Nature of 'Accidents'
If being of universe is the
‘effect’ then there must be a cause behind it.
Are there accidents in
Nature? If not then the ‘causality’ prevails. We may not know the cause at each
occasion, for every effect. If being of universe is the ‘effect’ then there
must be a cause behind it, this is a logical conclusion. Science or any
other discipline of knowledge is not being able to detect it would not rule out
its existence. Book “PURPOSE OF THE
UNIVERSE” written by Swami Vijnananand (s. v.), published in December 1961 discusses
the nature of so-called accidents. Here are some excerpts:
'Accidents'
Suddenly, a railway engine
is derailed and it costs a passenger his precious left eye. An automobile runs
across a pavement (side walk), running over a happy-go-lucky stretching himself
on the seashore. An innocent infant is torn to pieces in a house-collapse. Such
flabbergasting (mystifying, confusing) stupid occurrences certainly call for
further analysis, before being accepted as purely having an internal origin.
(l) Institute the inquiry
from the other side.
How would the skeptic
explain narrow escape of a blessedly lucky who was scheduled to travel by the
train derailed later and who was saved by his last-minute cancellation? A close
friend of the happy-go-lucky, prey to the accident on the shore had refused to
accompany him; since 'accidentally' he had injured his left thigh, while
walking the stairs. In the dwindling tenement (rental house / room) that
collapsed, another family drove out of its cell its naughty child, a few
seconds before the melodramatic disaster, resulting in hair-breadth escape of
the child.
I A) What prohibits the
conclusion then that the fortunate falling in second category evaded their
doomsday accidentally which virtually makes no advance than substituting the word
'accident' for the notion: 'innate (natural, born in mind) cause?
1 B) How can capricious
(erratic, fanciful) 'accident' favoring the concerned be construed? For
example, does the injury of thigh that prevented the fortunate from visiting
the sea-beach by accident 'accidentally' save him?
1 C) Reuter News Agency
released news in Express dated 5-3-60, concerning Agadir, a Moroccan city which
suffered an earthquake. It reads, "A woman giving birth to a baby was
uncovered last night by rescue workers from under the debris of her home in
Agadir, which was turned into a heap of rubble by Monday's earthquake. The
woman had been trapped under the ruins of her home three days ago. The mother
and child were both saved"-
1 D) Implied import
(meaning, sense, significance) of accident conveys hypothetically unwelcome
situation, which indeed is invalidated in cases mentioned in the foregoing. A
small 'accident' eschews (avoids) more monstrous mishaps can hardly be a
prudent reasoning. It is confounding (confusing) to draw a moral that naughty
children help themselves to escape the house wreckage. No amount of sophistry
(apparently plausible but false, misleading argument) lends hand in absolving
(exempting, relieving) internal 'cause' of a victim in any predicament
(dangerous situation).
(2) Again, in an all
devouring earthquake a new built mansion may collapse and who knows, an old
hut stands chances to survive. If the former is an accident, the latter
also is one. Eventually, the achievement seldom goes beyond rechristening
(giving another name to) the word 'causality'. Once the law is established, it
is undesirable to change the connotation (implication, intention) as it is
suitable to momentary subjective requirements.
(3) Continuing with the
uncontrolled truck that smashed our friend, resting on the shore, in the
neoteric (new, recent) perspective.
3 A) On the road, coming to
a dead stop suddenly, if the engine totally fails to move an inch, the car gets
no opportunity to touch any object and no 'accident' takes place.
3 B) But imagine the car is
out of control without coming to a dead stop and directs itself to the
pavement, fabricated of cement slabs, say of 150 pounds approximately equal to
a well-built adult. Over-running the slab, if the automobile checks itself,
there is no damage and no accident as such.
3 C) if the car proceeds and
slightly damages a lamp-post without being noticed, the motor owner has another
opportunity to avert accusations and abuses.
3 D) In the event of the
uncontrollable vehicle continuing its march; things shape differently. Our
Hedonist friend literally basking in the sunshine, on the pleasing seashore, is
given a death-blow. Curiously the cement slab and the happy-go-lucky both weigh
150 pounds; in case of the latter collision, the incident is branded as
accident. The obvious reason for man to give way is his own frail texture (weak
body frame). Again, in the last analysis, the subject comes in the picture.
