Come out of Money-wheel, Go into Loving-wheel.

For a happy life -
'Come out of Money-wheel, Go into Loving-wheel'

Human Life is Superset of Natural Life

Natural life means living solely dependent on Nature on whatever it provides for survival of life or its destruction. A huge number of forms of life exist with sole dependence on the Nature, to survive on food available naturally whenever atmospheric conditions of temperature, pressure, moisture, etc are congenial to life, and get destroyed if the food becomes unavailable or the atmospheric conditions becomes intolerable.

Life has a naturally built-in protective mechanism composed of 'instincts' like those of Survival - running to safety on facing danger, Procreation - producing sexually or asexually own forms of life for continuing the species on the Earth, and Adaptation - changing the self for improving chances of survival through adapting to prevailing conditions. The last instinct causes process of evolution through which different species of life evolved under different situations.

The process of adaptation is much slower than that of destruction of life due to inclement environment. Since changes in atmospheric conditions are fast and many time unpredictable, mass-scale destruction of life takes place very often. To safeguard against destruction of a species on the Earth, the Nature adopts the strategy of producing life forms of every species in huge numbers, so as to save at least a few from mass-scale destruction to keep the existing life-forms in existence. Thus, natural life undergoes mass-scale production and destruction.  

Up to this point, life remains natural but this didn't prove enough. Process of evolution caused development of intellect in some forms of life under some specific situations. The first use of intellect has been walking on two legs to make two arms free for working. Thus, there evolved the human form of life. Working with arms and hands made humans gradually more and more independent from the Nature, which we call the human life.

Next step towards modern human life was seeded by some humans deciding to settle at fixed places for years after years. This spurred a series of activities towards development of modern human civilization. Production of foods through agriculture, protective clothes for covering body, and construction of shelters for safety from dangers of aggressive atmospheric conditions and wild forms of life were the first three steps humans took for becoming independent from extremities of the Nature. This way of life is the beginning of the modern human life.

Objective of being independent from Nature was not to oppose or tame the Nature, but making changes in the self keeping in tune with natural conditions. Therefore, the Nature in its own laws remains part and parcel of human life. Humanity makes only a negligibly tiny fragment of the Cosmos governed by the laws of Nature. Hence, to keep the cosmic activities undisturbed, laws of nature must remain undisturbed. This is why I call the human life as superset of natural life.  

What is Intellectualism or Intellectual Way of Living

Technically speaking, intellectualism is an ideology wherein the subscriber predominantly relies on his/her intellect rather than physical capabilities for whatever he/she does. Its practical interpretation is a way of life dominated by use of intellect at every step the person takes. This makes a great difference in way a person thinks, speaks and performs. Let us see how it matters in day-to-day living of a person.

Supremacy of Logic

Humans have a highly developed faculty of thinking and logically deciding on problems faced by them. Therefore, logic is the first and foremost asset of human life, and making the best use of it is essential for being humane. It forms the core of intellectualism for the logic being the application of intellect.

When great scholars were developing humanity for use of intellect, enemies of humanity brought in a vicious concept of 'faith' to human life, wherein a person need not to think and logically decide on an issue but go by what somebody else guides him/her to do. Purpose of developing faith in people has been misguidance and exploitation of people by some cunning preachers of faith.

Since, humans have inertia, they look for easier ways of leading life. Faith comes handy to people saving them from complex process of thinking and logically deciding. Hence, faith became more popular than logic as way of life. This reduced number of intellectuals in humanity.   

Application of Intellect to Life

Wisdom of a person guides him/her to success in achieving his/her goals without consideration of what is right or wrong. But intellect of a person illuminates him/her with knowledge of right and wrong, and forces him/her to be on the right path irrespective of whether he/she loses or wins in games of life. Even in a loss, such a person has the contentment of being on the right path, while a wise person may find physical comforts of life but feels discontentment or even repentance for what he/she might have done to win a race. This differentiation in wisdom and intellect makes an intellectual person to have and comply by moral values as basic principle of life and then applies wisdom to achieve success.

Since majority of persons want success, intellectuals are always in a minority in a society, and make a distinction by being flag-bearers for being followed by some others looking for standard principles of life.   

