Rape.

The problem does not lie with the police, as I see it. They are, in any case, understaffed. In a 'democracy' large as ours, understaffed police force is an inevitable outcome. The problem - the root of most cases of rape, in this country, is traffic. In fact, the root of most of our problems is traffic, and the roads. Assigning blame doesn't serve much of a purpose. It's time to address this problem.

On Fanaticism

According to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Prisig, fanaticism arises out of lack of faith in the object of fanaticism. He takes the example of the sun rising tomorrow, and says no one is going bananas over this fact. Applied to oneself, I can see where Prisig is coming from. I'm fanatical about jazz and postmodernist theorists. My fanaticism stems from a lack of faith in my understanding, and that's always been the case. There is a certain insecurity at play, and once the insecurity dies, so does my fanaticism. For example, I used to be hugely obsessed with a progressive metal band called Dream Theater. My obsession lasted three years, and now that I think about it, it was premised on a lack of faith in my understanding of the music that was being played. I have a clearer understanding now, the insecurities have gone, and with that, the fanaticism's also disappeared.

I'm hypothesizing here, though I do get the sense one could extend this fanaticism to the ambit of academia, as well. The good professors I've been taught by possess (if fanaticism is a thing that can be possessed) a certain degree of fanaticism. the arrived ones, I have noticed, needn't be fanatic at all. The fanatic ones are afflicted with a lack of faith in their own understanding, and so always keep reading the course, and everything that's related to it. The arrived ones are secure in their understanding and communication, and still read out of genuine interest. This piece isn't a value judgement about fanaticism. This is what it appears to be, according to me, and that is that.

Music Editing is Not Always the Best Idea

According to Pat Metheny, a good musical improvisation is one that has the form of question and answer. The instrumentalist poses a question, through his music, and then answers the question with his instrument. If one is to apply this to the uncut version of Comfortably Numb live at PULSE, upon a little reflection, it becomes apparent that the uncut bit poses the question, played by Gilmour on his guitar, which is answered by the climax of the solo, where as the edited version only gives you the answer, without the question Gilmour's guitar had asked, on that version of the song. The uncut version of this rendition renders the performance of the song more complete, and should be referred to by one and all, when one speaks of that version of the song.

What Is Instinct?

            What is Instinct?

            An act of instinct, in the everyday sense, is one that cannot be logically explained through a series of cause-and-effect relationships, however, this notion gives rise to many questions that don’t have determinate answers, of the logical category P/~P. In this essay, I will attempt to bring to the fore a flexible definition of instinct, it’s use in the everyday, a possible relationship between proponents of instinct and dogmatism/faith, instinct and habit, the impossibility of a teleology of instinct, and conclusion.

            There are a number of ways in which instinct may be defined. In terms of what it is qualified by, instinct is a bundle of learned behaviours appropriated by the subject, when faced with a situation. The sources of these learned behaviours, in this post-modern age, are varied. Media of all forms plays a key role, as do societal norms and observed behavioural patterns. Parental guidance is another key construct to forming behavioural patterns and the progeny assimilate their parents’ behavioural patterns with their own to develop identities of their own. This idea would perhaps sit well with John Locke’s blank slate argument, which suggests that the mind of a new-born child is completely empty, and does not possess any semblance of innate ideas.

            How, though, does one reconcile this notion of instinct with what in everyday life is called a ‘gut’ feeling? The answer is simple – to posit the existence of a ‘gut’ feeling would be tantamount to accepting the Cartesian theory of innate ideas, which suggests that a child is born with some ideas already planted in the brain by a supreme artificer before birth, such as the existence of God and set notions of righteousness. A gut feeling, like the Cartesian theory of innate ideas, is a notion that transcends the bounds of logical categories, and provides one with an idea of the positive or negative consequences of a particular action, and illuminates the path one is traversing. In light of the above arguments, it seems to me that to posit the existence of a ‘gut’ feeling, loosely interpreted as instinct, in common commerce, amounts to accepting the existence of a supreme artificer. This notion, again, throws up many questions about the possibility of a necessary relationship between instinct and theism/dogmatism, instinct and atheism: whether they are compatible, a relationship between instinct and both- theism and atheism, or instinct as distinct from both theism and atheism.

