Knowledge – Parts Per Billion

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.

How true forms of creativity can help us to reconnect with our human core

“On The Train Ride Home” by The Paper Kites

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I found –
Maya Angelou

Humans – the creative animals

I think creativity is the most important quality granted to human beings. Nature in itself is the ultimate and the best creation which at the same time is also the creator of many things. Animals, non-human beings too have the gift of creativity to certain extent but human beings have outperformed in using this gift of creativity. We are always creating something, we have tools, we have automated processes to create anything we can understand. This creation of things has led us to becoming the most developed species on the planet. Creation can be in any sense – creation of music/ art/ cultures, families/ society, factories/ industries/ conglomerates, institutions/ organizations, cities/ metropolitan, governments, policies, supply chain, and what not! All these creations are intertwined to prove how advanced the human species is. You must also remember that once a process of creations starts generating fruitful outcomes it gets automated to optimize, to improve the efficiency. Most of the times we forget that some creative processes are not meant to be optimized because value of their outcomes is not materialistic. The concept of efficiency and/or optimization is purely materialistic concept. But as we are progressing ahead as the species, most of our creation processes are getting robotized, where materialistic outcomes are more important than the process of creation itself.

Young generation has crucial role in deciding the future course of our species, especially when we have this great tool of creation – our creativity itself. People of my generation (millennials and Gen-Z to some extent) are the key creators of this time who will decide where our future will lead us. This generation is completely busy in various ventures of creation to justify their own life. But, as I have mentioned before, our creation processes have become so mechanistic, so robotic to gain more, extract more materialistic outcomes that this young generation is getting more and more detached from the real purpose of creation in its true spirit. The consumerism and (crony) capitalism has thrown today’s youth into a forced state of alienation in spite of being living in crowd, densely populated resourceful, glamorous cities. We are lonely in spite of being surrounded by the crowd.

This loss of attachment from the spirit of creation has led to the alienation of the today’s young generation – who many times go through the feelings of isolation, meaninglessness, directionless, confusion – it’s not just a normal existential crisis through which every young generation of their times goes through rather it’s the blurring of the true spirit of living in today’s young generation. Please keep in mind that it is not mistake of this same young generation. The system, society, institutions have evolved in such way that the creative processes are getting designed more for materialistic optimization instead of getting created for the real upliftment of the human civilization. Feels like we are losing touch of the real purpose of our being.

An Australian indie rock band called The Paper Kites released a song called “On the Train Ride Home” which in my opinion tries to touch those feeling of “alienation” which our today’s young generation is going through. Deep down we all know what we really want, we know what our core is but the systems in which we are living today have made our lives more and more mechanical, even though we are in the process of creation that creation no more belongs to us, that detachment, that alienation, that freedom from the vicious capitalistic cycle is what we are yearning for in the end. This is what this song for me is.

The Paper Kites
L–R: David Powys, Sam Bentley, Sam Rasmussen, Christina Lacy, Josh Bentley

I will dissect this song from the point of alienation; for me that is what it is all about.

The lyrics of the song is credited to Samuel Bentley, On the Train Ride Home lyrics copyright: Wonderlick Pty Limited

(It’s a song which needs to be treasured, hidden from others so that no one spoils it and I know I am committing a personal crime by exposing it. But such creations need more exposure and deserve proper appreciation too.)

Waiting down at the station
I don't remember, think it was late then
Standing, always so quiet
We're like elevators filled up with strangers
No sound, no hallelujah's
Still I was praying on the train ride home

The starting of the lyrics creates an imagery of the person waiting for a train home. The complete separation from the surrounding has made this person to forget vivid details, it shows the mundane-ness, the separation from surrounding to just reach a safe, calming place which is home. The feeling of loneliness in spite of being in the crowd shows how there is no emotional connect between people. Elevator filled with strangers shows that people are closer and more connected, more accessible but they are not closer emotionally. This is exactly today’s situation, social networking and internet brought us so close that we can ‘poke’ our friend living in another hemisphere within few seconds and still we will see people craving for true connections more than ever. No hallelujah’s shows the loss of spirit, loss of soul in people who are part of this – physically close but emotionally isolated crowd.

If I can't get the things I want
If I can't get the things I want
Just give me what I need

Here, the person is aware of the difference between wants and needs which shows that his/ her separation from home to go to the crowded place to create a better resourceful life was not the ultimate goal. This is the only way through which this person can live a life. The system based on the cycles of consumption has narrowed down the meaning of living a life to mere survival. One can get as many things by obeying this cycle of consumption but it will not satisfy the hunger – the emotional hunger, that intimate craving of humanity. The distinction and use of wants and needs is a very smart way to show how the person is trapped in the system to survive but deep down they know what actually makes a fulfilled life. That is why person asks for basic fulfilment if not all what they desired.

Our words fill up the pages
Fill up the days with psalms for the ages 
Still those vows that we all speak
We break them like concrete
And just make our words cheap

This part of song shows how words have lost their worth. Words in the sense the sense of commitment, sense of loyalty to keep the promises. The piousness of the daily prayers, the vows are less cared for. This expression shows how insensitive we have become to just gain the materialistic means, to survive.

This is exactly where it struck me that this song is not just about average existential angst every young generation goes through; this song is more about the alienation of a person where system does not value real creativity – which gives our lives meaning. The system now has been maligned with the materialistic efficiency. Consumption has become more important than the end effect it creates. Mention of “wants” and “needs” thus highlight the culture of consumption here.

I want someone to grow with
Songs I can sing to, and I family to cling to

The song tries to conclude with the ultimate pursuit for living a better life. Why are we all doing the things which we do? Why do we go on job? Why do we work all week, live paycheck to paycheck without any greater purpose – in spite of knowing that we hate this work at its core? Why knowingly, intentionally are we craving for more and more materialistic pleasures?

I think it is because of the recent vile cycle of consumption. I have a reason to justify this. Somewhere we know that the process of creation in which we are involved is not doing justice with our pure humanistic core.

As a human being all we crave for is the mutual growth, sense of fulfillment, love and intimacy for each other in this limited time on the earth. We know that ultimate goal of creation should be this humanistic goal, but the moment the creation loses this human touch we suffer from alienation, a sense of directionless, sense of being confused, a sense of trapped inside an infinite maze. This is the exact moment when the person craves for home, family and intimacy.

The train ride home is that craving for being the real human being who values emotions, commitment, love and happiness of the loved ones.

But If I can't get the things I want
If I can't get the things I want
Just give me what I need

The person understands that in this seemingly flashy, attractive, glamorous but mechanistic, mundane, lonely and unemotional life there is some hope that they at least will be able to preserve their human core. The request for the “need” over “wants” is the cry for that preservation of the human core.

Alienation

What urged me to completely (and maybe blindly) associate the lyrics of this song to alienation is how Socialism defines the concept of alienation. Karl Marx identified how a process of creation thereby value creation could isolate its creator from its creation. This isolation of creation and creator once intensified removes all the human, emotional attributes from the process of creation and here the brutal capitalism starts. The creation is now mere a mechanical, boring routine of materialistic revenue creation where humanity has no value.

Karl Marx on alienation

Karl Marx presented very beautifully the purpose of creation in human life. It is what separates human beings from other animals, non-humans. We are always involved in creative process which have a personal purpose, a meaning. That is why our creations and it’s end results are so intense and are way different than how other non-human creative processes. The moment such processes start demonstrating the separation of creator, the process of creation and the end-product of creation, capitalism/ consumerism start peeking their head out thereby slowly eliminating what made such things processes humanistic. This exactly is alienation, there is no sense of home, comfort or belonging.

Marx defined four types of alienation in his discussions:

Alienation of an object –

A factory labor stitching the designer clothing does not bear the capacity to own it and enjoy it. Even though the labor holds the skill and knowledge to create that fancy clothing the system is rigged in such way that the emotional connect between creator and creation is lost forever.

Alienation of process –

The process of creation has become so mechanical, so repetitive to improve the efficiency and to increase the output that humans involved in them have also became mechanical, unemotional. Today’s young generation working in mundane jobs, the jobs they hate only for the paycheck and the job without any personal purpose is the example of that alienation. The separation of creator from objects makes the object accessible to anyone but this accessibility is not equally distributed because the input to output ratio is highly skewed. The value that is created in the creation of the object does not reward the creator in any good way thus creator – the labor remains poor. This also make the creator to lose the faith in the process thereby leading to the alienation of the process.

Alienation of species-being –

The moment this mundane, highly optimized process does not bear any real humanistic purpose, the creator no longer follows the process to reach a better position in life spiritually, intellectually through the process of creation. It’s like the human creator has become a machine giving throughput. A sense of being a better species is lost forever – this is another form of alienation.

Alienation between humans –

Once the creator no longer has a direct connect to its creation, has no faith in the process for better pivot of meaning, has no sense of humanity, the value for another human life is lost. It is not because the creator or this person demeans or belittles others, it is because the creator himself/ herself does not consider their efforts their value of better worth, hence same treatment is given to people in their surroundings.

There is one famous snippet of a speech from Gabor Maté, a Canadian-Hungarian physician who has done work in ADHD, trauma, childhood development.

Gabor talks about broader scope of alienation which somewhat is based on the Marx’s idea of alienation.

Alienated from nature –

We as the human species no longer have that connect with nature which has resulted in its deterioration. You might have seen that there are still some tribes living in the remotest, inaccessible areas round the globe which are completely in tune with the nature and have preserved it. Today’s consumerism has detached our objects of consumption from their consequences on nature thereby destroying it.

We have to somehow re-establish that connect with nature otherwise nature has its way of adjusting things (we are seeing its effects all around the globe). And remember that this re-connection is also linked to we being the human beings. I mean, who doesn’t like lush greenery, pristine rivers and remarkable biodiversity!

One of the first condition of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.
Leo Tolstoy

Alienated from work –

The works we are engaged in are rarely driven by a meaning or a higher purpose. Even if it has some meaning it is immediately inked to some materialistic thing, there is nothing wrong in it as far as survival is concerned but at least this awareness should push us to work for the things with higher humanistic, spiritual purpose, that is our real core as the creative beings. The alienation from work has led to depression, anxiety, emotionless feeling, numbness among every one of us. We are replacing this meaninglessness by other material means which involve how we look, what we possess. Such means of damage control are creating more damage to who we are and what we work for which defines us. You will see, the economy we live in highly focuses on associating meaningful experiences to materialistic products.

Alienated from other people –

The moment we lose the hope and connection between our surrounding we are losing some human part in ourselves which dims down our perception of humanity for others. We trust very few people or almost no one, the relationships rarely have that depth, that intimacy. Social structures based on the depth of relationship are dwindling. The mental illnesses are emerging due to the lack of social emotional support system, growing intolerance, apathy on global level are also effects of that.

The start of the song where it mentions people filled in the elevator, disinterested and having been lost their spirit is the same alienation.

We have to start forgiving people again, create safer environments where we can express ourselves without any prejudice. It is scientifically backed that putting trust in people and treating them with high worth makes them trustworthy and high performer (see Pygmalion effect) In the end, everyone of is craving for someone to rely on and also someone who will make our sacrifices worth of the hardships. Associating positivity of self-worth to being appreciated and being respected for who we are is hardwired in our human circuitry. Our existence gets redefined to higher standards the moment other people (even single person) recognize it. (History has examples where people did impossible for far lesser people who believed in them without expecting anything in return)

The urge to cling to a family, sing a song to someone, grow with someone mentioned in the song is asking to escape from such form of alienation.

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night
Margaret Mead

Alienated from ourselves-

We have lost the connect our inner self, our curiosities, our inner child in the pursuit of the consumerist ends. The disconnect with the surrounding and numbness to the processes in which we are involved is furthermore deteriorating our inner human core. We rarely listen to our gut feelings, instincts because presence of lots of data, information around us creates a false sense of understanding of the things around us. This is alienation from ourselves, we don’t even trust ourselves – a simple advertisement or targeted influence is enough to make us buy that next thing that we don’t even want.

The part in the song where it talks about making our words cheap is the alienation from self. There is no concept of morality and inner compass in such alienation.

We know deep down what exactly is happening with us and around us but the system rarely creates conditions to come out of that.

How to de-alienate?

The desire to know your soul will end all other desires
Rumi

The core reasons of alienation lie in the loss of empathy, loss of higher meaning/ purpose and loss of responsibility/ commitment (committing to something to change the course of life requires higher sense of responsibility). We are empaths by default as a human being, so it is imperative to preserve this attribute even if the surroundings force the opposite. I know this is difficult when we are responsible for multiple things and people, but you are also responsible for yourselves. It is worthless if you win, achieve something great while losing yourself in the end.

The creative processes whose outcomes are not attached to any material means are thus the purest paths to avoid such alienation in the times of high consumerism and negative effects of capitalism. High consumption is an addictive form of alienation which can be nullified by pure creation. Consumption will give pleasure but creation will give joy.

The prayer to ride home in the song is the hope that we will again meet ourselves in spite of such extreme disconnect. Pure creativity is the answer to such prayers as far as the process elimination of alienation from our life goes.

What separates human beings from rest of the animals is their creative ventures otherwise we are exactly like all other living things. We are the beings who engage in multiple activities of creation which are driven by conscious intent, a reason. This ability to create something has led us to become the technically advanced species on the planet. If we establish the connect with our inner core through meaningful creation, the victory over all forms of alienation is possible.

True creation is all about connecting to every possibility there is.

Such deep concept of alienation expressed in a wholesome and soulful song by The Paper Kites truly deserves more and more appreciation and recognition. Words failed me to express how it made me feel (that is exactly why I didn’t control my words count, where few verses of this song did the same job. No wonder poetry is highly potent than prose!)

The song-

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 the center instead of loyalty towards the signs used to show the meaning.

Jacques Derrida’s philosophy for the better understanding of the reality

Language and its purpose

Questioning is at the core of philosophy. Philosophy’s main pursuit is always to create an understanding about the subject of interest. It provides a way to create a basic and concrete understanding of the subject. It is a way to understand the creation and things that are beyond creation. Philosophy is the process of formalizing any concrete understanding so that a new evolved, more absolute understanding could be built upon that foundation.

The means to create such understandings are languages; it could be any language, of symbols, pictures, sounds, geometries, etc. Language serves as the most important tool to formalize any thought, idea, proof, postulate. So, every component of the language has to mean something to create a bigger meaning; like in speech, every word means something. When I say ‘child’ you will see a human young-ling, when I say ‘apple’ you see a red fruit of that particular shape, and when I am saying apple, you are sure that I am not talking about ‘oranges’, because orange is associated with something different looking ‘fruit’ (some would even think of an iphone when I say apple!). This shows that just like how atoms create molecules thereby the object, in similar sense, words of basic meaning create an expression and thereby some context which shows what we mean when we are saying them together to convey a bigger meaning.

Just like atoms of different elements from the periodic table come together in different permutations and combinations to create variety of compounds and infinite objects rather the whole universe, in the same sense every component of given language carries a value – a meaning which builds a narrative, an expression to create a context, a logical statement; a set of such logical statements together can point to some truth, some fact. If used in smart ways, it can help us to discover the hidden sides of our understanding. That is roughly how science and mathematics work.

But you know what? When we are investigating the boundaries of our understanding, we see that they all end in paradoxes, some self-referential paradoxes. Take for example, Epimenides paradox (the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos) as follows:

Epimenides, a Cretan says, “All Cretans are liars”.

Now what does this convey? Prima facie it feels like all Cretan people are liars, but then you see that person who is saying this is also a Cretan that makes him a liar, so he too is a liar. But if Epimenides himself is liar then what he said is also a lie, meaning that Cretans are not liars rather they are veracious. If Cretan’s are veracious then what Epimenides says is truth meaning that all Cretan’s are liars and this means Epimenides is also a liar. We end up in a loop, a self-referential paradox.

In the end, the sentence does not make sense, logic, the sentence is meaningless.

What happened here?

We used a language medium to create a meaning which helped to create newer understanding but that new understanding led us to bigger confusion, meaninglessness.

Here, I pose a very important question –

if the context of the sentence is meaningless does that mean that the words from which that sentence is made – words which have their own individual identity, their own absolute meaning a context are also absolutely meaningless?

What if we encounter same situation in the philosophical endeavors? as they are the building blocks our overall understanding of the creation and things beyond creation.

This is where the philosophy of deconstruction given by Jacques Derrida comes into light. I will try to explain deconstruction by building on some ideas. (you will see in the end that nothing “absolute” makes any sense or doesn’t even exist. That is also why deconstruction was rejected by many great philosophers but it has a valid point to prove.)

The flow of thought presented hereon is roughly like building an understanding and then challenging that idea because it does not present the best model of how our reality, our consciousness work.

Logocentrism

Western philosophy is based on the foundations of ‘the reason’. The Greek word logos (λόγος) literally means word, discourse, or reason. So, logocentrism considers language as the expression of reality and hence stands as a mediator between conscious and reality.

It is very important to understand that every type of understanding, knowledge building, sharing, communicating activity is associated with language. You need a medium to give a proper structure to what you are thinking and let others comprehend it. Logocentrism focuses on that.

