{"id":3060,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3060"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:41","slug":"31-the-inadequacy-of-the-state-idea-vol-25-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/25-the-human-cycle\/31-the-inadequacy-of-the-state-idea-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-31_The Inadequacy of the State Idea.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter IV
\n\t<\/font>
\n\t<\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Inadequacy of the State Idea <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tW<\/font>HAT<\/b>, after all, is this State idea, this idea of the organised community to which the individual has to
\n be immolated? Theoretically, it is the subordination
\nof the individual to the good of all that is demanded; practically, it is his subordination to a collective egoism, political,
\nmilitary, economic, which seeks to satisfy certain collective aims and ambitions shaped and imposed on the great mass of the
\nindividuals by a smaller or larger number of ruling persons who are supposed in some way to represent the community. It is
\nimmaterial whether these belong to a governing class or emerge as in modern States from the mass partly by force of character,
\nbut much more by force of circumstances; nor does it make any essential difference that their aims and ideals are imposed
\nnowadays more by the hypnotism of verbal persuasion than by overt and actual force. In either case, there is no guarantee that
\nthis ruling class or ruling body represents the best mind of the nation or its noblest aims or its highest instincts. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNothing of the kind can be asserted of the modern politician in any part of the world; he does not represent the soul of a
\npeople or its aspirations. What he does usually represent is all the average pettiness, selfishness, egoism, self-deception that is
\nabout him and these he represents well enough as well as a great deal of mental incompetence and moral conventionality, timidity
\nand pretence. Great issues often come to him for decision, but he does not deal with them greatly; high words and noble ideas are
\non his lips, but they become rapidly the claptrap of a party. The disease and falsehood of modern political life is patent in every
\ncountry of the world and only the hypnotised acquiescence of all, even of the intellectual classes, in the great organised sham,
\ncloaks and prolongs the malady, the acquiescence that men yield to everything that is habitual and makes the present atmosphere
\n \t\t\tof their lives.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 296<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Yet it is by such minds that the good of all has to be decided, to such hands that it has to be entrusted, to such
\nan agency calling itself the State that the individual is being more and more called upon to give up the government of his
\nactivities. As a matter of fact, it is in no way the largest good of all that is thus secured, but a great deal of organised blundering
\nand evil with a certain amount of good which makes for real progress, because Nature moves forward always in the midst of
\nall stumblings and secures her aims in the end more often in spite of man’s imperfect mentality than by its means.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut even if the governing instrument were better constituted and of a higher mental and moral character, even if some way
\ncould be found to do what ancient civilisations by their enforcement of certain high ideals and disciplines tried to do with their
\nruling classes, still the State would not be what the State idea pretends that it is. Theoretically, it is the collective wisdom and
\nforce of the community made available and organised for the general good. Practically, what controls the engine and drives
\nthe train is so much of the intellect and power available in the community as the particular machinery of State organisation
\nwill allow to come to the surface; but it is also caught in the machinery and hampered by it and hampered as well by the
\nlarge amount of folly and selfish weakness that comes up in the emergence. Doubtless, this is the best that can be done under
\nthe circumstances, and Nature, as always, utilises it for the best. But things would be much worse if there were not a field left for
\na less trammelled individual effort doing what the State cannot do, deploying and using the sincerity, energy, idealism of the best
\nindividuals to attempt that which the State has not the wisdom or courage to attempt, getting that done which a collective conservatism and imbecility would either leave undone or actively suppress and oppose. It is this energy of the individual which is
\nthe really effective agent of collective progress. The State sometimes comes in to aid it and then, if its aid does not mean undue
\ncontrol, it serves a positively useful end. As often it stands in the way and then serves either as a brake upon progress or supplies the necessary amount of organised opposition and friction 
\n\t\t\talways needed to give greater energy and a more complete shape to
\n\t\t\tthe new thing which is in process of formation.  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 297<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

But what we
\nare now tending towards is such an increase of organised State power and such a huge, irresistible and complex State activity as
\nwill either eliminate free individual effort altogether or leave it dwarfed and cowed into helplessness. The necessary corrective
\nto the defects, limitations and inefficiency of the State machine will disappear.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe organised State is neither the best mind of the nation nor is it even the sum of the communal energies. It leaves out
\nof its organised action and suppresses or unduly depresses the working force and thinking mind of important minorities, often
\nof those which represent that which is best in the present and that which is developing for the future. It is a collective egoism
\nmuch inferior to the best of which the community is capable. What that egoism is in its relation to other collective egoisms
\nwe know, and its ugliness has recently been forced upon the vision and the conscience of mankind. The individual has usually something at least like a soul, and at any rate he makes up for the deficiencies of the soul by a system of morality and an
\nethical sense, and for the deficiencies of these again by the fear of social opinion or, failing that, a fear of the communal law
\nwhich he has ordinarily either to obey or at least to circumvent; and even the difficulty of circumventing is a check on all except
\nthe most violent or the most skilful. But the State is an entity which, with the greatest amount of power, is the least hampered by internal scruples or external checks. It has no soul or only a rudimentary one. It is a military, political and economic
\nforce; but it is only in a slight and undeveloped degree, if at all, an intellectual and ethical being. And unfortunately the chief
\nuse it makes of its undeveloped intellect is to blunt by fictions, catchwords and recently by State philosophies, its ill-developed
\nethical conscience. Man within the community is now at least a half-civilised creature, but his international existence is still
\nprimitive. Until recently the organised nation in its relations with other nations was only a huge beast of prey with appetites
\nwhich sometimes slept when gorged or discouraged by events, but were always its
\n\t\t\tchief reason for existence.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 298<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Self-protection and self-expansion by the devouring of others were its
\ndharma<\/i>.
