The original story is linked here.

“Why the World Can’t Save The Earth”, by Raj Chengappa, is an influential cover story about discussions and exchanges at the twenty first Paris Climate Change Summit and a gist of new and upcoming energy efficient techniques, published in December 2015 in India Today. The author asserts the fundamental shortcomings of the summit, expressing his deep sense of resentment at the summit’s outcome, and systematically discusses the insouciance of the nations’ leaders involved in it that led to a zero-sum conclusion at the insufferable issue. According to the author, the summit, which was supposed to be a pivotal turning point in the history of political and socio-economic action to climate change was simply a repetition of a sad history of mere display of power play and relentless arguments among nations with no conclusion reached or immediate action taken in past global conferences. The author expresses deep concern over this, since he and millions of others across the globe had invested their hopes in the summit. He hinges the blame on the dynamic between developed and developing countries in passing the responsibility of cutting their emission rates back and forth, with the developed countries imposing overwhelmingly high demands on their underdeveloped counterparts without providing them with sufficient funds or technology to do so.

The tone of the author is formal and informative, which suggests that he writes for an audience of high school and university students, academically aware people and other like-minded individuals with an interest in learning about the environment. It also appeals to people equipped with an understanding of policy debate, the political functioning of the United Nations and similar bodies, and the dynamics of unions constituting world governments. The subsequent sections about upcoming technologies strongly appeal to science and technology enthusiasts. However, the article is written so as to delineate the basics for even a layman, hence can be read and enjoyed by a large set of readers. Supplemented with informative pictures and flowcharts, the article is complete within itself.

Opening with a beautiful quote engaging a sense of duty to the pure and nurturing earth from Atharva-Veda, the author relates the present growing need to address the issues of climate change across the globe to old, traditional values existing in literature, the juxtaposition throwing more light and bringing in more sentimental context to the matter.

The author affirms his argument using instances from the event witnessing a power play between opposing schools of thought in the activity such as governments versus corporations, warmists versus denialists, conservatives versus progressives and so on. Fake and hurried promises were made mostly by the developed nations, but what is even more upsetting is that even if all the countries in the summit were to abide by their commitments, the global temperatures would still rise by 2.7 degrees Celsius over the danger mark. The alarming increase in global temperatures would not be hampered without underdeveloped and currently developing nations joining in for the carbon cutting. Further, the author claims that there is a monetary budgeting issue with the commitments, which get more and more demanding on the country’s economy with the progression of years.

He answers British Prime Minister David Cameron’s question at the summit, “What is it that was so difficult in 2015 when the earth was in deep trouble?” He brings in the account of the Kyoto Protocol to show how history has been repeating itself, and humanity has been unable to make any progress because nobody tends to learn from their mistakes. Developing nations have been a dumping ground for unreasonable carbon emission cut targets. On the other hand, developed nations such as the US, Japan, Russia and Canada have safely backed out from binding themselves to any such targets and work on a self-paced, self-regulatory setting. The situation was somewhat quelled through the introduction of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs, which work on a personal commitment basis, rather than rigid targets. According to the author, the compromises made by the developed nations were not enough to bring about any change in the future. They agreed to shell out hundred billion dollars to support underdeveloped countries to meet their environmental goals, but even ten times this amount is not sufficient to considerably lessen their carbon footprints.

The second argument that the author makes, which is considerably a strong one, is that developed nations have been trying to systematically break down the unity between the developing ones. Since funding is a major concern for the developing countries, breaking down their unity and making them all individually answerable to strong giants such as the US in such summits stifles their only hopes of ever raising their voice against the injustice and laying their arguments down on logical, plausible grounds. For instance, China went on to appease the US in the Paris Summit and agreed to their unrealistic goals. India, however, having been a very minor contributor in the global carbon footprint and contributing less than the US and China, has been the earmark in all proceedings. The author gravitates towards US being the major culprit, being the biggest economy and as a result, the biggest emitter.

The author feels that the summit reiterated a common mistake from the past- the burdening of developing countries with over-the-top targets for cutting their costs, resulting in incomplete targets and a retreated responsibility from the developed nations. He believes that the problem of climate change is universal, hence the task of bringing it down is a shared responsibility. Giants

such as the US have been evading this responsibility by redirecting it to countries such as India and China for long, and he discusses the two cases independently to prove his argument.

In addition to the summit, the article discusses some smart technologies contributed by individual writers which could pave way to a better, greener and energy efficient future, drawing the focus on energy conservation. These include Power Grids which can alter the way electricity is distributed to households using remotes and switches, LED lights which are electricity efficient and have the potential to prevent 16 billion tonnes of carbon being added to the atmosphere in the next 25 years, energy efficient air conditioners which use ozone-safe refrigerants, biodiesel as an effective biodegradable substitute to fossil fuels, hybrid cars with regenerative braking systems to store energy during deceleration to prevent added engine losses when more power is required, advanced coal-based power plants, wind turbines, low grade waste heat converters, solar thermal power, and bicycle power. Each of these sections briefly describe how the technology works using block diagrams and graphics, and how the technology is relevant with respect to the Indian landscape. This is quite informative and edifying to the readers who do not have much knowledge about forthcoming technologies.

Overall, the article is well-structured, cohesive and an interesting read which unravels the problem from both political and scientific perspectives, presenting the central problem to the reader i.e. the “why” in “Why The World Can’t Save The Earth”, and providing affirmation by listing out prospective ways to reduce their carbon footprints, gently encouraging them to take these up in their daily lives and help secure a better future for the planet.

