Monologues - I

The Upanishads contemplate a "Theory of Truth" which suggests that the Truth can be attained through "Path of Renunciation". Once enlightenment is attained, the truth is realized and it can be enjoyed by the human mind even after renunciation of all material possessions and distractions.

The idea does not have anything controversial about it. Many religions tell their respective subjects to renounce their worldly possessions so that their souls can be released from this world and unite with God.

Why do they all do so? Maybe this is due to some common  trait that we, as Homo Sapiens species, all share. The trait of escapism. A hidden urge to escape. The Abrahamic religions preach that their souls would go to heaven or hell based on a divine judgement. Only the worthy go to Heaven and be with God, in a way escape the worldly bondage of our physical world. It is like severing that binding cord and be with God. One with Him. They have different versions of it in their textbooks but this is essentially what they teach.

Eastern religions, generally have a circular view of a soul's lifeline, preaching the birth-rebirth concept. It is through one's deeds that the soul gets appraised at regular intervals. Which is quite like the annual performance appraisal cycle, a famous event in the corporate world. Therefore, through satisfactory behaviour one's soul can achieve Moksha from our materiality to eternal sublimity and become one with God.

What makes me curious is, why do we all want to escape? Why is it that we don't have any major religion that believes that our souls shouldn't escape the material world? Why can't it be that we never escape? that there is no escape, or nowhere to escape! The phenomenon of death is a strong influencer behind this mindset. Of course, in those formative years of human being's major religions till date, death would be as incomprehensible to their minds as it is to ours even today. The affection for a person would have led it to establish in the minds of his close ones that he were still alive, in some other, ethereal form, in a state higher than us, in a state of bliss, with God (maybe that is the reason behind the invention of the concept of soul. And since our souls are eternal, in a way we are eternal. But it is also a truism that our bodies are going to stop functioning someday), our souls would be judged/appraised and ultimately we may get the chance to be in that higher Godly state of eternal bliss.

For want of a guide, ancient Hindu scriptures developed a philosophy to achieve the soul's union with God. Interestingly, this philosophy contains a theory of sheaths, or facets of our personalities. The topmost sheath, the highest of them all is the Bliss sheath. Essentially, it is a state of ignorance. Ignorance of the world and its attachments; attachments even to one's body. Ignorance here means detachment, and when one is detached completely from the world, he has escaped the world. Escapism again.

Learning Ethics from a Carbon Isotope - II

Verbose Ethics

Such examples like De Beers, often should raise questions about the corporate practices globally. If one sees every corporation through the lens of ethics, one finds a majority of them carrying a blot or two on their sugar-coated claims of corporate ethics. Corporations have, it seems, acquired a habit of lying to consumers and this habit is growing into a pathological condition as this errant habit goes unchecked, sometimes even aided, by the sovereigns.

It takes sheer insensitivity to let the environment be harmed by equipping millions of your automobiles with software designed to cheat pollution tests; it takes sheer shamelessness to brand your plastic water bottles with claims that you return more water to the ecosystem than you actually consume and go on destroying natural water reserves near human settlements; it takes "big, hairy audacity" to go on eschewing compliance requirements repeatedly and let millions of barrels of oil cripple the aquatic ecosystem and stay completely silent about it. This is just a miniscule sample of the many unethical and insensitive activities that corporates engage in order to enhance their shareholders' wealth. A common stance to inclusion of ethics and corporate responsibility into the business conduct is the Jobsesque "listen to what others say, do what you want to anyway" (of course the context is inappropriate here but it describes them perfectly). Corporates have repeatedly ignored the advice of ethicists and carried on blindly in the pursuit of economic prosperity at the expense of societal prosperity. Obedience to law is fairly pervasive in the corporate world. Unfortunately, what is not understood by the business professionals is the ethical framework behind those laws. Such an understanding would be like an ethical compass in grey territories and enable a more ethical decision making in them. Fundamentally, a laws is just an instrument of the sovereign to impose ethical conduct on its subjects. It therefore follows, that incorporating ethics into business activities would enable managers from diverting their attention from maintaining legal compliances and putting them in something constructive. When ethics gets embedded in an organization's culture, a majority of the legal compliances will be automatically met which translates into reduced legal overheads in the long run, even though it might come with a cost in the short term.

It is not their fault when managers choose to ignore the non-financial impacts of their business. The actual culpability rests with the society, with our education and with our obsession with numeration. Anything which does not translate into higher RoE or market capitalization, is often viewed as wasteful and merely a "good-to-have" activity. Rising shareholder activism has been successful partially through the introduction of CSR, triple bottom line etc. but many (perceived to be) ethical organizations all that ethical conduct means is issuing paragraphs of blank words printed on beautifully laid out reports with nothing tangible to show. This trend is giving rise to what I call "Verbose ethics" (full of words, bereft of action). For example, the CSR obligation in the Companies Act, 2013 is often met with furrowed brows in many boardrooms; many choose to fulfil this responsibility by making lump sum donations to shady NGOs, which sometimes are siphoned back into the organization it originated from. Their share of words than the share of actions is more making their ethical practice a "verbose" one. Partly the reason verbose ethics is so predominant is because academic institutions have largely chosen to ignore it. The study of ethics and its importance in our vicissitudes should be embedded in students' minds before they enter into the corporate world. Some of them would rise to be at the helm of multi-national businesses and wield significant power over their stakeholders. These  CEOs and MDs, being smart people, would hardly face any difficulties in deciding their marketing strategies or WACCs, they are relatively objective decisions. Erudition in ethics, or a lack of it, then would be the deciding factor in what course of action his/her business takes. In order to sensitize the future managers about ethics, organizational theory needs to strengthen the concept of societal wealth maximization as one of the organizations' central goals. Societal value should be given as much importance as Shareholder value. Only when the corporates are motivated to shun the dogmatic monotheism of shareholder's value and also focus on "societal value", will their verbosity be put into action.

Societal Value

Societal value is an indicator of the extent of sustainability an organization generates for the society at large. Since its explanation and refinement would require a dedicated discussion, I will try to summarize it here., It can be measured through the impact the organization has on institutional and environmental sustainability. Institutional sustainability would entail reinforcement of ethical practices in and around its areas of influence; for instance, the practice of giving bribes can be seen as eroding to the national institutional strength (a bribe given once increases the chances of a bribe being expected the second time also thereby perpetuating this practice in the long run); making good quality education available to the remote population can help build institutional value (by improving literacy and skill in the labour force); paying a more rational wage to labour will help build this strength (by making labour economically more independent). This focus on Institutional sustainability is essential to instill a greater sense of responsibility among professionals, regarding the effects their business might have on such social institutions. A business enterprise, by default, contributes towards institutional building via creating employment, enhancing commerce and solving a societal problem innovatively. However, this framework of societal value also includes an organization's contribution over and above these "fundamental duties". Environmental sustainability, is already understood. It is the contribution a corporate makes towards not harming the environment from its operations or making active efforts of improving it.