As we have seen already that use of language in certain way could create meaninglessness, self-referential paradox, does that mean language is failing to create better truths? What exactly is happening? If language and logic is paradoxical then the reality which they are explaining must also be paradoxical but that is not the reality we live in (if it would be paradoxical, then reality would not exist, the paradoxical elements would annihilate each other)

This means that there is something lying beyond the territories of language which we are not able to comprehend and translate which could solve this paradox of language.

(Park this first thought in your mind for some time)

Plato’s definition of reality – Platonism and The theory of forms

Plato called out for “essence” of everything that exists. Essence represents that absolute truth which we try to define using ‘forms’, the forms are ideas which are non-physical, timeless, absolute. The forms create reality but they are beyond our grasp because of our physical limitations.

So, building on the theory of forms Platonism believes that in surety that there is something truly pure and absolute at the bottom – at the root of existence. It supports the existence of abstract objects which are believed to exist in the realm which is different from sensible external world and our internal consciousness.

So, when you try to comprehend the Platonism and logocentrism together, you will appreciate that language and the logic it conveys, the meaning, the context it conveys is the foundation of how we understand the creation, the philosophy itself and the products of philosophy.

Language creates an objective pivot to create absolute ideas whose correlation yields into higher truths. Language creates ‘meaning’, ‘context’, ‘logic’ according to the Platonism.

(Park this second thought)

Semiotics – Language as signs

If language is so important to understand the true reality, it becomes very important to create a structure, rules, grammar to use it effectively. Semiotics deals with these ideas.

A sign is an important part of any language, one can say that any language is made up of signs. Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the two founders of Semiology established the two components of sign as signified and signifier. As these both words are self-explanatory – signified is the one which is of interest (also known as the ‘plane of content’) and signifier is how we are observing thereby expressing the object of interest (also known as the ‘plane of expression’).

So, in written language when I am saying apple, you know I am talking about the fruit called apple which looks red, tastes tart-sweet, is crispy-crunchy in texture when one takes its bite.

(This is the third thought to be parked)

Aufhebung – the sublation

In the modern western philosophy, which considered the language as the path leading to ultimate truth the idea of sublation created ‘logical’ revolution. The language as a tool to develop logic and this logic then leading to the investigation and discovery of the ultimate truth became really vital. For logic to remain ‘logical’ one needs to define the basic objective sides like right or wrong. A given idea must be right to exist in reality otherwise, it is wrong and is invalid. We build many arguments of right and wrong to lead us to the absolute understanding. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is known to develop the idea of sublation. Aufhebung literally means ‘to suspend’, ‘to abolish’.

For example, darkness is the condition when there is no light. If a place is called ‘lit’ it means that there is no darkness. So, this dualism created through sublation gave the greatest philosophical power to language and thereby logocentrism. When something is not good it is called as bad, when there are enough logical arguments like such ‘binary oppositions’, one can reach to the absolute truth as far the logocentrism goes. The process almost becomes objective, self-sufficient, and mechanical, there are no chances of human error when we are handling philosophical treatise; this is the same foundation through which judicial systems created the structure of law.

(the fourth thought to be parked)

Deconstruction

What came first – chicken or the egg? meaning or language?

Just recall the four ideas which we parked before.

Jacques Derrida is the philosopher who developed the ideas of deconstruction who solved the paradox of the logic in the logocentric philosophy.

It is important to accept that wherever a paradox arises there lies an opportunity of the creation of a new branch in our knowledge system. The deconstruction is that new branch which got created here. Derrida rejected the idea of Platonism. His work in deconstruction is highly inspired from the philosophy of phenomenology. Phenomenology is the study of fundamental nature of subjective consciousness and experience.

One would get confused to appreciate the matter of subjectivity in a philosophical discourse but phenomenology presents some valid points when we are questioning the reality and developing its understanding. How can subjectivity guarantee absolute truth?

Life was always there even before chicken and egg and also in both of them

Did you get my point?

The moment we separated egg from chicken and posed them as two distinct objects the famous question about their existence in timeline becomes meaningless. In the same sense, other similar questions have exactly same meaningless fate – what is life and death? what is good and bad? what is right and wrong? what is truth and lie?

Derrida pointed out that the moment we create duality in any argument we are losing some important information which could have showed us the ‘real’ reality. Maybe reality is not just two sides of the coin, maybe absoluteness itself is not ‘absolute’. In the attempt to create purely logical arguments, we lost the possibilities to see the real context behind the existence of these arguments.

Derrida strongly promoted the idea that meaning was always there, language is just a way to convey that meaning. Using language to find out new meaning does not lead to newer meaning because this ‘structured’, ‘logical’ language has already submitted itself to the already established two sides of the result – it will either be ‘right’ and if it is not right it will be ‘wrong’.

(Now bring that first parked thought of logocentrism – idea that language is the expression of the reality)

As the logocentrism goes, language is the mediator between consciousness and reality.

Now read the lines below:

This is an example taken from internet. Fact is that every average, normal person can read and understand this. Our brain is always on energy optimization mode. It never reads each and every letter to make a meaning out of the given word, it looks at the bunch of symbols to make sense out of it. This is small example to show that meaning is more important than the symbols, signs used to convey that meaning.

If we were to strictly submit to the rules of English vocabulary and grammar, this presented sentence is senseless to all of us. That is why complete loyalty to language instead of meaning is of no use as Derrida says while explaining deconstruction.

(now bring the remaining thoughts parked in your mind)

Meaning is relative

In deconstruction, Derrida talks about how we understand anything, any idea and how logocentrism, structuralism limited our understanding. The example of scrambled words helps to identify the idea of difference – Derrida called it Différence (as in French pronunciation). Whether I call it difference in english or différence in french, you understand what I am talking about because you get the context (that we are comparing something and this is the word to establish the gap between that comparison)

When I say apple how do you know what I am talking about?

You understand that I am talking about a fruit based on the context of my speech. Otherwise, there are definitely some people who would thing of an apple as an iPhone. So, when I say an apple, you think of a class of fruits, compare other fruits with ‘this’ one, this happens really fast and we are unaware of it after some time. This is true because when I am saying apple you are sure that I am not talking about oranges or any other fruits.

When I am saying dog, you know it is dog because it is different from cats, cows, horses. You are sure of the dog ‘animal’ because it is different in some sense than other animals.

Do you see what is happening here?

Our association of given word to any object whether it may be tangible or intangible is not absolute and self-reliant. It is relative. It is built based on how it differs from another objects. This is really important to understand and appreciate when one is trying to understand deconstruction.

The logocentric and linguistic tool that we are tying to use to understand the absolute truth has its limitations of preconception. The logic has already defined its two states of existence. That is why the language based on such logic will be filled with paradoxes and will never yield newer truths.

Derrida posed validity of his idea of deconstruction by showing the limitations of semiotics.

Take speech as the language of philosophy to find the absolute truth. There is a moment in Christopher Nolan’s movie inception.

We always initiate our thinking by creating certain arbitrary point as a pivot to build logic upon it. Here, the person was told to not think about elephants and in order to not think about elephants he had first defined what elephants are – where he paradoxically first thinks about elephants – to not think about them! Did you see what happened here?

Derrida says that even though the ‘sign’ which goes as the fundamental block of language as semiotics show, it is not self-reliant, self-established. For a sign to signify something specific, it has to differ from the other objects on certain attributes, the meaning of that sign will be relative.

The Swastika used by Nazi is a holy symbol in Hindu culture which signifies well-being. (you definitely are aware of its meaning in western civilizations)

Meaning of signs is always relative, contextual.

It is our complete loyalty to symbols which misleads us, where in reality the symbols are mere media to convey the meaning, context and not the other way around. Meaning created signs, language, language does not create meaning. That is exactly why complete and blind submission to language in the pursuit of truth leads to dead end.

The purpose of language/ signs in deconstruction

(recall the fourth idea of sublation, duality in logic)

Derrida attacked the semiotics by showing its limitations.

Now, we already understand what is signifier and signified. Derrida argued that if there was no difference between signifier and signified there would not be any purpose of existence of the ‘sign’.

To explain this argument in simple words, if you are not told about the varieties in the citrus fruits, you cannot tell which one is Lemon, which one is Mandarin, which one is Lime, Pomelo, Kumquat, Grapefruit, Bergamot and Citron.

If you don’t know the difference, everything would be lemon and orange

The relative difference between objects and ideas gives them their meaning. That is exactly why surrendering to strictly assigned meaning would steal the idea of its real nature. The idea would lose its other aspect due to the loss of information during formalization.

So, deconstruction shows that meaning is relative. When a sign is presented, a language is used to build an idea, it invites all its attributes and its contradictions. Again, Derrida says that blind surrender to formal attribute would never help in revealing the true nature of reality.

That is exactly why deconstruction also challenges sublation. According to deconstruction, there are never two extremes of any idea, attribute, sign. If we give into the idea of good-bad, black white, right-wrong we are losing the crucial information which lies in the spectrum that exists between these two ends. If we are able to create different levels in between these extremes of sublation we will discover new ideas.

When we talk about darkness, we know what brightness is, the relation between these two extremes helps us to understand each other. It is also true that there is some limitation in our vision which makes it impossible to perceive the constituents of the darkness, darkness is not darkness in itself, it is made up of other spectrums of light like infrared, ultraviolet. (This is just a scientific example but same can be implemented in purely philosophical treatise)

Deconstruction

So, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction challenges the logical dualism and the purity, absoluteness of language – a powerful tool and foundation of the philosophy.

Derrida attacked logocentrism by showing the flaws in the structuralism, Derrida showed that language is actually fluid while conveying the meaning instead of being completely static.

Derrida proved his point by showing our preferences for the languages. For discussion he took preference of speech over writing.

Speech involves various modulation while expression which is not possible through writing. Even though writing has certain symbols to signify those periodic gaps they cannot replace the advantages of speech.

Now, when an overly complex idea is to be presented, in order to review the train of thoughts again and again, written language is more effective than speech. Wherever you have to ‘technically’ present a thought, written communication is better, when you want to preserve an idea forever written communication is better than speech.

This is where we realize that there is nothing like the best and the worst. Each language has its own characteristics which can be only understood and appreciated once we see the difference between them. The differences between them show that there is no hierarchy among them. There value proposition is relative.

Now the moment I bring in today’s recorded audio-visual medium which is the most popular language of documentation, writing and speech will seem trivial, but they still hold their value in certain aspects.

The meaning of deconstruction as Derrida says is to break down the language to understand what is also does not mean. Our human instinct and training in language pushes us to stick to the predefined notion of the language whereas we forget that our understanding of that very notion emerged from its comparison to other parts. Derrida through deconstruction urged that while looking at something to understand seeing what lies beyond its appearance will give you the real understanding.

Why seeing beyond what is shown is important? Because the understanding with which we are trying to interpret what is shown was never absolute, it was created only because of the difference between what it is and what it is not.

This is where deconstruction starts to confuse everyone. Derrida called this puzzlement “Aporia”.

Why the idea of deconstruction felt wrong? And is it really wrong?

The tool Derrida used to explain the notion called deconstruction itself becomes the weapon to destroy that same idea.

The very first thing to understand deconstruction is to remove the presumption which logical language, logocentrism gives that these are fully defined, singular objects which are being discussed. The moment object of discussion becomes singular, we lose the possibilities to see its other attributes. To deconstruct is to remove the preconception that there is something really absolute that we are trying to discover.

It’s like searching for star emitting only infrared light by using the camera which only works in the visible spectrum of light, because you assumed that there is only visible light and where the light is not there it is only dark. You won’t even be able to appreciate that there are some stars which emit different type of light. You presumption of duality of dark and light prevented that different knowledge of your reality. Only relative understanding of the light waves can help you appreciate that there are some waves which are different from others, which are on a ‘spectrum’.

Derrida’s ideas were controversial because most of the critical ideas in philosophy, mathematics are built upon clear distinction between objects and their fixated meaning and attribution.

Even for the word deconstruction, people attributed it to rejecting what the language conveys and accepting rather its opposite.

Deconstruction is not just breaking down any idea to expose its flaws. Deconstruction rejects the complete loyalty to the focal point of discussion while inviting the references which created our so called ‘focal point’. Most of the times our trained brain seeks for exact opposite which is where deconstruction gets misinterpreted.

Conclusion

Derrida’s basic urge through deconstruction is the rejection of the duality or presumption, and seeing beyond what is shown through the language. When we are talking about something we interpret what is our ‘subject matter’ because we know the differences between other subjects and ‘this’ subject. When we appreciate such differences the meaning becomes fluid instead of static, the thinking becomes analogue instead of digital ones and zeros. Possibilities open-up instead on being ended in the paradoxes. Whatever we are thinking about and establishing as the singular truth is inherently non-singular because it always needs its other counterparts to justify its position.

Many religious wars were waged because of remaining loyal to the religious languages, script and not understanding what they actually meant, many laws were exploited because the loopholes were discovered based on understanding only what they meant. This keeps on happening.

Deconstruction becomes very important tool to critique the ideas given in any discussion where the final pursuit is meaning and not the formality.

For Derrida’s deconstruction the ‘Aporia’, the puzzlement is not a sign of weakness rather it is the sign of maturity.

Derrida’s deconstruction thus showed that only fancy formalization of philosophy will not help us to understand the reality. We have to get rid of our loyalty to the idea that there is something really singular out there which would define everything in the end. Meaning is not what the language is conveying structurally, it is also what lies beyond that which is not conveyed. The things which are not conveyed are the line of comparison to define the worth of the things being conveyed.

“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?”
Zhuangzi, Chuang Tsu: Inner Chapters

P.S. You will appreciate the ideas of deconstruction more if you watch Denis Villeneuve’s movie Arrival (2016). The movie beautifully shows the gap between language and meaning and also how potent the ideas of deconstruction are!

Motivation and Fulfillment – Sailing Through The OCEAN of Life for Self-Actualization

Abraham Maslow’s ideas of the hierarchy of needs lost its essence due to oversimplification into the famous pyramid of needs. Those who lacked happiness in their lives will prefer to be happy by trading all valuable objects they have, whereas those who never possessed basic things for survival will endure endless pain to get them. This creates a paradox of life. What was lost through Maslow’s pyramid came back into limelight due to modern theories in psychology like the Cybernetic Big Five Theory and Sail-Boat Model. They highlight a very important fact that stability and plasticity both are necessary for a person to become whole – a complete human being.

Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ for The Modern World

Psychology ~ Study of mental!?!

A big part of psychology is always associated with the mental disorders – a negative aspect of human psyche. It is a common (mis)conception that students of psychology largely associate themselves with the studies and treatments of such mental people. Maybe it is our human tendency (a defensive tendency) to get immediately attracted to negative aspects immediately which creates such conception about psychology. This is not limited to only psychology; it is applicable to everything we have initial opinions about. But this is not true, we are seeing only a half part of the psychology. The other half and the positive part – is more helpful to live a better life.

Talking about good and bad part of human psyche – where would you put a selfish person? For the sake of classification, a selfish person is the one who prioritizes himself/herself first when it comes to anything. He/ she would think of themselves first, for their own benefit first to make the best out of the circumstances. Isn’t that bad?

How could it be bad if survival is the only option in front of such people? Then the roles reverse immediately. When it comes down to survival of a person every virtue falls down. If a person did something for their own betterment and jeopardized others in the process, will they be called selfish? Now the answer to this question becomes subjective and quite tricky. Were the others evil? If yes, then being selfish for self-benefit by belittling the evil others makes you a hero. If the others were good then being selfish makes you the evil one. So, is selfishness subjective?

We will find the answers to this question soon in upcoming parts.

Have you ever felt that feeling of void after achieving something great you’ve been striving for? Have you felt that emotion of not being repaid for the many good you did for others? Have you felt jealous for that simpleton who while being less competent than you got more recognition? Have you felt bad for people who devoted all their life for the betterment of society got disrespected by the society? Do you think that the modern definition of love is closer to formal transaction of things, physical acts and emotions?

Do our answers to all the questions above in a “Yes” mean that we are bad humans?

This is exactly the part where the positive aspect of psychology plays a crucial role.

Humanistic Psychology – What Makes Someone “A Whole Human”?

The humanistic psychology popularized by the ideas of an American Psychologist Abraham Maslow is also coined as the third force in psychology. (After Freud’s Psychoanalysis and Skinner’s Behaviorism)

“It is as if Sigmund Freud supplied us the sick half of psychology and now, we must fill is out with healthy half.”
-Abraham Maslow

So, simply put, Maslow asked opposite question about human psyche. What if things go right? What happens when a human mind is completely healthy? What changes can be seen in a healthy human psyche? What are the characteristics of “a whole human”?

The ideas of humanistic psychology hence bring one spiritual aspect in the understanding of the human psyche. Maslow’s ideas from the Theory of Motivation show us that psychology is also about what good is in humans and how everyone can achieve it.

