In 2000, America’s 32 million teens spent 150 billion dollars on goods that, for the most part, are
generationally engineered. Brian Graden, a television programming executive explains: “I think one of the
great things about this information age is, with so many channels, you can say my business is 12 to 15, or
my business is 21 to 24. As a result, you have the most marketed-to group of teens and young adults ever in
the history of the world.”

A typical American teenager will process over hundreds of discrete advertisements in a single day, and
millions by the time he or she is 18. Mamie Rheingold writes in “Whole Earth magazine” that MTV produces
hip-hop concerts where popular rap artist perform for free because MTV will showcase videos that promote the
artist’s CDs. Meanwhile, large advertisements for Sprite, an MTV sponsor, are displayed in the background of
the telecast concert… It is a perpetuating cycle, and we as teenagers are the instigators. We are involved
in a symbiotic relationship with consumerism and media that shapes our opinions and influences our buying
decisions–whether or not we are aware of that influence.

The culture of cool is actually not a real culture. It’s a pseudo-culture. It’s a culture created in corporate
advertising offices for the sole purpose of increased consumerism. The corporations cool hunters seek
teenagers out, hip teenage culture trends that may have arisen spontaneously on the streets, for the sole
purpose of turning these folk expressions into profit. Thanks to this trend, Sprite and hip-hop are today
almost synonymous.

Hip-hop, which began as a folk culture amongst blacks, is now in cahoots with the most popular and profitable
youth drink in the world. Thanks to the merchants of cool. Today five mega-companies are responsible for
selling most all of youth culture. These companies are the real merchants of cool taste: Rupert Murdoch’s
Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Universal Vivendi, and AOL/Time Warner.

Think of it this way: This is, if you will, the new “colonialism.” The minds and the hearts of today’s
teenagers are the Asia and the Africa of the past colonial wars. These few media conglomerates–who own
most of the film studios, TV networks and TV stations, and most of the cable channels–have colonized both
the subjective and objective realty of today’s teens.

The merchants of cool combat this criticism by arguing that they are only reflecting the real world.
The media is just a mirror. A mirror of cool. But is that really so? Douglas Rushkoff cites the example
of spring break. “For the past fifteen years, MTV has packaged spring break into a staged television
performance, and then repackaged it through the year on show after show…Kids are invited to participate
in sexual contest on stage or are followed by MTV cameras through their week of debauchery. Sure, some
kids have always acted wild, but never have these antics been so celebrated on TV. Who is mirroring whom?”

Currently there are two popular, media-created characters that are sold to teens: the “mook” and the
“midriff”. Neither the mook nor the midriff really exist. They are both creations designed to capitalize
on teens. Who are they? The mook is the perpetually adolescent male. He is loud, obnoxious, and indulges
in less- than-honorable male feats. He is on MTV, the Tom Green Show, South Park, and on The Man Show. He
is Howard Stern himself.

Britney Spears is the archetypal midriff. She is incarnated in millions of 13 year old girls flaunting
their sexuality without really understanding it. The midriff message: your body is your best asset;
your body is cool, it sells.

The merchants of cool have created a very profitable feedback loop: the media watches kids and then
sells an extreme image of themselves back to them. Millions of teenagers then aspire to emulate that
distorted image of themselves.

In his documentary, Douglas Ruskoff asks: is there a way to escape this feedback loop?

The Merchants of Cool is a film about the colonization of the interior landscape, of our psyche, of our
culture, and our art. It’s a film about the pollution of our internal environment. In the name of freedom
of expression and profit, this colonization and pollution is destroying the finer fabric of the ecology
of the human mind and soul. Is there a way to stop it? Yes, I think there is. But not without radical
changes in our business and political culture. A new breed of activists –culture jammers — have started
doing just that. They are taking legal action to open up the airwaves. According to Adbusters magazine
(www.adbusters.org), they want the right to practice social marketing; to use the public airwaves — not
only to sell products and corporate images — but to sell ideas, stir public debate and empower people to
set their own agendas.

“Arguing for fundamental social change on commercial TV may be our last great hope of social engineering
ourselves out of the economic, ecological and psychological mess we’re in,” claim the Adbusters
activists.

