By Girish Menon
BP's (British Petroleum) oil leak off the coast of Louisiana raises a great number of issues that are relevant from an economic point of view:
Firstly it is difficult to estimate what is the actual amount of oil leaking into the sea. Today BP says it is 40,000 barrels / day. So as a sceptic who does not believe company PR statements, it might be higher - how high one wonders.
Secondly, how does one measure the level of the negative externalities involved (Cost Benefit Analysis). The fishermen in a wide region have lost their livelihood, oil exploration on the coast has stopped - so oil workers from non BP firms have lost their jobs,the tourism industry in Florida has been affected. The damage to the ecological environment. The list goes on. Also how many years will it impact the environment is difficult to contemplate.
The ironic part of it was that until recently, BP not mindful of the externalities it has created was getting ready to pay £10 billion in dividend to shareholders. So, it goes to the basic point that BP's profits are high because its production costs never include the negative externalities it creates. And usually the public pays, for the profits of BP shareholders, with cuts in their services since the tax money may be used for cleaning up operations. A classic case of privatisation of profit and socialisation of cost. Similar to the bailout of banks some time ago.
Yet one of the causes of this accident could be inadequate regulation and the desire to cut costs. Health and safety regulation has often been criticised as increasing production costs of firms. Yet those who have blind faith in markets continue to insist on lesser regulation for these oligopolies.
The good thing is that the accident happened off the US coast and forced Obama to take notice. I say good because in 1984 there was the world's largest industrial tragedy in Bhopal, India caused by a now wound up US firm called Union Carbide. Those dead, in hundreds,were paid paltry compensation, the firm's owners have escaped and the place is as poisonous as ever. The Indian government has been bought over by the MNC, which was cheaper than paying for the externalities, and most managers of Union Carbide would die in their homes instead of going to jail for even one day.
So one could conclude that abnormal profits of most firms may include the negative externalities that they may have passed on to the tax payers of that country. Hence there is a greater need to redistribute this wealth.
Get a free e-mail account with Hotmail. Sign-up now.
“Blessed is the nation that doesn’t need heroes" Goethe. “Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.” Herbert Spencer
Search This Blog
Friday 11 June 2010
Tuesday 8 June 2010
The oil firms' profits ignore the real costs
The energy industry has long dumped its damage and, like the banks, made scant provision against disaster. Time to pay up
George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk,
Has BP ever made a profit? The question looks daft. The oil company posted profits of $26bn last year. There's no doubt that BP has been pumping money into the pockets of its shareholders. The question is whether this money is what the company says it is. BP calls it profit. I call it the provision the firm should be making against future liabilities.
Despite an angry letter from two US senators and a warning from Barack Obama about spending big money on their shareholders while nickel-and-diming coastal people, despite the fact that it has no idea what its total liabilities in the Gulf of Mexico will be, BP seems to be planning to pay a dividend this year. It's likely to amount to more than $10bn. As the two senators noted, by moving money "off the company's books and into investors' pockets", BP "will make it much more difficult to repay the US government and American communities".
Pollution has been defined as a resource in the wrong place. That's also a pretty good description of the company's profits. The great plumes of money that have been bursting out of the company's accounts every year are not BP's to give away. They consist, in part or in whole, of the externalised costs the company has failed to pay, and which the rest of society must carry.
Does this sound familiar? In the 10 years preceding the crash, the banks posted and disposed of stupendous profits. When their risky ventures failed, they discovered that they hadn't made sufficient provision against future costs, and had to go begging from the state. They had classified their annual surplus as profit and given it to their investors and staff long before it was safe to do so.
Last week the British government bumped into another consequence of failing to take future costs into account. Chris Huhne, the new secretary of state for energy and climate change, revealed that nuclear decommissioning liabilities will cost the government £4bn more than it was expecting to pay over the next three years. This will cancel out two-thirds of the vicious cuts the government has announced and swallow most of his department's budget. As Huhne pointed out: "It is a classic example of short-termism. I cannot think of a better example of a failure to take a decision in the short run costing the taxpayer a hell of a lot more in the long run."
The decommissioning costs imposed on society by nuclear power will be dwarfed by those that are imposed by the fossil fuel industry. They include, but are not confined to, the money that will have to be spent on adapting to climate change. The United Nations estimates this cost at $50bn–$170bn a year, but a report last year by British scientists suggested that this is around three times too low, as it counts only a small proportion of likely impacts.
The UN has hired the consultancy Trucost to estimate the costs dumped on the environment by the world's 3,000 biggest public companies. It doesn't report until October, but earlier this year the Guardian published the interim results. Trucost had estimated the damage these companies inflicted on the environment in 2008 at $2.2 trillion, equivalent to one third of their profits for that year. This too is likely to be an underestimate, as the draft report did not try to value the long-term costs of any issue except climate change. Nor did it count the wider social costs of environmental change.
A paper by the New Economics Foundation in 2006 used government estimates of the cost of carbon emissions to calculate the liabilities of Shell and BP. It found that while the two companies had just posted profits of £25bn, they had incurred costs in the same year of £46.5bn. The oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon well is scarcely more damaging, and its eventual impacts scarcely more expensive, than the oil that is captured by neighbouring rigs then processed and burnt as intended.
The total costs imposed by the oil companies, which include the loss of human lives and the extinction of species, cannot be accounted. But even if they could, you shouldn't expect the companies to carry them. They might be incapable of capping their leaks; they are adept at capping their liabilities. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which is owned by Transocean, is registered in the Marshall Islands. Most oil companies pull the same trick: they register their rigs and ships in small countries with weak governments and no international reach. These nations are, in other words, incapable of regulating them.
Flags of convenience signify more than the place of registration: they're an unmistakable sign that responsibilities are being offloaded. If powerful governments were serious about tackling pollution, the first thing they would do would be to force oil companies to register their property in the places where their major interests lie.
US lawyers are drooling over the prospect of what one of them called "the largest tort we've had in this country". Some financial analysts are predicting the death of BP, as the fines and compensation it will have to pay outweigh its earnings. I don't believe a word of it.
ExxonMobil was initially fined $5bn for the Exxon Valdez disaster, in 1989. But its record-breaking profits allowed it to pay record-breaking legal fees: after 19 years of argument it got the fine reduced to $507m. That's equivalent to the profit it made every 10 days last year. Yesterday, after 25 years of deliberations, an Indian court triumphantly convicted Union Carbide India Ltd of causing death by negligence through the Bhopal catastrophe. There was just one catch: Union Carbide India Ltd ceased to exist many years ago. It wound itself up to avoid this outcome, and its liabilities vanished in a puff of poisoned gas.
BP's insurers will take a hit, as will the pension funds which invested so heavily in it; but, though some people are proposing costs of $40bn or even $60bn, I will bet the price of a barrel of crude that the company is still in business 10 years from now. Everything else – the ecosystems it blights, the fishing and tourist industries, a habitable climate – might collapse around it, but BP, like the banks, will be deemed too big to fail. Other people will pick up the costs.
There is an alternative, but it is unlikely to materialise. Just as Norway has treated its oil money not as profit but as provision against a tougher future, so the governments in whose territories oil companies work should force them to pay into a decommissioning fund. The levy should reflect the costs that economists are able to calculate, plus a contingency for those we can't yet foresee.
This would outrage the oil firms, as it would render many of them unprofitable. But there's a simple answer to that: the money currently defined as profit is nothing of the kind.
Despite an angry letter from two US senators and a warning from Barack Obama about spending big money on their shareholders while nickel-and-diming coastal people, despite the fact that it has no idea what its total liabilities in the Gulf of Mexico will be, BP seems to be planning to pay a dividend this year. It's likely to amount to more than $10bn. As the two senators noted, by moving money "off the company's books and into investors' pockets", BP "will make it much more difficult to repay the US government and American communities".
