Ghiblism

Ghiblism, I define as people's longing for beauty, simplicity, innocence, and softness in their own selves and surroundings. Besides ghibling, they should put some effort into making the world like that.

Niraj Kumar Jha

LPG to Imperialism

The trajectory was logical, but the world hardly cared. LPG was uniting the world and enriching people everywhere, but vested interests sabotaged the evolution. We are now back to the age of empires or the times of imperialism 2.0. The actors have already abandoned multilateralism for unilateralism. The smaller countries and poor people are now in more trouble, and so is the world.

Niraj Kumar Jha

A Call for Democratic Ideation Practice

 Ideas attract people in adherence, generally, when these are delivered well-packaged or in a dramatised way. This is how working ideas originate and spread. Ordinary people can hardly ideate based on their own experiences and engagements. Ideas come to people from seats of tradition, mavericks, or leaders at the helm of extraordinary events. The Western world presents a well-documented history of its ideational journey, and we can see that most of the lasting ideas originated during very short spans of history. What happens is that a grand idea discredits too many good little ideas and prohibits the emergence of another great idea. 

My humble submission is that people's everyday experiences should lead to idea formation and be shared; this should be a continuous interactive process, and people should value their lived experiences. The next great idea must be democratically generated. 

This is why I always respect the sharing of ideas on social media. Indeed, there is a great possibility and occurrences of wrong ideas being circulated and believed. However, my other contention is that curated ideas emanating from established media may be trapped within worse ideational frameworks. 

People who believe they are in the know should not be perfectly assured of their correctness. They may be wrong, too. At the same time, people who think that good knowledge should prevail bear the responsibility to engage with other people with an open mind and respect. Generally, the so-called elite disseminators of ideas are haughty, disrespectful and patronising to commoners. They are unlikely to abandon their exalted lofty locations. People themselves must be aware of self-worth. It is a pedagogical challenge, but I do not think that practitioners are aware of this crying need.   

Niraj Kumar Jha 

The Centurial Repeat of History

 The early and later parts of the 20th century were eras in contrast. The early part was almost an anarchic world where power primarily ruled the roost. In the second half, what followed was the era of dichotomous consensus. Despite the disturbing manoeuvres of the competing blocks, people knew what to believe, follow, and oppose. The presence of an ideational ingredient intertwined with an idealistic claim was extraordinary. Finally, in the war of ideas, the evolving one stood the test of time. 

The winning idea is now nowhere visible, not even the bipartite interplay of ideas preceding it. Does history repeat itself during the following century? 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Knowledge Foundation

Knowledge decides the destiny of a people. Prolonged crisis inevitably is a symptom of poverty of collective knowledge. In other words, a continued state of adversity is the stubborn perversity of shared cognition. Nonetheless, the almost insurmountable challenge is knowing what knowledge is and that is the trap. People generally do not know what knowledge is. Knowledge seekers must deconstruct the making of the foundational premises of a '-logy' and '-ism' and their present play whether they help or not and whether they are illusive or substantial.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

The Problem of Taking Assumptions as Facts

People form assumptions based on their impressions of what is happening around them or what is presented before them. When they express these assumptions, they unknowingly become defenders of those ideas. As they lack an understanding of the reasons behind their beliefs, they often adopt a fanatical and even aggressive stance when questioned. Tragically, even educational institutions engage in the same behavior. They manipulate or disregard facts to reinforce their own assumptions. This is something I have personally experienced. Decades ago, after completing my master's in political science, I realized I had been subjected to an indoctrination process. The recurrence was showering dogmas as theorems or as revealed unquestionables. For instance, we were taught Lenin's theory of imperialism, which was an adaptation of Hobson's and was unhistorical though presented as a historical theory, and patently a theory gone wrong as capitalism had not collapsed as theorised. But it continued to occupy the foundational position of a paper of the first year honours (again foundational).

A concerned person must study reading materials and events with an open mind. Knowing is a human responsibility. Examining any idea based on historical and social genesis, its linkages with existential anxieties, and actors and factors sustaining those ideas is a duty on the part of each one.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Reimgining Democracy

Democracy, despite being limited in its acceptance in the comity of nations, reversals, and slide, has come of age. Now, it is vintage. It evolved in England and formalised organizationally in the USA, the latter happening two and a quarter centuries ago.

With the help of its civilizational norms, India reinvented itself as a full-blooded democracy and the deepening of its democratic norms and practices continues.

However, the point is that democracy emerged in response to monarchism and offshore imperialism. Democracy did come with the awareness of its essential concern, i.e. mutual and collective guarantees of the dignity and well-being of each and all. It did get its mechanisms: constitutions containing guaranteed rights, separation of powers, and periodic elections. Nonetheless, it only put everything as an icing on the existing cake. Besides, when the American republic was founded during the concluding years of the eighteenth century, the fastest means of communications, executing all these, were saddled horses. Not even the abandoned telegraph by now was there. Now we are in the age of zeroed live communication, vastly reduced physical transportation, and artificial intelligence. Everything is in the rapid change mode along with the magical tech revolutions. Despite all these, the basic mechanisms of democracy remain of the age of horse-drawn carts and homing pigeons. Is this not a time for making democracy's makeover for reflecting the current realities?

Niraj Kumar Jha