This post discusses how choice arises from conflict, in the act of conflict resolution. The nature of this conflict, how conflict resolution leads to compromises in which one side goes dominant and the other subordinate, and how the dominant-subordinate structure is later reversed, producing a cyclic change, are interesting consequences of this idea. This also leads us to think of matter as the cause of inner conflict, and consciousness as the resolver of these conflicts. It helps us understand matter in a new way, as something that is always inconsistent rather than logically consistent. To describe matter as the substratum of conflict requires a fundamentally different way of thinking than…
How Living Systems Violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics
When James Clerk Maxwell proposed the second law of thermodynamics, he envisioned a thought experiment in which two chambers of gas were joined by a small door under the control of a ‘demon’ who would selectively open the door depending on which direction the gas molecules were moving. If we think of the two chambers as containing mixtures of blue and red molecules, and they were randomly flitting about, the demon would open the door just as a red molecule was about to move into the right chamber or a blue molecule was about to move into the left. The door would remain closed otherwise. If such a demon were…
Secularism in Vedic Philosophy
Secularism arose during the era of Enlightenment in Europe with the aim to relegate religion to the private realm and determine the public sphere by reason and experience. Europe wasn’t arguing for the equality of all religions in the eyes of the government. It was arguing for the rejection of the only religion that existed in their society. The modern claim that secularism is the equality of all religions in the eyes of the government tries to hide what lies in plain sight: it is the rejection of all religion. The equality of all religions in the eyes of the government was practiced in Vedic times, but it was an…