Self-Actualization – The Classical View on Being the Best Version of You

In 1938 Abraham Maslow spent six weeks with Siksika Blackfoot, the first nation (Indigenous people) in Alberta, Canada. Maslow was trying to understand the social hierarchy and dominance within these people and surprisingly he found something totally different. Siksika people ever fought for dominance or power, the definition of wealth for Siksika was sharing – the more you share the wealthier you are, children were treated same as the adults were – they had chance to put their own opinion in front of others, Siksika people were highly cooperative. Instead of a single dominant person forcing others for power, the Siksika Blackfoot society left no one behind. Even the people who committed wrong work had option to lose that attitude and join back. It was like the Siksika were highly aware of how one should behave for the betterment of everyone without compromising the personal well-being. Maslow realized that this is the highest form of being a human being.

Maslow understood that if certain basic criterion, basic needs are fulfilled for every human being, then they can immediately strive for self-betterment and also for the betterment of society. They will not exploit society for their personal betterment. Such person would be a person who has achieved self-realization where he/ she knows what is good for him/ her and how they can benefit others in the process.

So, Maslow’s Theory of Motivation talks about achieving human potential to it’s fullest. How we can bring about the best of ourselves which will satisfy us and will also benefit others around us thereby uplifting the whole society. This theory of motivation struck hard against the individualistic ideas which were strong in capitalist America.

The (Controversial) Pyramid

We all would have seen the famous pyramid of needs in certain forms somewhere. This pyramid is known to represent Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Although the concept of hierarchy of needs is originated from Abraham Maslow, the pyramid was never drawn by him. A consulting psychologist Charles McDermid came up with this pyramid to oversimplify Maslow’s ideas and this is where the core of Theory of Motivation was lost.

Oversimplification of Maslow’s theory caused the loss of its very fundamental ideas

Theory of Motivation and Self-Actualization

According to this theory, humans need an integrated hierarchy where basic survival needs must be satisfied to realize their full potential – to become a self-actualized being.

Theory of motivation deals with what motivates people to achieve certain goal or expected outcome. The most primary theory here is Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow attributed 5 hierarchies for the any person to achieve their full potential:

Physiological needs – Things required for survival like air, water, food, clothing, and shelter
Safety needs – personal protection from surrounding hostile conditions, a safe society, secure job/ income, health
Belonging needs – people who appreciate your presence in their lives, love, friendship, companionship, sense of connection/ belonging
Esteem needs – respect, loyalty, status, recognition
Self-actualization – the ability to reach the highest potential

Before moving on with the discussion with these hierarchy it is very important that Maslow never intended these to be linear. The mistranslation of the concept of hierarchy into pyramid lost the whole basics of Maslow’s theory of motivation. Maslow always clarified that these are not sequential.

Maslow’s classified the first four needs namely physiological, safety, belonging, and esteem as the existential motivators. These are the necessities for a person to exist in this world and are completely dependent upon external factors.

The last need for self-actualization is completely intrinsic motivator. Unless and until you feel that drive to understand the purpose of you your being, you won’t reach the stage of self-realization. The person who has satisfied all first four but not the self-actualization will feel directionless even after achieving what he/ she desired. That is exactly why doing things to prove your worth to the world mostly ends in existential confusion, such people question the void which is created after achieving everything they wanted.

That is why inner motivation is important for bringing out the best of you. So, the last need namely Self-actualization is attributed as the intrinsic motivator. This intrinsic urge will drive the person to make the sense of his/ her conditions improve further.

In this further improvement the person achieves self-transcendence. This is the purest form of the happiness. Spirituality calls it the enlightenment.

The Characteristics of Self-Actualizers

It is very important to reiterate that Maslow never intended the hierarchy of needs to be linear and always clarified that you can work of these needs simultaneously. It is not like leveling up in a game one by one. The more you satisfy lower needs, the more you are concerned with the higher needs.

Maslow’s studied such people who have achieved self-realization and found some special common traits. Some of them are listed below:

They have high level humor – Low level humor is when you belittle others to create laughter. The self-actualizers will make fun of themselves to create this laughter.
Self-realizers have high sense of reality – Self realizers exhibit a healthy self-esteem. A person with toxic self-esteem will feel jealous for other people’s success. They feel entitled as they were the worthier than others. But the self-actualizers appreciate other people’s success and befriend them to learn the ways to succeed.
Continuous appreciation – Self-realizers are able to find joy in even the routine tasks, mundane activities. Even though they are excited for something new and challenging they equally value the mundane-ness of the events in life. It is because they carry highest sense of gratitude for everything.
Problem centered – Self-actualizers understand that whatever mission they have whatever purpose they have to fulfill must always lie beyond themselves and consider the big picture and long-term vision. They are aware that once the goal is achieved, they will get exposed to that existential confusion, once you have higher and wider sense of goal it is very rare that you will end up in existential angst. These types of people are not building an empire to become billionaire, they are on a mission to contribute to the world. Most importantly this urge to contribute to the society is not to make themselves feel worthy, it is because they understand that it is what the world desperately needs. Thus, self-actualizers select their goals in such ways so that they strengthen the personal skills and contribute to the betterment of the society simultaneously.
Self-realizers enjoy privacy – Solitude resonates more with such people than loneliness.
Self-realizers demonstrate these values: Wholeness, perfection, completion, justice, effortlessness, aliveness, richness, simplicity, beauty, self-sufficiency, goodness, uniqueness, order, playfulness, truth
Self-realizers are accepting towards oneself and others – they know that a perfect human is not the one without flaws. They understand that imperfections, sadness, grief, jealousy are also important aspect of being a human and thus try to uplift others going through same conditions instead of belittling them.
Self-actualizers are more spontaneous and strive to become more natural
Self-actualizers intensely look out for autonomy. It’s like micromanaging will kill their motivation to do the task.
Self-actualizers have more profound relationships. The relationships are not transactional.
Self-actualizers have high sense of Gemeinschaftsgefühl – meaning heightened sense of being connected to humanity.
Self-actualizers always strive to create win-win situations. That is exactly what helps them to find the goals which will benefit them personally and also the society on grand scale.
Self-actualizers have peak experiences. Self-actualizers are not always happy (otherwise one would surely attribute such people mental!) Instead of remaining happy with everything irrespective of is valence – intensity, self-actualizers have these small moments which make them appreciate their purpose on even higher level. They are not always drenched in the rains of happiness instead a small shower of joy elevates their sense of purposeful existence.

After going through such detailed characteristics explained by Maslow, it is tempting to ask one question. Do Self-actualizers settle for what they are given?

Self-actualization is a journey

What majorly got lost in translation due to the creation of this controversial pyramid of hierarchy of needs was Maslow’s attribution to continuous improvement in Self-actualizers.

“It is not a state of being but a process, It’s a direction, not destination. This process won’t always bring the feelings of happiness, contentment, and bliss, and it may even sometimes cause pain and heartache. It’s not for the “faint-hearted”. It requires continually stretching outside your comfort zone. It takes a lot of courage to be the best version of yourself.”

This is the part where the theory of motivation truly becomes humanistic. That is exactly what I love about self-actualization. It is not creating a paradise free from suffering, rather it accepts the presence of negative ideas of humanity at the same level as positive ideas. That is what makes us a complete human. It is sad that in general understanding we miss this part of the theory of motivation.

Maslow’s theory of motivation for the modern world

Scott Barry Kaufman – an American psychologist conducted an experiment to fit Maslow’s theory of motivation which is more relevant in this modern world and also doesn’t mistranslate the original theory during oversimplification. I would say it is not oversimplification of the theory of motivation rather it augments the same theory to remain more relevant in modern times.

Scott Kaufman in his famous paper discusses that the as Abraham Maslow’s ideas go, the lack of satisfaction motivates people to fill that existential i.e., external, and emotional i.e., intrinsic deficiency. This deficiency is primarily about physical existence and then about mental/ emotional existence. It can also be deficient in both aspects (external and internal simultaneously). The people who lack motivation are also very defensive when they feel danger to their basic needs – survival needs.

Scott explains that motivated people are driven more by exploration, creativity and love not for themselves but also for the humankind.

The Cybernetic Big Five Theory

Scott Kaufman bridged the concepts of cybernetic big five theory with the characteristics of self-actualized human beings as explained by Abraham Maslow through an experiment consisting of a psychrometric test. (A psychrometric test is a questionnaire to assess intelligence, abilities, potential and personality.)

The big five theory of cybernetics identifies five factors which helps to define the person’s overall personality. Cybernetics here indicates the study of systems which work with a feedback loop. After all motivation is a type of feedback loop. Any mechanism which changes its response based on the outcome can be studied under cybernetics. So, the cybernetic system we are interested here are human beings. There are five factors which indicate the major habits – traits of the person. The varying contribution from each attribute can help us to understand what motivates, influences the given person and how his/ her life can be improved.

Following are the big five:

Openness to experiences – as the words themselves explains – it’s the way – the trait in which one accepts or molds/ changes to the new experiences. The more open one is to experiences the less they are susceptible to mental disorder
Conscientiousness – it is the ability to care, to take things/ consequences seriously, being diligent. More conscientious a person is more he/ she is reliable; extremes would be attribute to workaholics, perfectionists.
Extraversion/ Extroversion – is related to how a person draws energy to exist. Introverts feel energetic in solitude whereas extroverts seek company to feel energetic. This is inspired from Carl Jung’s ideas.
Agreeableness – it measures how considerate you are. People with low agreeableness are selfish, people with high agreeableness are kinder, sympathetic.
Neuroticism – is related to how one handles negative emotions and stress. More neurotic a person more negatively they behave.

This theory is also commonly known as the OCEAN theory. But, why did we try to understand the cybernetic big five theory? What motivates people is immediately related to how people behave and what are their “traits”; So, understanding the OCEAN aspects of the personality creates a model where you can understand what motivates them.

The Metatraits – Bridging the Classical and Modern Theory of Motivation

Scott Kaufman linked the big five facets of human personality to Maslow’s theory of motivation through the bridge of Metatraits.

The five facets of human psyche – the five traits namely Openness to experiences, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism can be grouped into two major categories. One is Stability and the another is Plasticity.

Stability is defined through the contributions from traits of Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness.

Plasticity is defined through the contributions from the traits of Openness to experiences and Extraversion.

The personality trait hierarchy
(Source: Cybernetic Big Five Theory, Colin G. DeYoung, 2014, Journal of Research in Personality)

Now, the magic starts happening.

It’s Not A Pyramid, Rather It’s A Sail Boat

Remember that the theory of motivation had two aspects. One is the security, safety and the another one is sense of existence, meaning.

Scott Kaufman through his experiment clarified almost all aspects of Maslow’s theory of motivation. Unlike the popular mistranslated pyramidal structure of hierarchy of needs, Scott smartly utilized the fundamental idea of simultaneity of all needs into his new model. According to Scott Kaufmanns model the hierarchy of need is best represented by the Sail Boat.

Scott Barry Kaufman’s Sail Boat Model of Self Actualization

It is very wonderful to appreciate what this Sail Boat model communicates. Its beauty is that is brings the lost ideas from the classical theory of motivation into limelight and at the same time it removes that false linearity from the hierarchy. The word ‘hierarchy’ reflects that interdependence and complementary nature of the needs. The more you satisfy the lower needs, the more you will try to fulfill the higher need.

Scott presents that we are never leveling up from one need to higher one, rather we are trying to fulfill every type of need to certain extent simultaneously. Once we fill like certain need is fulfilled to a safer extent, we can fulfill other multiple need simultaneously.

We are continuously changing our needs based on the experiences we have while fulfilling other needs. Once you achieve certain goal in your life you may feel the need to upgrade you living standards, social status. If you get one life changing spiritual experience you may feel to downgrade your living standards because you feel that this is materialistic obsession.

Scotts Sail Boat model thus can be represented as follows:

The Boat is the security aspect necessary for the survival of a person. It is both physiological and psychological. Safety, Connection and Self-esteem create the boat; once you fulfill these aspects your life will be secured, your physical existence is guaranteed but this will not fill the spiritual existential void, the urge for purpose and meaning in you. You will have to attach a sail of being open to uncertainty, daring to love, daring to find the purpose which will drive that boat into the “OCEAN” of the life. (Look what I did their, actually this is how Scott explains it, you get it!)

Having a boat with holes – the lack of safety, connections, and self esteem will surely jeopardize your materialistic existence. After that having only a boat – fulfillment of safety, connections and self-esteem will give you proper survival. But only survival will instantly demotivate you to even live. Its like a boat which has taken halt, has no purpose and may collapse when a big wave collapses. Basic fulfillment of survival need does not guaranty long term sustenance, any big challenge in life, any negative event will tear down this boat of existence into pieces. You must appreciate that the boat here indicates the metatrait of stability which is supposed to the rigid trait of the personality, rigid int terms of the fundamental support to the whole being.

In order to handle the challenges, the big collapsing waves one need to explore the OCEAN, the challenges for that the motivation will be drawn from the openness to new experiences, learnability, curiosity. This learnability, urge for growth is attributed to the sails of the boat. The sails will ensure that you will move faster when you sense collapsing waves, sails will ensure that your boat will reach the destinations you want, sails will ensure that you have the goal, the purpose, the meaning to your existence. Thus, the sails represent the metatrait of Plasticity.

You must understand that Stability metatrait is how you fulfill your deficiencies in the fundamental needs for existence whereas Plasticity metatrait is about how you make sense of what existence you have established.

How strongly you will live is defined by stability, it is about how you protect your goals, its is about how you handle your impulses, how you strategize and understand the events to remain stable.

How purposeful, focused you will remain will be defined by plasticity. What new goals you create, how you learn new things to achieve these goals, hoe you strategize you r actions to demonstrate understanding, create meaning is what plasticity is.

Conclusion

Life, our existence is always proven to be filled with paradoxes and contradictions. You will see a smiling beggar lying on the roadside – begging for the food of one time and you will also see a billionaire crying in his Lamborghini because he/she lost their loved ones. Different people will weigh out these events based on what type of life they were exposed to. Those who lacked happiness in their lives will prefer to be happy by trading all valuable objects they have, whereas those who never possessed basic things for survival will endure endless pain to get them. These types of paradoxical lives are the origins to a completely different world view and most importantly what motivates human beings.

What was lost through Maslow’s pyramid of hierarchy of needs came back into limelight due to modern theories in psychology like the Cybernetic Big Five Theory and Sail-Boat Model. They highlight a very important fact that stability and plasticity both are necessary for a person to become whole – a complete human being. Scott Barry Kaufmann also found out in his study that self-actualization was more strongly related to plasticity than the mere absence of stability. It shows how intrinsic motivation weighs heavier than the materialistic stability. It is a big concept to grasp but all of us are always passing through this experience but seldom are aware of that. You will realize that this is the theory which could also join the western and eastern concepts of enlightenment and self-transcendence.

P.S. – Iron Man’s character from MCU in every sense is the best pop-cultural representation of both the classical and modern ideas of the theory of motivation.

The most selfish character in a story got motivated to sacrifice himself for the greater good

References and for further reading:

A Theory of Human Motivation, A. H. Maslow (1943), Originally Published in Psychological Review, 50, 370-396
Kaufman, Scott Barry. “Self-Actualizing People in the 21st Century: Integration With Contemporary Theory and Research on Personality and Well-Being.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63 (2018): 51 – 83.
https://scottbarrykau f man.com/
DeYoung, Colin G. “Cybernetic big five theory.” Journal of research in personality 56 (2015): 33-58.
What Does It Mean to Be Self-Actualized in the 21st Century? – Beautiful Minds – by Scott Barry Kaufman in Scientific American
The Untold Science of Self-Actualization by Marco Sander
Featured image – A man looks at the painting Not to be Reproduced by René Magritte by Daniel Reinhardt

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!

The problem of other minds – do they exist in reality or the reality just exists in my mind?

Have you ever felt that words are failing to express the joy you have? Do you feel uncomfortable when you are unable to understand the vibe of your environment? Is it just you or is it the surrounding? Do you sometimes feel that everyone is treating you in a certain way and then you realize that actually it was you who was behaving differently? Do you get the feeling that someone is behaving in a way but thinking in a completely different way? Am I unable to get early in the bed because I don’t wish so or the weather is cozy? As if they are hiding something and you would never know what and how they feel? Could you make others feel your exact experiences in the exactly the same way? If yes, then how? If not, then why is impossible? How come our senses have practical limitations? Are those the limitations of our mind? Is empathy a real thing or is it just the construct of my mind to mirror the people in front of me? Why my experiences are so private?

The questions posed through Solipsism may clarify the origin of these ideas.

Where solus means “alone” and ipse means “self” in Latin

A philosophical idea that only one’s mind is sure to exist

Origin of Philosophy – Knowledge is power

Everyone of us is born with a tendency to have control over the surrounding. This is closely connected to our survival instincts. Though our survival instincts are mainly primitive what differentiates us from rest of the animals is our reasoning ability. Almost every animal is proven to have emotions, many of them can think logically at least from survival perspective, some of these animals have shown signs of intelligence closer to humans when trained properly. Our reasoning ability is some sort of highly evolved survival instinct. Reasoning introduces understanding, awareness of the surrounding in which we live, this understanding increases the predictability of the future thereby increasing the chances of the survival of the species. So, we can say that the better we understand the system which w are part of the better will be our chances of anticipating the risks of the environment; the better we anticipate the upcoming risks the better we can be prepared for to handle them to procreate further thereby ensuring the survival.

