BEING AND BECOMING

Nothing is authentic unless it is written down. No institution can thrive at the cost of ignoring the record keeping process. Human beings have become sea of data, a plaything for manipulation by media, a case study to discern the pattern and regularity. Education has taken shape of degree, marksheet, and certificates. Quantity is reigning its sovereignty over every possible virtue. Data speaks truth what can't be fathomed by subject. Data reveals what is hidden and hides what might be obvious. But who cares about human's touch when files of document are enough to draw a character. I once visited my alma mater for character certificate. My teacher asked me what is the purpose of my visit to law school. I replied, "Character lene aaya hoon". He responded humorously, "Character Chhod ke gaye the kya?" I had no answer then to respond his query. I learnt the lesson that certificatory sovereignty has alienated humans from their own roots. Max Weber's castigat...

Patience who has to listen? If one is surrounded by voices; Echoing every moment with invariable intensity. Music who has to feel its harmony? If unconscious movement of body and spirit defines what life is. Love who can find? If having and possessing have sketched the boundary of ego and its pre-occupation with knowns. Happiness who will realize in his hearts? If immediate thrust of pleasure and comfort is too intense to come out of it. Peace who will have If spectacle is all too desired aspirations, engulfing the human's mind into chaotic cacophony. Truth who is caring for? If illusion is a profitable veil To cover the dark side of life.

Where is Right if isn't lost in compulsions? Where is Duty if it isn't compromised through allegations? Where is Freedom if it isn't disappeared in exceptions? Where is Justice if it isn't monopolized by powers of institutions? Where is Equality if it doesn't remain in formal declarations? Where is Governance if it isn't a subset of management? Where is Dignity if it isn't subsumed by alienation?

Education is not meant to educate. This line of thinking is either too ahead of its time or too regressive. One may examine with curiosity why discipline is too important a virtue followed by educational institutions? If the purpose of discipline is virtue to be cultivated, what virtue it will bring in the character of a being, except conformity to a normalized value? Normalization is too important a goal for education that every scope of creativity is lost in following the tradition of mainstream. Why is it desirable to achieve uniformity in thinking, culture, and social relationship? If purpose is to make one single opinion as voice of truth, then, there is danger to create an echo-chamber of ideas. If purpose is to bring one way of life as authentic, in that case, multicultural beauty of existence appears to be at peril. I don't subscribe any value of nomological culture that there will be a law to live, or a pattern to behave. Assymetrical existence or uncertain pattern is as r...

Everybody lives for ideals and within ideals. What is factual about human's existence is that there is no substantial reality, progresses or regresses without ideals. Ideal, standard, norm, aspiration, and goal are sources of meaning-making, peculiar to human's lives. What it means to be death of values or norms? Aren't there many lives forms living in the mode of being, without aspiring to be? Desire of being itself creates a paradox of becoming. Becoming, either neologized as progression or regression, defines being as always already in transition. Something which is always in movement or governed by sovereignty of time can't be something. It can't be nothing as well. In that sense, every reality is real precisely in its transition. Can there be a value then which is attained? Or value is also governed by dynamics of transition? If value is already in transition just like any other fact, is there any truth in being? Except, only being is becoming? So my first prop...

Jonathan Sumption in his lecture on Law's Expanding Empire questions the role of a judge to decide the questions of faith, ethics, aesthetics, taste, and politics, and asked them to restrict themselves as a prophet of law and legality. Does it mean that there is a decline of other's authorities? And the questions that may be decided by politics or social agreement are decided by a few judges. Why law is treated as transcendental-problem solver, as if, law is a solution to every problem? Take for an example, love and affection could not be generated by law, neither law could teach the people to be compassionate towards every other creature of the planet. Legalism, a concept developed by Judith N. Shklar, raised the question of gulf between law and poltics or law and morality and advocated to see law in a holistic way rather than a rationalized tool developed by positivists in the modern world. In spite of her objection, there is certain truth in conceiving the idea that there ar...

Freedom is the essence of human being, devoid of it, human species is reduced to mere chattel, governed by causality or contingency of existence. Out of heteronomy or hypothetical imperative, every animal, plant, or even human being lives their life. Every being is subjected to law of nature; each living creature is affected by hunger, thirst, lust, desire, greed, fear, hope, anxiety, expectation, and mentality to acquire more goods. What makes a human not merely a subject of contingency instead of capacity to transcend the limitation of heternomy argued German philosopher Immanuel Kant. He argued that the human being has pure practical reasoning which may be used to derive the categorical imperatives (morally-binding duties). This capacity is unique in the human being in the sense that a person is though subjected to causality of life, natural or social; one is tempted to use hypothetical moral reasoning to be a useful social animal. But being consequentialist may be useful in many se...