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