Columnists

Hanging Out Together

by I.J. SINGH

 

I have always looked at myself as a solitary furrower, ploughing my own path through the mind-boggling maze of life. 

I also know that man is a social animal.  We exist in clusters; often the smallest and most meaningful are those of family.  Without company, we are not just alone and adrift, but painfully lonely and lost.  Keep in mind the subtle distinction between being alone and being lonely. Still, science tells us that married people live longer, in spite of the undeniable fact that not all marriages are heavenly.

Sometimes on long drives, I find myself on a lengthy, desolate stretch for miles, and then, all of a sudden, I come upon a cluster of cars almost riding each other's tail lights.  It is as if a group of people were all headed together towards a common end-point. 

Sometimes, I speed up and bypass them, and find myself on an isolated empty road once again, until I run into the next clump of cars a few miles further down the road.  The worse the weather and road conditions, the more the clustering, as if seeking comfort and security in intimacy.

Or, just look out the window of an airplane.  One flies by miles of nothing, interspersed with small burgs of closely situated homes. (The only exception I can think of is the ever-widening sprawl of Los Angeles.)

I always wondered why this was so.  Why would apparent strangers strive to join a cluster?  I wondered if there was some meaning in such behavior of social animals that we humans are.  I know these nested groupings provide the infrastructure and the conveniences that people need to live.

Now, a behavioral biologist at Princeton, Iain D. Couzin, has done what a scientist does.  He cast an analytical eye on the matter and reported (New York Times, Nov 13, 2007) that this "instinct to swarm" exists perhaps throughout the biological kingdom, "from ants to people".

If this is so, does it mean that it is not, at its core, learned behavior, but makes up some small but critical segment of our DNA?  Only time and science will one day tell us how it is passed from one generation to the next.  What is the impact of culture on it?  How much of it is nature and how much is nurture?  The important thing is that this defining trait exists; we need to understand it and put it to good use.

Perhaps it is this eons-old instinct that lies behind the parental mantra, repeated ad nauseum through the ages and in all cultures across the world, to shun bad company.  Parents and teachers insist that we resist the bad and cultivate good company, as if virtue and vice are both equally infectious.

Well, perhaps this is so, particularly if swarming is an instinct that is phylogenetically as ancient as it appears to be.

Research also suggests that ants are more peacefully cooperative in cluster formations than humans.  This may be because genetics and evolution make us so complex, contentious and competitive an animal.

Perhaps from this research we can derive answers to why teenagers hang out together?  It also seems to me that adult cocktail parties and coffee klatches may have emerged from the same instinct to form groups and not be conceptually any different.

There is power in numbers and there is vulnerability in being isolated, and therein lies the lure of togetherness.  No matter how strong the individual, all animal species seem to have discovered the safety that lies in collectivity.  Hence, the need to form families, clans, tribes, groups, even castes, gangs, religions and nations.  All minorities understand this truism, often at a cost.

So, we seek out others, even though we know that some people rob us of our solitude without giving us company.

What then is good company?  Is it the association of those who think absolutely like us? I hope not, for that would be the company of clones; it would make for dull dialogue, while making further progress impossible.

But good company could be that of fellow travelers who are on the same path, though not necessarily at the same place always.  In such a clustering, differences would be welcome; they would generate fruitful discussions.  From them, ideas would arise and coalesce to become markers of strength and independence, and harbingers of progress.

Religions, particularly those that are congregational in nature, recognize this truth. 

Two kinds of ties bind us to others: those of blood or of ideas.  Congregational religions inculcate a commonality of ideas and ideology.  If they were to be based on bloodlines and ethnicity, then by definition, those religions would be necessarily confined to an ethnocentric existence, limited to a piece of geography, lineage of birth, and cultural enclaves somewhere.

I say this even though I understand full well that, to an extent, delving into religious truths is a solitary pursuit.  It is a process of self-exploration in which each individual looks within to discover the source of universal connectivity. 

One could then argue that worldly companions and concerns along the spiritual path would only be a distraction.  And such a strain is indeed evident in Hindu and Roman Catholic belief, for example.  In both, the celibate life is exalted; the alluring and ideal model remains a person who willingly divests himself of all worldly ties.  The further away he retires from all human involvement, the holier his aura.

But community-building requires a congregational model.

Sikhism engages both the individual onus and the social contract, for it clearly recognizes that humans are social animals.  Religions, then, must define a way to convey the universality of the Ultimate Reality of which we are all a part, and secondly, must help us build social institutions and living communities to nurture that reality. 

And that inevitably brings us to the idea of a congregation, or what the Sikh Masters called sangat. 

In many north Indian languages, the word sangat indicates company, whether of an individual or an assemblage.  But in Sikhi, it assumes added significance.  Sangat is absolutely not a random collection of people.  It consists of people joined together, as the Zen would say, in mindful prayer and purpose.  This common purpose stems from kinship of ideas, not bloodlines.  It is somewhat like what we now dub the "town hall caucus".

Guru Nanak posed the question of what constitutes good sangat (Sat sangat kaisee jaaniye?), and then answered his own query: Where the One Infinite presence pervades (Jithey eko naam vakhahinye). 

Amar Das, the third Guru, reminds us that in good company one learns to love the truth (Sacchee sangat such milay, sacchey naal piyar).  Kabir reminds us that we become the company we keep (Jo jaisee sangat milay, so taiso phal khaye).   And the Sikh savant, Bhai Gurdas, reminds us that some company can liberate us, just as surely as some can consign us to hell (Kahoo kee sangat mil jeevan mukt hoi, kahoo kee sangat mil jampur jaat hai).

Sangat, then, becomes the primal idea, without which there can be no community or nation-building. 

Sangat  -  communities and clusters  -  would then mean tapping into what, for the want of a better expression, I would call "people power". The strength of a group is always greater than the sum of its parts.  This power is infinite, without end.  It is the power that can transform ordinary mortals into men and women who come together in higher purpose.  Just as pressure and time can create a priceless diamond out of the same carbon that is ordinary coal, similarly sangat can transform people. 

Guru Gobind Singh, the Tenth Sikh Master, pays the ultimate compliment to such sangat in words that we can all understand: "I owe all that I am to these people, without them, there are untold millions like me (Inhee(n) ki kirpa te sajey hum hai(n), nahee(n) moso(n) gareeb karoar parey).

And then, says Nanak, God pervades such a gathering (Vich sangat har prabh vasay jeeo). 

Now that is putting our instinct for swarming to excellent ends.  Even a lone ploughman like me salutes such sangat.

 

December 8, 2007

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