Pollution has been defined as a resource in the wrong place. That's also a pretty good description of the company's profits. The great plumes of money that have been bursting out of the company's accounts every year are not BP's to give away. They consist, in part or in whole, of the externalised costs the company has failed to pay, and which the rest of society must carry.
Does this sound familiar? In the 10 years preceding the crash, the banks posted and disposed of stupendous profits. When their risky ventures failed, they discovered that they hadn't made sufficient provision against future costs, and had to go begging from the state. They had classified their annual surplus as profit and given it to their investors and staff long before it was safe to do so.
Last week the British government bumped into another consequence of failing to take future costs into account. Chris Huhne, the new secretary of state for energy and climate change, revealed that nuclear decommissioning liabilities will cost the government £4bn more than it was expecting to pay over the next three years. This will cancel out two-thirds of the vicious cuts the government has announced and swallow most of his department's budget. As Huhne pointed out: "It is a classic example of short-termism. I cannot think of a better example of a failure to take a decision in the short run costing the taxpayer a hell of a lot more in the long run."
The decommissioning costs imposed on society by nuclear power will be dwarfed by those that are imposed by the fossil fuel industry. They include, but are not confined to, the money that will have to be spent on adapting to climate change. The United Nations estimates this cost at $50bn–$170bn a year, but a report last year by British scientists suggested that this is around three times too low, as it counts only a small proportion of likely impacts.
The UN has hired the consultancy Trucost to estimate the costs dumped on the environment by the world's 3,000 biggest public companies. It doesn't report until October, but earlier this year the Guardian published the interim results. Trucost had estimated the damage these companies inflicted on the environment in 2008 at $2.2 trillion, equivalent to one third of their profits for that year. This too is likely to be an underestimate, as the draft report did not try to value the long-term costs of any issue except climate change. Nor did it count the wider social costs of environmental change.
A paper by the New Economics Foundation in 2006 used government estimates of the cost of carbon emissions to calculate the liabilities of Shell and BP. It found that while the two companies had just posted profits of £25bn, they had incurred costs in the same year of £46.5bn. The oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon well is scarcely more damaging, and its eventual impacts scarcely more expensive, than the oil that is captured by neighbouring rigs then processed and burnt as intended.
The total costs imposed by the oil companies, which include the loss of human lives and the extinction of species, cannot be accounted. But even if they could, you shouldn't expect the companies to carry them. They might be incapable of capping their leaks; they are adept at capping their liabilities. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which is owned by Transocean, is registered in the Marshall Islands. Most oil companies pull the same trick: they register their rigs and ships in small countries with weak governments and no international reach. These nations are, in other words, incapable of regulating them.
Flags of convenience signify more than the place of registration: they're an unmistakable sign that responsibilities are being offloaded. If powerful governments were serious about tackling pollution, the first thing they would do would be to force oil companies to register their property in the places where their major interests lie.
US lawyers are drooling over the prospect of what one of them called "the largest tort we've had in this country". Some financial analysts are predicting the death of BP, as the fines and compensation it will have to pay outweigh its earnings. I don't believe a word of it.
ExxonMobil was initially fined $5bn for the Exxon Valdez disaster, in 1989. But its record-breaking profits allowed it to pay record-breaking legal fees: after 19 years of argument it got the fine reduced to $507m. That's equivalent to the profit it made every 10 days last year. Yesterday, after 25 years of deliberations, an Indian court triumphantly convicted Union Carbide India Ltd of causing death by negligence through the Bhopal catastrophe. There was just one catch: Union Carbide India Ltd ceased to exist many years ago. It wound itself up to avoid this outcome, and its liabilities vanished in a puff of poisoned gas.
BP's insurers will take a hit, as will the pension funds which invested so heavily in it; but, though some people are proposing costs of $40bn or even $60bn, I will bet the price of a barrel of crude that the company is still in business 10 years from now. Everything else – the ecosystems it blights, the fishing and tourist industries, a habitable climate – might collapse around it, but BP, like the banks, will be deemed too big to fail. Other people will pick up the costs.
There is an alternative, but it is unlikely to materialise. Just as Norway has treated its oil money not as profit but as provision against a tougher future, so the governments in whose territories oil companies work should force them to pay into a decommissioning fund. The levy should reflect the costs that economists are able to calculate, plus a contingency for those we can't yet foresee.
This would outrage the oil firms, as it would render many of them unprofitable. But there's a simple answer to that: the money currently defined as profit is nothing of the kind.
Get a free e-mail account with Hotmail. Sign-up now.
Thursday 3 June 2010
Irrational Optimism
A state-hating free marketeer ignores his own failed experiment to offer discredited theories riddled with blame-shifting and excruciating errors
Brass neck doesn't begin to describe it. Matt Ridley used to make his living partly by writing state-bashing columns in the Daily Telegraph. The government, he complained, is "a self-seeking flea on the backs of the more productive people of this world … governments do not run countries, they parasitise them."(1) Taxes, bail-outs, regulations, subsidies, intervention of any kind, he argued, are an unwarranted restraint on market freedom.
Then he became chairman of Northern Rock, where he was able to put his free market principles into practice. Under his chairmanship, the bank pursued what the Treasury select committee later described as a "high-risk, reckless business strategy"(2). It was able to do so because the government agency which oversees the banks "systematically failed in its regulatory duty"(3).
On 16th August 2007, Dr Ridley rang an agent of the detested state to explore the possibility of a bail-out. The self-seeking fleas agreed to his request, and in September the government opened a support facility for the floundering bank. The taxpayer eventually bailed out Northern Rock to the tune of £27bn.
When news of the crisis leaked, it caused the first run on a bank in this country since 1878. The parasitic state had to intervene a second time: the run was halted only when the government guaranteed the depositors' money. Eventually the government was obliged to nationalise the bank. Investors, knowing that their money would now be safe as it was protected by the state, began to return.
While the crisis was made possible by a "substantial failure of regulation", MPs identified the directors of Northern Rock as "the principal authors of the difficulties that the company has faced". They singled Ridley out for having failed "to provide against the risks that [Northern Rock] was taking and to act as an effective restraining force on the strategy of the executive members."(4)
This, you might think, must have been a salutary experience. You would be wrong. Last week Dr Ridley published a new book called The Rational Optimist (5). He uses it as a platform to attack governments which, among other crimes, "bail out big corporations"(6). He lambasts intervention and state regulation, insisting that markets deliver the greatest possible benefits to society when left to their own devices. Has there ever been a clearer case of the triumph of faith over experience?
Free market fundamentalists, apparently unaware of Ridley's own experiment in market liberation, are currently filling cyberspace and the mainstream media with gasps of enthusiasm about his thesis. Ridley provides what he claims is a scientific justification for unregulated business. He maintains that rising consumption will keep enriching us for "centuries and millennia" to come(7), but only if governments don't impede innovation. He dismisses or denies the environmental consequences, laments our risk-aversion, and claims that the market system makes self-interest "thoroughly virtuous"(8). All will be well in the best of all possible worlds, as long as the "parasitic bureaucracy" keeps its nose out of our lives(9).
His book is elegantly written and cast in the language of evolution, but it's the same old cornutopian nonsense we've heard one hundred times before (cornutopians are people who envisage a utopia of limitless abundance(10)). In this case, however, it has already been spectacularly disproved by the author's experience.
The Rational Optimist is riddled with excruciating errors and distortions. Ridley claims, for example, that "every country that tried protectionism" after the Second World War suffered as a result. He cites South Korea and Taiwan as "countries that went the other way", and experienced miraculous growth(11). In reality, the governments of both nations subsidised key industries, actively promoted exports and used tariffs and laws to shut out competing imports. In both countries the state owned all the major commercial banks, allowing it to make decisions about investment(12,13,14).