However, one major difficulty with societal value is that of immeasurability. How can an organization's contribution towards building institutional sustainability be evaluated? This area needs more research to arrive at a fairly solid framework for measuring them. Till such a model is developed, managers can use proxy KPIs to be able to fairly estimate the positive societal impact of their organization. For instance, number of whistleblowing incidents reported.

This is a personal account of how I see the corporate ecosystem through the lens of ethics and the more I scrutinize them, the more troubled I become with the fact that I, along with millions of other MBA graduates, are going to enter into this arena without a proper understanding of their ethical responsibilities towards the society and therefore would be more probable to turn a blind eye towards morality and ethical conduct.

Learning Ethics from a Carbon Isotope

De Beers used to be a monopoly. Through the formation of cartels it successfully established control both on the demand (Diamond Syndicate) and the supply side (De Beers). Before its tussles with the U.S. Anti-Trust laws, it effectively controlled 80% of the diamond industry!! Nothing so shocking here. What I was fascinated with, was a statement from my Strategy professor that De Beers has successfully pulled the biggest marketing coup in human history.

Which it really is. Think about it. How do you attribute a certain value to diamonds? Typically, any product derives its value from the extent to which it fulfills a particular need. While industrial diamonds won't give you a hard time in estimation of value as it can be derived from some operational benefit it provides, e.g. fine cutting and trimming; but how does a consumer derive value through the personal possession of a diamond? Is diamond needed by people in the first place? Was it ever needed? I find none. Unlike diamonds, gold picked up in importance quite early (owing to better availability) and time only impressed it harder on our zeitgeist; our part of the world promoted it to the status of a ritualistic necessity while others gradually brought it into the economic system thereby ensuring a perpetuity for its significance. Diamond, however, got left behind. How, then, did diamond become so valuable? One factor is its rarity which provides it its ornamental value (we shall ignore the industrial usage of diamonds). This value was justified before the 19th century's Industrial Revolution as its extraction was difficult. But the technological advancements begotten by the revolution made their extraction much easier. In a typical scenario, such a boom is followed by mushrooming of small entrepreneurs sprawled over the terrain, each fighting his own way to prosperity and this whole process ending with a reasonably sized miners controlling the resource supply in the region at the least. However, diamonds were steered into a detour by an Englishman named Cecil Rhodes.

An critique of the De Beers and commercial diamond industry

Cecil Rhodes knew that the then emerging diamond supply explosion in South Africa would be corrosive to the mineral. He therefore successfully attempted a consolidation and cartelization of the demand and supply sides of diamonds through the formation of De Beers and Diamond Syndicate. This control over virtually the complete market for a commodity, made it a monopoly. The artificial scarcity of diamonds coupled with the much famed marketing, converted what is technically a carbon isotope into an eternal symbol of love, enabling it to reap higher revenues. The point here is, was De Beers justified in creating a market out of thin air? Diamonds don't have a necessity in our lives, yet we spend extravagantly on them. Was it ethical of De Beers to lie to its consumers and generate wealth?

Rights of Man

If my first contention is clear by now, I would argue that from a purely philosophical perspective, it is unethical for any corporate body to use its consumers as means to meet its ends of fattening its bottom line and increasing shareholder value. Corporations carry a fiduciary responsibility towards its stakeholders (consumers always being predominant) of helping them meet their ends. It is under this implied covenant ("social contract", if I may call it) that law provides a corporation its legitimacy. Any organization designed as an end in itself has no claim over legal protection and is liable for the violation of the rights of man, derived from Kantian ethics. Therefore, such autotelic arrangements as De Beers have no ethical claim over their existence. De Beers has created an illusion among its consumers that diamonds are rare, effectively a misrepresentation about its product's value. 

Diamond is a natural resource. De Beers, through establishing a tight grip over its production and supply chain, effectively secured a patent over diamonds (as roughly any diamond being traded anywhere was De Beers' which brought all the "royalties" to it alone); I have argued why it is unethical to patent a natural resource in a previous post here. (http://here-i-lie.blogspot.in/2013/04/philosophical-musings-and-ruminations_30.html)

Are diamonds a necessity?

All said and done, De Beers can still be vindicated from such allegations if diamonds are shown to actually be a necessity and not a luxury i.e. it has a "reasonable" need in human lives. I mention reasonability owing to the fact that some of our needs are not actually needs, but wants; e.g. a drug addict would want his/her narcotic so bad that he/she is led into believing that it is a need rather. Minding this caveat, it is prima facie evident that diamonds don't have a necessity in our lives except for industrial purposes. Although, some might argue that diamonds are on the path which gold took centuries ago and that diamonds are gradually acquiring the status of a necessity; e.g. since diamonds have been closely associated to relationships, diamonds have become, if not pure but symbolic necessity, that it acts like a totem for your love, it is also eternal and supposedly induces this eternity in your love. Could it not be done with another gemstone, say, a ruby? Can't its red colour signify the flame of your passion? Also, relative to human longevity, a ruby is as eternal as a diamond. But the other three precious stones viz. emerald, sapphire and ruby failed to attract the human fascination and therefore were sent to the nosebleed seats. My point being, that maybe, just maybe, humanity needed one precious thing in its social evolution, that fortune went to gold; we don't need another stone to waste our resources on. Diamonds, therefore, are a luxury.

Although it can be argued that over the course of time, luxuries gradually become necessities. Imagine air travel!! Ceiling fans were found only in palaces once. New solutions to humanity's problems are often valued more than older solutions and their social status gradually subsides. A similar course could be envisaged to claim that diamonds too are on a course to becoming a necessity and will find a haven of needs in our minds someday to unload their actual value, if they carry any. To this, I would respond that other products derive value essentially because they address a particular human need. When a solution is introduced in the market, its discoverer/inventor is morally justified in reaping the fruits of his labour as a reward for his contribution to humanity's progress. Diamonds repeatedly fail this test. They never addressed any human issue in the first place!! A counter-argument can be put forward that the diamond industry supports millions of livelihoods and if the perceived value of diamonds is undermined, the livelihood of, say, diamond miners of Angola will be adversely affected. And what about those who already own diamonds? Regarding these issues, I don't have any concrete solutions to; for the marginal miners working for De Beers it can be insulated from damage by maintaining the same wage levels and  the current owners can maybe compensated for the decreased value in a phased and proportionate manner. These solutions would need money, which can be sourced by completely liquidating De Beers. The diamond industry needs a reset and this fantastical proposition is that reset.

