Your Myth, My Myth

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty. Hence ‘the right of the strongest’—a phrase that one might think is meant ironically, but is actually laid down as a basic truth. But will no-one ever explain this phrase? Force is a physical power; I don’t see what moral effect it can have. Giving way to force is something you have to do, not something you choose to do; or if you insist that choice comes into it, it is at most an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty?

Suppose for a moment that this so-called ‘right of the strongest’ exists. I maintain that we’ll get out of this nothing but a mass of inexplicable nonsense. If force makes right, then if you change the force you change the right (effects change when causes change!), so that when one force overcomes another, there’s a corresponding change in what is right. The moment it becomes possible to disobey with impunity it becomes possible to disobey legitimately. And because the strongest are always in the right, the only thing that matters is to work to become the strongest. Now, what sort of right is it that perishes when force fails? If force makes us obey, we can’t be morally obliged to obey; and if force doesn’t make us obey, then on the theory we are examining we are under no obligation to do so. Clearly, the word ‘right’ adds nothing to force: in this context it doesn’t stand for anything.

‘Obey the powers that be’ If this means submit to force, it is a good precept, but superfluous: I guarantee that it will never be violated! All power comes from God, I admit; but so does all sickness—are we then forbidden to send for the doctor? A robber confronts me at the edge of a wood: I am compelled to hand over my money, but is it the case that even if I could hold onto it I am morally obliged to hand it over? After all, the pistol he holds is also a power.

Then let us agree that force doesn’t create right, and that legitimate powers are the only ones we are obliged to obey. Which brings us back to my original question.

–  Source: The Right of the Strongest, The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

This piece is my attempt of capturing the mood of Political Right becoming the new Right irrespective of what world (First or Second or Third) you live in; similar to Oxford English Dictionaries’ attempt by choosing ‘Post-truth’ as ‘International Word of the Year’.

The above excerpt from Rousseau’s treatise, I feel, becomes more relevant than ever with the binaries of Right and Wrong being decided, like any other time, by the Strongest and people, in unforeseen proportions, falling in line, unlike any other time, with them.

The ominous trend, considering its prevalence, though makes you scoff initially, on little thinking unfolds itself by letting you see how people’s actions, irrespective of age or positions they hold or ‘supposed’ education they receive form their opinions and start trolling with what they read on Social Media, caring least for verification with a credible news source or caring least about the fundamental logic of dispersed knowledge, limits you, in your helpless position, to shrug them off rather than making a Sisyphean attempt of correcting them – for, ‘When They are so Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression’.*

There is, however, a different kind of critique of the reliance on reasoning that points to the prevalence of unreason in the world and to the unrealism involved in assuming that the world will go in the way reason dictates. In a kind but firm critique of my work in related fields, Kwame Anthony Appiah has argued, ‘however much you extend your understanding of reason in the sorts of ways Sen would like to do – and this is a project whose interest I celebrate – it isn’t going to take you the whole way. In adopting the perspective of the individual reasonable person, Sen has to turn his face from the pervasiveness of unreason.’ As a description of the world, Appiah is clearly right, and his critique, which is not addressed to building a theory of justice, presents good grounds for scepticism about the practical effectiveness of reasoned discussion of confused social subjects (such as the politics of identity). The prevalence and resilience of unreason may make reason-based answers to difficult questions far less effective.

This particular scepticism of the reach of reasoning does not yield – nor (as Appiah makes clear) is it intended to yield – any ground for not using reason to the extent one can, in pursuing the idea of justice or any other notion of social relevance, such as identity. Nor does it undermine the case for our trying to persuade each other to scrutinize our respective conclusions. It is also important to note that what may appear to others as clear examples of ‘unreason’ may not always be exactly that. Reasoned discussion can accommodate conflicting positions that may appear to others to be ‘unreasoned’ prejudice, without this being quite the case. There is no compulsion, as is sometimes assumed, to eliminate every reasoned alternative except exactly one.

