Self-satisfaction not guaranteed

Displacement

2010-01-24T12:54:00.001-06:00

This is the new address of my blog.

The loss of humor

2010-01-19T05:22:00.006-06:00

The distinguishing mark of senility in a thinker is the eagerness with which he is ready to embrace a religious or a moral or an altruistic way of life or thinking mostly as an antidote to his own growing disgruntlement, assuming he has not already announced himself to be a god. This happens to even the mightiest of thinkers. In his youthful days, however, he had not adopted significantly different philosophies or ways of lives. Even then he had acted as a god, an atheist, a savior and a destroyer. But he assumed these roles very flexibly. He got in and out of them very easily. He could do so because he is still able to laugh at the fact that he does not have to, or he cannot even if he wanted to, define himself, or 'be' anything, that his life lacks a unitary meaning. He is cheerful about the abyss. The senile thinker has lost this sense of humor.

Life and Expression

2010-01-18T05:31:00.002-06:00

His life has a deep internal logic -- a consequence of him having surveyed and soared over the entirety of being. And the profundity of this experience is buried inside him, although alive, bringing him to the verge of a threshold. All he needs, he deems, is an expression of this experience, whether as a deed or a journey, a piece of writing or a touchdown. This expression would then complete and round up what has already achieved an internal completion, by externalizing this experience, and thus bringing the external world up to speed. He adds up his life and the expression to envision a totality. And so as he expresses himself, he proclaims that the threshold has been crossed over. The temperature increases, there is a 'quickening of the faculties', a gasping of breath, as if life itself is nearing its end -- expression as eschathology!
But then when the summit has been reached, and he screams out in jubilation, all he hears is his own hollow echo. What has happened? What has gone wrong? He looks around and about, and he denies the echo. Has the world not reached a conclusion? Is his logic faulty? But then he learns that he has to go on. Life has not ended. Maybe it has given birth to something through him, but it lives on. He sees this when he recognizes that not all of the experiences that constitutes his inner being were ready for expression. Sure, they know the lines but they are still unwilling to come onto the stage. So the expression cannot be just added to the entirety of his being, as the last unit of the latter, but rather it is the other side of his internal experience, which is invoked only when its time arrives and not before that. The division of the internal and the external world is illusory at best. And so he marches on with life, recognizing that by expressing himself he has gained life, and not exhausted it. The totality needs to be repeated on a different sphere now.

Reason in madness

2010-01-05T04:26:00.009-06:00

Even the artist drives those objects away from his immediate world, whose greatness he can recognize only from a distance, be it spatial or temporal. He retains only those select few objects around him, which he can consecrate and still not lose his breath or sanity.
The artist does not only utilize his tools for the purpose of creation, but also for his preservation. But through the objects he creates, he intends to confront what he had previously driven away into oblivion. That is, his creations come from a distance, they are precisely the conveyors of distance, and in that sense not his objects at all.

Die Erinnerung

2009-11-26T15:41:00.001-06:00

Last week, I read a letter from a poet who was lamenting to his friend about how nobody understands him. The letter ended with him lamenting about this very lamenting, about him confessing to his friend about his weakness. I recreated the suffering of the poet in me as I read the letter and for a brief moment relived that pain.
Yesterday, somebody told me about a French philosopher who killed herself on the birth anniversary of her master, who was her favorite philosopher. I tried to freeze that perspective of hers within me that drove her to suicide. I upheld this perspective for a short while to indicate to her that her life was not in vain, that I see what she did, and that, in one sense, this whole world ceased to exist after she died.
And this morning, as I woke up, I imagined a picture of a still unborn child smiling. I understood that innocence, and the untainted purity with which the child saw the whole world. I smiled with the child.
I wondered if the poet, the philosopher and the child were looking at me from somewhere as I was doing all of these things. And the sight of the moon indeed reminded me of the night when the four of us had a great feast together.

Sobriety

2009-11-07T03:58:00.006-06:00

Drunk are the waves of the ocean that topple and fall on each other in revelry
Drunk is the wind as it blows its howling secrets on to the trees
Drunk is also the comet that traverses headlong through time periods unawares
And drunk is the shame that hides itself in new attires everyday

Drunk is the statue that strikes your head when you kneel before it
Drunk is your heritage that seeks its origin in an unknown destiny
Drunk is also your solitude that never parts your company
And drunk are all your truths that dress themselves up as lies

Are you not too drunk to even recognize your drunken brethren?

On our Zeitgeist

2009-11-06T09:58:00.003-06:00

1. Any existence that does not come to terms with the spirit of its times - however monstrously chaotic this task might be with respect to our times - is nothing but idealism, however 'profound' it may otherwise think it is. It would be pure escapism -- 'all thought, no action'.

2. The peculiarity of our Zeitgeist is its unprecedented greed, its fleeting memory: it devours unabashedly anything that touches its base and strikes its chord, unless it does not confound that thing to hide in the pretext of its own shadows. So who is capable of satisfying this monster of greed? -- Only someone who refreshes every moment with cheerfulness by receiving his energy from an unknown future, and in doing so, submits to the hungry present. He interprets the lack of memory of the Zeitgeist as the eternal youth of the future.

Recipe for the re-born II

2009-10-26T06:33:00.009-05:00

Autumn approaches when visions, sounds, language, human beings and culture itself lose their symbolic, metaphorical character and tends towards the literal. Although this is an asymptotic tending, never entirely synchronizing with itself, thus never accomplishing death. But can there be a re-birth, if death itself has not been fully achieved? Whence comes this "re-"? How can one will oneself to life, if there is no blindness? How can the will be blind?
Symbolism is the work of the culture in which one finds oneself. One takes and gives without worrying about the rules of economical exchange. Truth plays with blindness here. Frivolity and squandering are not forbidden.
But the asymptote can be diverted to carve out a new ascending path, by borrowing energy, in trickling units, from the depths of its past higher moments, which are now in a state of limbo, not lively but not dead either, and by refracting this energy into new shades and shadows. This is an economic exchange with strict rules of transaction, involving tabulation, interest and surveillance: the most difficult task for a human being! One has to drag one's broken legs across the desert to learn the art of forgetting! Nuances and subtlety are now in the greatest demand. But as the journey wears on one builds one's credit more and more, and there is a gradual loosening of the economical grip. Perhaps spring is on the horizon? Perhaps a new language, a new "sine", new symbols, new culture? And no one has to know about this secret path. The same settings that confronts one now in the boredom of one's limbo will be re-born later into a revitalized life, as if there were no previous descent. This "as if" of the new blindness!

This is the experiment

2009-10-11T12:05:00.008-05:00

I have often observed, to my wonder and delight, that my handwriting changes in very subtle ways depending on the kind of pen I am using: Whether it is an inkpen or a ball point, or again whether it is a gel pen or a pencil even. Even within a certain class, say gel pens, my handwriting takes to some kinds and not so much to others. The r's and s's and f's get their own flair and pointed intentions with the right kind of pen.
So too with us. What we are is intricately bound up with whom we are around, where we are, what we give and what we receive. There, some style of ours is taken up and immortalized by someone, here an intention that we made is covered over and reinvoked at a different time, thereby lending this intention a new, hitherto unanticipated meaning, and some times a proposal of ours is rejected initally but sharpened into a more disciplined, self-conscious command by the other, and at other times what we offer is completely overlooked or rejected by the world. What we end up inscribing on the tablet of life seems to depend entirely on the surface of the tablet itself! This dark uncertainty that belongs inescapably to our lot seems to be a sort of weakness. Nietzsche implies so much when he writes of the German that he "cannot be judged by his actions and [that] as an individual he is still completely hidden even after he has acted." Our actions do not reveal who we are for these actions only manage us to recast us into a new light, which we ourselves were not privy to before. Like a fallen leaf we get whisked away, trampled over, flown across lands at the mercy of uncertain forces and winds, or we remain in some corner withering away and forgotten.
But this injustice that we suffer at the hands of life is also our path to glory and redemption. To be sure, one must limit oneself and possess oneself in a self-contained way. But this self-enclosure is only possible by an occasional will to stupidity, as Nietzsche might say. In the end, by wrapping ourselves with our own skin we deny ourselves the possibility of a new meaning, a re-birth, a future, however dangerous a game one is now playing in choosing to remain in this open uncertainty. It is in this future that our greatness and glory lie. Life's theatre of cruelty is not revealed in that one is fluttering at the mercy of natural forces one cannot gain control over, but in the challenge to repeatedly submit oneself to this flight and fluttering all the while preserving oneself in the act without losing balance. To speak through Nietzsche again: "How much truth can one endure? how much truth can one dare? This is the real measure of value. This is the test. This is the experiment."

The joyful signs!

2009-09-03T08:41:00.005-05:00

After the victory is won, one always feels one has expended more energy than was actually required for the task. But strangely, this insight is unavailable when one is actually going through the process, as one always feels pressured to spend as much effort and energy as one did. (The growth of the child or any process of self-overcoming has this peculiar structure of strife and pain).
However, the seemingly excess energy that appears at the end of the process will not have gone to waste. It shows up as the profound joy and power of the conquerer!

Tip of the tongue

2009-08-31T10:54:00.003-05:00

It does not have to be this way, but language in many cases emerges as a back-up for instincts that have corrupted. The sure sign of corrupted instincts is that one does not trustfully believe in these instincts anymore. Believing is no mean task; we are all bad believers insofar as we cannot tiptoe on a tightrope without being sucked in by the vertigo of the abysses. To save oneself from the fear of perishing one seeks a cushion, a back-up. Language then emerges as this emergency solution. It acts as the depository reserve, the "savings account," in which one hopes to translate the sublime and fluid language of instincts for the sake of assurance and guarantee.
Writing (book-keeping, journals, etc.) and technological innovations (day-planners, computers) have this interpretation of language guiding their development. Nay, the whole of Western-dialectics develops out of this feeling of vertigo. The root of American capitalism is to be found in words that have rigidified themselves into fixed meanings: a clear sign of disintegrated instincts. No wonder Americans are inclined to "talk about" anything and everything that appears to them as a problem as way of solving these problems. America: the most scholarly culture that has ever been.

Misunderstandings

2009-07-21T17:53:00.008-05:00

1. The quality of consistency may be taken to be a symptom of boredom and repetition. Alternatively it may indicate, in some very exceptional cases, the sign of bright awareness and openness to the world. It would be a great injustice to confuse the latter for the former. Who would call the patterns of sun, the sea, the birds and the trees boring?

2. I once said this. But also: to think that thought which is unthinkable, unaccessible to others -- it is the secret strength of the one who marches on without forerunners!

