THE AGE OF REASON

How do you see the world, has been the central question of Adhyatman. Not only does it ask the question, rather it also provides an alternative vision to look at the world. The terms used in these contexts, "Dhrsta" and "Sakshi-Bhaav", seem very cryptic in this regard. I have seen many people say this. But, I do not think they know the meaning of what they are saying or otherwise, why would they keep living the life that they are living. So, let us delve in this.  I think, Sakshi-Bhaav is the feeling of seeing the world as it is. It is such a bizarre usage of words. As it is. As if the other people see it not as it is, or as it is not. What is there which you see, and they cannot see. Here, we can start deconstructing. What do we mean by, first of all, "The world" and the other, "Seeing".  First of all, the ontological category, "The world". By the world, of course, it is not just the physical entities placed at places. First of all, we...

Help is a wonderful category. To help someone can be an interesting experience. Even to the ego. The philosophy of Help or Seva is in Indian philosophy given a very central status. "Seva", in its pure meaning, is the losing yourself in the service of others kind of thing.  Interestingly, the addition of suffixes, "-full" and "-less" makes it much more interesting.  The feeling of being helpful to others contains within itself the feeling of being helpful to oneself. But there can be instances when the person is not able to help himself, but he can be helpful to others.  "Helplessness" however is more or less an abstract totality. It is implicit in it, that If someone is helpless about himself, he cannot be helpful to others. In other words, here we are dealing with a Hegelian Negation, which means, the negation of being helpful, that is being helpless, is a different state. It is not just negation of helpful.  Helplessness, although negates helpf...

At first, A Hegelian Joke.  Three UPSC aspirants were talking about Indian Administration.  One of the Aspirants said, "It is so sad, the kind of system we are aspiring to enter, it is so corrupt. Everyone takes bribes to do work, but nobody accepts."  Other aspirant said, "Yes bro, I agree, everyone takes money, but nobody accepts. I will also never accept that I take bribes."  The third aspirant said, "Yes, I Agree too. Everyone takes bribes but nobody accepts. I will accept."  The first aspirant asked, "How about not taking bribe at all? what is this Liberal honesty?"  Other two aspirants laugh at him, saying, "are you a nobody? Don't you realize the central principle, "Everybody takes bribes and nobody accepts! Be somebody like everybody and shut up and take bribes!" First Aspirant returns to his home and starts reading Hegel again.  The central idea of the joke is about the learned Helplessness that the society wants to te...

 The reference is from the Peterson vs Zizek debate where Peterson calls Zizek a "Strange Marxist" as a taunt to which, typically of Zizek and my own behavior, He gracefully accepted that. He said, he is more and more convinced that he is a "Strange Marxist!". He posited that he is a Marxist in the sense, because he begins with Freud's Death Drive, or Todestrieb, which is the negativity intrinsic of life itself, and using Death drive, rehabilitated Hegelian Idealism, and hence Dialectical materialism.  To explain in simple terms, Let us break it down.  Death Drive, what do you think it is? Salman Akhtar says it is related to Nirvana and desire to annihilate yourself into an inorganic non-living state.  I respect Salman a lot, but academically speaking, it is nothing more than Salaman's Indian Philosophy romanticism. Death drive has nothing to do with a death wish. Rather, It is an inevitable, rather normal condition of negativity that the Individual feels in...