However, the central point in dealing with this question is that prejudices typically ride on the back of some kind of reasoning – weak and arbitrary though it might be. Indeed, even very dogmatic persons tend to have some kinds of reasons, possibly very crude ones, in support of their dogmas (racist, sexist, classist and caste-based prejudices belong there, among varieties of other kinds of bigotry based on coarse reasoning). Unreason is mostly not the practice of doing without reasoning altogether, but of relying on very primitive and very defective reasoning. There is hope in this, since bad reasoning can be confronted by better reasoning. So the scope for reasoned engagement does exist, even though many people may refuse, at least initially, to enter that engagement, despite being challenged.

–  Source: Preface, The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen

Considering what Prof. Sen tries to argue, like my attempt in another piece, it’s very much possible for rhetoric or a reasoned argument to be just a mythology (or ‘someone’s truth’ as Devdutt always argues) garbed in assertion in contrast to it being a whole fact.

So to look at Post-truth, in a bleaker view, as defined by Oxford English Dictionary – ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’ or look at it with optimism is one’s own choice of disposition. Faster you opine, more you judge, lesser is the probability you become a savant and more is that you become (or remain) cynic within and without.

I will conclude this part of my write-up with Devdutt’s oft-repeated extract of a popular saying, for life isn’t about getting into binaries or the warp and woof but about a very complex web of Subjectivity and Relativity,

“Within infinite myths lies the eternal truth
Who sees it all?
Varuna has but a thousand eyes,
Indra has a hundred,
You and I, only two.”

Thou Shalt Not Care SHIT

Scene 1:

Vaisampayana said,–“That bull among men, Duryodhana, continued to dwell in that, assembly house (of the Pandavas). And with Sakuni, the Kuru prince slowly examined the whole of that mansion, and the Kuru prince beheld in it many celestial designs, which he had never seen before in the city called after the elephant (Hastinapore). And one day king Duryodhana in going round that mansion came upon a crystal surface. And the king, from ignorance, mistaking it for a pool of water, drew up his clothes. And afterwards finding out his mistake the king wandered about the mansion in great sorrow. And sometime after, the king, mistaking a lake of crystal water adorned with lotuses of crystal petals for land, fell into it with all his clothes on. Beholding Duryodhana fallen into the lake, the mighty Bhima laughed aloud as also the menials of the palace. And the servants, at the command of the king, soon brought him dry and handsome clothes. Beholding the plight of Duryodhana, the mighty Bhima and Arjuna and both the twins–all laughed aloud. Being unused to putting up with insults, Duryodhana could not bear that laugh of theirs. Concealing his emotions he even did not cast his looks on them. And beholding the monarch once more draw up his clothes to cross a piece of dry land which he had mistaken for water, they all laughed again. And the king sometime after mistook a closed door made of crystal as open. And as he was about to pass through it his head struck against it, and he stood with his brain reeling. And mistaking as closed another door made of crystal that was really open, the king in attempting to open it with stretched hands, tumbled down. And coming upon another door that was really open, the king thinking it as closed, went away from it. And, O monarch, king Duryodhana beholding that vast wealth in the Rajasuya sacrifice and having become the victim of those numerous errors within the assembly house at last returned, with the leave of the Pandavas, to Hastinapore.

And the heart of king Duryodhana, afflicted at sight of the prosperity of the Pandavas, became inclined to sin, as he proceeded towards his city reflecting on all he had seen and suffered. And beholding the Pandavas happy and all the kings of the earth paying homage to them, as also everybody, young and old, engaged in doing good unto them, and reflecting also on the splendour and prosperity of the illustrious sons of Pandu, Duryodhana, the son of Dhritarashtra, became pale.

Source – The Mahabharata, Book 2: Sabha Parva: Sisupala-badha Parva: Section XLVI, K. M. Ganguli translation

Scene 2:

Radhika Apte, the popular actress, recently, when asked by a journalist, about a nude clip that has gone viral right before her film’s release, had following, to say to him,

“My friend, sorry but your question is very ridiculous. Controversies are made by people like you. You saw the clip? you shared it with other people? You are the person controversies are made out of. I’m an artist. If I’m required to do a certain job, I’ll do it. If you get out of your cocoon and look at what people are successfully doing abroad and are not ashamed of their bodies, you would not ask me this question. People who are ashamed of their own bodies have curiosity about other’s bodies. If you want to see a naked body tomorrow, look at yourself in the mirror rather than my clip.”

