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samaja (Society)

Sanskrit and prestige go together in India. As soon as you have that, none dares say anything against you. That is the one secret; take that up. The whole universe, to use the ancient Advaitist's simile, is in a state of self-hypnotism. It is will that is the power. It is the man of strong will that throws, as it were, a halo round him and brings all other people to the same state of vibration as he has in his own mind. Such gigantic men do appear. And what is the idea? When a powerful individual appears, his personality infuses his thoughts into us, and many of us come to have the same thoughts, and thus we become powerful. Why is it that organizations are so powerful? Do not say organization is material. Why is it, to take a case in point, that forty millions of Englishmen rule three hundred millions of people here? What is the psychological explanation? These forty millions put their wills together and that means infinite power, and you three hundred millions have a will each separate from the other. Therefore to make a great future India, the whole secret lies in organization, accumulation of power, co-ordination of wills. - Swami Vivekananda. Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

My mission is to build a society that is built on Vedantic ideals.

The West is suffering from a crisis of identity and purpose because it tied itself to materialism and consumerism. India is also going down this path, it will get wealthy, but we should not forget that India has a rich spiritual and philosophical tradition that combines the material and spiritual. My goal is to build a society that is built on these Vedantic ideals that combines the material and spiritual, a combination of the strengths of the West and the East.

Study

The study for samāja is focused on understanding human nature, society, and governance.

Primary​

  1. Statecraft
    1. Vyasa – Mahābhārata
    2. 📚 Kauṭilya – Arthaśāstra
    3. 📚 Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
    4. Plato – Republic
    5. Hamilton - Federalist Papers
  2. Culture
    1. Sarvarkar – Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?
    2. Bhawani Mandir by Aurobindo
  3. Economics
    1. Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations
    2. Friedrich Hayek – The Road to Serfdom
    3. Joseph Schumpeter – Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
  4. Sociology & Psychology
    1. Max Weber – The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
    2. Sigmund Freud – Civilization and Its Discontents
    3. George Orwell – 1984
    4. Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
  5. War & Strategy
    1. B.H. Liddell Hart – Strategy
    2. Sun Tzu – The Art of War
    3. Carl von Clausewitz – On War
    4. 📚 Xenophon – Cyropaedia
  6. History
    1. 📚 Will Durant – Lessons of History
    2. 📚 Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America
    3. William L. Shirer – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
    4. 📚 Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Biographies​