            The socially accepted notion of instinct as mentioned in the introduction suggests that it cannot be explained through a series of cause and effect relationships. This means to say that any attempt at logical categories to explain this phenomenon may be rendered moot. Similar to this is the universal idea of God, which suggests much the same; that God transcends logic, is beyond space and time and the empirical world, and is the creator of the universe. The proof for the existence of instinct, it seems, is centered on faith, much like the existence of God. Therefore, there appears to be a necessary relationship between faith in God, or theism, and faith in instinct. Instinct, furthermore, is necessarily incompatible with atheism, in light of this argument, because the essential characteristic of theism is faith, and we have seen above that instinct too is premised on faith, where as the essential characteristic of atheism is empirical reality, which is precisely the thing that instinct is not premised on. From this, it logically follows that instinct cannot be compatible with both- theism and atheism, nor incompatible with both theism and atheism.

            Another notion of instinct that one hears of, from time to time, is that instinct is the same as habit. For this school of thought, instinct has nothing to do with theism, nor atheism, but rather centers on a routine so intrinsic to one’s being, and in some cases, essential for one’s survival, that it becomes second nature to the subject in question. When this routine becomes second nature to a subject, and the subject performs these routine actions without having to think at all, the routine turns into a habit. For example, each time Sourav Ganguly took his stance before facing a ball, he would place the bat in his left hand and let it swing back anf forth once, as if he was winding himself up for each ball he faced. This action turned into a habit, and a not so uncommon view will suggest that this action constituted his instinct. This is an interesting way of thinking of instinct because it disposes of the notion of faith mentioned earlier, and provides a simpler framework for the idea of instinct. 

            As for the teleology of instinct, it doesn’t exist. Instinct has neither a past, nor a future. It is always directed, and in some ways, a way of thinking of the present. It is always in the moment. To say that there is a teleology of instinct, is therefore a redundancy.

            To conclude, instinct is a very loosely defined term, one that is open to an incredible amount of interpretation, and a field that (at least to my knowledge) hasn’t been explored enough yet. Whether it is premised on theism or habit, I will leave the reader to decide. I can only say with certitude that a I do not know what instinct really is.

           

            

iRamble

There's no point to having this blog. It's meant to function as an online journal. These thoughts are mine, and it is important to keep a journal, though I do not see a functionality in putting them down on a public forum. The idea of an online journal is somewhat absurd to me. The very concept of a personal journal is that it is a private affair- one where one's thoughts go. It's a kind of inversion that is taking place here. People want to know what other people think. Sometimes, one doesn't want to let on what one thinks, and in articulating this fact, one is letting another know what s/he thinks. 

Public opinion is another funny term that's been abused and flung about, of late. Incorporate public opinion, nation will grow, they say. There is inversion here too. Ideas coming from all over the place. Rampant plagiarism. Ideas as building blocks to one's own thinking. Intellectual growth. Shrinking boundaries. Technology is slowly doing away with material possession of things. The internet allows access to every bit of information one may need. Internet access is an acquisition. An accusation of prolixity, to wordy/bulky encyclopedia and hard copies of research material, too. Bullet point insights and mediocrity in knowledge about things, as opposed to the ever fecund ways of complete knowledge about relatively fewer things. The internet dispenses information. The internet inhibits complete information too, for many of us lazy ones, who are too lazy to look a little deeper, even if only on the net. The world has shrunk. It's on the world wide web. Google it, bitch.

This blog is pointless. Reading this piece has given you nothing to write home about. Nor has it enhanced your knowledge of anything at all. It's perhaps opened you up to a new way of cynicism. Good for you. If you want me to write something substantial, perhaps something that'll change your life, piss off. It is precisely these fiendish things, floating about on the internet, this whole status bullshit attached to the idea of having a blog, that makes the internet an irritating place. 

Decisions

Decisions need to be made, decisions for the future, decisions for means of earning, decisions for intellectual enrichment, decisions for tomorrow. Some choose journalism, others choose the corporate world, yet others choose the media, while some others choose the academic way of life. The academic way of life. A funny thing, it is: an academic way of life. The idea of sounding profound is one that has a few takers; analogous to a painting, a piece of music, anything that stirs one's aesthetic sensibilities, analogous indeed to the high-mindedness of rulers passed, of ideals that can only remain but ideals, analogous, indeed, to the unattainable notion of perfection, a notion so unattainable that one insists on at least trying, because perfection is the 'keep off the grass' banner in a park and 'trying to achieve that goal' is the person dribbling a ball in the park on the grass where the banner says 'keep off the grass'.