Irrespective of what led people, in the above two scenes, to act the way they did, the gist is thus,

“We can only see things within others that we see within ourselves”

As regards the first scene, Duryodhana supposedly getting dishonored in Mayasabha doesn’t give any credence to his belief that Draupadi too is part of it and thus can be avenged by dishonoring her – here Duryodhana sees what he JUST wanted to see.

About the second scene, the journo is one example of so many peeping toms you see, on daily basis, around you.

Now coming straight to the point that I would like to put forward, having in your very close group of friends, the people of opposite sex, doesn’t mean you are in romantic relationship with them or much worse, sexual relationship with them.  Having in your very close group of friends, the people of opposite sex, doesn’t necessitate you to call them your sister / brother. Can’t you dare the world to call them your best friend / close friend if they are so, without associating the relationship with any (supposedly ‘safer’) prefixes like for ex., sister kinda, brother kinda friend, caring least about what society around you thinks? Do you fear a voyeur within you or those very many voyeurs around you?

Let those, fortunate (or unfortunate) peepers, who have access to your conversations, see and bray what they want to. Let their foul mouths howl what they like to. All you need to say them always (or remember always) is,

“You can only see things within others that you have within yourselves”

So

THOU SHALT NOT CARE SHIT

Reason Vs Emotion

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” – Luke 23:34

Cambridge dictionary defines,

Innocence: the quality of not having much experience of life and not knowing about the bad things that happen in life

Ignorance: lack of knowledge, understanding, or information about something

One finds sincere practitioners going effusive about ‘the word of forgiveness’ across many websites. To quote a popular site for ex., “Praying for one’s torturers is not human. Jesus was able to do it because of his intimate relationship with the Father.” It is obvious Jesus in his cries to God was treating his torturers as ignorants for they weren’t aware of ‘Him’ in a religionist’s perspective; they weren’t aware of the rebellion they were inciting by putting Jesus on cross in a historian’s perspective.

Putting to rest the religion for now, I will confine myself to my way of looking at things all but religion, atleast for the rest of the write-up.

To enter into the very pith of the above two words or ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for that matter makes things worse by getting one onto the shaky contours of reasoning – for what is goodness but a relative virtue that is zeitgeist and / or species specific.

Who exactly is innocent / ignorant? To put forward my level of understanding, an innocent/ignorant is the one who doesn’t put into use his faculties of reasoning. Now, is it possible for a person to be completely innocent/ignorant? My answer would be a firm, NO. Just like it’s not possible for a person to be a complete introvert or extrovert it isn’t possible for a person to be completely at extreme ends of a spectrum of innocence / ignorance either. Also, if he is less under the influence of Reason while looking at things, he must, for sure, be more under the spell of Emotion. So is it possible for a person to be completely logical or completely emotional? A resounding NO again(here’s a related post of mine), because both logic and emotion, though not correlated atleast until certain depths of consciousness, can coexist, at varying degrees in various personalities.

Logic and Emotion marry and coexist in any person so amicably to an extent that they become unrecognizable as binaries.

For instance,

1. A subordinate, at work, to make his point count, infront of his superiors, often, puts his own ‘twisting of facts’ garbed in assertion/confidence (or emotion garbed in reason or mythology(subjective truth) garbed in objective truth) at official meetings.
2. Sankara, Ramanuja, Madva, Chaitanya etc to quote Indian; St. Augustine and then St. Thomas Aquinas etc to quote European whose religious philosophies are often at opposite ends at various points with each other, were able to prove (or give an impression) to their contemporaries (and to their avid followers to this day) that their own way of looking at things, alone, is objective.

Here’s a super insightful write-up on this very exciting idea, ‘Your Truth – My Truth’ by popular mythologist, Devdutt Pattanaik.

To move little forward on the affect the Reason and Emotion might causate on the future, my sincere feeling, as journalist, Jacob Koshy summarizes about Noah Harari’s latest book, ‘Homo Deus’, in his amazingly written review, is thus,

With his work, Harari, “… opened a portal for us to contemplate on what kind of relationships we are forming with our data-crunching machines and whether ‘right’ must be determined by empirical evidence or good old ‘gut instinct.’ It does appear that Harari discusses a world that has solved hunger and religious fanaticism — facts that are at odds with our reality — but the future, as history tells us, sets in when we are least aware of it.”