I signed up for Ayaskala Literary Magazine’s NaPoWriMo challenge, alongside about 200 fellow poets. The drill was straightforward — we would receive a daily prompt in our mailboxes or on the Facebook group, submit our entries by the end of day, and receive the best poems of the day and a host of special mentions the next day. This is quite different from the poetry writing experiences I have had before. As I enter the month of May, here are five takeaways from this unique, first-of-its-kind experience, in retrospect.

1. Poetry is a practiced discipline.

Most people I meet would compare poetry to a no-strings-attached affair. Prose is the more strenous counterpart. With NaPoWriMo, I could tangibly see the effect of daily writing on my subsequent poems, and how every poem came out better (at least to me) in aspects, such as

• the economy of words,
• the selection of words,
• the flow of language,
• the density of emotion.

2. It is important to READ.

I cannot stress this enough. Thankfully, my inbox would buzz at about 8 p.m. every night with the selections of the day, and I would go through each one of them. Not only was this leisurely fun, but also a great way to learn about contemporary styles in poetry that people are actively indulging in.

Further, I would take time out to read poems from my favourite magazines including POETRY, The Paris Review, and The New England Review during evening tea. My social media handles would load up account suggestions of poetry magazines, and I would read, read, read. This filled me with context.

3. Experimenting is fun.

I had been writing quite linearly before; my poetic style would resonate as a unique signature of my work. With the wide array of prompts, ranging from “write a sonnet” to “write a haiku”, from “connecting across borders” to “write a poem on ‘yes’”, it was impossible to stick to a fixed style because of the sheer variation of requirements out of my work.

My contemporaries would often pick up new styles — both structural and literary, and open me up to styles I was unaware, or even apprehensive of. Non-punctuated? Line breaks? List poems? Funny indentation? Rhyme schemes? Why not!

4. Writing with a community goes a long way.

I know at least ten more poets now who are writing in the same times as I am. I know their favourite poets (thanks to prompts such as “write a poem in response to another poem”, and “fill your words between the first and the last lines of your favourite poem”), the themes they tend to side with, their arrant diversity of styles and voices.

Hopefully, we will stay connected and continue reading each others’ works via online media.

5. Writing is rewarding.

There were prompts that made me think hard. There were prompts that made me introspect moments of my life I would not have otherwise. There were prompts that made me say difficult things, personal or impersonal.

In the fullness of time, I have thirty collected poems that are anything between simple messages to myself and challenges I threw at myself.

Going to bed every day knowing you created art for someone, somewhere in the world, but more importantly for your own sake, is indeed a most rewarding feeling.

[All pictures used in this post are by the illustrator, Nami Nishikawa, and have been taken from Pinterest.]

The introductory lessons in my epistemology course brought about the primary difference between words like truth, belief and knowledge. It shaped the primary concepts and prerequisites necessary for understanding the views of famous philosophers and what they had to say on the subject. I was surprised to find my belief in the objectivity of knowledge destroyed within the first half an hour of the lecture, as knowledge assumed a completely different meaning and purpose.

The age-old questions of philosophy, such as how to define knowledge, where does knowledge come from, is knowledge possible, how can we know and how does knowledge relate to truth, gain special momentum in today’s times where every question that comes to the mind can be simply looked up online with results displayed in a matter of seconds. With millions of resources and an overflow of information, it is hard to discern between genuine sources and the false ones. This brings another vital question:

How is a source credited as being genuine after all?

Since all sources are colored and skewed to some extent, there is no way to uncover an ‘absolute truth’. In fact, an absolute truth, in itself, is non-existent. Epistemology is important because it contours how we think. Modern epistemology is a conjunction of two fundamental theories - empiricism and rationalism, and how the clash between the two gives rise to various theories and questions.

Empiricism is a theory that knowledge is acquired from the senses. Advocated by philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, and George Berkeley, it was enthused by the advent of experimental science and developed through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the other hand, rationalism is the theory that knowledge is obtained by the application of reason. Reason is here given a higher priority than experience and is promoted as the basic foundation in deciding the certainty of knowledge. Classical rationalists include Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Gottfried Leibniz. I found both schools equally intriguing, but incomplete in some regard, even though they form a mutually exhaustive set of ways to obtain knowledge.

The first two philosophers that come to mind are John Locke and Bishop Berkeley. Locke, a seventeenth century British empiricist, thought of his philosophy as being adjunct to Newtonian physics and argued the presence of two kinds of qualities, primary and secondary. Primary qualities are physical qualities, such as hardness, mass or wavelength, and relate to the physical concepts of quantification. Secondary qualities, on the other hand, are subjective and obtained through immediate sensory inputs, such as taste, smell or texture. Berkeley was an eighteenth century Anglo-Irish empiricist who believed that being was equivalent to perceiving. Critical of Newton, he argued that only secondary qualities exist, since they are the only ones that are perceivable. Grounded in Christianity, he hailed God as the constant perceiver, hence justifying the existence of an object even when not in sight of a human. Although on the outside, his philosophy sounded quite convincing to me, I found it hard to agree on the premise that secondary qualities do not exist at all. Little did I know that we were yet to be introduced to another radical philosopher, David Hume.