Limits of logic

2009-07-06T18:54:00.003-05:00

The world has the character of .... if a then b then if c then -a then d if b then -b ... with the future terms in the chain expressing the reality that takes shape and is created only at that moment (this reality being born out of an indeterminable array of factors). What comes to be, therefore, is the greatest testament to its itself, to reality. It sustains itself in absolute freedom, and is answerable only to itself.
Even the logician has no say in what comes to be, but on the contrary, he adjusts his theory of contradiction depending on what peculiar form reality dishes out. It would be ridiculous for him to say, "reality cannot be that way because my theory forbids it!" since his theory is parasitic on reality and not viceversa. (All the shocks of quantum physics and old age must bear this in mind for insulation). Hence, the best the logician or the phenomenologician can do is to faithfully describe, not predict, reality. But what else is this best description, besides that which repeats or mirrors the sequence of terms? : .... if a then b then if c then -a then d if b then -b ... Granted that this rote repetition can be therepeutic at times (for example, by clearing up one's own confusions about reality (Wittgenstein), or by acting as the seat for the confessions of one's sins), it is still always uninterestingly modest, self-preserving and meek.
If on the other hand, one confused the nature of logic and professed to predict reality, all one would have done is glibly short-circuited reality or generalized it. One's immodest theory then turns to be hopelessly abstract that seeks to grasp the skeleton of reality with pincers after it has sucked up its blood. A great way to counter this abstraction is to use logic against itself: to wit, show that the real terms contradict each other (say, by juxtaposing b and -b) when they are taken out of context (an operation that is needed for all generalizations), in order to, of course, not show the deficiency of reality, but rather that of logic. (It is by this method that Nietzsche effects a releasement of logic into life).
But releasing contradictions into the flow of life: by this are we not taking the basic steps of the creative life itself?

2009-06-25T09:29:00.001-05:00

"I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the apes of their ideal" --Nietzsche

Thought of the last few days..

2009-06-16T09:25:00.003-05:00

We do not really know who we are or who we could be; 'self-determination' is but a false slogan; all we can do is create relatively stable selves for ourselves. And even that too depends on the people we are around, the climate we are in, how we are dependent on others, how we let others see us and determine us, what we would like to project upon others, and what we take to be our joys and sorrows.
We are unknown to ourselves; we cannot fathom our own depths -- and who knows whether there is really anything to fathom at all...

Conversation with the ladder

2009-05-28T10:49:00.003-05:00

'My lows are lower than you, but my highs are higher than your highs...whence comes your peculiar midwifery?'
'What? Are you implying I am not higher than myself?'
'Is that not clear?'
'So be it then.. I hold the right to speak as long as you are below me. For this is my secret desire: that you can bring me to silence!'
'You speak the truth... the contradictions of your being are but beyond you.'

Ode to solitude

2009-05-13T11:42:00.005-05:00

How much adjustment and good will is required before one can see one's own reflection in the mirror! One must drop what one is doing, walk up to the mirror, open one's eyes and look at the mirror for the mirror to look back at one.
How one may choose not to do some or all of these things! How much the mirror is not helpful in this regard -- a testament to the profound solitude of one's individual existence! Moreover: how superficial is the image when the mirror does reflect;for one sees what one wants see, what one has given oneself to see. How much is left unsaid! Isn't all showing a deceiving?
But if the mirror is the best we can hope for, then who wants the mirror? Bury youself under the skin! For the treasures of your being lie there uninstantiated as the great germs of the your solitude!

Buzz word

2009-04-28T14:23:00.002-05:00

'It ain't true until you do it; make it explicit!' This is how the fly reasons and continues to buzz around you, knowing perfectly well that it is not supposed to do so, and that it could get killed for its incredulity. But this is the covert, shameless hope of the annoying creature: that you may feel too lofty to be a swatter of flies, too pure to soil your hands, even if that means you suffer the vexing sting of the parasitic fly. And in this way it takes advantage of your magnanimity and lives on for another day!

Life's plenum

2009-04-25T20:42:00.003-05:00

The world is not my image of it, and yet the world is alive only through the images I create.

3 levels of absurdities in Nietzsche

2009-04-22T13:34:00.003-05:00

I.
1) The objectivity of truth or that of health is vehemently denied. The truths of each body - whether a culture, an individual or a genre - is localized and given a legitimate sphere, where the tyranny of their specific perspective has the sole right.
2) It is still maintained, in apparent contradiction to the above, that there some healthier, more truthful bodies in comparison to others. The passions, the sufferings, the desires, the needs, the joy and happiness of these nobler entities must be preferred - since they have a greater purpose to them - to that of the lower beings.
3) However, an unequivocal rule is denied, which gives one access to a method by which one can discern which body is healthier or stronger than some other bodies. The knowledge of the criterion of what counts as healthy is known only by those who possess this health! It is not accessible to everyone. This is the tragedy of the healthy ones!

II. This movement from 1) to 3) is that of the 'objectivity' to 'subjectivity'. But not in the Hegelian sense, where the movement gains momentum in this very movement. It is rather the movement from 'will to truth' to 'will to power.'

III. But at the same time, this movement is perhaps the closest one gets to having a genuine sense of objectivity. Or the closest approximation that the motion of becoming can have to that of being, as Nietzsche puts it somewhere. For, even the noblest one's claim to his health, in the end, might be another form of delusion and dogmatism. A cave which hides another cave within its abyss. The spectre of Hegel in Nietzsche.

3 purposes of art

2009-04-07T22:47:00.006-05:00

1. Art as fantasy: Here art plays the role of an outlet for the masses, who generally live oppressed lives (like in India). Art takes people to that fantastic realm, away from the harsh reality that the common man faces. A little bit of nitrous oxide, a little tickle and run, a little dancing-around-trees - and the working man is convinced that he should go on toiling more and more: art for the sake of the common consumer.
2. Art as the mirror of reality: A more refined sense of art, dominant mostly in the western intellect. Art has a function of mimesis: to reflect back the reality to the oblivious thinker and scholar, so that he can keep tabs on it, so that it does not get out of his hand. He needs art to control reality or to make a satirical caricature of it! Art - almost like a diary that chronicles one's inner feelings, so that one does not lose oneself in one's own depths. Art as the effect of the command: "Know thyself!" Art for the sake of the sophisticated consumer.
3. Art: not for the sake of the consumer, but for the sake of the artist. Art - not for the sake of purpose, but to create purposes: falsifying, but also transforming reality, and thereby creating the audience too, the consumer! Both a satire and fantasy - a midway between the first two senses of art, but neither the first nor the second. Art as the rare rays of the comet following its own path in the night's sky.

The philosopher as a dancer

2009-04-02T16:24:00.003-05:00

Often I am asked which philosophical problems one must take up, and which ones one must set aside as confused or paralyzed or unproductive. One does not need a critique of faculties to answer this question. The answer is quite simple and is given in its very givenness as a philosophical question. One does not "take up" a philosophical problem, but to a philosopher philosophy is given in a singular, nuanced way, which is particular to the shape and contours of that philosopher's life paths and idiosyncracies. The philosopher meets philosophy half way, and then he defines and determines the exact way in which his philosophy is unfolded by deepening or altering the forms of these contours.
But existentially speaking, that decisive moment when a person "becomes" a philosopher, when a philosophy "comes" to him, can be described as the pleasure of a bitter-sweet pain at the ever-so-slight loss he feels in his world, with which he had hitherto been completely at one. It is the sweet pain one experiences when one lifts only one toe off the ground, even though one is in every other way grounded in reality: the bitter pleasure of "metaphysics." The subsequent challenge for the philosopher is to maintain a sort of balance so that on the one hand he does not abstractly try to remove himself off the ground (lest he wants to get caught in the entrapments of false philosophies), and on the other hand not to induce himself with a narcotic which makes him again "one" with the world (unless he wants to end up being a self-satisfied mystic). Balance is the key for a philosopher.

Right to neologisms

2009-03-19T23:08:00.006-05:00

Those of us who have good taste and also a taste for freedom and for light air prefer to read a philosopher who does not use too many dense and techincal terms in his works. Generally these terms are borrowed from everyday vocabulary (or these everyday words are lightly modified, usually coverted to an "-ism" or "-logy" of sorts) and are elevated into central concepts or principles of thought around which, or rather behind which, the philosopher hides a wealth of presuppositions, contradictions, modest confusions and stupidities. Despite what the philosopher likes to believe a conceptual term (contextualism, relativism, pragmatism, Dasein, Spirit, realism, compatibilism) is, therefore, a grand metaphor of a not-so-talented poet. This conceptual philosopher is usually a stuffy person who makes way for the special term he wants to create by chopping the life out of the usual meanings of this term. He is like the hiker who is keen on leaving his pathmarks for the rescue team to follow, as if he is inwardly sure that he will lose his way in the wilderness! He thus invents a metalanguage, the language of languages, the essence of language. Such immodesty, as I said, must offend our taste.
But on the other hand, the philosopher with a more sublime taste, who in acutely observing the world he lives in, refuses to invent neologisms, but rather inventively and endlessly distributes the currencies of language already at his disposal, not wishing to rise above it once and for all, but swimming in it, going beneath and above it alternatively -- assuming that this philosopher performs this duty with great diligence, he will not only reveal that he is a wonderful writer, but soon will earn the noble and rare right to coin neologisms: it is as if life itself rewards him for his terrestrial struggle! With what? With philosophy! With the right to philosophy! And these newly coined terms would then be the pearls grown on earth, although they would resemble the tears of a god! These pearls of philosophy, then, would transfigure the very meaning of current language, extending its boundaries. But who has the strength equal to this task? Besides say Nietzsche or Kierkegaard?

Semblance

2009-03-02T21:57:00.001-06:00

The wonderful way in which people with similar facial features also tend to have similar hand or expressive gestures!

Kant's invention of the metaphor

2009-02-26T17:34:00.003-06:00

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant notices that the only way reason can hope to fulfill the completeness it seeks for, besides in a constitutive way, is to employ reason regulatively: to proceed in the employment of reason 'as if' there is unity or purpose or completeness in this world. At first glance, this solution seems a little ridiculous. And it is, if one understands this philosophy of the 'as if' narrowly, to be performing a designated technical function of creating illusions about things which are not really there for reason's apprehension. Indeed, this is precisely the function Kant requires of it. But at the same time, setting aside the actual job of the 'as if' in Kant's system, I note that Kant discovers the metaphor by discovering the as if: as if he is saying, "completeness" but not literally, but metaphorically. He thus interprets the metaphorical use of reason as its central and definitive employment, and therefore puts the "scare quotes" around completeness. It is, a "so to speak" completeness - a "so to speak" philosophy.
And this is no mean achievement, for by doing this, Kant recaptures the very gesture of philosophy: philosophy as solipsistic self-stimulation, as speculation (as Hegel reads it), or (as Schopenhauer reads it) atheism and non-meaning (if by meaning we mean something literal), or as a tragic abysmal view of life that sees no secure ground to stand on, as the non-belief in the grammar and logic of language, as the free license to express even the minutest thought and experience as hiding a wealth of debris (the last three as Nietzsche views it), or the play of interpretations (Gadamer/Derrida), or as the concern with art, beauty, imagination and free-play that tip-toes above all the seriousness and gravity of analytic salvation-seekers (as the entire post-structuralist movement). Kant's metaphor reveals the complete lack of a language that philosophy can call its own, that it had been parasitic on a scientific language that has now claimed its independence. In short, Kant's invention of the metaphor shows the inevitable truth: the flickering existence of philosophy, which nevertheless refuses to extinguish itself.

