Elon Musk has a favourite scale, even though this is less discussed than almost everything other thing that he is interested in. It is called the Kardashev Scale. This scale is named after Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev who presented it in a research paper in 1964, and it measures civilisations on the basis of their energy access and use. Kardashev, an astrophysicist with a PhD in physics and mathematics, was the deputy director of the Astro Space Center of the PN Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. His assessment or scale for different kinds of civilisations was on the basis of the quantum of energy that a civilisation was able to tap into and use.
He developed the idea that there were there three kinds of civilisations.
Level 1, where a civilisation was able to harness and use all the energy available on the planet in which it was situated;
Level 2, where a civilisation was able to harness and use all the energy from its star (for instance, the sun for earth);
And Level 3, where a civilisation was able to harness all energy sources in its galaxy including from its star and other sources in the galaxy, including from Black Holes.
This framework of thinking is absolutely essential to the way Musk thinks about the future of the human race—as a multi-planet civilisation, which can co-exist in various planets making use of each planets energy sources as it pleases and human beings changing their habitat and habits according what was available in that planet. This way of thinking also adds a new dimension to the geopolitical framework of civilisational states—hitherto used for states with a long and unique history which forms the source material or code for the raison d’etre of their nationhood. By this logic, India is certainly a civilisational state, so is China, even though technically Mao’s Great Leap Forward was a great act of destruction wrought upon the Chinese civilisation.
But the Kardashev Scale is also a demonstration of the innate underlying philosophy of “the West”, the fundamental anthropocentricism drawn from Abrahamic sources: consider that Genesis 1:26-28 promises that man, created in the image of God, was given control over nature as part of divine will. Nature, thus, was something to be controlled, and, in the Kardashev calculation, the greater the ability of a civilisation to extract energy from its environment for its own use, the higher its status and power.
This kind of adventurism is no doubt exciting, and geopolitically useful, the country that is able to set the first colonies in other planets could gain serious strategic leverage, a thought that surely does not escape Musk. China is furiously competing in this Kardashev-ian race to conquer Mars with plans to send an unmanned mission, and then a manned mission to Mars by the turn of the decade. It has its own plans of setting up colonies on the Red Planet.
India would have to compete at this technological frontier, if it comes to pass, and, as Musk keeps promising, the first human colonies are built one day in the not-so-distant-future. But anthropocentric competition violates the basic principles of India’s foundational philosophies. Consider the shanti mantras in the Upanishads.
om dyauh santir antariksam santih
prthivi santir apah santir osadhayah santih
vanaspatayah santir visvedevh santir brahma santih
sarvam santih santir eva santih sa ma santir edhi
om santih santih santih
says the Yajurveda.
As translated by Swami Abhedananda of the Ramakrishna Math,
“Om. May peace radiate there in the whole sky as well as in the vast ethereal space everywhere.
May peace reign all over this earth, in water and in all herbs, trees and creepers.
May peace flow over the whole universe.
May peace be in the whole universe.
And may there always exist in all peace and peace alone.
Om peace, peace and peace to us and all beings!”
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad preaches an all-encompassing peace (and not just for man, or not even just for the living),
om sarvesam savastir bhavatu |
sarvesam santir bhavatu |
sarvesam purnam bhavatu |
sarvesam mangalam-bhavatu |
om sanntih santih santih ||
May there be well-being in all,
May there be peace in all,
May there be fulfilment in all,
May there be auspiciousness in all,
Om peace, peace, peace.
— as translated by Swami Abhedananda.
Therefore, India, while competing on technology and space exploration, must endeavour to create a new scale which measures inner well-being and health of a society as the Kardashev Scale measures external energy conquest. Such a scale could be called the Consciousness Scale which measures spread and strength of what is known as geoethics which explore the morality of the interaction between human societies and the natural resources around them. India’s growing achievements in non-disruptively transitioning to towards a non-fossil fuel future (renewable energy now constitutes nearly 50 per cent of the country’s energy use mix) could help it build common sustainable frameworks.