That is why we have many fields of knowledge to understand the establish different aspects of the reality we live in. When there were no boundaries between different fields of knowledge everything would start from simple question (even today single important and specific question can establish a completely independent field of knowledge) We are always one question away from a completely new perspective towards reality. (See Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem if you are interested in this idea)

Philosophy could be attributed to the most primitive, original, and the crudest field of knowledge. Although most part of philosophy is properly structured, it is crude due to the plethora of unanswered questions it has. Once the fundamental questions in any domain of understanding are answered, once the paradoxes lying at the end of an established field of knowledge are solved then a new field gets created and separates from the fundamental philosophy.

(The primitive man survived on whatever nature provided then the humans realized that one can sow the seeds to get certain crop from certain soil in certain season in this much quantity thus came farming – Botany, Geography, Mathematics and many more. When we were unable to understand the Newton’s theory of gravitation to some heavenly bodies (the perihelion of Mercury) then Einstein’s theory of relativity disrupted our existing understanding of the universe. It has literally affected every field of modern knowledge.)

Skepticism – Keep on questioning until you get consistency in understanding

So, in nutshell, the job of philosophy is to ask those questions which would challenge the complete domain of a certain field of knowledge, once you get the proof of this question then it becomes the part of that field of knowledge or a completely independent field of knowledge. They detach from the Philosophy. Philosophy was never meant to provide answers, if certain philosophy is providing proper answers, proper predictability then it is a field of knowledge.

What happens to the questions which remain unanswered?

What if there are unresolved paradoxes at the end of the a fully established field of knowledge?

I would say the philosophy carries the unanswerable, paradoxical nature – the imperfections in our understanding until they are formally, satisfactorily, and most importantly – coherently answered. That is exactly why philosophy always seems crude, as if it is carrying all the imperfections in our understanding of the reality.

Skepticism lies at the base of the philosophy. Once you get consistent answers to the questions posed, you keep on questioning that consistency. Everything (and I mean it) will end at a point of paradox or inconsistency. (If one finds exceptions then it is better to upgrade that theory otherwise soon it will get replaced with better theory.) There are ways to deal with such paradoxes/ inconsistencies (See Agrippa’s Trilemma if it interests you.)

Solipsism – Extreme skepticism – Questioning the existence of the question and the questioner!

So now we that we are familiar with the nature of questioning everything to establish consistent answers thereby to create knowledge, it is important to know how we do so. What make us answer these questions in a consistent manner. Our experiences, observations of the surrounding, our interaction with one another and the results of these interactions give us the fundamental model of reality. This model is developed by our minds – bunch of neuron connections physically per say – the collection of the sensorial feedback from the body.

Now the question is, as we go on questioning the reality, the final question is come like this –

If there are still some gaps in my absolute understanding of the reality which are creating this uncertainty somewhere, which is creating paradoxes, inconsistencies; what exactly is absolute? What exactly is the most certain thing in the world? What is the most real thing, real measuring scale with which I could measure and understand my surrounding?

Solipsism says that only the existence of your mind is certain, the existence of other minds will always be uncertain. As the presence of other minds is uncertain, you can be sure of only what you experience as “the reality”. As only you absolutely and fully realize the reality through your mind, the reality is just mere figment of your mind and imagination (when stretched too far!) When you try to transfer your minds realization of the reality to others you will always see that something got lost in translation. If reality is just the construct of my mind, then what exactly is existence?

Why Solipsism stands strong? – Why idea of living in the Matrix fascinates us?

Is the creator playing with my mind to show me a false reality for something different which is beyond my access?

The earliest evidence to ask such question is found in the writing of a Roman skeptic Sextus Empiricus quoting Gorgias (c. 483–375 BC) as follows:

Nothing exists
Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it
Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it cannot be communicated to others.

Then René Descartes (the one who established Cartesian coordinates) came up with one of the famous quotes/ ideas about the absoluteness of the reality.

Cogito, ergo sum.

I think, therefore I am.
René Descartes

Simply put, Descartes argued that, the most certain knowledge one can have is through personal experiences because knowledge transferred from others are never perfect also there is no way to measure where the translation was perfect. The existence and experience will always be discrete – separate; it will vary mind to mind, so what is reality for you is the only absolute reality; that is why absolute knowledge is private property. As you can be only certain of your experiences only your mind is the reality, everyone else’s minds don’t exist. (OR should I say others are mindless! Jokes apart!)

George Berkeley – Bishop Berkeley is also one famous philosopher who developed the ideas of immaterial-ism. He is known for the famous analogy of “a falling tree” although his writings never explicitly mentioned such analogy but let us say in a crude way, he pointed towards it. (See, even here we can see the gap that is created during the communication of an idea, a simple analogy someone established before us!)

So, the idea is, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody saw it falling, nobody heard it falling, nobody felt the vibrations of fall how come we be sure that a tree fell down somewhere? Unless and until someone observes the fall through their senses one can never be sure that the really fell. So, if no one noticed it and in the end even you didn’t notice the fall, then the tree never fell down!

Your mind, you consciousness and you had to exist absolutely to observe, experience the fall of the tree. If you weren’t there to see and experience the fall, how could you be so absolutely sure that the tree fell?

Solipsism – Trust no one but yourself!

Now, you would have understood what may be going wrong with Solipsism!

Modern day answers would be like “I would have been presented with a video to prove the fall.” OR “I would have been presented with the person who cut down the tree”

But the counterargument would go like this “What if the video was faked? (by using deepfake!!!)” OR the witness found to be forged – I wouldn’t know if the person is lying with confidence (even polygraphs tests can be fooled, false alibis can be created!!!)

Jokes aside, these are mere representative examples to demonstrate the point. When you start formally questioning the nature of reality by using the most consistent tools that we have in modern science, then this question again peeks out in a bizarre way!!!

According to quantum mechanics, the moment we measure the state of a quantum object, its state changes. So, the measurement of that instance will never refer to the actual state of the quantum object. Meaning that you could never be sure of what actually happened before or at the instance of measurement. You can have a probability but you will never be sure.

Your observation had to exist to define the state of the quantum object, if you weren’t there were infinite state of the quantum object to exist. Your observation assigned it a definite, objective, absolute state. Your observation made it a real “reality” otherwise it was always possibility rather probability of many events. Please note that these are not just the flights of minds by the most compelling specimens of humanity, these are actually mathematically, experimentally proven ideas.

The one liner to understand solipsism is –

Your personal experience is more dependable than common sense!

I understand that how is it even possible to question common sense, common experiences. Solipsism is such a foolish idea rather the most foolish idea one can have! But, bare with me when we try to answer the paradoxes which lie in solipsism. Any person who is having existential crisis has been warned hereon!

Different ideologies in Solipsism

Metaphysical solipsism – the most extreme solipsism – the external world doesn’t exist. My mind creates the reality for me. (A rude adamant philosopher made it clear!)

Quick Joke – Unless I didn’t observe the tree falling, it is still there (and maybe giving fruits if it is a Mango tree!)

Epistemological solipsism – The reality around me is absolute and objective, but we cannot know it directly as it is through our sense and experiences. It is the limitation of my senses which inhibit my understanding of the reality. (This is a humble approach I would say!)

Sensory organs are not the experiences from the reality rather they are just the interpreters of the reality with practical limitations. There is no direct agency to experience what others are experiencing, to know other minds.

Quick Joke – A person drinking tea finds a fly in his tea asks the waiter to replace the tea. Waiter helplessly trying to convince his of not having any fly in that tea gives up and replaces the tea. After few same complaints from same person and replacing many cups, it is discovered that the fly was in the guest’s spectacles!

It’s like I cannot hear certain sound frequencies but certain animals can hear those frequencies. I can see only the light in visible spectrum, but other animals can see in another spectrum. It’s the limitation of my senses which dulls down the objectivity of the reality. You have to be ‘the God’ to understand all the spectrum of the reality! (excuse my introduction of some spiritual power here but we will come back to this again!)

This is the most practical, plausible and calming version of solipsism.

Methodological solipsism – Every logic is fallible, that is why you could never know what the absolute looks like. There is nothing like ‘the God’, if there is something supreme you won’t even understand how supreme it is and why it is so! (I know we are getting spiritual to go away from early religious epistemological solipsism but that is how it works)

It says that even our brain, our mind is the part of external reality. (I am feeling uncomfortable here.)

Quick Joke – A criminal was convicted for murder. He went scot-free because he didn’t do that murder, his had hand – rather the knife did the murder.

Jokes apart, but consider cognitive dissonance. Many things which we learned in our childhood as the absolute concept, as the ultimate truth gets replaced by something life changing and even more true and absolute. So, what is real truth is beyond our understanding.

Paradoxes at the end – Where Solipsism would break down!

The paradoxes of the solipsism are the most fun part which explain why solipsism deserves any explanation.

Here are some doubts,

If my mind is the absolute reality I live in, then why can’t I convince myself to survive by just imagining that I have eaten a lot today (while not eating even single crumb!)

I could just survive by thinking of eating the best food I could “think” of.

Everyone knows that this is not the real case. A person with that much will power and fasting will barely survive.

Now, the counterargument for this (and I love this part due to pop-culture reference!) –

What if your brain is kept in a container giving some electrical impulses exactly like in movie The Matrix. The matrix is programmed in such way that not eating will kill you definitely.

Solipsism ends in a matrix, a simulated reality beyond our experiences!

If there no such thing like matrix then how come all of us would die if we face the same degree of starvation? How come the experiences (even though not purely translatable to others but still the same based on the objective, consistent observations) we have in such cases match?

Many of the knowledge established as the most absolute, consistent and closer to the reality is developed because all of us had same experience (at least objective experience, ideally fully efficient translatable experience) in every one of our lives.

The answer is that we all share a common consciousness which enable us to experience the same scenario. We all are living a common and shared dream.

Our reality is a shared dream! Our consciousness is a shared dream! We all are connected by something so common and absolute thing. A spiritual person would call it the soul, a scientist would call it the energy.

This is technically known as the Solipsistic idealism – the best answer we have which will not blow our brains and will not give us the existential crisis!

The bizarre one comes here –

Even if the matrix is real, you would never be able to get the absolute understanding of it. Existence of external absolute reality is uncertain. You won’t even know if it is called matrix or a chewing gum or something else!

Pro tip – don’t over-love solipsism

You must understand that the arguments in solipsism are quite good. (It is just my failure of communicating those to you if you are not convinced till this point. I apologize for that.)

If the reality is just created by my mind/ in my mind then there is no way to verify that from external agency.

But, our experiences, emotions (at least some of them) always feel common. René Descartes Descartes posed that the experiences, sensory feed-backs are purely created by our mind but modern science proves that babies are not born with absolute ideas of reality (it is possible that they are exposed to certain sensorial experiences from their mother right from the conception) The absolute experiences they get are from their interaction with the surrounding objects and people. Our personalities, identities are created from mutual interactions. We cannot be ourselves without the people around us and the environments we are exposed to.

Only a completely isolated person would have the polarized inclination towards solipsism.

But again, what if it is just a construct beyond our understanding? There is no way for us to know that.

Even if there lies a construct beyond our understanding, there are some practical ways to purposefully ignore extreme ideas of solipsism rather leverage the ideas of solipsism.

If you are bound to the existing construct of reality which is practically within the reach of your experiences, your mind then you must abide by the laws of that reality. If you only stick to only the reality of your mind, then your so called “absolute truths” will immediately be challenged by the truth of others. It will be a blood bath but let your older absolute truths die to let the newer ones be born. They won’t be ideally absolute but at least they will be better than the previous one.

Even if the illusion of reality is shared among all of us as a common dream, we would never be able to escape that. Meaning, again play by the laws of the land. Ignore the existential crisis on the absoluteness of reality. At least try to get closer to the reality.

I think this is exactly why even though the pursuit of solipsism may feel worthless in the end but it’s understanding and appreciation gives us a hope to continuously keep on improving our version of the reality – private or shared whatever they may be.

Learn the rules to break them in a better and glorious way!

The acceptance of Solipsism (in a positive way) can also create an urge in person to seek for the real freedom. Solipsism in positive way urges the person to take that inner route in order to create the world of their desires through disciplined thinking (in a healthy way and not in a delusional way!) 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!

A Bet Called Life

Anton Chekhov through his short story called ‘the Bet’ establishes important gifts life grants us. The real freedom is to neither let go of life with an escapism/nihilism nor degrade it through materialistic exploitation. The real freedom is the harmony between time, resources, practical curiosity and most importantly people around us. Life has possibilities to offer, it is up to us to live our lives on the spectrum rather than polarizing them to an ideology.

Anton Chekhov’s famous short story called “the Bet”

The good life is a direction, not a destination
Bruce Lee

Quick question! Would you trade 10 years of life for 10 million? There are two important parts of this question before looking for the right answer and only a fool would think that there truly is one good answer to this question.

The first part of this question is – what is the value of time we live through our lifetime? Say, a millionaire who is bedridden in his last moments of life is still unsatisfied with the plans he had for his life. Would he trade his money with extra time?

The second part is – if we live a life with no resources – money to meet the ends then what good is to live such life?

Now if we look out for subjective answers, the diversity in answers would surprise us (and that part is not surprising, because everyone has their own definition of a good life and a bad life based on the experiences they had)

Anton Chekhov – one of the most important short story writers wrote one interesting story called “The Bet” which makes the readers question the real intent of having a life and living through it till death. What kind of life is a good life – a short but resourceful life or a long but painful life?

Synopsis

The Bet is a story of two people – A Banker and a lawyer who in their young age fix a bet to decide who among them is right. The argument of the bet is based on the morality of a death penalty. Banker thinks that instead of making the convicted suffer for a long time through lifetime imprisonment, he should be sentenced to instant- immediate death. Life – long but with suffering is inhumane punishment. Whereas the lawyer thinks that taking life in any way is inhumane as humans do not have any power to restore the life back. Taking life slowly or instantly – both are inhumane but if these two are the only options, then the best punishment is to let the convict live; even though it will be painful but he still lives.

In order to prove validity of their arguments they decide a bet where the banker agrees to pay the lawyer 2 million if the lawyer undergoes solitary confinement for five years. In the excitement of the argument the lawyer agrees to 15 years of solitary confinement for 2 million. If by any means the lawyer escapes this confinement or tries to connect with any human being, he will lose the bet and banker won’t have to pay anything to him. The lawyer would get wine, smoke, books and a musical instrument but no human contact or newspaper or a letter from someone. There was only a small window to receive anything from outer world.

As the confinement proceeds the bankers becomes more and more nervous. He anticipated that the lawyer won’t even last for 2-3 years but the bet truly goes till its completion and in the meantime the baker loses most of his money where the 2 million he pledged is the only amount he has. He now knows that the lawyer – seemingly successful to survive through the bet will now have 2 million while living out of the confinement and the banker himself would be poor. He tries to kill the lawyer on the last day of his confinement where he discovers that the lawyer has actually renounced what he was about to win from the bet, he even distastes the life itself and seeks the ultimate salvation, freedom from life. The lawyer understands that even after reading these many books, these many stories, learning many languages the death in an instant can wipe out everything that can be created.

Next day, the baker finds out that the lawyer escaped the confinement as he had planned in his letter to purposefully lose the bet. The banker is relieved knowing that he still has hold over the 2 million which was his last capital for survival. To not let discussions catch fire he locks the letter of renouncement of the prize from lawyer in a safe.

Life – granted to everyone has majorly two aspects which are continuously deciding the course everyone’s life. One is time and another is resources.

Anton Chekhov can be called as the king of short stories where his philosophy of writing was focused on to present only what is necessary to convey the intent to drive the story further, nothing seems extra in his stories which make them highly effective short stories. All of Chekhov’s stories are based on common scenarios happening with common people, there is always some realism and non-fictional touch to his stories. And hence they always deliver a profound idea about what a life really is, what it means to be a human. You will rarely find a direct message in his stories, the natural reactions of his characters will show you the mirror. Anton Chekhov truly mastered the skill of mirroring the life through is short but highly effective stories. The Bet is one such masterpiece. Let us dive deeper into this story.

The Abundance

The Bet is a story of how one values their own life and other people’s lives. Chekhov smartly shows how abundance dulls, narrows and blinds the vision and opinions one has. The banker and the lawyer in their young age while arguing over the justification to punish someone by death of life-long imprisonment are indicated to be full of adrenaline and excitement. Even though they have not gone through such experiences they have firm opinions on such experiences. The lawyer and banker both have many years of life still left to spare which leads to such an absurd bet. The banker thinks that he has enough wealth just to spare for such a silly bet. Almost all the times, we are ready to stake things we have in abundance for a silly thing which would prove our beliefs to be either right or wrong. Abundance reduces the perception of value for things, time and even life. Lawyer and banker both were young when the bet was established. Great thing about Chekhov to appreciate is how he points out the behaviour and opinions of youth on almost anything. The youth seem to have strong opinions on everything even when they haven’t gone through those experiences or lived with the people closer to such experiences. The so called “hormones” make the youth think themselves as invincible – there is nothing wrong with that as it is what makes young people turn impossible things into possible but being in a simulation where there is no relevance to the reality makes the youth delusional where they take negative and life-altering decisions carelessly. Consider if this bet was set up between two beggars or two old men, its an impossibility. In both cases they are lacking time and resources/ money.