First & third world

2009-02-08T11:46:00.009-06:00

In today's world, the mark of self-sufficiency, growth and economic maturity and independence of a nation is indicated by two factors: (i) whether a large number of foreigners wish to visit or settle in that nation - either to make a living or for business purposes or for spiritual excursions or to explore the nation's cultural richness or for other reasons that a tourist might give; ii) whether the nation has earned the right to say that it does not want foreigners on its soil, if it wanted to.
Even if many of the African and Asian countries, like India, satisfy the first condition, they fail the second. They fail the second condition either because they cannot reject foreign infiltration without risking economic loss and alienation, which is always an impending threat in today's globalized world; or because they feel the need "to be told" what to do, what to aim for, which direction to take by the leading first world countries; (or both). This latter dependency is a strange one since it is a sort of cultural slavery on the part of these ancient, albeit now, "dead" cultures, making them look up to the "master" western cultures as the leaders of this culture of globalization that began in the last century. The reason why these ancient cultures end up being slaves in this game is because they feel that only by being so they can hold onto the nostalgia of a lost cultural and spirtual greatness. The choice is straightforward: either be a spiritually bankrupt, barbaric nation without this nostalgia or be a barbaric nation with this memory attached like a parasite. The more a nation belongs in the former camp, more is its self-sufficiency and potential for leadership. Hence, America.

No thing-in-itself

2009-02-02T15:42:00.011-06:00

We always project ourselves onto everything: what we believe, what we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we think and what we sense are discoveries of our own projections. That tree there, that building here, this God above me, this person below me : all my projections of my own inner alleys and secrets. This is how we carve out our space in the world, however fluid and mobile this space really is. We discover only what we invent, and then our eternal stupidity never ceases to be surprised at these very discoveries as if they were given to us by an external source. Eternal naivety - that's behind this wretched Unheimlichkeit!
There is an outside world - the great seducer - which is forever beyond our grasp. As the wanderer proclaimed: We are always in our own company...

Echoes

2009-01-26T20:10:00.003-06:00

The discordance of the self sends out ripples of reverberations and interruptions over the indefinite fabric of ether in such a way that it opens up an infinite field of contradictions, odd mutilations, shameless corruptions and conspiring stage-plays. May this self still seem surprised about the gaping chasm between itself and the world? Does it still have a right to plead innocent?

The Night-Song

2009-01-26T13:25:00.003-06:00

Aber ich lebe in meinem eigenen Lichte, ich trinke die Flammen in mich zurück, die aus mir brechen.
Ich kenne das Glück des Nehmenden nicht; und oft traümte mir davon, daβ Stehlen noch seliger sein müsse als Nehmen.
Das ist meine Armut, daβ meine Hand niemals ausruht vom Schenken; das ist mein Neid, daβ ich wartende Augen sehe und die erhellten Nächte der Sehnsucht.
O Unseligkeit aller Schenkenden! O Verfinsterung meiner Sonne! O Begierde nach Begehren! O Heiβhunger in der Sättingung!
Sie nehmen von mir: aber rühre ich noch an ihre Seele? Eine Kluft ist zwischen Geben und Nehmen; und die kleinste Kluft ist am letzten zu überbrücken...

Wohin kam die Träne meine Auge und der Flaum meinem Herzen? O Einsamkeit aller Schenkenden! O Schweigsamkeit aller Leuchtenden!
Viel Sonnen kreisen im öden Raume: zu allem, was dunkel ist, reden sie mit ihrem Lichte, - mir schweigen sie.
O dies ist die Feindschaft des Lichts gegen Leuchtendes: erbarmungslos wandelt es seine Bahnen.
Unbillig gegen Leuchtendes im tiefsten Herzen; kalt gegen Sonnen, - also wandelt jede Sonne.

-- Also sprach Zarathustra

Out in the open

2009-01-05T10:59:00.005-06:00

It is astonishing how much value we place upon external evidence! For instance, consider a relationship between two parties involving a strife where one knows exactly what the other is thinking and feeling; what the other person's plans and secrets are, what the motivations of deceptions, defenses and attacks are, what is veiled and what is revealed. And moreover the other person knows that one knows this about the other. But since all of this information is hidden under the carpet, as it were - due to whatever reasons - the interpretative games continue to go on as if both parties were oblivious of these various facts and knowledge about the other and about oneself. These facts still do not count as evidence. The balance of this struggle is tempered with, and consequently shifted, only if one of the parties decides to break the rules of the game, and call out the other, and bring out all the motivations and secrets into the open. Only then both parties acknowledge what they already know - as if they were standing before a 'judge' before whom they must confess. (This happens even if no one else is involved or cares about this struggle except the two parties). The specter of the 'world' itself stands as the judge before whom the two witnesses appear. So much for our belief in the external world!

Two sides of the same coin

2009-01-02T12:55:00.003-06:00

i) What the stars must learn: That recognition is different from understanding. Many things recognize the star: the planets, the comets, the meteors, the asteroids. Some revolve around it, some avoid, some fall into it. But none understand its solitude and the inner necessity of its radiance. And so the star must learn not to place too much trust on these recognizers. The latter have a taste for the star's radiance, but this does not mean that they themselves can radiate or can fathom where this radiation comes from. If anything this taste is an indication that one does not and cannot possess this radiance. So the star must maintain its distance from them, at the same time go on shining for them -- i.e. it must maintain its solitude.
ii) The difference between a scholar and an original is that the former has not yet acquired the right to be obscure, and probably never will. He speaks like a slave as he demands for clarity. He demands clarity because he himself does not shine.

The diminishing space of philosophy

2008-12-15T23:08:00.007-06:00

Philosophy is essentially abstraction. What is abstraction? Abstraction is a movement away... it is gaining distance; it is buying time and the right to breathe. (Isn't all of Hegel's phenomenology a strategy for buying time?). Moving away and gaining distance from what? From life, from existence, from the 'phenomenon', from reality. One moves away from life to breathe! But why? For many reasons; one of them is to look at life as it presents itself; for one cannot apprehend and hold the phenomenon of life in constant purview if one is deeply and passionately embroiled in the phenomenon, for one is then part of this very phenomenon. One is then too close to it to see it and appraise it. So one seeks distance, a relief. One becomes a subject who wants to apprehend its object. Hence Plato, the philosopher, criticizes the inspired artist who is too close to his art, who ends up being a mouthpiece for a force he does not comprehend. And for Plato, this force must be comprehend. Whence comes this demand?

But this flight of abstraction is not innocent. For in this flight, which makes all 'phenomenology' possible, the very object of apprehension is distorted. Phenomenology's possibility is also its impossibility. Such is its violence. Meaning: gaining this distance compromises the very purpose for which this distance is sought in the first place. How could this not be? The eye cannot see itself even if it squints! Abstraction is a kind of squinting. Just like for geometrical abstraction an apple is nothing but a sphere of so-and-so dimensions, for philosophy existence becomes a composition of some bare essentials or vital properties. Just like the physicist listens only to the wavelengths of a musical piece, a philosopher describes a body as the amalgam of bones, tissues, blood, fibres and neurons. All the oppositions of philosophy (mind/body, subject/object, et. al) arise from out of this abstraction. The final objective of this abstraction is an extreme polarity through which philosophy acheives its completion and death (Hegel).

But what after Hegel? After Hegel begins philosophy's inward journey, its moving towards under the banner of a self-criticism. Philosophy now wants get close to life, away from abstraction (what else was Kierkegaard saying?) and with each difficult step it takes towards existence, it is propelled two steps back, since to undertake criticism of philosophy one has to still philosophize. Hegel laughs in his grave. Kierkegaard longs for death and becomes ironic. He laughs back at Hegel, and so at himself. But with Nietzsche, Derrida, and Deleuze philosophy attempts the impossible: to breathe life into philosophy. To make philosophy itself concrete, artistic, creative, poetic. To take something away from life and give it to philosophy, but at the same time, to give back to life its core, its concreteness, in the form of a new philosophy: claiming that life itself gives birth to philosophy, life itself needs an abstraction, which nevertheless has to be concretized to fulfill life itself. This 'eternal return' of philosophy to life is not an abortion, but a lofty sacrifice. Still a kind of buying time and space, but nevertheless, just as surely returning this space back to where it belongs, but in a more aesthetically enriching way (what else is 'deconstruction'?). An eye which does not still see itself, but sees its own infinite persectives in the reflection it casts on its object. Such is the impossible space of this new philosophy which is diminished in its very inceptio. An impossibility, which, perhaps Hegel already anticipated.

Nietzsche's bad taste

2008-12-10T14:45:00.008-06:00

There is an art of gliding on the surface: the art of living. This art requires a faith in life, an innocent faith in its forward movement, in its seductions and its 'metaphysical' delusions.
The impetus of Nietzsche's philosophy (the antennae of his 'cleanliness') lies in its ability to smoke this faith and these seductions out of their subterranean hideouts - bring them onto the surface, as if to show that a backward, almost atavistic movement belonged essentially to the forward thrust of life. As he says in his Ecce Homo, he gets hold of every secret: 'the abundant hidden dirt at the bottom of many a character'.
But perhaps the secret behind his secret is a mechanism which reveals his will to survival. Only by retracting life is he able to live, able to create. Only at this abysmal point of his philosophy his will to survive is revealed to be virtually indistinguishable from his will to create. At this point, where survival and creation coincide, and where need and abundance come together, we see the limits out of which Nietzsche's philosophy emerges: Nietzsche's very sterility. As a result, Nietzsche is obliged to appraise and pronounce judgments upon things about which a more naive and trustful faith chooses to remain silent. This shows Nietzsche's bad taste. (And is not Nietzsche's critique of all philosophy before him essentially directed against this philosophy's naivety and self-satisfaction, its 'good taste'?)

Genuine and fake

2008-11-20T13:27:00.005-06:00

The real test is for one to invent the very image one must grow into, and not secretly borrow this image from some other source. But also: This image does not arise out of nothing, but processed out of the images given by others, by past, and even by the entire history of mankind. The more encompassing and rich the number and kinds of sources, the more genuine is the output. And for one who passes the test, this processing yields a whole which is not the sum of its parts.

contra-Naturalismus

2008-11-17T23:27:00.006-06:00

'Naturalism', like all shoulder-shrugging pieces of non-philosophy, appeals to something that is 'given' as a bare fact, in order to exclaim "this is how things are at bottom! So do not probe anymore!" Appeal to nature is always an appeal to fact on this account. 'Nature' or 'natural' means precisely that which invites no further criticism - Nature as this domain of innocence where something is what it appears to be; the angels of heaven are thus domesticated and brought down to the level of farmers and peasants.

A case study of the 'ascetic priest', as someone who is a master of instincts, but who nevertheless chooses to shepherd the herd, the case study of the possibility of this ambiguous type would bring about the ultimate refutation of such naturalist readings of Nietzsche. For no such ambiguity belongs to nature!