Civilisation states should project not only what they can acquire and conquer but also their inner harmony and the evolution of a common consciousness without which all ecological and sustainability targets become meaningless. If human beings are destructive on earth, as they undoubtedly are, without an elevation of inner consciousness, they are bound to be destructive in whichever planet they set up colonies in. As the Kardashev Scale showcases ambition in material terms, the Consciousness Scale would evaluate internal sanctity within civilisations and societies—a reduction of violence, an improvement in soil, water, and air quality, reduction of any form of addiction, and violence on women and children. No doubt many of these issues remain problem areas in India but if Musk in America, the most energy inefficient country in the world with some of the highest carbon footprints per capita, can draw inspiration to conquer another planet to draw new energy sources, India could well set the tone for a different kind of civilisational evaluation metric.
One of the great missing links in the study of geopolitics is the question of internalities. As Indian philosophy understands only too well, that which is in the individual, the same will be reflected in society. That which is in the atman, the single soul, is in the brahman, the universal consciousness. So, nations and societies can only find peace with one another if they find greater internal peace, and in turn, they can only do so if the individuals that make up that society are more emotionally stable, less anxiety-prone, and less driven to extreme behaviour. But rare is the instance when geopolitical strategic thinking takes this inner stability into account. It seeks instead only material examples of well-being, but as the experience of the United States and others in the wealthy Western world is showing again and again, material prosperity is no sanguine indicator of social stability or lack of aggressive aspiration on the world stage. In fact, often the reverse is true—the more the more, the more the global rapaciousness.
As India seeks to establish its credentials as a civilisational state, it must not only compete effectively on formats and criterions set up by others, but also seek to define the normative agenda.
As the Aurobindo, the sagacious author wrote, “…there is no insurmountable disparity between spirituality and worldliness…” and what seems to ordinary human beings as a “…crisis of events and great material changes, is always in its source and real meaning, a crisis in the consciousness of humanity…”. Vivekananda, who Aurobindo revered, suggested something very similar—true peace is not merely the absence of war, but a cessation of all conflict, against all sentient beings.
The Consciousness Scale would be a measure of such policies and civilisational aspects that promote these ideas of radical peace-making. It would give meaning to India’s role, and position, as a unique civilisational state offering a novel way of adjudging the paths taken and choices made by nations.
Aurobindo said about war, patriotic valour, and the spirit of conquest: “See the patriot dying in order that his country may be free, and mark that country a few decades after the Lord of Karma has paid the price of the blood and the suffering that was given; you shall see it in its turn an oppressor, an exploiter and conqueror of colonies and dependencies devouring others that it may live and succeed aggressively in life.
The Christian martyrs perish in their thousands, setting soul-force against empire-force that Christ may conquer, Christianity prevail. Soul-force does triumph, Christianity does prevail—but not Christ; the victorious religion becomes a militant and dominant Church and a more fanatically persecuting power than the creed and the empire which it replaced.
The very religions organise themselves into powers of mutual strife and battle together fiercely to live, to grow, to possess the world.
All which seems to show that here is an element in existence, perhaps the initial element, which we do not know how to conquer either because it cannot be conquered or because we have not looked at it with a strong and impartial gaze so as to recognise it calmly and fairly and know what it is.”
This is vital reflection from the very heart of Indian Hindu philosophy. The question of conquest is never fully answered without raising the question of conquering oneself. Therefore, perhaps only India could find the intellectual and philosophical space to develop a scale that engages civilisations (and civilisational states) to reflect upon the deeper, more intrinsic changes needed within their societies, and being on a scale is a nudge towards moving to higher planes of success.
All of India’s greatest thinkers have always been united in the idea that the country has something much deeper to offer to the world than merely material well-being. As India’s rising in the geopolitical ladder, bringing some of this knowledge into strategic initiatives would be useful—the country’s push on yoga has been successful, and certainly yoga is a great starting point for any reflection on consciousness. It might be well be, while Musk and Xi Jinping compete for land on Mars, that the more vital inner work is done via Indian knowledge, and in that the Consciousness Scale would be more important than the Kardashev Scale.
* Hindol Sengupta is professor of international relations at O. P. Jindal Global University, and co-founder of the foreign affairs platform, Global Order.