So, the starting set up for bet shows how in early young years abundance can blindfold the person from reality.

Banker wanted the punishment to be instant as it involves no suffering also shows how greatly he values pleasures and happiness in life. A painful life is equivalent to death for him. At the same time for the lawyer morality is more important, that is why he prefers gift of life in any form rather than the instant death.

“To live anyhow is better than not at all”
The Bet

And funnily or ironically, in the end after 15 years you will see the lawyer longing for the true salvation, you will see this in his letter when the bet is about to end where he establishes that whatever knowledge, experiences, money, resources one could have in their lives – the death will render all of those useless – a more nihilistic opinion.

“You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe”
The Bet

The Solitude – Curse or Boon?

It is really interesting how Chekhov describes the lawyer’s voluntary solitary confinement. It’s like mirroring of how we as human beings go on the quest of understanding the surroundings, the nature and the society around us when we are left alone.

As the lawyer was alone and confined to himself only, in early years of imprisonment the lawyer felt lonely and depressed. This shows how we are mostly created by our surroundings. Most of the time we are what our surroundings are. We only start understanding ourselves when we try to define our existence from inside and not outside. This becomes accelerated and intense when one accepts the solitude in the place of loneliness. The journey to solitude for lawyer started with music and romantic, thriller fiction.

It is impressive of Chekhov’s writing to highlight how our mind tries to fill in the gaps when we are alone. When people are on their own with no outward person to person interaction or person to object interaction, they try to fill that gap of loneliness with entertainment, music, poetry, literature, addiction and what not. People who are unable to fill this gap are the truest lonely people, they always will long for company of other people to fill the void.

In second year, the lawyer became more silent and started writing for long hours instead of reading anything. He is angry with what he accepted just to prove his point but is helpless to change the course of the things. This is the stage where Chekhov sneakily establishes that even though entertainment may fill the void of solitude to some extend for a person, it will not stand the test of the time. The solitude makes the person to have thoughts inside them engulf themselves. Writing is one way to blurt out all that is going inside the mind of the person thereby consoling them that whatever was inside them is now physically outside, on paper. One peculiar observation about writers inserted by Chekhov here! When your thoughts try to eat you, devour you from inside, it is good to channel them outside through your creations, that is what is the basic characteristic of the greatest artists the world has ever seen.

Chekhov then describes the sixth year of the lawyer in confinement as the seeker of the knowledge. Again, the credit goes to the genius of Chekhov where he shows that when a person rises above his own materialistic existence, he seeks the understanding of the nature that he emerged from. When the person accepts his solitude then only his search for real truth begins. It’s like this solitude removed all the noise from his existence. The lawyer in solitude studying philosophy, languages and history shows the curiosity to know oneself better. Study of languages show the curiosity to understand and comprehend that which others had already said but your inability to hear restricted you to access that knowledge. Studying philosophy shows the urge to clear the clutter of thoughts going in the head, philosophy to some extent is the re-organization of what we think, how we think and how we decide our actions accordingly. Studying history indicates the ways to understand the reasons behind the present order of things, everything that exists in present has traceability to history which justifies the way things – traditions are perceived, handled in present.

From sixth to tenth year the lawyer studied the languages and mastered them like a commoner. It is very interesting choice from Chekhov to make his character study languages after studying some heavy fields like philosophy, history. It could have been science and technology but no, all the lawyer was interested in were the languages. Please understand that this is one of the most important creative choices made by Anton Chekhov.

When a person finds the truest, purest reservoir of knowledge, his search for anything greater than that ends there (obviously), the next stage for such enlightened person is to understand and find different interpretations of this pure knowledge.

“The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all”
The Bet

After completing ten years, the lawyer surprisingly moved to theology and gospels – the study of religion. It is surprising for a scholar who mastered six languages and deeply understood philosophy, history of humanity. Chekhov wants to highlight one important aspect of humans and their obsession with certain goals – destinations in life. When the destination people considered the most important thing of their life are reached, at that exact moment they become meaningless. The human mind becomes clueless after this event, whatever efforts they took to reach their feel worthless as if nothing in life was worth that or was worth that value. That is the moment when the person tries to detach themselves from all these theories, logics and philosophies. This is the moment when a person realises that there is totally different order and the entity which has designed this current order in which he exists. This is the person resorting to spirituality. When a person feels hopeless during continuous sufferings, purposeless even after achieving that important goal he desired for his whole life, spirituality becomes the last stop.

“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism: but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
Sir Francis Bacon

In the last two years Chekhov portrays the lawyer in solitary confinement as a the one who is drifting in the ocean of existence, he is on the verge of breakdown, he is sinking thus wherever he will find support he will cling to it. It is some sort of neurosis, especially the neurosis of the genius mind.

It is the true genius of Anton Chekhov where he shows his readers the journey to find the meaning of our existence, solitude intensifies the speed of this journey. And in the end, if one forces himself to understand the meaning of life in an absolute way, then he will definitely end up being the fool – the smartest and greatest fool the world has ever seen! Too much analysis, too much knowledge and too much logic can drain humanity from the person in a very tragic way. Even nihilism will look petty in front of such condition.

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
Rabindranath Tagore

The Time Vs The Resources

Please understand that major events in the Bet are flashbacks of the banker. And Chekhov has written these flashbacks as if the banker is regretting his decision of setting this bet. The banker knows that he has already lost the bet. He lost all his wealth during this time of 15 year and in addition to that peace of his mind just to prove some foolish point to some group of people.

You must appreciate how Chekhov manipulates the effect of time and resources in the bet. Through this manipulation, he shows significance of both time and resource/ money in human life and also the interplay between them. You will see that the lawyer had 15 years to build his upcoming life after successfully completing the bet. He was the victorious who would have had wisdom and wealth – he would have become practically invincible. But too much knowledge and time spent with books made him think about the worthlessness of life, as his mind was always fed with the simulations, experiences from the books he never got the hold of real-life experiences. This created a detachment from reality in his life experiences. Thus, it is not surprising that he considers the gift of life (which he was ready to live anyhow in the early time of the bet) as a worthless one as death can wipe it out in no time.

For banker it is totally different story. He was the one who was so sure about the future abundance of the wealth he would have had that the pledged money was nothing for him in the early years. The lack of knowledge and the abundance created illusion for him. When the bet was about to end, he was consumed by the idea of loss of his dearly 2 million. The banker even makes an attempt to kill the lawyer in secret to win the bet. The character of banker seems shallow right from the beginning of the story but we must not forget that he too is a human being. Before the setup of bet, the banker was of the opinion that a good life must be painless life otherwise the life should not be lived. But as the bet proceeds you will find the banker in the continuous pain and fear for the loss of his money. Even with this pain he prefers living though it. He chooses painful life now.

Let us understand one scenario, what if the banker went on to become wealthier and wealthier as the bet went on to completion. He would not have felt a single regret to let the lawyer win the bet. Rather the character of the banker would have definitely honored the lawyer for his willpower and genius that he had become during his solitary confinement. The “supposedly” wealthy banker would have humbly sponsored the lawyer for the rest of his life. But Chekhov did not let that happen with the banker’s character. This shows how we human beings set our ideals, our philosophy of life, our way of making decisions, our way of thinking and our motivations based on how we feel about ourselves. Our ideals or philosophy of life never take a moral guidance system – it rather follows the pathways of how we experience life around us and how we feel about it. A cold-blooded criminal will never feel regret for killing another human being and at the same time a sage will punish himself for losing his temper on a child who broke his meditation practice. Your calls for right or wrong are heavily influenced by how you feel about yourself, others come later.

So, it is really important to understand how we decide right or wrong. Most of the time these decisions are influenced by how we were feeling in that decision making moment.

No wonder Chekhov shows mirror to his readers through his short yet highly effective writing.

The Conclusion

So, we will again come back to the question we asked at the start of this discussion. Can 10 years be traded for the 10 million? If these 10 years were full of pain and suffering, one would surely trade them for the money. If these 10 years were filled with happiness, joy and fulfillment then 10 million would look worthless in front of them. This shows how foolishly we are trying to justify our lives by attaching it to a single defined destination. We are always forgetting the multitudes of spectrum our lives have. We always try to justify our life with a single event – good or bad and forget that this too shall pass. The profoundness of life allows us to define the life in every possible way, that is actually a curse and a boon. That is exactly why living life with the decisions we take is the biggest bet a person can play. Anton Chekhov shows this side of life through a simple bet between a lawyer and a banker.

Life will never be a single conclusion, it will always remain multifaceted, full of possibilities. That is why whatever call we take for the life to become something ahead is going to be new trick every time. When we discuss the quality and quantity of life, we are again ignoring the spectrum of endless possibilities life has.

Salvation either through the pursuit of knowledge or through the pursuit of resources – both are foolish moves to live a fulfilled life. Life will never associate itself to single adjective, single attribute, single absolute ideology, philosophy – otherwise it will become monotonous- mechanical – lifeless. You will see that so called “enlightened” genius lawyer in the end literally becomes mad and despises everything that life can offer – the same lawyer who considered living life in any condition is good than death when the bet was to start.

“To be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness”
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Anton Chekhov was the master of bringing two exactly contrasting ideas through the portrayal of realistic life. That is exactly real life is – full of paradoxes. That is what makes Chekhov’s stories so special.

“What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.”
Anton Chekhov

Chekhov establishes these important aspects life granted us like the abundance of time and resources, the knowledge, the possibilities and pathways to self-discovery. The real freedom is neither to let go of life with an escapism/nihilism nor degrade it through materialistic exploitation. The real freedom is the harmony between time, resources, practical curiosity and most importantly people around us. Life has possibilities to offer, let us live our lives on the spectrum rather than polarizing them to an ideology. It is crime to let life take a side on a shore than to let it flow through the vast ocean of possibilities.

(There is a third part of this story which was not known to public for many years. In this newly revealed ending, the banker remained in guilt even when the lawyer had technically renounced the prize money by losing the bet. One day, the lawyer returned to the banker and asked for the money he won. The banker gave the lawyer the prize money in order to bring his mind at peace.)

Source for reading:

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Bet, and other stories

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.

Why the philosophical search for the ultimate universal truth is useless?

An Existential Meme Caption and Its Resolution

Since the invention of social media, some images (especially the certain classic meme templates) have stood the test of time. These images keep on circulating and there comes a moment when that image reinvents itself in new format, it brings some new argument with different type of humor. See the following image for example:

Funnily enough, this image always comes with a thoughtful (supposedly) caption as follows:

“Just because you are right, does not mean, I am wrong. You just haven’t seen life from my side”

Given that the argument presented in this caption demonstrates the subjectivity of the everyone’s perspective, it is really futile to discuss what to exactly extract or understand from this caption.

For example, if this was the scenario where knowing the true value would save a person’s life then knowing the truth becomes the necessity and all of us know that this wouldn’t have saved that precious life which was dependent the true answer. There is no definite answer for this argument because it invokes subjectivity in the argument. People use this image and the said caption to express their inability to prove the truth value of their argument, especially their emotions.

Now, in recent time this image resurfaced with a new argument which blew my mind the moment I saw it. The reinvented image looks like this:

“How a mathematician/ an engineer solved the conflict”

You must appreciate wit and sense of humor of the person who modified the argument presented in the original image.

There Is No Final Truth.

This simple evolution of a very common internet template invites a question. What is the real truth? What is the truest truth? What is that one answer that can answer all the questions? If something exists in truth, then how would I verify that it is “the truth”?

At first one might think that these are such foolish questions. Truth can be established by experimentation, demonstration, repeatability/ reproducibility, comparison, consistency, contradiction/ counterexamples.

Take for example,

Q1: how would one calculate the time taken by the ball dropped from certain height on the Earth to reach the ground?

A1: The answer is by using Newton’s kinematic equations.

Q2: How the kinematic equations were developed?

A2: By using Newton’s law of gravitation and the law of motion

Q3: How these laws were developed?

A3: Newton studied the motion of moon and earth, developed some mathematics to explain that behavior. That math remains consistent to explain the scenario of the motion of the ball dropped from certain height.

Now from here the real fun begins,

Q4: If Newton’s law of gravitation and laws of motion are consistent and hence true then why did they fail to explain the different/anomalous motion of the planet Mercury around the Sun?

A4: The truth presented in Newton’s laws of gravitation and motions are a special case of the higher and more inclusive, exhaustive truth of Einstein’s relativity.

Q5: Why Newton’s truth is not the complete/ ultimate truth?

A5: Newton assumed Gravitational as a universal force of attraction, inertia of every object in the universe, concepts of the balanced force.

Q6: Did Newton made mistake in “assuming” certain things for the sake of establishing the proof and its mathematics? Because, Einstein certainly didn’t assume those things and still his theory of relativity can prove the arguments covered by Newton.

A6: Yes, looks like Newton assumed gravity as a force of attraction where things will get “pulled” towards heavier objects or fall into them. Whereas Einstein established this as wrong and proved that Gravity is actually a “push” created due the curvature in space-time.

Now from hereon, if one remains careful enough then that person can land into the territory of quantum mechanics to prove that Einstein was wrong (in a way). The failure that connect the Theory of relativity and quantum mechanics is why we are still uncertain what is the ultimate truth that will answer all the questions there exist. (Trust me the answer is definitely not “42”!)

So, if we keep on asking the question to each and every truth, will we reach the ultimate truth? Will that be the ultimate knowledge? Will that help us define the absoluteness of the knowledge?

Philosophers have argued (literally and figuratively) for centuries about the acceptability of any truth as “the truth”. Epistemology deals with the theory of knowledge, how a belief and opinion differ from the truth, if given argument is true then how it becomes the truth- what is its validity, justification?

So, when one starts to question things continuously there will be three possible cases explaining how the things will end into. This condition is famously known as Agrippa’s Trilemma or the Münchhausen trilemma in philosophy.

In really simple words, the trilemma says that it is impossible to prove whether certain truth is really true because at the last end of this truth there will always be some unjustified, non-contradictory fact which cannot be proved by using other proofs in existence.

Let see in detail what is this trilemma and the its legacy in epistemology.

The Münchhausen Trilemma

Baron Münchhausen is a fictional character created by German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in his book “Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia”. Münchhausen is a person who has done many impossible things like fighting a forty-foot crocodile, and traveling to the Moon. The book is a satire. (Baron Münchhausen is German Don Quixote per say!)

So, there is a story where Baron Münchhausen is drowning in the water while riding on his horse but soon he realizes that he can lift himself from the water just by pulling his hair. Hence, he pulls his hair and comes out of that mire/ quicksand with his horse.

Münchhausen saves himself along with the horse from drowning by pulling himself by his hair!

Do you understand how it worked? How could one pull himself out of an unsupported marshy land without any support? Where did Münchhausen pivot to rest himself? The story is foolish!

So, how did Münchhausen come out of mire without any support? If he was successful in his rescue, he would have definitely used some pivot, some support!

In the similar emotion, any argument to be proven true will need another supporting true argument. This “primary supporting true argument” will also need another “secondary supporting true argument”. You might have understood where we are going with this. If this keeps on progressing further and we keep questioning the complementary true arguments which are supporting the main truth then we will end up in three possible scenarios, which are “the trilemmas” as follows:

If we keep on questioning anything, the proofs will:

Given proof will be followed by other distinct proofs which further will be proved by other more distinct proofs leading to infinite chain of proofs – The regressive argument
A proof will be proved by another proof based on the prejudice that it is consistent in many cases so, as it is consistent then it must be true hence the main proof is true – The circular argument
The proof will be accepted as the truth as there is no proven counterargument or any contradicting observation to falsify it – The dogmatic argument

Resolving the Trilemma

Explaining these trilemmas, we can say that these three trilemmas can be solved by following ways:

Infinitism: there will be an infinite chain of justifications for every truth. It will never end.

Remember that child who annoys their parents with a new question to every answer they give. That child indirectly knows infinite reasoning! (somehow!) A “patient” parent can go on answering that child’s each and every question!

Coherentism: there will be recurring loop of beliefs based on some other beliefs. These beliefs will prove each other.

You know your friend is telling you the truth because you have always seen him/her telling you the truth. It is consistent with his behavior. As you “believe” that he/ she tells the truth, whatever is told by them would also be true. (But who knows!)

Foundationalism: the chain of justifications will end at an argument which is accepted as the truth without any other proof and/or because there is no contraction available to this argument. It becomes accepted as an axiom which lies at the foundation of everything.

The matter was accepted to be made up of smallest invisible particle called atom and based on that many good theories explaining reaction stoichiometry, formation of molecules and thereby compounds was explained. We now know that atom can constitute further divisible particles thereby upgrading the theory further on to cover more generalized cases till quantum systems.