He maintains that "Enron funded climate alarmism"(15). The reference he gives demonstrates nothing of the sort, nor can I find evidence for this claim elsewhere(16). He says that "no significant error has come to light" in Bjorn Lomborg's book The Sceptical Environmentalist (17). In fact it contains so many significant errors that an entire book - The Lomborg Deception by Howard Friel - was required to document them(18).
Ridley asserts that average temperature changes over "the last three decades" have been "relatively slow"(19). In reality the rise over this period has been the most rapid since instrumental records began(20). He maintains that "eleven of thirteen populations" of polar bears are "growing or steady"(21). There are in fact 19 populations of polar bears. Of those whose fluctuations have been measured, one is increasing, three are stable and eight are declining(22).
He uses blatant cherry-picking to create the impression that ecosystems are recovering: water snake numbers in Lake Erie, fish populations in the Thames, bird's eggs in Sweden(23). But as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment shows, of 65 global indicators of human impacts on biodiversity, only one – the extent of temperate forests – is improving. Eighteen are stable, in all the other cases the impacts are increasing(24).
Northern Rock grew rapidly by externalising its costs, pursuing money-making schemes that would eventually be paid for by other people. Ridley encourages us to treat the planet the same way. He either ignores or glosses over the costs of ever-expanding trade and perpetual growth. His timing, as BP fails to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is unfortunate. Like the collapse of Northern Rock, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was made possible by weak regulation. Ridley would weaken it even further, leaving public protection to the invisible hand of the market.
He might not have been chastened by experience, but it would be wrong to claim that he has learnt nothing. On the contrary, he has developed a fine line in blame-shifting and post-rational justification. He mentions Northern Rock only once in his book, where he blames the crisis on "government housing and monetary policy."(25) It was the state wot made him do it. He asserts that while he wants to reduce the regulation of markets in goods and services, he has "always supported" the careful regulation of financial markets(26). He provides no evidence for this and I cannot find it in anything he wrote before the crisis.
Other than that, he claims, he can say nothing, due to the terms of his former employment at the bank. I suspect this constraint is overstated: it's unlikely that it forbids him from accepting his share of the blame.
It is only from the safety of the regulated economy, in which governments pick up the pieces when business screws up, that people like Dr Ridley can pursue their magical thinking. Had the state he despises not bailed out his bank and rescued its depositors' money, his head would probably be on a pike by now. Instead we see it on our television screens, instructing us to apply his irrational optimism more widely. And no one has yet been rude enough to use the word discredited.
Thursday 27 May 2010
Financial Markets a Bigger Terrorist Threat than Al Qaeda?
By Girish Menon
In 2004, after the Congress coalition won an unsurprising win over 'India Shining's' BJP, the stock market operators began pounding the Sensex and the incoming government's hand was forced to appoint Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram to key positions in the Indian government. This calmed the stock markets and the Congress coalition was forced to dilute if not abandon it's more redistributive economic manifesto. This is one of the many instances when the interests of the financial markets assumed greater importance than the will of the majority.
We have in the last few years also witnessed government bail outs of banks all over the world. There was unprecedented hysteria stirred up all over the world and hitherto governments who were dogmatically opposed to nationalisation or subsidies were opening up their treasuries to bail out the stock market crooks and gamblers.
In Europe, governments who were forced to increase their spending to get their economies out of recession are now being warned by the same crooks and gamblers that if their books are not balanced their credit ratings would be lowered. Concerted attacks on stock markets and the Euro are the weapons used to get EU governments to impose economic policies that support financial markets and against the interest of the majority. The Greek example probably followed by the threat to Spain and Portugal are examples of governments being bullied by financial markets.
We as ordinary citizens have been repeatedly told that Islamic terrorists among others are undemocratically trying to undermine the mandate given to elected governments. Hence democratic governments need to use force to defeat them. However, especially in the last few years financial markets operators have been dictating government policy by threatening a collapse of the stock market or the currency. The owners and managers of financial market firms have no democratic mandate and yet seem to have a free run of the public purse. Tax money has been diverted from welfare programmes to prop up stock markets and currencies which are continuously being hammered. These government bailout expenditures may even be higher than government expenditure on 'fighting terrorists'.
Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear small fry as compared to the movers in the world of finance in their ability to make democratic governments implement anti democratic policies. So will I be wrong in concluding that financial market terrorists are a bigger threat to economies than Al Qaeda, Taliban et al?
Get a free e-mail account with Hotmail. Sign-up now.
Get a free e-mail account with Hotmail. Sign-up now.
Wednesday 21 April 2010
Modern Indian Spirituality
I am quite sure ladies and gentlemen, that in this august assembly nobody would envy my position at this moment. Speaking after such a charismatic and formidable personality like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is like coming out of the pavilion to play after Tendulkar has made a sparkling century. But in some weak moment I had committed myself.
There are certain things that I would like to make very clear at the very outset. Dont get carried away by my name Javed Akhtar. I am not revealing a secret, I am saying something that I have said many times, in writing or on TV, in publicI am an atheist, I have no religious beliefs. And obviously I dont believe in spirituality of some kind. Some kind!
Another thing. I am not standing here to criticize, analyze, or attack this gentleman who is sitting here. We have a very pleasant, civilized relation. I have always found him to be an extremely courteous person.
One is talking about an idea, an attitude, a mindset. Not any individual. I must tell you that when Rajeev opened this session, for a moment I felt that I have come to the wrong place. Because, if we are discussing the philosophy of Krishan and Gautam and Kabir, Vivekanand, then I have nothing to say. I can sit down right now. I am not here to discuss a glorious past of which I suppose every Indian is proud, and rightly so. I am here to
discuss a dubious present.
India Today has invited me and I have come here to talk of spirituality today. Lets not be confused by this word spirituality, you can find two people with the same name and they can be totally different people. Ram Charit Manas was written by Tulsidas. And the television film has been made by Ramanand Sagar. Ramayan is common but I dont think it would be very wise to club Tulsidas with Ramanand Sagar. I remember, when he had written Ramcharit Manas, he had faced a kind of a social boycott. How could he write a holy book in such a language like Avadhi? Sometimes I wonder fundamentalists of all hues and all colors, religions and communitie show how similar they are. In 1798, a gentleman called Shah Abdul Qadir, in this very city, for the first time translated Quran in Urdu, and all the ulemas of that time gave fatwa against him that how could he translate this holy book in such a heathen language.
When Tulsi wrote Ramcharit Manas and he was boycotted, I remember a chowpai that he had written.
*Dhut kaho abdhut kaho rajput kaho ki julawa kohu*
*Kohu ki beti se beta na biahab, kohu ki jaat bigaar na chahu*
*Mang ke khaibo, mehjid ma raihbo, lebe ka ek na debe ka dohu*
Ramanand Sagar, when he made his television serial, he made millions. I am not undermining him, but obviously he is much lower in the rung. I will give you another example. Perhaps it would be more direct and more appropriate. Gautam came out of a palace and went into wilderness to find the truth. But nowadays we see, the modern age gurus, come out of the wilderness and wind up in the palaces. They are moving in the opposite direction. We cant talk of them in the same breath. So let us not hide behind names which are dear and respectable for every Indian.
When I was invited to give this talk, I felt that yes, I am an atheist, try to be a rationalist in any given situation, Maybe thats why I have been called. But suddenly I have realized that there is another quality that I share with Modern Age gurus. I work in films. We have lot in common. Both of us, sell dreams, both of us create illusions, both of us create icons, but with a difference. After three hours we put a placard 'the end'. Go back to reality. They dont.