Personal lifestyle and value changes are also necessary. But without economic and political change, we
cannot expect to check the negative influences of the mass media. Here are two suggestions for long term
change:

1. The control of the mass media must be turned away from corporate shareholders and over to the people;
to the hands of those who produce art, music and journalism, and to those who want to receive
information and cultural experiences. Commerce must not be allowed to colonize the cultural landscape.
Culture is not just a sales-product. Culture is a process, a way of being, a state of mind, and a set of
collective expressions. In order to have freedom of expression, our culture must be free from the
colonization of commerce.

2. To ban advertising altogether is not necessary. Instead we can limit advertising to its fundamental
function: to educate and inform us about new products and ideas–nothing else. In addition, advertisers
must be required to live up to high ethical standards. What we will loose in creative advertising through
these measures, we will gain in creative art and culture. After all, the function of commerce is no to
exploit and enslave people? The function of our economy is to enable people to live enriching and free
lives. The above suggestions are sweeping in scope and, of course, not very favorable to the corporate
media. Nor to capitalism as we know it.

Indeed, if implemented, the traffickers of teenage trends would no longer be able to cash in on cool.
Let’s start this transformation by changing public opinion. Let’s encourage and join kids and teenagers
in becoming adbusters and culture jammers. Let’s turn off commercial TV and radio and tune in to PBS,
NPR and Pacifica Radio. Or, even better, we can start our own media. Many independent media activists
are doing just that–launching their own media outlets and thus rewriting the rules of journalism. And,
instead of watching TV, we can read, write, paint, meditate, sing, run and play. Over time, we will make
the merchants of cool– you guessed it!–totally uncool.

Roar Bjonnes is a freelance writer, the editor of Prout Journal, a contributing editor of New Renaissance
(www.ru.org), and has published numerous articles in magazines and newspapers in Europe and the United States.

Volume 9, No. 2, Summer 2002 [8/23/2002]

The Olympic Games are taken seriously by many countries. Aside from the economic sphere, it is another avenue for the West to display its “superiority” over the rest of the world. How is this achieved? Levi Obijiofor and Sohail Inayatullah take us into the hidden meanings of the world’s greatest sporting event By Levi Obijiofor and Sohail Inayatullah.

A wide-eyed TV commentator in Australia remarked at the end of a pulsating Olympic semi-final soccer match between Nigeria and Brazil in which the former triumphed: “This is unbelievable! Nigeria of all countries!”

In similar tones, headline writers in the West’s leading press described the victory over Brazil as an “upset”.
This phrase, especially as it relates to the Olympic Games, is significant.

At the heart of such journalism is the misleading construction of the Olympics as an apolitical event. We are
misled not in the sense of being blind to favoritism—but through propagation of the assumption that the
Olympics represent all of humanity’s triumph, that winning athletes represent the culmination of human
excellence. The deeper meta-level of politics, in which the Olympics are essentially a massive Western exercise
in cultural domination, is avoided.

But this should not be a surprise since “civilization” has come to mean Western civilization. Indeed, the
Olympics are about the ascension of the West. The Olympics flame passing on unextinguished from ancient
Athens to the modern era is about the unproblematic transmission of Hellenic values to global culture.
The flame should not be doused, meaning that the values of the West should not be challenged. Like Mount
Olympus, they should stand tall above all other peoples, values and visions.

The Olympics Are Western
The Olympic Games have for years been dominated or hijacked by sporting events those are basically Western in
origin. When a non-Western athlete or team excels in an Olympic event which is traditionally Western, the feat
is perceived as an upset. Or there are genetic factors that are brought in to account for it. Those
long-distance runners from Kenya, we are told, have many hills to climb as they herd their sheep. Effort,
traditional family structures, traditional training techniques, and cultural importance given to specific
bodily skills are overlooked.

