Some quotes - Jerome K Jerome

Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like the measles, we take it only once. One never need be afraid of catching it a second time. The man who has had it can go into the most dangerous places and play the most foolhardy tricks with perfect safety. He can picnic in shady woods, ramble through leafy aisles, and linger on mossy seats to watch the sunset. He fears a quiet country-house no more than he would his own club. He can join a family party to go down the Rhine. He can, to see the last of a friend, venture into the very jaws of the marriage ceremony itself. He can keep his head through the whirl of a ravishing waltz, and rest afterward in a dark conservatory, catching nothing more lasting than a cold. He can brave a moonlight walk adown sweet-scented lanes or a twilight pull among the somber rushes. He can get over a stile without danger, scramble through a tangled hedge without being caught, come down a slippery path without falling. He can look into sunny eyes and not be dazzled. He listens to the siren voices, yet sails on with unveered helm

-- On being in Love, Idle thoughts of an Idle Fellow


We are all inclined to adopt a similar standard of merit in our estimate of other people. A good man is a man who is good to us, and a bad man is a man who doesn’t do what we want him to. The truth is, we each of us have an inborn conviction that the whole world, with everybody and everything in it, was created as a sort of necessary appendage to ourselves. Our fellow men and women were made to admire us and to minister to our various requirements. You and I, dear reader, are each the center of the universe in our respective opinions. You, as I understand it, were brought into being by a considerate Providence in order that you might read and pay me for what I write; while I, in your opinion, am an article sent into the world to write something for you to read. The stars—­as we term the myriad other worlds that are rushing down beside us through the eternal silence—­were put into the heavens to make the sky look interesting for us at night; and the moon with its dark mysteries and ever-hidden face is an arrangement for us to flirt under.

-- On Vanity and Vanities, Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow

We wish to become rich men, not in order to enjoy ease and comfort—­all that any one man can taste of those may be purchased anywhere for 200 pounds per annum—­but that our houses may be bigger and more gaudily furnished than our neighbors’; that our horses and servants may be more numerous; that we may dress our wives and daughters in absurd but expensive clothes; and that we may give costly dinners of which we ourselves individually do not eat a shilling’s worth. And to do this we aid the world’s work with clear and busy brain, spreading commerce among its peoples, carrying civilization to its remotest corners.

--On Vanity and Vanities, Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow


Are we laboring at some Work too vast for us to perceive? Are our passions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of which we are driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought that all our eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless prison crank. Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes can penetrate the past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up with infinite care, swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved to be mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the dust by Gothic bludgeons. Dreams of fraternity, drowned in blood by a Napoleon. What is left to us, but the hope that the work itself, not the result, is the real monument? Maybe, we are as children, asking, "Of what use are these lessons? What good will they ever be to us?" But there comes a day when the lad understands why he learnt grammar and geography, when even dates have a meaning for him. But this is not until he has left school, and gone out into the wider world. So, perhaps, when we are a little more grown up, we too may begin to understand the reason for our living

-- Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got."

-- Three Men In a Boat

My name...

"What am I after all but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it
over and over;
I stand apart to hear—it never tires me.
To you your name also;
Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in
the sound of your name?"

-- Walt Whitman

Happiness

Our experience of being happy makes us think that being happy is constrained by fellow beings, companies, etc. This conceptualization, true or not, has been peddled by management gurus, and psychologists, and we are sold on this. Is this true of human psychology? Or Is this a prima facie plausibility just because we experience that happiness is constrained?

2. Conducting research the way ethnologists do wouldn't produce knowledge. The way one poses questions depends on the background knowledge: in fact, questions are relative to some or another description.

3. Lets consider two ends of the spectrum: a Bill Gates and the poorest (in terms of financial worth) man. Indian traditions 'say' (scare quotes for different reasons) that we are not happy, *not* because some projects (desires, intentions, etc) that are pursued are failed, *but* because such projects are *ours/mine*. Here, both Gates and the poorest man are not any exceptions! There exist natural regularities that interfere our intentions, no matter how rich one is (for instance, I intended to drink milk to quench my thirst, and in fact I did, but my stomach got upset, which I didn't intend. One can imagine countless examples that way). Many do agree that natural regularities affect our intentions, but everybody thinks that there is some *relationship* between intentions and results. Indian traditions claim that there is no relationship between intentions and actions; they further say that the appearance that such relationship obtains is illusion the way that our experience of Sun's movement around Earth--which is our daily experience--is. Just knowing the claim that we are not happy not because of projects being pursued but because those projects are ours, does not make one happy! Something more is required: to experiment, problematize, the very notion of 'self'. Some Indian traditions claim that self is illusory as well. In intentional psychology, which is a product of semitic theologies and which mgmt gurus sell, self is taken for granted: that our actions are instantiations of intentions of such a self! That's why we hear slogans like 'be positive', 'believe in what you do'!