Ferrari and a broken window

De Beers was never justified in creating this illusion of preciousness for diamonds and reaping profits out of it. By doing this, De Beers has constantly eaten into the consumers' disposable incomes and "earned" money for diminishing the consumer surplus; quite contradictory to its economic duty of augmenting the consumer surplus. One stock argument against this contention could be that many organizations earn their revenues solely from luxury products e.g. Ferrari; the argument here can be extended to all such organizations and the legitimacy of their returns stands to be questioned.

While it is true that many organizations levy premiums for their luxury products; what ethical validation does, say, Ferrari have that makes them charge inordinately for their automobiles when what its products essentially address is our need for transportation, just like another automobile. I contend that they are not violating general ethics through their actions. Because, Ferrari cars are nothing more than an option in the whole global automobile market. You, as a potential car owner, have a myriad of options to choose from. Ferrari never erects barriers to prevent you from exploring other cars. I can, as a thought experiment, evaluate Maruti 800 and a Ferrari, and make my choice independently. Therefore, it can be argued that firstly, unlike De Beers' diamonds, Ferrari's products fulfil a need and have a legitimate value. Secondly, Ferrari doesn't control the global output of cars; it can only influence the production of its plants not Rolls Royce's. In this respect, Ferrari, by acting in the economic environment is increasing competition which, ceteris paribus, rationalizes the industrial price point in due course of time. De Beers, by acting as a monopoly, has an absolute control on the diamond's price; with no market forces to decide the price in a fair manner, De Beers' position proves detrimental to the consumer surplus in the economy. These arguments impart legitimacy to both Ferrari's products and its existence, which De Beers clearly fails to have any claim on.

One last argument against the validity of commercial diamond industry is the "Broken Window Fallacy" conceived by the French economist, Frederic Bastiat. Broken Window Fallacy states that just because breaking a glass window pane would provide a commercial opportunity to a carpenter, it would be ultimately harmful to the society if the carpenter decides to go on breaking windows repeatedly to earn money by then repairing them; because every such activity (of destruction) has an opportunity cost (of the broken glass).  Such an activity would hinder the commercial activities of the carpenter's victims, the money that would go in reparation could have been used in something constructive, the carpenter could have helped a genuinely needy customer, the list can go on. There is a reason countries don't wage wars to boost their economic activity, it is because "broken glasses" are never beneficial for society.  With no need to address in the first place, diamonds consume huge amount of resources till they end up with a consumer. Aren't these resources an opportunity cost to other industries who could've used these resources for better purposes?Diamonds then are "broken glasses"; De Beers the unscrupulous "carpenter".

Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - Is Nothing better than Something?

One rather good metaphysical question is “why is there something rather than nothing?” An interesting question in the realm of value is “is it better to be nothing rather than something?” That is, is it better “not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing?”

Addressing the question does require sorting out the measure of value that should be used to decide whether it is better to not exist or to exist. One stock approach is to use the crude currencies of pleasure and pain. A somewhat more refined approach is to calculate in terms of happiness and unhappiness. Or one could simply go generic and use the vague categories of positive value and negative value.

What also must be determined are the rules of the decision. For the individual, a sensible approach would be the theory of ethical egoism—that what a person should do is what maximizes the positive value for him. On this view, it would be better if the person did not exist if his existence would generate more negative than positive value for him. It would be better if the person did exist if his existence would generate more positive than negative value for him.

To make an argument in favour of never existing being better than existing, one likely approach is to make use of the classic problem of evil as laid out by David Hume. When discussing this matter, Hume contends that everyone believes that life is miserable and he lays out an impressive catalogue of pains and evils. While he considers that pain is less frequent than pleasure, he notes that even if this is true, pain “is infinitely more violent and durable.” As such, Hume makes a rather good case that the negative value of existence outweighs its positive value.

If it is true that the negative value outweighs the positive value, and better is measured in terms of maximizing value, then it would thus seem to be better to have never existed. After all, existence will result (if Hume is right) in more pain than pleasure. In contrast, non-existence will have no pain (and no pleasure) for a total of zero. Doing the value math, since zero is greater than a negative value, never existing is better than existing.

There does seem to be something a bit odd about this sort of calculation. After all, if the person does not exist, then his pleasure and pain would not balance to zero. Rather it would seem that this sum would be an undefined value. It cannot be better for a person that she not exist since there would (obviously) not be anyone for the nonexistence to be better for.

This can be countered by saying that this is but a semantic trick—the nonexistence would be better than the existence because of the relative balance of pleasure and pain. There is also another approach—to broaden the calculation from the individual to the world.

In this case, the question would not be whether it would be better for the individual to exist or not, but whether or not a world with the individual would be better than a world without the individual. If a consequentialist approach is assumed, it is assumed that pain and pleasure are the measure of value and it is assumed that the pain outweighs the pleasure in every life, then the world would be better if a person never existed. This is because the absence of an individual would reduce the overall pain. Given these assumptions, a world with no humans at all would be a better world. This could be extended to its logical conclusion: if the suffering outweighs the pleasures in the case of all beings (Hume did argue that the suffering of all creatures exceeds their enjoyments), then it would be better that no feeling creatures existed at all. At this point, one might as well do away with existence altogether and have nothing. Thus, while it might not be known why there is something rather than nothing, this argument would seem to show that it would be better to have nothing rather than something.

Of course, this reasoning rests on many assumptions that can be easily challenged. It can be argued that the measure of value is not to be done solely in terms of pleasures and pains—that is, even if life resulted in more pain than pleasure, the overall positive value could be greater than the negative value. For example, the creation of art and the development of knowledge could provide value that outweighs the pain. It could also be argued that the consequentialist approach is in error—that estimating the worth of life is not just a matter of tallying up the negative and positive. There are, after all, many other moral theories regarding the value of existence. It is also possible to dispute the claim that pain exceeds pleasure (or that unhappiness exceeds happiness).