These rationalizations apply mostly to sportsmen and women from the non-West. Contest therefore is not
on the ground of sports but on the ground of political constructions, in terms of valuing certain
sports, histories, and cultures over others. If this is not the case, why do we have to have the Winter
Olympics, arguably designed for the West and the countries “blessed” with winter to have their own games?
No one remembered to design another Olympics for those countries that, by reason of geography, have only
dry and rainy seasons. Can’t we also have a Steaming Olympics, a Dry Olympics, or even a Wet Olympics?
We cannot, since the Olympics, even as they claim universality, are particular. Athens, we should
remember, does not experience the monsoons.

By promoting the image of the Olympics as global and by ensuring that every country participates in the events
determined by Western authorities in the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the West is indirectly
promoting its own values. The tragedy however is that many members within the IOC are from the non-West. Yet
decisions aboutthe summer Olympics still almost always seem to leave the non-West with no viable alternatives.
Of course there are options such as boycotting future Olympic Games if the inclusion of traditional sports from
the non-West is rejected by the IOC.

Marginalization
The dilemma is that non-participation in the Olympic Games means marginalization in the international economic
and political spheres. Avoiding the Olympics relegates a country to the dustbin of nationalistic history. If
one plays and loses badly, as most of the non-West do, a deep-seated cultural inferiority complex arises. All
that is left to do is to join, to be “developmentalized”.

If one plays and wins, beating the West at their own game, speculation is rife about the use of
performance-enhancing substances, as with China’s women’s distance running, or simplistic reference
to genetic advantages.

The West, originators of the Olympics, just can’t take defeat as a fact of life. At stake are not sports but
cosmology, worldview, and most recently nation. Thus, to invest resources in preparation for the Games every
four years is to play “catch-up” with the West. Above all, participation in the Games is participation in
another form of forced marketing of Western values.

Unfortunately, non-Western countries have been “infected” with this ideology under the guise of sports
development. How many non-Western countries spend as much money developing their traditional sports as they
do developing those of the West?

Neglected Sports
Traditional sports from the non-West are not recognized and have been kept out of the Olympics because the
West has not “blessed” them as genuine sports. Yet some in the non-West, for example, strive to compete in
such Western sporting events as beach volleyball, horseback riding, rhythmic, gymnastics, and synchronized
swimming. With ballroom dancing now an Olympics sport, let us hope that non- Western nations do not begin
to invest in this sport. Yet, if they don’t they will continue to lag in the medal count, which could also
be considered another GNP indicator count.

But what if non-Western nations focus on sports in which they have a comparative advantage? How, for example,
would the IOC react to suggestions to include traditional events like… drum dancing, hand fishing, tree
climbing with bare hands, palm wine tapping and consumption, a 100-metres sprint race pushing discarded car
tyres or rims, running with an egg delicately placed on the head, a sack race, trap shooting with slings or
catapults but no guns (what the West can do with a gun a skilled African marksman can do with the catapult),
wood chopping or kabadi—traditional wrestling—as in Pakistan? What about camel riding in order to
accommodate the Maghrebs of the Sahara region? and so on….

With all these included in a refined Olympics, will the West continue to dominate? As a Somali proverb states,
“What you lose in the fire you must seek in the ashes.” Is such a level playing field possible?

The future option for the non-West in the Olympic Games must be either to build on its own model of
traditional sports or to utilize its numbers in the IOC to force a change. The non-West cannot continue
participation in an Olympic Games where winning on Western terms is its essence. To do so is to promote
inequity and further humiliation.

Winning in Order to Win
More characteristic of the Olympics than winning on Western terms has been the aggrandizement of winning
itself. It is more important than cultural exchange and refinement of the human spirit, contrary to Olympics
propaganda claims. To illustrate the point that winning and losing have become the two key Olympics words,
let us return to the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Asked why his colleagues on the U.S. basketball team (the “Dream Team”) were not staying in the same Olympic
village as other athletes to make friends, one of the players reportedly said, “We are here to win gold, not
to make friends”.

The same theme was evident in several advertisements during the Atlanta Games, as recorded by Roy
MacGregor of The Ottawa Citizen. Here are a few: “You don’t win silver, you lose gold”; “If you’re
not here to win, you’re a tourist”; “Second place is the first loser”; and “No one train for
second place”.