So ladies and gentlemen, let me make it very clear that I have come to talk of this spirituality that has a supermarket in the world. Arms, drugs and spirituality these are the three big businesses in the world. But in arms and drugs you really have to do something, give something. Thats the difference. Here you dont have to give anything.
In this supermarket you get instant Nirvana, Moksha by mail, a crash course in self realization, cosmic consciousness in four easy lessons. This supermarket has its chain all over the world, where the restless elite buy spiritual fast food. I am talking about this spirituality.
Plato in his dialogues has said many a wise thing, and one of them is before starting any discussion decide on the meanings of words. Let us tryto decide on the meaning of this word spirituality. Does it mean love for mankind that transcends all religion, caste, creed, race? Is that so? Then I have no problem. Except that I call it humanity. Does it mean love of plants, trees, mountains, oceans, rivers, animals? The non-human world? If that is so, again I have no problem at all. Except that I call it environmental consciousness. Does spirituality mean heartfelt regard for social institutions like marriage, parenthood, fine arts, judiciary, freedom of expression. I have no problem again sir, how can I disagree here? I call it civil responsibility. Does spirituality mean going into your own world trying to understand the meaning of your own life? Who can object on that? I call it self-introspection, self assessment. Does spirituality mean Yoga? Thanks to Patanjali, who has given us the details of Yoga, *Yam, Yatam, aasan, pranayam*We may do it under any name, but if we are doing pranayam, wonderful. I call it health-care. Physical fitness.
Now is it a matter of only semantics. If all this is spirituality, then what is the discussion. All these words that I have used are extremely respectable and totally acceptable words. There is nothing abstract or intangible about them. So why stick to this word spirituality? What is there in spirituality that has not been covered by all these words? Is there something? If that is so then what is that?
Somebody in return can ask me what is my problem with this word. I am asking to change it, leave it, drop it, make it obsolete but why so? I will tell you what is my reservation. If spirituality means all this then there is no discussion. But there is something else which makes me uneasy. In a dictionary, the meaning of spirituality is rooted in a word called spirit. When mankind didnt know whether this earth is round or flat, he had decided that human beings are actually the combination of two things. Body and spirit. Body is temporary, it dies. But the spirit is, shall I say, non-biodegradable. In your body you have a liver and heart and intestines and the brain, but since the brain is a part of the body, and mind lies within the brain, it is inferior because ultimately the brain too shall die with the body, but dont worry, you are not going to die, because you are your spirit, and the spirit has the supreme consciousness that will remain, and whatever problem you have is because you listen to your mind. Stop listening to your mind. Listen to your spirit - the supreme consciousness that knows the cosmic truth. All right. Its not surprising that in Pune there is an ashram and I used to go there. I loved the oratory. On the gate of the lecture hall there was a placard. Leave your shoes and minds here. There are other gurus who dont mind if you carry your shoes. But minds? Sorry!
Now, if you leave your mind what do you do? You need the Guru to find the next station of consciousness. That hides somewhere in the spirit. He has reached the supreme consciousness, he knows the supreme truth. But can he tell you. No sir, he cannot tell you. So can you find out on your own? No sir, you need the guru for that. You need him but he cannot guarantee that you will know the ultimate truth and what is that ultimate truth? What is the cosmic truth? Relating to cosmos? I have really not been able to understand that. The moment we step out of the solar system the first star is Alpha Centuari. It is just four light years away. How do I relate to that!! What do I do!!
So the emperor is wearing robes that only the wise can see. And the emperor is becoming bigger and bigger. And there are more and more wise people who are appreciating the robe.
I used to think that actually spirituality is the second line of defence for the religious people. When they get embarrassed about traditional religion, when it starts looking too down-market, they hide behind this smokescreen of cosmos and super consciousness. But that is not the complete truth. Because the clientele of traditional religion and spirituality is different. You take the map of the world, you start marking places which are extremely religious, within India or outside India, Asia, Latin America, Europe wherever. You will find that wherever there is lot of religion there is lack of human rights. There is repression. Anywhere. Our Marxist friends used to say that religion is the opium of poor masses, the sigh of the oppressed. I dont want to get into that discussion. But spirituality nowadays is definitely the tranquilizer of the rich.
You see that the clientele is well heeled, it is the affluent class. Alright, so the guru gets power, high self esteem, status, wealth (which is not that important), power and lot of wealth too. What does the disciple get? When I looked at them carefully I realized that there are categories and categories of these disciples. Its not a monolith. There are different kinds of followers. Different kinds of disciples. One, who is rich, successful, doing extremely well in his life, making money, gaining property. Now, since he has everything he wants absolution too. So guru tells him - whatever you are doing, is *niskaam karma *you are playing a role, this is all *Maya*, the money that you are making everyday and the property that you are acquiring, you are not emotionally involved with it. You are just playing a role. You come to me because you are in search of eternal truth. Maybe your hands are dirty, but your spirit and soul are pure. And this man, he starts feeling wonderful about himself. For seven days he is exploiting the world, and at the end of the seven days when he goes and sits at the feet of the guru, he feels I am a sensitive person
There is another category. That too comes from the affluent class. But he is not the winner like the first one. You know winning or losing that is also relative. A rickshaw-wallah if he is gambling on the pavement and wins hundred rupees will feel victorious, and if a corporate man makes only 300 million dollars, while his brother is a billionaire, he will feel like a failure. Now, what does this rich failure do? He needs a guru to tell him
who says that you have failed? You have other worlds, you have another vision, you have other sensibility that your brother doesnt have. He thinks that he is successful, wrong. The world is very cruel, you know. The world tells you honestly, no sir, you have got three out of ten. The other person has seven out of ten. Fair. They will treat you that way and they will meet you that way. There he gets compassion. There he plays another game.
Another category. And I will talk about this category not with contempt or with any sense of superiority, not any bitterness, but all the compassion available one that is a very big client of this modern day guru and todays spirituality, is the unhappy rich wife. Here is a person who put all her individuality, aspirations and dreams, and her being at the altar of marriage and in return she got an indifferent husband. Who at the most gave her a couple of children. Who is rather busy with his work, or busy with other women. This woman needs a shoulder. She knows that she is an existential failure. There is nothing to look forward to. She has a vacuous, empty, comfortable yet purposeless life. Its sad, but it is true.
Then there are other people. Who are suddenly traumatized. They lose a child. The wife dies. The husband dies. Or they lose the property, they lose their business. Something happens that shocks them and they ask why me? So who do they ask? They go to the Guru. And the guru tells him that this is Karma. But there is another world if you follow me. Where there is no pain. Where there is no death. Where there is immortality. Where there is only bliss. He tells all these unhappy souls follow me and I will take you to heaven, to paradise, where there is no pain. I am sorry sir, it is disappointing but true that there is no such paradise. Life will always have a certain quota of pain, of hurts, a possibility of defeats. But they do get some satisfaction.
Somebody may ask me if they are feeling better, if they are getting peace then what is your problem. It reminds me of a story that I have read. Its an old Indian story told by a sage, that a hungry dog finds a dry bone and tries to eat it and in the process bites its own tongue. And the tongue is bleeding and the dog feels that he is getting nourishment from the bone. I feel sad. I dont want them, these adults, to behave like this because I respect them. Drugs and alcohol are also supposed to give mental peace and serenity, but is that kind of piece or serenity desirable or advisable?
The answer is no. Any mental peace that is not anchored in rational thoughts is nothing but self-deception. Any serenity that takes you away from truth is just an illusion a mirage. I know that there is a kind of a security in this which is like the security of a tri-cycle. If you are riding a tri-cycle you cant fall. But adults do not ride tricycles. They ride bi-cycles. They can even fall. It is a part of life.