Hume was yet another empiricist, with a visibly different flavor in his arguments. An eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, he urged that knowledge comes from sensory experiences, and all the perceptions of the human mind could be safely classified into either impressions or ideas. Ideas emerge from impressions, and impressions put the existence of matter to a question mark. He went on to give the induction and causation theory, saying that there is no such thing as a cause-and-effect pair, only correlations of events in the universe. So, saying that fire caused the burn is improvable; only that there is a correlation between fire and the burns. He also propelled the bundle theory of personal identity and shared Buddha’s idea of “no self” with subtle differences.

As opposed to empiricists, rationalists debated that knowledge comes from mind structures and rational principles. The most important rationalist discussed in class is René Descartes, a seventeenth century French philosopher who gave the famous philosophical statement “Cogito ergo sum” meaning “I think, therefore I am”. According to him, the solid foundation for the principles of reason is the thinking self. I do not buy the complete empiricist idea, owing to the fact that perceptions and sensations differ among cultures, groups, and even individuals. Also, how would one justify the existence of the color blue, to say, someone who was born blind? Hence, there are certain things that exist beyond perception. We are blind to myriad other colors and wavelengths that cannot be sensed by the human eye. However, this does not negate their existence. Again, rationalism cannot account for all the things that exist, since every knowledge cannot be obtained through a priori (prior to experience), and not all can be traced back to the roots of logic and reason in the human mind. Empiricism is easier, as rationalism incorporates the innate knowledge or reasoning as a separate independent entity existing outside of the five senses. However, rationalism extends humans to something more than what they simply experience, which sounds very convincing, as had we been all about our senses, we would have been very easily manageable by external forces. Science could not have advanced without a subtle intermingling of both, as it integrates both empirical knowledge as well as building upon the observation through delicate reasoning and logic.

Getting a scholarship to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) for a student is a much-coveted dream, and I was lucky to be a scholar for the year 2018. I am going to proceed with this blog post from a student’s perspective, and discuss some unconventional pointers from my experience.

An annual conference to bring the research as well as the industrial interests of women technologists to the vanguard, the event can be both inspiriting, for students looking for the right motivation to continue their studies in computer science, as well as path-changing for students looking forward to transition into tech from other fields.

GHC’18 took place from September 26 to September 28 in the beautiful city of Houston, Texas. With tracks ranging from Open Source to AI and Interactive Media, GHC had a diverse set of speakers from all around the world. Three new tracks were introduced — Emerging Technology, Hardware, and AR/VR, much indicative of the recent trends and actuations in computer science. However, GHC is not simply about learning, but also about giving back; most importantly, using the right mix of the two to make the most of the three days given to you.

1. List ‘Em Out: One of the greatest strengths of the conference is that it offers a bundle of opportunities for all kinds of specific needs. Before you go, make a list of up to three major goals or aspirations you have from the conference. It could be finding a job as a data scientist or a software engineer, securing an internship, making a minimum of two strong connections with students or professors from your domain, making up your mind on the one career step you’re too afraid to take, finding the right thesis for your third year, finally updating your resume to a LaTeX template, or even shortlisting the right schools for your master’s or Ph.D. You would be surprised to find how easy it is to navigate through the huge convention center once you have this list in place.
2. Attend Talks: Honestly, since my undergraduate school was research-oriented in every way, and I had already taken up a thesis, I was not too keen on attending the introductory talks. I was more interested in specific topics in AI, such as Multiagent Systems and Robotics & AI, which somewhat aligned with my interests. However, the talks provide a fairly good representation of what may intrigue you in the future, so definitely handpick some sessions to attend. In addition to these, there are Speed Mentoring and Networking sessions which allow for one on one conversations with an experienced woman — highly recommended for students.
3. Visit the Career Fair: GHC has an excellent career fair, and perhaps the biggest one I have seen so far. With over 200+ companies coming with serious hiring targets, offering a wide range of roles: both technical and non-technical, landing your dream job or your dream internship is not a grueling task anymore. The company representatives are more than happy to clear your doubts, introduce you to the current roles and collect your CVs. Do keep about 20–30 CV printouts handy, although there is usually is a printing room in the convention center in case of emergencies. Most of the process is digitalized these days. During my time, companies were hiring heavily for US and Canada offices. Apart from companies, many schools set up their stalls to introduce you to their MS/MBA/Ph.D. programs and can ease you through the daunting application process for higher studies.
4. Network: This cannot be stressed upon enough. Speaking to fellow students, industry professionals or young researchers broadens your horizon in many ways and introduces you to a whole new set of opportunities. Even if you are not able to contain all your questions in a single conversation, follow up over LinkedIn. Remember that this goes both ways, so share your own experiences and help other attendees through your expertise, connections, and referrals when you can.
5. Don’t Lunch Alone: Yes, you read that right! Companies and schools are always hosting networking sessions over breakfast, lunch or evening snacks, so put yourself out there and attend these events. You just cannot underestimate the power of bonding over food and drinks!

Finally, do ensure sufficient space in your travel bags to store all the goodies from the career fair. And oh, reserve an extra day or two, if you can, to backpack around the city.

