The Essence of Nominalism
Is happiness, love – sadness, hatred just the names we have given certain things? Is that why after achieving something great we fill empty and become clueless about what’s next? Is there something common, universal, essential characteristic shared across things that create reality? Or are we just putting labels on things so we can put them in our brains effectively? Nominalism says that there is nothing common shared between all the objects existing in reality.…
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A Trade-off Between Simplicity & The Reality
In spite of being originated from medieval philosophy, the law of parsimony which famously goes as Ockham’s Razor still remains practical in the modern times of AI and the pursuit of artificial general intelligence. Ockham’s Razor asks to cut all the unnecessary things while understanding any system to reduce complexity. This idea is a part of creating efficient ML algorithms. The tool of parsimony has its limitations too and these limitations can create an objective…
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Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality
We are so tied to our minds, our self, our ego that we can only see what our mind is conditioned to see; and the expanse of mind is so vast, that we consider the inability to gauge its limit to its infinite-ness. But, in self-observation we will see that reality is far bigger than our mind. Mind cannot be bigger than reality although it can create a perfect illusion of it being bigger than…
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Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life
In the constant pursuit of eternal happiness what man forgets is that nothing is everlasting, the sadness exactly like the happiness too shall pass. But, the urge to remain eternally happy and safe, steals the man from actual sense of reality. The illusions of thoughts filled with prejudices, conditioning and the escape from the reality by justifying the same thoughts becomes the endless cycle for such man. The moment man rejects the separation between him…
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The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts
Remembering J Krishnamurti on his birthday. The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways. The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal – has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the…
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Freedom = Courage (Now + Here)
When it comes to psychology – people consider Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as the de facto rock-stars of the field of psychology. One unnoticed person whose findings deserve equal attention rather more attention was Alfred Adler. He introduced the Individual Psychology to the world which is relevant still today and is way more sophisticated to solve the “so called” troubles of our life. Individual psychology makes a successful attempt to reach to the roots…
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A Hindsight For Better Future
Morgan Housel – the famous author of ‘The Psychology of Money’ has another important book called “Same as Ever” which gives insight into things which have never changed over the course of time. Same as Ever drives the motto of objective flexibility and subjective awareness of every event happening around us and with us. It also highlights that our mind is the first and the easiest one to fool, which leads to false sense of…
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The Utility of Human Life and Morality
Why doesn’t Batman kill all his villains once for all? Why the sentence passed by judicial systems in certain heinous and extraordinary crimes feel unjust for the pain victim went through? How one can tell that given person was right or wrong when he/she had no intent of doing it? Can you just look at the end consequences of the actions and decide right or wrong for such scenes? Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of Utilitarianism tried…
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The Free Spirit – Beyond Good and Evil
The journey to the freedom demands solitude thereby making man responsible, accountable for the consequences of his every thought and action. Friedrich Nietzsche in his book Beyond Good and Evil paved a way for future philosophers to establish their own new perspectives about the truth where there are no two sides – good-bad, sad-happy, moral-immoral, beautiful-ugly, calm-disturbing but a revised and better version of the older truth. Nietzsche in this book focused on the refinement…
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Losing the ‘Grip’ on Escapism
Escapism creates a void in our perception of reality so that new ideas, creative ideas would populate this void for living life with a new perspective, new approach. The healthy escapism is the most important tool, a therapy for many successful creative people our world has ever seen. Once this escapism takes extreme side it may lead to addiction, procrastination and delusion. Freud’s ‘desire to destruction’ and René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire help us…
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Alienation and Creativity
Creation for capitalism, consumerism and pleasure maligns its true purpose which actually is to create joy and a sense of belonging, comfort and safety. Alienation is the end effect of such capitalist processes where people have isolated their humans side for the rat races and FOMOs. Pure creativity, empathy, connect with nature and self can help use to preserve that human core and come out of the alienation.
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Deconstruction – reading between the lines
Logic always talks about ones and zeros. But when logical, philosophical arguments end up in a paradox we discover a totally new understanding about reality which is neither one nor zero but a spectrum. Jacques Derrida’s basic urge through deconstruction is the rejection of the duality or presumption, and seeing beyond what is shown using the limitations of language. Deconstruction helps to come out of the duality of any argument by putting relative meaning at…
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Undone – the hymn of Sisyphus for modern times
There are certain moments in life where everything seems meaningless while we take a look at the final fate of all things and nihilism takes over, especially in the times of great unexpected failure. A crystal-clear philosophy of absurdism can come to rescue in such unsettling moments of existential confusion. When such complicated ideas reveal themselves through a simple, soulful yet philosophical song spanning few minutes, the impact is immense. ODESZA & Yellow House’s song…
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Dune: Philosophy in Science Fiction
The focus of Dune saga is on the ill-effects of hero worship. Frank Herbert warned his readers about the life altering consequences of granting too much power in the hands of a person who refrains to be questioned by his followers. The character arc of Paul Atreides depicts a moral dilemma. It also shows how power and aesthetics play a vital role when one is justifying actions, character and intent.
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Questioning Our Consciousness – Solipsism
Solipsism warns about the impossibility to know everything in absolute manner but if appreciated in a proper way it guides us to seek for continuous up-gradation from existing lesser absolute truths to newer and better absolute truths. A pure solipsist would be delusional, neurotic but a practical solipsist would bring about a revolution in his own world thereby in the worlds of the others and even in the whole world altogether!