These sentiments run counter to the views of the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, who
said that “the important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part”. By promoting the
importance of winning, Olympics sponsors are propagating the message that winners are superior, that winners
are from the West, and that the non-West are losers and are therefore inferior to the West.

Each culture has its own sports. Some are individualistic, some competitive, some based on ancient myths.
By giving official credence only to the sports of one culture, our sports bio-diversity is lost.

Beyond the Sovereign Nation
The context of sports is domination. Winning is all that matters. Winning boosts a nation’s image, turns
winners into instant millionaires, and unifies long-time domestic enemies. More than that it reinscribes
the nation as the natural and only form of governing sovereignty. West, nation, and winning become natural
and synonymous. Can we imagine an Olympics where there are different sorts of “territoriality”? Perhaps a
line-up of nations, ethnicities, individuals, communities, transnational corporations, and even
civilizations.Can we imagine a situation where there is excellence and challenge but not in the context
of “winning”? The desire to win also encourages men and women to cheat and bypass the most sophisticated
drug testing kits available, ultimately harming their own bodies.

Women and Sports
The Olympics are also primarily about traditional male values. Women’s sports, like the Yugoslav girls’
game of lastis (where girls play with an elastic rope and jump up and down in infinite variations), is
one example. Women, also, as we know from studies on competition, would prefer a negotiated score in
which all parties are happy. For example, if the game is drawn, many women are satisfied with that
conclusion while men would prefer a “sudden death” (with all the metaphorical meanings behind it).

Olympic sports, from a feminist perspective, have either developed from a warrior tradition such as fencing
or from leisure time, that is, when women were taking care of the home economy. Indeed, the origin of the
Olympics lies in preparing men for war. As with the non-West, the inclusion of women has been in the terms
and values of male Western games. Women’s terms and values have been excluded largely in the same sense
non-Western culture has.

Lobbying for Change
Olympics as apolitical, humanity’s struggle for global excellence? We don’t think so. But bringing these
issues up is not easy. As with religion and politics, deconstructing the Olympics can be seen as an
unpatriotic task. It might be argued that there is no Western hegemony, so let non-Western nations lobby
the IOC for their own sports, or don’t give the Olympics so much attention.

The Games are only a matter of individual athletes in friendly competition. But can non-Western nations
lobby for alternative sports? Can they develop a global following even if the sport being played has some
cross-cultural appeal?

Our argument is that resources are limited and media exposure is even more limited. And the Olympics do
matter. It is a billion-dollar industry. One only need to look at the effort socialist nations gave to
the Olympics to see their value in prestige. Challenging the Olympics is bothersome because most of us
have bought the idea of the Olympics as universal, as the purest of all human expressions. To locate it
in other discourses is to undo primal tribal-national emotions.

Still, there is beauty in seeing athletes run faster, swifter and stronger. Competition and keeping scores
do lead to excellence. A Zen of sports where the process is more important than the outcome is only part of
the story. Outcomes are important. There is a charm in seeing individuals of many cultures mingle together
for two weeks. Even if the flags of nation-states reinforce the ugliness of patriotism, the Olympics do
create internationalism even if they do not create a universal humanism.

Cultural Enshrinement
Thus, we argue not for the elimination of the Olympics but for its transformation, and generations ahead,
we need redefinition of the Olympics concept. New indicators of performance and achievement instead of
the simplistic medal tally might be useful.

Bruce Wilson, for example, argued that chatter about Australia surpassing its 1956 record in 1998 should
be seen in the context of a 32 million Australian dollar sports investment, nearly a million dollars per
medal won. Perhaps we need a ratio after the medal tally like medal/investment in sports. Burundi or
Namibia might then be the real winner of the Olympic Games. Why not an indicator such as medal/GNP also?

We also need an Olympic Games for the non-West and women where there is neither victor nor vanquished,
where excellence is achieved without domination. Ultimately, that is the solution, an alternative Olympics
where traditional games and the cultural stories behind them are enshrined. Hawaii already has a day for
traditional Hawaiian sports. These are critical because they teach the young ancient ways of knowing, of
relating to the environment.