One could also take a long view—even if pain outweighs pleasure now, humans seem to be making a better world and advancing technology. As such, it is easy to imagine that a better world lies ahead and it depends on our existence. That is, if one looks beyond the pleasure and pain of one’s own life and considers the future of humanity, the overall balance could very well be that the positive outweighs the negative. As such, it would be better for a person to exist—assuming that she has a role in the causal chain leading to that ultimate result.One rather good metaphysical question is “why is there something rather than nothing?” An interesting question in the realm of value is “is it better to be nothing rather than something?” That is, is it better “not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing?”

Addressing the question does require sorting out the measure of value that should be used to decide whether it is better to not exist or to exist. One stock approach is to use the crude currencies of pleasure and pain. A somewhat more refined approach is to calculate in terms of happiness and unhappiness. Or one could simply go generic and use the vague categories of positive value and negative value. What also must be determined are the rules of the decision. For the individual, a sensible approach would be the theory of ethical egoism—that what a person should do is what maximizes the positive value for him. On this view, it would be better if the person did not exist if his existence would generate more negative than positive value for his. It would be better if the person did exist if his existence would generate more positive than negative value for him.

To make an argument in favour of never existing being better than existing, one likely approach is to make use of the classic problem of evil as laid out by David Hume. When discussing this matter, Hume contends that everyone believes that life is miserable and he lays out an impressive catalogue of pains and evils. While he considers that pain is less frequent than pleasure, he notes that even if this is true, pain “is infinitely more violent and durable.” As such, Hume makes a rather good case that the negative value of existence outweighs its positive value.

If it is true that the negative value outweighs the positive value, and better is measured in terms of maximizing value, then it would thus seem to be better to have never existed. After all, existence will result (if Hume is right) in more pain than pleasure. In contrast, non-existence will have no pain (and no pleasure) for a total of zero. Doing the value math, since zero is greater than a negative value, never existing is better than existing.

There does seem to be something a bit odd about this sort of calculation. After all, if the person does not exist, then his pleasure and pain would not balance to zero. Rather it would seem that this sum would be an undefined value. It cannot be better for a person that she not exist since there would (obviously) not be anyone for the nonexistence to be better for.

This can be countered by saying that this is but a semantic trick—the nonexistence would be better than the existence because of the relative balance of pleasure and pain. There is also another approach—to broaden the calculation from the individual to the world.

In this case, the question would not be whether it would be better for the individual to exist or not, but whether or not a world with the individual would be better than a world without the individual. If a consequentialist approach is assumed, it is assumed that pain and pleasure are the measure of value and it is assumed that the pain outweighs the pleasure in every life, then the world would be better if a person never existed. This is because the absence of an individual would reduce the overall pain. Given these assumptions, a world with no humans at all would be a better world. This could be extended to its logical conclusion: if the suffering outweighs the pleasures in the case of all beings (Hume did argue that the suffering of all creatures exceeds their enjoyments), then it would be better that no feeling creatures existed at all. At this point, one might as well do away with existence altogether and have nothing. Thus, while it might not be known why there is something rather than nothing, this argument would seem to show that it would be better to have nothing rather than something.

Of course, this reasoning rests on many assumptions that can be easily challenged. It can be argued that the measure of value is not to be done solely in terms of pleasures and pains—that is, even if life resulted in more pain than pleasure, the overall positive value could be greater than the negative value. For example, the creation of art and the development of knowledge could provide value that outweighs the pain. It could also be argued that the consequentialist approach is in error—that estimating the worth of life is not just a matter of tallying up the negative and positive. There are, after all, many other moral theories regarding the value of existence. It is also possible to dispute the claim that pain exceeds pleasure (or that unhappiness exceeds happiness).

One could also take a long view—even if pain outweighs pleasure now, humans seem to be making a better world and advancing technology. As such, it is easy to imagine that a better world lies ahead and it depends on our existence. That is, if one looks beyond the pleasure and pain of one’s own life and considers the future of humanity, the overall balance could very well be that the positive outweighs the negative. As such, it would be better for a person to exist—assuming that she has a role in the causal chain leading to that ultimate result.

Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - To Abort or Not to Abort?

A debate has been going on from a long time now....whether abortion should be legal or illegal; it goes to even deeper discussion of whether it is moral or immoral? The most heated dialectic has been going on in the western hemisphere; between the "Pro-Lifers" and the atheists.

There was a time when the lines seemed clearer and the slogans said everything. Pro-lifers were Jesus-loving Pope-followers with a passion for sticking rosaries on ovaries, and atheists were quick to respond with “Keep your theology off my biology!”

But recently, the lines have begun to blur with advent of Pro-life or Humanist Atheists, who along with shunning the presence of God also embrace the sanctity of Human race and derive their morality from it. Atheist and civil libertarian journalist Nat Hentoff said that “Being without theology isn’t the slightest hindrance to being pro-life.” Atheist philosophy professor Don Marquis declared abortion is “immoral” because it denies developing fetuses “a future like ours.” Robert M. Price, author of books like “Jesus is Dead” and “The Case Against the Case for Christ”, called abortion “second-degree murder” Well, at least we still have the “Four Horsemen” safely in our ranks, right? Not quite. Even our beloved Christopher Hitchens considered “the occupant of the womb as a candidate member of society.” He also argued that “the unborn entity has a right on its side” and identified himself as involved with the pro-life movement.

But many people have a hard time understanding why an atheist might be pro-life. Well, here are my responses to some of their more common objections :

"It doesn’t matter whether or not the fetus is a human being, because women have bodily autonomy rights and no human can have non-consensual access to her body."

Well not so fast. If the fetus is not a human being with his/her own bodily rights, it’s true that infringing on a woman’s body by placing restrictions on her medical options is always a gross injustice and a violation. On the other hand, if we are talking about two human beings who should each be entitled to their own bodily rights, in the unique situation that is pregnancy, we aren’t justified in following the route of might-makes-right simply because we can. Bigger and older humans don’t necessarily trump younger and more dependent humans. Rights must always be justified and ethically grounded lest they become a tool of tyranny.

Before we address the question of bodily autonomy in pregnancy, let’s meet the second player. What does science tell us that the preborn are? To be clear, science doesn’t define personhood. It never could. Science can’t tell us whether it’s wrong to rape women, torture children, enslave black people, or which physical traits should or should not matter when it comes to determining personhood. Science may be able to measure suffering in living creatures, but it can’t tell us why or if their suffering should matter. However, science can tell us who among us belongs to the human species.

