Moreover, from the social standpoint, one cannot deny the functionalist position that various components of society are interrelated with the implication that to improve one particular part of society is to work for the improvement of all other parts. Thus to solve social problems of man, the whole society need to be perfected. But you know that you cannot combine one good thing with another good thing so easily. For example, you cannot combine Sarvodaya (Gandhi’s concept of welfare) with military success; you cannot combine Ahimsa (non-violence) with capitalist industrialization. This takes us to do a critical examination of various utopias as consistent wholes with their overall attractiveness or repulsiveness. There is no option to this, however unfair these utopias are to different social interests.
After arrival of postmodernism and emphasis on relativism and deconstruction it has become more vivid that it’s not easy to delve on the idea of perfectibility. There is no absolute truth and, therefore, there is no possibility of perfectibility. There are no rivals as there are no dichotomies. All are speaking different languages and the battle of ideas has become a chaos of ideas. In countries like India also this is happening despite the fact that unlike the assumptions of postmodernity there may be very little to celebrate. For majority of people economic and physical misery is a real “real” issue. Everyone wants justice but there is no consensus regarding forms or bases of justice. Everyone wants equality but there is no consensus regarding equality. Everyone wants peace but there is no consensus regarding causes of absence of peace, ways of building a peaceful society, or how a peaceful society is to be sustained. Everyone wants development but victims of development are a reality.
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