There is one more kind. Like everybody who is the member of the golf club is not fond of golf. In the same way everybody who is seen in an ashram is not a spiritual person. A film producer who is an ardent follower of a guru, whose ashram is about two hours from Delhi once told me that you must go to my Guru. You will see the whos who of Delhi there. Let me tell you my Guruji is another Chandraswami in the making. Now this is a contact point
for networking. I have great respect for people who are spiritual, or religious, and in spite of this they are good people. And I have a reason. I believe that like every emotion or feeling, you have a limitation.
You can see up to a point. And you cant see further. You can hear up to a point, but beyond that you wont be able to register sounds. You can mourn up to a point and then you will get over your mourning. You will feel happy up-to a point and then you will be through with your happiness. Same way, I am sure that you have a certain capacity for nobility also. You can be as noble and no more. Now suppose if we count this capacity for nobility in the average man as ten units, now anybody who goes to pray in a mosque five times is consuming his five units, there anybody who goes to the temple or sits in the feet of the Guru, he is consuming his quota of nobility there. And in a totally non-productive manner. I dont go to pray. I dont pray. If I dont go to any guru, or mosque or temple or church, what do I do with my quota of nobility. I will have to help somebody, feed somebody, give shelter to somebody. People who use their quota in worshipping, praying, adoring religious figures and spiritual figures, in spite of that, if they are left with some nobility, hats off to them.
You may ask me, that if I have this kind of ideas about religious people, why should I show such reverence for Krishan and Kabir and Gautam? You can ask me. Ill tell you why I respect them. These were the great contributors in the human civilization. They were born in different points of time in history, in different situations. But one thing is common in them. They stood up against injustice. They fought for the downtrodden. Whether it was Ravana, or Kansha or the pharaoh or the high priests or the British Samrajya in front of Gandhi or the communal empire of Firoze Tughlaq in the times of Kabir, they stood against that.
And what surprises me, and confirms my worst feelings, that today, the enlightened people who know the cosmic truth, none of them stand up against the powers that be. None of them raises his voice against the ruling classes and the privileged classes. Charity, yes, when it is approved and cleared by the establishment and the powers that be. But I want to know which was that guru which took the dalits to those temples which are still closed to them. I want to know which was that guru who stood for the rights of the Adivasis against the thekedaars and contractors. I want to know which was that guru who spoke about the victims of Gujarat and went to their relief camps. They are human beings too.
Sir, It is not enough to teach the rich how to breathe. It is the rich mans recreation. It is the hypocrites pretension. It is a mischievous deception. And you know that in the oxford dictionary, mischievous deception is a term that is used for a word, and that word is HOAX.
Speech by JAVED AKHTAR at India Today Conclave *
Get a new e-mail account with Hotmail - Free. Sign-up now.
Britain and the Euro
From Times Online
April 21, 2010
Knives out. It's the fatal flaw in Clegg's plan
The Lib Dems are committed to joining the euro. Just look abroad – it would be catastrophic for Britain
Anatole Kaletsky
If they want to skewer Nick Clegg in tomorrow's TV debate on foreign policy, the two established parties should focus on one issue: not Trident, nor terrorism, nor Afghanistan, but a much more immediate threat to the country's political independence and economic wellbeing — the euro. But to pin down the Liberal Democrats convincingly, Gordon Brown and David Cameron will have to do more than just point to the chaos in Greece and the 20 per cent unemployment in Spain.
They will have to engage Britain's voters in a sophisticated argument that has proved too complex for many of Europe's top businessmen and financiers — although this confusion may now be ending as a result of the events in Greece.
The Lib Dems' official policy is clearly stated in their manifesto: "It is in Britain's long-term interest to be part of the euro." The manifesto then adds two politically convenient qualifications — that Britain should join only "when the economic conditions are right" and "if the decision were supported by the people in a referendum". But these weasel phrases in no way detract from the Lib Dems' analytical position, that they fervently believe the loss of monetary independence to be a national ambition.
This is a point on which the Tories could have a field day, but only by making an admission that Mr Cameron would find politically very tough. To explain why any British politician who still believes in joining the euro is either a committed euro-federalist or an economic ignoramus, the Tories would have to admit that Britain, under Gordon Brown's economic leadership, has actually suffered rather less damage from the financial crisis than most parts of the eurozone. The loss of GDP and industrial output since the start of the recession, for example, has been slightly smaller in Britain than in Germany and unemployment here remains lower than in any other economy of comparable size.
Worse still from the Tory standpoint, Mr Cameron would have to concede not only that the huge deficit run up by the Brown Government has helped to support the British economy through the crisis, but also that it will do no great harm in the long term, provided public spending is managed sensibly. By contrast, the government deficits in Greece, Spain, France and other eurozone countries, although they are actually rather smaller than Britain's, are already squeezing the lifeblood out of their economies and will end up destroying their political independence.
Why is this so? The main advantage for any nation of having its own currency, at least since the gradual abolition of the gold standard in the middle years of the last century, lies in the ability to conduct independent monetary and fiscal policies — to set interest rates and to borrow money, without regard to external political constraints. This monetary and fiscal independence is a far more important national prerogative than just the ability to devalue the currency to make exports competitive or revalue to make foreign holidays feel cheaper. And it is the permanent loss of monetary and fiscal independence that clinches the argument against joining the euro, regardless of whether economic conditions are deemed to be favourable or whether a referendum has been held.
To give up the national currency also implies, in the end, giving up a nation's independent ability to set taxes and public spending — an irrevocable loss of sovereignty on a par with ceding control of a large piece of national territory or disbanding the Armed Forces.
Compare the political and economic pressures exerted by the crisis on Britain and Greece. Both countries have government deficits of roughly 12 per cent of national income. But Greece is on the verge of national bankruptcy, while politicians in Britain can calmly engage in debates over whether to abandon planned tax increases and whether to start modestly reducing public spending in 2011 or the years beyond.
Why, then, are financial pressures so much more intense in Greece? Mainly because the British Government borrows in its own currency and can therefore simply print more money in order to repay its debts if required. This, in fact, is exactly what the Bank of England did last year, creating new money to the tune of around £170 billion. The ability to print money can create inflation if the Bank of England miscalculates; inflation rose to 3.4 per cent in March. But the independence of monetary policy gives the British Government a freedom to set taxes and public spending in response to the decisions of British voters, instead of the demands of international organisations or bond market investors.
For members of the eurozone — Greece today but, in the long run, also Spain, Italy, France and even Germany — the opposite is true. By abolishing their independent currencies, they have not just lost control of interest rates and given up their ability to devalue or revalue. They have also effectively ceded their tax and spending decisions to the European level.
This is most obvious in the case of Greece, which has no control of the euros it needs to borrow and can no longer raise them on financial markets without guarantees of support from other EU countries and the IMF. German politicians are now openly stating that Greece will have to pay for these guarantees by giving up control of its domestic policies.
But the gradual loss of fiscal sovereignty is also visible in Spain, where the government deficit of 10 per cent of GDP is only slightly smaller than it is in Greece and where deflationary policies demanded by the eurozone "stability pact" have already raised the unemployment rate to 20 per cent.
In the end, even Germany, the paymaster of the eurozone, will suffer the loss of fiscal control implied by monetary union. The Greek experience shows that the single currency can only survive in the long run if all member governments share responsibility for each other's debts.
Although such "burden sharing" is explicitly ruled out by the European treaties, it was always envisaged as a consequence of monetary union by Jacques Delors and the other instigators of the euro project.