Born to an affluent, artistic family of musicians, Wittgenstein had a lineage of depression in his roots. So did it contain a lineage of dark matters, as three of Wittgenstein’s four brothers committed suicide. Even his sexuality was ambiguous, and he was tormented by the obscurity and discomfort of his sexuality. Also, there was an inherent profound self-hatred because of him being a Jew hiding out in Britain. All this reflected vividly in the books he wrote, the first one being Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Treatise of Logical Philosophy). A mechanical engineer from Berlin, Wittgenstein readily came under the influence of great mathematicians of his time, namely Bertrand Russell and AN Whitehead who jointly contributed to the Principia Mathematica. In the book, he argued that propositions show the logical form of reality and display it. Also, all of the everyday incidents could be broken down into simple, logical propositions which have a truth value. These signify what is being received by the senses. The rest constitute meta-statements which cannot be proven.

Having acquired a very rational, logical stance in his book, Wittgenstein summed up his seventh set with a single proposition, the famous “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” This was heavily criticized by Russell, an agnostic, who was not very happy with the idea that the meaning of the world lies outside of it and Wittgenstein’s connections with an otherworldly, mystical philosophy.

I was surprised to learn how such a deep-seated philosopher turned to anti-epistemology in his book, ‘Philosophical Investigations’, a collection of aphorisms which suggested that all of his previously written works and the works of other philosophers were absurd and unnecessary. Here, he stressed upon the importance of ordinary life as opposed to posing serious and unanswerable philosophical doubts and questions. At this point, he had broken off from Bertrand Russell and was moving toward ordinary language philosophy, advocated by Oxford professors. He compared philosophers to mere flies trapped in a bottle, circling around in the entrapment, and his book showed them the way out of the fly bottle. It is interesting to note that the philosopher Wittgenstein is talking about here is really himself. Some people have commented that his work of anti-philosophy really is a beautiful work of philosophy.

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein demystifies language and says that every word is associated with a meaning which depends on the usage. They are simply tools in a toolbox. The only difference lies in the relative understanding of words between individuals. But this is not a philosophical puzzle, rather a mere functional puzzle which can be sorted out using a simple ordinary understanding of language. It is the conceptual confusions regarding language that causes most philosophical problems, which are really insignificant and irrelevant. He, therefore, nullifies his initial arguments made in the Tractatus.

Inspired by Wittgenstein, Oxford philosophers such as JL Austin, GEM Anscombe, and Gilbert Ryle came up with the concept of ordinary language philosophy, which propagates the idea that philosophers, through the distortion of everyday words, engender philosophical problems that they themselves are employed to solve. This forms a circular mesh. I followed up on this on the internet to find that this obviously garnered substantial criticism, such as the fact that certain things like the questions of death, afterlife or God have to be reached through by ‘philosophical’ use of language as ordinary contexts fail in these cases. Also, Wittgenstein seems to essentially be professing that there was no general solution to an issue apart from the community norms, which fails since communities are not stable or ‘ultimate’. Hence, his later philosophy fails when we talk of cross-cultural issues.

Although not a solipsist, Wittgenstein had an interest in solipsism, which he probably got from Schopenhauer. This is reflected in lines such as “The world is my world” from Tractatus, by which he means he has a view of the world not shared by others which are mostly inexpressible. It is also argued that he probably felt solipsism itself had a lot of confusion inherent in it, which goes with the ambivalent attitude he had himself on philosophy.

I found certain arguments of Wittgenstein deeply intriguing, and certainly intend to study him more. David Jarman’s film on Wittgenstein is equally inviting as was Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and although I haven’t watched all of it yet, I am sure my curiosities shall lead me to it soon.

Here was a city I always believed to be overrated, but the first sight of which made me fall silent. Open streets, cafés with outdoor seating and long horizontal sheds on them, unexpected rains, classic buildings- in Paris all loves recur, retell, refix. But one thing stood out. Art. There is art on the streets, be it in the form of graffiti, road signs or fashion. The first day of our stay in France, my mother and I took a guided tour to Giverny, a small village in the Normandy region of northern France within the valley of river Seine, a 1.5-hour drive from the heart of the city. The place is known for the home of French impressionist Claude Monet, who stayed there from 1883 until his death in 1926. It is Giverny which provided him with the essential inspiration to continue with his works, specifically the famous lily pond which caused him to create a series of paintings of water lilies under different light conditions, which he created by observing them at varying seasons and times of the day. While in the car, the driver and the guide, a fortyish French lady, talked to us about his life and works, the scenes outside the car slowly transitioning from the bustling city streets to the quiet countryside.

Monet was born in 1840 in Paris, and his mother supported him in his passion to become an artist. His eyes fell upon Giverny while looking outside the window of his train coach. He was so inspired that he decided to move there. Slowly establishing his stronghold over the rented house, he bought the land and created magnificent gardens surrounding it. The gardens of Giverny show up in either form or in inspiration in most of his paintings such as the Clos Normand which now has a famous cider named after it, the archways, the lily pond, the water from Epte, and the many heavy floral landscapes consisting of azaleas, rhododendrons, climbers entwined with red coloured leaves, roses and apple shrubs.

Through this journal, I would like to provide an analysis of impressionism in art through my experiences at Monet’s gardens in Giverny. To provide background, impressionism is a 19th-century art movement which originated in Paris, aiming to picture ordinary subject matter with emphasis on thin brush strokes, unusual visual angles and focus on movement as an important part of human experience which needs to be captured. But more than that, impressionism also encouraged experimentation with light and juxtaposition of the same imagery painted in different variants of light such as day and night, summer and winter and so on.

