Freedom Is Not Fun

Freedom, people think, is all about merry making. It is assumed to mean to do what one likes. This is a great error of perception. Basically, freedom is all about responsibilities. Being free is, in fact, not even a state of being. It is only continuous striving, intellectual and physical, personal and collective. The fact is that only slaves have the benefit of being free of responsibilities. Enjoying life is a legitimate goal of life. But despite our indulgences, even in the best way what we can imagine, there always remains an inexplicable sense of void, an irritant feeling of something not being to our liking. We try more and more to fill the void, to remove the irritant, but it simply does not go away. Why is it so? The simple answer is – we are not free. In fact, we have a wrong perception of freedom. It is because our indulgences replace of strivings. 

What is freedom then? Freedom is about one’s dignity, and of others’. It is what the people of devious instinct distaste. And, it thus becomes our unending endeavour – holding on to our dignified existence in association with others. In dignity we have freedom. 

Clarifications: 

1. Merry making is not bad at all but it should not be at the cost of one’s or other’s dignity. 

2. Why do we have bad people? We have it. 

3. Rights are responsibilities, and responsibilities are rights.

Niraj Kumar Jha

My Fundamentalism

Our all collective commissions and ommissions are either capital generative or capital destructive. If capital destruction crosses a certain threshold, it's only miseries all around.

Niraj Kumar Jha

It's Social Sciences v. Genetic Coding

When we indulge in social sciences, we address the millinnia of genetic coding in human beings.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Human Dignity

One fights for human dignity not because people are crying out for it. It's for the opposite reason that there is hardly anyone caring for human dignity. The crisis, however, has very ominious implications. In fact, the people bereft of human dignity are behind most of the social ills.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Theocratism and Ideocratism

I distaste theocratism and ideocratism not for the obvious reason that they resort to pseudoreasoaning, but for the reason that they vulgarise disciplines and in turn brutalise life itself.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Poverty of Pedagogy

Our pedagogy is mostly an exhoration for every pupil to attain greatness. It fails to explain that heroism and heroes are mostly about chances and circumstances respectively. And, it ends up demeaning very normal people, in general.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Please Don't Blame the Social Media.

The worst riots, wars, genocides and so many other bad things occurred before the advent of social media. We cannot blame, if we see thoughtfully, the social media for social ills and conflicts. Humanity in no case was better before the advent of soical media. Hence, there is no reason to call for suppressing the media. Ralther people should be allowed to express as they feel without any restriction. It has two clear benefits. First, we know how do different people feel, and thus we have very raw data for understanding and working social relations. And secondly, the media in place of fomenting troubles, in fact, lessens the chances of troubles as it helps people to release their suppressed angers. The good people can always engage with such roguish arguers and help them to see reason. Otherwise, they would definitely be lost cases. And certainly one can argue sensibly to spread good ideas even without engaging in verbal duels with equal effect.The bottom-line (here very literally) is that people engaged in free and frank exchanges would be wiser sooner or later, and the society would be better.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Mahatma

It was the early 1970s. I was just a kid then. I was trying to learn the basic letters. Our tutor Shri Suresh Babu was struggling with me to make me learn the first alphabet but my faculty was stubbornly resistant to accept that. Anyway, at that time I knew about Gandhiji. The Mahatma at that time, I felt, lived around, not as a person but as an influence. His presence as an ennobling ethos permeated the ambience in that remote location of the country. I saw his pictures hung on the walls of public offices and places as if looking at me and everyone affectionately with a mischievous smile. As I grew, I see today, his presence gradually withering away over time. We can discuss the legacies of the Mahatma endlessly in appreciation or approbation but the fact, which I feel we cannot deny is that he bound us in a very humanising association as a nation. At that time, which I can articulate now, the Indians then must have felt that they belonged to the nation, and the nation belonged to them, and everything was geared to the idea of universal good. And Bapu with his careless smile symbolised the spirit.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Unfolding of the Unknowns

New technologies bring totally unprecedented (without precedent very literally) opportunities and very grim challenges (rather dreadful) before us. Socially concerned persons must study, think, and reflect on the issue so that we collectively prepare ourselves for the unfolding of the unknowns. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Philosophising the New World