Most likely the burden sharing will eventually be achieved through a vast expansion of the EU's ability to borrow money in its own name and then lend it on to national governments — in the same way that the US federal government issues Treasury bonds and uses the proceeds to offer conditional support to the states. While the mechanism whereby Europe will adopt a federal fiscal policy is not yet clear, the outcome is unavoidable. And that will mean Germany, as much as every other euro country, losing control of its economic destiny. If that is also Mr Clegg's objective for Britain, he should say so.
They will have to engage Britain's voters in a sophisticated argument that has proved too complex for many of Europe's top businessmen and financiers — although this confusion may now be ending as a result of the events in Greece.
The Lib Dems' official policy is clearly stated in their manifesto: "It is in Britain's long-term interest to be part of the euro." The manifesto then adds two politically convenient qualifications — that Britain should join only "when the economic conditions are right" and "if the decision were supported by the people in a referendum". But these weasel phrases in no way detract from the Lib Dems' analytical position, that they fervently believe the loss of monetary independence to be a national ambition.
This is a point on which the Tories could have a field day, but only by making an admission that Mr Cameron would find politically very tough. To explain why any British politician who still believes in joining the euro is either a committed euro-federalist or an economic ignoramus, the Tories would have to admit that Britain, under Gordon Brown's economic leadership, has actually suffered rather less damage from the financial crisis than most parts of the eurozone. The loss of GDP and industrial output since the start of the recession, for example, has been slightly smaller in Britain than in Germany and unemployment here remains lower than in any other economy of comparable size.
Worse still from the Tory standpoint, Mr Cameron would have to concede not only that the huge deficit run up by the Brown Government has helped to support the British economy through the crisis, but also that it will do no great harm in the long term, provided public spending is managed sensibly. By contrast, the government deficits in Greece, Spain, France and other eurozone countries, although they are actually rather smaller than Britain's, are already squeezing the lifeblood out of their economies and will end up destroying their political independence.
Why is this so? The main advantage for any nation of having its own currency, at least since the gradual abolition of the gold standard in the middle years of the last century, lies in the ability to conduct independent monetary and fiscal policies — to set interest rates and to borrow money, without regard to external political constraints. This monetary and fiscal independence is a far more important national prerogative than just the ability to devalue the currency to make exports competitive or revalue to make foreign holidays feel cheaper. And it is the permanent loss of monetary and fiscal independence that clinches the argument against joining the euro, regardless of whether economic conditions are deemed to be favourable or whether a referendum has been held.
To give up the national currency also implies, in the end, giving up a nation's independent ability to set taxes and public spending — an irrevocable loss of sovereignty on a par with ceding control of a large piece of national territory or disbanding the Armed Forces.
Compare the political and economic pressures exerted by the crisis on Britain and Greece. Both countries have government deficits of roughly 12 per cent of national income. But Greece is on the verge of national bankruptcy, while politicians in Britain can calmly engage in debates over whether to abandon planned tax increases and whether to start modestly reducing public spending in 2011 or the years beyond.
Why, then, are financial pressures so much more intense in Greece? Mainly because the British Government borrows in its own currency and can therefore simply print more money in order to repay its debts if required. This, in fact, is exactly what the Bank of England did last year, creating new money to the tune of around £170 billion. The ability to print money can create inflation if the Bank of England miscalculates; inflation rose to 3.4 per cent in March. But the independence of monetary policy gives the British Government a freedom to set taxes and public spending in response to the decisions of British voters, instead of the demands of international organisations or bond market investors.
For members of the eurozone — Greece today but, in the long run, also Spain, Italy, France and even Germany — the opposite is true. By abolishing their independent currencies, they have not just lost control of interest rates and given up their ability to devalue or revalue. They have also effectively ceded their tax and spending decisions to the European level.
This is most obvious in the case of Greece, which has no control of the euros it needs to borrow and can no longer raise them on financial markets without guarantees of support from other EU countries and the IMF. German politicians are now openly stating that Greece will have to pay for these guarantees by giving up control of its domestic policies.
But the gradual loss of fiscal sovereignty is also visible in Spain, where the government deficit of 10 per cent of GDP is only slightly smaller than it is in Greece and where deflationary policies demanded by the eurozone "stability pact" have already raised the unemployment rate to 20 per cent.
In the end, even Germany, the paymaster of the eurozone, will suffer the loss of fiscal control implied by monetary union. The Greek experience shows that the single currency can only survive in the long run if all member governments share responsibility for each other's debts.
Although such "burden sharing" is explicitly ruled out by the European treaties, it was always envisaged as a consequence of monetary union by Jacques Delors and the other instigators of the euro project.
Most likely the burden sharing will eventually be achieved through a vast expansion of the EU's ability to borrow money in its own name and then lend it on to national governments — in the same way that the US federal government issues Treasury bonds and uses the proceeds to offer conditional support to the states. While the mechanism whereby Europe will adopt a federal fiscal policy is not yet clear, the outcome is unavoidable. And that will mean Germany, as much as every other euro country, losing control of its economic destiny. If that is also Mr Clegg's objective for Britain, he should say so.
Get a new e-mail account with Hotmail – Free. Sign-up now.
Heaven: A fool's paradise
Why do the majority of Britons still believe in life after death? Heaven isn't a wonderful place filled with light - it is a pernicious construct with a short and bloody history, writes Johann Hari
John Lennon urged us: "Imagine there's no heaven/It's easy if you try/No hell below us/Above us only sky." Yet the religious aren't turning to Lennonism any faster than Leninism. Today, according to a new book by Lisa Miller, Newsweek's religion correspondent, 81 per cent of Americans and 51 per cent of Brits say they believe in heaven - an increase of 10 per cent since a decade ago. Of those, 71 per cent say it is "an actual place". Indeed, 43 per cent believe their pets - cats, rats, and snakes - are headed into the hereafter with them to be stroked for eternity. So why can't humans get over the Pearly Gates?
In reality, the heaven you think you're headed to - a reunion with your relatives in the light - is a very recent invention, only a little older than Goldman Sachs. Most of the believers in heaven across history would find it unrecognisable. Miller's book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, teases out the strange history of heaven - and shows it's not what you think.
Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I'll show you what's lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Koran lived in thirst - so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where "the first would be last, and the last would be first" - so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today's Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang. Emily Dickinson wrote: " 'Heaven' - is what I cannot Reach!/The Apple on the Tree/Provided it do hopeless - hang/That - 'Heaven' is - to Me!"
We know precisely when this story of projecting our lack into the sky began: 165BC, patented by the ancient Jews. Until then, heaven - shamayim - was the home of God and his angels. Occasionally God descended from it to give orders and indulge in a little light smiting, but there was a strict no-dead-people door policy. Humans didn't get in, and they didn't expect to. The best you could hope for was for your bones to be buried with your people in a shared tomb and for your story to carry on through your descendants. It was a realistic, humanistic approach to death. You go, but your people live on.
So how did the idea of heaven - as a perfect place where God lives and where you end up if you live right - rupture this reality? The different components had been floating around "in the atmosphere of Jerusalem, looking for a home", as Miller puts it, for a while. The Greeks believed there was an eternal soul that ascended when you die. The Zoroastrians believed you would be judged in the end-time for your actions on earth. The Jews believed in an almighty Yahweh.
But it took a big bloody bang to fuse them. In the run up to heaven's invention, the Jews were engaged in a long civil war over whether to open up to the Greeks and their commerce or to remain sealed away, insular and pure. With no winner in sight, King Antiochus got fed up. He invaded and tried to wipe out the Jewish religion entirely, replacing it with worship of Zeus. The Jews saw all that was most sacred to them shattered: they were ordered to sacrifice swine before a statue of Zeus that now dominated their Temple. The Jews who refused were hacked down in the streets.
