"Brennt Paris?"

Was watching the movie "Is Paris Burning?" today. After having read the book, the film was, obviously, a let down. But there was this series of dialogues that caught my attention.

Von Choltitz was the Nazi Governor of Paris who disobeyed Hitler's orders to destroy the city, for which he was called "The Savior of Paris" and was revered by the French. It is well known that if not for him, Paris, as we know it, would not exist and would be ruined just like another Warsaw.

A ceasefire has been brokered between the Germans (under Choltitz) and the French resistance by the Consul of Sweden. This ceasefire was, again, done without Hitler's knowledge. In this scene, Choltitz is talking to members of the French resistance about their breach of the terms of the ceasefire.

Choltitz (On the French Officials entering his room where the Consul of Sweden is also present) : I suppose you know the Swedish Consul, Herr Nordling. Thanks to his efforts, we arranged a truce which, up to now, has cost the lives of 200 German soldiers.

French Official : As a representative of General De Gaulle's provisional government, I protest against our arrest in the midst of the cease-fire. We are just contacting our people to make sure they respected it.

C : In your car, my guards discovered a proclamation that was designed to provoke the city of Paris to revolt. I don't see how you maintain you're respecting the cease-fire and then make vicious attacks on our men right in front of our faces!

F : I'm a member of the French Government in Exile and I won't permit you to question my word of honor! The circular in the car was a proclamation that had been revoked.

C : In that case, why did your men shoot at our soldiers?

F : You command an army of regulars. When you give an order, your men obey it. The Resistance is an alliance of many movements, and I don't control them all.

C : The Communists, for example?

F : Our ranks include both Communists and anti-Communists. Now we're all battling against a common enemy.

C : You can make among yourselves all the politics that you want! Only you must not shoot at my soldiers!

F : If you would like to finish these incidents, stop sending out your patrols.

Now, few would find anything wrong with what the French Official said, including the statement highlighted in bold. Let us look at the context - the Germans have forcefully, through war, occupied France; the French resistance, as claimed by the official, is a bunch of teams of people agitated by the oppressive occupation, craving for liberation, for seeing themselves controlling their capital, for seeing their flag atop their public buildings.

Now consider a present day analogy. The Israelis have forcefully occupied non-Israeli lands; the Palestinian resistance, along with the democratically elected Hamas, is a bunch of teams of people agitated by the unjust occupation, illegal encroachment, craving for independence and statehood, for seeing themselves controlling their land, for seeing their flag and nation recognized by the Israelis.

If the French Official could justify sporadic breaches of ceasefire on the pretext of lack of control, why are the Palestinians deprived of that justification? It is suggested (and accepted even) that it was Israel, with reference to Operation Cast Lead, that broke the ceasefire and not Hamas. But even if you discard that, if you support the Israeli assault on Gaza, would you not have to support the Nazi occupation and endorse the planned destruction of Paris? Or if you supported the French resistance against the illegal German occupation, would you not have to support the Palestinian resistance against the illegal Israeli occupation?

Governance

If we accept the constraints of a civilized world, we enter the realm of laws. For laws to be useful, they must be enforced. Who then is to be entrusted with law enforcement? A subset of all people need to be. This subset is the government. How is the government constituted? In different ways. In social animals other than man, it is primarily the most powerful few within a community, e.g. alpha-males in most species of monkeys and apes. In man, it probably started out in a similar way. But today, there are numerous ways in which governments are constituted. Perhaps the most civilized among them is democracy.

Governments are then necessary to uphold the liberties of the people it governs to guarantee assurances of civility. In civics, this would go by the term rights of the people. In turn, the people themselves are accountable, the corresponding term in civics being duties. Both these go hand-in-hand, and there cannot be one of these protected in the absence of the other. The government, in the interest of protecting equality of men, must be blind to differences in sex, religion, caste, etc. in protecting the rights of its people. In turn, the people, in the interest of maintaining civility, are expected to perform their duties as and when required.

Governments are essentially in place to manage affairs concerning its people. Things are efficient when they are hierarchical. Subdivision allows each individual entity to focus on one particular topic, and a co-ordinated working of these entities ultimately results in the whole system achieving its diverse goals. The hierarchy allows for subdivision of the responsibilities of the system--think of division of responsibilities between parents in a family, between departments in a company, between teams within a department in a company, or more abstractly as division of functions between different structures of a website (database handling, content handling, markup handling etc.), or as division of a proof of a theorem into lemmas, or selection by nature of specialized organ systems in organisms--hierarchies are efficient.

Governments are organized, usually called separation of powers--in India's case (thanks to the Britons), into the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. I will not go into this here. By hierarchies of governments, I mean the division of responsibilities between government bodies at different levels--within a locality, in a city, district, state, country, internationally. Note that this particular hierarchical structure is neither how governments first came into being, nor necessarily how they are today, but what makes most sense to me. In other words, in my opinion, the existence of an international government is essential for civilization.