Now, philosophising is catching up with the newness we are growingly getting into - the new engendered by the old-shattering technologies (See the very thought provoking write up of Harari linked below). Harari, to my understanding, asserts that the power of algorithm, data-crunching, and automation together while liberate us from many of the earlier constraints but it , at the same time, also threatens our freewill very substantially. I feel thathuman mind has always been controlled by some or other agencies but now it is 'hack-able'. The process is very subtle and imperceptible and it's happening right now. But the answer to the challenge again is the free market . When different agencies would compete to hack our minds, we can easily make out the grander design. There is another safeguard and that is inbuilt in the services provided by new the technologies. The cyber platforms allow us to share our experiences and we know each other better. This sharing enhances our knowledge of our collective self. Moreover, though Harari is in some doubt about this, the new technologies (he says laboratories) threaten liberalism but my take is that new technologies have only threatened the ethereal, never the earthy (as he says so at the end of his essay). The vested interests and the entrenched powers are trying to hijack the new technologies but my reckoning is that the new technologies will only strengthen liberalism on the balance. I also feel that Harari somehow fails to define freewill appropriately. True, what we perceive our freewill is substantially pre-determined but free will is not that substance. It is about the edge, no matter how insignificant it may be, over the substance we are mostly guided by. And it is only liberalism, which gives us the edge. Kudos to Harari for getting us into the debate on our new self!

Niraj Kumar Jha

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-harari-the-new-threat-to-liberal-democracy

Debate not to conclude

We never have any edge in a debate. The point is that the person is not playing chess with you. He is arguing with what he is - his faith, beliefs, and his life long learning. If you find the person irrational, his finding would be exactly the same about you. After a point, it is always better to withdraw and let it go. Both the parties have the better part of their life before them.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Masters of the Universe

You remember,
you reason, and
you imagine.
This is how
your mind works.
But the best thing is
that you rely
only on your imagination.
Free yourself from experiences,
whether yours or of others,
or those recorded over ages.
And let not logic and coherence
bother you.
Then you have this privilege,
you eat your cake
and you have it too.
And this is not at all about
the nasty cake.
You can claim without a hitch
the lordship of the universe.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Democracy Today

Democracy has never been on a strong footing globally. It kept on emerging and vanishing from different countries. And the so called strong democracies in the world hardly cared about democracy in the global order. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc was certainly a victory for democracy but now again in the post-Cold War world, when there should have been an ascendance, it is falling, shrinking, or receding globally. 

This is very tragic. 

There are reasons for the trend. And one among these is that the victorious powers of the WWII with regimes based on popular will subverted the very democratisation process globally, which they apparently espoused. They vitiated capitalism and globalism by acting chauvinistically, racially, and predatorily. In fact, they abused the very democratising processes for consolidating their domination. This weakened and emasculated nascent democracies everywhere and in turn did not leave the perpetrators themselves unaffected. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

A Proposition

The truths we may know.
The Truth is not knowledge.
It’s only an unending quest.
It’s in the quest, one sheds his ego.
Yet, he doesn’t know; he cannot know.
But at sometime in his unceasing quest
he becomes love,
And becomes the Truth himself.

Niraj Kumar Jha

An Irony

When you believe in yourself,
the world too bestows its faith on you.
But when somebody is condemned to question everything,
how can he believe in his self too?

Niraj Kumar Jha

Save the Knowledge from Yourself.

Negate yourself to let knowledge prevail. Your persona should never subsume the knowledge you seek to impart. This subverts the knowledge even if it tends to be valid.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Spiritualising and Philosophising

Spiritualising soothes; philosophising distresses. One is about meaninglessness; the other about meanings. One is about timelessness, the other about times. Retire or remain restless. The choice is yours.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Spirituality and Religion

Yuval Noah Harari says (in his interview to TOI, Sep 2,2018) that spirituality is about questions and religion is about answers. I think this to be unlikely. Both spiritualism and religion respond to the inexplicable existential riddles and anxieties. Only difference is that one seeks to soothe his nerves by using his faculty and the other by his agency. The problem with the other is that he is very troublesome.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Random Notes

• When a race suffers slavery for a millennium, they assume the running of the apparatus of slavery by themselves as the state of freedom.
• Philosophical fatigue triggers religious fervour. 

Questioning the Rationale of Creation

My simple contention is why let noumenal prevail over phenomenal, or essential over formal, or unity over diversity, or eternal over ephemeral. If we are believers and do the opposite, then we question the rationale and ridicule the effort of creation.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

The ever evolving existent future

Civilisation, they say,
manifests pastism.
But let me say this,
Civilisation remains ever,
A subject of futurism.
Pastism is only,
And only, barbarism.
We can say this
With deserving pride
That we have ever been only becoming.
And we have never been the past, thereby.
And we have always been existing as future,
The ever evolving existent future.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Meaning s and Meaninglessness

Meanings and meaninglessness mingle,
And make our world.
We make meanings,
And meaninglessness makes us.
In existence, nonetheless,
We have this holy privilege
That we define everything and being
To meaning and purpose,
Or we consign everything and being
To the bottomless pit of meaninglessness.