Synergy in Thoughts, Speech and Actions

The first sign of a person being moral is that he/she does what he/she speaks, and he/she speaks what he/she thinks. This makes his/her mind clear free from confusion of ambiguities, saving him/her energy for serving greater purposes of human life.

Such a person is always straight forward which goes against modern practices of diplomacy wherein a person speaks sweetly even with bitterness in his/her mind and actions. This trait further reduces number of subscribers of intellectualism.

Individual Freedom with Social Discipline

Since our great ancestors decided to have human settlements at fixed places, we became social animals. This imposes social discipline on each of us limiting our freedom to individual level only. Another implication of this intellectual trait is to respect rights of others through pursuing own rights, and also fulfilling own responsibilities before expecting others being responsible members of society.

This provision of intellectualism was vehemently breached by enemies of humanity through preaching religions and putting it into social arena of individuals for guiding their social lives. Since religions have been many with mutually contradictory preaching, social displays of religious performances put followers of different religions at war with one another. The right course should have been to put religious faith into individual arena of persons.

Duty of Giving Back to Life

Human life is a precious gift of Nature to us, for which we need to pay back to Nature by producing and making our children better members of humanity. This way only, we can ensure continuity of a happy human life on the planet. Apart from this being our social responsibility, it is our our individual responsibility too as a parent.

Working for Livelihood

Everyone of us needs food, clothing to cover our bodies, shelter to live in, and many other comforts of human life. All these things need us to earn money through working. Even with huge inherited wealth, a person should not lie idle or loiter here and there just because he/she is sure of meeting all his/her needs from the inheritance. Further, we are obliged to raise a family to continue human life on the planet, this too needs us to work for economic support of the family. Anybody not having a proper work for himself is not fulfilling his/her basic humanly duty.

Creating for Advancing Humanity

Modern human life needs thousands of things as necessities, facilities, conveniences, such as motor vehicles, computers, telephones, furniture, dress materials, variety of foods, oils and cosmetics, drugs and medicines, etc for each of us. Such things are available to us because somebody else created these. It becomes our duty to give back to humanity as creators of something new. Nobody can afford to remain just a user or consumer of such things like a parasite. such creations are the basic things through which humanity has advanced as superset of natural life.

Optimum Use of Resources

Every living-being survives and progresses by consuming resources from the Nature external to him/herself. Hence higher availability of resources to every living-being may mean survival of more units of life and their better qualities of life. While others may not understand this, intellectuals understand this well, they use minimum of resources to let these be available to others and manage themselves optimally.

This strategy includes minimization of wastes produced and thrown back to the Nature by them, and may need recycling of wastes. For example, conversion of human excreta into useful manure for growing fruit, vegetable and fiber plants in a garden, and further making use of organic wastes from plants and kitchen into more manure for the plants may make a family unit or a set of persons self-reliant for meeting most of their medicines, foods and fiber requirements and producing almost nothing to pollute the Nature. Such practices may ensure good health to all through right selection of food plants for growing in the garden.

The water drawn for underground is given back to the ground through rain-water harvesting during rainy season wherein the rain water from the area is taken to the lowest point and dropped into the ground through a boring. Same boring is used to provide Earthing to the Electricity circuit of the home.       

Performance Efficiency

General definition of efficiency of a system is the ratio of output to input of the system which is always less than 1. Efficiency of human life is thus measured in abstract terms through study of what a person gives out to the World external to him/her and what it takes from it. Both the input and output may be positive as well as negative. say, giving out foods for somebody is positive but giving out pollutants to the World is negative output. Similarly, an input of a food item is positive while absorbing some pollutants and neutralizing it is a negative input. 

With intellectual living as depicted above, a person essentially intakes fresh potable water, may be some food items, clothing, building material, etc from outside, and outputs a huge quantity of food, firewood, timber and medicinal items produced in the garden, and most importantly gives out nothing that is negative. Further, he/she provides homes for a large number of birds, insects, etc in the garden.

Another important service an intellectual provides to humanity is developing and exemplifying a rich tradition for others to follow. His/her children grown through intellectual living prove to be more responsible citizens than others. This makes the whole family a precious asset for society.       

Economic Worth of an Individual

Key to progress in quality of life and development of human civilization is economy for which probably each of us works through personal income to family income to national economy, and finally to economy of the whole humanity. Though direct worth of a human-being can't be based on his/her economic status, no worth survives without economic well-being.

