Consciousness and the social cycles

I have often wondered why the Hindus classified all humans and societies under four varnas or classes of shudra (worker), ksattriya (warrior), brahmin (intellectual), and vaesya (merchant). Why not have five or ten classes instead of four?

I got my answer when I read Hume’s explanation on the nature of merchants:

The infallible consequence of all industrious professions is to beget frugality, and make the love of gain prevail over the love of pleasure. Among lawyers and physicians [intellectuals], there are many more who live within their income, than who exceed it, or even live up to it. But lawyers and physicians beget no industry. They even acquire their riches at the expence of others. Merchants, on the contrary, beget industry by serving as canals to convey it through every corner of the state

So the key difference between the intellectual class and the merchant class is physical work. We can say that the change from the intellectual class to the merchant class is the mind of society switching from the abstract metaphysical world, mastered by intellectuals, into the concrete physical world, mastered by workers. The merchant class is the transitory stage between 100% metaphysics and 100% physics, so that:

Likewise, a warrior is a worker that gives importance to metaphysics — planning, strategy, tactics, foresight, etc. That’s why the ideal warrior or leader is the philosopher-king (50% metaphysics, 50% physics). From a philosopher-king he turns into an intellectual (100% metaphysics). From an intellectual, he then turns into merchant (50% metaphysics, 50% physics) and then into a worker (100% physics).

With this, we can see that social cycles are merely groups of human minds switching between physicality and metaphysicality in order to maintain its individual existence in physical reality. A tough physical problem can only be solved by a metaphysical idea, while a questionable metaphysical probability can only be proven in the physical world through real experiments.

You could also say that physicality is one leg while metaphysicality is another leg. Physical existence ‘moves forward’ when both legs work together, focusing one each leg at a time. In contrast, rocks just have physicality and cannot really have any progress, and a good idea is just an idea unless it is implemented in the real world (this is a common issue with inventors and tech startups).

This simplification of what the human mind is trying to do in various cycles helps us get a clearer idea of what consciousness is, which we can now define as a processing unit of existence.

Consciousness = processing unit of existence

This means that consciousness is the effect of existence and cannot possibly exist without the idea of existence.

But wait! Won’t that definition make us materialistic because it makes consciousness subordinate to existence? Yes, because as physical beings, we open our eyes to see existence that is beyond our control. However, we can negate this definition if we could use our consciousness to create existence — I am conscious of a pink elephant and so a pink elephant exists in my mind. This would be a God point of view, and not a human point of view.

So from a God point of view we can say that consciousness is the cause of existence. This however, would be purely philosophical and have nothing to do with our social cycles. It would also be impractical because we cannot create things instantaneously by merely thinking of them (rather, it could take a lot of time before they physically exist).

But wait! Wouldn’t having two opposing definitions for the same thing be absurd (i.e. paradoxical) since one definition would instantly destroy the other? Yes. To remove the paradox, we assign a new word ‘mind’ for active consciousness or when it is used as the cause of existence, so that we have a draft definition:

Mind = processing unit of existence that also acts on existence

This would then make our earlier sentence more accurate and remove the paradox:

“My mind conceived an idea of a pink elephant and so a pink elephant existed in my mind.”

Mind would be a lot more difficult to define because it also requires a deep knowledge of existence. So we shall leave that for another post.