Niraj Kumar Jha

तुम कहो

तुम कहो
इसलिए नहीं कि
कोई सुनेगा.
तुम कहो इसलिए
कि कहना जरूरी है.
मुझे लगता है कि
कही कभी गुम नहीं होती.
वह तैरती रहती है हवाओं में और
घुलती रहती है सांसों में.

नीरज कुमार झा

Needed Great Universities for India

India is a unique nation. Save Asia, India is populated by more people than any of the continents. In terms of area too, with 3,287,469 square kilometres of land, India occupies 2.4 percent of the total land area of the world. Both these figures make India an enormous country. What magnifies the uniqueness is that the country with the 2.4 percent of the land on the planet supports 16.7 percent of the world population.

This uniqueness poses a gigantic challenge by itself and the challenge in turn makes India more unique. The challenge is further magnified by the acute diversity. India has great number of people who live the most advanced life style at par with any stratum of the global community and at the same time, India is inhabited by a great number of primitive peoples, who live in absolutely natural state. We have also sizeable numbers of people, who are among the richest in the world, and we have the biggest numbers in terms of the absolutely poor too. Even in the very capital city of the gigantic country, starvation deaths have been reported. I am not talking here about ethnic diversities – of looks, habits, culture, religious affiliations, languages etcetera which leave any foreign visitor bewildered in India.

Yet the challenge is not that we are too many or too diverse. Our civilization has made us to survive and thrive on this very land for millennia. And this is the same civilization which makes us a great functioning democracy, a rare feat even otherwise. It must be underscored that the nation-state as it emerged in the West was a mono-ethnic entity and nobody could have even imagined earlier that India would survive as a democracy amidst such deprivations and diversities. Thanks to our civilization heritages, we are a very proud democracy of the world.

Again a point deserves to be underscored. Each of we Indians is equally worthy and valuable as any other person in the world.

What is our challenge then? Our challenge is opening space for a billion aspirations to play. And this is not something unachievable. Since 1991, with little bits of periodic unshackling the Indians have made global strides. The point to ponder over is how to ensure that all aspiring souls get decent outcomes of their endeavours? 

This is basically a managerial problem. Any good company knows this and therefore hire suitable minds at the steepest cost to run their business efficiently. Any country, and if the country is India with its population and complexity, would certainly require incomparably greater expertise to make the coexistence of so many people smooth and their collective self to rise to its deserved place. But for governance, we don’t hire super experts and the greater fact is that they don’t exist. People elect and the elected ones command a bureaucracy to run the affairs and expertise is the least of their concerns. What can then be done?

We need great infusion of knowledge in the society – both general and specialized. And we cannot import some critically required knowledges from outside as they are not manufactured anywhere, as nowhere else such numbers in such complexity are managed.

These days there are talks of propelling some of the Indian universities to global top ranks. This is certainly a great move. But what we really need is that we must have great universities in general in order to meet our knowledge needs. They must have to rise above from their functional role of imparting some rudimentary skills or more practically from their ritualistic role of conferring degrees.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Resolving a Dilemma

Peoples and civilizations share among themselves much more than one can ordinarily realize. And civilizations have benefitted from each other in their civilization advance. Many ideas and institution which evolved elsewhere become the mainstay of any country. Being purist or exclusive serves no purpose. It only weakens peoples and civilizations.

On the other hand, a country is stymied on account of its dependence on foreign ideas and institutions. They do not help in resolving the prevailing problems which have been resolved elsewhere. And it also distorts some established and well serving traditions.

What is the way out? In fact, the problem is not primarily about the place of origin of any idea and institution. Rather it is the problem of the intellectual prowess of a community or a national community. We can resolve the dilemma by answering a simple question. The question is –

Is it we who command the idea or institution for the good of each and all or the idea or institution controls all of us for the good of some other?

When we apply this filter, the distinction between the indigenous and the alien for too many cases does not stand.

Niraj Kumar Jha

A Grave Crisis Looms Large

In a very near future only a few jobs for a few people would be left. Dwindling job opportunities and its psychological, social, and political repercussions can be seen anywhere in the world even now.

Three reasons are responsible for that.

1. Growing automation, robotisation, and application of AI.
2. Streamlining of business processes with growing. sophistication of computer and internet technology.
3. Competition from efficient countries.

What can be the way out?