One of the most conspicuous scenes I observed in Giverny was the stark contrast between Monet’s house and the others in the village. The rows of brick-walled houses in the village resonate a streak of consistent dull, bleak gray colour against Monet’s house, which oddly flaunts bright pink walls with fluorescent green windows. Even the inside of his house has a beautiful concoction of colour- the dining room entirely yellow, the kitchen coloured in shades of blue, the bedroom a light shade of green complete with a flower vase and Monet’s paintings on the wall, the living room a mix of fawn and cream against brightly coloured carpets and brown furniture, flowery curtains opening to windows of an endless stream of green and red.

It is Monet’s sincerity to life and energy coupled with his opposition to dull colour that kept him from using blacks or browns in his paintings in his entire career. Visiting his house in Giverny lent even more substance to ideology, his painting style translating into his daily life- the walls and decor of his own house. Currently doing a course in human-computer interaction and design, I can see how Monet’s colour theory has affected UI/UX design today, bright colour combinations slowly making their way back to website templates and web graphics.

The second most conspicuous imagery I came across was the subtle shadowplay in Monet’s dense gardens and the reflections of the trees on the lake water. Needless to say, this shows up in his paintings too.

Likening my ideas to philosophy, it is a well-established school of philosophy that acknowledges the difference between reality and impressions. The existence of objective reality has been well questioned and discarded as a mere conceptualization or as being unattainable by many philosophers. Hume’s philosophy majorly relies on impressions and ideas, which he believes to be pale copies of the outside world. The impressionists thought along the same lines. They regarded the actual subject as being different from what humans registered and took it one step further to bringing out a distinction between what the eye perceived and what the brain understood it to be. They did not want to paint realistic art, rather capture the optical effects of light. Monet’s “Vetheuil in the Fog”, considered one of his finest, is a vague impression of a figural form. The momentary impression is crystallized in the form of optical experiences registered in the painting.

Monet’s gardens were indeed a beautiful experience at this time of year when spring was slowly ascending its feet towards the French countryside, the trees patiently awaiting fresh blossoms, the brook flowing under the bridge dreaming of the strong glint of summer sun upon its waters. The chance trip firmed by the appreciation for art and culture. The souvenir shop adjacent to the gardens replete with bookmarks, pocket mirrors, postcards, handbags, wall art, notebooks, fridge magnets and so on with Monet’s paintings pressed upon them and the brasserie, Les Nymphéas with inverted umbrellas and carefully crafted white chairs in the open ensured that even as we were leaving, Giverny continues to remain a beautifully ornate, impressionable memory in our minds for the years to come.

In most religious practices, the idea of convergence between the soul and the Highest Form is resonant, and a highly taxing, often excruciating path between the two is written down. This is where Advaita Vedanta stands out. According to this rather radical path to spiritual realization, the soul (referred to as the atman) and the Highest Form (referred to as Brahman) are one. The Highest Form is the highest metaphysical reality, and through the realization of the aforementioned idea, a true sense of identity can be gained and eventually, liberation can be attained. Drawing parallelism with Buddhism, just as the Buddha (or any mystic) says that the state of nirvana can be achieved through experience, not belief, Advaita Vedanta also involves the essential element of experience or anubhava in order to get to the epiphany of self-realization. In the process, Advaita Vedanta also establishes the perennialism of the Brahman, an ever-changing entity which morphs and transitions into different natural objects over time, but the essence and continuity of which remains intact.

The Brahman is the existential and fundamental instrument in the universe. It morphs into humans, nature and all there is, and plays coy games with us in this world of semi-reality entirely for jollification and playfulness, without concrete reason. The Brahman cannot be bribed or prayed to, and plays lila out of sheer sportive tendencies. Lila, or divine play, is a term that appears quite often in Hinduism, and is common to both dualistic and non-dualistic schools of philosophy. In a non-dualistic world such as Advaita Vedanta, lila is simply the divine play of the Brahman which gives rise to all of cosmos. The Brahman is not a God or a final stage, rather the journey all along.

While I do understand the gist of Advaita Vedanta, its validity in theory evades me still. To think of it, the oddity arises when I think of the layers of detachment between myself and spirituality (or the spiritual world) that the society has made me to believe. Although I do not identify as being religious, Buddhism’s path to spirituality invites much of my curiosity. Preconditioning has led me to create a virtual gap in my head between the incomplete, mistrustful material world and the perfect, beautiful world of the Good, the Ultimate- much similar to Plato’s World of the Forms, which I plan to discuss later in this journal. How can then the atman and the Brahman be one? This is where the concept of maya kicks in- to bridge the gap.

The Advaita Vedantic Concept of Maya

According to Shankaran, we are unable to recognize the fact that we are already one with the Ultimate Reality because of maya, an illusion, which acts like a filter that feeds our ignorance. This makes me take a step back and think about the myriad possibilities that open up once one accepts Shankaran’s premise, and everything starts to fall into place in whole new, incredible ways. I believe the congruity of the world can still be retained.

The advaita vedantic concept of maya can be juxtaposed with Plato’s allegory of the cave, as discussed in class. This lecture particularly riveted my interests, because the two accounts come from two ends of philosophy, one from the East and the other from the West. Yet, the two share common ground, which bolsters the idea that Advaita Vedanta might actually be something much more than an abstract theory. In Plato’s famous allegory, an unshackled prisoner went on to gain access to a world outside the shadows on the walls, which he and the other prisoners had been limited to, in the cave. When he comes back to inform the others of his newfound enlightenment, they simply demur and label him as a madman. However, in the process, the unbound prisoner realizes the difference between the limited reality he had been confined to and the greater reality he was exposed to in the later stage. This difference is maya.

