Some Gandhi

I was reminded of a quote from Mohandas Gandhi today, and it seems very apposite after my previous entry about the forthcoming state election.  In an article published in Young India in 1925, Gandhi intimated to his readers a list of seven social sins, which had come to him via a "fair friend:"

Politics without principles
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Knowledge without character
Commerce without morality
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice

I think the most telling thing about the upcoming state election is that neither of the major parties has been able to articulate why they're there.  Why vote Labour or Liberal if they can't even state some basic principles as to why it's worth the effort?  We are just slaves to the same punitive economic ideology which has warped our social outlook for the last 30 or more years.  If the point is to remain in power (Labour) or to attain it (Liberal), what is the point of possessing power at all?  If it is to follow the same political muddle-headedness that has prevailed since the politicians began to dissent from the prevailing socio-economic consensus, then there really is no point.

Several questions follow on from this.

Why the auction on "law and order," when the governing ideology practically forbids the government from operating the whole system?  Ideology dictates that prisons be outsourced to private companies.

Why continue to build freeways when it is clear that they don't stack up in purely economic terms?

Why persist with private-public partnerships for all major infrastructure projects?

Why subordinate education policy to the needs of industry?

Why is government involvement in the market necessarily a bad thing?

If questions like this make me naive, then being wordly-wise doesn't seem particularly worthwhile.  Surely there are more interesting possibilities contained within our community if it is conceived as a society, instead of constantly being articulated as a market, industry or some other economic construct.

There is a very good point Gandhi makes earlier in the same article, which bears placing close by this list of social sins:

We have not the governance of the universe in our hands but we have our own in our hands and you will find that that is about all it is possible for us to do. But it is at that same time all in all. There is much truth in the homely English proverb: Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

There are many more questions one could proceed to ask here.  Probably a lengthy blog post worth, but I'll save that for another edition. The full Gandi piece can be found here, pages 129-35.