On Mon, 2014-03-03 at 13:00 -0800, Raj Shekhar wrote: > What I see here is that you are using the model laid out in the Indian > texts (I assume the Hindu religious texts). Using this model has > benefits, but the bias that might creep in there is that the good of > many outweigh the needs of few.
Yes indeed. The good of the many does outweigh the needs of the few. That is true of laws in every country on earth, let alone within religions despite a lot of tripe being spoken about "individual freedom" of which not a lot exists in the self proclaimed free societies of the world. Individual freedom exists only in a small space created for it by common consent within the framework of what many want. But that, and how laws are bent to benefit the few, is a different subject. Speaking of religion, I have not read a single Hindu religious or non religious text in my entire life which will soon hit six decades. Note that I did not even mention the word Hindu in my post. I base my views solely on my observations of society in India and they apply to Indians - meaning Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs and Christians. That is the way life has been lived in Indian society and continues to a great extent. There is a curious way in which things that are common to a whole lot of Indians are attributed to Hindus alone - and this is one example of a type of cognitive bias. Parents looking after children looking after elderly parents, collective family decision making, mandatory heterosexual marriage, fixing marriages within a community, a bias against homosexuality, the requirement to procreate are social mores that cut across all religions in India. In fact that behaviour extends across an entire patch of the earth from north Africa to the far east. Yes it may be "Hindu behaviour" in common parlance but guess what? Within this common "Hindu behaviour" the only thing that is not common to all is the particular god that is worshipped. Funny innit? So what is religious about this behaviour? shiv
