Sunday, March 29, 2020

Global agenda and Integral paradigm

The Indian situation is after all part of a universal one. On the stripping away of "normal" democracy to reveal "raw" democracy and what that's about: as much about the use of "coercive power" as any other. And arbitrariness.
https://t.co/W6N6cvMKPy
https://twitter.com/kazhugan/status/1244314635437654017?s=19
Among other things, it speaks of an idea that I've been thinking of but don't hear anyone mentioning: an all-party 'national government' to meet #COVID2019india. Back in the day, it was frequently tossed up as an idea.
Why national government?
Because, instead of wasting energies on finding fault after things go wrong, or relying on this or that individual politician's genius or lack of it, this extraordinary crisis needs everyone on board. Not blame games.
Why are the police bestialising us? Why are humans trying to get home, with no other means to do it except on their feet, being brought to their KNEES? Crawl, duck-walk, frog-march? The symbolism is unmistakable. My column.
https://t.co/owVFHrYI5M

1. Situation is unprecedented in human history; in fact, human civilisation.
2. All theorising of past fall short by huge margin.
3. Unprecedented in another way too: instant communication.
4. Virtually it's a world-govt guided by macro-data like of WHO.
5. So seems Evolutionary.
https://twitter.com/SavitriEraParty/status/1244322024161308672?s=19
Blogging and tweeting from 2005 to 2020 has been a great learning experience and raining of Grace. I have always highlighted the Global agenda and Integral paradigm despite my puny understanding. Today humanity is facing an unprecedented catastrophe. So we pray only She can save.
Easy to find many well aware, well read, intelligent, and articulate persons on Twitter but with a rotten worldview. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have given me the chance to apply corrective no matter if it reaches only a dozen people. Pranams on March 29 #TheMother's arrival day
https://twitter.com/SavitriEraParty/status/1244031885132451840?s=19
Retired persons bearing the unhappy burden of the title, 'senior citizens' have become a near-derogatory category in this crisis. Such stereotyping and patronising is against needed autonomy and freedom. Social norms as regards their different exigencies too need standardisation.
Two thousand years of political theory has been on society and collective life whereas the current crisis has reversed the gaze towards home and family. It has been a neglected area and many loopholes as regards loneliness and neglect need to be addressed. https://t.co/ZXkUpWxvS1
Basically, it's individualism, common sense, and refusal to succumb to herd mentality or superstition. In India, the children are taught the opposite in the name of Sanskar and Parampara. Parents want to be cared for in their old age and apply all kinds of tactics upon offsprings

To be fair Harsh, what you said wasn't any constructive criticism but more of an average rant. A better way would be to engage, understand the process and suggest what can be improved. Ad hominem is really useless. Saying this since I respect your views a lot.
https://twitter.com/rg_gupta92/status/1244254405467267072?s=19
There are plenty on Twitter who indulge on general arguments and rants but specific points, metrics like you bring out on other topics would help your case here 🙂

But, there's another reason I'm mentioning all this. I would consider myself a 'naturalist'. I like to look at phenomena such that the cause-effect chain can be explained right till atomic / molecular level (and may be even till level of quarks).
If there are systems of knowledge (?) that don't delve on the cause-effect relationship in simple terms or posit existence of too many entities that cannot be demonstrated, I don't easily believe them (e.g., astrology, palmistry, homeopathy, etc).
A decade back I used to swear by 'science' and 'evidence'. A decade back I used to believe in Aryan Invasion Theory because it was written in the textbook. I'm a sort of black sheep in medical field because I don't believe in 'evidence based medicine'.
The reason I remain skeptical of EBM is because unless and until cause-effect relationship for a phenomenon is explained at molecular and cellular level, I consider it sophisticated statistical jugglery. So, I no longer "swear by science" so to say.
https://twitter.com/KetPan/status/1243921436143738880?s=19
But, there is another reason I mention all this. There was a time when I used to hold people believing in the 'supernatural' in some kind of contempt for not possessing sufficient intelligence. But, @mmpandit sir is one of the first and most prominent people to have humbled me 🙂
While I still continue to not believe what I categorise as supernatural, I get to learn a lot from him. I'd urge @srikarreddym to go through @mmpandit sir's movies. They're very informative and cover the undertaken subject very well. You'll find them here. https://t.co/mQpgr0gVxj

Then you should hate the BJP and Sangh-they killed 10K Hindus in one stroke in Bangladesh with the LBA.  You should hate the mercantile groups who butchered millions and are butchering thousands even today. But you don't, do you? Your hatred is ... selective.
https://twitter.com/maidros78/status/1244241750337544192?s=19

