Comments on: Wars, Opium, Powerful Governments and Weak Nations

By: Patel

Patel — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 19:14:10 +0000

I agree on your take on religion. In India, you see many brilliant, charicmatic, religious leaders, capable of mobilizing followers in the hundreds of thousands and only one thing comes to mind. I wonder what the opportunity cost of that is? And the problem isn’t just with these devout Hindus, Christians, Muslims… in India. NRI’s, my parents including, become followers these organizations and end up building shiny new temples 2 blocks away from older ones. Take some of these temples and replace their pujaris with teachers, their murthis with blackboards, and kankoo with some plain old chaulk. The amount of human capital India spends on religion is equally as foolish as the amount it spends on gold.

On a side note: I was wondering if anyone here knows any good Japan and Korea Foreign/economic policy blogs?

By: Atanu Dey

Atanu Dey — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 06:41:13 +0000

Guru, I am not talking about absolute power, only power of the government relative to the power of the people. So you could have a Soviet Russia style government where the people are powerless relative to the power of the government. Same as a Taleban style government. At the other extreme, you could have Western European style liberal government where the people decide much of what they do in their private and public lives. In India, people are powerless relative to the power of the government.

And yes, the US consumes more stuff — they produce more stuff as well. And what they consume which they don’t produce, they borrow, and they borrow massively. But that is not the power that I am talking about.

By: Atanu Dey

Atanu Dey — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 04:02:52 +0000

Sibin, I have read Marx quoted as "Religion is the x of y" variously where x = {opium, opiate} and y = {masses, people}. In the German, I have come across "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes". If indeed he said it in German, then clearly "Religion is the opium of the people" is right. But he could have written that directly in English. The Free Dictionary has this excerpt of Marx:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

By: Guru Gulab Khatri

Guru Gulab Khatri — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 02:00:50 +0000

The Average US individual has the ‘power’ to consume more power than any other group in the world. Be it oil/electricity, so one can say he is powerful
And so is US governement, which is taking any where from 17-33% of his income + sales tax,
property tax, other tax(see an american phone bill).
The stronger the individual => stronger government.
I dont see it is a government vs individual game.
Its the pidda desi who gets a pidda government.
Its silly folks from bikaner who elect a movie star and then complain that he’s never in bikaner.
The same folks who complain that parties are run by strong personality turn out in large numbers celebrating birthdays of its head.
piddey log piddey sarkar, tagdey log tagdey sarkar.

By: Amit Kulkarni

Amit Kulkarni — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:14:51 +0000

I have talked to some (5 to be precise) of the evangelists of the two biggest monotheist religions, on why religion is necessary in the modern world. And not surprisingly, their response was: you can’t run a society where too many people are atheist. I should note, my impression was that they were themselves not religious. On the surface, they all looked deeply religious, but after spending two-five hours with them, I felt their motivation was certainly not ‘religious’. They expressly forbid dissent when they are on the stage or were ‘preaching’.

I have also seen places which are prosperous and yet, religion has a stranglehold (dont know the level though, maybe superficial, maybe deep).

By: Sibin.

Sibin. — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 21:57:19 +0000

Not trying to nitpick, but the original quote from Marx was…

“Religion is the opiate of the masses”.