Economy means basically keeping balance in income and expenditure. Each family unit of today has most often a single source of income but with many ways of expenditure. Important expenditure heads may be enlisted as food and health, clothing and housing, and education and entertainment with their ideal average share of 50 : 30 : 20. Mismanagement of human affairs has added one more head of economic exploitation through Aristocratic politics and faked Divine terrorism. Exhibitionist tendency of humans has further distorted how people spend their earnings. Average human-being are forced to provide, directly or indirectly, about 30 percent of their incomes to political and religious head. This has distorted the average share of human expenditure heads to about 20 : 30 : 20 : 30 for food and health, clothing and housing, education and entertainment, and charities and taxation, respectively. Each of these heads counts in progress and development of individual to humanity levels.  

This distortion in expenditure heads has adversely affected humanity with cost of increment in crimes and blockade of civilization advancement. The results are noticeable needing no keen eyes.

Politicians, administrators and religious preachers make the richest class of people with probably no or minimal productive work while hard-working humanity under their control has been struggling for survival.  

Mismanagement of economic affairs is the worst in public domain accounts of governance and religions leading to economic and social corrupt practices as premium business of humanity.

About 70 percent of humans on global level suffer from one or more of chronic diseases. This suffering goes to about 90 percent in many nations of the World.

Crimes have been on the rise continuously since recorded history of humanity leading to more miseries of average humanity. Moral values in humanity haven vanishing.

Commercial considerations have penetrated to matters like health, education, justice, etc which need be covered under public welfare for overall development of human civilization.

Economic Classification of People

From Economics point of view, there are broadly three ways people live by by their own will or under compulsions.

Lavish Living

This lifestyle aims at spending lavishly principally for three reasons -

To seek comforts, luxuries and conveniences,

To seek high status in society, and

To cover up for sense of insecurity

For adopting this lifestyle, the persons are required to earn enough to make their two ends meet for which they keep no consideration of right or wrong practices of earning money. Most of the persons of this lifestyle keep too busy in maintaining their economy that they find no time for enjoying life through family and social relationships, entertainment and recreation, and most importantly through paying attention to keeping good health. Therefore, this lifestyle makes the person more and more miserable as they often age with three types of problems -

Health : Most of the lavish spenders develop vices, particularly of womanizing and alcoholism, which reflect on their respective health. The health problems raise their heads as the persons advance in age. Since such persons do little physical work, resilience of their bodies is often low making them more prone to attack by diseases. 

Exploitation : Lavish spenders try to purchase everything, they need even rarely, at whatever price. All such price tags have high margins for manufacturers and traders, leading to their high level of exploitation. When such persons are young, their earnings are high and they don't bother for such exploitations. But with advancement in age, their earning power dwindles with corresponding increment in their worries about the exploitations. Moreover, for keeping their social status high they are expected to contribute more for social purposes. This also enhances their exploitation, hence the worries.

For their involvement in illicit activities for more and more income, people of this class try to compensate them psychologically through charitable acts with reliance on godly and religious exhibitionists, making them super-rich with no productive work by themselves.   

Economical Living

 As far as economy and quality of life are concerned, middle class people with limited earning out of their hard work serve their purposes of life in optimum ways with care about what they get from market for the prices they pay. Some of these people try to appear like the lavish spenders in their possessions with shopping cheaper things from the market for their low incomes with the result of accumulating third-grade materials in their homes and worries of maintenance of these. In the process, they get exploited. Another section of this class tries to keep a balance in quality and prices of materials they shop, hence bargain with selection of the best options within their limits of affordability.

Just Surviving

A third group in the humanity with limited resources and means of living under their command keeps on struggling for survival within their poor incomes. Most often, they rely on inferior products hence suffer with poor health. Even good quality of medical treatment remains out of bounds for these people. They have no entertainment means except having sexual pleasures, hence produce large families to feed. This makes them more poor, sick and problematic. Life expectancy and education remain the lowest in these people.   

Psychological challenges to one's Economy

First, there are necessities, then, we create needs for conveniences and then we have wants for progress, comforts and luxuries depending on how we perceive our needs and wants. For all these things we focus on getting money. But we rarely seek happiness through contentment of or satisfaction from what we already have or even set a limit for what would be enough. Thus the craving for more of wealth goes on, but there are exceptions to this. These exceptions are not for the reason that they don't have necessities, needs or wants but for the reason that they have barriers in getting inflow of money by all means for their self-imposed moral discipline, unlike common people generally do.