Academics becomes a seductive idea, indeed. One enters college after having finished twelve years of school, twelve years of being taught by the same teachers, of meeting the same people, of listening to the same shit everyday. College is a whole new experience, and the idea of what one went through in school after three years becomes preposterous. But of course, one must state the obvious.

By the third year of one's college life, and this is when one begins to look at oneself as being on the brink of graduation, some find themselves enamoured by the profound ways of one's professors, of wanting to be intellectuals like them because sometimes they make being smart look very cool, and what one invariably fails to realise is that one only really finds the idea of being an intellectual appetizing. The idea becomes seductive. Sexy. The idea becomes a little like the American hegemonisation of the world, however, where it differs from American hegemony is that it does not lack culture. It does, however, come with its drawbacks.

A not so uncommon trait amongst academics is that they think they know everything about everything - a disease which in fact should be legally recognised as a threat as great as the possibility of nuclear wars. With nuclear wars, one speaks of MAD - mutually assured destruction. The efforts that go into knowing everything about everything can drive one err...... MAD. The general pompousness of their attitude and their positively obnoxious ideas on which brand of shampoo one should use should be looked at as global security threats. A possible cure to this incredibly dangerous disease is a simple one - to give each of these pompous farts a humbling experience to mull over. That should put their money where their mouths are.

The reader may perhaps get the idea that this article is a tirade against academics, and I believe it is my prerogative here to quell such notions - there are in fact, quite a few positive effects of this way of life. The non-pompous academics revel in the ideas they are surrounded with, and perhaps it is with this mind that Socrates said "All I have are my ideas". Academics, in terms of what it is qualified by, is essentially about the comparative analysis of ideas, along with research, fieldwork, and of course, teaching, and it is these precise ideas, as history will tell you, that allows one to keep one's peace of mind. Exceptional cases will tell you that it drives some people mad, and there are exceptions for everything.

To come back to decisions, which is what i started this article with, they need to be made, and very soon, for final year students of Delhi University. For all the ugly counterparts of academics, the idea still sounds rather seductive. Sexy.

The Mecca Incident

Mecca is a rather curious name for the festival of a college called Hindu. One way of interpreting it is that this is an attempt on the part of the college to be secular- the other way, of course, is to think of it as the Mecca of activity. Or in this case, rowdy behaviour. It is also rather curious, I would like to add in parenthesis, that no terrorist outfit has got wind of the name of our festival and premised an attack on the chosen nomenclature. After what happened today, I would support such a terrorist outfit.

Since I joined college, the festival has got worse by the year, and up until the commencement of this year's "festival" (feels rather odd calling it a festival) one would have thought bringing Daler Mehendi to our college to perform set a benchmark for lousiness (sounds rather oxymoronic, doesn't it?), but as Murphy's Law will tell you, I was Wrong. With a capital W. Elitist as this may sound, what happened this year, specifically today, was mind-numbing. The English Dramatics society of Hindu College was scheduled to perform a play called Night of January 16th today, i.e. 3rd Feb 2012. In line with most of what Ayn Rand has written, this play is a wordy-sort -of-intense-in-a-pretentious-way sort of play, and owing to the intellectually gifted general populous of our college (I wonder if they know how to open a door), our play got booed off stage. When people weren't booing, they were hooting at every form of estrogen they could see on stage, when they weren't hooting, they were yapping amongst themselves like deranged pomeranians. Efforts were made by actors and stage managers to quieten the crowd, but all they received was hoots and boos. The actors tried to use mics, get their words across to the back rows, all to no avail. The irate cast had no option but to leave the stage with the play half finished.

It is my understanding and not uncommon knowledge, I am sure, that Masque is not a very popular society and is branded as elitist, though that doesn't take away from the right to perform on stage. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, every theatre society should also be entitled to a chance to prove themselves worthy. The kind of inebriated self-centred egoism that prevailed in the auditorium today (did I mention half the audience was drunk?) is precisely the thing that will prove to be the downfall of institutions, and in my eyes, Hindu is already a terrible, terrible college.