4. What Indian traditions say that one can achieve happiness, which is *independent of* what one has, of what one is, of what one attained, etc. One doesn't need to become ascetic, one doesn't need to renounce family, in order to attain happiness; this doesn't foreclose the possibilities of ascetics becoming enlightened.

5. Well, there are no requirements for one to become happy. In other words, it is wrong to say that those who go to temple and offer pooja-s don't attain happiness. Of course, some paths are better for some, but not for others: tantriks engage in 'sexual practices', which offend sensibilities of many indians, in order to get enlightened.

6. Anyway, RK mission, for that matter, any mission, doesn't have the intellectual capital: their ranks are filled up with half-baked bs. I say this, because RK mission guys couldn't even offer substantial critiques of Kripal's work, a work that makes Rama Krishna Paramahansa a pedophile. Same with all those who parrot new age metaphysics bullshit!

7. There is no eternal quest. It is a goal of every human being, a goal that manifests in different ways: from getting admisison, to jobs, to get married, and so on. So, this is amenable to any scientific investigation; in this sense, Indian traditions contributed to human knowledge. Our native languages are laden with such things: people say, one is to die without having any desires, so that one doesn't take another birth; and so on. Here, these junk swami-s, half-baked Indians give scientific gloss to rebirth and karma as though they are dependent on causality, without telling that what causality is. In actual fact, there is no punarjanma, but it is a cognitive strategy, a heuristic. Because we have lost the theoretical framework of our folk psychology because of islamic and british colonizations, we have taken over intentional psychology, and the other discourses. We think that we know what intentional psychology is, but we are ignorant of both intentional psychology, and our folk psychology; and our folk psychology beats any western psychology that exists in the market: in fact, our folk psychology is true of human nature.

Maaya and Gyaana

The problem with the writers of Atman, of Gyaana is that they don't know what they are talking about. How could it be true? This is an issue of understanding.

That earth is moving around sun is also a belief, is also a sentence, and also a proposition. It is also claim of theory. This proposition is a knowledge-claim. Then, what is the difference between this knwoledge-claim and gyaaana: reading Adi Shakaraacharya and offering another 'interpretation' will not do; it simply shows how 'erudite' one is. We have zillions of erudites, but one is not in a position to answer rudimentary questions posed by ordinary people.

Every one thinks that concepts are variables the way X, Y, Z are introduced by convention or by definition in C routine, or in mathematics. This is also screwing the new age metaphysics Indian junk. Concepts are not variables: they don't arise in vacuum; they are part of some theory or some understanding. When such theory/understanding is lost, we are left with slogans: that Universe is of God; Atman is God. What a nonsense!

Abt maaya. The world is not mirage, my friend. The world exists and impinges upon our experience. WHy don't you jump from a high-rising tower in Hyderabad? And see the mirage when you end up on death-bed. Indian traditions claim that our experience is not veridical; from this, it doesn't follow that world is mirage or is an illusion. Adi Shankara did not say this, but the modern interpretors junk do. Then, what is maaya? All traditions claim that maaya is a positive force; and that world is maaya, but not illusion. To illustrate this, let me play with a toy example: if you got Tirumala, you see dEvAlaya, I do building, whereas a martian (with similar constitution) sees a heap of stones. This is what Shankara says: there is *no* unique way of experiencing the world; however, we can compare two ways of experiencing the world: that's why we can make qualitative claims: that your experiencing of X is more illusory that my experience of what you experience; and so on. In western tradition, the failure of empiricist/positivist camps says that there are no 'positive facts' Indian traditions make the strongest claim: we can only know that our abductive inference of the structure of the world is false, but we will never know the true structure(s) of the world.

What, then, is maaya: it is human learning strategy, a particular implementation of (human) evolutionary learning ability. Whenever we navigate in the world, we problematize only aspect of it, while keeping stable the remaining. This ability prevents us from accessing the truth of the experience. In maaya panchaka, Shankara claims that the learned, the lay man, the Brahman are spell-bound by her( that is, maaya). And also he says, maaya is an effect.

Economic and scientific theories

The economists who support capitalism use rational choices, individual intentions to explain many to explain many economic phenomena: money, wealth, surplus value, commodity, financial crises, credit etc.,

Marxian economists abhor intentional and/or rational choice explanations. There is another reason to reject all neoclassical economic theories (all microeconomic theories), on the basis that intentional explanations are NOT explanations at all

It is very hard to digest Marx Das Kapital, but if you have read some philosophy of sciences, it is easy; because all scientific explanations are not of the type "premiss to conclusion". Scientific explanation goes in reverse direction: Given a conclusion (fact, phenomena), find the premiss (hypothesis.)Use this tip, and read scientific theories it clears up things.

Learning and Unlearning

Building RAC without knowing the innards of clusters is useless. Thst is what hyderabadi training centers do. Thats what Oracle training does; like the way we learn economics in highschool.

The growth of human knowledge has been explained by the activity of problem solving. Software is also there to solve some problems. Without knowing these set of problems, just learning installing is useless. For instance, teh so-called IP-addressing came into picture to solve a set of problems before that everything was done at mac-level (or layer-2).