Here, I would focus on why persons deny getting rich through self-control for their own psychological barriers of morality and ethics. 

Crimes and Corruption

Government and employees and those of some large private organizations often involve in corrupt practices for monetary gains through misusing their official powers. Some mighty persons crush weaker persons for monetary gains. Some others involve in thefts and other crimes for such gains. Such persons and groups thereof economically thrive through anti-social activities, still there are a few who won't involve in any of such activities even if they have opportunities and living in poverty. This bar on the self is imposed for keeping up their moral values and conscientiousness. Thus, moral values etc become another block of economic prosperity.

Habitual Pleasure Seeking

Fermentation was originally devised for curing skin ailments. Later, people found that the fermented beverages have intoxicating effects which provides a sort of unusual pleasure to the drinker. With this concept in progress, fermented drinks have become sources of intoxication, hence, pleasures ruining economy of a huge number of persons on the globe becoming habitual of intoxication. Then, people devised many other ways of intoxication which dipped more persons into intoxication and economic wreckage.

Similarly, many other bad habits of seeking pleasure, such as going to prostitutes for sexual pleasures, etc ruin economy of a great number of persons who don't consider consequences of such short-term pleasures.  

Fatalists

Indian society was taught by a poet named malook Das in the following words -

iaNh djs u pkdjh] ikgqu djs uk dkeA nkl eywdk dg x;s lcds nkrk jkeAA

This means that birds etc don't work still survive. So the poet's advice is that the God looks after all. Hence, no need to work. Though all people might not have read the advice, but most of the religious-oriented persons believe in working of fate that pre-decides future of everyone. With this concept in mind, such persons keep on looking for comforts and conveniences of life without working hard for these. This keeps the poor people poor forever. 

Gambling is a game in which a bidder is promised a bounty against investment of a small amount of money, provided his/her fate is favourable. With this hope, the gamblers keep on putting at stake whatever they have and lose everything they had, thus ruining themselves.

Charities and Donations

I like to go on my pleasure or research tours like a hermit with minimum luggage, mostly a few books, notebook, pen, pencil, some dry foods like roasted grams, a mat, a sheet of cloth, and one spare dress etc all kept in a shoulder bag. Hairs on my head are generally long and many times, my beard, too, grow long for no-shaving on the way. If the place I visit is a pilgrimage, people mistake me for a beggar like many others on such places, and donate things to me without my asking. In such a case, firstly I refuse to accept but if I fail to convince the donor, I handover the materials so received to somebody else needing or looking for such things. My consideration on this is that I don't live on charities but depend on my work only.

Once, after a free meal at a religious place in high mountains (called Bhandara in India), I began washing used utensils there to work for the food I had taken. The organizers of the Bhandara requested me not to do that but I didn't relent. Later, a person came to me and told me that I was snatching means of his livelihood there by washing the utensils which was the work assigned to him. I got his point and stopped the work. After that I refuse to accept free meals in such Bhandaras.

So many of us have such inhibitions in their minds which put them in trouble or inconveniences of economy at odd places, while many others with no such inhibitions and making such things as means of their livelihoods enjoy riches after some begging.  Here I would be dealing with such inhibitions affecting one's economy.

The most powerful community of India at all times is habitual of living on charities and donations without any hitch through generations, while many other communities and persons hate living on such aids from others. The governments often promote in poor people living on their aids, and most of the persons are eager to listed as poor to get the benefits. Still, there are some who are averse to such assistances for keeping up their social status and self-esteem. Thus, consideration of self-esteem in getting something for others is the first challenge to economy of some persons.

Charities, donations and welfare schemes work as deterrent to one's economy in reverse way too. People dependent on these don't like to work hard for survival or progress thinking that they will get something from others for survival. Thus, these social parasites block their own way of hard-working for progress.  

Status Complex

Most of the persons don't like to do mean jobs like sweeping, domestic help, etc for their consciousness of their social status thinking what others in their society would think of them. Some such persons go far from their native places for taking up such petty jobs without telling the truth to their close social contacts. In both of these practices, persons' economies are adversely affected.