In my spare time I work with grps that care for the elderly and animals. Elderly humans and animals, those of no monetary value, are the ones most quickly abandoned in crises that makes society fearful of their own lives. Our naked selfishness comes out in its mesmerizing horror.
https://twitter.com/dikgaj/status/1244032117752897536?s=19
I feel like saying to those who think they will never grow old or that they are not animals, you too will be left beside the road one cold night, in the hope that you be frozen or beaten out of life, so you no longer have to be spent on, so that the space you occupied is free.
when you will fall sick, even with all the money you gave in your jolly days to insure for your care and the tax you paied, you will be taken off the ventilator, you will not be resuscitated, you will not be given medication or sustenance that will prolong your life.
even with all the love you gave your children or family or kin, all the hours you toiled to get them fed or taught or sheltered, they will one day see you as a liability, resolved through termination, in a setting for which no one can be seen as responsible. It will just happen.
dont see any one aspect of life as more important than others, even if society will do its best to convince you otherwise so it can get you to spend valuable times in your life working for its benefit and pleasure.
at the end of the day, most of society runs as a profit maximization machine - input the minimum and extract the maximum. It uses the lottery drive in humans and profuse conditioning to lure the human into and keep producing. But it spends a huge effort in hiding that mechanism.
Most of the values taught to us from childhood in cultures not openly predatory like jihadi cults, is to make sure we dont realize whats really going on, and the more productive are brainwashed more to ensure that they dont pursue self-interest to the same degree as brainwashers.
Yet I still feel that those "kinder" values are a better way to live, just that kindness needs a firm hand to ensure its not a means for exploitation. Society must be held responsible  for those it has used once, whether for production or pleasure. We must choose the better way.

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Mehendale wrote about horrible mistakes of Sarkar

Unlike others I give credit where due. As Jadunath Sarkar said alone among Indian ppl Marathas contested Mughals and rolled them back conquering them ultimately. That is legacy of Marathas and every Maharashtrian should be proud.
https://twitter.com/Chandrapida1/status/1239110027299786754?s=19
You Kaal Chiron and Rohit did you even read that tweet? Sarkar is admiring Marathas as only ppl who rolled Mughals back and conquered them. What is wrong in it ? This is your history and you are justifiably proud of it.
I know he had limited access to Marathi primary sources. However this quote is completely right and I do not think anyone can disagree there.
Deccani ppl were contesting Punjab with Abdali so their blood flowed but when Abdali attacked Mathura,4k Naga Sadhus and thousands of Jats died protecting the city. Not one Maratha bled in defence of that city.
https://twitter.com/Chandrapida1/status/1239075590424203265?s=19

I did. I am speaking in general on Sarkar as a historian and his opinions about Marathas which were based on non-primary documents. Not about his work on Mughals which is par excellence.
https://twitter.com/Kal_Chiron/status/1239113482512896001?s=19
Sarkar is not authority when it comes to Marathas. His opinions are welcome. But he is authority on Mughals.

Also an addendum, wrt Shivaji and Marathas (not other aspects of that era) research and writing in MH has moved far far in advance of Jadunath Sarkar with far more sources 
https://t.co/GxEj1LFSGI
https://twitter.com/ArmchairPseph/status/1240258661928202240?s=19
Being open to criticism doesn't mean criticism won't be countered if one disagrees  https://t.co/l9TMfqWxJ8
Where does this idea come from that people are intolerant to criticism of Marathas? A cursory reading of Marathi historians themselves should disabuse anyone of this notion. 
https://t.co/ApFeRfv0Dg
The flaws of the last H Empire and the reasons for its failure need to be studied threadbare- it is only from there that we can start to build the future. But first for that one has to stop refusing to see it as 'yours' in the first place. https://t.co/EAkkRInDkZ
As the last pan-India Hindu Empire, it belongs to all of us, just as all past Hindu Empires do. First stop being petty and parochial, take ownership of it as a Hindu, then critique it. https://t.co/4kVZQru7jo

Bargis did destroy temples here. I understand that generals didn't wield complete control over the band of looters. But destroying temples, loots are part of history too. Won't those be included in history too ? Otherwise, I don't have any objections to people getting their due.
https://twitter.com/From_Himalaya/status/1239808435182428161?s=19
Destroyed vigrahas for sure. Chief among them will be Siddeshwari of Bhadrapur. Aparajita of Kanakpur, Keshabakshi (both were earlier damaged by Kalapahar).
First damaged by Kalapahar then again from Bargis.
https://t.co/6Z8FfJfAxk

With due regards to his untiring work...Jadunath Sarkar is not the last word...a great historian like say G.B. Mehendale has written about  the horrible mistakes that Sarkar has made..and simply because his attitude of refusal to read even primary Marathi sources. Dhanyavad!! 