(4) Innumerable instances
substantiate erroneous implication of our notion about accident.
Two representative fatal
cases should give us authentic clue. Re-examine accidental death of our friend
on the sea-beach where 'causal agent’ is taken to be an unchecked automobile
and compare it with another casualty to typhoid where the causal agent is typhus
bacterium.
Four features distinguish
the accidental occurrence.
Unwantedness
Unexpectedness
Unconsciousness
Internal weakness of the subject
Properly analyzed in
bacterial invasion the same features come into play.
Firstly, none wants bacterium
to switch on an attack.
Secondly, nobody ever
expects it. (The first differs from second, where the latter lays stress on
unpredictability).
Thirdly, the would-be
sufferer never consciously (in its usual sense) allows intake of typhoid germs
in the liquid.
Lastly, it is the internal
weakness of the victim that brings about the general breaking up.
Medical authorities and
bacteriologists substantiate the habitual belief that the bacterium often
peacefully lives in the metabolism and it is branded hostile only when the
constitution itself undergoes deterioration. It is pertinent to note that the
metabolism in relation to microbe is designated as 'host' in technical
phraseology (verbal expression).
The mute guest embarks in
for a warm shelter. The bewildered host himself unfortunately turns hostile and
employing scorched earth policy (strategy which involves destroying anything
that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from
an area), the scared coward commits suicide in the name of (a poor) bacterium,
the entity that lacked means for subsistence.
Accident looks to be measure
of human ignorance or ego since in the name of accident, humanity struggles
hard to keep back inherent shifts and shames.
(5) Thinkers certainly
withhold support to misnomers like chance, accident, mishap, and so on. Darwin
accepts CAUSALITY.
Science had yet to un-riddle (understand) some of the primary mysteries in the days of Darwin, which often over powered
him. Nevertheless, he invariably depreciated 'chance' in its orthodox sense.
To put it in his words'
"In the case of every species, many different checks,
acting at different periods of life, and during different seasons or years,
probably come into play; some check or some few being generally the most
potent; but all will concur in determining the average number or even the
existence of the species. In some cases it can be shown that widely different
checks act on the same species in different districts. When we look at the
plants and bushes clothing an entangled bank, we are tempted to attribute
their proportional numbers and kinds to what we call chance".
About external conditions
affecting internal he says, "It is very difficult to decide how far
changed conditions, such as of climate, food etc., have acted in a definite
manner. There is reason to believe that in the course of time the effects have
been greater than can be proved by clear evidence. But we may safely conclude
that the innumerable complex co-adaptations of structure, which we see throughout
nature between various organic beings, cannot be attributed simply to such
action. In the following cases, the conditions seem to have produced some
slight definite effect: E. Forbes asserts that shells at their southern limit,
and when living in shallow water, are more brightly colored than those of the
same species from further north or from a greater depth; but this certainly
does not always hold good. Mr. Gould believes that birds of the same species
are more brightly colored under a clear atmosphere than when living near the
coast or on islands, and Wollaston is convinced that residence near the sea
affects the colors of insects. Moquin-Tandon gives a list of plants which, when
growing at the sea-shore, have their leaves in some degree fleshy, though not
elsewhere fleshy. These slightly varying organisms are interesting in as far as
they present characters analogous to those possessed by the species which are
confined to similar conditions. When a variation is of the slightest use to any
being, we cannot tell how much to attribute to the accumulative action of
natural selection, and how much to the definite action of the conditions of
life.
Thus, it is well known to
furriers (persons dealing with furs) that animals of the same species have
thicker and better fur the further north they live; but .who can tell how much
of this difference may be due to the warmest-clad individuals having been favored
and preserved during many generations, and how much to the action of the severe
climate? For it would appear that climate has some direct action on the hair of
our domestic quadrupeds (four footed). Instances could be given of similar
varieties being produced from the same species under external conditions of
life as different as can well be conceived; and on the other hand, of
dissimilar varieties being produced under apparently the same external
conditions”.
On the face of it, the
diverse results in each current of events manifest subjective dominance. Finally denouncing chance
in outright ridicule, Darwin opines “I have hitherto some times, spoken as if
the variations so common and multiform with organic beings under domestication
(taming) and in a lesser degree with those under nature-were due to chance.
This, of course, is a wholly incorrect expression, but serves to acknowledge
plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation".