Similarly, Newton’s ideas which we discussed in the start rested on some foundation which proved many truths based on that foundation. It was the failure of that foundation which could not explain the motion of mercury. Einstein’s new foundation embraced wider foundation where Newton’s math becomes a special case. We will keep on upgrading our foundations.

Skepticism, Agrippa and the Suspension of the Judgement

There was a school of Greek philosophers who questioned the very existence of the knowledge. They were “skeptical”, “doubtful” about everything thereby forming the school of Skepticism in philosophy. The reason to question everything available around us was due to the ways through which we understand these things. There is a gap between how we experience things around us through our senses and what these things really are. (What we see in desert looking like a lake is actually a mirage) There will always be some gap between appearance and reality. So, what we are believing to be true does not necessarily requires to remain true. The reality might be totally different. Not only different but reality can be subjective meaning that what a person has experienced from a thing can be totally different from what another person has experienced, and both stand true because of the individuality of their ways of experiencing the reality. Both sides will be true due to distinct and unprovable subjectivity. Bertrand Russel in his book the Problems of Philosophy has clearly discussed this as the limitations of our senses and the nature of reality. these limitations of our senses bring in that subjectivity in our truths hence they are our versions of truths which may be the truths for others. So, the early idea was to question everything to suspend both beliefs, experiences or the versions of the truth.

The problem which is created here is that if people become doubtful about everything around them, then they will end up in questioning their own existence. This question of existence will further lead to infinite chain thereby rendering useless, worthless, and futile venture. That is exactly why Socrates pursued ethics where “Why to live?” is not that much important and where “How to live?” is much more important.

One of the important philosophers called Pyrrho ((360-270 BCE) traveled with the army of Alexander to India where he met some “naked philosophers” (gymnosophists) who explained to him the reality of life. That there is no such thing as true or false, nothing is just or unjust, neither is honorable or dishonorable. No belief or experience is true or false. From these naked philosophers (I think these were the ancient groups of “Naga Sadhus” which exist even in our time today). These learnings focus on not having any judgement thereby rejecting any judgement, suspending any judgement.

This gave rise to the formation of five tropes for suspension of judgement which were developed by Agrippa who came later and expanded the understandings of Pyrrho.

These five tropes go like this:

When the views are conflicting between common people and the philosophers then we must suspend that judgement – unacceptable due to inconsistency – Dissent
When one is justifying a claim then that claim must be appealed by a prior claim which will end in infinite regress, so we must suspend that judgement – Progress ad infinitum
Everything is relative, things appear right or wrong based on the condition in which they were observed and the environments in which they were judged, so we must suspend that judgement – Relation
When a judgment is proved to be true based on an assumption and if that assumption itself is unsupported then we must suspend that judgement – Assumption
When a truth invokes another proof which creates the circularity of justifications then we must suspend that judgement – Circularity

The beauty of the Agrippa’s five tropes is that it brings in the relativity in our process of understanding the truths of our lives. I would say that Agrippa solved the problem of establishing the truth by the process of elimination. In a very smart way, instead of proving something directly to be true, we can work around the facts surrounding given argument. Eliminating the arguments in the proof by implementing these five tropes can at least reduce the size of the problem thereby keeping all the possibilities of proving it to be true always open. The beauty is in the opportunities to upgrade the foundations!

This philosophy of skepticism created the foundation of modern philosophy and thereby modern science and mathematics. Some ideas explained in this trilemma remain consistent with the Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem which explains why mathematics rather the reality itself is inconsistent. There will always be something unprovable in given domain of system which will demand to expand that system to a totally new system of knowledge thereby upgrading the existing foundations of our understanding of the nature and the reality and thereby our fields knowledge. That is exactly why Newton’s ideas even though were limited to some special cases are important because Einstein wouldn’t have had the foundation to build upon something. We will always be creating some general understanding of the universe which later will surely become a special case in our understanding. That is also why questioning everything is important in the process of developing fundamental understanding. It is the philosophy of skepticism which empowers us to stay humble and rediscover the reality in which we already exist.

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 never know due to the mortal limitations. Miyamoto Musashi’s idea of the absolute wisdom through the concept Void transcends the boundaries of human life and time.

Miyamoto Musashi’s philosophy for 21^st century

After disseminating his lifelong wisdom in a very systematic way through four books named as the Ground Book, the Water Book, the Fire Book, and the Wind Book representing the philosophies to fight the battles, wars and survive through the challenges of the life, Miyamoto Musashi concludes his learnings in last book – the Book of the Void. On the scale of writing, it is not even a book. The readers will feel like they are reading the last page of the book. This shortness of the last book – the book of Void is very intentional by Miyamoto-san. Again, as his suggestions go – one has to really appreciate what he is trying to communicate – the wisdom that which cannot be expressed, conveyed through words.

The main purpose of the Book of the Void is to make the readers aware of the things and the wisdom that they can never know. There is one danger in this process especially for those who learn only by themselves (-without a real teacher always in front of them) which Miyamoto-san was very well aware of. He tries to complete this cyclical process of gaining wisdom through self-learning in this Book of the Void.

“What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man’s knowledge.”

First, he clarifies what this is all about. Miyamoto-san first brings out the elephant in the room that there will always be something that you could never know.

“By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the Void.”

The Void thus represents the wisdom that lies beyond all that can be known by every human being. Now there is one catch in this idea. A normal person who has just started his journey on the path of wisdom will not know everything initially. So, whatever he/she does not know right now is new for him/her. Does this new wisdom which that person was unaware, which discovered during the journey represent the Void? The answer is – No. The Void is not the gap between your current understanding, current knowledge, and the knowledge you are yet to gain or understand. The Void is that which can never be known even when ‘everything that is there to know’ is known completely. And that itself is really humbling. It is about the limits of how we learn, understand the world around us. Miyamoto-san as the great teacher makes every reader aware of what the limitations of our understandings are. He wants everyone to understand that even when you know ‘everything that is there to know’, there still will be something left out because of the limitations of the ways we perceive the reality.

“People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.”

Here, Miyamoto-san very smartly makes the reader aware of what they call the Void may be and mostly will be the knowledge they are yet to gain. Again, as I explained earlier, the Void is not the gap between what you know and what all there is to be known by you. For every learner, whatever they haven’t experienced before will be new knowledge to them (which literally is the definition of ‘new’!) That will create the illusion of Void for them but the path is way long for the pursuit of true wisdom. We have this tendency of treating every new experience we come across as a very special experience and there is nothing wrong in it, but also creates an illusion of knowing the special wisdom in the person. This instigates the illusion of knowing something extraordinary, of knowing everything in the mind of that person.

Miyamoto-san thus advises the readers to recognize the confusion between the common knowledge and the real Void – the knowledge lying beyond everything that can be known.

In very simple and short words, Miyamoto-san is trying to show the expanse of the true ‘wisdom of life’ to the readers so that they will be humbled by what very small amount they know and they can know throughout their limited lifetime. Miyamoto-san idea of Void is intended to remain on the path of learning throughout the life with the awareness that there will always be something beyond our current understandings of the nature.

Being aware of the infinite extents of that which can be never known, one creates the curiosity to know everything that is there to know; it also brings in the humility for what very little one knows.

The idea of Void by Miyamoto-san is about intellectual humility and the limitations of how we understand the world around us.

Let us keep the idea of the Void aside for now. The things that we can know, the wisdom that we can have themselves are so vast in their expanse that a single mortal life cannot be sufficient to learn and grasp each and everything that is there to know. This will easily overwhelm a new learner rather everyone on such journey. Miyamoto-san knew this hence he proceeds with the ways to clear this confusion and such overwhelming feelings.

“To attain the Way of Strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With you spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.”

In simple words, the way to get everything big is to start small and build over it, follow the truest path step by step instead of getting overwhelmed by the length of the journey. Once the person becomes aware of the process, the things built over the time will help him/her to distinguish between the that which is known, that which is yet to be known and that which can never be known.

You will notice in every part of the Book of the Five Rings especially in the Wind book, Miyamoto-san suggests to learn the techniques of the other schools from a broader perspective. Even after being the greatest swordsman of his time, he was completely aware that there will always be something which can improve his existing techniques. There will always be some better ways to do the same thing. This newer, creative, and out of the box thinking is only possible for the person who understands the limitations of his mind, who is truly humble even after gaining all the wisdom in the world. Only the idea of the Void can show a complete scholar the extents of what he/she knows.

Miyamoto-san mentions the spirit of heart and mind which are emotional and intellectual aspects of personality. He further mentions the perception and sight which are the abilities to see beyond what is shown and to see the bigger picture. The journey for the true wisdom is about development of our emotions, intellect, perception, and vision. That is what life actually is! What a thought by Miyamoto-san!

“Until you realize the true Way, whether in Buddhism or in common sense, you may think that things are correct and in order. However, if we look at the things objectively, from the viewpoint of the laws of the world, we see various doctrines departing from the true Way. Know well this spirit, and with forthrightness as the foundation and the true spirit as the Way. Enact strategy broadly, correctly, and openly.”

Miyamoto Musashi holds the last but the most important (and the secret trick) in the journey for the wisdom of the life. Actually, he already hinted this secret in the early part of the Book of the Five Rings. Miyamoto-san explains that when the person on the journey for the wisdom will reach the ultimate spot (and not the end of the journey- the journey has no end – it continues in the Void) then he/she will realize that the vast expanse of knowledge that they were getting overwhelmed in the early part of their journey are actually created from the main true path of the absolute wisdom. The vast expanse of the knowledge was created due to many deviations from the ultimate path. The absolute wisdom will have that clarity as Miyamoto-san explains. That is the exact reason why he already said

“If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything”

Once you get the absolute clarity of what you know then you will never feel the need to know each and everything. You are zero and infinity at the same time, you are nothing and everything at the same time. You will try to understand everything based on the absolute wisdom you already have as all the remaining knowledge is just a deviation from that absolute wisdom.

“In the void is virtue and no evil.”

The acceptance of that which can be never known will actually make the person humble. Many will think that the idea of not knowing everything will actually create maniacs due to that unsettling urge to know everything but the exactly opposite will happen. When one accepts that the journey for the wisdom is a never-ending, then the smartest choice is to embark on this journey with minimum possible baggage. The true scholar will get rid off every deviated knowledge from the path of the true wisdom to reduce their load in this journey, they will use their limited but ultimate wisdom in every possible and new way to understand the new knowledge and the knowledge which cannot be known.

You must appreciate how great thought Miyamoto-san put forward many years ago with close to zero resources. That is what is great about the Book of the Five Rings and especially the Book of the Void.

The Book of Void actually speaks about everything through the idea of nothing. This can be put down into some words only by the scholars like Miyamoto Musashi. That also the reason why the Book of Five Rings is not just a guide for war strategy and the ways of the warriors. The Book of Five Rings is more than that, it is about the ways to live a life full of true wisdom. True wisdom holds everything in the idea of the awareness of nothing.

The Spirit of the Void for the modern world

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance”
Confucius

The initial realizations of the idea of the Void are presented to make the readers aware of what small they actually know and what vast they are yet to know. When one accepts that there is still more to know and learn many things and even after knowing/learning everything, there will be something which can never be known due to the limitations of human life, at that exact moment the person becomes the container to the ultimate wisdom.

Void and the Incompleteness of the Mathematics

Modern mathematics and the development of completely new mathematical concepts are based on the world-famous Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. In simple worlds, certain truths in a system must be accepted true without a proof (and there are no contradictions to them till now) to prove all the remaining truths of the system. If in such system a new fact arises which cannot be proven by any existing truths and is never contradicted then such non-contradicted and unprovable truth will create bigger system of newer truths. (you can read in detail about this in my older post). The new uncontradicted, unprovable truth in the system lies out side the existing system of truths. It can be only understood by the person who is open to new possibilities outside the existing system.

The Void and The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Miyamoto-san even in his days was aware of this world-famous psychological effect now that we have a proper name for it. Miyamoto Musashi knew how half-knowledge – limited knowledge creates the illusion of knowing everything and can even blind the master of masters personality. He wanted the new learners to remain humble not get overconfident during the start of the long journey and he knew that the one who has traveled enough through this journey will have the humility for what great they have achieved. (see my older post to know more about the Dunning Kruger effect)

“The opposite of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge”
Stephen Hawking

The Void and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Modern Scholar

Miyamoto-san’s idea of the Void also highlights how we are only able to learn what we are able to grasp. This actually creates a biased learning process, which is dominant in those who learn things on their own. Even for people who are masters of their fields and have proper guidance available externally, it is impossible to learn something new and groundbreaking unless they are receptive towards it. Ralph Waldo Emerson in his world-famous speech The American Scholar explained how exactly this learning works. (read in detail about the American scholar in my older post1, post 2, post 3)

The Void and Einstein

Einstein’s idea of relativity was rejected by many scholar scientists in the early stages because they were unable to accept and understand the ideas of higher dimensions in the fabric of the space-time. (That is exactly why Einstein is known as a peerless genius!) So, you can only learn what you are able to perceive and grasp. Miyamoto-san’s philosophy of Void encourages to become open to that which cannot be known which lies beyond our grasp.

The Void and The Quantum Mechanics

While we are on the cusp on the quantum mechanical revolution in modern world, it was Max Planck in quantum mechanics’ early emergence when he quoted about the nature of the reality we live in and our inability to understand such quantum mechanical reality. Upon understanding the mind-boggling nature of the quantum mechanics Max Planck maybe got a peek into the Void – that which can never be known due to our physical limitations. For a swordsman as Miyamoto Musashi, the philosophy of the Void stood the test of the time.

It also shows how absolute wisdom remains consistent throughout the times, branches of knowledge and generations. (find more about how we have realized the existence of Void through one interesting concept in QM in my older post)

Conclusion

Thus, the Book of Void by Miyamoto Musashi is about remaining humble about the extents of the knowledge we have right now, the knowledge that is yet to be known and the knowledge that is beyond the limits of our understanding which is the real Void.

The concept of Void clarifies three main points:

– 1 –

What you know is very small compared to what all there is which can be known.

– 2 –

You can know everything that is there to know and when you will know everything that can be known you will understand that everything that can be known is just the result of the many deviations from the absolute knowledge.

Knowing everything is not about understanding everything individually like a memory bank, rather it is knowing a thing in its entirety and every perspective

This clears one fundamental doubt which everyone has in their own learning journey. We think that if we know many things then we will have knowledge of everything. For the same reason we think that a wise man has many tools in his bag to deal with every problem.

But it is exactly opposite when it comes to the concept of wisdom through Void.

A wise man knows single concept which touches all that is there to know, this single concept brings in the clarity. A true wise man never carries a bag full of different tools to solve different problems, he carries the distilled understanding of how to develop the tools according to the problem.

Thus, once you are able to know everything that is there to know you will find a single thread connecting to all such fields of knowledge. You will never get overwhelmed by the amount of information and expanse of the various fields of the knowledge. That single thread of your wisdom will bring clarity, will bring in virtue in your life, will calm down your mind

– 3 –

When you will succeed in knowing everything then you will truly understand the boundaries of how you understand the universe. This will be the moment when you will accept the existence of the true Void. This acceptance will make you humble and even after knowing everything that is there to know you will embark on the new journey of that which can never be known. That will be your transcendence.

One has to very deeply think and understand and appreciate how Miyamoto Musashi in his very short but important “Book of the Void” distilled the fundamental wisdom of humanity. No wonder this concept of Void is always peeking its head out in different events, different lives, different breakthroughs, and different eras of the humanity. The truest wisdom always remains consistent throughout and it never fears to upgrade itself based on the new learnings. The Book of Void is about what small amount we actually know, what vast ocean that is there to know and what massive expanse lies beyond that ocean as the Void – the world beyond our understandings.

Links for further reading:

The American Scholar – Man as a University

Part-3 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous speech called “The American Scholar” was delivered in 1837 in front of the American youth. Emerson wanted the youth of that time to understand what it takes to create new knowledge and breakthroughs. The origin and legacy of knowledge, importance of past knowledge through books, importance of bringing and testing ideas into the reality to find the absolute truth, the greatness and vastness of we as a human-beings and the life we live are some important aspects of Emerson’s speech. His sheer vocabulary rather choice of words is more than enough create an impression which will last for thousands of years. Emerson’s ideas in this speech are based on very fundamental ideas of knowledge, biases in human thought processes, loopholes in human psychology which are still relevant with 21st century.
There are Part 1 and Part 2 which have dived deeper into these important parts of The American Scholar.
We will see in this Part 3 what were the closing thoughts and advice, instructions Ralph Waldo Emerson gave in his The American Scholar speech. The closing parts of this speech covered the idea of Man as a University. It is the beauty of Emerson’s thoughts which attributed the vast sources of infinite knowledge to each every person’s life. This not only gave importance to every person as a human being whose soul, mind themselves are the nature but this also brought a sense of responsibility as an original and objective thinker in every person of the nation. The speech truly transcended the eras and generations. The revolution in the field of knowledge by considering Man as a University itself is one of the core idea of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s thoughts in his speech The American Scholar.