That is the problem...he did not have limited access...he, in many cases, refuse to even consider primary Marathi sources...if you claim to be a reader of history...you will make an affort to first read Mehendale and try to refute what he said about Sarkar..I will end it here. 
https://twitter.com/lalashwa/status/1239118096318836737?s=19
Your view. I would regard Rana Sanga say a saviour of MH Hindus too..if he had succeeded in freeing MH from Bahamani grip..even if Hindus were 90% in MH under Bahamanis..in fact I regard him as a saviour even now..no Hindu worth the name should live under degrading muslim rule.

Modi’s virtual internet lockdown has kept 8 Million Kashmiris in dark about #coronavirus - Pakistan was then not wrong to raise #Kashmir in the SAARC video conference on #COVID2019  https://t.co/1K5qdg1VxC
https://twitter.com/ashoswai/status/1240297710974009344?s=19

Fighting Communism or Hindutva is not the real challenge as the present crisis underscores. Larger Ontological picture is more relevant for which the Yogic insights of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo are immensely instructive. Modernity is key but Supraphysical realm matters much more.
https://twitter.com/NathTusar/status/1240235465476898817?s=19

One of the very few books that I have read word by word. Am restarting again. Virus will keep coming even if we find a solution for Corona. The only thing important is to have a better immune system. And simplest thing for that is to eat right, sleep well & exercise. https://t.co/5dEa8EUsS5
https://twitter.com/SandeepMall/status/1240289352464261121?s=19

As Gebser perceived, the breakdown of the mental-rational (or dialectical mind) in the face of intractable double-binds, dilemmas, and crises, tends to revert to equally aberrant modes of magical consciousness, ie, "magical thinking" (cf. Gary Lachman's *Dark Star Rising*)... /1
Prayer, instrumentalised as a form of magical technique (or spell-casting) rather than as a mode of contemplation, is just such a reversion to magical thinking. /2
https://twitter.com/fourfoldvision/status/1240296739090731008?s=19

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Despots won't care how many die

Assorted tweets:

Ashis Nandy's  mocking  life sketch of Sri Aurobindo in Intimate Enemy n d implied gesture of "clinical psychology" is not in good taste. I strongly condemn it as a biased n a  factually wrong note. These indians r more "enlightened" than Peter Heehs, the notorious debunker!
https://twitter.com/GoutamGhosal3/status/1237906427320000512?s=19

#IndiaQuarantinesCorona | Watch: World succumbs to #Coronavirus, but India ahead on COVID-19. | Rahul Shivshankar on INDIA UPFRONT. https://t.co/R7nrw1k09u
https://twitter.com/TimesNow/status/1238111306411999233?s=19

Rahul sharing personal exp of MOTHER. We must be Spiritual, respect Animals. Sharing Prof Sampadananda Mishra shares what the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram said about virus in 1953, based on her being affected by a terrible flu in Japan, year 1919.
https://t.co/cZwBQHmm4w
https://twitter.com/NayyarSanjeev/status/1238112423682465798?s=19

Authoritarian, repressive regimes have faltered the most in controlling the extremely contagious #COVID2019 #coronavirus. China, Iran both suppressed news of the outbreak, did horribly by their people by NOT informing them of the dangers, refuse to share real statistics with ROW.
https://twitter.com/Savitri4Ever/status/1233459739691905024?s=19
In a way, super spreading events have been enabled majorly by the reticence of China and Iran, and the world is suffering. Specifically with China having the largest data set of infections and not sharing the knowledge endangers the ROW, which has no knowledge of certain facts.
There is a lesson here. Open and caring societies will manage and save their people. Despots won't care how many die as long as they retain power. Another important takeaway - despotic powers like China CANNOT BE TRUSTED with the world's leadership.
Eventually, the repressive CCP regime may get its derailed system back on track and continue on its hegemonic world expansion plan. But the ROW should be even more wary and come up with alternatives to reduce its influence and power.

Let's address the root cause: "Both SARS and COVID-19 can be traced to China’s open-air markets where animals (such as wolf cubs, snakes, turtles, rats, civets) are bought live and then slaughtered on the spot." Such markets will spawn more deadly viruses. https://t.co/kHtFDaPakn
https://twitter.com/Chellaney/status/1238098923673116676?s=19

Chinese secrecy also worsened this crisis. Yet international agencies, too petrified to say an unkind word about Beijing, now lavish praise on a totalitarian regime that will never disclose the full truth. This dystopia is an upshot of the CPC's unchecked global clout.
https://twitter.com/kapskom/status/1238107732101812225?s=19

Savitri Era Political Action: The Human Cycle has solutions to present problems https://t.co/eOlEE3U4n7
#SavitriEra of those who adore,
Om #SriAurobindo & #TheMother.
https://t.co/upjH4BU1Q1
https://t.co/JJS7HM0DGn
https://t.co/9IaBwJNfVI
https://t.co/BA3NuhB6Lq
@NathTusar (SELF)