(6) Accidents no doubt
present to us a considerably perplexing picture. Japan lives under the
shadow of potent danger of earthquakes. Millions have been overturned and
ruthlessly annihilated in the Nature's fiery "freaks'. Hiroshima, the city
that suffered atom bomb disasters in the Second World War took a heavy toll of
Japan's man power, for which Americans are cursed by the aggrieved.
But whom can we blame where
there is a bolt from the blue? On 14-1-51, Reuter released a news item from
Waco (Texas, U.S.A.) that the pilot who led A-bomb on Hiroshima, Claude
Eatherly has been declared insane. The report reads, "The former United
States Air Force Major who led the Atom Bomb missions against Japan in the
Second World War, Claude Eatherly, has been declared insane by a country jury
here. The jury yesterday committed the Texas war hero to an ex-servicemen's
hospital here for treatment of schizophrenic reaction. Since 1950 he has been
admitted to the hospital nine times. The tall ex-pilot flew reconnaissance
(survey for military) missions over both Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately
ahead of the planes carrying the Atom Bombs. He once told a psychiatrist he
felt responsible for killing 100,000 people at Hiroshima. His brother, Mr.
James Eatherly, applied to a County Court last September for his brother to be
committed to a mental institution for the protection of himself as well as
others. Among the decorations Eatherly won was the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He was discharged from the Air Force in 1947 and since then has been in trouble
with the law on several occasions. He served a nine month sentence for forging
a check in New Orleans in 1953. He also robbed a grocery store in Dallas, and
broke into Post offices in Texas".
As a spontaneous reaction, a considerable population belonging to
Hiroshima is likely to gloat over the news.
No doubt the Japanese have
suffered an enormous damage. But, if, the logic of Nature's penal code is once
unreservedly glorified, it bursts forth a barrage of pointed, embarrassing
questions.
6 A) Have all the pilots
turned lunatics?
6 B) by the same logic, does
not A-bomb on Hiroshima reveals unconsciously / displays expression of a
punishment in accordance with Nature's rule? (And incidentally, were all the
residents of Hiroshima blown up to be launched into eternity?)
6 C) on endorsement of
Nature's rational equity, what difference does it make if Nature administers
correction by means of insanity, so-called accident or T.B.?
6 D) this recalls my
aphoristic (crisp) conversation with one of the convicts convicted to death during
one of my visits to jail for research.
Without my touching the point
the condemned on his own flared up, “I am not guilty of murder. Those who have
really committed the offence will meet the due penalty one day or the other. I
am unnecessarily and accidentally caught instead of them".
I paused a little and said,
'If you believe that the real culprits are incapable of evading equitable
impalement (punishment) in future, when they would be actually dealt with
retributive (penalizing) justice, they shall be as blank as you are about
immediate cause of their catastrophe. Then, they would curse some escaped
offender, following in your footsteps. While going to gallows, they will plead
ignorant of their guilt as you do today. But, dear friend, you have rightly
penetrated through Nature's fundamental creed. For some of your bygone (past)
blunder, passed out of cognition, you are meeting your present lot. I do not
want to offend you, but to confirm your own pious belief”.
The convict shook his head
after a while and conceded, "So it is. Now I will die quietly and
convinced".
7) Accidents are traced
to the man’s internal situation time and again.
Doctor Dunbar records “A
German named Marbe was first to note publicly the existence of the accident
habit. In 1926 he proved statistically that the person who has had one
accident is more likely to have another than the individual who never had any.
In 1934 a Viennese, Alexandra Adler suggested that an unknown factor in human
personality was responsible for curious repetition of injuries to those who are
prone to accident.
Giving many more
illustrations and research findings on “Accidents”, S. V. concludes with a
quote from 'Fundamentals of Marx- ism, Leninism’.
"It follows from this
connection of accident and necessity that accidental phenomena are also
governed by certain laws, which may be studied and become known".
Conclusion:
Necessarily then, every
effect-disease, accident, dis- pleasure is related to a deserving cause, though
beyond cognition, at an individual Plane. There are no accidents or
co-incidences in nature although we may not be able to trace the cause in every
occurrence of such nature.
We may not know the purpose
(i.e. cause , intent), but the being of the Universe cannot be considered as an accident.
Vijay R. Joshi
No comments:
Post a Comment