Different strokes

2008-11-07T23:18:00.003-06:00

What is commonly called 'misunderstanding' between two people is a cover-up for, and a result of, a misplaced amount of faith between them; or what amounts to the same, it is a consequence of a self-betrayal as to what the genuine distance between the two people is, regarding their respective ranks, tastes and styles. However being true to this distance and difference does not restore a better understanding. It only creates silence. A parable.

The politics of struggle

2008-10-29T17:16:00.007-05:00

When one desires to be ruled, one also desires and expects a certain kind of ruling that is appropriate to the power ratio. One craves for a certain amount of severity, deception and cruelty from the ruler, and may even call it 'love'. But when the ruler rules with a different or a lesser degree of severity (perhaps due to curiosity or pity or boredom), then the ruled seeks revenge and becomes ferocious. The latter creates a turmoil until the power ratios are restored. He calls this his 'revolution'. For, a deep concern with the restoration of the ratio is what determines the ruled as the ruled. The ruler, on the other hand, is a revolutionary in an entirely different sense because he is haunted with the creative spirit to tremble and upset the existing order of power relations, at times, even risking losing the power which is given to him over the ruled. The secret tragedy of the ruler arises from his disdain for the comfort of a rote repitition. The revolt of the ruled interprets this tragedy as the decadence of the ruler.

Under the sheets

2008-10-27T12:56:00.012-05:00

The commonest form of self-deception is taking one's own inventive skills to be merely passive skills of discovery. A kind of underestimation of one's own ingenuity. And then one holds onto these truths as if they have been given to one by some mysterious external source. At the same time, one congratulates oneself for discovering these truths, which one believes to be available for all in the same form of hue and dilution in which one has uncovered them. One then sets up and passionately advocates justice and objectivity. It is only by virtue of a prior act of self-deception that one invents philosophy (a.k.a. phenomenology).
But these truths are only lenses through which one views everything in one's field of vision. They are 'truths' precisely because these lenses makes all truth possible, as such. A Kantian act of self-invention by the virtue of which one gives to oneself what one has already given to oneself. The 'as such', the golden commandment of phenomenology, has nothing but this structure of self-bestowing. (And didn't Kant mean by 'critique' precisely a way of unraveling this un-Gordian knot?).
A self-invention, which relying on its obscurity to itself, kids itself to be a modest self-discovery! And beyond the realm of this self-giving, oscillate infinite reverberations of terrible self-contradictions, dark-spots and abysses, against which one does one's best to guard oneself. But this dark arena is the secret source of philosophy, the Hades from which it springs and to which it passes away, where one being discourses with the other even though an infinite distance hangs between them.

Difference between beer and wine

2008-10-16T00:21:00.009-05:00

What an individual genius is for a German is a cultural phenomenon for the French. What speaks of profundity and gravity for the German is frivolousness, shallowness and play for the French. What is speech for the German is song for the French. What is Romanticism for the Germans is Napoleon for the French. What is life for the German is love for the French. What is philosophy for the Germans is art and coffee for the Frenchman.

A rhetorical invitation

2008-10-06T23:08:00.006-05:00

At least, at a basic level, everybody projects oneself onto the world. By doing thus, one feels comfortable and familiar. The uncaniness of the world is tamed. However, because of this self-projection one also fails to take delight in the simple discoveries of the world, the things that constitute the world and one's own place in this world. One fails to notice the uniqueness of one's own vision of the world, one's "constructivism," since one has already compromised one's singularity in order to feel at home. One becomes ever so slightly: dogmatic. But then can one avoid this self-projection if one has already limited oneself? And still: who can avoid this self-limitation and still go on living?

A psychologist's question

2008-09-28T16:14:00.004-05:00

A lover places her love so far above the earthly that the mere appearance of her love in the world, his limited manifestation, is a turn-off and an objection to her love. But who can see that this need to idealize and interpret the temporal as imperfect hides behind it a profound self-pity and self-loathing, which more than anything else does not want to be loved?

The body of writing

2008-09-26T12:37:00.003-05:00

Some people do not write because they feel writing will cheapen their beloved insights and strip them of their vitality. They are their own worst and most critical readers who come back to what they have written, after gaining some distance from it, and are appalled at the banality and pretentiousness of their words. Gaining this distance gives enough time for that madness and adrenaline to subside , which induced them to writing in the first place. They rather prefer to read somebody else's writing, and take envious pleasure in the fact that the author has expressed something which is close to what they would have expressed, if they were not so disgusted with their own ink. Isn't this quite strange? They forgive others of their shamelessness to express themselves easily, but are inexplicably hard on themselves and are ashamed at their own immodesty.

What a writer requires is that distance from himself, such that he does not feel ashamed and disgusted at his own insights and words. He should earn the right to be immodest. This distance should be gained before he begins to write, not after he has written something. Gaining this distance means to lend body and power to one's writing, to let one's pen control one's thoughts, and give content and form to the latter such that they are transformed in turn. Put crudely, a writer should not really be clear about what he is writing. But to gain this distance, one should also have thoughts which are strong and lively enough so that they can traverse this distance uninhibited, without losing their brilliance, their suddenness and their surprise factor. But this is another matter.

The curious memory

2008-09-24T19:28:00.003-05:00

We willingly open up some past wound just to check if it is still there. And after we are assured of its existence, we are comforted. We shut it and move along with renewed strength, apparently forgetting that the wound would not have been there if we had not opened it up.

Recipe for the born-again - type I

2008-09-02T12:40:00.012-05:00

Ultimately, the greatest solace for the one betrayed lies in grasping the insight that other people, how these others have appeared to one, the roles that others play in one's life, the disgust and the happiness that one sees in others, the degree of expectancy, love, comradeship one has with others, the mutual trust and understanding that one thinks one shares with others, and the whole order of power relations between one and the others, exist because one has put them there. It lies in the insight that one has built one's own world and colored it with one's own brushes. And that one can, as easily, take these colors away if one wanted to and thereby see this world and the others in it as totally devoid of any meaning or significance. This requires selective memory, suppression, transitional stupefication of the senses, wearing a thick skin, abstraction from the influences of the immediate sorroundings, distantiality and other psychological ingenuities. The end result is the ultimate victory over the others, reducing all the sufferings, the resentments, the frustrations of misunderstandings and misplaced levels of faith and trust to a nought. One then laughs in magnanimity at the world. There is a unique comfort in this solitary insight denoting a great triumph over the world. It calls for a Herculean strength and clarity of one's soul. And after one has grasped this insight, one must multiple this strength a hundred times by enacting the power of this insight and embodying it as the new light which guides the path of a new life; in short, one has to die first in order to be reborn.

The Mole

2008-08-31T18:19:00.004-05:00

Beware of the truth which when given to you makes you placid and indifferent. Lest you want your truth to bore you. Beware of this truth because it is not a gift but something you have collected as a trophy for your previous accomplishments. You stare at your trophy as in a mirror admiring your own image in it. And it gives you pleasure, the pleasure of possession. This is why you decided to encash. Does anyone know of this great pleasure?
But what else? Where do you go with it? Where do you grow with it? Like a permanent mole on your face, it distinguishes you from others; but it also sets you part eventually isolating you. How can you go back now? How could you go back to playing a game, whose victory you have already celebrated with your trophy? Doesn't the muddy water bind you to stagnancy?
Can't live with it, can't live without it: like two strange cosmic lovers who kill their love only by the virtue of being together; but who love each other deeply only when they are apart, when they do not even know each other. Is your truth too a counterfactual, something that you cannot show to anyone, something that does not belong to this world, to this earth? Are you ashamed of your mole?

A personal touch

2008-08-14T15:35:00.008-05:00

Back in the US after a busy and, nonetheless, eventful summer. I went back to my home country, and for some reason (which, of course, I am aware of) I felt more distant and alienated from its people, its culture, its noise, its buzz, it spirituality and its superficiality than ever before. I barely survived!
Also went to Europe, and lived in Germany for two months. I have never felt more at home than in Europe. It's in my blood this place- this continent's stoned streets, its corners and alleys, its people - both dead and alive, its architecture, its pretentious philosophy, its lofty finesse, its style and music. Even its 'common' people are acceptable to me! - This is the kind of freedom I experienced - for the first time in my life!
Now I am back into a retrogression, with an emptiness in my heart, which testifies to a certain lack of direction that I am currently feeling. I need a new project, a new alibi, an excuse, a new constellation, new planets around me, a rebirth, a new philosophy, a new love to pour into - i am single again! - and hopefully this time the container does not spill over!

Illusions of the few

2008-08-04T12:40:00.009-05:00

Few people (the rare ones, the solitaries, the geniuses) walk on earth as if they are hunchbacks, who are burdened by the urgency of a million decisions. In their weak moments they seek kindred souls to share their strange and unique story with them, but to their despair they find none. In their strong moments they see how they outlive every one-sided and oppositional limitation, into which they have learnt to place the predictable paths of other mortals. There is a great unparalleled joy they experience in this later discovery, which is bolstered by the fact that they cannot share this joy with anyone! They also see how impossible it is for them die, to limit themselves, to define themselves, to know themselves! -- the true meaning of the 'passion for the infinite' -- even though in their weaker moments they wish they could die, in order to lose the hunchback's eye and ear which survey and listen to the music and the chaos of the entirety of being. Since, to know oneself is to corner oneself into a particular taste and manner of existence -- and does this require, first and foremost, a very strange and deliberate (?) passion for stupidity that stubbornly decides to turn away from the expansive growth and unity of being, in order to set up its own 'self' (a 'self', therefore, in opposition to the world)?... or is this conjecture itself an illusion, a self-projection? However, during their more speculative moments the few think that the majority of these self-limiters are themselves illusory beings, smoke-screens set-up on the stage of the world to make the latter more interesting and unpredictable; and that in truth these self-limiters know that they are putting on a show for the solitaries, secretly laughing at their crests and troughs, their laughter and tears. In any case, the 'few' do not really comprehend the self-limiters and self-knowers. The latters' mystery is a source of comedy, curiosity, tragedy, nay, life itself for the few. This mystery represents the illusory point of forbidden knowledge, of death.

Shame as pride

2008-08-02T09:16:00.006-05:00

Many people (teenagers, women in love, economical men) convert the deep shame they have before themselves into their pride. This is the reason why they want to hide their pride at any price. Occassionally they find themselves obligated to give up the object of their pride (love, life or the world itself), especially when they fear that the source of this object would be revealed to be this very shame/pride. They renounce the object only so that they may go on staying afloat on the surface, go on being proud. Many call this their sacrifice and suffering.

What is greatness?