Many young men fled into the hills of Palestine to stage a guerrilla assault - now remembered as the Hanukkah story. The old Jewish tale about how you continue after you die was itself dying: your bones couldn't be gathered by your ancestors anymore with so many Jews scattered and on the run. So suddenly death took on a new terror. Was this it? Were all these lives ending forever, for nothing? One of the young fighters - known to history only as Daniel - announced that the martyred Jews would receive a great reward. "Many of those who sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt," he wrote and launched us on the road to the best-selling 1990s trash 90 Minutes in Heaven. Daniel's idea was wildly successful. Within a century, most Jews believed in heaven, and the idea has never died.
But while the key components of heaven were in place, it was not the kumbaya holiday camp it has become today. It was a place where you and God and the angels sat - but Jesus warned "there is no marriage in heaven". You didn't join your relatives. It was you and God and eternal prayer. It was paradise, but not as we know it.
Even some atheists regard heaven as one of the least-harmful religious ideas: a soothing blanket to press onto the brow of the bereaved. But its primary function for centuries was as a tool of control and intimidation. The Vatican, for example, declared it had a monopoly on St Peter's VIP list - and only those who obeyed their every command and paid them vast sums for Get-Out-of-Hell-Free cards would get them and their children onto it. The afterlife was a means of tyrannising people in this life. This use of heaven as a bludgeon long outlasted the Protestant Reformation. Miller points out that in Puritan New England, heaven was not primarily a comfort but rather "a way to impose discipline in this life."
It continues. Look at Margaret Toscano, a sixth-generation Mormon who was a fanatical follower of Joseph Smith in her youth. Then she studied feminism at university. She came back to her community and argued that women ought to be allowed to become priests. The Mormon authorities - the people who denied black people had souls until 1976 - ordered her to recant, and said if she didn't, she wouldn't go to heaven with the rest of her family. She refused. Now her devastated sisters believe they won't see her in the afterlife.
Worse still, the promise of heaven is used as an incentive for people to commit atrocities. I have seen this in practice: I've interviewed wannabe suicide bombers from London to Gaza to Syria, and they all launched into reveries about the orgy they will embark on in the clouds. Similarly, I was once sent - as my own personal purgatory - undercover on the Christian Coalition Solidarity tour of Israel. As we stood at Megido, the site described in the Book of Revelation as the launchpad for the apocalypse, they bragged that hundreds of thousands of Arabs would soon be slaughtered there while George Bush and his friends are raptured to heaven as a reward for leading the Arabs to their deaths. Heaven can be an inducement to horror.
Yet there is an unthinking "respect" automatically accorded to religious ideas that throttles our ability to think clearly about these questions. Miller's book - after being a useful exposition of these ideas - swiftly turns itself into a depressing illustration of this. She describes herself as a "professional sceptic", but she is, in fact, professionally credulous. Instead of trying to tease out what these fantasies of an afterlife reveal about her interviewees, she quizzes everyone about their heaven as if she is planning to write a Lonely Planet guide to the area, demanding more and more intricate details. She only just stops short of demanding to know what the carpeting will be like. But she never asks the most basic questions: where's your evidence? Where are you getting these ideas from? These questions are considered obvious when we are asking about any set of ideas, except when it comes to religion, when they are considered to be a slap in the face.
Of course there's plenty of proof that the idea of heaven can be comforting, or beautiful - but that doesn't make it true. The difference between wishful thinking and fact-seeking is something most six-year-olds can grasp, yet Miller - and, it seems, the heaven-believing majority - refuse it here. Yes, I would like to see my dead friends and relatives again. I also would like there to be world peace, a million dollars in my current account, and for Matt Damon to ask me to marry him. If I took my longing as proof they were going to happen, you'd think I was deranged.
"Rationalist questions are not helpful," announces one of her interviewees - a professor at Harvard, no less. This seems to be Miller's view too. She stresses that to believe in heaven you have to make "a leap of faith" - but in what other field in life do we abandon all need for evidence? Why do it in one so crucial to your whole sense of existence? And if you are going to "leap" beyond proof, why leap to the Christian heaven? Why not convince yourself you are going to live after death in Narnia, or Middle Earth, for which there is as much evidence? She doesn't explain: her arguments dissolve into a feel-good New Age drizzle.
True, Miller does cast a quick eye over the only "evidence" that believers in heaven offer - the testimonies of people who have had near-death experiences. According to the medical journal The Lancet, between 9 per cent and 18 per cent of people who have been near death report entering a tunnel, seeing a bright light, and so on. Dinesh D'Souza, in his preposterous book Life After Death, presents this as "proof" for heaven. But in fact there are clear scientific explanations. As the brain shuts down, it is the peripheral vision that goes first, giving the impression of a tunnel. The centre of your vision is what remains, giving the impression of a bright light. Indeed, as Miller concedes: "Virtually all the features of [a near-death experience] - the sense of moving through a tunnel, an 'out of body' feeling, spiritual awe, visual hallucinations, and intense memories - can be reproduced with a stiff dose of ketamine, a horse tranquilliser frequently used as a party drug." Is a stoner teenager in a K-hole in contact with God and on a day-trip to heaven? Should the religious be dropping horse dope on Sundays? But Miller soon runs scared from the sceptical implications of this, offering the false balance of finding one very odd scientist who says that these experiences could point beyond life - without any proof at all.
But even if you set aside the absence of even the tiniest thread of evidence, there is a great conceptual hole at the heart of heaven - one that has gnawed at even its fondest believers. After a while, wouldn't it be excruciatingly dull? When you live in the desert, a spring seems like paradise. But when you have had the spring for a thousand years, won't you be sick of it? Heaven is, in George Orwell's words, an attempt to "produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary". Take away the contrast, and heaven becomes hell.
And yet, and yet ... of course I understand why so many people want to believe in heaven, even now, even in the face of all the evidence, and all reason. It is a way - however futilely - of trying to escape the awful emptiness of death. As Philip Larkin put it: "Not to be here/Not to be anywhere/And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true". To die. To rot. To be nothing. We wouldn't be sane if we didn't seek a way to leap off this conveyor-belt heading towards a cliff.
So yes, there is pain in seeing the truth about Heaven - but there is also a liberation in seeing beyond the childhood myths of our species. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in Babylon 4,000 years ago, the eponymous hero travels into the gardens of the gods in an attempt to discover the secret of eternal life. His guide tells him the secret - there is no secret. This is it. This is all we're going to get. This life. This time. Once. "Enjoy your life," the goddess Siduri tells him. "Love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace." It's Lennon's dream, four millennia ahead of schedule: above us, only sky. Gilgamesh returns to the world and lives more intensely and truly and deeply than before, knowing there is no celestial after-party and no forever. After all this time, can't we finally follow Gilgamesh to a world beyond heaven?
In reality, the heaven you think you're headed to - a reunion with your relatives in the light - is a very recent invention, only a little older than Goldman Sachs. Most of the believers in heaven across history would find it unrecognisable. Miller's book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, teases out the strange history of heaven - and shows it's not what you think.
Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I'll show you what's lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Koran lived in thirst - so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where "the first would be last, and the last would be first" - so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today's Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang. Emily Dickinson wrote: " 'Heaven' - is what I cannot Reach!/The Apple on the Tree/Provided it do hopeless - hang/That - 'Heaven' is - to Me!"
We know precisely when this story of projecting our lack into the sky began: 165BC, patented by the ancient Jews. Until then, heaven - shamayim - was the home of God and his angels. Occasionally God descended from it to give orders and indulge in a little light smiting, but there was a strict no-dead-people door policy. Humans didn't get in, and they didn't expect to. The best you could hope for was for your bones to be buried with your people in a shared tomb and for your story to carry on through your descendants. It was a realistic, humanistic approach to death. You go, but your people live on.
