By Mesha Oh
Have you ever wondered why human beings are born in such grossly unequal circumstances—in terms of various indices, such as the genetic inheritance they receive at birth from their parents, the sort of parents they are born to, the social, ethnic, cultural, religious (or non-religious) and economic background of the family into which they take birth, and the part of the world where they are born?
Birth-based inequalities are a basic fact of human life. These inequalities, over which an infant arriving in this world has no control, play a major role in shaping the outcome of a person’s life. Given how significant these really are in determining our life’s outcome, is there, one might want to know, any logic that decides who shall be born in what sort of context (genetic, familial, social, cultural, economic and geographical), or does this all happen simply at random?
While at least as long as we are in this present world we can really never know for sure what the reason, if any, might be for the particular context a particular infant takes birth in, this has not stopped human beings from developing various theories that seek to provide an explanation for this phenomenon.
Such theories are of two types: naturalistic and supernaturalist. According to the former, a particular infant takes birth in a particular context simply by chance, this being simply the way Nature operates. A man and a woman engage in sexual intercourse and later, a child happens to be born to them. There is no transcendent logic behind why this particular child was born to this particular set of parents who are members of a particular class with a particular economic and cultural background, living in a particular part of the world and from whom it received a particular set of genes, all of which will play a determining role in how its life will go on to unfold. It is by mere chance that someone is born somewhere, to some set of parents from some social background in some part of the world. This means that birth-based inequalities among human beings are simply a matter of chance.
According to another set of theories, there is actually a supernatural reason why a particular infant is born in a particular context. According to one such theory, we are actually the soul, as distinct from the body and the mind. The soul is eternal, and it keeps taking birth and experiencing death and being reborn in an ongoing cycle because of the actions that it has done. According to this theory, when a particular soul assumes the form of a human being, the particular context in which it takes birth is determined by the stock of its accumulated actions that it has carried over from innumerable past lives. This means that birth-based inequalities among human beings are a result of the past actions of each soul that assumes a human form and that this is what determines who will be born in what context.
According to a second such theory, the context in which an infant takes birth is decided by God, who is believed to be a being that is above and beyond the universe, including human beings. This utterly transcendent God, this theory posits, alone decides who will be born in what sort of context (Also, this God alone knows the logic behind this, which for us mere humans is something utterly inscrutable or unfathomable). In other words, according to this theory, birth-based inequalities exist simply because God has willed them to. It is all God’s will.
Each of these theories that purport to explain the existence of birth-based inequalities has its advocates. While it may be an interesting intellectual exercise, and even great fun, to speculate on what the truth might be behind the existence of birth-based inequalities, the fact is that we really do not (and at least as long as we are in this present world, simply cannot) know for certain what the answer is. Keeping this in mind, here is a tentative theory that might be at least as plausible as the other theories in this regard:
The Divine has manifested Itself as the entire Universe. Every single thing and being in the Universe is The Divine manifested in and as that particular form. This means that all the many human infants that take birth in this world, each in a context utterly unique to itself, is actually The Divine choosing to manifest itself in that particular form and in that particular context. What might ordinarily be thought of as so many different human beings taking birth in so many different contexts is actually the One Divine Being appearing in many different human bodies in many different contexts. This would then mean that it is not that human beings are born in grossly unequal circumstances. Rather, it would simply mean that The Divine chooses to appear in human form in a variety of circumstances, with each such appearance happening in a set of circumstances that is utterly unique to itself.