Persons in India celebrate marriages and even death of veterans of their families through feasting others to keep their social status high in others' eyes, even after borrowing money for such celebrations. Thus, status complex is another block on economic progress.

Some persons involve themselves in charitable activities just for being appreciated by others though their personal economy may not afford a charitable act. They just compete or imitate those who can afford, and thus ruin their economies.

Perfectionism

Many persons choose to do their jobs perfectly even losing sight of practicability or economics of the task performance. In the process, they ruin their economy. Although doing a job perfectly is not a bad idea in itself, but all aspects of a performance must be looked into during execution. All tasks don't need perfection for economic and many other reasons. Not only this, even in a task needing near-perfection, some components may not be as important as others, and the performer must pay his/her attention in accordance to the importance of different components of the task.  

Economically Worthy Human

Money serves very important purpose of happy survival of an individual. But if a person goes beyond psychological barriers to economy outlined above, a small quantity of regular income proves sufficient in providing happiness of living. Important points in this regard are worth mentioning here.

Properly selected food items, and their quantities and quality can keep a person healthy with longevity and resilience needing no medical services.

Adequate protection from climatic extremities through clothing and shelter is a necessity of modern human life. Due to current scientific knowledge of humanity, these facilities may be so designed so as to become no economic burden. For example, a home may provide all the necessary comforts of life without provisions of artificial illumination and temperature control.

After informal education from parents, children need formal institutionalized education which contributes to national worth, hence need be freely and uniformly arranged by the government from public taxation. This would improve on national worth without burdening individuals economically.

With cultivation and promotion of social discipline in society, all defense, crime control and justice machinery of the government may become redundant or reduced to minimal. This would lead to a society free from exploitation improving upon economy of every individual.

Religious faith must be limited to individual life, hence its public display must be prohibited. This would save people from psychological and economic exploitation by religious preachers.

Involvement of government in individual's life must be limited to management of common resources, with minimal taxation on people saving them from working for serving lavish politicians and administrators.    

Above-said are hypothetical provisions which are beyond materialization in near future, hence should not be waited for by individuals for leading a happy life. But every individual must review his/her own lifestyle to remold it closest to the ideal situation in light of the above-said clauses, and make him/herself happier and a worthy human-being.

Grand Meanings of Human Life

Fundamentally, meaning of human life is derived from basic human instincts of survival, progress and procreation with the purposes of living a lifespan and continuing it through generations in line with natural design. These are natural demands of life applicable to all known forms of life, but human life has evolved differently from what natural life is, as a superset of natural life. This means that the human life includes all that what nature demands from life plus a few things more. The cause of the additional things is the evolution of human intellect to a high level as compared to that of the other forms of life. This has caused evolution of three more instincts in humans.

Memory - Memorizing experiential information and using it whenever needed,

Curiosity - Being curious, hence making efforts to know things in vicinity, and

Imagination - Imagining what is non-existent and trying to develop them

Directly and indirectly, all these three additional instincts aim at improving quality of human life. Therefore, a meaning of life may be contributing to improve quality of human life. With this idea, let us examine some meanings of life through basic and additional instincts of humans.

Basic Meanings

Survival

The human experience proves that lifespan of an individual form of life can't be endless. Thus, every birth is complemented by a death. Therefore, survival is not the meaning of life but a healthy survival can be the meaning of life to an individual. For this, the individual is required to take care of health resilience and agility which are included in true meaning of good health.

Progress

In living beings and also in every organic system, regular changes are inevitable. These changes may be for betterment of the system or for its decay. Therefore, even for avoiding decay, betterment has to be adopted to by an individual in his/her life as an organic system. This betterment is renamed as progress through which the individual seeks and creates more and more convenience and comforts of life.

Humans have made rapid strides in this respect but many such efforts have become counter-productive for their adverse effects on health resilience and agility. Therefore, a balance between health and progress has to be made through trade-off between the two. For some individuals, this may be the purpose of life.