When it comes to normal human reproduction, sperm and ovum merge to form a new whole. They cease to exist individually and become a new substance that is not the mother and not the father but a new body altogether, one that is also human and has the inherent capacity to develop through all stages of development. As Christopher Hitchens aptly said:

“The original embryonic “blastocyst” may be a clump of 64 to 200 cells that is only five days old. But all of us began our important careers in that form, and every needful encoding for life is already present in the apparently inchoate. We are the first generation to have to confront this as a certain knowledge.
”

"But embryos and fetuses can’t be our equals — they’re not fully developed yet! They aren’t self aware or sentient! They can’t survive on their own!"

Well, of course they can’t. But why isn’t a fetus self-aware or sentient? Why hasn’t an embryo developed a functioning brain or the capacity to breathe on its own? Isn’t it merely because she or he is younger? Isn’t that just the way human beings at their age and stage naturally develop and function? While we wouldn’t give our car keys to toddlers on account of their current capacities, neither would we kill them for not having reached a developmental milestone yet. If we deny personhood and justify the death of a fetus simply because he or she has not developed to the point of sentience yet, that makes abortion the deadliest form of age discrimination.

When we talk about rights and personhood, we leave the realm of science for that of philosophy and ethics. History is ripe with examples of real biological human beings whose societies arbitrarily decided they didn’t qualify as equals, on account of criteria deemed morally relevant. At one point (and still, in many ways, today), it was skin color, gender, and ethnic background. Now, we can add to that list consciousness, sentience, and viability. We haven’t evolved so fast in 50 years as to be immune from tribalistic us vs. them thinking. If science defines a fetus as a biological member of our species, is it possible that our society is just as wrong in denying them personhood?

Furthermore, if self-awareness is to be the dividing line, anyone unconscious or in a coma might not be considered a person, while those in a heightened state of awareness due to drugs would trump the rest of us. If we determine that the ability to suffer and feel pain is what counts, then any born person with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain can be stripped of equal rights and killed. If higher brain function or a greater degree of health are what matter, then anyone with a higher IQ or a greater longevity and health than your own should be free to decide that your unfortunate quality of life makes your existence not worth continuing. Only the pro-life position — that all human beings should be granted the common right to continue their lives as human persons, regardless of their age, stage, gender, sexual orientation, race, or physical form and abilities — is truly egalitarian and fair for all human beings.


"But so what? Even if the unborn are human beings worthy of personhood even in their earliest stage of development, under normal circumstances, no one has a right to use someone else’s body against their consent."

This is true. And, likewise, under normal circumstances no one should be killed for being too young to care for themselves independently. Unfortunately, pregnancy is completely unlike any normal circumstances or normal human relationship. What happens when both a woman and her developing fetus are regarded as human beings entitled to personhood and bodily rights? Any way you cut it, their rights are always going to conflict (at least until womb transfers become a reality). So what’s the reasonable response? It could start by treating both parties at conflict as if they were equal human beings.


Human society has determined that parents have an obligation to nourish and protect their dependent offspring. The more vulnerable and dependent someone is, the more we are obligated to not abandon them. That a fetus is singularly dependent on one woman for the duration of nine months is not an argument for abortion, but against it. If an unrelated infant were abandoned on your doorstep miles from civilization with no one in a position to reach you and release you of your charge, would you not be obligated to at least provide basic life-sustaining care until such a time as care could be passed on to another person? Would this not be true even though you did not consent to the arrival of the dependent human, who was in fact forced upon you? Would you be any less obligated to try to keep this child alive if doing so was wearisome and taxing on your body, though not life-threateningly so? If this is true of one’s duty to sustain a vulnerable and dependent stranger until care can be passed on to another, how much more obligated is a woman to her own prenatal offspring?

And there you have an introduction to an abortion debate that is void of Bibles, popes, and rosaries. I realize that this brief secular case against abortion undoubtedly raises as many questions as it has answered. After all, if we make abortion illegal, won’t that make them more dangerous for women? Do we believe women who have abortions should face jail sentences? Should fetuses be counted in the census, and if so, what happens when a woman miscarries? Are we trying to put a stop to the work of Planned Parenthood and other women’s clinics? Can we grant fetuses rights without endangering and hurting the lives of women? Indeed, no one wants to see women injured or harmed in a dangerous illegal abortion! And therein lies a conversation that a civilized society must have if we are to truly treat every member of our species with equality. Can we legally condone one human being killing another human being because one might otherwise risk her life and health to do so? Or are there better ways to address the problems that drive so many countless women to feel they have no choice but abortion? To adequately deconstruct these concerns would require lengthy articles unto themselves, which is why I hope this will be the beginning of ongoing dialogue amongst atheists on this matter.

Frederica Mathewes-Green once said “No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.” Abortion advocates correctly perceive the trap, but they merely offer the woman a sterile knife to aid in the amputation. Real help does not sacrifice one human life at the expense of another but goes to the source of the trap to unscrew the hinge and free both.

If we all work together to come up with real choices for women — better birth control, better maternity leave, subsidized daycare, a living wage, flexible work schedules, better schooling options, more attractive open-adoption and temporary foster care options, etc. — abortion may roll itself into the world of obsolescence, regardless of its legal status.

That being said, if the pre-born are human members of our species and worthy of recognition as human persons, we have just as much of an obligation to protect them from the choices of other human beings and to ensure that violence against them is not legal and condoned.

I’m an atheist and I’m pro-life because some choices are wrong, violent, and unjust — and I want to do whatever I can to make abortion both unthinkable and unnecessary.

Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - Essays - On Shifting Lifestyles

A few months back, somewhere I saw a T-shirt with a joke on it. It was the classic British “Keep calm and carry on” insignia but with the crown inverted and the words changed to “Now panic and freak out.” I laughed out loud because it seemed a novel joke and sarcasm in the typical English style.

But not long after seeing it, I saw that image somewhere on Facebook, and soon after that I saw about one hundred different adaptations of it in a hundred different places. Within the course of probably weeks, something I encountered went from seeming unique and appealing to ubiquitous and cliche. This is the nature of contemporary culture. Nothing lasts very long.

If we add to this fast-paced cultural language two more aspects of modern life, the planned obsolescence of technology, and environmental awareness, it does not seem too surprising that the idea of a sharing economy might emerge. Things go out of style quickly, and they actually stop being usable as well. Given that, buying them just means you will have to throw them away before they wear out, which is wasteful.