Sports teach us about each other, about our myths. They create inner and outer discipline. They concentrate
the mind. They are also a way toward intergenerational solidarity, where the old teach the young. Above all,
sports, as originally conceived, should promote a culture of peaceful co-existence and friendliness.
Unfortunately, all these ideals have changed. Today, competitors weep openly when they lose and when they
win, making it difficult to understand the essence and spirit of the occasion. Sportsmen and women also
sometimes trade abuses and punches with one another and with officials. Sometimes limbs are broken and
lives are lost, not through accidents but through deliberate acts of hatred.

Would these alternative Olympics be globally televised against the mystique of Athens? Of course not. At
least not until Asian and African nations begin to control their own mass media. Challenging the Olympics
is ultimately about taking back one’s history and body from nations and giant media firms that own athletes
and monopolize sponsorship of them. It’s also about fighting media imperialism and all forms of imperialism
thrown up by multinational sponsoring organizations. It is about fighting patriarchy and the modern
nation-state system. Finally, it is about creating a new future, a planetary civilization beyond West and
non-West.

References:
MacGregor, Roy. “Swoosh, only winning matters at these Games,” The Ottawa Citizen, August 3, 1996,
p. 2. Wilson, Bruce. “Is overtaking the Melbourne medal tally such a big deal?” The Courier-Mail,
August 2, 1996, p 47.

In her 1993 book “Shame,” Bangladeshi writer Tasrima Naslin draws upon the bloody conflicts generated by clashing religious beliefs: In 1992, hard-line Hindus in India, claiming that the Moslem Basri mosque at Ayodhya was built upon a holy Hindu site, tore the mosque to the ground. Naslin uses this actual event as a stepping-off point for her fictional story, in which Muslims in Bangladesh retaliate for the Ayodhya incident by hunting down and killing local Hindus.

Shame sharp-focused on the dangers of an outlook circumscribed by limiting sectarian boundaries. Characters in the book behave as if a rubber band is bound tight around their minds, engaging in tit for tat violence, unable to see beyond their immediate “tribal encampment.” As an ironic coda of life imitating art, a fatwah was levied against Naslin by a Bangladeshi fundamentalist Muslim organization.

The book was striking, but perhaps did not reach much of a Western audience. The spectre of dogma sprang into far greater relief for many, especially in the US, following the incidents of September 11th. Nineteen men who had a particular belief in God and his sanction of their actions crashed a plane into twin towers, killing thousands. It is said they were acting on their belief that female virgins waited in heaven for martyrs as reward for their actions.

Dogma is no new thing; it may be as old as thought itself. The very antiquity of beliefs often grants them,
in believers’ minds, a special legitimacy, and at the same time, renders them more intractable. The term
“dogma” started out as a religious one, originally used in the Catholic Church to describe an assertion of
metaphysical truth, accepted as doctrine. The dictionary definition broadens this: dogma is something held
as an established opinion, a definite authoritative tenet. These days the word has acquired an even more
negative connotation, as an idea which is held to against all reason.

It is not always easy to say what is or is not dogma, nor perhaps should one lightly do so. One man’s dogma
is another’s cherished ideal. Intellectuals need to take care in espousing their values and ideas, and
especially in criticizing others’. There are important social, cultural, and historical factors at play in
determining what people believe and why. Such ideas have to do with creating civic cohesion, with ensuring
survival. But, and here lies the rub, they may also deal with one group of people exploiting another. The
20th century served as mute witness to countless instances when belief gelled into totalizing ideology, with
catastrophic results.

Still, as a jumping off place for understanding, perhaps we can generalize a little, in trying to circle in
on what dogma consists of. We might say that dogma often has a backward looking nature, not keeping pace
with social changes. It is often passed on from generation to eneration. It may be highly emotionally loaded.
It is often at the root of fundamentalism. It may lead to behaviors which are selfish or exploitative. And it
is often embraced collectively.

“Crowds of silent voices whisper in our ears, transforming the nature of what we see and hear. Some are those
of childhood authorities and heroes, others come from family and peers. The strangest emerge from beyond the
grave. A vast chorus of long-gone ancients constitutes a notso-silent majority whose legacy has what may be
the most dramatic effect of all on our vision of reality.” – Howard Bloom.

