Pet Peeve

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

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

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

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

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?