\nAt the present day there is no essential improvement; there is only a greater difficulty in devouring. A “sacred egoism” is
\nstill the ideal of nations, and therefore there is neither any true and enlightened consciousness of human opinion to restrain the
\npredatory State nor any effective international law. There is only the fear of defeat and the fear, recently, of a disastrous economic
\ndisorganisation; but experience after experience has shown that these checks are ineffective.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn its inner life this huge State egoism was once little better than in its outer relations.1 Brutal, rapacious, cunning, oppressive, intolerant of free action, free speech and opinion, even of freedom of conscience in religion, it preyed upon individuals
\nand classes within as upon weaker nations outside. Only the necessity of keeping alive and rich and strong in a rough sort
\nof way the community on which it lived made its action partially and crudely beneficent. In modern times there has been
\nmuch improvement in spite of deterioration in certain directions. The State now feels the necessity of justifying its existence
\nby organising the general economic and animal well-being of the community and even of all individuals. It is beginning to
\nsee the necessity of assuring the intellectual and, indirectly, the moral development of the whole community. This attempt of
\nthe State to grow into an intellectual and moral being is one of the most interesting phenomena of modern civilisation. Even
\nthe necessity of intellectualising and moralising it in its external relations has been enforced upon the conscience of mankind by
\nthe European catastrophe. But the claim of the State to absorb all free individual activities, a claim which it increasingly makes
\nas it grows more clearly conscious of its new ideals and its possibilities, is, to say the least of it, premature and, if satisfied,
\nwill surely end in a check to human progress, a comfortably organised stagnancy such as overtook the Graeco-Roman world after the establishment of the Roman Empire. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1 I am speaking of the intermediate age between ancient and modern times. In ancient times the State had, in some countries at least, ideals and a conscience with regard to
\nthe community, but very little in its dealings with other States.   <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 299<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe call of the State to the individual to immolate himself on its altar and to give up his free activities into an organised
\ncollective activity is therefore something quite different from the demand of our highest ideals. It amounts to the giving up of
\nthe present form of individual egoism into another, a collective form, larger but not superior, rather in many ways inferior to
\nthe best individual egoism. The altruistic ideal, the discipline of self-sacrifice, the need of a growing solidarity with our fellows
\nand a growing collective soul in humanity are not in dispute. But the loss of self in the State is not the thing that these high ideals
\nmean, nor is it the way to their fulfilment. Man must learn not to suppress and mutilate but to fulfil himself in the fulfilment of
\nmankind, even as he must learn not to mutilate or destroy but to complete his ego by expanding it out of its limitations and
\nlosing it in something greater which it now tries to represent. But the deglutition of the free individual by a huge State machine
\nis quite another consummation. The State is a convenience, and a rather clumsy convenience, for our common development; it
\nought never to be made an end in itself. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe second claim of the State idea that this supremacy and
\nuniversal activity of the organised State machine is the best means of human progress, is also an exaggeration and a fiction.
\nMan lives by the community; he needs it to develop himself individually as well as collectively. But is it true that a State-governed
\naction is the most capable of developing the individual perfectly as well as of serving the common ends of the community? It
\nis not true. What is true is that it is capable of providing the cooperative action of the individuals in the community with
\nall necessary conveniences and of removing from it disabilities and obstacles which would otherwise interfere with its working.