2008-07-25T12:46:00.006-05:00

A great person has within him the experiences of the entire history of humanity. And something more. His 'growth' into an adult symbolizes the assimilation of these experiences, most unconsciously, into his being. The curious on-looker only has to study his various gestures - his thoughts, his body language, his anxiety, his pain, his hand-movements and his joy, since these different things interpret and display this history in a new light - the light through which his particular genius shines through. This rare particularity and specificity is nothing but what one thoughtlessly calls 'individuality'.
Achieving individuality is a rare thing, and is certainly not an easy task. It is not all pleasure and happiness. The great individual has to live and die many times, since only in doing so can he rehearse the history of humanity inside and outside of him. He has to survive multiple bruises, go on lonely cruises, and learn not to expect other people to comprehend him. He has to accept disappointment as a part of greatness. This is tough to do, since being human (read 'naive') he instinctively expects more than 100% from others all the time, since this is what he gives to them in all his engagements. But he has to see that human beings are not created equal, and the creator-god has squinted eyes. He has to learn to see that his contemporaries do not understand him since they are dependent on him to show them the way. (Achtung: "The tendency to let oneself be debased, robbed, lied to, and exploited could be the shame of a god among men"). It is as if even his common contemporaries 'recognize' who he is and what his destiny is! The present gets its meaning only through a creative reinterpretation of the past - this is the greatest lesson he learns from his friends, family and other strangers.
Individuality and greatness is achieved only when the person not only learns life's tragic lessons, but has that extra energy in him to appear at the other end of the tunnel with an unbruised limb and multiple wings. Even though a part of his being is as old as the mountains, there is another part of his being that is beautifully preserved and fresh, breathing the life of the present and the future. Like the meeting point of autumn and spring he comes to the scene to create his art, and also the appreciators of his art!
But this is not easy. The world, his contemporaries, will resist him as they come to disbelieve their own instincts about life. And this is the greatest challenge for greatness. For now, it has to learn not only how to create, but also to preserve itself in the face of the toughest resistance. This is when greatness stares at abysmal madness, and it needs this madness to do this double job of creating and preserving. Few survive this test for a long time, and in failing this test they become part of history, however only to point themselves towards a future greatness, towards the individuals to come...

Great passage

2008-07-25T11:57:00.003-05:00

"Independence is an issue that concerns very few people:- it is a prerogative of the strong. And even when somebody has every right to be independent, if he attempts such a thing without having to do so, he proves that he is probably not only strong, but brave to the point of madness. He enters a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers already inherent in the very act of living, not the least of which is the fact that no one with eyes will see how and where he gets lost and lonely and is torn limb from limb by some cave-Minotaur of conscience. And assuming a man like this is destroyed, it is an event so far from human comprehension that people do not feel it or feel for him:- and he cannot go back again! He cannot go back to their pity again! - -"

- NIETZSCHE

Willkommen in Deutschland!!

2008-06-03T03:42:00.007-05:00

Arrived in Frankfurt in a plane, where every 50-plus oldie - on their way to visit their software son/daughter - believed that every road leads to Chicago. After demystifying their presuppositions, I arrived in Vaterland. Stood in the line for immigration clearance. Then came my turn:-

Me: Hello
Officer (looks at my passport, and says with German English): What do you done here?
Me: What?
Officer: What have you do here?
Me: I am here to attend a language course.
Officer: What language?
Me: German..
Officer (with a surprised, gleeful smile): Verstehen Sie Deutsch?
Me (with a fake German accent): Ja, ein bisschen.
Officer: Wo studieren Sie?
Me: Im Freiburg, bei Goethe-Institut.
Officer: Haben Sie eine Zurueckkarte?
I showed him the return ticket.
Officer: 27th Juli, Eh? He stamps my passport, and says "Willkommen"
As I go past him, I hear him asking his officer-pal next to him, "Wer is besser, Goethe oder Schiller?"

What if....?

2008-05-16T10:26:00.004-05:00

1. What if people in this world whimsically made decisions in their lives based on numbers? No, I am not talking about some astrological excursion, but something more naive, more un-rational. For instance, what if your girlfriend breaks up with you because she does not like your new phone number? For some idiosyncratic reason she does not like the pattern of 7s and 2s in your number. You say 7182477122, and she hangs up the phone and never sees you again. Again imagine you are flying into town, and you tell your folks the flight number 521 and they decide not to pick you up from the airport. Wouldn't that be fun? But we do not do that. Why not? Is there a reason? It is almost as if your girlfriend and your folks tell themselves, "What his phone number is or what his flight number is is pure chance. He does not have any control over that. He is just "given" these numbers." Is that right? They decide to forgive and overlook these small things. The boundaries of legitimacy and justification humanity seeks are not drawn on this landscape. Not yet, at least. These boundaries only come later, and little further down the line -- for instance, if after giving your girlfriend your phone no., you tell her not to call after 10 pm since you would be busy with other things, she would, quite justifiably, dump you. Where the boundaries are drawn is a matter of convention. But is it arbitrary? Can the whole of humanity easily will to change these boundaries simply because they want something different? Or is there a compulsion, a necessity, to this convention? Whatever it is, there is a lot of "covering up" that we do before we come to our sense of justice and normality. If we had covered up starting from a different point, we would have had a different set of conventions, a different dance to dance.

2. Imagine a world where academic people, researchers, do not depend on grants and scholarships to conduct their research and make their livelihood. What if only filthy rich people got into academia? Then, no one could pressurize them to finish their dissertation or book in a couple of years. They would have the required financial independence to prolong their projects until the project comes to its own fruition. The thoughts would come to them, and not viceversa. They would incorporate all the boredom, the deviations, the alterations of their moods, their natural growth into their works. This financial independence, more importantly, would give them freedom from the political status quo, the norms of bureaucracy, including the norms of scholarship. Perhaps then the quality of the works coming out of our academic institutions would also be a lot higher. Money is indeed underrated.

3. What if none of our languages had the active voice, and we conversed only with passive voice? We might not be better off, but perhaps we would've checked a lot of uncalled-for aggression in us.

Pet Peeve

2008-05-09T22:08:00.003-05:00

I cannot stand someone insulting my intelligence. This happens especially when the other person tries to deceive me. I am not implying that it is impossible to deceive me, but only that when something is uncovered as deception, it no longer continues to be one. The deception itself or the intent behind it is not something totally bad by itself. I am no such purist. In fact, an immaculate deception has always intrigued my fancy. But the audacity or the stupidity to think that I will not figure out that I am being deceived hurts my intelligence. (I experienced this recently when grading papers of students (and I have also experienced this time and again dealing with different people). One Lisa thought that I could not differentiate between a Kant and a Lisa!)
Sometimes, I get the feeling that the deceiver knows that I know that I am being deceived. But then he tries to play this inarticulate game with me. He goes along with the deception, hoping that I will suppress this knowledge for some unknown reason against my own better sense. As if with a wink of an eye he can seduce me into his world, and then leave me stumped in the real world! In such cases, it is really a plea which says either that "Come on! You know how things are, you know how it is.. just pretend that you do not know what I am doing." Or that, "Come on... you have deceived and lied in the past too... you understand the need!" Sure I do, but I was the deceiver then! And I did not get caught!

Thoughts after 5 pm

2008-04-21T22:22:00.006-05:00

1. The mark of being a great philosopher is that no thought, no sense, no nonsense, no action, should elude you. You should have surveyed the whole at that decisive moment of conception. After that, everything else is at your mercy. You are the potter who molds the clay. The world is your child, which will listen to you if you speak its dialect.
2. A scholar not only demands that you tell him something, but also that you mention to him aloud that you are telling that thing. He does not just open his eyes, but he really opens his eyes wide. He demands that you wear yourself on your sleeve.
3. In this sense, all of Western society since the beginning of its history has been 'scholarly'. The arguments, the debates, the philosophies, the archives, the psychoanalysis, the demand for freedom and individuality -- all as signs of giving to itself what it has already given to itself.
4. The non-scholarly Eastern society is for this reason not properly documented. Hence it risks losing itself to the clarity of the West.
5. The demand for scholarly clarity is ultimately a demand for completing one's death. It is a question of health - to seal this death off in order to inaugurate a new birth. But the Eastern wisdom believes that there is no death and no new birth, that in the demand for closure something vital irretrievably escapes the vicinity of the self - life. Hence the shifting and fluid individuality of the Eastern self.
6. Wittgenstein is to analytic philosophy what Christ is to Christianity. Both individuals were counter-factuals with respect to their followers.
7. It is true that the sense of what is written is not entirely at the hands of the writer. It awaits an appropriation and interpretation by its reader. This reader may be this very writer who has now dipped his pen in a different ink.

Very classical, very pristine, very rubbish (roobbish), very soapy, very British

2008-03-12T12:18:00.007-05:00

One sure way to tell whether a nation is on the ascendency or descendency is to see how they perform, at the global arena, at their favorite sport(s). That's how the Greeks understood it; and if you look at the performances at Olympic Games in the last 50 or so years, you can tell the difference between India and China...

But be that as it may, let us talk about the servants of the Queen - the British. Anyone who has followed the exploits of the English in recent decades knows it is a bit of a nonsense. Now, I don't want to just bring out the negativities, although there are no positives to speak of, especially since I am not a getting-carried-away English journalist. I even have a soft corner for these sportsmen, especially since I have a habit of rooting for teams that don't win.

Take football for instance: the likes of Shearer, Beckham, Owen, Shelton, Rooney, Sherringham - all superstars on paper - can't win a bloooody international tournament! And most of these guys are already retiring. The only time England won the world cup was in 1966 at home soil. But they have no chance of winning anything outside, especially since they are able find a lot of excuses for their losses. But what makes this worse is their shameless, and quite stupid, media. They look at their sportsmen through high-powered lenses and bloat up what is really a speck. The sportsmen then convince themselves that they really are that good, they roll the drumbeat, but they never come on stage! They end up being whisperers and gossipers applauding a Brazil, a Argentina, a Italy, a Germany, and even recommending them to knighthoods. True servants!

But their cricket team is perhaps worse. The cricket media even. (Recently, I came across a headline on BBC (days before England's tour to NZ)which read: "Sidebottom refuses to be complacent"... is this bravery? who accepts to be complacent, anyway?) The last good English team had Botham, Lamb, Gower and Gooch. Since then it has been a big joke. They have repeatedly convinced themselves that Australia are really interested in playing Ashes against them. And so whenever they lose a series to a lesser team the captain ejects an excuse, "It is a learning experience... we are preparing for the Ashes". Bollocks! The Australian A team of the last 20 years could have beaten any English team of the same era. Yes, the 2005 Ashes victory was a fluke. No wonder all the English bowling heroes of that series are no longer in the team anymore.

The ENG. team's one-day style of playing is again stuck in the 80s. The only change now is that they do not mind wearing colored clothes, and they have stopped complaining that the new white ball swings too much. Not to mention all the tourist-like wicketkeepers and openers of the last decade, who pay a visit to the team and leave for some other business after just one series. Then the ridiculous coach ('Duncan Fletcher' -- was that guy for real?), then Ashley Giles!
And who has not giggled every now and then at their funny sounding names and totally-undeserving-favorite-player-nicknames? Sidebottom, Gilo (who also goes by 'Ash' and the 'King of Spain' - I am so glad there is an 'a' in Spain!), Athers, Banger, Bloodaxe (Ramprakash!). Even their beloved mediaman has a nickname - 'Aggers' - who lacks any independent perspective, but is a cheerleader for the team. Both the team and the media are awakened to reality, when an esteemed rival player (whom they will recommend to a knighthood, I'll bet) reminds them of this. How sad is this?