I will conclude this part of my write-up by suggesting two very exciting, Nicholas Hoult starrer, films. One, the very famous, much critically reviewed, Mad Max: Fury Road, two, the less appreciated and less critics friendly, The Equals. While I wouldn’t comment about the craft of movie making, the reason being my ignorance of it as I wrote in another write-up of mine, I feel the latter has a more realistic idea (an idea that humans getting caught in slightest of Emotions is worse that can happen and Reason alone is virtue) of a post-apocalyptic world.

Ramblings on Efficiency and Effectiveness

 

To move forward my fascination for making things look more chaotic than they actually SEEM TO APPEAR, here’s my own Ramblings on Efficiency and Effectiveness.

In his lecture ‘Upanishads on Efficiency’, part of a lecture series Swami Ranganathananda of Ramakrishna Order did at Harvard University, quotes a line from the very famous Chandogya Upanishad,

“Yadeva vidyaya karoti tadeva sradhdhaya upanishada viryavattaram bhavati”

This roughly translates to,

Whatever is done with knowledge, conviction and meditative thinking on the subject concerned, that alone becomes supremely efficient.

Cambridge Dictionary defines being ‘efficient’ as, “working or operating quickly and effectively in an organized way” and being ‘effective’ as, “successful or achieving the results that you want”. And according to the tome, antonyms of the two words are inefficient and ineffective respectively.

The modern parlance of Business and Management places the very two words at the opposite ends of spectrum making them look like one can’t co-exist with each other. According to “Business Dictionary”, efficiency means “doing the thing right,” effectiveness means “doing the right thing.”

So being ignorant of what exactly constitutes the meaning of the two words, I will restrict myself to my own ramblings, cogitations, musings or whatever you may wanna call for that matter- by making Google (search) your own aide.

The other day I was showing a Whatsapp image received as a Forward to a colleague of mine at work. In it contains the list of academic degrees a middle aged person holds – around 25-30. My colleague was awed by the list and praising the perseverance he might have within him. But I felt if there’s any use of THE perseverance of getting more and more academic degrees except for showing-off.

My explanation is this. For a person to excel in any field of her study or pursuance, she have to apply those three Upanishadic traits of Vidya, Sraddha and Upanishad (or  Knowledge, Conviction and Meditative reflection on the subject concerned – if you don’t want me to use any adjective to the word ‘trait’ or meander into other language). Now the man under scrutiny with many degrees to his credit in terms of excelling is, I consider, a wretched because of a mere fact that every field of study has its own depths which can’t be fathomed unless its pursued by applying the said three traits. Granted that every stream or field of study is interrelated, but more a study becomes diverse less it gets intense by its inability to reach those depths by remaining superficial.

Let’s take two popular emitters of light – incandescent and laser – as an allegorical example. My own attempt of making things (seem, at least) obvious. Light from the former reaches many places thus dissipating much of its energy in its attempt to show disparate things thus remaining less intense while the light from the latter reaches not more than its point of focus thus remaining more intense in the effect that it causates.

To conclude, eulogizing, attempts to put one onto any pedestal of sublimity is, I believe, a mere act of nurturing and going forward with the very concept of relativity while thinking to oneself that their notions are absolute. For, greatness or sublimity itself is a grant of relativity.

Mind and the Chaos that it is – 2

They say our understanding of things is nothing but a layer after layer accumulation of dirt. They say for us to understand the true nature of things we ought to cleanse ourselves off the layer after layer formation that has become our very identity.

To quote Aldous Huxley on the occasion of his birthday, just yesterday, from his famous 1954 essay “The Doors of Perception” in which he claims the Mescaline’s (comparable to LSD) ability to temporarily cleanse one off their multilayered perceptions and ideas,

“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended directly and unconditionally by Mind at Large – this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.”