Plato’s allegory of the cave, in my opinion, illustrates the concept of illusion in simple terms, trying to focus primarily on a clear distinction between the earthy world and the World of Forms. The Avaita Vedantic concept of maya is a lot more diverse and encompassing, in the sense that it is not repulsed by the material world. Advaita Vedanta, in my understanding, celebrates the world and looks to create an absolute reality within its limitations, in the form of the Brahman. The physical and the Ultimate are both the same. Hence, the material world is not deficit of any “perfection, contradictory to Plato’s hunch that there were pure mathematical structures or essences laid out in heaven.

My take on Avaita Vedanta is that it is a beautiful concoction of varying Hindu philosophies, with a very strong central motivation. It is the monism that stands out. In my opinion, it allows a better explanation of the world as compared to other philosophies which rely on a Supreme controlling power which accounts for all that exists. Questions of pain and suffering sprout in the latter case, which can be explicated simply in terms of lila and maya in the former. Whether or not the Brahman aims to strike a balance between pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, love and hate is another question. It is the childlike innocence of its play that gives birth to beautiful things, and this ascends above all.

Instead of relying on these ideas written down in sacred texts of the time, Charvaka professed the power of sensory inputs and direct perception and grounds all reliance on these. Although one of the six darshanas in ancient Hindu philosophy, it greatly differs from the other five in its increasing tendencies towards open atheism and materialism. Because of its open disregard of Hindu deities and rituals, Charvaka garnered a good amount of criticism. Followers of Charvaka were often accused of being run on their own self-interests and of being hedonists and opportunists, wanting to accumulate material gains by professing a school of thought that validates it.

Through this journal, I would like to provide my own assessment of the principles of Charvaka and how they contrast with typical Hindu principles. Through these anomalies, I intend to enforce this rather deviant part of Hinduism often locked up and tucked away from common people. No, a crime would not land you up in the depths of hell to be roasted for eternity, you would not be reincarnated to balance out the sins and the virtues of your present life, and all of reality is contained within the world you live in. Therefore, eat, drink and be merry for today is all there is.

The Nasadiya Sukta in Chapter Ten of Rig Veda hints towards this road.

But, after all, who knows, and who can say

Whence it all came, and how creation happened?

The gods themselves are later than creation,

So who knows truly whence it has arisen?

This enforces that even the Vedas do not owe attribution to the Gods. My personal interpretation of the above lines is that it aims to raise the question of cause and arising. Most arguments in favor of the existence of a God are mathematical tautologies drawn based on the premise that “something” existed prior to all creation, and hence God is the beginning of all creation. But, juxtaposing these lines in context to the ontological proofs drawn by logicians and mathematicians, I find that the major contrast is created by the third line itself- The gods themselves are later than creation. This is a wonderful perspective; the Gods not being the absolute beginning of anything at all and rather, subsidiaries of the process of creation. Gods are products of creation. This throws everything into a toss.

So who knows truly whence it has arisen?

This is a brilliant skeptical argument. The lines do not aim to provide reason or answer to the question they raise. Rather, they exist to raise the question. In my opinion, Charvaka, to some extent, brings about the classic argument of empiricism versus rationalism, perhaps the most significant clash of schools in Western philosophy, and brings back memories of Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Descartes. Charvaka, however, is placed in an Indian context, and hence stands out of the crowd by dejecting mindless ritualism and religious dogma in Hinduism present at its time, which continues to exist today. Through deliberate questioning and skeptical arguments, Charvaka brings about a philosophical dimension to Hinduism. It is not a philosophy against philosophy, but a philosophy against religion. This intensifies its importance, because to a society of blind followers, a question can get it to stop rushing into faith and speculate.

To me, the Charvaka school of thinking was not complete. I do agree that it was important, but it had many drawbacks, some of these arising from the classic rationalism versus empiricism debate.

To provide background to my following points, Advaita Vedanta accepts six sources of knowledge- Pratyakṣa (perception), Anumāṇa (inference), Upamāṇa (comparison and analogy), Arthāpatti (postulation), Anupalabdi (non-perception, cognitive proof) and Śabda (testimony of past or present reliable experts). On the other hand, Charvaka accepts only the first one i.e. Pratyakṣa (perception).

The chief weakness, perhaps, was the entire focus on senses, perceptions, and experiences as the ultimate source of truth. It is important to note that these can be subjective, and Hinduism often seeks an objective truth. In the process, other sources of knowledge, such as mathematical patterns and logical reason are ignored. Charvaka sees events in the universe as being unpredictable and occurring by chance, randomly and without cause. This conflicts with the scientific spirit which tends to observe patterns and cause-effect relations in events. The ideas of interference and design in science are missing in Charvaka.

Moreover, our perceptions also depend upon internal human programming which brings our desires, fears, beliefs, prejudices, vices, and virtues, expectations and ignorance into the picture. If the Charvakan reality relies solely on perception, it could be a rather distorted one.