One solution is to fight the trend, go back to the old-fashioned, longer lasting methods, avoid getting material things when it’s not necessary, and generally opt out of the modern economy. But an easier method, especially provided the capacity to organize which information technology can provide, is to just share access. Instead of each of us buying an item that will be obsolete or out of style, we can buy access to a collection and constantly trade in for something we haven’t used yet. We can create a public library of power tools, clothes, furniture and electronics. Although, eons away from Indian social landscape, countries like US, have Zipcar for transport or airbnb for hotels — both to cut costs and to increase convenience. But certainly the dream of this sharing economy appeals to many societies and cultures alike.

But it has skeptics as well. The two most common forms of criticism are from different angles, but boil down to the same issue: there are business people who say it won’t be possible to make money, and there are idealists who say that it is nothing but a cover for squeezing pennies from the consumer for every use.

The worry, then, is that it must be something capitalists are just going to exploit, (and this is proven by capitalists worrying over whether they’ll be able to exploit it). The outcome of understanding this so-called sharing as basically a form of micro-renting reveals that it can take away the lower class’s power by denying them ownership. Given this, the business world is perfectly happy to embrace what is essentially a new form of feudalism.

So is anything changing? Certainly the spread of information is far greater than in the past. Additionally, travel and movement is becoming more common, if not to the same degree in different social circles. These factors mean that there may be a shift in the importance placed on ownership. While at one time, the idea of property was rather directly identified with the owner (think of how the word is also used to refer to qualities), in a world so full of duplicates, what we are concerned with now is access.

When I leave my house, I make sure I have my phone, my wallet etc—all items that allow access to other things. Very little of it is unique property. If I lost these things, the annoyance would be getting my access back—new pieces of plastic or metal that could once again allow me have or provide various information. A shared economy seems a natural enough extension of that. Rather than carry a bike around, the modern consumer expects to have a card in the wallet or an app on the phone that allows access to bikes as needed.

Clearly most of us are not so nomadic as to be able to just create a new home every night, but at the same time the deepest roots will probably be where the most social activity takes place, and if that is through texts and posts as much as in living rooms, it may become easy to feel at home if one can get to Facebook or Twitter, with less need for a physical space that represents community. Perhaps what matters is who has got control of those domains. The classic concerns that public ownership is incompetent while private is too greedy and self-centered persist, and it is clear that the idea of a sharing economy isn't going to erase the issues that come with property. But the relationships might be changing nonetheless.

Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - Part Dos - On Swami Vivekananda's Speech

A few days back I came across Swami Vivekananda’s speech at Chicago of 1893 (the full speech). It was a pretty good speech. He talked a lot about the Hindu philosophy and the Vedic principles. Certainly, if I were there among his audience, I would have extolled his speech and venerated him for my life. I do respect him and his thoughts and I also respect the Hindu philosophy which he exalted at Chicago so beautifully. But as I read through it, I wondered whether it was correct to conclude that those thoughts were the final arguments for the existence of God. If it helps my case, even the Rig Veda, in the Nasadiya Sukta (Creation Hymn) has mentioned that question of a creator can’t be addressed. “Who knows whence came creation or whence the creator came. Whether the creator begot this creation or creation begot the creator.” (Not exactly accurate, since I write only what I can recollect, but the message is intact). When the originators of the philosophy are themselves skeptical, why shouldn't be we?

Although, I can't ratiocinate with the Vedic philosophy (which is his speech’s later half) because it is just a philosophy or a theory at best (like other theories e.g. relativity, evolution) and can’t be held as the ultimate truth, I wasn’t very much satisfied with his initial half. I have picked up the relevant lines from the speech and tried to answer them to the best of my ability.

Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? – The laws of physics as we know hold true only within our universe, one can’t calculate anything outside and before our universe based on the present laws of physics, classical or quantum. One can’t and shouldn’t comment on anything unknown. Even if one comments, one shouldn’t try to fill that gap with the God rhetoric.

Everything mutable is a compound, and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd. Therefore there never was a time when there was no creation. – First off, he asserts that God dying is an absurd phenomenon and hence rejects it as impossibility. Even accepting his predisposition, he says that it is possible for things to have no beginning at all, like the Vedas and the soul. So if there never was a beginning, we wouldn’t require a beginner or creator, hence no point of existence of god. If he didn’t create us then he holds no authority over us.

Argument about the Ontology of Thought - When he talks about monism, he evokes a very wide and contested dialectic that has been going on since the time of Socrates. The arguments of monism which he uses sound more like metaphysical dualism to me just like the Cartesian arguments (if he quoted the Vedas, the Vedantas give the concept of only absolute monism, they are not dualists). He tries to mix the thoughts of two very different schools namely Idealists (only mind is real) and Materialists (mental and spiritual can be reduced to physical). Further, he uses the presence of “essence” as an argument supporting god, and apparently fell for the round-trip fallacy by implying that the “absence of proof” of its material origin is a “proof of absence” of its material origin. When one uses science as one’s support, there can never be a “dead end” argument. Who knows what might unfold tomorrow! After all, there have been times when people believed in full earnestness that the world was flat and the earth was the center of the universe. They killed people who said otherwise!!

We cannot deny that bodies acquire certain tendencies from heredity, but those tendencies only mean the physical configuration, through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way. There are other tendencies peculiar to a soul caused by its past actions. And a soul with a certain tendency would by the laws of affinity take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency. – Evoking the “Law of Affinity” is plain cherry picking to justify his statement. Even if we assume Law of Affinity pervades all matter (which it does not and in the parts it does, it has various versions; in some instances likes attract, then some instances show that the opposites attract and some complex cases may present a combination of the two, a male and a female may be attracted to each other but they are physically the opposites), and having previously drawn a distinction between matter and spirit, how does he justify that the same scientific laws will apply to the spirit in the same manner as they apply to the matter? Diagonal application (between matter and spirit) is a far cry. Further, he subsequently claims that soul is a part of the almighty, an “abject”, deluded manifestation of God itself, this would mean that God itself is subject to the same laws, which would contradict the Omnipotence of god.

