What K4M2A believes

K4M2A is a conversation, not a doctrine. But a conversation still needs a starting point, and it is only fair to say plainly what ours is. These are the beliefs everything else on this site rests on. We hold them firmly enough to act on and loosely enough to change.

This may sound like a lot of certainty for a group that says it is still finding out. It is meant the other way round: by writing our beliefs down, we make them easy to test, and easy to show us where they fail.

1. Everyone wants the same four things

Ask people what they want for the earth and the answers sound alike: clarity, enough, trust and harmony. Madhyasth Darshan names these four together as the human goal. None of them holds up alone, and together they are what we mean by good.

2. The wish to be happy is not optional

Every human being wants to live a happy and prosperous life, and to live it continuously. We don’t think that wish is selfish or naive. We think it is the most reliable fact about people, and the right place to begin.

3. Happiness comes through understanding

Happiness is a resolved present. Pleasure depends on conditions and passes. What makes happiness stay is understanding, and what makes prosperity possible is knowing our needs.

4. Understanding is verified by living

Being able to explain something is not the same as understanding it. The test is what becomes different in how we live. That is slow to confirm. Living cannot be verified in a day.

5. The family comes first

A good system for the planet starts as a good system for a family, then for a village, and grows from there. Whatever is missing in the family cannot be supplied anywhere else.

6. Relationships before rules

Rules can stop harm, but they cannot supply the understanding that was missing. We would rather build relationships in which exploitation no longer makes sense. A good system needs less control as the people inside it understand more.

7. Technology should serve understanding

Technology amplifies whatever purpose we already have. Its greatest contribution may be to free people to understand themselves and each other, and we try to build with that in mind.

8. Nobody gets there alone

What we write is not one person’s view. It is understanding we are working out together, and anyone who wants a good earth is welcome to take part.

Where we might be wrong

We may be underestimating how much people’s wants genuinely differ, across cultures and lives.
Starting with the family assumes families can be safe places. Some aren’t, and our approach has to account for that.
Most of these beliefs come from Madhyasth Darshan. We find it convincing, but it has not yet been widely tested, and we may be reading it imperfectly.

Sources

Madhyasth Darshan, given by Shri A. Nagraj, and its Paribhasha Sanhita, especially मानव लक्ष्य (the human goal), p. 148.
Shri A. Nagraj, Vyavaharatmak Janvad, p. 102, on the family as the first step.
The essays on this site, where each belief is argued in full.