The second drawback, in my opinion, is the absence of order or social conduct in a Charvakan society. Charvaka believes wholeheartedly in following one’s passions and indulging in pleasure. However, pleasure and pain are two dualities that reside on the same coin. It is impossible to have one without the other. To counter this, Charvaka professes that one should gain pleasure and stay away from pain as much as possible. In this way, it was quite different from other philosophies in India during that time. There was no concept of abstinence, temperance, fasting or self-denial in their philosophy. Again, I can draw similarities between the lectures on Hedonism and Charvaka, wherein a brief portion of Charvaka was touched and discussed upon again.

According to the scripture,

“The enjoyment of heaven lies in eating delicious food, keeping company of young women, using fine clothes, perfumes, garlands, sandal paste… while moksha is death which is cessation of life-breath… the wise therefore ought not to take pains on account of moksha. A fool wears himself out by penances and fasts. Chastity and other such ordinances are laid down by clever weaklings.”

Here, I would like to add that it is an exceedingly simple and uncomplicated philosophy, and this works in its favor. There are no excessive rules and regulations to abide by, no prophecies to head to, no God to believe in. It is a very human and passion-driven philosophy, something very central to the primitive human brain. But, in being uncomplicated, it fails to acknowledge a need for social harmony and societal well-being. Simplistic solutions work in the short run and on an individual level, but fail to work in the long term for societies as a whole, and may cause pain and suffering to more people. Through ideas of a soul, a God and rebirth, Hindus in positions of power were able to control animalistic behavior and keep the masses in check.

The rejection of spirituality and a higher consciousness is one more thing that I do not specifically like about Charvaka. Indian society has been rich in the gems of meditation, spirituality, and yoga from the beginning. These are separate from religion and are obtained through sensory experiences itself, but there is a long and tiring path to follow before one can unlock them. According to Charvaka, the path is not worth taking because it goes against the pursuit of pleasure. But, the gain overrides the losses made in the journey.

Charvaka dwindled after the 12th century, but the ideals remain and continued to inspire many Hindus into skepticism and pursuits of science even after it ceased to exist as a proper umbrella school of thought. Slowly, Western philosophy introduced its stronghold in the Indian society, and science became a thing of the present.

I believe that in today’s society, a balance between dialectical materialism and utilitarianism needs to be achieved in order for it to function well. A close inspection of the cognition and emotional centers of the human brain would reveal that most of our actions are propelled by purely animalistic signals. Hence, introspection and meditation along with a bit of self-regulation become necessary in order to ensure that no harm is inflicted upon other sentient beings. According to me, our aspirations and desires may be as material as possible, and that is okay, as long as they do not cause other beings suffering.

To me, it is important to make students of science and humanities aware of Charvaka so as to present to them a complete and holistic dimension of Hinduism, and not just a section of it projected by the Brahmins. Charvaka is an excellent example of how accommodating Eastern philosophy has been of conflicting views, and even though looked down upon by many, made it to be one of the six darshans.

References:

• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Charvaka
• https://www.ancient.eu/Charvaka/

Socrates, Athen’s street-corner philosopher, is known to be born in 470 BC and remains occluded from the primary literature. His mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife- through her, Socrates gives birth to the truth. As discussed in class, the figure of Socrates is rather unattractive- short, plump, not even close to being muscular or sinewy as portrayed in most busts today. He also fought in wars, which perhaps had an effect on his philosophy and caused him to question the expense of happiness. The only way we can know him is through Plato, his disciple’s classical writings, and hence Socrates will thereafter mean the Platonic Socrates. He is also discovered through the historian Xenophon’s writings, where he claims that all he knows is that he knows nothing. Socrates’ chief philosophical style, also known as the Socratic Method or the elenchus, is a style of teaching which involves a series of questions thrown at the learner, while simultaneously addressing the topic at hand. Socrates, at the central point of art, culture, and urbanization, began to explore his fellow Athenians through this method of engaging in discussions and conversations. Immediate contact with students brought about a sense of honesty and truthfulness, as well a sense of introspective brooding. It is pointed out multiple times that Socrates never, in fact, believed himself to be a teacher, rather simply a seeker of knowledge through the outside world. It is hard to complete an article on Socrates without bringing up his most emphatic, resounding quote that the course actually began with -

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

As discussed in class, American philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that Socrates’ disciple Plato was, in fact, the first feminist. Through Socrates’ teacher Diotima of Mantinea, a woman, who plays a pivotal role in Plato’s The Symposium, the credibility of a feminine figure as a teacher or a prophetess is established. Instigated by the discussion, I became curious about Diotima’s figure- was she a historically real person or just a literary figure drawn to magnify the poetic effect in Plato’s writings and force people to think about love, or “erôs”? My curiosity led me to realize that just as Socrates or Plato, Diotima also had a metaphorical role in Greek philosophy. She represented love and wisdom, and impregnated Socrates with impressions on love and instilled a love for knowledge in him.

The Socratic Problem, or the Socratic Question, is simply the fact that one can never know Socrates in depth because almost all of his teachings can only be found through secondary sources since he never wrote anything down himself. This can raise doubt and contradictions within the writings, which make him a much celebrated enigmatic figure. I believe it is the paradox that makes me all the more interested in investigating Socrates further.