But let us the enjoy this travesty! The show must go on...

Life's cliches

2008-02-07T23:00:00.000-06:00

It is a common cliche to note that the artist needs an occasion or a pretext which inspires him to let his creative juices out. The main fear of the artist is that he will internalize himself, which will result in his creative forces turning inward and burdening his back with a sack full of indispensibles. What lacks a context never takes birth, becomes a scholar, and ends up burning within itself like a dark inextingishable flame.

Perhaps, it is a cliche too to note that almost all of us live life without being born? We - artists without contexts, sailors without seas - we are life's cliches.

Technesse

2007-12-18T17:03:00.000-06:00

I have been asked more than a few times, why I don't write down my thoughts.

Equally, I have been suggested to buy a memory storage-device (a kind of personal planner), which will keep track of my impending appointments and schedules, so that I do not miss any of these latter. "It is impossible that you will remember all your future commitments! This little device will remember them for you." But how will it remember? What if I forget to even look into the planner? Who will tell me to refer to the planner about things I have supposedly forgotten? If it is necessary that I should remember here, if my memory is left alone here, then I will dare to remember my entire schedule. Away with the planner!

Technology here as elsewhere quantifies memory. In effect it says, "You should remember only to look into this device... the rest the device does for you. You do not have to remember all those excessive details about your schedules, which is hard and cumbersome for you to remember!" But who says memory works this way - that it has quantitative limitations? Even if it has these limitations, are these limitations been tested? Isn't the limiting line drawn by this technological device, at best, an arbitrary estimation? Arbitrary and seductive, that it seduces the present-day lazy ones to "adjust" their limitations to the line prescribed by this device. What started out as a cushion, an auxillary, an extra-padding, now becomes the combatting device!

But this is not limited to "technology" as in gadgets and electronics. The majority of mankind has always been "technological" even before gadgets were invented. How else does one explain the amazement with which one gapes at a math wizard, who can multiply two six digit numbers in the blink of an eye? Is this amazement not that of a softenend mind which claims appreciation of the other as the consolation of a self-defeat? What next? - writing because one has to think?

Fine line

2007-11-14T20:58:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I have a fertile thought, impatient to gush forth. I feel I cannot wait to give birth to it. However, sometimes I block the thought, I distract myself with trivialities and neighbors. Then I grope for the idea again. Where is it? Where is the vigor? Have I lost it? I take a break. I indulge myself with life. Then when the scales are balanced again, I approach it with sobriety. The thought appears many in number. And to my great surprise, the treasured thoughts have become richer, more powerful, more cognizant of themselves. They are no neophytes anymore! They want to come out and take form, but with poise and dignity. Their dances are more rhythmic, even though they are just as fertile as before. They work with me, they do not torture me to let them out. And when they arrive, they drop like pearls! They are the metaphors of my life!
But behold! If I hold these thoughts back, and let them pass through me untapped, they turn out to be old-naggers. They whine that the world has no place for them, and that they are too good for this world. They demand an eye at the back of their heads so that they do not have to squint too much into their past. They become nostalgic pirates!

Yes, thoughts too have their childhood, youth, and their old-age. But a thought can have only ONE of these in its lifetime, not all three of them. It's a fine line.

Moral?

Go under!

2007-11-03T23:38:00.000-05:00

What is left now for you to do, except to follow the tunes of that inner jingle which makes you the solitary? Why emerge into the surface before that ceremony is completed? Are you too curious? Or are you too scared that time will fly by without you? Is that even possible?

These surface creatures can detect the need of your inner path, and for that their wisdom is beyond their surface. They reject your sneaky appearance -- 'you cannot be one among us, if the timing is wrong!' they say. 'Go under and beneath, and emerge when it is time for you -- we will meet you there, perhaps in a different form than you see us now'. Why do you blame them for not wanting what they do not deserve? Don't you know the moon wants to shine only when there is no sun? Can you blame the moon's modesty? Is it true you are in love with a pompous moon?

What are you afraid of besides the exploding gush of your own heart? Why do you scream "Aaahhh!" when you are the pin prick yourself? Are you a watchman who cannot stop looking at the clock?

Forget about the arrows of time -- only then will you grow!
The world will wait for you -- eagerly for your show!

Portraits

2007-10-31T22:01:00.000-05:00

There is a typical feeling, a flavor to one's overall experience. It is what one 'gets out of' one's experience, and it is what determines one's experience too.This feeling summarizes the story of one's life, its tempo, its music, its crests and troughs. To wit:

>> The tragic ones: They feel that they never get what they deserve. And there is truth to this feeling. They come periliously close to the prize many times, but some accident or the other takes the better of them, and they end up settling for something which they believe betrays their inner greatness. Second-prize winners! (The intelligent sensitive schoolboy can't figure out why the beautiful girl he has a crush on, is busy flirting with a rich flathead against her own better judgment). They sniff out imperfections in others -- even though this does not deter their commitment to others -- just so that they can feel incomplete again. Around them everything becomes tragic. They always feel this discordance between the inner and the outer. They constantly scream out loudly, but no one can hear them. This is their tragedy, which is completely rounded/contained in itself -- which means they cannot speak about their inner Angst with others, or share this tragedy with someone else to ameliorate their pain, without feeling betrayed by the others. The wise among them accept this tragic fate of theirs, jusfitifying this fate as what belongs to the elite and the selected. And thus they come to have pride in themselves.

>> The lucky ones: They always get more than they deserve. Procrastinators who get the work done! They have a knack for timing; not the most diligent, but the most effective. Women like them. By hook or crook, they find a solution for everything. Selective sense of hearing; not interested in saving the world. Their typical experience lacks depth, but it is practical and pleasant. Always seem forgetful of suffering. Do not know themselves, but that does not matter! Around them everything becomes oblivious and light-hearted.

>> The perfect ones: They always get what they deserve. But their trick is to limit themselves, willingly and hence arbitrarily. Meaning: they do not mess around with what is alien and foreign because they respect their limits. But they respect their limits, because they do not want to mess around with the alien and the foreign! A self-contradiction! Which they sanctify as a desire for self-knowledge... Good at drawing perfect circles! Good at squandering a lot for gaining nothing. They radiate because they burn out. They donate because they inherit. They can cure because they bite. Champions of rebirth - they live because they have already died. The feminine. Around them everything becomes divine.

Crack in the ark

2007-10-01T11:06:00.000-05:00

Everything he knew fell by the wayside. He proceeded to engulf himself within the austere gates of solemnity, hoping to submit to the blind dictation of inconsummate shrieks. Suddenly the gates opened, and he was greeted by the fluffy entrails of non-gravité, even though he had fallen into autumn inside his head. He sprang about as he walked, but with jerkless knee. Stirring the whispers as he did, he lent his ears to the sweet music of solitude, adding a note with his waving hand as he blew the trumphet of his rebirth. The monotonous ticktock was reset, and he moved its hands with the beat of his rhythm. His past was shut behind him, except for those brief moments of kaleidoscope when the former struck him with bolts of lightening, as if it cut though an imaginary key-hole. Now he restrained himself with no other soul, but he lived for every spirit, announcing his blitzkrieg on the whole as he did. Under seizure, he commanded a caesura with homo natura. All his ukases were now offset by a duration of silence...

Heidegger's muse

2007-09-17T06:56:00.000-05:00

Heidegger dares to think the 'unthought' in other thinkers. But at the same time he points out that the more original a thinker's thought, more the unthought in him, the more he fails to comes to grips with what he thinks. Heidegger's thought, in this sense, may be termed un-original - it does not allow itself to leap into the fertile patch of obscurity. His thought abandons a certain kind of unreflective innocence - it is almost too serious, too morose, too self-absorbed, too proud. And for this very same reason, his philosophy opts the path of safety; it always makes a safe bet, because it first wants to secure for itself the second best place from which it then hopes to aim for the stars (if it can hope at all).

But this passivity is also the 'woman' in Heidegger's thought, which says, "I cannot love but I want to be loved." The latter, more than anything. This 'woman' refuses to be tied down, almost to the point of being promiscuous. She jumps from one nook to another, eternally afraid of being 'pinned down', since to settle is to enter the very unthinking-domain of creative obscurity. She bails herself out of every situation that might define and limit her. (Why? Because she has already limited herself in a deeper sense?) She washes her hands off the risks of existence. She wants to be free, out of irresponsibility.

Limbo

2007-09-17T06:37:00.002-05:00

The mere thinkability of a thought is not a proof of its truth. Nevertheless, this very thinkability makes the thought irrefutable. So it is with the vestibule we call life - irrefutable, but not yet true.

Our venue

2007-08-31T11:10:00.000-05:00

What a curious phenomenon it is to see the living ones scavenge the remains of the dead! Waiting for our geniuses, writers, and leaders to die, we excavate our spoils, not sparing their secret diaries, intimate details, drafts and undelivered performances. How much we do not believe in an after-life! We gossip about them, slander them, appraise them, especially since our voice was choked when the "voice of our generation" was still alive and speaking. And all in the name of respect for our heroes - bad manners with a clear conscience! Like the vulture which prefers to have a bald head, devoid of feathers, to avoid spattering of blood as it feeds on its dead carcass - we prefer to be ugly than have a bad conscience! We live only as spies, and hence inspite of our lack of right to do so.

Violence of philosophy

2007-08-26T10:33:00.000-05:00

Nietzsche achieves the thorough-going self-contradictory nature of his thought - by means of which he earns, in truth, his right to criticize philosophy, and criticize it inexhaustively - by means of compromising the innocence of his reader. This compromise appears as Nietzsche's unpleasant need for self-criticism, that is, his need to retract instinctively what the uncritical forward impulse of his life puts forward. Why? : In search of an innocence not condemned to forceful retraction.

Sur Bataille

2007-08-23T11:34:00.001-05:00

The prodigal submits his work to the world and remains silent, as he has to be. What that work is, Who the author really is -- regarding these the genius keeps silent and lets the course of things take its toll. And this out of modesty, out of abundance, out of style. -- General Economy

The average great man (ex: a scholar) imposes his work onto the world, and proceeds to "clarify" it or himself. He speaks where he has to keep quiet. He always feels that he has inadequately expressed himself in his work. (Consider the feminists interpreting Nietzsche: "Nietzsche is wrong here. Not ALL feminists imitate men... look at us!"). He says he started to compose after his inspiration already had whizzed passed him. He says he is too profound even for himself! His clumsy footnotes are more important than the main body of his work. He has a rejoinder for everything -- he mistrusts the imagination of his reader. Hence the scholar, the laborer, the working class. He hides behind the purdah and chooses to remain silent when he ought to speak. -- Restricted Economy

Spot-lights and dark-spots

2007-08-22T13:58:00.000-05:00

"Why this stupid knowledge of the impending hurricane if we cannot do anything to stop it?"