47.  Let me continue my tweets on #ADISANKARA  
https://twitter.com/Janamejayan/status/1238121348616069120?s=19

48. The great founders of the modern science such as Descartes, Newton, Galileo and Bacon contributed to the modern scientific way of understanding Nature with their tests for the Real.
49. Descartes sees the world as consisting of the dualism of matter and mind, or object and subject, or observed and observer, matter being the extended moving ‘substance’ and mind, the unextended immaterial thinking ‘substance’.
50.  Newton thinks of the world as an aggregate built out of discrete material particles, the combination of which, under the influence of the forces of attraction, have produced the great determinate world-machine.
51. Galileo assumes Nature to be a book written in the language of Mathematics.  Bacon believes that scientific knowledge is obtained through inductive generalizations from objectively observed facts.

52. This way of looking at the world implies that man as the observing subject (or mind, thinking substance) is totally detached from
53. the object (the world, the extended moving substance) and, at the same time, can obtain knowledge of the world which is totally impersonal, objective and based on facts as they are.
54. Materiality, quantifiability, amenability to mathematical treatment and to analysis into discrete parts, are the characteristic scientific tests for the Real.
55. With these tests for Reality, was born in the seventeenth century the modern quasi-religion of Positivism of which David Hume is the arch-priest.

56. For this positivist philosophy, statements can be meaningful only if they are synthetic judgements about verifiable matters of fact – the inductive method, and science, or analytical judgement based on a priori reasoning, mathematics and logic – the deductive method.
56A. Apart from these two classes of judgments, all other insights or intuitions are not germane to this philosophy and are supposed by it to be strictly meaningless and not recognized or even shunned.

57.  Aesthetic, moral and religious insights, which are more subjective, cannot, of course, be verified nor refuted with reference to material correctness just as empirical and scientific statements can be verified or refuted, but
58. their presence by us, is as much real as empirical facts themselves of science, if not more.  But Positivism considers them meaningless or at most to be mere expressions of subjective human desires.  The intellectual effect of this is a fundamental cleavage in the human mind.

59.   Since science reveals no purposes or ends in the world but only things, forces and objects, obeying these forces, man himself becomes an object in a world of objects.
60. For the Positivists, it is the most unforgivable of solecisms to commit the naturalistic fallacy by inferring an ‘ought’ (value) statement from a ‘is’ (fact) statement.

61. Thus, we arrive at an intellectual schizophrenia, a split, an unbridgeable gulf between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’, fact and value, world and man, object and subject, observed and the observer.
62. Notwithstanding this split, the great predictive success of Newtonian atomistic mechanical theory meant that over the next two or three centuries atomistic mechanism was extended into all physical sciences like light, heat, chemistry etc.,
63. and into the science of life also like biology and medicine. (For Descartes, all animals are machines.)  In the 19th century and early 20th century, this incorporation of all phenomena into the great Newtonian world machine proceeded further into psychology too, behaviorism;
64.  human thought was described as an ‘epiphenomenon of material processes.’  Man thus becomes ‘nothing but a complex of biochemical mechanisms, powered by a combustion system which energizes computers with prodigious storage facilities for retaining encoded information.’
65. To this way of thinking, value and meanings are nothing but defense mechanisms and reaction formations.  Man, thus, fully incorporates himself into the insentient world-machine.

66. In, thus, entertaining a vision of the dualistic world, man finds himself to be the center of an intense conflict, both inward and outward. Inwardly, his spontaneous hunger for meaning, values and ideals, for what T.S.Elliot called the satisfaction of the whole being,
67. revolts against a doctrine, which divides the ‘is’ and ‘ought’ (fact and value) and denies any fundamental reality to his religious insights and ideals.
68. At the same time, his loyalty to and his dependence on, the mechanistic world do not allow him to dwell trustfully within a world of religious and metaphysical values.
69. Thus, matter (the observed world), the outer substance in the Cartesian dualism, overwhelms mind (the observer), the ‘inner’ substance.  But mind, as the creator of this entire edifice of scientific thought, revolts against the incorporation of itself into mere matter.
70. Thus, the inner conflict, the civil war in inner space is prolonged indefinitely in various forms and guises as fact vs. value, determination vs. free-will, matter vs. mind, meaninglessness vs. meaning etc.

It is very likely that Yeats' "rough beast" of his poem "the Second Coming" is the same as Jean Gebser's riddling "the law of the Earth".
https://twitter.com/fourfoldvision/status/1238113510569041921?s=19
The breakdown of the "gyre" (which is also R. Moss's *Mandala of Being* & Rosenstock-Huessy's "cross of reality") is the pre-condition for the rise of "the rough beast" and Gebser's "Law of the Earth" likewise.