Prout founder P. R. Sarkar has written a good deal about dogma and its effect on society. He offers this
concise definition: “Dogma is an idea with a rigid boundary line, which won’t allow you to go beyond the
periphery of that boundary line. Thus dogma goes against the fundamental spirit of the human mind. The human
mind won’t tolerate anything rigid. It wants movement — not only movement, but accelerated movement.”

This definition moves us beyond the dictionary one, and also asserts certain psychological ruths. It posits
a directed, fluid concept of human existence. In another book, Sarkar compares human existence to a flowing
stream, as opposed to a stagnant pool. If the human mind craves expansion, then dogma not only creates
division and conflict, but is also fundamentally opposed to this movement. Movement towards what? Towards a
knowledge of the self. Sarkar lambasts philosophies which are based on materialism, because they are
“anti-human.” Rather, he encourages broadness of vision – physical, intellectual and, particularly,
spiritual development. Humanity’s evolutionary future lies in the expansion of consciousness.
Examples of dogma, both past and present, abound: In the Middle Ages, clerics joined knights fighting in the
Crusades. Forbidden to spill blood, they eschewed swords, and instead walloped their enemies on the head with
a hammer.

Hard-line Israeli settlers, believing God has commanded them to settle Palestine, daily encroach further into
Palestinian lands, upping the ante of tension in that contentious region.

One area in which dogma has particularly pernicious effects is the status of women. In India, for example,
the practice of sati allowed for the burning of Hindu widows on their husband’s funeral pyre. Yet this
was brought about by a distortion of scriptures, according to Sarkar. Priests misquoted a scripture which said
women shall lead the funeral procession, twisting it to say the widow shall walk into the fire. Although
nowadays sati has been banned, its legacy lingers, with the practice of in-laws pouring gasoline over unwanted
widows and setting them afire.

Or consider this quote: “A man should certainly not cover his head, since he is the image of God and reflects
God’s glory; but woman is the reflection of man’s glory. For man did not come from women, but woman was
created for the sake of man.” Although it is common to view Islam as the religion most constricting to women,
the above is not something out of Shariya law, but instead comes from 1 Corinthians. A strong anti-intellectual,
anti-scientific bias often accompanies dogmatic belief. “I ain’t got no learnin’ and never had none… Glory be to
the Lamb!

Some folks work their hands off’n up to the elbows to give their younguns education, and all they do is send
their young-uns to hell…” This was uttered by a Pentecostal preacher at the time of the Scopes trial, the
famous debate on evolution being taught in the schools in the U.S. at the turn of the last century.

Many fundamentalists’ ideas are rooted in a dogmatic and literal adherence to scripture, even when science has
convincingly challenged the legitimacy of their notions. (Of course, science, too, must be scrutinized for
signs of dogma.)

In an essay entitled “The Roots of the Moral Majority,” David Harrel notes that Christian fundamentalists have
clung tightly to a number of beliefs and practices. These include anti-evolutionism, school prayer, militarism,
the inerrancy of Scripture, and pre-millenialism (the belief in the “rapturing” of believers up into heaven,
and a period of reign of Christ on arth).

American Christian fundamentalists have in recent years entered the political arena, although, as Harrel notes,
they did so only “when it seemed to them that the very structure of society was seriously threatened by
modernism and liberalism.”

Responding to Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell’s claims of impending moral doom in American society, Harrel
quotes William Fore of the National Council of Churches: “It is true that the nation needs spiritual reform…
that our society has fallen into a moral cynicism that feeds corruption….Falwell is partly right, and this makes
him far more dangerous than if he were totally wrong.” Sarkar distinguishes between religion and spirituality.
Spiritual practices strengthen and free the mind, offering direct communion with the highest reality and a sense
of universal connectedness, while religion is based on tradition and belief, and often merely leads to
sectarianism.