"Doesn't this knowledge show our baseness... doesn't it mock and ridicule us, as we stupidly wait two days in advance as some other part of the world get hit by it?" "To report and move on!"

"Why are the news-channels so worried about the few hundred honeymooners in Cancun?"

"Aren't we better off without this knowledge, we spies-of-nature?"

"Dinosaurs were wiser than us... they lived and got extinguished royally"

"Why tabulate nature if we cannot totally control it?"

"Isn't it obvious that we can never completely subdue it?"

"If we didn't think that we were superior, that the process of nature culminates in us, we would not fight against nature.... we would happily give way to better and higher creatures!"

"This doesn't mean that we happily surrender to any calamity approaching us... Here, it is the question of a quality of existence ... of a certain nobility"

"Why the placid indifference, which makes us neither animals nor Gods?"

"Our arrogance! How badly we need to be slapped!"

-- The frustrated but passionate rants of a friend. Not romanticism. No tree-hugging, love-for-all philosophy. Calling the bluffs.

East is east; West is west (Written on the cusp)

2007-08-19T16:22:00.001-05:00

Globalization is the latest form of the white race's unscrupulosity. Another of its prejudices, which it knavishly deems is "good for all", despite the self-proclamation of the dimming of its own lofty radiance- nothing but a strategy of dumping on others. But who are these "others"? The Orients, the Africans, and everyone in between. Why do these others agree to be dumped upon? But do they have a choice?

For instance, what defines an Indian? None of the popular tags designating some cultural virtuosity! Rather, what defines him is a kind of profound non-awareness about himself, of his own capabilities, of his profundity and his stupidities, of his limitations and the powers of his arsenal, and sometimes of his own greatness. He is waiting to be defined - that's his definition - and he has been waiting for centuries, in a kind of sheepish innocence, hoping that this innocence about himself will redeem him. The others - Africans and the Orients share this characteristic of innocence with the Indians, to a greater or to a lesser degree - and this innocence is precisely what the westeners have lacked. Why? Because they could not afford to be otherwise! You see, it is a question of economy, of give and take. Because, at some point in their history, they gauged that the inner-greatness of their spirit was not all that great, the westeners had to limit themselves, and thereby become aware of themselves. In fact, they limited themselves only to be aware of themselves! A closure just for the heck of it! They sought death before they died. It was on the pangs of this irony that the Western culture and philosophy came into being -- indicating that their culture and philosophy came into being only after their race was on the decline. The "decline of the West" has a prior decline, which has perhaps gone undocumented -- just like the decline of the Orient and the African race have gone undocumented. A speech where no writing has reached! The only difference, then, between the two sets of cultures is that it was only the west, in a defining historical moment of existential inspiration, grasped itself in its decline, took measure of its own scopes and limitations. A Kantian operation before Kant was even born! A re-birth before death!

All this goes to show how comically inappropriate the ultrasonic bells of technology and globalization are for the non-western man. Of course, it does not matter since the latter will never hear this inappropriateness as such in his being, since he does not have anything within himself, which he himself has sized up, to compare this external noise to. He deposits layers and layers of smuggled gadgets on his undetermined essence, frittering away in decaying innocence. What unseasoned processes happen behind the smoke-screens when an Indian becomes a software engineer!

Where coyness is required --

2007-08-12T16:15:00.000-05:00

I had a philosophy professor who walked into the class once and said: "Let's confess: we are not and will never be as good as a Nietzsche or a Kierkegaard or a Hegel. Our levels are somewhat below. So now let us proceed and discuss their works!"

At this point I had a series of reactions which I rehearsed in my head:

"Speak for yourself, missy!"

"If we really are not as good as these guys, then why bother discussing their work? Why pretend that we fathom even a word of what they write? Why not concede that they write for themselves and then sing our own songs, even if no one listens to them? For no one listens to them either... hehe..."

"How happily you believe in degrees of goodness - 'we are not as good as [them]' - as if you are initiating us to the secrets of the wretched, as if the latter deserve their happiness too... Isn't it true that even the presumed readers of these people's works are also on the same level as these people, that there is only an absolute understanding of them, corresponding to that sublime level where no words can reach, and that the half-way understandings of the average have no reality whatsoever?"

"Can you show some modesty please?"

Then I was briefly woken up from my imaginative musings by these judgmental words from the one person who was actually speaking in the class: "Nietzsche... hmmph... if that sort of surrender to nature and appeal to child-like playfulness appeals to you....!" Well.

I went back to my dreamworld to raise a few more questions...

Creating out of nothing...

2007-08-08T16:23:00.000-05:00

Experimenting with oneself brings about periods of intense creativity: One confines oneself to regimented diets, regular habits, isolated wintery walks and controlled sitings; One disciplines oneself against one's playful (now seen as "childish") and frivolous instincts, channeling these energies, almost forcibly, into a particular direction - the direction of one's chosen artistic endeavor. One has to - for one has chosen this art itself out of disregard for one's instincts - one does not believe in their frivolity anymore, one mistrusts their happiness, although previously it was the joy of precisely these instincts that created one's being. This is what happens when one's being has been internalized - one is subjected to the almost-mechanical rule of economy. One does not squander away; one preserves - A Buddha of self-severity, an artist who creates to live, out of nothing, out of death.

Many artists have created this way: They pay internally, often indebting oneself forever, almost out of guilt, for the sake of creating something for the exterior -- ex: one creates love, and sometimes even a life-form which one wants to love. But can one love now without comprising one's artistry? Can one not lose what one has created? Can one break out of the clutches of economy?

After-thought (Preface)

2007-08-06T22:34:00.000-05:00

Through Nietzsche's writings one can comprehend better what other philosophers said - not a process of making sense, but comprehending nonsense!

2 thoughts

2007-08-06T20:05:00.000-05:00

On Nietzsche:
1. It's a typical misunderstanding of the naïve to suppose that Nietzsche's main polemic was directed against philosophers. Nietzsche could care less for philosophers and the history of their "tradition" - a testament to his honesty and "realism," to the fact that his investigations were held in the absolute vicinity of (his) life and its pulsating movements. But this does not change the fact that Nietzsche himself was "philosophizing," a term to which he then obviously wanted to give a new meaning. Sure, he had something to say about (or against) philosophy, but this polemic is only an off-shoot of his main concern with morality as the slanderer of life. Morality, as he encounters it, is the name for the existential problem facing contemporary existence. If Nietzsche were writing during the time of Ancient Greeks, he would have still philosophized, but with a slightly different spirit, perhaps with much more joy and innocence than he could afford during his actual time (the meaning of "untimely meditations"). Religion and philosophy are subjected to hammering in his works only insofar as they naïvely subscribe to moral evaluations. This hammering is an off-shoot in the same sense in which "consciousness" itself is something of an off-shoot, a late and a relatively imperfect development in the progression of instincts. Nietzsche's writings delve into the very profound, yet changing, quandaries of existence - a testament to his so-called "existentialism" - irrespective of whether "philosophy" - previous or contemporary - affirmed or denied existence. This is the meaning of Nietzsche's a-historicism, the very endlessness of his polemical works - he would have produced his works even if there existed no philosophy before him, which is not what one can say regarding a Kant or a Hegel, who are so much dependent about a certain tradition of thought. Tardy "scholars" who take what Nietzsche says to be a version of "relativism", "nihilism" "naturalism" or dismiss him because he is being "self-contradictory" are confused about themselves. Nietzsche's writings, in one sense, exhibit all these tendencies, but they also exceed these latter. His writings thus breathe the air of life. They exist...!

2. Another proof of Nietzsche's a-historicism - the lack of technical language in his writings. But he does not just present a common, everyday language without making this language undergo real, life-like mutations and variations. When these writings are recast in a technical mould, as if this recasting does not change the nature of what is said, (which is another naïvety of philosophy scholars), then what emerges is an isolated philosopher, who has nothing to do with life, who thinks he has attained the right to abstract from the latter, preserving the purity of his philosophy from all "ontic" considerations. How a change in style of writing results in a different philosopher! A blot, to be more precise! This philosopher we call by the name - Heidegger. Heidegger - as a result of a profound confusion about Nietzsche's writings, about the importance of how Nietzsche said what he said.

United Colors

2007-07-31T19:02:00.000-05:00

Ever since his inception, man has tried to woo his woman. He fought battles and jealous desires, created artworks and nations, sang poems and laments, and sacrificed his wealth and his health. He had to, for women are loftier creatures - more subtle, more seductive, more beautiful, more graceful, more lighter, nobler and higher, at least according to the order of projection of things. In his innocent state, man sometimes even wonders silently whether women even walk on feet, whether they do not just glide away over thin air, whether they even cough or sneeze. How many steep mountains man climbs, how many inner demons he scares away, and how many stormy seas he swims - only to compensate for his lowliness, to bring himself up to the level of the woman, to seem worthy in her eyes! Like a monkey or a slave hoping to please his queen!

This gender warfare is translated into a curious racial warfare in the modern day. Consider the relatively high number of inter-racial couples under these qualifications - the man belongs to a non-white race (either Asian or African) and the woman is white; AND the non-white male is either a celebrity, or a rich tycoon, or is extremely handsome, and the white female is not necessarily someone the whole world has caught sight of, before she entered into her famous alliance. Kofi Annan, Tiger Woods, Rajiv Gandhi, Imran Khan, Bruce Lee, Sidney Poitier, Zakir Hussain to name a few - were (are) all exceptional men who were the best at what they did, and were perhaps the best their native cultures had to offer to the world, and who were (are) all (incidentally?) married to white women. (Now, there may not be any suggestive pattern behind this phenomenon, but then there just might be). These men were the best their respective cultures had to offer to the world - this means that these men necessarily stood out from out of their own cultures, they, quite literally, overflowed or superseded them - in search for and attracted to something other - in this case, something seemingly lighter (in every sense of this word!), loftier and holier, in the same way a man has always, quite naturally, sought and fought for his woman. Therefore, in this example, it is not so much that men are attracted to their women, but more that exceptional men of non-white races, due to a natural propensity, sought out women of the white race, even if the latter were not so exceptional. It is as if the outstanding credentials of these men serve as compensations for the racial difference! Another order of projection of things! Well then. One has to ask whether the female gender can be compared to the white race as a whole whereas as the male can be compared to the non-white races. A cultural question!

To the naive and the sentimental

2007-07-19T12:41:00.000-05:00

The confrontation and the critique of one philosopher with another betrays and hides a sequence of profound confusions - especially if the philosophers in question belong to different generations. For, if consistently thought out, no philosopher is refutable. Every philosophical doctrine about the world, and against it, are true within the limitations of a certain given perspective - the feeling that one is right about oneself and about one's beliefs cannot be dispensed with, even if one's belief about oneself changes. This self-feeling then has its right too!

