Nirvana!

We might hate Communism and Communists, abhor their ideology, scorn and mock them. But many of us have wondered how Communism captured the imagination of the world, what it meant to those who adhered to it in the initial days and what were its basic principles which endeared to people across many countries. Not everyone has read Marx and Engels in entirety or studied dialectical materialism, historical materialism or their roots. How much of the laws of Dialectics do we understand, and what does Cartesian dichotomy has to do with Reductionism which forms the basis for Marxist world view is something we have to ask ourselves as we critique Marx.  P Kesavan Nair attempts to provide a overview of what entails Marxist thought, roots of Marxian concepts and has also criticized Marxism, Communism, Socialism  and their antecedents in this 'Apostate on Communism'. Having all these at one place is certainly handy and serves as a reference. Bertrand Russell evaluated comm...

I was in my first year of engineering in May 1997 when the rematch between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue was held in NY. Being novices in the field of Comp Science, we were very enthusiastic to know each and every happening in the world of computers. I remember those discussions we used to have in the hostel mess and in college, intently following the Chess matches between a Human genius and a super computer. We were both shocked and amazed when Garry Kasparov lost and Deep Blue was declared the winner. We thought for ourselves and opined that Computer Science has indeed a bright future 😇 Reading 'Deep Thinking' was a journey not just into the past but also a lesson in how to adapt to changing times in the present and future from the man who has seen machine intelligence from up close.  Chess was our pastime during train journeys between Mysore to Bengaluru and consequently kept track on most of the things that was happening in the chess world too. Kasparov was ...

B Raman's 'The Kaoboys of R&AW' was on my long list of to-be-reads for sometime. The hype over the book and the author himself did have their influence on me. Finally, ended up reading the Kindle version. If I can summarize Raman's book, I say its a 'too clever by half' attempt! Why do I say that? And its not to suggest that Raman's book is thrash or not to be read at all. It has its importance, there are facts revealed which were unknown hitherto and new perspectives on our polity, intelligence apparatus and incidents. It is the unbridled sanctimonious importance that he grants himself and constant attempts to blame everyone else is one of my pain points. The other agony I had to experience throughout the work is his fawning obsequiousness of the Gandhi Family. He almost grants the entire bouquets of goods that happened to India and the Intelligence community to Indira and Rajiv Gandhi and the anything bad to everyone else! I mean if this was h...

Study of native cultures world over and the way many of them lost out to a dominant culture has one thing in common. Barbarism and deceit of the overbearing religions, namely Islam and Christianity. Until the advent of these two religions, there are very few examples of civilizations being wiped off by force. Yes, civilization do adapt, evolve and even transform over centuries. But Islam and Christianity turned natural evolution into forced acceptance, obviously with the use of force, deception and subversion. The focus of this post is the native American nations and their tragic story of their civilizational obscurity forced by the Christian Europe. One of the outcomes of my reading Michael Punke's 'Revenant' and the corresponding brilliant movie starring De Caprio, was a renewed interest in the history of native inhabitants across the world. While Punke's work is known for its gripping story and narration, I was looking out for a more focussed work that recounte...

The intermingling of science and spirituality especially Indian spiritual traditions has had a long journey and witnessed many debates, discussions, fawning acceptance and equally acrimonious negations, but has also seen many concerted and dedicated efforts to understand it. Though was aware of many academic and rather pedantic works which dealt with the subject, a work for public consumption and common aficionados like myself wasn't in my purview. This is important because the current popular discourse on the intermingling of science and spirituality has either been lopsided or plain caustic on both sides. My personal interest in the subject had my antennas searching for such a work for quiet sometime. Thanks to Prof. Sangeetha Menon of NIAS who introduced Prof RL Kapurs seminal work 'Another Way to Live' to amateurs like me through her post on FB, that lacunae too was addressed. Prof RL Kapur was a internationally well known psychiatrist and had held visiting posi...