The Tyranny of Language

Of all the tyrannies, the worst tyranny is that of a language. A single idiom or a single expression may survive generations of women and men and may dictate life in such a way that the most tyrants would envy to ensure their sway like that. At another level, expressions frozen in time endlessly produce tyrants. We must be very careful about powerful expressions, in particular, about lasting expressions.

There are some examples:

“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.”

“State is the march of God on Earth.”

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

Niraj Kumar Jha

Civilization

The government-owned businesses were very tragic economic anomalies. These anomalies are being removed now, and the de-governmentalization trends today. The process is termed 'privatization,' but one can see that the term is not compatible with the idea it seeks to convey. The very nature of capital, personal money deployed for gainful provisioning and servicing of the society, is social. The deployment of personal money in the economy brings people into a very fulfilling association. The easier and the less taxed the process, the wealthier and happier are the folks. And, as such a company gets its status changed from being government holding to the civil* ownership, the process may be called civilization. The word civilization must be assigned this good and human good meaning, and the meaning is hardly different from its original meaning. One needs to distinguish a civilization from primitivism to know that the proposed extra meaning does not bring any variance to the effect of the word.

*civ·il (sĭv′əl)
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or befitting a citizen or citizens: civil duties.


Niraj Kumar Jha

Discoursing

Though I am not seen like that, the enduring fact is that I am a professional discourser; I am paid basically for that. And, as such, I explain the basics of discourse to my audiences and one of those is this. The first task of discourse is simplification so that you have the foundational understanding, which is a necessity for getting into understanding. And the second task is to complicate: to look for the interplay of realities and possibilities to the limit when our faculty finds itself unable to go further. First is meant to introduce them to understanding, and second to the limits of understanding. These are two ends but the main concern is to identify the takeaways, i.e. to work knowledge to make it work for the general good (general because the basic orientation of my discipline is not imparting some skills). The bottom line to me is to go to the fundamentals and to get back without becoming fundamentalist and to plan the journey in a way so that it is beneficial to one and all.

Stating the obvious but people need to realize this obvious rather badly.

Niraj Kumar Jha

चित्रण है

नाम, अर्थ, और मूल्य,
जो हमने नियत किए हैं,
और जो सीखे हैं,
वही असीम सागर में
जीवन की नाव है ।
ज्ञान-इंद्रियाँ जुटाती है रंगें,
मस्तिष्क उकेरता है तस्वीरें,
तस्वीरें दिखाती हैं प्रसंग;
अस्तित्व-बोध चित्रण है,
गोचर मात्र चित्रित है।
प्रतिबिंब है,
रंगें हैं,
चित्रण है,
चित्रण जीवन है,
चित्रण अभिकरण है ।

नीरज कुमार झा

Children of the Moment

Regeneration of folks, which took centuries or even millennia, not so long ago, is happening in spans of months or years these times. The folks regenerate themselves in their lifetimes only, and in a continuing way. And in their every avatar, they are more children of the moment than that of the past times.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Republicanism

Democratism, as a conceptual category and as practice, gets all the attention. Another very powerful idea, closely resembling this and perhaps for this reason only, has been grossly overlooked. Republicanism has great potential as an idea or concept, and its non-realization leaves civic life much poorer than it could have been in the case of realization. Democratism as an idea is highly susceptible to monarchism on the one hand and demagoguery on the other, and worse it provides cozy nesting of ideologies of all hues. The Republican idea calls for cutting emotions and all such deviations which seek to deprive people of their happiness (or to induce them to opiated bliss). It is the rationalization of order, which aims at ensuring that each one has all the chances of self-fulfillment. It seeks the paramountcy of science and civics in life. Residues of monarchist and feudal forms, norms, and mores are still quite burdensome. They choke human senses and sensibilities.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Aesthetics

The irony is that it was feudalism that nursed 'the finest' what humanity could achieve in arts, aesthetics, literature, and architecture. The values which hallmarked feudalism, like chivalry, honor, glory, paternalism, devotion, loyalty are still regarded highly by so many. All these happened with their monumental glory amidst the perpetration of now unimaginable brutalities and the most dehumanizing denials, The forms, and the values still hold our fancies, and perhaps even define our ideals; win our admiration, and evoke our veneration. What is this? 

There is something utterly disgusting. The displays, constructed, gathered out of the pools of blood,  sweat, cries of pain, sighs of soul, evoke our aesthetic senses; lords' love songs give us a heavenly feel.

There is something utterly disgusting. We must refashion aesthetics,  

Niraj Kumar Jha