This blog post was written by Singing Dragon author Shyam Ranganathan, author of Yoga – Anticolonial Philosophy.
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Oppression, cruelty, and danger are surprisingly matters that anyone can ignore and be unaware of if they are not directly impacted. And even when it is on our doorstep, we can choose to be ignorant about such matters by creating ad hoc explanations that do not situate tragedy within larger historical trends.
Many of us for years have been concerned about the deterioration of the health of the environment and the remarkable systemic cruelty inflicted on nonhuman animals in ecosystems and factory farms, and we watched all of this in horror as most humans normalize this. This slow destruction of everything not human sets the backdrop for numerous painfully slow genocides and wars that have been occurring in spaces suffering from the legacy of colonization.
As a South Asianist, I was aware of the war against Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and the genocide of Rohingya people at the hands of the Myanmar state, both surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly) supported by local Buddhists! As I complete my second book on colonization, I’ve come to appreciate how normalized genocide has been in various theaters for centuries, including and especially North America.
According to scholarly reckoning, prior to European settlement in the Americas, Indigenous people on Turtle Island number in the 100 millions. Within three generations of European arrival, that population was down to 5% of its original number.
Many people in the Westernized world had become accustomed to a creation of Europe in the Middle East—Israel. October 7, 2023 changed that normalization with what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have concluded is an ongoing genocide against Palestinians—a claim that the International Court of Justice determined in 2024, is plausible.
There is a word for what we are going through: a polycrisis. Accordingly, there isn’t just one problem afoot. There are innumerable all at once, but they are not disconnected.
Selective Outrage
What I observed with every new sense of outrage over awareness of some injustice is how people would often react as though it was (a) a new thing, and (b) the only thing wrong. A remarkable single-issue mentality dominates the way people often react to problems, and what this ignores is the root cause of the various challenges. One result of this selective outrage is that energy is directed to very narrow causes while allowing all the other problems of the world to unfold unabated.
Root Cause: Egotism
Understanding what the root cause of the problems we face is not easy. In contexts of oppression, we are encouraged to buy our experiences as part of our self-understanding. In Yoga this is called egotism — asmitā in Sanskrit. Egotism is a conflation of my identity with how I experience the world. And if I experience the world by way of a certain racial, sex, gender, orientation, or political perspective, this becomes part of my sense of who I am. And when I try to protect my self-interests, I protect this very narrow identity.
The result is that I end up caring about what seems relevant to this narrow identity based on various extremely contingent experiences. This would explain how people tend to be selective in their outrage and largely unconcerned with various problems. If I identify with being human, then I stop caring so much about the suffering of nonhumans or the Earth, for I’ve conflated the interests I have with this narrow human identity.
If I conflate my sense of who I am with a narrow sex or ethnic identity, say being male or white, I then only put effort into caring for issues that impact this identity. In this ordinary way of existing, we are devoted to our outlook and experiences. If I understand myself in terms of a specific cultural identity, the genocide and erasure of other groups will seem tolerable if it doesn’t impact me. And I may even feel it is necessary if that other group challenges the privilege I grant my cultural identity.
Our polycrisis goes unabated thus because we focus only on narrow ideas of who we are instead of common interests which would lead us to undermine connected crises that effect all of us.
In contrast, Yoga, the original philosophy, recommends that we should be devoted to Īśvara, Sovereignty, which is defined by the essential traits of being unconservative (not stuck in its past) and self-governing (free to move forward). This is a basic interest that all people share, regardless of species, sex, gender, ethnicity, or orientation. On this account, the Earth and nonhuman animals are persons (puruṣa-s) too as they share this basic interest. Thus to be devoted to Īśvara is to be devoted to a shared interest.
When I put my energy into being devoted to Īśvara, I no longer am defining myself in terms of a narrow set of interests based on contingent experiences. My energy is devoted to what would be safe and healthy for all persons, for I understand that this is in my interest. If people lived life this way, they would put care and attention into making our world safe for all people. They would stop ignoring problems, and also stop being single-issue agents, obsessed with this or that problem, but not with oppression as such.
What Yoga teaches us is that there is no way to be devoted to Sovereignty but also one’s narrow sense of self based on one’s contingent experiences. If I were to be concerned with my sovereignty defined purely in terms of my ethnic, sex, or experiential markers, then I am not actually devoted to Sovereignty but to my experiences and narrow way of engaging the world.
My actual autonomy (kaivalya), Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sūtra, teaches us, is made possible by an ethical transformation of abandoning the selfishness of egotism in all contexts (YS IV 29). So I must choose what I am devoted to: Sovereignty or the contingencies of my experience. I cannot do both.
If I focus on my narrow ego-based identity, I foster polycrisis by pretending that my interests are narrow and unaffected by distant problems. If I am devoted to Sovereignty, I cannot allow a polycrisis to unfold as that would be incompatible with my autonomy, which is an interest in acting freely in a free world.
Yoga: Anticolonial Philosophy
Why is this insight into the ethical project of Yoga not the starting point of Yoga education? I have found in my research that the very same forces of colonization that we live through structure ordinary discourse around yoga. So instead of going back and learning the original philosophy of yoga, we are encouraged to identify yoga with how we came to the practices of yoga, and in terms of the teachers we identify with.
Academics unconcerned with philosophy but who nevertheless call themselves scholars of Yoga treat these various social identities built around different teachers and lineages as the topic of the study of Yoga. Instead of studying the original philosophy, Yoga, they study various groups and opinions about the use of the word “yoga.”
Yet, if we are careful about research so that we do not try to impose our beliefs on what we are studying (interpretation) but engage in logic-based philosophical learning. We can uncover that Yoga is a timeless resource we can call upon to deal with the challenge of being a quirky individual in a beautiful world of quirky individuals.
All I did, which was quite unique, was to apply the very introductory logic skills I teach my introduction to philosophy students to the study of Indian Philosophy. This allowed me to discern that Yoga is a unique ethical practice centered around devotion to what persons have in common—an interest in Īśvara, or Sovereignty—that involves taking on the responsibility to explore being sovereign by practicing unconservatism and self-governance.
What this taught me is that oppression isn’t interested in individuals. In its most extreme form, it wants us all to be the same, and anything out of the ordinary has to be exterminated or bullied out of existence.
In contrast, Yoga, the original ethical practice, is deeply concerned with individuals in their idiosyncratic glory. It shows us that what we have in common is our individuality, which is something to be valued. But that individuality is not the same as the contingent experiences we have. It has to do with our ethical interest in being unconservative and self-governing. Whenever any of us put energy into working on these essential traits of Sovereignty, we no longer participate as agents of the oppression we experience.
A basic Yoga practice in and of itself disrupts oppression. But it is also the most essential and required form of self-care. This self-care is not selfish as it is not defined in terms of a self constrained by the narrow experiences of race, species, sex, or biology. It is a self that shares the same interest as all selves that we care for as practitioners of Yoga.
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To learn how self-care and anti-oppressive activism amount to the same thing, and to learn about the original philosophy of Yoga, and critically distinguish it from what colonization and oppression has redefined as “yoga,” check out Dr. Shyam Ranganathan’s book, Yoga — Anticolonial Philosophy: An Action Focused Guide to Practice (Singing Dragon 2024).
Also, follow Dr. Shyam Ranganathan on Instagram @yogaphilosophy_com, and Substack @drshyamr