The worst of such bad ideas is, of course, the idea of God. It has spawned several religions which, collectively, have caused more misery than anything else in the world. Even as science progresses, this terrible idea is gaining ground.
Socially, an absolutely horrible idea is marriage. It has totally subjugated half of the human species. While some men may have suffered at the individual level, women have suffered collectively. Fortunately, its hold is receding.
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In economic terms, a third rotten idea was state control of human actions. It legitimised the practice of entirely undemocratic practices, sometimes in the name of democracy. The state screwed you for your own good. India has suffered the most from state control. Many others have suffered from its extreme form, Communism.
Fortunately, after a brief and bloody flowering, Communism has gone completely. But sadly its malevolent parent, state control of everything, has not. Now some people are arguing that it should be expanded. That just shows how hard it is to get rid of the smell of a really bad idea.
We love bad ideas
Societies seem to adopt bad ideas very eagerly. The worse the idea, the more eager they are to accept and practice it. It doesn't matter where or who or when. World history is full of examples of this.
Furthermore, a good idea is soon perverted into becoming a bad practice. People clearly prefer the latter to the former. A case in point: Caste-based reservations in government-funded institutions.
But bad ideas - again like caste-based reservation - also present an intractable problem: they do some good. Not much, but some. And this provides its proponents to claim victory and run with it.
Henry VIII of England attacked the Roman Catholic Church in the mid-16th century because it would not allow him to divorce his wife! Religion and marriage came together here. Protestantism triumphed in England, and a very practical approach to everything took root there.
In France, the French Revolution brought in its wake the notion that it was all right to exterminate the ruling class. Stalin and Pol Pot, to name just two, perfected it in the 20th century. But the French Revolution was an epochal event that would change Europe completely over the next 100 years, and for the good.
In China, they had the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. It caused a lot a hardship to the Chinese people. In the end though, wholly unintentionally and as a reaction, it led to a different China that now seeks to dominate the world.
Defending bad ideas
Some people say that an idea is only as good or as bad as the people who subscribe to them. This sounds very reasonable on the face of it but is, in fact, complete nonsense.
A bad idea has no context. It does not become good when the context changes. Like (only) the three bad ideas I have mentioned above it is bad in the absolute sense.
Not just this. Bad also ideas chase out good ones. This too has happened all over the world.
In India, for example, the Brahmins chased Buddhism out completely. As a result, oppressive ritual triumphed over simple good sense.
But thankfully now this aspect - of religious as opposed to philosophical Hinduism - is ending. Unfortunately, however, its place is being taken by political Hinduism. It sits very badly with philosophical Hinduism which is delightful in its nuances and subtleness. No other body of thought comes anywhere close to it. But who is to tell the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)?
Political Hinduism has been in the ascendant because the RSS has confused Hindu culture with Hindu ritual. The slow abridgment and even elimination of ritual over the last 150 years has been taken to mean that Hindu culture is being extinguished. So there has a wholly unwarranted political response.
But Hindu culture doesn't need goons and thugs to help it survive. It managed quite well before 1925 when the RSS was born. It has always thrived on wisdom and insight, which the goons and thugs lack entirely.
But even if Hinduism doesn't need the goons they need it. And therein lies Narendra Modi's main problem.
The guy has to stop using something as wonderful as Hinduism for political ends because if nothing else, it makes him and his party indistinguishable from Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League. When Jinnah comprehensively lost the election in 1937, he raised the cry of Islam in danger and won Pakistan for himself.
What does the RSS-BJP combination want to win with its Hinduism-in-danger campaign? An India broken in spirit?