But how are we so sure that Mescaline is a worm hole to the THE experience (THE to be read as ‘absolute’) but not a worm hole to another way of experiencing the same world that we live in? If our existence itself is, limited by, built upon, an uni-dimensional pedestal that is time-space, how does the, supposed, claim  that mescaline as a sort of short cut to THE (THE, again, as I like you to read) stand tall?

Is it not possible for our whole race to be not superior than a mere specks of dirt that we come across in our day to day existence? Does our consciousness, inventions etc. etc. as a whole or one by one make us any superior? After all, where does any definitive meaning of Superiority stand when taken into consideration the very relative nature of things in our one-dimensional world of human perceptions, let alone the multi-, if not infinite dimensional possible perceptions in our very own, the pale blue dot, that is, Earth.

To quote Huxley one last time, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”

And thrusting to the line my own perception will make it as under,

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad, if at all there’s one.”

Mind and the Chaos that it is

I believe the way we think is always directed by two things – emotional part of us and the logical part of us.

The logical part is totally systematic and robotic. And it’s so systematic and impervious that becoming a machine is inevitable if at all a person is full of logic with no emotion.

Coming to the emotional part of a mind, its so much chaotic and unsystematic that the more one contemplates about it the more chaotic it becomes.

And no living being in my view can totally be ‘logical minus emotional’ or ’emotional minus logical’. It’s just the combination of two anyone can be, of course in varying degrees.

Thus, day after day, It’s becoming clear and obvious to me that the structural mindsets that people tend to show outside is just part of an hypocrisy that they possess inside. And it’s also possible they being ignorant of the subtleties of their own minds.

Of course, who knows in entirety what human mind is capable of. I don’t think anybody can fathom it to the full and any attempt to reaching those depths by a person would be awarded, by the world, with a potion of hemlock; calling them insane; throwing them into asylum or dungeons for life, as it always happened.

It’s just a random post that I made and I am not gonna make any revisions to it since all of it has come out, in one go, of the chaotic state my mind is in right now.

Zelig and the stray

It’s not often that you come across a movie in a documentary format, that too from a very famous director – one such film is Zelig. With Woody Allen both as a lead actor and director, it’s considered an epitome of perfection in the genre of mockumentary.

Contrary to what has been the norm when it comes to discussing with respect to the basic theme of this movie viz. being oneself irrespective of where you are / whom you are with, I will write about a situation that interested me.

More than half time into the story, when one after another person comes claiming the alleged damage and damages Zelig have caused them, public opinion slowly turns against him so much that in one scene a lady expresses a desire of getting him lynched by the court of law.

This brings me to the very concept of the validity of punishment as a reformative measure when a person commits an offense out of ignorance.

Is punishing a person a right choice when he / she commits an offense rather than making him go through the reformation?

Let’s consider Zelig’s case itself as an example: irrespective of whether he’s conscious of his committing crimes / mistakes, he has committed them and is he really culprit of all this? Our answer can’t be in affirmative.

Similarly a kid committing a crime wouldn’t be punished in the same way an adult gets punished because the former is considered ‘ignorant’ as regards the ways of the world.

Let’s now take a famous line from Bible as an example. Said to be the first in a series of seven last sayings Jesus utters from the cross and called famously as “The word of Forgiveness”, the line goes as follows

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do”

Now if you take Zelig’s case since he’s suffering from a disorder he can’t be held responsible for any crime that he commits – on the grounds of his being ignorant.

In the same way if one takes the biblical saying into the case and try to contemplate on the nature of ignorance and its spread across the world, it’s very much possible that what we believe as ultimate truth is very much ‘our truth’ rather than it’s really being true-in-every-sense. On further reflection on this lines, I feel, there shouldn’t be any reason to punish a person for a crime he committed out of ignorance. It’s only the reform that he requires in the end.

I will further try to explore on this fascinating biblical line, on ignorance and on innocence in another post.

Random Extraction of Thoughts

The other day I was reading ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ which I liked instantly: esp. the chapter ‘The Seventh Tuesday…’

It’s mostly about the positive side in becoming older. This contrasts with the general opinion and much romanticization of adolescence.