******

The less talk, the better. Why do people should talk in the first place, except for survival in the sense of subsistence, they shouldn't talk at all; but people derive pleasure by doing so. When relatives gather, they either talk about their achievements (embellish their personalities), or criticize others (attacking other personalities)

There is a slice of the world that is being refered to maya. It is learning process, human learning process. This brings the duality; duality of the experiencer and the experienced. The experienced is the slice of the world, which we don't directly *see*. The experienced has the counterpart, experiencer. The experiencer springs into being whenever one experiences the world.

Reading things doesn't help. That is, Indian traditions are not philosophies. What Indian traditions try to do: break that damn learning process. The very act of breaking that learniong process is called Nidhidhyasa, contemplation - as it is called. But forget the name, important is what it refers to. People philosophize on contemplation "Mr.X said", "Mr.Y said" so on so forth, which is uselsee.

intentions and results

We dream as if things would be different. If things had been this way, I would have been different.

"Had I done MBBS and MD, came to US and became a pediatric surgeon, I would be making millions"

We dream as if those past counterfactuals give solace, as if the counter factual path goes the way we want it to be.

Whenever things dont pan out the way we want them to (in fact, they don't - and this is true), we think that, "had X, I would have been Y"; but this "had X" is also an intention, there is a hiatus between intending X and the wanted result that Y is. We forget this often times.

This is what people lament about, when they talk about their marriages. Soon after getting married, people realize that their marriage doesn't reflect some bollywood/tollywood movie. Then, they invoke the mantra: had I married my teenage love, I would have been leading 'happy' life.

hope and commonsense

Hopes are constrained by the world and its regularities. Our commonsense dictates that our hopes are related to the end results. But who is hoping, who is intending?

We have learnt many things without knowing that the latter were learnt. It is called sub-conscious learning. Some of them are false; some true. When I invoke commonsense, I refer to the false beliefs, eventhough it contains nuggets of truebits here and there.

We read news papers, journal articles and other stuff. Some genuine information is misunderstood by us and some junk is learned. Sometimes, we patchup holes in our commonsense. The holes are none but questions. Much of India commonsense is learned and recycled from textbooks which are taught from elementary school onwards. This commonsense is the image of current humanities.

Society

Assume that someone does social service in the hope that everyone else helps everyone else. But nobody reciprocates. What happens then? such social service collapses.

Why it has to collapse in the first place? People are not stupid.

Because, there is an experience of, 'my' family, 'my' projects, 'my' daughter etc. There comes the notion of agency. We all experience that way. Indian traditions claim that such experience is not veridical. They also explain why we are under that illusion, and how to get rid of that illusion.

All economic and social theories are built upon the claim that we are intentional beings. If we are not intentional agents, if everyone of us try to access that truth, a perfect system can be built. This is what ancient Indians were after. In that sense, they are light years ahead of present social scientific thinking.

Is Maya illusion?

Maya exists.

Whoever says maya is illusion, I feel like slaughtering those stupids, that repeat mantras mindlessly.

You equate non-existence with Maya, which is wrong.

The moment you cognize, you experience the world. You also experience the experiencer. This coming into being is due to the evolutionary-learning-process of human beings. No one is beyond this, rich and poor; intelligent and the dumb.

One can *break* this learning process, this is what Indian traditions do. The moment one breaks this process, the cognition doesn't enter the picture, unless on demand. Then you will function like a tape recorder. It records all garbage, it doesn't tell you whether it is music or its the word of your lover. Of course, if you want to go to Chennai, you gotta know things, you gotta remember. Call them functional knowledge. One needs that knowledge to survive. Thats all!

Maya is a learning process. Just reading a Shankara, discussing Advaita endlessly doesn't make you enlightened. You gotta break that learning process.. mere philosophizing is useless.

The first step is to keep the baggage minimal. If one gives up everything, one is close to that. Hardly do we give up. We are always about the future. We remember the experiences that caused pain and the ones that caused pleasure. We strive to avoid the former set, reproduce the latter.

In order to survive in the world, you dont need many things. Think about your pullampet citizens. They can live on millets. you can live on millets too, but you don't. You want to maintain some status quo, mimick someone else's status quo. "My sone wants to be an engineer", "I need to build a big house". Thats why you cant satisfy any of the human beings, no matter what you do, except for basic subsistence.

You assume that once you help someone, the latter will help others. That is wrong, because the guy is trying to help himself to maintain/mimick (others) status quo.

Beauty

There is one thing you gotta remember. When we see others, we see the way we see our faces in plain mirror, but not in concave mirror.

The former experience is seen as, as you say it, constant. More real than others.

This 'we' is some set of people, because all people in this group borrow some knowledge, info, beliefs from the same stock i.e biological. In the sense that our way of seeing the way in plain mirror is evolutionary.

Beauty is a relational property, as any experience is!