1. Universal Basic Income.
2. Reducing working hours in government organisations.
3. Lowering retirement age for government jobs.
4. Maximum privatisation for economy and efficiency but with
effective regulation.
5. Promotion of sporting and cultural activities involving more and more people as active participants.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Freedom is not a Natural Order

We’re free to say we aren’t free.
Reality, the heart-rending reality is -
Those who aren't free have never said
They aren’t free.
We can speak anything what we feel like.
It’s true.
By and large, there is no problem with that.
The problem lies elsewhere, my friend.
We speak and speak, and the problem is -
That doesn’t count.
And that is why we feel like not being free.
My friend, we’re free to swim,
There is clean and clear water too.
But can we swim without knowing how to swim?
Freedom is not a natural state, dear.
It is learnt and explored.
It doesn’t come to us naturally.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Commanded Internationalism

After global empires and wars, the global leaders worked for internationalism, but by and large, what they have worked is a commanded internationalism. Now, the command of the international order is being contended and an economic war of attrition has already been unleashed. The incumbent command has responded by de-globalising, which is rather ironical as the technological advances have reduced distances among persons and peoples considerably, and even nullified it in so many ways. Multilateral internationalism is the pathway to a new peaceful and prosperous world, but is now being blockaded. The rest must unite for facilitating economic internationalism so that all the peoples of the world can reap the harvest of the the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the world is not forced to wait for another half a century for the new dawn.

P.S. The Western imperialism was also a form of internationalism, which was sort of controlled internationalism. The Great Wars showed that this system was not viable and they shifted to commanded internationalism. The West indeed promoted internationalism but kept it under its command through the West dominated multilateral agencies, military alliances, and by their national military machines. Now the same command is being sought by China with its measures like OBOR, SCO.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Internationalism is orphaned

The great powers have abandoned internationalism. And there is no mobilisation among the rest to facilitate internationalism. Earlier, at least, there was some pretension. Hitherto, the West under the US tutelage has worked a commanded internationalism and now China seeks the same, and hence, the inevitable clash. The economic internationalism is necessary for mitigating poverty and instances of violent clashes among groups and nations but post-Cold War world is sinking into greater anarchy. This is the weirdest irony of the times.

Niraj Kumar Jha

नागफनी

जहर बुझे काँटों का
नागफनी खड़ा था,
चटखते मरू में.
बिना पानी की
जमीन से,
सच उगेगा भी
और कैसे?

नीरज कुमार झा

Examination System in the Most Unique New Age

We don't need corrective but reformative measures in the examination system. In fact, the very idea of examination in such form has become redundant. In my opinion, multiple approved boards of examination with their own patterns of examination should be allowed to operate for the certification of the same set of students. And any pupil or person, even not having formal education at a school, should have the option of appearing in any of these examinations or in more than one of such examinations at the time and pace of his or her choice. When the different boards would compete for soliciting examinees, they would devise more creative form of examinations, which would focus on exploring the aptitude and potential of examiness rather than testing their memorising capacity. Anyway such silly set of information is already accessible from anywhere and anytime. We need to think everything anew in this most uniquely new kind of age. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

कहीं नहीं से आना

अनादि ही आदि का उद्गम है,
अनन्त ही अंत का तल है,
अज्ञेय ही ज्ञेय का आधार है,
अर्थहीनता ही अर्थ की भूमि है.

नीरज कुमार झा

मैं क्या चाहता हूँ?

मैं चाहता हूँ कि
सवालों के जवाब दिए जाएँ,
और जवाबों पर सवाल किए जाएँ.
ये खुद के हों और या किसी और के,
और के हों तो किसके,
को लेकर कभी फ़र्क नहीं किया जाए.
मैं और कुछ नहीं,
सिर्फ़ गुलामी की काट चाहता हूँ.

नीरज कुमार झा

World Class Universities

The Government of India wishes to raise 10 private and 10 public universities to the world class by selecting out the best from the existing universities and by exempting them from the rules and regulations and granting them Rs 10,000 crore over a period. This is indeed the best possible way to raise the standards of education in India. However what I suggest here that the state governments can multiply the effort of making Indian universities world class. After all, many of the Indian states are as big as the big states of Europe and some advanced countries of other continents. The 20 bigger states of India should find ways to make their two universities world class, one private and one public. The rest of states and union territories can also do the same by raising at least one university, either private or public or in PPP to the world class. If all concerned parties willing India can endeavour successfully to upgrade its 50 universities to the world class. This is indeed an urgent necessity as India suffers a lot as a result of lacking in quality education.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Methodological Musing(s)

The opposite of wrong as the existent wrong causes it to occur is not the right most of the times. The antithesis of wrong, most often, is another wrong, worse than the original wrong. The right, one should know, does not germinate out of the wrongs.

Niraj Kumar Jha