So how did the idea of heaven - as a perfect place where God lives and where you end up if you live right - rupture this reality? The different components had been floating around "in the atmosphere of Jerusalem, looking for a home", as Miller puts it, for a while. The Greeks believed there was an eternal soul that ascended when you die. The Zoroastrians believed you would be judged in the end-time for your actions on earth. The Jews believed in an almighty Yahweh.
But it took a big bloody bang to fuse them. In the run up to heaven's invention, the Jews were engaged in a long civil war over whether to open up to the Greeks and their commerce or to remain sealed away, insular and pure. With no winner in sight, King Antiochus got fed up. He invaded and tried to wipe out the Jewish religion entirely, replacing it with worship of Zeus. The Jews saw all that was most sacred to them shattered: they were ordered to sacrifice swine before a statue of Zeus that now dominated their Temple. The Jews who refused were hacked down in the streets.
Many young men fled into the hills of Palestine to stage a guerrilla assault - now remembered as the Hanukkah story. The old Jewish tale about how you continue after you die was itself dying: your bones couldn't be gathered by your ancestors anymore with so many Jews scattered and on the run. So suddenly death took on a new terror. Was this it? Were all these lives ending forever, for nothing? One of the young fighters - known to history only as Daniel - announced that the martyred Jews would receive a great reward. "Many of those who sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt," he wrote and launched us on the road to the best-selling 1990s trash 90 Minutes in Heaven. Daniel's idea was wildly successful. Within a century, most Jews believed in heaven, and the idea has never died.
But while the key components of heaven were in place, it was not the kumbaya holiday camp it has become today. It was a place where you and God and the angels sat - but Jesus warned "there is no marriage in heaven". You didn't join your relatives. It was you and God and eternal prayer. It was paradise, but not as we know it.
Even some atheists regard heaven as one of the least-harmful religious ideas: a soothing blanket to press onto the brow of the bereaved. But its primary function for centuries was as a tool of control and intimidation. The Vatican, for example, declared it had a monopoly on St Peter's VIP list - and only those who obeyed their every command and paid them vast sums for Get-Out-of-Hell-Free cards would get them and their children onto it. The afterlife was a means of tyrannising people in this life. This use of heaven as a bludgeon long outlasted the Protestant Reformation. Miller points out that in Puritan New England, heaven was not primarily a comfort but rather "a way to impose discipline in this life."
It continues. Look at Margaret Toscano, a sixth-generation Mormon who was a fanatical follower of Joseph Smith in her youth. Then she studied feminism at university. She came back to her community and argued that women ought to be allowed to become priests. The Mormon authorities - the people who denied black people had souls until 1976 - ordered her to recant, and said if she didn't, she wouldn't go to heaven with the rest of her family. She refused. Now her devastated sisters believe they won't see her in the afterlife.
Worse still, the promise of heaven is used as an incentive for people to commit atrocities. I have seen this in practice: I've interviewed wannabe suicide bombers from London to Gaza to Syria, and they all launched into reveries about the orgy they will embark on in the clouds. Similarly, I was once sent - as my own personal purgatory - undercover on the Christian Coalition Solidarity tour of Israel. As we stood at Megido, the site described in the Book of Revelation as the launchpad for the apocalypse, they bragged that hundreds of thousands of Arabs would soon be slaughtered there while George Bush and his friends are raptured to heaven as a reward for leading the Arabs to their deaths. Heaven can be an inducement to horror.
Yet there is an unthinking "respect" automatically accorded to religious ideas that throttles our ability to think clearly about these questions. Miller's book - after being a useful exposition of these ideas - swiftly turns itself into a depressing illustration of this. She describes herself as a "professional sceptic", but she is, in fact, professionally credulous. Instead of trying to tease out what these fantasies of an afterlife reveal about her interviewees, she quizzes everyone about their heaven as if she is planning to write a Lonely Planet guide to the area, demanding more and more intricate details. She only just stops short of demanding to know what the carpeting will be like. But she never asks the most basic questions: where's your evidence? Where are you getting these ideas from? These questions are considered obvious when we are asking about any set of ideas, except when it comes to religion, when they are considered to be a slap in the face.
Of course there's plenty of proof that the idea of heaven can be comforting, or beautiful - but that doesn't make it true. The difference between wishful thinking and fact-seeking is something most six-year-olds can grasp, yet Miller - and, it seems, the heaven-believing majority - refuse it here. Yes, I would like to see my dead friends and relatives again. I also would like there to be world peace, a million dollars in my current account, and for Matt Damon to ask me to marry him. If I took my longing as proof they were going to happen, you'd think I was deranged.
"Rationalist questions are not helpful," announces one of her interviewees - a professor at Harvard, no less. This seems to be Miller's view too. She stresses that to believe in heaven you have to make "a leap of faith" - but in what other field in life do we abandon all need for evidence? Why do it in one so crucial to your whole sense of existence? And if you are going to "leap" beyond proof, why leap to the Christian heaven? Why not convince yourself you are going to live after death in Narnia, or Middle Earth, for which there is as much evidence? She doesn't explain: her arguments dissolve into a feel-good New Age drizzle.
True, Miller does cast a quick eye over the only "evidence" that believers in heaven offer - the testimonies of people who have had near-death experiences. According to the medical journal The Lancet, between 9 per cent and 18 per cent of people who have been near death report entering a tunnel, seeing a bright light, and so on. Dinesh D'Souza, in his preposterous book Life After Death, presents this as "proof" for heaven. But in fact there are clear scientific explanations. As the brain shuts down, it is the peripheral vision that goes first, giving the impression of a tunnel. The centre of your vision is what remains, giving the impression of a bright light. Indeed, as Miller concedes: "Virtually all the features of [a near-death experience] - the sense of moving through a tunnel, an 'out of body' feeling, spiritual awe, visual hallucinations, and intense memories - can be reproduced with a stiff dose of ketamine, a horse tranquilliser frequently used as a party drug." Is a stoner teenager in a K-hole in contact with God and on a day-trip to heaven? Should the religious be dropping horse dope on Sundays? But Miller soon runs scared from the sceptical implications of this, offering the false balance of finding one very odd scientist who says that these experiences could point beyond life - without any proof at all.
But even if you set aside the absence of even the tiniest thread of evidence, there is a great conceptual hole at the heart of heaven - one that has gnawed at even its fondest believers. After a while, wouldn't it be excruciatingly dull? When you live in the desert, a spring seems like paradise. But when you have had the spring for a thousand years, won't you be sick of it? Heaven is, in George Orwell's words, an attempt to "produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary". Take away the contrast, and heaven becomes hell.
And yet, and yet ... of course I understand why so many people want to believe in heaven, even now, even in the face of all the evidence, and all reason. It is a way - however futilely - of trying to escape the awful emptiness of death. As Philip Larkin put it: "Not to be here/Not to be anywhere/And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true". To die. To rot. To be nothing. We wouldn't be sane if we didn't seek a way to leap off this conveyor-belt heading towards a cliff.
So yes, there is pain in seeing the truth about Heaven - but there is also a liberation in seeing beyond the childhood myths of our species. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in Babylon 4,000 years ago, the eponymous hero travels into the gardens of the gods in an attempt to discover the secret of eternal life. His guide tells him the secret - there is no secret. This is it. This is all we're going to get. This life. This time. Once. "Enjoy your life," the goddess Siduri tells him. "Love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace." It's Lennon's dream, four millennia ahead of schedule: above us, only sky. Gilgamesh returns to the world and lives more intensely and truly and deeply than before, knowing there is no celestial after-party and no forever. After all this time, can't we finally follow Gilgamesh to a world beyond heaven?
Get a free e-mail account with Hotmail. Sign-up now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)