This is direct and demonstrative evidence. Verification is the perfect proof of a theory, and here is the challenge thrown to the world by the Rishis. We have discovered the secret by which the very depths of the ocean of memory can be stirred up-try it and you would get a complete reminiscence of your past life. – Well, the debate on reincarnation is another long and tedious thing to go through. The Hindu philosophy holds that a soul has to repay its debt through this continuous cycle of birth-death-rebirth. Being a pantheist, it also believes that a soul can be born as an animal depending on its behavior and conduct in the previous life. Plato was a vehement advocate of reincarnation. Christianity rejects reincarnation. Oriental philosophies believe Karma to be the sole evaluation criterion for reincarnation while some western belief systems hold that the subject has a choice in the matter. Whatever, we still haven’t reached a point in our intellectual journey so that we can even attempt to examine this alleged phenomenon. Assuming that reincarnation does happen, there have been several studies by psychologists in which their subjects somehow remember their past lives. OK. But it is a very peculiar observation that none of them has ever lived an animal’s life (but we saw earlier that souls can be reborn as animals), and the important people (parents, siblings, lovers etc.) in his/her previous life also occupy important positions in their present life, though the roles are swapped.

Déjà vu is another argument. Many people experience déjà vu, including me. But unfortunately my déjà vu is limited to the events about to happen in the near future. I dream about some insignificant event and a few days later the same thing unfolds in exactly the same manner. You might call me a deluded raconteur, but how can you reject my account? There is no way you can examine my brain and question its veracity or mendacity. Strange it is that I would be questioned but a person claiming to remember his/her previous life won’t. In light of all this, I would just say that the concept of karma is important, in the sense, that it maintains a moral thought among people. Humans always fear doing certain things because they don’t want to mess up their after-life. Probably, that was a reason why the concept of reincarnation was brought in the first place, to introduce a “selfish” motive behind a person’s moral behavior for the general welfare, because probably the Rishis had discerned that one’s own welfare is of the utmost importance to a person, if someone truly rises above it, he achieves Moksha, the ultimate emancipation from worldly worries and malaise.

All right, I am talking gibberish. Reincarnation does happen. But then, one must ask, what is the purpose of all this? Why create so many souls, put them on a “small mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam” in some dark, obscured corner of the universe? What does the Almighty Creator intend to do with our souls once they reach Heaven? Some say that “From each incarnation the soul takes the quintessence of its experiences. From these different episodes in the evolution of the soul, it is possible to gain a comprehensive understanding of many different experiences.” But what will the soul do after it has amassed so much experience? (Further it begets a paradox. If rebirths are truly meant to teach the deluded souls the ultimate truth by employing the faculty of experience, why do we witness infant mortality? Certainly it is safe to assume that a child who died at an age of, say, 5 years wouldn’t have gained any considerable spiritual experience. Then why first send it to earth and suddenly call the whole thing off? So, does the divine err a lot?).

The Hindu philosophy tells us that the ultimate goal of the soul is realizing that it is a part of something big, something grand and after this realization it finally merges with the omnipresent essence, the pervasive ether. But what after that? If this and only this is the ultimate goal then I find it to be a sheer wastage, which, given the attributes of god would be absurd. If you are still thinking that Hinduism actually tells us about a God, a being with no form, no anthropomorphic attributes and no judgments about our eensy, worldly behavior and conduct (I have faced this argument too) but who is present everywhere and just wants you to learn about the spiritual elation through Karma (that is more or less, Swami Vivekananda’s speech’s rest part), then I would say that you are playing with words now. Because, what you call as God I call a set of philosophical thoughts and as an atheist, I refuse to call it God. As a human, when I look up at the night sky, shimmering with umpteen stars, I wonder sometimes about the vastness of the cosmos and I am simply humbled. But that is, just a feeling, you might call it God, but I won’t, I call it the universe.

I would tell about Existential Nihilism, but as a human, you probably won’t buy it. We have a tendency of finding an explanation, a purpose behind everything which scientists and psychologists call an evolutionary necessity. But it isn’t always helpful, certainly not in these times when we have a Quantum physics which in a way implies that “God” does play dice. I could try to quench your thirst for a theistic explanation by proffering the possibility that, we are just an experiment at best, the denizens of a cosmic flask under precise observations by some cosmic scientist (which you would call god). Which leads to another premise that such a squeamish scientist would not want to interfere in its experiment’s vicissitudes. At best he/she would leave us alone and let us live our life on our own terms. Worrying about the recycling of souls would be far below on his/her list of priorities and so should it be on ours. Live life to the best possible extent and create a more tangible goal for your life. That is the best one could with one’s life according to me. (This is my explanation. I could call it God, but strange isn’t it? You wouldn’t accept it as God. You would call it a deluded, materialistic worldview!! Think again).

Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - Essays - On the Conundrum of Owning a gene

Although I was working on a continuation for my previous post, but a recent article in The Economist about the recent raucous on patented genes (the story on The Economist ) has prompted me to write this.

The issue has been put up against the patents on genes being awarded to research agencies which would give them exclusive rights over that particular gene for extensive research. But is it right? This sounds much like a science fiction to me. How could someone own a gene? The human genome took millions and millions of years to develop and become what it is today. If anyone should be granted the patent, it must be Mother Nature!!

While the legal issue is interesting, my focus will be on the philosophical aspects of the matter. After all, it was once perfectly legal to own human beings—so what is legal is rather different from what is right.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for the ownership of genes is a stock consequentialist argument   (Consequentialism) . If corporations cannot patent and thus profit from genes, then they will have no incentive to engage in expensive genetic research (such as developing tests for specific genes that are linked to cancer). The lack of such research will mean that numerous benefits to individuals and society will not be acquired (such as treatments for specific genetic conditions). As such, not allowing patents on human genes would be wrong.

While this argument does have considerable appeal, it can be countered by another consequentialist argument. If human genes can be patented, then this will allow corporations to take exclusive ownership of these genes, thus allowing them a monopoly. Such patents will allow them to control the allowed research conducted even at non-profit institutions such as universities (who sometimes do research for the sake of research), thus restricting the expansion of knowledge and potentially slowing down the development of treatments. This monopoly would also allow the corporation to set the pricing for relevant products or services without any competition. This is likely to result in artificially high prices which could very well deny people needed medical services or products simply because they cannot meet the artificially high prices arising from the lack of competition. As such, allowing patents on human genes would be wrong.

Naturally, this counter argument can be countered. However, the harms of allowing the ownership of human genes would seem to outweigh the benefits—at least when the general good is considered. Obviously, such ownership would be very good for the corporation that owns the patent.

In addition to the moral concerns regarding the consequences, there is also the general matter of whether it is reasonable to regard a gene as something that can be owned. Addressing this properly requires some consideration of the basis of property.

