In a proper Hindu spiritual life you must wake up long before dawn each morning and perform several hours of austerities to center yourself before you engage the tawdry goings-on of the material world. Well this morning I woke up before dawn and contemplated mystical concerns to do with Lords Vishnu and Shiva, as made manifest in my life by the writing of one Jonathan Haidt, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that tipster AfroDesiAc brought to our attention yesterday.

And I feel much wiser for the effort. Consider these insights:

As Democrats change the drapes on Capitol Hill and relegate Republicans to minority status, both parties would do well to look to the ancient East for advice on how opposites should — and should not — work together.

In Hinduism, two of the main gods are Shiva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver. They are not enemies but partners in the governance of the world, and Shiva’s “destruction” is really change, as in the change of seasons or of generations. Another Eastern tradition, the Manichean religion of ancient Persia, holds that the forces of good and evil eternally battle for control of the universe, and we humans get hurt in the process.

Which of these two models is most appropriate for our two-party system? It ought to be Hinduism.

Oh no! It’s the Ancient East again! I will let you read for yourself the full development of this argument — the article, by the way, is entitled “The Spirit of Dharmacracy” — but I ask that you consider whether, in your participation in American political and cultural life, you speak for Shiva or Vishnu:

Robert F. Kennedy spoke for Shiva when he said, “I dream things that never were and say ‘why not?’” … The conservative philosopher Irving Kristol spoke for Vishnu when he said, “Institutions which have existed over a long period of time have … a collective wisdom incarnate in them …”

If I want to see Professor Haidt confronted by a frothing-mad female superhero waving instruments of destruction in her numerous arms and hissing at him with a pitch-black tongue, does that mean I speak for Ma Kali? The professor inquires:

How can we make our two-party system more beneficial for the nation? What can we do to become more “Hindu?”

(Insert joke about fistfights in the Lok Sabha here.)

But wait! There’s science behind all this:

In my research on the role that emotions play in morality, I have found that acts of virtue, nobility and honor create feelings of moral elevation in those who witness them.

Alert the IgNobel committee! This is some (sacred) bullshit.