Dogmatists often believe that they are doing God’s will, that their beliefs are divinely anctioned. And yet,
says Sarkar, “People who follow dogmacentered philosophy exploit others in the name of providence for their
own self-interest. For example, the proponents of dogma often claim that they have been blessed with divine
revelation. They say that they had a dream in which God appeared before them and commanded them to do
particular work, and on this pretext they exploit others to the full.”

And, “there are many philosophies which tend to crudify the human mind, and make people violent and
inconsiderate. They make people believe that they are God’s favourite children, whereas the rest of humanity are
cursed. Although these views have philosophical sanction, they do not enjoy the sanction of the A’tman.” Here
Sarkar refers to the deepest layer of human existence, the soul, which, according to his spiritual philosophy, is
in congruence with Cosmic Consciousness.

Religions, Sarkar says, know how to twist their teachings to deny the truth and adapt to different
circumstances, in order to secure the interests of a special, privileged class. They “sentimentalize” the minds
of people, and through the use of stories, myths and parables, create superiority, inferiority and fear complexes.

Yet dogma is not simply a religious phenomenon. Tenets of economic thought can be clung to as fiercely, as
blindly, and often with as bloody consequences, as religious ones. The instances of harmful adherence to
social and economic dogmas and hegemonic doctrines are too numerous to mention. As just one example,
Stalin, attempting to force the round pegs of economic reality in the Soviet steppes into the square holes of
his Marxist doctrine, slaughtered tens of millions.

How can dogma be evaluated? Is it possible to judge another’s beliefs? How is one to avoid the accusation of
cultural bias? In matters of human rights, for example, especially when criticism comes from Western sources,
leaders of non-Western countries retort that their internal affairs are their own business. Human rights, they
argue, are not universally interpreted in the same way, and cultural beliefs in certain notions of human nature
or governance excuse any violations. With the efforts of the United Nations, the World Court, and numerous
non-governmental organizations working for the protection of human rights, the world is now struggling towards
a consensus on the necessity to codify and protect these rights. Belief, of course, cannot be legislated. But
behavior can.

Skepticism, said Santayana, is the chastity of the mind. Is a skeptical stance, then, the way to begin to evaluate
belief systems? It is possible to go too far, as many postmodernists do, discounting all beliefs as constructed,
and proceeding to deconstruct them. There are those who argue for a cultural, and indeed, a philosophical
relativism. Yet this too often becomes paralyzing, as every inch of ground begins to shift beneath one’s feet.
Sarkar is not arguing for skepticism, per se. He sees definite truths in life.

A vigorous intellectual life, promoting the questioning, debate and free exchange of opinions and information
is the first step. In other words, rationality. Beliefs, Sarkar says, may be evaluated based upon their degree
of rationality. And this rationality needs to be further rooted in a universal outlook, which will promote the
physical, mental and spiritual well-being of every human on the planet. Furthermore, as Sarkar argues in his
book Neo-Humanism, plants and animals should be included in these considerations, since they also have
existential value.

Ethics also play a role in shaping the parameters of belief; a person established in morality will be less likely
to embrace beliefs which are harmful to others. According to Sarkar, “to counteract the malevolent effect of
dogma-centred philosophies, the two most important factors are the development of rationality and the spread of
education. Merely attending school and university classes will not necessarily have the desired effect. Stress
should be placed on education which produces a high degree of rationality in the human mind, and this type of
education should be spread amongst the people. So, to counteract religious dogma we have to adopt a two-fold
approach. First, the path of logic and reason must be adopted… Simultaneously, the spiritual sentiment must be
inculcated in human minds as this is more powerful than the religious sentiment. For this people should be
properly educated in the way of spirituality.”

Each person must weigh the relevant ideas, consider them rationally, experiment with them, and decide for
themselves. At the same time, the practical effort to open one’s heart and expand one’s consciousness lays the
groundwork for an outlook free of exploitative tendencies. It is crucial that the ideas of compassion, universal
brother- and sisterhood, and the linking of one’s spirit with a greater reality, become more than simply ideas.
Their beauty and truth must be realized through practice. This combination of rationality and spirituality will
open the door to an expansive, dogma-free existence.

Andy Douglas is a freelance writer and a graduate student in creative nonfiction writing at the
University of Iowa. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.