Lessons from the Sky

Democracy does not mean that it is the rule of the human beings alone. The definition that democracy is the government of the people for the people and by the people is an obsolete one. Such a democracy can be termed as anthropocentric democracy where we are concerned only with the right of the human beings alone. We are totally unconcerned with the right of a granule of dust or the whole of vegetative kingdom. Democracy can never be a good system of government if it exploits nature, because it affects the free movement of the individual in one sense or the other in a different manner. So in a democratic set up what happens is that one has to expand the definition of democracy. Democracy has to include not only the human beings but also the biotic and the non-biotic entities of the universe as a whole. So a democratic government must be able to respect the right of a particle of dust and also it must extend a possible regulated mechanism to protect such a right, maintained by the non biotic world. It can never be confined to the biotic world alone but to the non-biotic levels also and then we must be able to protect the right of one and all. So democracy in this sense is not the rule of one or a few over the majority or the minority or the rest who are not part of a particular ideology but democracy means it is the rule by one and all in the sense that everyone must be able to regulate himself. Such a self regulated activity alone can be treated as the basis of democracy. Then a question can be raised about the nature of non-human beings which are not concerned with the discriminatory power which is not applying the discriminatory power. How can we say that they are also part of a democracy? The answer is that no being or non- being in the universe except human beings will never be able hurt the rights of the other entity. Take for the example of a lion. A lion eats only when it feels hungry. No lion kills another animal as part of their sporting experience. This is not the case of human beings. No being in this universe ever collects anything for its family or its future generation. What they are doing is that they want only what they need at that particular moment of time. Human beings have got the habit of collecting and keeping things for a long time. They expect that they can keep it forever because they falsely believe that they must be able to lead a very long life on earth or probably till the end of it. Such a concept is too dangerous. What is possible is that in a democratic set up the people must be able to understand the fact that non-biotics are strictly following the rules of Nature and the Universal law that governs the macro and the micro, organic and the inorganic in manifestation. But human beings due to their ability to apply discriminatory power have got the habit of collecting and keeping. That is why Jesus once asked his disciples to learn the principles of right living on the earth not from the human beings but from the birds of the sky. No bird hoards anything for the future. It gets enough to satisfy the present. Humans are not able to follow that dictum but the spirit of that dictum should be practiced and maintained by every human being.