Since the government is an artificial construct created by us to sustain civilization, it is only reasonable to expect people to be able to actively participate in it, which is why democracy is the most sensible form of governance. Further, since the government is itself artificial, the boundaries on which its subdivisions are defined are themselves artificial. That is to say that geographical entities like cities, states and countries are mere tools in assisting governance--nothing more, nothing less. Of course there are differences between people from different states in terms of language, culture, traditions, religious beliefs etc. But so is the case between people, e.g. from the circuit design and the signal processing departments of Qualcomm in terms of expertise, interests etc. There is also an allegiance to one's city/state/country of origin. Just as there is an allegiance of a person to his team, to his department within his company. Constructs like countries, therefore, exist to efficiently maintain civilization and it is important to always remember that these constructs do not supersede the universal goals of civilization. Humanity--the protection of universal human rights--should never be superseded by nationality, or communalism, or regionalism, etc. Boundaries are the means to an end. The end being civilization. The means shouldn't themselves become ends, and should never displace the actual end. Note that while it might be true that historically, the rise of nation states was never hypothesized as expressed here, the global notion here is absolutely essential in the globalized world of today. It forms the centerpiece of civilization, as we understand it.

As accepted earlier, people from different places are different. And these differences are not necessarily hindrances to a global civilization. A representative international democracy will debate various issues and arrive at a consensus on a few fundamental rights that are to be upheld globally. So also will they decide on the few basic duties and responsibilities of each country. Apart from these basic requirements, all further laws of a country will be determined only by the people of that country. And a similar methodology will apply at each hierarchical level of the democracy. International laws cannot be meddled with by lower hierarchies. This need not be the case for national or state laws.

Patriotism would, even in this setting, be important. However, the concept would be different in a fundamental way. It would not be synonymous with believing in Saare jahaan se accha. Neither would it have glorified (and stupid) notions of blind allegiance to the country irrespective of what it does. But, it would be a simple acknowledgment of the fact that the society one lives in determines, to a great extent, the quality of one's life. That the standard of living depends on the prosperity of the society, on the alleviation of social evils (poverty, casteism, linguistic fundamentalism, communalism, racism etc.), on the prevalence of peace in the society. And realising the importance of one's volunteerism in establishing and helping enforce laws where necessary, and one's duties in the actual functioning of the state.

Civilization**

Man is an animal. Man should therefore have begun life like an animal. Wild animals, as we all know, are "wild". They lead "wild" lives. Wild lives are random, unpredictable -- a buffalo in a forest is unsure of seeing itself through the day, a young lion is unsure of not being eaten by an adult, a snow leopard is unsure of its efforts bearing fruit, a whale is unsure of whether its migration will be trouble-free...

Man, to a much larger extent than other animals, is also intelligent. To him, the aforementioned randomness in life is unsettling, unacceptable even. He is social. He is civil. Therefore, through his intelligence, he has been able to artificially impose rules that attempt to remove the uncertainties in everyday-life. These rules, like any others, are restrictive--they curb some of his freedom. But this is a meagre price to be paid for the assurances offered in return--can you imagine everyone being free enough to do what they want, so much so that you are constantly required to guard yourself from predators? Or a world with no conception of crime? Can you accept not being compensated for your hard work? Are you willing to risk walking through enemy territory to reach somewhere? Overwhelming "No"'s, I am sure. So, I underscore the fact that we accept these rules, neither because our predecessors have imposed them on us nor because we don't find an alternative, but because we tacitly understand that they are necessary. Necessary for civility, for peace. These restrictions, ironically enough, are essential for our freedom to do other things, to do things that interest us, to allow us to find goals other than the basic biological goals, all the while being assured that everyone will follow the rules. These inhibitions liberate us to find meaning and purpose in our lives, where neither exists. It is this system--where people found a way to live beyond the wild existence, while paying but a small price in terms of rules--that I call civilization.

The Americans often boast of being "leaders of the free world". Of America being the place where "equality of all men" was first upheld as an ideal. But, in my opinion, we all upheld this as an ideal a long time ago, perhaps the first time was when, in the course of evolution, the first social beings arose. For, accepting the restrictions referred to in the previous paragraph requires an inherent okaying of equality of men. Or else, if I believed I were better than the rest, why would I accept limitations to my freedom? So those social animals--those chimps*, if you will--are the real leaders of the free world. This is against the theory of the selfish gene, articulated best by Richard Dawkins. But I think that it was with this egalitarian concept that intelligence started to trump genes. Civilization then, was an unintended consequence of evolution. But as influencing factors, civilization superseding evolution is what makes man man.

But, what constitutes the set of restrictions that can be called civilization and what not? Where do we draw the line? What about liberty--after all, it appears before equality in the motto of the French revolution? Well, the necessity of restrictions is to avoid confrontation, to enable amiable relationships. It was accepted with the understanding that certain wants of people might conflict with those of others, in which case, each party claiming the want has an equal footing. Therefore, wherever possible, these wants must be shared equally. In other words, each person gets what he wants only to an extent to which any other person with the same want gets what he wants, i.e. wants of people are to be met so as to not deny wants of others. Obviously, this rule is very simplistic and one can concoct complex situations wherein the above rule might fail to solve the problem. Nevertheless, this serves as a good starting point. Simply put, as long as you don't hurt anyone you are free to pursue your wants. So, I suppose that when one is confronted with a question of whether a certain thing is the right thing to do, one can safely substitute that with the question of whether doing so would hurt anyone, or equivalently, whether civilization is possible if everyone else also does the same. To the extent allowed by these questions, we are all free.

* To give a name, I don't literally mean chimpanzees. It could be prokaryotic organelles, for all I care.
** What is written down here is my present thought. I would expect myself to revise this if and when I found the need to do so. I will try to do so with explanations for the changes.