Procreation

Humans procreate with the intention of surviving after death through respective generations carrying their genes. Thus, genes appear to be immortal providing an apparent immortality to an individual. But this can't be ensured as a break in procreation of generations may be possible at any stage for various reasons. Secondly, marriages introduce amalgamation of genes from different sources, therefore, after a few generations, the original individual's genes may be present in individuals in part only. Say, a new born may have facial features of his/her one ancestor, body structure of another, characteristics of some other ancestor, etc. Therefore, the individual's set of genes gets lost through permutations and combinations of genes from different individuals down the generation chain.

Thirdly, with continuity of a certain practice different from the original practice for three or more generations, the genes undergo modifications. This upsets continuity of genetic inheritance from an ancestor.

Thus, surviving through genetic inheritance can't be the purpose of life for an individual. Through procreation, an individual can only contribute toward continuity of life on earth.

Procreation being futile for an individual for immortality through genetic inheritance, the humanity has successfully sought another purpose of getting sexual pleasure in process similar to that of procreation. Therefore, all sexual intercourses of humans don't aim at procreation which is the case with other forms of life. This makes sexual pleasure as a possible purpose of life for some individuals.

Advanced Meanings

Propagating Human Experience

Lifespan of memory records of experiences of an individual may be extended through transfer of information through generations for taking advantages of these for betterment of human life. Creating written records of experiential information through use of languages, enhances this process further. Therefore, propagation of human experience to the future generations may be a purpose of life for some individuals. Some authors may be working with this contention.

Probing the Unknown

Human instinct of curiosity may compel some individuals to improve human knowledge base through efforts for knowing the unknown. The science behind this process is to probe the unknown through what is known. This may be the meaning of life for some individuals benefitting those who seek more knowledge.

Imaginative Innovation

Human capability of imagining what is non-existent until that time works for seeding innovations through lateral thinking for improving quality of human life, but this has potential for misuse too for creating like atomic weapons to destroy a part or the whole of humanity. Whatever be the case, this may be the meaning of life for some individuals leafing to more innovations in the world which may improve or decay quality of human life.

The Grand Purpose of Life

We have seen above that various meanings of life have some potential subscribers for their own choices and provide benefits in their limited ways. Therefore, the humanity is in a process of differentiation for pursuance of different meanings of life based on basic or advanced instincts by different persons. No purpose is capable of taking the whole humanity to a higher level. In the process, some humans pursuing their basic instincts as their meaning of life may remain what they are today or even get degraded. Others pursuing their advanced instincts for their meaning of life with the basic instincts relegated to routines of life may evolve further. As a result, the humanity would get divided into humans and super-humans. This takes some of us to pursue a grand meaning of life to evolve to super-human level through conscious pursuance of advanced meanings of life.

This point of further evolution of only a part of humanity is supported by the evolution process so far wherein only parts of species have been evolving to higher levels under circumstantial differentials. Even the humans evolved from species still existing on earth in their forms of pre-human evolution. Differentials in circumstance and practices keep on creating diversity in evolution levels within each species of life, thus giving rise to multiple species from a single species.  

To summarise, the whole of this treatise, those willing to evolve to super-humanism must consciously pursue their capabilities of memorizing and recording human experiences, curiosity to improve upon the human knowledge base, and imaginative creativity, while the basic instincts of survival, progress and procreation get pursued through their routines. Those who fail to do so and keep on relying on the basic instincts only would remain as ordinary humans. 

Body can be Alive without the Brain

A recent suicide attempt in my neighborhood and his progress through ongoing medical treatment have been educating me on functioning of human body and their control by the person's mind and brain. The suicide victim is in hospital with doctors assuring his family members of a full recovery. Condition of his body which was stout and healthy otherwise, except the head injury due to shooting point-blank through frontal portion of the brain, is improving.

On passage of 10 days in hospital, he is able to breathe without external aids of oxygen and ventilator, his heart beat is normal, he opens his eyes, and is sensitive to touches on his skin. Apart from nutrition injected into his body, he is being tube-fed milk which he seems to be digesting. But there is no action from any of his action organs. It is not known whether he is able to understand what his sensory organs sense from the external world. Doctors attending him say that he would take about two more weeks for speaking and affecting other actions. With this set of information, I am trying to separate mind and brain functions in monitor, control and regulation of a person's body condition, sensory inputs and output actions. Accordingly, provided here is a functional constitution of human body with incorporation of its mind and brain.

