To Live is to be Related

K. P. S. MENON, I. C. S. (Retired)

A couple of years ago, I had a letter from the sponsors of “The Fraternity cultural Orientation Course” asking me if I would inaugurate the Course. I was unable to do so as I had to go abroad, and I have lost touch with the movement. Nevertheless, the first sentence, in a very attractive brochure which has sent to me, remains in my mind. It says that “To live is to be related.” Here are six simple words, but pregnant with meaning. They have special relevance to the situation of mankind today.

In our infancy we are related to our parents and more especially to our mother. Gradually our attachments extend our brothers and sisters, cousins and nephews. At school widen further and embrace our classmates, schoolmates, play and teachers. The school now becomes a complement to the home.

I was brought up in a highly Hindu home and educated in a highly Christian school, the C. M. S. High School in Kottayam, and later in the Madras Christian College. Both at school and college our day began with the study of the Christian scripture, and it ended with the reading of, or listening to, the Ramayana  and the Mahabharata at home. I do not regret this. I honestly believe that I am a better Hindu on account of my study of the Bible, or, at any rate, none the worse for it.

When you are out of your teens you begin to be at atrtracted by the other sex. And generally you become attached legally and irrevocably to one member of the other sex; and she promptly establishes herself as your better half. Sometimes marriage results in a conflict between the wife and the mother, and the tyranny of the mother-in-law and the resistance of the daughter-in-law sometimes results in a tragedy. In the West the problem is solved by practically eliminating the parents from the household. When a young couple set up house, the old couple move out. They can at best be visitors to, not residents in, their children’s house; or the children may condescend to send their parents to a Home for the Aged. In India, where the joint family tradition still lingers, this is regarded as callous. So, strangely enough, is it in Russia.

Soon after the Great October Revolution the Soviet Union began with an aversion to all established institutions, including the family. Marriage was regarded as a bourgeois affair. It was thought that to satisfy one’s longing for sex should be as simple as to quench one’s thirst with a glass of Water. This was known as the glass of water theory. Some people, however, still regarded marriage as a useful, though not a sacred, institution. The controversy came to the notice of Vladimir IIych Lenin who said: “It is alright to say that to satisfy one’s instinct for sex is like drinking a glass of water, but surely you do not want to drink from a glass from which a dozen others have drunk.” That settled the question. Marriage is now considered as a respectable, though not a holy, institution. Divorce is easy and holy wedlock does not become what A. P. Herbert called “holy deadlock.” The unmarried mother is not looked down with contempt or horror. Indeed there is a provision in the Soviet budget for the maintenance of children of unmarried mothers.

I mention all this as an example of the varying attitudes towards, and the conflicts inherent in, human relations. Sometimes our relationship with something becomes so intense that it begins to dominate all others. By the time we attain middle age we become related to a sect, a caste, a religion or a political party. If a person becomes so attached to it that he begins to look askance at every other sect, caste, religion or party as trash, he becomes a fanatic or bigot. And bigotry and fanaticism are the worst of all evils.

All men are attached to one country or another. This is known as patriotism, but if one acts on the principle, “My country, right or wrong” patriotism may become, as Dr. Johnson defined it, “the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Once in a few centuries a man is born whose attachment is not confined to his country or people but whose concern embraces all humanity so much so that he is even prepared to lay down his life for mankind. Such a man was born in Palestine more than 2,000 years ago and he was crucified. Such a man was born in our own country in our own time, and he was assassinated.

Somewhere I saw a definition of life some years ago. Life was defined as conscious contact with environment. Take for instance a fish. Remove it from its watery environment, cast it on land, and it dies. Clip a bird’s wings and prevent from rising into the empyrean, and it ceases to be a bird. Or a man in solitary confinement for a number of years, and he loses that distinctive faculty of man, reason, and for all practical purposes he ceases to be a man.

Willynilly, we are all in Contact with our environment. But that is not enough. We must be conscious of our contact with environment and be in harmony with it. This is stressed in the prospectus of “The Fraternity Cultural Orientation Course” which says, “The secret of successful living lies in the maintenance of harmonious relationship with those around us.” The idea is well put. Only, I would omit one word from this sentence. I would omit the word “successful.” Success is not the be-all and end-all of life. Success is a siren which tempts many an honourable man into the primrose path of the everlasting bonfire. Graceful and decent living is far more important than a successful life. Indeed the life of a man who is bent on being successful often lacks grace and even decency, though there are some illustrious examples to the contrary.

I would also make an addition to the sentence quoted above. I would add the words, “with nature.” One of the unfortunate tendencies in modern times is for man to move further and further away from nature. True, he has conquered nature. He has defied the law of gravity, flown into space and put his foot on the moon. The Russian and the American have shaken hands in space, a celestial gesture symbolic of the terrestrial detente for which they have been striving.

In conquering and subduing nature man has lost his intimacy with it. Why, he has moved away from his own nature. What is the nature of man? That is a subject on which philosophers have differed from time immemorial. All would agree that human nature has a better and a worse side: man is full of contradictory impulses. In some ways man is allied to the angels: in other ways, to the devil.

There are some philosophers like Rousseau who believe that human nature is intrinsically good and spoke of a golden age in the past.

“When wild in the woods the noble savage ran.”

The opposite view has been taken by political scientists like Hobbes who described primitive man’s life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” By and large the former school stands for freedom; the latter, for authority, which curbs man’s animal instincts and keeps him in order. The trouble, which we ourselves have experienced, is that the former may lead to chaos and the latter to totalitarianism.

The root of the trouble is that people do not feel sufficiently strongly that to live is to be related. Related, not in the sense in which the tiger is related to the lamb, the exploiter to the exploited or the racist ruler to the coloured population, but related in the sense in which Confucius said, “Within the four seas all men are brothers.”

Physically, the people of the world are now more closely related to one another than in any previous period of human history. With the advent of the air age and the vast improvement in communications the world has shrunk. Distances have been annihilated and today everyone is everyone else’s neighbour.

The physical closeness between the peoples in different parts of the world is not reflected in their political relations. The strong are still inclined to follow:

The good old rule, the simple plan
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.

It is this attitude which has produced wars and conflicts from time immemorial. But the time has come when a war is utterly inconceivable. A local war can easily become a global war, and a conventional war can become a nuclear war. And a nuclear war will mean the end of civilized life, if not life itself, on earth.

To live is to be related. And not to be related is to perish.