Socialising on Social Media

Socialising on social media entails mostly passing on information or messages at best or simply clicking symbols indicating a person's moods or feelings. There is hardly any analytical take on any issue. I encounter too many heads but hardly a mind on social media. And those who apply their minds present their case as final pronouncements.

Arguing is not everyone's cup of tea. For any person, it is difficult to keep calm when losing an argument or seeing one's long-held positions demolished.

Argumentativeness has its merit, as it helps good ideas prevail over bad ones. Those who possess the strength with a will for the same must indulge in it. But, for maturer persons who cannot tolerate the rush of blood in their arteries, polite conversations while raising doubts would be quite a good or even better alternative. A mature person would be in a learning mode to make other people realise the weakness of their points.

Unfortunately, it is rare to find people to express themselves analytically and be open to counterarguments. Moreover, most people are not mature enough to participate in polite conversations as I have made the case above.

Heated arguments and/or polite conversations ensure social good and facilitate progress. Tragically, people are either incapable or reluctant to do so. The reluctance comes from their ego as they fear a loss of face if their arguments do not hold ground.

People's egoistic nature does not allow them to exercise their minds. They, thus, allow mindlessness to prevail over them personally and publically.

Niraj Kumar Jha

मित्र साहित्य

जीवन विविध परिघटनाओं का दूसरा नाम है और इनका साहित्य के द्वारा प्रतिबिम्बन स्वाभाविक है। इस संदर्भ में साहित्यकार से मेरी अपेक्षा है कि वह स्थिति या भाषा की अतिरंजना के द्वारा पाठक पर हावी होने का प्रयास नहीं करे। वह व्यक्ति को चकित, आक्रांत, उत्तेजित, या सम्मोहित करने का प्रयास कम से कम करे तथा मित्रवत पाठक को सहज अपनी मानवता के प्रति आश्वस्त करे। व्यक्ति और साहित्य दोनों की गरिमा है और यह उनके सहचर होने में ही सुरक्षित है।

नीरज कुमार झा

Games of Ideas

Ideas run behind human affairs. These may be functional and dysfunctional primarily. It is the business of ideas which makes different races, autonomous political communities, civil or wretched. Ideas make part of humanity the first world and the rest of it the discounted world. The first world manufactures, trades and uses ideas and the rest consume ideas and more often get consumed by ideas. The soft merchandises are not bad or good per se. It is felicity with ideas that matters. It is the ideational capacity or incapacity which shapes the life and destiny of races.

NIraj Kumar Jha

New pedagogy

Public educationists must ensure a makeover of pedagogy in the context of the emergence of thinking software. Pupils should be trained not to store data but to scan and process data and not to imbibe but to examine knowledge. A suspecting mind would be better than a believing mind.

Niraj Kumar Jha

AI and Education

I found it perplexing that some educational institutions banned chatbots as they think that the students would source their assignments from these machines and they would make themselves dumb. 

I do not think that our ancestors banned automobiles fearing those would affect the walking ability of people or weaken their limbs. In fact, the automobiles actually did nothing of the sort. It only enhanced mobility. No matter how sturdy human legs may be, they can not take payloads to space, or to the moon, or to another planet. 

AI would only aid human beings and, more so, ordinary folks. Any technology makes an individual more resourceful and eases their life. Every technology is a social leveller. It does the job faster in free-market societies. 

The institutions should rather be recalibrating their pedagogy to assimilate these technologies into it and train the pupil's minds for superior engagements. Earlier we had only limb-like tools and now we have mind-like tools. If  I can call them limb tools and mind tools respectively, I would say the mind tools would aid our mind works and even do that independently freeing our minds for better things. Certainly, many would not be able to handle that freedom but automobiles have not offered us only good things either. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

One and Zero

1 is knowledge; 0 is being. 
1 is meaning; 0 is existence. 
1 is artificial; 0 is natural. 
1 is location; 0 is nowhereness. 
1 is time; 0 is timelessness.

1 is cognition; 0 is consciousness. 
1 is epistemology; 0 is ontology. 
1 binds; 0 frees.
Negate 0, 1 is a disaster. 
Be humble with your 1. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Zeroing the Order

I think the idea of the unity of being is the source of all tyrannies. Again, what is countable is secular, and what is not only concerns the transcendental. Oneness or unity of existential reality in terms of being one does not correspond to the imagined or the unimaginable vastness or minuteness of existence. When we apply number one to identify existential reality, we try to delimit the truth to our limited cognition, our secular vision. The ultimate reality corresponds to only zero. This is the appropriate number to value existence and a number that may save us from all kinds of despotism.

Niraj Kumar Jha

रामकथा

रामकथा सभ्यता का संविधान है। तुलसीविरचित रामकथा जनसाधारण हेतु सभ्यता का गंगावतरण है। इस पवित्र जल का आचमन कर जन स्वयं को सनातन आदर्शों से सिंचित करते रहे हैं। तुलसी के भाव और भाषा में सर्वमंगल के सूत्र हैं। गोस्वामी के वचनों के सरल भावार्थ का अनर्थ उपनिवेशी और वाम बोधप्रणाली की प्रधानता के कारण हुआ है। इस ग्रंथ की अवमानना समाज में व्याप्त बौद्धिकता और व्यवस्था की त्रासदी है। बौद्धिकता के वामीकरण का और क्या परिणाम हो सकता है?

नीरज कुमार झा