Physical Body

Apart from mind and brain, human body has three sets of parts -

Sensory organs - palms and soles for touches, eyes for visuals, nostrils for smells, ears for sounds and taste buds for tastes.

Action organs - tongue for speech, arms with hands for handling things, legs with feet for walking, sex organs for reproduction, two excretion organs, and the body in general for other movements and expressions.

Life support systems - breathing, digestion, blood formation and circulation, etc

The Mind

Routine sustenance of these systems of body is looked after by the mind without any support from the brain. Therefore, the body may sustain or remain clinically alive even if the brain is dead.  This seems to be the present condition of the patient mentioned above.

The mind of a person is composed of many sub-minds with one in each sub-system of the body. All the sub-minds are attached in form of glands to the network of neurons spread throughout the body. Apart from taking care of routine sustenance of the body sub-systems, the mind reads body's special and contingent needs and desires, and communicates them to the brain for further instructions. Thus, the brain has no direct communication with parts of the body.

The Brain

The brain resides safely inside skull and is connected to the body through an intricate and comprehensive network of neurons, termed the mind. It has three functional parts -

Body sensing and control centers for interpreting inputs from sensory organs, issuing instructions to action organs and taking care of special and contingent needs of body's sub-systems,

Memory to keep record of experiences of the body with the external world and providing the recorded information to thinking faculty whenever needed,

Thinking faculty to analyze experiential information and take decisions for actions through the body,

Thus, the body can be clinically alive without intervention of the brain, but can't sense the external environment or take any action.

My View differs from Medical Science View

Medical science practitioners are of the opinion that the body can't sustain without the brain. So in their opinion, if a person breathes, his/her heart beats, and he/she digests food, his body is not only clinically alive but he/she is fully alive and can be brought to normal health and working. With this opinion, they keep on treating even brain-dead persons based on condition of their physical bodies. In all such cases, a day arrives when a sub-system of the body develops a contingency needing intervention of the brain. For not getting any support from the dead brain, the body meets its end of life. A brain injury is termed as 'concussion' in medical terminology. Therefore, a person with seriously injured brain has very rare chances of survival. Persons with partially injured brains may survive but with physical impairments or mental disorders. 

Mental, Psychological and Intellectual Disorders

Some disorders such as spasms, defective speech, Parkinson's disease, etc are caused by defective or broken communication links in the neuron network spread in the body - the mind of the person, resulting into communication weakness between the body, mind and the brain. Most of the spastics fall in this category. These disorders require medical treatment to strengthen the neuron network in the body.

A second type of disorders of the same class, such as phobias, excessive anger and irritation, depression and anxiety, inferiority and superiority complexes, etc is purely psychological wherein brain fails in understanding the situation in right perspective. This is dysfunction of thinking faculty of the brain and may be cured through psychological counseling by a psychiatrist. The practice of treatment strengthens neuron links within the brain for developing the right perspective. No medication is necessary in such cases but some brain tonics may prove beneficial in the treatment.    

Insanity in a person is considered a disease and is medically treated though it is rare and its low percentage of detection makes it rarer. It is a disorder of the brain wherein some part of the brain doesn't function properly. So, I put it in a class intellectual disorders which I find rampant in human societies. 

Many intellectual disorders are considered as part of culture of the people, hence neither recognized as disorders nor treated. Faith in divine miracles and incarnations, religious fundamentalism, spirituality, worshiping of pebbles and stones placed in so-called temples, respect to a person based on his/her dress or make-up, etc are intellectual disorders in people remaining untreated for thousands of years, hence becoming cultures of many societies. Such disorders have been hampering scientific developments and progress in human civilization.

Since body can survive even with a dead brain, it can survive with weak or defective brain too with display of all signs of life. But all such cases make the persons less human-beings, may be called sub-humans, than those with their brains fully functional. Unfortunately, the modern world has more of sub-humans than those with fully functional intellectual faculties, but their disorders remain undetected under covers of cultures and democratic majority of theirs. Thus, many cultures and democracies in the world have been preserving and promoting intellectual disorders in their subjects. 

Vaidic life recorded in Vaidic scriptures ensures full intellectual development of people through healthy foods. This was the case with Theo culture and race about 2,500 years back. That culture was decimated by enemies of humanity for establishing their psychological, political and social domination over common people under covers of religions. 

