The Nun Revolution

The ongoing strike by nuns in Kerala against the church is attracting a lot of attention.  Many who are loyal to the Catholic establishment say that the fact that the nun did not complain for several months and apparently 'yielded' to the Bishop's sexual demands suggests that their relationship might have been consensual and that the nun cried rape only when something went wrong between them.  But listening to the nuns accounts shown on TV, it certainly seems that there is another explanation why the nun did not protest initially.

We need to consider the powerful tradition of Catholic indoctrination of nuns - that is based on implicit obedience, total respect for the priestly hierarchy and devotion to the church duties.   From the day a nun is ordained in the church, she will undergo deep indoctrination in the virtues of order, obedience, compliance and devotion.  And disobedience or rebellion is treated as the greatest vice and is virtually unthinkable.   Therefore when a nun encounters a lecherous priest who makes sexual advances, her first instinct would be to protect secrecy and honour of the church - because she is trained to value the sanctity and image of the church than to assert her own fundamental human rights against sexual harrassment. Therefore it is easy to force an indoctrinated and devout nun into sexual activity by a priest - because the nun's prime instinct would be NOT TO cause a commotion and malign the church's image - hence she cannot scream or fight openly or run out of the convent shouting for help. This inherent weakness of the nun owing to religious indoctrination has been serially exploited by the male priests - and  in the history of the Catholicism at least in India - nuns have seldom rebelled openly against the church. There may isolated instances like Sister Jesme, but being alone, she could be easily be discredited by attributing insanity. In this instance, complaining against a bishop is a very drastic step for a nun especially when she is alone. If there is company of several nuns, it would be easier.  It does seem that the bishop in this case had misbehaved to varying degrees with several nuns and this is why the nuns were able to network and ventilate their painful experiences among themselves and finally muster enough courage to come out into the open.

The Catholic Church is a very successful business establishment that makes its wealth through its hospitals, schools and colleges -and probably through .  Its greatest advantage is the special brand of workers - the nuns - who work totally free. Incredibly,  in India, even a nun who is a cardiologist cannot take any money for herself. All her salary goes into the bank account of the church. Of course, they are given free accommodation and free food and when they get old and ill they will be nursed by younger nuns.  In contrast, priests, bishops and cardinals are allowed to have salaries, make money for themselves and have complete financial freedom and individual ownership rights.  In the Catholic Church, male priests are masters even from the time they join while the women (nuns) are expected to be totally obedient and servile and work without pay for their entire lives.

Now, in Kerala, for the first time, the nuns are engaged in what seems like a Marxian conflict where the capitalist-worker division is drawn between the sexes - the oppressed workers (nuns) vs the masters (priests). Now, I don't see how this will resolve without the entire organization - in its current form of priestly bourgeoisie ruling the nun proletariat - disintegrating in Kerala.  The unique economic system of the church that is a mix of capitalism, fedualism and slavery would need to give way to conventional social-democratic capitalism - as  happened in Western Europe in the twentieth century - with the church - in the absence of totally disciplined nun-workers who don't need to be paid - finding it impossible to sustain the profitability of its educational and healthcare business. 

What am I?

The I exists only in language and thought that is made of language. I exists in my parent's accusation that 'I' didn't do something.  It is in situations like my parent accusing me of not doing something that the consciousness of 'I' becomes acute because of the pain that goes with the accusation. I is the 'thing' or the 'free willing morally responsible agent or the soul' that is responsible for not doing whatever my parent said I didn't do. It is that thing that is interpreted as worthless and inferior on account of it not doing what my parent accused it didn’t do.   What exactly is this 'I' that my parent says didn't do that every worthy person ought to have done?.  It is not this body.  It must be the brain. Which part of the brain?  It is the part of the brain that has the ability to act freely and by its own volition and moral responsibility. Which is this part of the brain? Is it the prefrontal lobe of the brain? Is it some focus within the prefrontal lobe?  Is it made of nerve cells? Or is it the programmed software that the focus in the prefrontal lobe runs? Is it the neural hardware or the software that it runs? Or is it something that is distinct and separate from the brain tissue that is free and morally responsible and that prods the brain tissue to act hovering over it in a non-material form - something that may be called the  'soul'?.  If this soul is an energy that acts on the brain tissue to make it function, then it must be material - as energy and matter are interchangeable. If the soul is not an energy and something 'spiritual' like consciousness itself, it will be completely distinct and separate from the body and the brain tissue.  And therefore this soul will not be the brain, neural tissue or any part of the body. The brain is a computer. It is programmed or conditioned by the genes and the information that it is fed into it as it goes through life.

Thus, if there is a soul, it has nothing to do with the body and brain that was obtained through biological evolution and inheritance down the genetic line. The soul need not feel guilty or ashamed of the body and brain it is connected to.

If there is no soul and decisions are a result of software programming in the neural tissue and the thought of being responsible and willing freely is also a thought that is part of the software and what I feel I am doing is actually a nature-determined action that my brain computer is made to do with the appended thought that whatever is executed in the brain computer is done freely by the thing called 'I".  This is followed by conditioned thoughts that say 'I must be responsible, I am guilty, I should be ashamed' etc making the 'I' seem more real.

The long and the short of it is that the I is not any part of the brain or body. If it is software, it is unreal and a delusion. If it is spiritual and animating the brain, then again it is separate from the brain and body.

That the 'I' is the body or the brain is not true.  The I does not exist in a material form as energy or energy residing inside material tissue  - aside from the controversial possibility that it is a free-willing morally responsible soul and in which case also, it is free from the body.  It is the confusion that the ‘I’ is the body (or the brain) that causes problems.