Objectivity – The Job of A True Scholar

“The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson has simplified the jobs of a true scholar in the last sections of his speech. The only job of a true scholar is to guide the humanity through his observations. Emerson pointed out that during the process of becoming overly attached to their own vocation, people have forgotten, have lost the awareness and greatness of the nature thereby their own souls. A scholar’s job is to observe the nature, put those observations before the humanity and inspire people to continue this pursuit for the absolute truth.
Emerson has attributed this task as “the highest functions of human nature”. But, this task, this journey has its challenges, it demands some sacrifices. One of them is the influence of popular opinion and the expectation of materialistic benefits. For explaining this Emerson gives example of John Flamsteed and William Herschel who incessantly observed the sky for star cataloguing. Their observations proved important for the discovery of planet Uranus. While observing the goal was not to become famous and get rewards and recognition for the discovery; rather the job they were doing was one of the most boring and mundane tasks of humanity. Flamsteed and Herschel were observing the sky and noting down their observations with only goal of understanding what is happening in the universe where they exist. The times of Herschel were the times of debates on the center of the universe. Popular opinion was that the Earth was the center of the universe (Geocentric Model of Universe); another popular opinion was that the sun was at center of the universe with earth revolving around it (Heliocentric Model of Universe). Today we know that we are not even at the center of our own galaxy milky way and it is near to impossible to ever find the center of the universe! The jobs of Flamsteed and Herschel if would have been influenced by the popular opinions surely, they would have received those accolades, prizes, fame from either of the groups promoting their own versions of truth. Instead of having that influence of opinions/ having those biases, they honestly presented themselves to the task of objectively observing the universe. And these objective observations took humanity to completely new understanding of the universe that even they wouldn’t have thought about. (See P.S. for more)

The point is that that most of the times a true scholar will be heavily influenced by biases, popular opinions, expectation of “immediate fame”, money, company of famous and influential people, hero worship; but he has to move away from these pleasures and only commit himself to this highest function which is to objectively observe and interpret the nature. Sometimes poverty and solitude will be his only companions.

“…He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one who raises himself from private considerations and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is one episode (S01E09) in Rick and Morty where Rick’s Dad is getting honored by the high class aliens of Pluto to name Pluto as a Planet so that they can continue their self benefiting activities thereby degrading the Pluto. For the good of Science Rick’s Dad comes out of the bias and the false praise, prizes, popularity from high class and renounces Pluto as a Planet.

Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon’s Rick and Morty (S01E09)

Emerson beautifully told what has to be done but he also told how it is possible.

Confidence and Bravery of Self Expression

For understanding the things ahead, one must not forget that Emerson established an observation that our soul is the impression, the reflection of nature around us. The limitations, boundaries of our soul are the limits of the nature around us – our understanding of it. (Emerson already established that “Know Thyself” and “Study Nature” mean nothing but the same- See in Part 1)
Emerson talks about confidence of a scholar in his job, in himself. When a person will truly engross himself in his own objective studies free from all the influences, then only he will discover that absolute knowledge. Emerson attributed all such influences as mere appearance and tells everyone to look underneath them. When a true scholar will approach this job of observation and study of himself with confidence the nature will reveal itself. When this scholar will discover this truth about himself, he will literally find the truth of all for all nature resides in him.

“He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson again highlights that the journey of understanding the universe, the nature is not outwards rather it is inwards. One only has to be confident and honest about his intentions. After conquering this self-doubt, a true scholar will have to dare to present his objective observations to the biased crowd.
The following lines by Emerson are uncountably powerful and very motivational for every person (not only artists) of every generation who has embarked on such journeys in their lives.

“The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in cities vast find true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses, until he finds that he is the complement of his hearers; – that they drink his words because he fulfills for them their own nature; the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public and universally true. The people delight in it; the better part of every man feels—This is my music; this is myself.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson informs that the scholar is not inherently protected like women and children. Once he gathers this bravery to challenge the conventions, the people who were resisting him at first will also accept his ideas, the falsehoods they were carrying as their truths will shed down as his ideas are originated from the pure and absolute knowledge; people will find the connect to his communications from his ideas of his soul thereby ultimately the great nature itself.

Fluidity of thoughts

Even though we are unable to understand the whole picture of nature in single glance that should not stop us from updating that picture. Emerson understood that the knowledge which humanity has gained till date is not complete, there will be always something missing hence it cannot be trusted completely but that also should not restrict us from challenging hat has been established already. Emerson is expecting fluidity of thoughts, ideas here as is the nature.

“Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the momentum of figuring out our individual lives, everyone has intentionally ignored this imperfection of knowledge and has forgotten to challenge the conventions. There is no one to blame for this ignorance but a true scholar’s great job becomes important in this situation.
Emerson has also established his worry for conversion of humanity into a herd, a group of blind followers, blind worshipers. In order to simplify our lives, we have chosen to follow the paths created by our ancestors instead of challenging them to refine the knowledge further. This simplification of life is closely related to the search for money and power for they are the most influential means to ease the lives. Emerson here suggests for the revolution through “the Culture”.

“The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the up-building of a man.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Through culture Emerson actually expected the richness of individual lives. The lives where materialistic means lie to the bottom and the search for knowledge, up-gradation of knowledge, philosophical up-gradation of humanity is at the top. Humanity should not limit its limitless mind, soul to some materialistic thing or a person to worship – history has many examples that we have already done that many times.

“The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Age of Revolution – Inner Development, Relevance of Knowledge and Man as a University

Emerson is expecting amalgamation of all types of ideas in the current age through the scholars. For that he gives references of the different ages in history like early Classical Greek Era known for developing foundations of knowledge, Romantic ages and Philosophical ages. Here he establishes that even though these ages are independent of each other ad existed in different timelines; according to Emerson they are always getting reflected in different phases of every person. All these eras actually exist in every person. Thus, Emerson wants to bring all the streams of knowledge, all the poles/ the extremes of different streams of knowledge in front of each other.
The aim of bringing everything and everything contradicting on a common table is to create relevance of knowledge for humanity. Through this, the knowledge will serve at its highest capacity for the betterment of humanity. Emerson wants to bring all so called “Hi-Fi” knowledge stream to a simple test of “relevance” because if it is not relevant then what purpose can knowledge serve for the people, for the humanity?

“Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

These ideas were revolutionary for the times when the pursuit of knowledge was limited to high class people and not to the people working for the soil.
Emerson closes his speech with one important thought of development from inside. He expects every person to play a part in the development of humanity as a whole. All the ideas presented by Emerson represent decentralization of power and involvement of people from grass-root level; it is the only reason for which every life gets uniqueness and importance. Emerson’s important idea of a man as a society and a society as a man gets concluded in the closing sentences of his speech. Emerson expects every person to contribute to the new revolution of the society by starting the inner journey. Patience is the final virtue which he instructs everyone to have to start this journey.

“The world is nothing, the man is all”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

One has to understand how all the ideas given by Emerson are still relevant today. The ideas to highlight are confidence in self, search for real freedom, bravery to present and interpret the objective observations against the conventions, remaining free from popular and materialistic influences, fluidity of thoughts, importance of inner development, creating knowledge of relevance, and patience.

-The End-

(P.S. – The observations made by William Herschel were majorly intended for mapping the Universe so that its center can be located. Later on, the objective observations led to discovery of Universe. After a century the observations became important when scientists found an irregularity in the orbit of Uranus around the Sun. This irregularity of meant that either Newton’s Law of Gravitation is wrong or there is one more planet whose mass is affecting the orbit of Uranus. After additional observations, a new planet ‘Neptune’ was discovered by scientists thereby proving the indirect and valuable legacy of knowledge created by Herschel and Flamsteed.)

Read Part 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

Read Part 2 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

Read Part 3 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American Scholar – The Books, The Actions, Intellectual Humility and The Dictionary of Life

Part-2 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay called “The American Scholar” made an attempt to move people out of their immediate achievements of separation from the English Government and inspired them to create something new, create and value the processes for building strong future generations and deep knowledge of nature. Even though this essay was more relevant for the American generation which was largely dependent on their English legacy, it still remains relevant because of the crispness of truth it holds for every new generation of humanity. The speech/ essay will always transcend the understandings of every generation. See Part 1 to understand how Emerson sets up the ideas of the nature, the knowledge, the purpose of education system and the true scholar in the starting part of his world famous essay.

Now, moving on to Emerson’s advise for a true scholar.

Books – The Mind of the Past and its Blind Worshipers

Emerson wants to establish the ways in which the past wisdom was transferred to the next generation. He refers to it as a distillation process. Over the period of humanity, the crude things in experiences, events lost their unwanted parts and went on to become concise, crisp through books. This process created the truths, the facts. The cruder the event, the experiences the less crisper the truth. Emerson explains the imperfections in this process of truth generation by giving analogy of Vacuum Pump. As no vacuum pump can generate the perfect vacuum, no machine can give out exact amount of work to the exact amount of energy input, the process of creating the truth is also not completely efficient. Thus, it is absolutely impossible to establish the ultimate truth in a single attempt, in single past. The best version of the truth we have today is the truth that has stood the test of time, the truth which has been upgraded over the time. It is very interesting to understand how Emerson thought over the ideas of the books and the evolution of truth through them. He connected a very technical idea of efficiency of any mechanical system to a more abstract idea of the extent of the truth value of knowledge.

Emerson also highlights that the age-old books will not stand the test of today’s truths as there will be may stages of evolution in between which will lose their footprint over time. For example, the idea of the earth being carried on the back of the turtles, the elephants, the snake’s head the earth being flat is lost to the ideas of eclipses, the seasons and the actual images of the earth (even though there are still some admirers to these ideas! And it is also important to understand how people interpreted them)

Thus, Emerson in a sense warns every scholar, every person to not become just an admirer, a follower, a worshiper of the book. Because, the understanding and the experience with which the book was written, the truth was conveyed will not exactly be the same experience, the same understanding for the reader. The inefficiency of the system is the boundary of the reader which can only show him the limited understanding of the truth.

“Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and soul. Hence the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees. This is bad; this is worse than it seems.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson expresses his sorrow for the fate of the books. He calls the people who blind worship the books “the Bibliomaniacs” and “the Emendators” as in the editors of the truths who create their versions of the truth. Emerson expects a true scholar to not become a book worshiper or a past worshiper. Worshiping the past is the death of the evolutionary thinking thereby restricting the flow of generational distillation of true knowledge. Emerson wants a true scholar to lose the idea of a book lover, book worshiper and become a genius. In some way Emerson tries to define a genius. For that he uses the idea of “an active soul”. An active soul is free from the blind influences of the past and thereby the books. It is not following a defined orbit around the truths from the books, rather an active soul itself is capable of creating a system around which others will orbit. The teachings of the schools/colleges, the subjective truths of past from books are questioned by this active soul further called as the genius by Emerson. This Genius is responsible for the creation of the next version of the absolute truth; there is a sense of progression this genius brings. For that he should break out of the past, come out of merely following the books, look forward to the future. Emerson mentions how mere worshiping of Shakespearean pieces killed the future creative progression of English literature. Many creators became over influenced by Shakespeare thereby nothing original happened for 200 years in literature.

Someone might think here that Emerson is undermining the importance of the books, rather he further explains the impact of books in the hard times of any true Genius, any true Scholar. Books serve as the best companion anyone can have in their idle time, they are the kick starters of every genius mind, they are there to initiate the spark in every creative mind but not to drive it.

“When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must,—when the soul seeth not, when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining,—we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson gives the examples of some great English poets like Chaucer, Marvell, Dryden. He says that even after passage of many long years the ability of these poets to connect with our minds is really fascinating which is possible only because of the books. This also means that these ideas of poets wee futuristic, visionary enough that they are relevant after hundreds of years. Books are the best option to carry this vision.

Innocence of Knowledge and Awareness of Media

Emerson warns every person of the books they are consuming. He explains this with the analogy of survival of human body. The very innocent nature of human mind and the knowledge both can be conditioned with any thought from the book leading to the fact from the book to become the ultimate truth for the person. Emerson wants everyone to not accept the truth of the books for the truth of life. He wants every true scholar to become a selective reader and follower of the books. Emerson explains that the books display only that part which its creator wanted to show to the readers, this also means that whatever we are reading is just a small part of the authors life not the whole. Thus, when a powerful person, scholar (mentally and physically) encounters books, he holds the power to materialize, personify any and every thought from the books. It is the skill of a true scholar to selectively find the ideas and the versions of the truth, instead of going full on literal and thereby accepting them as truth. In simple words, Emerson expects every reader to get the hold of the ideas and inspirations from the books and not blindly follow them word to word. A genius, a true scholar thus knows what to pick from every book.

In our daily lives today, books are not the only source of information. Emerson’s warnings have become more real in today’s times. We must understand that every information we get from media is not a knowledge hence we must be selective and aware about the content we are consuming. Emerson was not highlighting only the academic noise of knowledge in schools and colleges; he was also highlighting the overall noise of information around us in our daily routine. This noise has become more effective in our generation through social media, portable/digital media, user selective media. Beware of the media you are consuming, try to find the pattern in your content and break out of it. Otherwise, your “curated content” will keep on narrowing your perspective.

Building on this Emerson shifts his focus to the educational institutes. He clarifies that though books and learnings from the past are inseparable and important part of learning and educational institute have done a great work in executing this part, they have completely exploited this part to worse extents. Educational institutions have also established a business on these tools of knowledge to grow rich in materialistic forms. Hence, Emerson also reminds the policymakers to realize the truth that even single part of the absolute truth, the knowledge is powerful enough break this whole commercialized system of education.

Emerson also predicted the future that if the educational systems keep on commercializing the book following, past following, mugging/ cramming up the books culture, create an assembly line of scholars and professionals, even though these colleges will have fat bank balances, funds, even though they will grow richer and richer, their importance/ quality of the education they provide will go on degrading; these institute will lose their public importance.

And look what is happening with most of the education systems of our generation.

Action Speaks Louder Than Words (and that is not the end of the story)

“There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, —as unfit for any handiwork or public labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called “practical men” sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson never fell short while explaining the importance and power of new ideas, knowledge they create and the legacy they leave behind for future generations. But he made sure that people wont’s god worship the ideas they have. He wants every thinker to execute their ideas, convert them into actions.

“(The action) It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all hours.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson has identified one common trait that scholars of all generations hold. All scholars, intellectuals are known to be recluse, always in their own mind and there is nothing wrong about it. The ideas sometimes can carry them far away from the reality. Sometimes new and original ideas are so rare and powerful that one has to embark on a solo journey to discover them completely. One has to understand when this pursuit over-influences their mind, it takes a toll over their minds. The separation of our intangible mind from reality eventually has a bad ending. The neuroticism, the inability to communicate such feelings to others, conversion of such thoughts to some extreme explosive actions and consequences thereafter are one part of intellectual society. The mad geniuses, super smart but cunning villains in our pop culture and real-life stories of smart criminals, smugglers, murderers, sociopaths are the exact reflection of such people in today’s society.

Emerson wants every scholar to come out of their overthinking and the comforts of the world of their own ideas. Emerson knew and made others aware that anything is possible in your own world and as it is created by your own ideas, you get attached to it. You will never want it to disappear and will avoid to test them with the reality. This goes on and on and your mind will be full of many new ideas. They will keep on expanding but they will never become real.

Emerson wants every true scholar to test their ideas in reality and break out of the comforts of the world in their own minds.

“Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson gives advice to future scholars in advance that this fascination of their own beautiful ideas, the comforts of the worlds in their minds may seem beautiful but it is addictive and never-ending- it’s like analysis paralysis leading to inaction.

We always fear that our beautiful ideas will cease to exist when tested with reality, it feels like a part of us is died and deep thinkers, over-thinkers can connect with this on different level. But one must also accept that the death of such non-real ideas is one integral part of the process of the discovery of absolute truth. Death of “wishful thinking” is also one important aspect of every true scholar rather every person’s character development. Emerson instructs that this process of testing ideas through real and concrete actions will be boring, more problem creating, anger generating-frustrating but one has to endure through them. One must not lose the opportunity to test their ideas in reality.

“(Action)…It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all hours.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson gives the example of our childhood events and how they made us who we are today. We are what we did and what happened to us in our childhood. We are not what we used to think in our childhood. (Like how most of us wanted to become a Pilot and Astronaut and look how many of us really want that today).

The ideas not converted to action lose their existence in two ways. Either (and most of the times) they change instantly into new idea, something else due to their fickle nature or they get rotten in a corner of our mind thereby indirectly disfiguring our adult mind. It is very interesting observation by Emerson; he identifies that our behavior, habits, inspirations are rooted in our childhood. Further on and most importantly Emerson points out that it is not our whole childhood that gets carried over in our adult behavior, habits, inspirations; it is the events and our actions, our responses to events in our childhood that shape us in future. Childhood thoughts, ideas converted into actions are actually etched on our personality forever. And only thoughts and ideas limited to our minds are lost forever. Same is happening with us every day, it is just that Emerson makes everyone aware of the importance of converting our ideas into actions by presenting a very intimate and common example.

“The new deed is yet a part of life, -remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson puts one excellent insight in front of everyone. The actions and not ideas become the subconscious part of our life. These actions solely initiate the cascades of event which are always unfolding in our current life events.

“Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar and sing.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Dictionary of Life

“Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions has the richest return of wisdom.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great thing about Emerson’s persona is that not only he instructed the scholars but he also gave the directions to start from. Emerson makes everyone aware of the types of actions they can take and their consequences. He wants everyone to understand the nature of outcomes from the action we will take to bring our ideas into reality. As actions will be driven by ideas, there will be times when actions following one wrong idea will not yield good and favorable results. Some actions will feel worthless, unidirectional, single faced, niche and they will only reveal their nature after we see their results. So, does that mean that if actions are more important than ideas and if actions are anyways most of the times going to be worthless then why actions should be one important part of a true scholar? After all most of the times, they are not proving the point of their superiority over the ideas. At least ideas give some type of comfort to our mind.

Emerson says that a true scholar’s life is not only about thinking beyond limits and taking actions on it. If thinking and acting on them was the only purpose of life then everyone would have craved for acting on the ideas which is not the reality. Systematic thinking and bringing them into reality through actions is just one dimension of being a true scholar. Before being true scholars, we are human beings, we have lives.

“If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Actions, Pasts, Ideas are part of that bigger life. Hence, Emerson focuses ono living the life, which is possible through having different types of experiences, be mindful of each and every experience in your life. Hence the concepts of Actions, Pasts, Ideas are just “vocabulary”, where life is bigger than that, life is a “dictionary”.

In simple words, the things that we are trying to learn and think beyond and bring them into the reality are a just part of bigger reality that is life. So, Emerson wants every true scholar “to be alive” to live through the life they have. Emerson wants everyone to have a life relevant scholastic aptitude, which anyone can have (though it sounds “sophisticated”)

Getting things done for proving worth of ideas is not the final job of a true scholar. Life is bigger than ideas and their execution.

The Great Principle of Undulation in Nature and Influence of Popular Opinions

When Emerson suggests every true scholar to live a live of rich experiences, be aware of the reality around them – he gives everyone the idea of one confusion that will always tempt them to have a bias. Emerson says that the “Polarity” is the law of nature.

In his own words-

“…inspiring and expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold;”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

These extremes in every natural phenomenon creates a wave, an “undulation” in nature. Which is one inseparable part of life thereby every human soul. Every idea, every action a scholar takes will have a wavy nature, there will be some part of idea, of actions which will dominate over their opposite one for a time. Emerson says that actions, ideas, knowledge, thinking these are just the resources for a true scholar. Even after losing these resources a true scholar will not lose his character, he will not lose who he is, his identity.

“Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson establishes this to warn every true scholar and remind their real pursuit in life. Emerson through this wants to communicate that there will be times when a scholar will have temptation to follow a popular opinion, he will feel bad for not getting proper recognition for his/her achievements. Things will happen which will force them to give up on their lively pursuits, to give up on living for some materialistic means. In such moments, a true scholar should never give up on his character.

“Character is higher than intellect.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson actually removed a fine line which used to exist between the uneducated, working class and the studying class or so-called scholastic class – educated class. Emerson clarified that a scholar is not the one who joins one institution, secures a diploma/ degree, attends office, decides actions, creates policies and drives the “less intellectual” life around him. What is important to become a true scholar is “the character” – “the attitude”. Every person can have that; hence Emerson instructs every scholar to have that intellectual humility and not get fooled by the popular opinions of “white collar jobs” of scholars. He indirectly establishes that people who did not come from the system have more power to create a disruption in the system, to create a new and positive change in the system.

“Not out of those on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature; out of terrible Druids and Berserkers come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

This really holds true in today’s times too. There are many proofs from famous startups, fortune companies, literary and art schools that formal education is not the indicator of creative disruption in our society. Revolutionary people were never dependent on the systems to create new ideas and bring about new change. Thus, Emerson’s age-old ideas resonate with the facts of today.

A true scholar according to Emerson is the one who has this intellectual humility; who understands that having and creating great ideas, executing them to reality is just a part of life. A true scholar is not limited to thinking, executing and learning only. A true scholar has the purpose of living a life beyond the system created; a true scholar being an active part of his society and can come from any part of it. This idea itself is very powerful.

There will one last – third part on how Emerson closes his ideas, requests, guidance to the scholars of every generations.

– End of Part 2 –

Read Part 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

Read Part 2 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

Read Part 3 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American Scholar – The Scholar, the Nature, the Origins and the Legacy of Knowledge

Part-1 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World

The success of any society can be easily attributed to the success of its young generation thereby the institutions that develop them. There will be some moments in everyone’s life where we might have questioned the failure of the education systems from where we “passed out”. We realize at these moments how mechanical the systems have become. Even after realizing this fact, we are always on a search for a tag, a dream career, a dream job to which we wish stick forever till death (sadly, in some cases that is the only option). There are many examples where people in their last moments wished that they would have done things differently, explored some new ventures, dared for some things and would have taken that risk but now they don’t have enough time to do so. The idea of a death with no regrets is strong in today’s times; ideas like YOLO (You Only Live Once), FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), FIRE (Financially Independent to Retire Early) are the examples of this ideology, there is nothing wrong in it. It is the result of what recent generations have experienced. Also, this is not new in history. After a horrible black death in Europe people appreciated the value of life and their body which is always reflected through the arts, literature and creative ventures from the renaissance era.

The thing is that when a large group of people try to follow an ideology on a significantly larger scale, there comes a time of saturation, a plateau of losing momentum which sustains forever and becomes the habit of generation, a trait of that generation. We lose the sense of the processes in order to achieve some short-lived pleasures, short living achievements. And after achieving that thing we lose the sense of our being, although there are many exceptions, there always are. The main feeling of clueless-ness after achieving something is the exact reflection of our one-dimensional pursuits for something, it is the proof that in the pursuit of something valuable to us we lose the importance and intricacies of the process we are going through. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay called “The American Scholar” made an attempt to move people out of their immediate achievements of separation from the English Government and inspired them to create something new, create and value the processes for building strong future generations and deep knowledge of nature. Even though this essay was more relevant for the American generation which was largely dependent on their English legacy – the one from which they were newly separated, it still remains relevant because of the crispness of truth it holds for every new generation of humanity. The speech/ essay will always transcend the understandings of every generation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson- one of the greatest philosophers, essayists, writer once gave a lecture in an American University which still seems relevant even after the passage of almost 185 years. The thoughts are so absolute that they have stood the test of time. The lecture or speech called “The American Scholar” by Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the important parts of English literature which highly focuses on the necessity and importance of originality of thoughts, their implementations through actions and the legacy/ virtues a person should leave behind for future generations.

The lecture is famously segregated into three parts. Students of literature follow following partitions to understand this essay.

The origin of knowledge, science and the influences on a scholar
The responsibilities/ duties of a scholar
The daring to create the knowledge relevant to the time

Instead of splitting this into conventional parts I will try to touch the core of Emerson’s ideas for its relevance and importance for our generation.

Origins of “the jobs” in society and The Man of Thinking

Emerson in the starting immediately establishes how the youth has become comfortable on the older foundations, infrastructures left behind by their rulers. They are just feasting on the remains of what has been left behind after victory. Emerson uses the words as “Sluggard intellect” as in the intellectuals who have become comfortable with what they have to highlight this fact. He further calls their jobs as “the apprenticeship to the leanings of the other land” to signify how there is no excitement for the breakthroughs throughout this new born nation. Every scholar has assigned themselves a tag of their “jobs” – the scholar word is not limited to the students only. Emerson is calling scholar to everyone performing their skills in a mechanical way – with some donated, left-over resources from their rulers. The message is not restricted to students only, Emerson is actually summoning every working class of people. He wants the youth of the nation to come out of the mundane tasks and the mechanical nature of the work they are doing as a scholar. Emerson wants the youth to come out of this calmness, boring mentality of doing what is assigned to venture into the endless possibilities the nature provides. He explains the unbounded nature of “The Nature”, the origin of society existing in it and the ways to come out of the mundane-ness of the jobs in this society to evolve further. For this, he starts with the origin of society and “the jobs”, “the tags” and dehumanizing, “mechanicalizing” of the field of knowledge.

Emerson puts some light on the purpose of creation of different labors, different fields of knowledge. Emerson explains that in order to function properly a man was divided into many men with certain skills, domain expertise which made the society multifaceted. But, the process of separation was exploited to extreme where it lost its real purpose. The purpose was to handle and comprehend the boundless nature but it was lost to mere sustenance and separation of humanity into materialistic classes.

“…Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The fable implies that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But, unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk and strut about so many walking monsters, -a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

The division and high focus on labor has divided society into so many parts that it has become difficult to bring them together to unite the society, the humanity. Emerson’s analogy of fountain is so powerful here. Not just American society but the whole world now has separated to such extent of cultures, borders, colors, races, histories, faiths, religions, ideologies, prejudices, resources that it is really difficult to bring them together for a greater common cause. Emerson wants everyone to lose these borders, these tags mentally in order to understand the boundless nature.

Emerson expects every person who is actually a scholar but associated themselves to a tag, a job a profession to strip off of their titles and expand their vision beyond their assigned skill. He wants everyone to transcend their own designated skill.

In today’s world, jobs, titles, posts are killing the people for who they are. No wonder we worry of AI taking over our future jobs. As AI is efficient and fast in doing such “tagged” jobs, the “repetitive” jobs many people who are doing these mundane jobs fear that AI will take over the humanity and before humanity their jobs in future. We forget that the knowledge from which we created these boring jobs is actually boundless. It is our over-simplification of life journeys and our negligence towards the process of living for the sake of the comforts of life that we decided to stick to such mechanical nature of our jobs. He gives very simple example of a farmer – how a man with knowledge of different fields of knowledge like hydrology, geography, meteorology, biology, economics, finance, mechanics, technology got converted to mere a man of profession.

“He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

He calls this process as “the Metamorphosis” with similar cases with trader, priest, attorney, mechanic, sailor.

“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson wants for everyone to come out of this oversimplification of our lives. Hence, he establishes the difference between “a thinker” and “a Man thinking”. Before becoming anything possible every scholar must understand that they are a man first, a man from the boundless nature.

“Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student’s behoof?”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

You should understand that though at the very start of his speech Emerson addresses the American Scholars by calling them so, it is very wise of him to state every man a student, a scholar at this exact moment. This is where his speech becomes open to every man. Though the address was given to the American students, Emerson wants every man to understand what he is trying to convey through this speech. Here, Emerson’s speech has actually transcended the boundaries of a country and time. Emerson worries that during this powerful time of every person as a scholar, the scholar mostly chooses the wrong side of knowledge that is to stick to some tag, profession and loses the privilege of vast possibilities which might have granted by the same multifaceted knowledge from its source “the Nature”.

The Nature- The idea of classification and the origin of knowledge

The curiosity to understand the nature is the origin of knowledge. Every person wants to assign some value to the things happening around him which are reflected through nature around him.

“There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

“…Nature hastens to render account of herself to the mind.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

In order to understand each and every phenomenon, the “young mind” assigned some value to them and then classified them; Joined things into one when seemed similar. The concept of “individuality” in the early scholar actually segregated knowledge into different parts. The words “Diminishing anomalies” by Emerson explain how a paradox at the end of every branch of knowledge gave rise to completely new field of knowledge. This development of new field of knowledge helped to connect some really remote fields of knowledge. For example, see the revolution in physics happened after Einstein explained and proved the theory of relativity. Also, most importantly the quantum mechanics and the problems about the nature of our reality which itself is paradoxical in its behavior for us today, when solved will connect many dots, far more and completely different fields of knowledge which seem very distant today.

“…science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson highlights the purpose of classifying things in nature was to handle the chaos of the events. Classification created a pivot around the human mind which enabled systematic segregation and relationship development to understand the nature. Use of the term “The law of human mind” actually shows that we have never understood the nature for what it is, we have developed a system of knowledge to organize the chaos where some of the things are making sense to us and the things which don’t make sense is the challenge for today and tomorrow. The challenge is being handed over to the men of science who will try to connect these remote dots.

“He shall see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind.”
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

The analogy of the seal and print is such a beautiful analogy given by Emerson to the nature and the soul. Emerson takes a spiritual point of view to understand the nature. He explains that though the soul and nature are “boundless/ center-less”, the nature becomes limited and bounded to the extent of the bounds of the mind. Emerson says indirectly that certain thing won’t exist in nature until you ask nature for its existence. Thus, if it is created by your mind, if it is present in your mind and you try to establish it by studying yourselves then you will definitely establish the same thing in the nature. If it is not in you then it definitely is not existing in nature. Your limitations of the understanding of yourselves will be the limitations of the nature around you. Hence, if you widen your understanding, become limitless then only you will understand the limitless form of the nature.

Max Planck one of the greatest physicists of all times and who came far later after Emerson had similar opinions about the nature of our reality and the limits of our understanding about it.

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
Max Planck

Emerson thus fuses the two distant dots called “Know Thyself” and “Study nature” into one based on this spiritual foundation. Reading, listening these sentences and realizing this idea itself is so powerful. This also shows that Emerson himself was a master of connecting different and distant dots in the fields of knowledge. No wonder he was successful in actually defining the origin of human understanding. In this way he recalls the importance and significance of nature on a mind of a scholar.

-End of Part 1 –

There is a Part 2 to understand how Emerson further suggests the “potent” tools, “the weapons” and responsibilities which come with them to really transcend the boundaries of our existence and become a true scholar. We will see that in next post.

Our identity is one inseparable part of our existence. It is the very first pivot that we have in this boundless existence. The name given by our parents/relatives symbolizes the very first dimension of our identity. Then we build upon it as we grow. Many factors like our family, the people around us, their and our financial conditions, their and our emotional states, their and our habits, inspirations and what not directly and indirectly gives us many facets. They become part of our identity. As we grow up in most of the cases our jobs, professions become our identity. Actually, we are conditioned right from our childhood to become doctors, engineers, social workers, bankers, brokers, pilots, writers, dancers, teachers, firefighters and what not. Our job becomes the largest chunk of our life and our identity. These identities which we hold for our lives are mostly rooted in our young times, college days and the immediate days after we leave the educational institutions. No doubt that these are the turning points for most of us. That is why the success of educational systems and institutions is very important in the development of the whole society. And, Emerson tried to question the materialistic identity these systems granted at such turning points to the young scholars of his time. But as history repeats itself same is the case with our recent generations. This is where the absolute ideas, the great wisdom of Ralph waldo Emerson stand the test of time.

There is more to come…

Read Part 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

Read Part 2 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

Read Part 3 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson

How true forms of creativity can help us to reconnect with our human core

“On The Train Ride Home” by The Paper Kites

Humans – the creative animals

Alienation

Karl Marx on alienation

Alienation of an object –

Alienation of process –

Alienation of species-being –

Alienation between humans –

Alienated from nature –

Alienated from work –

Alienated from other people –

Alienated from ourselves-

How to de-alienate?

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Jacques Derrida’s philosophy for the better understanding of the reality

Language and its purpose

Logocentrism

Plato’s definition of reality – Platonism and The theory of forms

Semiotics – Language as signs

Aufhebung – the sublation

Deconstruction

What came first – chicken or the egg? meaning or language?

Meaning is relative

Deconstruction

Why the idea of deconstruction felt wrong? And is it really wrong?

Conclusion

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Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ for The Modern World

Psychology ~ Study of mental!?!

Humanistic Psychology – What Makes Someone “A Whole Human”?

Self-Actualization – The Classical View on Being the Best Version of You

The (Controversial) Pyramid

Theory of Motivation and Self-Actualization

The Characteristics of Self-Actualizers

Self-actualization is a journey

Maslow’s theory of motivation for the modern world

The Cybernetic Big Five Theory

The Metatraits – Bridging the Classical and Modern Theory of Motivation

It’s Not A Pyramid, Rather It’s A Sail Boat

Conclusion

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The problem of other minds – do they exist in reality or the reality just exists in my mind?

Origin of Philosophy – Knowledge is power

Skepticism – Keep on questioning until you get consistency in understanding

Solipsism – Extreme skepticism – Questioning the existence of the question and the questioner!

Why Solipsism stands strong? – Why idea of living in the Matrix fascinates us?

Solipsism – Trust no one but yourself!

Different ideologies in Solipsism

Paradoxes at the end – Where Solipsism would break down!

Pro tip – don’t over-love solipsism

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Anton Chekhov’s famous short story called “the Bet”

Synopsis

The Abundance

The Solitude – Curse or Boon?

The Time Vs The Resources

The Conclusion

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Why the philosophical search for the ultimate universal truth is useless?

An Existential Meme Caption and Its Resolution

There Is No Final Truth.

The Münchhausen Trilemma

Resolving the Trilemma

Skepticism, Agrippa and the Suspension of the Judgement

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The Spirit of the Void for the modern world

Void and the Incompleteness of the Mathematics

The Void and The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Void and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Modern Scholar

The Void and Einstein

The Void and The Quantum Mechanics

Conclusion

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– 2 –

– 3 –

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Part-3 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World

Objectivity – The Job of A True Scholar

Confidence and Bravery of Self Expression