolute right.
The Ethical Views of James and Dewey :-
The social and individual consequences of activity are emphasized by philosophers of the Pragmatic school as criteria of good and evil. Both WILLIAM JAMES and JOHN DEWEY, especially Dewey, are emphatic at this point.
The good is that which serves the ends of the group and the individual in the group. A good act is one which considers the individual as an end in himself and not as a means. But, by so considering each individual, we consider the welfare of the group. The human individual, as a social unit, is the ultimate measure of good and evil. That which enriches his life must necessarily enrich the lives of all.
Here the individual and the group are tied together, since, it was argued by Dewey, individuality is a social product and no one has true individuality save as a member of the group.
Thus, a survey of the thinking of men down the ages about good and evil reveals two fundamental positions and many shades of both. On the one hand measures of good and evil are thought to be inherent in the nature of the universe.
Man is to discover them by coming to an understanding of the universe and its nature. Whether the universe speak to man with its own voice, or whether the voice be that of the Creator of the universe, the position is fundamentally the same.
Good and bad are absolute, having been established from the beginning of time, and apply in all situations and at all times. When the criteria have been discovered, either by rational searching of the universe or by revelation, they are forever true, never changing.
The other position is that good and bad are relative terms, and that the measures, the criteria, are to be discovered by a study of the particular situation involved. Time and place are determiners of good and evil. For a sick man, certain foods are evil, but for a well man they are good.
In a modern social group, preservation of the aged and weak is good, but in a primitive group which is beset by enemies and must be on the move to escape destruction, to preserve the aged and infirm is bad since it slows down the group and may result in disaster. This position looks at the consequences of the particular act in terms of the life of society and determines the ethical quality of the act in terms of the good of the whole.
Man’s thought on matters of ethics has taken these two lines throughout history, the absolute and the relative. And, among present-day thinkers both positions are to be discovered, although the relative point of view is the most pronounced. It is difficult for modern man, possessed of great respect for science and human reason, to find adequate ground for an absolute theory of right and wrong. All the evidence which commands his respect seems to point away from this to a relative position.
Gandhi and His Concept of Evil :-
Gandhi had very few possessions: a pair of glasses, two pairs of homemade sandals for different occasions, some books, a spinning wheel, and little else. Each item has a story and a lesson to teach us. The item that stands out the most, in this connection, is a small wooden statue of the three monkeys telling us to “See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil.” It represents the sophistication of his understanding of the human mind and what philosophers call “the problem of evil.”
Gandhi’s answer to the problem of “evil” was two-fold. First of all, to recognize the nature of the world is understand the nature of dualities. If we have “goodness” in the world, then we will have its opposite. Yet, we can move closer to “the good,” which for Gandhi was tied intimately with nonviolence and Truth, which is the greatest challenge we have as human beings.
Furthermore, Gandhi said that evil only existed so long as we gave our attention to it: our ears, our eyes, our words, our mind, etc. This certainly does not mean ignoring acts of cruelty and intentional harm; rather, it means resisting dehumanization, it means raising the humanity of the person who was so morally degraded as to commit an act of intentional cruelty. This is why, in spite of all of their actions, Gandhi never called the British “evil.” He wanted to water the seed of a different quality within them and within his movement.
Mahatma Gandhi. On October 22, 1925, Gandhi published a list he called the Seven Social Sins in his weekly newspaper Young India.
- Politics without principles.
- Wealth without work.
- Pleasure without conscience.
- Knowledge without character.
- Commerce without morality.
- Science without humanity.
- Worship without sacrifice.
Arguing that the policy of an eye for an eye would soon leave the whole world blind in no time and warning that submission would only multiply evil, he sought to fight against Evil but to love the Evil doer.
He chose to separate the act from the actor and the deed from the doer. He fought one without hating the other. He argued that to fight evil with evil will only multiply evil. The evil must be fought by love and eliminated by converting the evil doer from the bottom of his heart. Punishment is only external and physical suffering would not change the inner mind and heart of the evil doer.
Punishment and retaliation will not reform the evil doer. So the only way to fight the evil is by non-violence because violence can never totally eliminate evil from the mind and heart of the evil doer. What is needed is the change of heart and that can be done by resisting all evil with love and nonviolence. Even the worst of man has a particle of good in him and we must appeal to that innate goodness so that evil is transformed in to good.
Passionately convinced about the innate goodness of Man, of every man even of the evil doers, Gandhi sought to separate the act from the man, the evil from the evil doers. He fought against evil without fear but also without hatred. The evil is to be totally eradicated even from the heart and mind of the evil doers. Gandhi always laid very great stress on change of heart and adopted an amazing technique.
EVILS ACCORDING TO BUDDHISM :-
What exactly is evil? Is it a force that is outside us and lures us or is it something that we create ourselves? Are we intrinsically good or bad? There are many philosophical questions the answers to which are wrought in debates. As far as Buddhism is concerned, it says that it is not people who are good or bad, morally wrong or right, but certain traits that that we create in ourselves. And, it is only us who can undo them.
“By oneself, indeed, is evil done; by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself, indeed, is one purified. Purity and impurity depend on oneself. No one purifies another.”
THE CONCEPT OF “DEPENDENT ORIGINATION’: Buddha preached the concept of ‘dependent origination’ which essentially stands for the interconnectedness of everything and everyone. So, how can anyone by above another? Or, how can someone think of himself as self-righteous and someone else as intrinsically wrong? The teachings of Buddha are mind-opening and so here we take a look at what according to Buddhism are the three capital evils
GREED: Greed is all-encompassing as it includes the sins that are related to desiring anything in excess. It is related to money, yearning, lust, food and an inability to let go of things easily. Of the seven capital sins in Christianity, greed, gluttony and lust come under the evil of ‘greed’ alone as per Buddha
HATRED: Hatred is a very powerful emotion, sometimes called even more powerful than love. It is a destructive emotion that drives one to anger, fury and destruction, both physical and mental. Giving into hatred is like bending the knee to your own enemy. From the capital sins of Christianity, it can be related to the sins of wrath and envy.
IGNORANCE: This can be called the versatility of the tenets of Buddhism that it includes ignorance as one of its primary evils. Ignorance is basically about delusion, about yourself and others. It can drive one to pride, sloth and envy, the Christian sins, besides encompassing other emotions such as blindness and being delusional.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.