So the most interesting part from the said chapter goes like this:

Later that day, we talked about aging. Or maybe I should say the fear of aging— another of the issues on my what’s-bugging-my-generation list. On my ride from the Boston airport, I had counted the billboards that featured young and beautiful people. There was a handsome young man in a cowboy hat, smoking a cigarette, two beautiful young women smiling over a shampoo bottle, a sultry looking teenager with her jeans unsnapped, and a sexy woman in a black velvet dress, next to a man in a tuxedo, the two of them snuggling a glass of scotch.

Not once did I see anyone who would pass for over thirty-five. I told Morrie I was already feeling over the hill, much as I tried desperately to stay on top of it. I worked out constantly. Watched what I ate. Checked my hairline in the mirror. I had gone from being proud to say my age—because of all I had done so young—to not bringing it up, for fear I was getting too close to fort y and, therefore, professional oblivion.

Morrie had aging in better perspective.

“All this emphasis on youth—I don’t buy it,” he said. “Listen, I know what a misery being young can be, so don’t tell me it’s so great. All these kids who came to me with their struggles, their strife, their feelings of inadequacy, their sense that life was miserable, so bad they wanted to kill themselves …

“And, in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live every day when you don’t know what’s going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you’ll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you’ll be sexy—and you believe them! It’s such nonsense.”

Weren’t you ever afraid to grow old, I asked?

“Mitch, I embrace aging.”

Embrace it?

“It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”

Yes, I said, but if aging were so valuable, why do people always say, “Oh, if I were young again.” You never hear people say, “I wish I were sixty-five.”

He smiled. “You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning. Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five. “Listen. You should know something. All younger people should know something. If you’re always battling against getting older, you’re always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.

Contrary to the ‘Old vis-a-vis Young’ position that we read about till here, let’s see another write-up where the very concept of ‘wisdom’ is contrasted with ‘knowledge’.

Following lines are taken from the ‘Preface’ of a very famous book, ‘The Story of Philosophy’.

Human knowledge had become unmanageably vast; every science had begotten a dozen more, each subtler than the rest; the telescope revealed stars and systems beyond the mind of man to number or to name; geology spoke in terms of millions of years, where men before had thought in terms of thousands; physics found a universe in the atom, and biology found a microcosm in the cell; physiology discovered inexhaustible mystery in every organ, and psychology in every dream; anthropology reconstructed the unsuspected antiquity of man, archeology unearthed buried cities and forgotten states, history proved all history false, and painted a canvas which only a Spengler or an Eduard Meyer could vision as a whole; theology crumbled, and political theory cracked; invention complicated life and war, and economic creeds overturned governments and inflamed the world; philosophy itself, which had once summoned all sciences to its aid in making a coherent image of the world and an alluring picture of the good, found its task of coordination too stupendous for its courage, ran away from all these battlefronts of truth, and hid itself in recondite and narrow lanes, timidly secure from the issues and responsibilities of life. Human knowledge had become too great for the human mind.

All that remained was the scientific specialist, who knew “more and more about less and less” and the philosophical speculator, who knew less and less about more and more. The specialist put on blinders in order to shut out from his vision all the world but one little spot, to which he glued his nose. Perspective was lost. “Facts” replaced understanding;and knowledge, split into a thousand isolated fragments, no longer generated wisdom. Every science, and every branch of philosophy,developed a technical terminology intelligible only to its exclusive devotees; as men learned more about the world, they found themselves ever less capable of expressing to their educated fellow-men what it was that they had learned. The gap between life and knowledge grew wider and wider; those who governed could not understand those who thought, and those who wanted to know could not understand those who knew. In the midst of unprecedented learning popular ignorance flourished, and chose its exemplars to rule the great cities of the world; in the midst of sciences endowed and enthroned as never before, new religions were born every day, and old superstitions recaptured the ground they had lost. The common man found himself forced to choose between a scientific priesthood mumbling unintelligible pessimism, and a theological priesthood mumbling incredible hopes.

In this situation the function of the professional teacher was clear. It should have been to mediate between the specialist and the nation; to learn the specialist’s language, as the specialist had learned nature’s, in order to break down the barriers between knowledge and need, and find for new truths old terms that all literate people might understand. For if knowledge became too great for communication, it would degenerate into scholasticism, and the weak acceptance of authority; mankind would slip into a new age of faith, worshiping at a respectful distance its new priests; and civilization, which had hoped to raise itself upon education disseminated far and wide, would be left precariously based upon a technical erudition that had become the monopoly of an esoteric class monastically isolated from the world by the high birth rate of terminology. No wonder that all the world applauded when James Harvey Robinson sounded the call for the removal of these barriers and the humanization of modern knowledge.