I personally believe the Socratic style of teaching should be brought back to the modern world, where most educational institutions, particularly primary to middle schools, often suppress the ideas of critical thinking and indulging in the process of doubt and question. A modern-day Socrates would find students sitting in a cafeteria and plunge into a series of questions with them, just for the sake of intelligent dialogue and discourse. This may put most people off, but this is essentially how critical thinking could be reinforced. In modern times, where texting has become the primary mode of communication, the beauty of dialogue remains underappreciated. Studying Socrates could promote the concept of language and dialogue that sprouts out of nowhere. Asking the right questions, and not knowing their answers is perfectly acceptable in the Socratic way of teaching. The concept of love stays obscure until we ask, “What is love?”; the concept of fear stays obscure until we ask, “What is fear?”.

Moreover, Socrates stood up for his beliefs and was ready to die to defend them. After having been convicted of lack of reverence and corrupting the morals of the youth of Athens, he was tried and sentenced to death. This is a time where Athens was crumbling after having been at the apex of its radicalism, and at an internal war with ideals and the freedom of speech. The entire abstraction of democracy was at trial. His death, famously painted by Jacques-Louis David, shows Socrates presented with a cup of poisoned hemlock. Socrates lived a life dedicated to philosophy, and it reflects through his stoic old-man face in the painting. I believe the young generations could greatly benefit by drawing inspiration from his boundless sincerity to his methods.

Socrates’ premises were often counterintuitive, yet so fresh and engaging that men and women, particularly young, would gather around him to hear him speak. In the words of Cicero, he brought philosophy down from the skies. The inquiries he made were not all obtuse or conceptual; he even asked practical questions such as, “What makes us happy?”, “How should we live our lives best?” and so on.

Socrates pointed out the need for love in a world overtaken by war and a thirst for money and fortification. This shows that his philosophy was also inclined to real-world problems. In my opinion, this reflection draws even greater context in the modern world, where everyone is engrossed in their 9 to 5’s, almost robotic and unfeeling to the idea of happiness and things that should matter in life. Through Socrates’ two-thousand-year-old quest into the meaning of life, one can learn a good deal about how to live it.

References:

• https://www.questia.com/library/philosophy/
• https://www.biography.com/people/socrates-9488126

“How indeed is knowledge generated?”

The discussion is heavily inspired by the philosophy of Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, social theorist and literary critic, who combined elements of modern philosophy and sociology, arguing that knowledge emerges from power relations. He moved beyond the previous classical philosophical questions, which sound rather nebulous and unimportant, and jumped to the real thing.

Michel Foucault’s singular most significant inspiration had been the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who often wrote on the overlap of genealogy of philosophical ideas. Foucault wrote various books including Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality. He was inspired by Nietzsche’s genealogical investigation of social practices. The basic idea behind all of his works is demonstrating how discourses of power have modified and altered the way we think about ideas such as morality, sexuality, madness etc.

Foucault was concerned with how systems of knowledge were scattered across different historical episodes, called epistemes. Foucault’s Discipline and Punish explores the relation between discourse, perception and conduct. He gives the illustration of a prison cell, a power institution wherein the prisoners are subjugated and oppressed by the prison guards. Even when the guards are not on patrol, there is an internalised fear in the minds of the prisoners that they are being scrutinised from the watchtower, which results in a cycle of disciplinary society of checks and surveillance. Here, Foucault builds upon Jeremy Bentham’s conceptualisation of the watchtower, or the Panoptican. Both the victim and the oppressor are part of the power institution. Thus, according to him, knowledge is generated by reducing people to docile bodies and by systematically punishing the deviants. The deviants, in turn, stifle their individuality and internalise their actions according to the professed norm, which is referred to as dynamic normalisation.

In The History of Sexuality, a three-volume series of books, Foucault discusses the classification of sex as being “normal” and “deviant”, a joint effort by the government, the medical practitioners and the Church. He explains how homosexuality was scientifically classified as being abnormal and perverse, and how modern-day discourse on sexuality is actually a part of the same history of repression. By tracing the accounts of views on sexuality from ancient Rome and Greece, where sex was regarded as something normal and uncontroversial, to the West, where discussions on sexuality instantly raise moral questions, Foucault reveals how the knowledge of sex was really created by social power relations.

Madness and Civilization throws light upon how during Renaissance, insane people were not regarded as being sufferers of some mental abnormality, rather people blessed with occult wisdom. But the birth of the “medical gaze” began classifying all mad people as being diseased and in need of medical cure, which he also discusses in The Birth of the Clinic.

Foucault had a distressful personal life- with instances of suppressed sexuality, hints of sado-masochism and depression which all projected subtle influences on his works.

I agree with Foucault’s works on many levels, however I find them rather dark and distrustful. Foucault gives a very comprehensive study of social norms and established morals, and allows us to be in a better position to understand them. Although I have almost always glorified the rebels, the square pegs in the round holes, I do believe that there is a certain set of ethics that would keep psycho killers from roaming about the streets and murdering innocent civilians, or a college student from stepping into the downward spiral of drugs, alcoholism and crime. But again, this sense of discernment is personal to an individual, and it is wrong for a society to draw lines and bars on people. Foucault’s works are extremely important for people to realise that our identity, dignity and morals are non-existent; they are merely products of power relations which are morphed and moulded with time, to the advantage of the dominant.

What I extremely like about his works are how they all talk about extremely diverse subjects- discipline, insanity, sexuality etc. but all somehow converge to the conclusion that all of these are but an interplay of power relations that run through society. He demystifies history, and goes on to use history the way it should be used- as a tool to understand the present. I believe that his works are of extreme relevance even today, and should continue to inspire
modern philosophers in the years to come.