John Locke presents a fairly plausible account of property: a person owns his body and thus his labor. While everything is initially common property, a person makes something his own property by mixing his labor with it. To use a simple example, if Bill and Sally are shipwrecked on an ownerless island and Sally gathers coconuts from the trees and build a hut for herself, then the coconuts and hut are her property. If Bill wants coconuts or a hut, he’ll have to either do work or ask Sally for access to her property.

On Locke’s account, perhaps researchers could mix their labor with the gene and make it their own. Or perhaps not—I do not, for example, gain ownership of the word “word” in general because I mixed my labor with it by typing it out. I just own the work I have created in particular. That is, I own this essay, not the words making it up.

Sticking with Locke’s account, he also claims that we are owned by God because He created us. Interestingly, for folks who believe that God created the world, it would seem to follow that a corporation cannot own a human gene. After all, God is the creator of the genes and they are thus His property. As such, any attempt to patent a human gene would be an infringement on God’s property rights.

It could be countered that although God created everything, since He allows us to own the stuff He created (like land, gold, and apples), then He would be fine with people owning human genes. However, the basis for owning a gene would still seem problematic—it would be a case of someone trying to patent an invention which was invented by another person—after all, if God exists then He invented our genes, so a corporation cannot claim to have invented them. If the corporation claims to have a right to ownership because they worked hard and spent a lot of money, the obvious reply is that working hard and spending a lot of money to discover what is already owned by another would not transfer ownership. To use an analogy, if a company worked hard and spent a lot to figure out the secret formula to Coke, it would not thus be entitled to own Coca Cola’s formula.

Naturally, if there is no God, then the matter changes (unless we were created by something else, of course). In this case, the gene is not the property of a creator, but something that arose naturally. In this case, while someone can rightfully claim to be the first to discover a gene, no one could claim to be the inventor of a naturally occurring gene. As such, the idea that ownership would be confirmed by mere discovery would seem to be a rather odd one, at least in the case of a gene.

The obvious counter is that people claim ownership of land, oil, gold and other resources by discovering them. One could thus argue that genes are analogous to gold or oil: discovering them turns them into property of the discoverer. There are, of course, those who claim that the ownership of land and such is unjustified, but this concern will be set aside for the sake of the argument (but not ignored—if discovery does not confer ownership, then gene ownership would be right out in regards to natural genes).

While the analogy is appealing, the obvious reply is that when someone discovers a natural resource, he gains ownership of that specific find and not all instances of what he found. For example, when someone discovers gold, they own that gold but not gold itself. As another example, if I am the first human to stumble across naturally occurring "Unobtanium" on an owner-less alien world, I thus do not gain ownership of all instances of "Unobtanium" even if it cost me a lot of money and work to find it. However, if I artificially create it in my philosophy lab, then it would seem to be rightfully mine. As such, the researchers that found the gene could claim ownership of that particular genetic object, but not the gene in general on the grounds that they merely found it rather than created it. Also, if they had created a new artificial gene that occurs nowhere in nature, then they would have grounds for a claim of ownership—at least to the degree they created the gene.

Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - Part Uno - Intelligent Design and Meaning of Life

"There is no justification for life, but also no reason not to live. Those who claim to find meaning in their lives are either dishonest or deluded. In either case, they fail to face up to the harsh reality of the human situation" - Donald A. Crosby

"What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself" - Jean Paul Sartre

Finally I am back after a long time. But still unable to think I decided to write some excerpts from my diary, on which I have been scribbling for the past four years. 

I've been considering and rewriting this particular post for a few months now. My problem is the approach. Given that I've had such difficulty I'll try to be straight forward and see how everything turns out. Simply put, my query is that if we were in fact made then what is to be gained from the existence of humanity? Not in the form of a metaphorical or existential quandary  rather a very literal what is the end goal purpose of the human race. Assuming we were designed I would imagine it was with a purpose even if that purpose was to satisfy some curiosity. I can not conceive a scenario in which any sort of omnipotent or omniscient deity would be responsible in particular considering any flaw in a creation reflects a flaw in the creator therefore if it was a deity they could not be considered either. Even if the flaws were intentional to some unknown purpose. 

I see the potential for where we could have been created and yet I see no evidence of that being the case or to be more precise being that if that is the case then there was no follow through once the experiment started. In opposition, I see the potential for how we were born of chaos which I see plenty of support for and yet that too is incomplete. One particular point of interest is that if we were of chaos and therefore have no implicit purpose, how then among the chaos have we established dominance and mastery essentially removing ourselves from the chaos while remaining within it?

For those of you that would dare to bring religion directly into this discussion let me just shut you down right now. If we were created as glorious representatives of some all powerful being and that's all, then that all powerful should be damn ashamed of itself. Not only is that level of egotistical vanity so far off the charts but they clearly failed or if they succeeded then we need only look at the failure itself that is humanity as a representative of how horrific such a being is. Humanity is clearly not something worthy of praise and if there is such a vain being then it too is unworthy of praise.

Jean Paul Sartre, in his book "Being and Nothingness", gave a very nihilistic view of life that it has no inherent purpose. It is up to you to make your own purpose in this life and your pursuit of your own purpose is what will define you. This is a question of what the human race as a whole is meant for if it was created on purpose by something capable of such creation rather than by chance.  

If we were created the only conceivable ends to our purpose,  is our end itself to which I find ample evidence to, suggest that if we were created it was to study the nature of death itself. Not only are we to study it but also to provide example for others to study, others being not only ourselves but our creators if that is the case. In this potential scenario of intelligent design I understand how every facet of our existence is created to perpetuate an experiment revealing the details of life and death on a scientific level so they might be understood by others.

The question then if that should be the case is what would happen to humanity when the experiment ends? What if it has already ended? If death is now understood completely and entirely by the creator/s then what are the results and how should the experiment end?

Approaching the concept of humanity as if I were using it as an experiment using deductive reasoning I can only conclude that death is the most likely purpose of the experiment and on that note I have yet to discover a proper dissolution of the experiment given that I am not as objective to the concept as I should be. I can only imagine that our end would come suddenly if at all perhaps the experiment was designed so that we will destroy ourselves as a final test or proof of theories or that we will be allowed to continue without interference to establish secondary attributes of death such as addiction or contagiousness either of death directly or power over death. Though it may be far beyond that and it may also be simply that the experiment is nowhere near completed yet which only leads me to question what the next round of tests will be like...