For instance, Kant did not "refute" Hume's skepticism; he was no more "truthful" than Hume, but at bottom one reads Kant more than Hume because Kant has come to capture the spirit and the mood of the generations that followed him (a mood of a certain serious gloominess tempered by cautious restraint, I might say!). Or as I say I find Kant more "tasteful" (in sentimental scholarly circles, more "profound") than Hume. But I also read Nietzsche more than Kant, although Nietzsche in many ways is more playful, more joyous, and hence more closer to Hume than to Kant.

To give an example of how enormous and uncharted this field of underlying confusion can be: One of the mostly-unconscious issues with respect to which most of these philosophers wrestle with is whether or not there should be a distinction between (their) "life" and (their) "philosophy" or between "reality" and "thought"; and if there is a distinction, how can the line between the two be unambiguously drawn. This question plagues many of these thinkers (Wittgenstein), and if it does not directly plague their own thinking process, it will play a sleight of hand in determining how their successors interpret them (ex: how the early-modern writers like Leibniz, Descartes, Spinoza appear archaic and irrelevant to OUR post-modern life). Wittgenstein, who was more aware of this particular issue than many, sought in his earlier work to clearly differentiate between "life" and "philosophy," and by doing so, sought to completely eliminate the latter. However the bunny popped up again, like a shadow which kept following him until he decided to be a philosopher again! (But if there is no distinction between the two, how would thought (philosophy) get its material, its "phenomena"?) Nietzsche was not so naive. He sought to entangle philosophy and life in endless crisscross ways, constantly denying any clear distinction between them. In fact, his whole polemic can be read as against those philosophies which sought (unconsciously) to rise above the sphere of life (which presupposes a clear distinction between the two), to transcend, comprehend and comment on the latter. Nietzsche found a place for philosophy within life, and for life within philosophy. Heidegger, his interpreter, unhappily does not see the struggle of Nietzsche's polemic. He brings his own set of assumptions, unawares, into his study of Nietzsche, and like most others his assumptions too (more than any others') tries to find a unique place for thought in spite of reality. Hence he reads Nietzsche's so-called "perspectivism" and "phenomenalism" as aspects of a subjectivist line of thought to which Nietzsche belongs with the likes of Descartes. What do we get? One more instance of confusion. Now, all of these three writers are "right" in their own ways, given their presuppositions. But to clarify these latter one needs another polemic. And so on.

Strategies

2007-07-10T21:23:00.000-05:00

To wit: Why does one write? What goes through one when one writes? Is writing an apology? - Perhaps, to write about precisely this question of writing, in a hope to slyly seduce its mystery through self-referentiality. Or perhaps, the author vindicates himself through his writing, which hence becomes his self-purgatory device - writing as an occasion and a confession. (A more playful version of this latter technique has become too commonplace nowadays - I encounter many bloggers where the author talks about himself and his 'experiences',(as if they are all worth talking about), deliberately and quite modestly, exposing his 'follies' and his presumptions, choosing his written piece as an occasion to laugh at himself, all the while conscious that he is appearing more and more endearing and adorable to his unsuspecting reader, and therefore quite immodestly enjoying this feeling of self-gratification). Or perhaps, writing represents the writer's ugly side; he writes to bare his thoughts, to get rid of them, since he cannot bear them - writing as therapy (another cunning strategy, since this writer writes because he feels that his tormenting thoughts are too noble for his current way of life; so instead of changing the way he lives (which is more of a challenge), he opts to expose his thoughts by writing, hoping either that his readers will readily gaze, admire and fathom his inner potentialities and greatness - which he himself does not comprehend - thereby exonerating him; or else, if this does not happen, he would have at the very least compromised the profundity of his thoughts by exposing them and bring them into life). An apology, an occasion, a therapy - 3 varieties of self-deception; Strategies of writing, from the point of view of a writer.

Riddle

2007-06-20T15:13:00.000-05:00

I have some friends - doctoral students in philosophy - who have at times mentioned to me that their parents and friends initially found their idea of "doing" philosophy as a major or at the graduate level, quite ridiculous. They were looked at as if they were cyclops, or as if their third-eye had gone blind. "Why has our dear X lost interest in life?" they thought -"Strange asceticism at such a young age!" But doesn't this bewilderment hide a deeper psychological truth? This situation is similar to the one we have with respect to religion in modern times. One now looks strangely at someone who says "I live my life as my religious Bible wants me to!" or "Even your 'science' needs my God!" One looks at this person and wonders if he is not in tune with his present-day reality. One is presented with a psychological absurdity, a riddle, that is hard to fathom. "Why" one thinks "the self-deception, the self-reproach and retrogression?" Perhaps then philosophy too has met a similar fate - it has outlived its own death, it has become the derision of common sense. What else is the meaning of "doing" philosophy in a technological culture, if not nostalgia for a bygone era, a romanticism, a cheap mask behind which to hide oneself, a sun-screen for those gloomy ones? Fair enough. However, one has to ask now: has anyone actually lived his life in this modern, post-modern world?

To my readers

2007-06-18T14:17:00.000-05:00

In reading a verse, in listening to music, in watching a play one shows one's artistry. Yes, spectators are artists, too! These artists do not refer back the art presented to something already inside them. Rather, they create themselves in appreciating an artwork - they grow. The reader does not project himself on the words he is reading, in desperation to find himself in these words. Meaning is not reflected by a mirror. Instead, he recoils himself, to detect in these words, something into which he wants to become - he looks for the foreign, the alien, the strange, the unexplored, like a warrior, like a cultivator. He plays with the signifiers, and does not so much grope at the abstract signified. The listener does not play a tune over and over again only to enjoy his own stagnant passions - for these are not passions if they are stripped of their vibrancy. Music is not opium, not auto-stimulation, at least in this sense. Art is not meant to make its consumer "be at home" in his world. Quite the opposite.

Chimeras or Danger?

2007-06-12T19:51:00.000-05:00

The internal disintegration of Europe as a culture, of European peoples, is reflected in (not so much created by) the works of its major writers and thinkers, especially of Germany. Signing on to generalize I will say: it was Kant who first questioned an uncritical acceptance of the scope and promise of scientific knowledge. But if there was any discernable direction to the inclinations of European culture, one could see that science was only growing ever-so-unthwartedly to define the tastes and prejudices of European culture! So Kant 's questioning manages to only announce the imposing growth of a certain absymal chasm between reality and knowledge, between what man thought and how man lived. He did not provide a cure to the disease, but boldly showed its symptoms. The Jena Romantics made a brave attempt, but in vain, to overcome this chasm, and Hegel thought he achieved the seemingly impossible. But people who came after Hegel managed to mockingly laugh at him, especially because he died. The real Gods do not die, you see! Now came, repeatedly, philosophy's (I say "philosophy" not without over-simplification, since I have left out the adjective "European", which is not insignificant!) pressing moments of decision - either, continue to philosophize in utter isolation, betraying the wisdom of peoples and their existences, conjuring abstract chimeras one after the other, or else do something, act to fill up the abyss, take up the dangerous path! So came the procession of upheavels: communism, the political strifes and revolutions, philosophies in action, the whimsical scape-goating of races, the search for European culture, the Ubermensch, existential inner-turmoils, nostalgia, disillusionment - all in the lofty name of spiritual integration, all in an effort to prevent the banal leveling of races, masses, and philosophies. But the end-result: two world wars and the ever-widening of the engulfing chasm! The inevitable: Europe disintegrates. But this disintegration is also a work of genius - the scattered pieces, it seems, have found a way to avoid facing upto the two-pronged question of philosophy, by continuously wearing masks and vaporising into shadows! The opiumated genius evades! The question however remains as the vestiges of an echo : What is philosophy?

The Romantic

2007-06-09T11:24:00.000-05:00

The 'Adagio' in Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata has a series of movements that is repeated a number of times. In this series, Beethoven slowly builds up the tempo towards a grand finale, an outburst of climax, as if he is preparing the listener for a long cherished secret. But then the Romantic in him takes over. Just when he is about to reach the climax, Beethoven deliberately strikes a low key, almost in resignation, as if he is groping to return to some unknown point from which he has already gone beyond in one sense, as if he suddenly loses faith in the magnanimity of the listener to fathom his treasured secret. One can almost imagine Beethoven shaking his head in disillusionment! Strange pessimism! Or Romanticism - a belief in the progressive ideal coupled with a nostalgia for a lost origin... Thus spoke Nietzsche of the maestro: "Beethoven is the interlude of a mellow old soul that constantly breaks and an over-young future soul that constantly comes; on his music lies that twilight of eternal losing and eternal extravagant hoping..." In short, Beethoven lacks his present.

GO!

2007-06-05T14:27:00.000-05:00

Back home, an alarming number of people engage in a kind of innocent mass-frivolity - a national phenomenon, you might say. In traffic, waiting for the green signal to appear, they restlessly inch their vehicles beyond the threshold point in anticipation of the go-light. I've always wanted to pick up one of these commuters, grab him by his shoulders, shake him up, and ask him: "Where do you really want to go?" But I knew he could never answer my question.

Right words, please!

2007-05-24T21:01:00.000-05:00

Every culture has its own rituals, dances and songs... and its own words, which say something definitive about that culture. America is no different, although some nostalgic skeptics might point out that the modern technological culture of the US is really no culture at all. However, this issue is a different, yet contentious, one. And I have, instead, an evening date to catch, to scrutinize this issue right now!

A sample:-

As a part-time job, I will be teaching in a community college in a few months, and a few days ago determined to get away from my sleepy afternoon, I decided to visit the college campus. Since I had no other go, I boarded an intra-city bus which took me to the college, even though its campus was about 20 miles away from my house. I was impressed with the service, and aspiring to catch the same route number on the way back home, I hoped to know the bus timings. One of the passengers informed me that the driver might have a pamphlet which would give me the required information. As I was getting off the bus I had the following conversation with the driver:

I: May I get a copy of the route guide, please?

He: Say what?

I: The ROUTE guide please?

He looked at me intently, with a look of abandonment.

I: You know the sheet with the bus timings and everything.... do you have that?

A sparkle in his eyes, and Eureka !- he understood me! But at this point - and this is vital for the subtle ones - he did not just give me the route guide, but rather he clarified the terminologies first, and only then he gave me my trophy.

He first asked: You mean a SCHEDULE INFORMATION? -- as if the term schedule information has no synonyms, and has an extra-lingual meaning independent of how people might freely use that term. But this is typical of the Frei-landers to always seek the right words to execute the appropriate deeds, in a similar way an animal or a computer produces the right response only to the appropriate stimulus. Perhaps, a result of over-technologicalization (!), which prevents the constructed mind to step out of the limits of normal, normative discourse, in order to think and feel and say. The irony of the Frei-land! - which may be contrasted with the playful discourses and languages of the lesser-technologicalically driven countries like the old India - where one sometimes feels that people never mean what they say, and never say what they mean. And how could it be otherwise? - a word sometimes has the same word as both the antonym and the synonym! But has anyone fathomed this culture? A challenge.