\nHere the real utility of the State ceases. The non-recognition of the possibilities of human cooperation was the weakness of
\nEnglish individualism; the turning of a utility for cooperative action into an excuse for rigid control by the State is the weakness
\nof the Teutonic idea of collectivism. When the State attempts to
\ntake up the control of the cooperative action of the community, it condemns itself to create a monstrous machinery which will
\nend by crushing out the freedom, initiative and various growth of the human being.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 300<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe State is bound to act crudely and in the mass; it is incapable of that free, harmonious and intelligently or instinctively varied action which is proper to organic growth. For the State is not an organism; it is a machinery, and it works like
\na machine, without tact, taste, delicacy or intuition. It tries to manufacture, but what humanity is here to do is to grow and
\ncreate. We see this flaw in State-governed education. It is right and necessary that education should be provided for all and
\nin providing for it the State is eminently useful; but when it controls the education, it turns it into a routine, a mechanical
\nsystem in which individual initiative, individual growth and true development as opposed to a routine instruction become impossible. The State tends always to uniformity, because uniformity is easy to it and natural variation is impossible to its essentially
\nmechanical nature; but uniformity is death, not life. A national culture, a national religion, a national education may still be
\nuseful things provided they do not interfere with the growth of human solidarity on the one side and individual freedom of
\nthought and conscience and development on the other; for they give form to the communal soul and help it to add its quota to
\nthe sum of human advancement; but a State education, a State religion, a State culture are unnatural violences. And the same
\nrule holds good in different ways and to a different extent in other directions of our communal life and its activities. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe business of the State, so long as it continues to be a necessary element in human life and growth, is to provide all
\npossible facilities for cooperative action, to remove obstacles, to prevent all really harmful waste and friction,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 a certain
\namount of waste and friction is necessary and useful to all natural action, \u2014 and, removing avoidable injustice, to secure
\nfor every individual a just and equal chance of self-development and satisfaction to the extent of his powers and in the line of his
\nnature. So far the aim in modern socialism is right and good. But all
\n\t\t\tunnecessary interference with the freedom of man’s growth is or can
\n\t\t\tbe harmful. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 301<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Even cooperative action is injurious if, instead of seeking the good of all compatibly with the necessities of individual growth,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 and without individual growth there
\ncan be no real and permanent good of all, \u2014 it immolates the individual to a communal egoism and prevents so much free
\nroom and initiative as is necessary for the flowering of a more perfectly developed humanity. So long as humanity is not fullgrown, so long as it needs to grow and is capable of a greater perfectibility, there can be no static good of all; nor can there
\nbe any progressive good of all independent of the growth of the individuals composing the all. All collectivist ideals which seek
\nunduly to subordinate the individual, really envisage a static condition, whether it be a present status or one it soon hopes
\nto establish, after which all attempt at serious change would be regarded as an offence of impatient individualism against
\nthe peace, just routine and security of the happily established communal order. Always it is the individual who progresses and
\ncompels the rest to progress; the instinct of the collectivity is to stand still in its established order. Progress, growth, realisation
\nof wider being give his greatest sense of happiness to the individual; status, secure ease to the collectivity. And so it must be
\nas long as the latter is more a physical and economic entity than a self-conscious collective soul.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is therefore quite improbable that in the present conditions of the race a healthy unity of mankind can be brought about
\nby State machinery, whether it be by a grouping of powerful and organised States enjoying carefully regulated and legalised
\nrelations with each other or by the substitution of a single WorldState for the present half chaotic half ordered comity of nations,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 be the form of that World-State a single empire like the Roman or a federated unity. Such an external or administrative
\nunity may be intended in the near future of mankind in order to accustom the race to the idea of a common life, to its habit,
\nto its possibility, but it cannot be really healthy, durable or beneficial over all the true line of human destiny unless something
\nbe developed more profound, internal and real.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 302<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tOtherwise the
\nexperience of the ancient world will be repeated on a larger scale and in other circumstances. The experiment will break down and
\ngive place to a new reconstructive age of confusion and anarchy. Perhaps this experience also is necessary for mankind; yet it
\nought to be possible for us now to avoid it by subordinating mechanical means to our true development through a moralised
\nand even a spiritualised humanity united in its inner soul and not only in its outward life and body.
\n  \n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 303<\/font><\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter IV   The Inadequacy of the State Idea   WHAT, after all, is this State idea, this idea of the organised community to which…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25-the-human-cycle","wpcat-58-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}