Marks of a Progressive Society

A society becomes dignified only when the members of the same are ready to cooperate with each other, not in the sense that there should not be any competition with each other. A society can be termed as peaceful creative and progressive only if it guarantees cooperation than competition and consensus than contradiction. A society that endures any type of inner conflict can never be called a progressive society. Development does not mean huge buildings, wide roads, extensive transportation or flooding Medias and it cannot also be evaluated on the number of institutions it runs. A developed society guarantees co-existence between one and all. According to Advaita system a society also should not be empowerment of one group/individual over the other. We have social movements for women empowerment, Dalit empowerment and empowerment of the last in the society etc; but I don’t think such isolated empowerments of one over the other will never be able to make a society peaceful. Equal empowerment should be the rule of a peaceful society; equal empowerment, in the sense that every individual should be empowered to do his actions in his own way and not in tune with the directions that come from any outside entity. A person influenced by God can never be treated as a free person as far as he considers God as an external force. Here, he is nothing more than a tool and his actions can never be adjudged as his own actions. He also does not hold the moral responsibility for his actions. If one cannot contain moral responsibility of his actions and if a society as a whole also does not hold responsibilities of any kind, then such a society cannot be said to be a peaceful society. According to Advaita way of thinking both the individual and the society should be free. The Advaita system believes that the centre of force that determines every individual is really within the phenomenon and not something external to it. That force should be the self-regulating force with the individual which guarantees co-existence and co-operation in any society. So a developed society is the one that contains self-regulated individuals, who are relating everything to themselves. A self regulating society can be treated as a developing society and a progressive society. We also have to remember that a collection of super power individuals of any kind also do not make any society progressive or developed. According to Advaitic attitude, an individual must be able to regulate himself, so is a society, so is a nation and so is the whole world. This self regulating mechanism in the individuals as well as in the whole universe must be experienced as the force on which the world should grow. This fact has often been ignored by both capitalists and communists. Both basically believe in centralization of power. The difference is that according to capitalism the centre of the force is an individual while in communism it is an abstract entity called the state. The state being the centre as it has been defined by its critics is not different from the individual in capitalism. Advaita system believes in de-centralization which should be applicable to the individual, society as well as the nation.