Impact of Political and Economic Structures on Human Behavior
Impact of Political and Economic Structures on Human Behavior
Impact of Political and Economic Structures on Human Behavior
Adil Badshah (Mansehra)
Human being is not fraudulent, corrupt, criminal and fiddle by his Nature. Lombroso's (criminologist) theory is essentially a theory of biological positivism. Biological explanations of crime assume that some people are 'born criminals', who are physiologically distinct from non-criminals. He explained 36 physical features of human body that explain different signs of criminal personality. In John Locke's philosophy, Tabula Rasa is a theory which states that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore, all knowledge comes from experience or perception and no one is born criminal but environment in which he lives affects his behavior.
Similarly, Shah Waliullah Dehalvi explained in his book Hujatullah Balagha that a few persons who might be less than 1% in numbers, are spiritually disable to accept the good and are inclined to evil thoughts as Quran says about them:
‘‘ صُمٌّ بُكْمٌ عُمْيٌ فَهُمْ لَا يَرْجِعُونَ
While the vast majority of human beings are born as innocent creatures as they have the capacity to learn good or bad from their environment. At another place, Holy Quran says:
﴿فِطْرَتَ اللّٰـهِ الَّتِي فَطَرَ النَّاسَ عَلَيْهَا﴾ آیت۳۰ سورت روم -“
This verse also emphasizes that all human beings are born according to Allah’s nature and human behavior is the result of prevalent culture or environment. Similar concept has been discussed in a Hadees that states: “Every child is born on Divine nature. كلُّ مولودٍ يولَدُ على الفطرةِ”
What is (Nature)? Shah Waliullah R.A explains that fitrat (the nature of human) consists of following four ethical codes which are inbuilt into human nature:-
1- طہارت (Cleanliness): Every human wants to live in a clean and sophisticated environment that starts form his psychology, body, family, district, region, province, country, and world.
2- اخبات (Acceptance of sovereignty of a Creator or a Higher power): Everyone in the world bows down before some supernatural power or some authority that he or she considers greater than his or her self. In Islam, it is called Allah, while in other religions some call it Baghwan, Waheguru, Jehovah, Elohim, Hayyi Rabbi, Qewls, Ahura Mazda etc. Even an atheist who does not believe in God bows down to laws of nature or some philosophical system (like communism) and thus accepts the supremacy of a higher authority.
3- سماحت (Generosity and dignity) : Human nature is generous . Man wants to live in a group and works for the collective betterment of mankind. Similarly, forgiveness, bravery and hospitality come under this umbrella.
4- عدالت (Justice) : The greatest ethical code in human nature is justice. Every human being likes justice and wants to build his society on the principles of justice.
Hegel's dialectical idealism states that every idea (thesis) gives rise to a counter idea (antithesis) and the original idea and counter idea collide with each other to give rise to a new idea (synthesis). Then, the synthesis itself acquires the status of a thesis and gives rise to its own antithesis in a continuous cycle. Karal Marx developed his ideology of Dialectical materialism on the basis of Hegel’s dialectical idealism by denying the spiritual aspect of Hegel’s dialectical idealism. In Marx’s dialectics, three main contradictions take place. In the first contradiction, there is interaction between man and nature in the social aspect of labor. For example, a new material results from two old materials. The second contradiction starts with appearance of contradiction between new productive forces and old productive forces. The third contradiction results from the contradiction between new structure of production and the old superstructure. Marx anticipated that dialectics in capitalism will give rise to socialism. Shah Waliullah R.A said that revolution or social change is inbuilt capability of human beings through which they first organize like-minded people to change the harmful social structures and evil functions of their society.
Furthermore, Shah Waliullah R.A said that following three different characteristics of human nature differentiate humans form other creatures in the world :-
1- Ability to follow and invent (مادہ ایجاد و تقلید): Human nature is creative; Man wants to create, invent or discover new things for the sake of development and continuum of culture and civilization after learning from nature and his fellow beings.
2- Ability to appreciate beauty (مادہ حب جمال): Humans like beauty in everything around them and struggle to make their environment unpolluted, beautiful and clean.
3- Ability to think and work for collective good (رائے کلی): Humans have a natural tendency to live in groups, clans, family etc. Shah Waliullah says that if a single male and a single female start living in jungle, they will build their family, clan and ultimately human society comprising of towns, cities and countries. Humans have the ability to develop different sorts of tools, systems and institutions in order to create ease and efficiency in human life which are characterized by Shah Waliullah as Irtifaqaat. That’s why the human being is superior to other creatures in the world as Allah says in Quran:
لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا الْاِنْسَانَ فِیْۤ اَحْسَنِ تَقْوِیْمٍ
When human beings come to this earth, they bring God gifted natural tendencies and characteristics but when they socialize within the given culture of society, then blank human mind starts writing with cultural code. If the environment is favorable to foster above mentioned characteristics appropriately, then society gets flourished and healthy. On the contrary, if social environment is not favorable, then cultural lag occurs and humanity as a whole suffers.
Political and economic structures have great impact on human behavior, attitudes and ethics as explained by Shah Waliullah. If economic structure creates concentration of wealth into a limited group of people and majority suffers from starvation and poverty due to the unjust distribution of economic resources, then human ethics are spoiled. Similarly, political structure -whose first pillar is Parliament-, has the power to make laws and policies pertaining to public domain and welfare. The second pillar of political structure is Judiciary that interprets the constitution and legislation and also gives verdict and punishment on violation of laws. The third pillar of the political structure is Executive whose responsibility is to implement all laws and policies passed by the parliament.
Now question does arise that what circumstances make a man corrupt or culprit?
Its simple answer is that when the parliament designs the policies, procedures, plans and strategies for safeguarding the interests of a specific minor group of society (Ruling Class) that holds the bulk of country’s resources, and majority of population is ignored in reaping benefits from their decisions, then every person who is involved in the machinery of operating the system, particularly those who are positioned at the top level, use their power to violate the rights of majority, promote nepotism, corruption and use the resources of the whole society for their own interests. They design social, economic, educational and political institutions for exploitation. Resultantly this casts adverse impacts on human behaviors and a majority gets involved in corruption, nepotism and criminal activities because of inequality of resources, poverty, injustice and hunger in society.
Conclusion:
If the political and economic systems of a country are corrupt and dysfunctional, then collective behavior of a society tends to be rotten and all the system’s machinery i.e. parliament, judiciary and administration will be corrupt and every person who has been working there, he has to be a corrupt; he has to follow the procedures that have been designed for further exploitation and plundering of mass resources. Therefore, eliminating the corrupt systems (Political, Economic and Educational Structures) can only change the attitudes of corrupt people in society who abuse their power, authority and country’s resources.