Having Progressive Psyche with Pleasure of Contentment

There are two philosophies of leading one's life. One says that a person must work for progress and on this path there is no need for him/her to stop. Currency coins of this philosophy are words like 'competition', 'dynamism', 'advancement', etc. Henceforth, we would be calling this way 'progressive philosophy'. Another lifestyle philosophy advocates developing a feeling of satisfaction with what has been achieved to enjoy life. Although, this seems to be the objective life is meant for, it is opposed by progressive philosophers on grounds of developing complacency, hence is counter-productive. We term this 'contentment philosophy'.

The contentment philosophy has been the hallmark of religious and spiritual preachers throughout human history, but for others only. They themselves have been found involved in amassing unlimited wealth, authority, luxuries, etc for themselves through doing business of virtual commodity of God. Although, these exhibitionist preachers seem to have massive following in common innocent people but none of the followers follows what is preached to him/her in his/her practices of real life. Hence, for the followers being faked like the preachers themselves, we keep them out of our preview through this discussion. Even then, the contentment philosophy doesn't lose its luster of bringing happiness to human faces.

In practice, we enjoy water when thirsty, rush to grab a meal when hungry, we stop taking these after our needs of these are satisfied, and feel contented. This doesn't mean that we would never again enjoy taking water, or rush for a meal. This is where and how the contentment philosophy is pursued by everyone even without any preacher or even being aware that we follow a philosophy day-in and day-out. We need no exhibitionism for it, it is purely instinctive in all forms of life. Even with this universal pursuance of contentment philosophy, we are not rejecting the progressive philosophy for its immense contribution to progress and development of human civilization.

Two above-said philosophies may be graphically depicted as shown below.

 

Two Philosophies of Life

From the above discussion, it appears that the two philosophies have their exclusive fields of application in human life, and these can't be mixed up. These two exclusive fields of life may be named as 'home' and 'work' using contentment philosophy and progressive philosophy, respectively. This is what I propose to counter here. Two philosophies may be made complementary to each other with accrued benefits of both for every individual.

Pause in between to Enjoy

The third philosophy as hybrid of the two outlined above is to have pauses in between progress efforts to enjoy gains of the progress already made. I would like to name this philosophy of life as 'Propause Philosophy', depicted in the diagram below.

Propause Philosophy of Life

Specific steps of pursuing this philosophy are -

Plan for making progress efforts with a fixed short-term and conveniently achievable target for reaching in the step,

Pause on reaching the target, review the progress made and enjoy until you feel rejuvenated for the next bout of efforts,

Plan for the next step of efforts with another specific target for achieving,

Continue the process of efforts and pauses mutually sandwiched, … …

With pursuance of this philosophy, it appears that time of pause goes waste during which some more progress would have been made, which is not the case in reality for three solid reasons. Firstly, the wholesome purpose of life, efforts, progress and achievements is to find happiness. Unless you have it through pauses, whole process of living remains a waste. Secondly, each pause rejuvenates the person to make efforts with higher efficiency for getting better results with lesser efforts, the the rate of progress at each step is enhanced, adequately compensating for the loss of time during the pause. Thirdly, every pause provides an opportunity for reviewing the past efforts and results thereof suggesting what might have gone wrong as a lesson for the future steps. This further improves performance. 

Process of Ageing

Time stamps a lasting impression of everyone's body and mind. In the first quarter of century, both grow and get enriched. Second quarter of century witnesses slower rate of growth of body coupled with higher rate of growth of mind. Third body growth is stagnated but growth of mind continues with enhanced rate. Fourth quarter of century finds the body maintaining status quo and the mind continuing to grow.

Ageing Process

Ideally speaking, the process continues and may cover a few centuries until the body begins to decay reaching the terminal stage some day as depicted above. It all depends on how an individual maintains his body and mind in healthy and active state with key being discipline in all aspects of life with rejuvenation in between through pauses as stated above. Human experience of Vaidic Era informs us human lifespan may go up to about 500 years.  

Considerations for Age Factor

With age of a person going above 50, steps of efforts and target need be designed with consideration of ageing on the body and mind. Firstly, the person must engage him/herself in more of intellectual activities coupled with reduction in physical exertions. Secondly, the steps of efforts and targets must be gradually reduced with aim at enjoying life, rather than destroying it with hard work.