SOME HEGELIAN REVERSALS I ENCOUNTERED IN LAST 15 DAYS!

I wanted to always write on abstract philosophical topics. Someone asked the great patriot Lala Lajpat Rai, "What will you do after India gets independence?", to which He replied, "I am a schoolteacher. I will teach." This is exactly my attitude. As a writer, I like to write on theory, the more abstract and non-useful, the better it is for me. Why, if you ask me, I have less obligations to be correct here. When we try to analyze society and politics, there is a sort of constraint that your analysis should be correct. This correctness, I despise. People do not read through texts. They do not deal with in between textual stuff. Anyhow, here I am, writing about my favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher's one of the favorite tools, Dialectic reversals. 

Let me begin with a joke. This will explain what I mean by Dialectical reversals. An UPSC aspirant qualifies civil services exam and goes to the ultimate Mecca, which is ironically in Mussoorie in Uttarakhand. He keeps studying all day even after his selection while his training his LBSSNA. One day, his friend, a fellow probationary officer, asks him, "Why you are still working hard? you are selected now!" To which the aspirant replies, "Exactly, that is why I fear that now that I qualified the exam, people might find out that I do not know anything at all, and My selection is all a farce!" 

This is what Reversals are all about. Hegelian Dialectical reversal is when the Anti-thesis is not stated as simply negating the thesis but in fact, uplifting the central argument of the thesis itself and and making it the central argument of the negation. How? "Why are you studying when you are qualified?" has an implicit assumption that one should only study for qualifying the exam. To which, the anti-thesis, is not this that, "Oh!no, it is my hobby to read and so on!", but rather, a dank acceptance of the fact that One does not really need to know stuff to qualify this exam, just work and get accustomed with facts and qualify and at the end you really did not learn anything in content and just some discipline and other moralistic learnings and so on and so on. This is really reversal in practice. 

Another joke. I call it the men will be men joke. Have you seen those humorously pervert advertisements of an alcohol where a man is seen to be going extra mile to impress a woman and then a song plays and a sort of background voice speaks, "men will be men!" What is this tautology? 

Tautological statements, according to Hegel, are self-reversals. What does that mean? It means often we use this format of sentence, "The thing is a thing" when that thing fails to be the ideal version of itself. For example, In the Ad, when the man does not behave in a moral and high self-esteem person, he is said to be a man, signifying that he could not live up to the ideal version of a man, which is, a good man. What is in fact, a good man, is a different discussion. Here, A good man, according to the ad is simply someone who does not show off in order to impress women. 

Let us take another observation. I have been preparing for this silly, superficial exam called civil services. It is another matter, if I could not qualify it. But the fact remains the same, that this exam demands from the candidate a certain kind of superficiality in terms of opinions, demeanor and other things. It is, in some sense, a beauty contest of the graduates. Let us come to the joke. This exam has three stages, prelims, mains and the interview. It is often said as popular wisdom among aspirants, that one should prepare for mains first and then prelims. The reason often given is "What good is preparing for prelims if you have no preparation of mains!" This is so interesting. I reply to these people, sometimes on their face, but sometimes in my head if the person I am talking to is too stupid to understand the joke, I say, "But wait a minute. I agree. But What good is preparation of mains either, if you have no preparation of prelims?", Did you get the reversal that I did? The central reason behind the thesis "Oh! One should prepare for Mains", is "That qualifying one without the other is of no use", the same argument can be used to make its anti-thesis, "Oh! one should prepare for prelims". This is Philosophical reasoning at its purest and the most abstract. Ok, I am not stupid. I also would have prepared, and I did, of mains first and then prelims. But that is the thing about theory. It is not wisdom. It is not some life advice. It is an insight into how logic and language interact via paradoxes and contradictions. 

I had another insight few days back when I was hanging with my friends. It is a Psychoanalytic one. People use defense mechanisms to defend their deepest insecurities. I claim, "Embracing the attack might be the best defense!" again, a reversal used here. How? When you defend yourself through humor or something. The dialog is extended, and your mind accepts the premise and dialectics begin. Your mind starts thinking. But, if you embrace the psychological attack on your deepest insecurities, you stop the thought then and there. But it is not that simple. Sometimes this blank acceptance can become the deepest denial of the fact and that may lead to anxiety on the sub-conscious level. I saw one of my friends, being victim of this. He was listening to a song when I arrived. I came with one of our common friends. We saw him busy with music, we started talking. And it is a boring fact about me that anything with me becomes a philosophizing session of the world as it is. He listened through all our conversations and tried to intervene here and there. He started complaining about it that how theory can be a futile exercise and how real changes are required and how coming here is a waste of time for him. But haa! did you get it? few minutes back, this person was listening to music, that was for him, no waste of time. So, no what happened? Is he being bitchy? How to explain this? One more fact to add. He showed symptoms of visible anxiety. Legs shaking, sweat on his forehead. Now! What is the explanation? Is he deliberately sabotaging the discussion? Is he cruel? I claim he is not. He is the most genuine of us all here. Then who is cruel here? So, I have two answers to this. First, it is me. and second, it is no one. Let us see how! So, he is definitely not bluffing. Genuinely, music for not waste of time for him. It was precisely rest. What is the difference between Rest and waste of time? I claim, rest should be an activity which should make you, almost inspire you, to work again. It is in some sense, be repetitive, boring, or somewhat inactivity. Listening to music, even the same song again and again, is a good rest. A waste of time is precisely which throws you into procrastination. For example, an interesting philosophical discussion is many times so interesting and dopamine inducing that in comparison, studying for an exam might seem futile. Now, come to his response. Was it anger? No, I believe it was a cry of intellect. Intellect, many a times, comes with its curse of insecurity. I quote Charles Bukowski, 

                        "Beware the knowers, because they are afraid of what they do not know!" 

This is actually a statement about intellect for a reason. If your intellect comes from a reason other than intellect itself, insecurity is the byproduct since if that reason is threatened anyhow, you feel insecure. Here, the reason for intellect for this friend of mine, seems to be coming from a dire need to qualify an exam. This exam is unique in the sense that unlike other exams, this exam has no escape from guilt mechanism. Imagining you are peeing beside a road in a small town or village. Unfortunately, it is a common exercise in our country till date. No public urinals. An UPSC aspirant might feel guilty even for peeing. 

I STOP HERE TILL NEXT TIME.