BEING AND BECOMING

What do we understand about science in the era of "Technological Rationality"? How do we know about what really do we know? May be, you need not to think too much about these questions. Technology will take care of all sort of "verdictionary" politics (Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics). Technology provides those underneath and beneath rules to derive a sense of truth. The real power lies in "right to decide", to refer Carl Schmitt. Then question is what is truth? How do we know about what is truth? And what are the limitations to know the truth. This is a foucauldian paradigm, an art of impossible, which provides the basis of all "normalising powers". Science is desired by homo sapiens for the sake of power. The master narrator, Francis Bacon, once remarked that "knowledge is power". The quest of knowing is mastering. Ignorance is despised. Even Kantian paradigm went into the similar direction to discipline human minds as per...

Life is really a journey and not an endpoint. When I look at the process, the life cycle of life, there is no end, no finality. There are many a journey, many a movement, ceaselessly changing and transforming, dieing and living in a same process of life. No matter what you endeavour for, nothing is permanent, everything is in flux, to refer the wisdom of Heraclitus. The thing which amuses me is a thing that hollows out every bit of my pleasure. Sometimes, good health makes me happy and adventurous, but the same health in another moment deteriorates. My condition as a healthy being becomes a source of pain and suffering. Immutability is a mythical expression of a philosopher. Life is full of expression, so our vision is also on a journey. When I start treating every a bit of happenings around me, as if it is inevitable, that desire to direct my life goes away from my imagination. I am not a director of my life, instead a passenger who has to live by everything comes across me. I f...

Can there be a path of life? For serene happiness and joy, and to follow what is being followed, Does it qualify as a life? To think without thinking, To dream without dreaming, To feel without feeling, To live without living, Aren't you failing forever? Aren't you dieing forever? Where is journey if it is not alone? Where is destination if it is fixed in stone? Where is power if its death is certain? Where is wisdom if it is carrying too much burden? Good night buddies!

Economists are known as a better engineer, a technician, who have capacity of gazing miniscule atoms and sub-atoms of demand and growth, its slumpness and retardness. Be it French Physiocrats, or the master thinkers of classical age, like Adam Smith, Turgot, Recardo, Bentham, Saint Simon, or Keynes, they forsaw a new spirit is in making in form of political economy. Liberalism was the birth-child of the historical necessity for some, however a master plan for others. Laissez faire in its spirit relied upon the freedom of exchange in eighteen century and freedom of competition in 19th century of Europe. However, 20th century under the calibrated brush of ordo-liberals and anarcho-liberals, neo-liberal paradigm came into being. It was Nazism and Marxism which were made a face, an imagined adversary, to fight against that gave them stimulation to construct a "market society" whereas no competition or exchange will be free enough without selective intervention. Germany became t...

Isaiah Berlin, one of my favorite philosophers of all time, explains human freedom, through tracing the teleological and deontological history of philosophy. In the end he exclaims that science don't provide any goal. Somewhere it is human's determination which decide the authenticity of our life. We are extremely malleable. But, at the same time we have capacity to choose between just and unjust. This capacity to exercise a choice which is just or unjust makes us humans. As Huxley or Darwin expounds about human nature where a weak is crushed by a mighty creature. In that sense, nature don't have any moral content. But humans are capable to think about weak and strong at the same time. This unique capacity is a bulwark to ensure freedom. This notion is  purely Kantian, which supports human dignity and human agency over teleological or theological determinism. Somewhere Stoics and existentialists like Sartre agree with this line of thinking. Human agency in today's wor...

In an interview with BBC when Bertrand Russell was asked about his life long learned experience if he would like to share with his descendants? He emphasized upon two important lessons; first one was an intellectual one, i.e., always prefer the fact over belief; no matter what you wish to see or believe. And the second lesson he loved to share was a moral one, i.e., love is wise and hatred is foolish; tolerate others whether you like or dislike the habits or thoughts of others. A man who witnessed two horrific world wars and the holocaust wouldn't have suggested anything better than these wise lessons.  Our believes, as it is evident most of the time, lead us to a zone of dogma, from there, no scope for the return of sense remains feasible. Fact, though its obscurity is a burden which must be unfolded with a scientific attitude, represents the truth. And nothing, even a profound wish, replaces the truth. Second, tolerance is not a utopian wish. It happens in our daily life wh...

Over the years reservation policy is drifting towards appeasement than justice. There is no limit of its extension. It's being stretched without having any goal in mind. Political parties have made it a plaything to galvanise the sentiment of pro and ante. This policy paralysis is really caught in Hegelian cycle of its completion and return, whereas one day, as I don't think that time is too far, reservation of all is equal to reservation to none, will prevail. The Maratha reservation is a latest example of how things are working. Nobody is concerned about justice. There are all too reservation, but nowhere equality is visible. Equality has been elevated to the "state of exception"(Carl Schmitt, Political Theology). The Orwellian paradox is still visible that "all are equal but some are more equal than others" (George Orwell, Animal Farm). In language of Upendra Baxi, to slightly twist his style of saying, politics for reservation is not bad at all, but po...