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The Trilemma of the Truth and the Skepticism
Skepticism deals with the attitude of questioning our beliefs based on an idea that our perception of reality through our senses and personal experiences may totally different from “the actual reality”. The Münchhausen Trilemma and Agrippa’s Five Tropes from epistemology may guide us on how to suspend a judgement and how assign truth value to every belief in our lives.
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The Book of Five Rings – the Book of the Void
The final book from the Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi may seem like a last page reading with very few paragraphs but it gives deep insight into the knowledge that is yet to be gained by the person and the knowledge which lies beyond the limits of the humanity. The Book of the Void is the most concise treaty on the extent of our knowing, our ignorance and that knowledge which we would…
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The Book of Five Rings – The Wind Book
The Wind Book from Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings is about the changing traditions according to the lifestyle. The Wind Book focuses on multi-disciplinary ways of learning things and developing wisdom. Miyamoto-san through the Wind Book explains that there is no single secret way, no single formula, no single attacking style to solve an unconventional problem.
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The Book of Five Rings – The Fire Book
Miyamoto Musashi’s ‘The Fire Book’ from the Book of Five Rings focuses on detailed one-to-one combat strategies and warfare tactics. But, it is not limited to enemy warfare and combat. The Fire Book dives deep into the true grit, the consistency and the perseverance required to fight and win the greatest battle – the battle of life, the battle of survival.
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The Book of Five Rings – The Water Book
Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Water from the Book of Five Rings is about the ideas of form-ability, fluidity of water. The way we live and control our lives, the decisions we make, the actions we do are solely based on the behaviors and the routines we follow. It is really an understatement to call this book as a Guide for Sword-Fighters.
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The Book of Five Rings – The Ground Book
The Ground book is the foundation of living a life of focus to its full effectiveness, full potential. When Miyamoto Musashi is saying that the Ground Book is like road mapped on ground, one has to appreciate and understand that it is actually the roadmap to our whole life. It is not just about sword fighting and war strategies. The whole purpose of writing such a distilled and rather a short book is just to…
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Music of a painting and portrait of a song
Can we extend our experiences beyond the limitations of our senses? A picture is worth thousand words, they say. You try to explain something to your friends and they get confused then you show them the photo/ video of the same thing and the need to explain things disappears. Visual media is literally ruling over all other types of media. This also highlights our dominant way of consuming information, any information. Hence, we can definitely…
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The Practicality of Philosophy
What is the purpose of Philosophy? We live in a competitive and fast-moving world where everything’s success depends on the outcomes and their value delivery. Take any example, if any movie release fails to entertain the major audiences, consider it flopped; if any project is not delivering the expected profits to the company consider it stopped; if any equipment is not working properly for the performance it promised, consider it a market failure; if any…
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The Green Knight – A Story of Killing the Boy
Many people who have had a near-death experience tell that their whole life flashed before their eyes. Although, it is difficult to try out and experience the reality of it, experience shared by such people is interesting and indicates what it means to be a conscious human being rather a living thing. Many of us would have also seen drastic behavioral changes in people after they have gone through a difficult disease or after…
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“If-” A Stoic Poetry by Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling is famously known for the creation of ‘The Jungle Book’. He is the youngest British Nobel Laureate (at the age of 41) till date. Today we will be deep diving into Rudyard Kipling’s all time famous and many people’s favorite poem ‘If-‘. This poem written in 1895 was published in his famous historical fantasy book called ‘Rewards and Fairies’ in 1910. This poem is all about a set of recommendations from poet to…
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Zima Blue and Existentialism
The whole premise of the story Zima Blue is greatly aligned with finding the purpose of life, finding the meaning of life which are greatly the interests of the Existentialism. Almost all of the great personalities in the human history are the people who did one thing in a great way as they found their purpose, their meaning of life in that one thing. The purpose they found in that thing made them to endure…
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Food for thought only at $1
“Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.” “A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely shape his circumstances.” – James Allen, As A Man Thinketh The best thing about books is the value they provide compared to their cost. Books are the materialistic vessels which contain streams of the incomparable, unbound…
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Two “long arms” of the law – The Principles of Natural Justice
According to Aristotle- the law means “a sort of order, and good law is good order” and “reason unaffected by desire”, and “the mean”. Many of us are unaware of how a law making system established itself, its inner workings and its vast expanse. “The Principles of Natural Justice” may help us to understand some of the workings, importance and purpose of the law and judicial system in Human Civilization. “You can’t escape from long…
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About the thought of ‘Reading for thinking’
A truth that has merely been learnt adheres to us only as an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose does, or at most like a transplanted skin; but a truth won by thinking for ourself is like a natural limb: it alone really belongs to us. This is what determines the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar Arthur Schopenhauer New year represents new beginnings, a fresh start. Though recent years were…
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Language and Empathy
Remember the last time you pulled a prank on someone and imagine explaining it to your friends. You go on building the events and so the excitement level goes up and up. For the last sentence, all the purpose of events is resolved into a comic relief. You will notice the expressions of people listening to your story keep changing as the event unfolds. They are building the picture of the event in their mind…
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Parts Per Billion 