notes from neitzsche

 ... So far everything that has given color to existence still lacks a history; or, where could one find a history of love, of avarice, of envy, of conscience, of piety, or of cruelty ? Even a comparative history of law, or merely of punishment is completely lacking so far. Has anyone yet conducted research into the different ways of dividing the day and the consequence of a regular arrangement of work, holiday and rest? Does anyone know the moral effects of food?  Is there a philosophy of nourishment? Have the experiences of living together been assembled; for example the experiences int he monasteries? Has the dialectic of marriage and friendship been presented as yet? .....

=======================================

For one thing is needful: that a human being attain his statisfaction with himself- whether it be by this or by that poetry and art; only then is a human being at all tolearable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is always ready to revenge himself therefore; we others will be his victims, if only by always having to stand his ugly sight. For the sight of the ugly makes men bad and gloomy.

========================================

iran on India

Iran has so much to teach us Indians about orderly debate and articulate speech. Even the people on the streets to be so much more articulate than our politicians. I began wondering what stops them from making their make in areas like software. Well maybe ahmedinijad is not letting the light shine through into the engineering colleges. Which might not be completely true we have so many successful Iranian academics and engineering professionals here in the US. Ofcourse strained relations with the US - but does that mean you have to be chummy with the US to be able to make technological progress. Or is the very premise of my argument - is it that all the progress is being put to mostly military use.

Church and State

:) I had composed this long back. I probably had some thoughts to add to it - but know I dont even remember the source for the following. They are clearly not out of my head.

The contemporary crisis in Western Christendom created an audience for Hobbes and his ideas. In the midst of religious war, his view that the human mind was too weak and beset by passions to have any reliable knowledge of the divine seemed common-sensical. It also made sense to assume that when man speaks about God he is really referring to his own experience, which is all he knows. And what most characterizes his experience? According to Hobbes, fear. Man's natural state is to be overwhelmed with anxiety, "his heart all the day long gnawed on by fear of death, poverty, or other calamity." He "has no repose, nor pause of his anxiety, but in sleep." It is no wonder that human beings fashion idols to protect themselves from what they most fear, attributing divine powers even, as Hobbes wrote, to "men, women, a bird, a crocodile, a calf, a dog, a snake, an onion, a leek." Pitiful, but understandable.

And the debilitating dynamics of belief don't end there. For once we imagine an all-powerful God to protect us, chances are we'll begin to fear him too. What if he gets angry? How can we appease him? Hobbes reasoned that these new religious fears were what created a market for priests and prophets claiming to understand God's obscure demands. It was a raucous market in Hobbes's time, with stalls for Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Quakers, Ranters, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchy Men and countless others, each with his own path to salvation and blueprint for Christian society. They disagreed with one another, and because their very souls were at stake, they fought. Which led to wars; which led to more fear; which made people more religious; which. . . .

Fresh from the Wars of Religion, Hobbes's readers knew all about fear. Their lives had become, as he put it, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." And when he announced that a new political philosophy could release them from fear, they listened. Hobbes planted a seed, a thought that it might be possible to build legitimate political institutions without grounding them on divine revelation. He knew it was impossible to refute belief in divine revelation; the most one can hope to do is cast suspicion on prophets claiming to speak about politics in God's name. The new political thinking would no longer concern itself with God's politics; it would concentrate on men as believers in God and try to keep them from harming one another. It would set its sights lower than Christian political theology had, but secure what mattered most, which was peace.

whats the f@@king point

If every one is to live for themselves and the only reason to be here is just so that people arent inconvenienced then whats the fucking point of it all. All this - living to be able to marvel at the world and the nature of it all just seems to be bogus. That feeling is like any other strong emotion we feel. I see no reason to base lives on a trivial emotion.

humsafar

jeevan ke har mod pe mil jaayenge humsafar,
jo door tak saath de dhoonde ussi ko dhoonde nazar.