Though blatant extractions, as they are for sure, from the aforementioned books, I felt them as necessary in better understanding the intricacies of and the very ambiguous nature of truth.

This post, as an advocate of the concept of ‘Relativity of knowledge’, is an attempt of mine to push forward the said thought.

Please do convey your valuable opinions, for they are welcome.

Thoughts post-reading Chaplin’s Auto-Bio

From helping out his mother along with his brother to make out a living in the streets of London during the time of his childhood, to the time of his retirement into a small Swiss village and later when he’s welcomed back to USA after years of exile, Chaplin always maintained that zest for life.

He had been the sweetheart of people and press throughout the world during his younger days and with age has grown his popularity and his ability to see things rational too. This particular ability of his made him ‘sour in the eye’ of American Press and Government, esp. in those days of anti-communist frenzy; made Federal agents to stalk him, despite his declaring repeatedly to the effect that he’s neither ‘for-communism’ nor ‘against-communism’. He says his only bad is being non-conformist.

Though highly-readable is his auto-biography, the best part in my view comes towards the end when he turns nostalgic about all that he had to go through. It makes one wonder, though at a varied intensity according to one’s own perception of life, an extent of wretched hell the life is and what all one can make out despite it being wretched.

One interesting thought struck me during these last chapters of the book when Chaplin says ‘….the world has given me its best and little of its worst’. How many will be wise enough to realize and sincere enough to admit to this.

Buddha says about ‘Nirvana’ state and Gita say about ‘Stita Prajna’ state as the ways in order to transcend beyond the struggle of life. How much ever sublimity and truth they might have in them, it is the zest for life, I feel, that’s basic.

Me and Cinema

I always believe there happened an evolution in my understanding as regards movies. From merely analyzing a particular movie with a very limited knowledge w.r.t all that went into making that movie and judging the value of the same, I can now say with a lot of confidence I understand very little when it comes to understanding the craft called ‘movie-making’.

This confidence on my inability to understand comes from those experiences I had with very many so-called classic movies. One of my early experiences comes from my watching of movies ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Casablanca’. These are the movies which if not for their cult fame, though I developed a lot of liking for them since then, I would have totally taken its craft or whatever they call the beauty-those-movies-have for granted.

My understanding of a good movie had been like this – a movie with a decent story line and a good entertainment quotient. But these factors, according to what I feel now, are very much relative i.e., they vary according to an individual’s perception of what a ‘decent story’ and an ‘entertainment quotient’ mean. For ex, if I have to pick between the two very famous movies of Francis Ford Coppola, ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Apocalypse Now’, I would prefer the latter to the former for the mere fact that the latter’s cinematography, screenplay and the background score drifts me across various types of moods that ranges from psychedelic to nostalgia, a feeling about the ‘actual-apocalypse-that-might-or-might-not-happen’ to the ‘doom-that-is-war’. These I am blabbering about, I feel, is very much relative and can be genre specific.

To elucidate more on this relativity, I will use an example viz. a case of watching a classic movie. I watch it with an awareness that it is a classic movie and try to see greatness in every possible frame and will start admiring in case I figure out some. Then I will read few of the professional reviews and few articles that describes all that went into in order to make the movie. Now I watch the movie for the second time to find out all the craft that has been mentioned. These findings will increase my admiration even more.

Also, the technical innovation, efficiency and the amount of aesthetics that a movie have in it are some of those other factors considered while ranking a movie.

So a mere knowledge that these contributing factors exist is obviously different from actual ability to understand each of these. This revelation, had for another time dawned upon me during the time of my watching ‘The Transformers’ series which I liked very well instantly. When went further with reading some of the professional reviews, there’s good amount of panning with regards to the screenplay, length, budget etc along with an acclaim for the technical prowess.

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This in short is a bit of my journey with the world of cinema. Much detail in the upcoming posts