Shunya's Notes

BBC Series on the Ganga

Here is an excellent BBC documentary, Ganges, on the river's Himalayan birth and descent, its journey through the plains, and its end in the Bay of Bengal in what is the largest river delta in the world. The series focuses on the natural history and human life along the river's course. The three episodes embedded below (one hour each) are: (1) Daughter of the Mountains, (2) River of Life, (3) Waterland. One critique I have is that by concentrating the most beautiful and the rarest nature and wildlife footage, the series encourages the highly misguided impression that the environment along the river's course is robust and thriving.

Alan Watts - What We Are

A poetic rumination on our existence by Alan Watts. Strikes me as "scientifically-alert" Upanishadic metaphysics with dubious bits minimized.

Marglin on the Dismal Science

I spotted a recent book, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community, by Harvard professor Stephen A. Marglin, who apparently writes from a socialist-communitarian point of view. The book jacket says the following: 

Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However, as Stephen Marglin argues, market relationships erode community. In the past, for example, when a farm family experienced a setback--say the barn burned down--neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns, not to his neighbors, but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising, but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations.

Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last four centuries, this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered.

Watch this excellent interview with Marglin to get the flavor of his central arguments (62 mins), and read the first chapter of his book and some book reviews here (Guardian, Times Higher Education, etc.) and on Amazon.

Pollock on the Study of Classics in India

In this insightful and alarming talk (~20 mins, also detailed in this pdf), Sheldon Pollock, professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Columbia University, describes the deep crisis in the study of the classics and classical languages in India, and why we should worry about it. Six million classical manuscripts lie unread in archives across India but today, Pollock claims, there aren't any noteworthy Indian scholars of classical literature, no one teaching pre-19th century works in major universities, and no journals being published. Many Indians did great work in early/mid-20th century, but "India has not produced another DD Kosambi. There is nobody in India today who has the philological and critical ... edge that Kosambi brought." If you like this talk, check out this interesting interview with Pollock during one of his India visits.

Tyler Cowen on Stories

In this amusing TED talk, Tyler Cowen explores how stories work in our lives—how we receive them, how we tell them to ourselves and to others, and what we should be wary of—even as he is conscious that what he is talking about is also just a story!

Thapar on Indian History

An engaging conversation with historian Romila Thapar on some aspects of ancient Indian history, its distortion by colonial scholars, tussles between the post-independence secular and Hindutva camps, and how the past and the present continue to shape each other in India.

The Bhagavad Gita Revisited - Part 1

(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments.)

Why the Bhagavad Gita is an overrated text with a deplorable morality at its core. This is part one of a two-part critique. (Part 1 is the appetizer with the Gita’s historical and literary context. Part 2 is the main course with the textual critique).
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In mid-first millennium BCE, a great spiritual awakening was underway in areas around the middle Ganga. People were moving away from the old Vedic religion—which revolved around rituals, animal sacrifices, and nature gods—to more abstract, inner-directed, and contemplative ideas. They now asked about the nature of the self and consciousness, thought and perception. They asked if virtue and vice were absolute or mere social conventions. Personal spiritual quests, aided by meditation and renunciation of material gain, had slowly gathered pace. From this churn arose new ideas like karma and dharma, non-dualism, and the unity of an individual’s soul (atman) with the universal soul (Brahman)—all pivotal ideas in Hinduism.

Some of these innovations in thought soon made their way into the texts we now know as the Upanishads, setting them qualitatively apart from the earlier Vedas. All of this occurred in the context of great sociopolitical and economic changes, marked by the rise of cities, trade and commerce, social mobility, public debates, new institutions of state, and even some early republics. This was also the world of the Buddha, Mahavira, and Carvaka.

The Great War of Yore

By this time, versions of a Mahabharata story had been circulating for centuries. Perhaps inspired by a war that took place c. 950 BCE around modern Delhi (the date is tentative), the story, through oral transmission, took on a life of its own. In The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009), Wendy Doniger writes that the earliest bards who told the Mahabharata story came from a caste of charioteers, who served as drivers, confidantes, and bodyguards to the Kshatriya warrior-castes. While on military campaigns, they recited stories around campfires. (No wonder God is a charioteer in the epic! Even Karna is raised by a charioteer.) In later ages and in times of peace, many bards took their performance art to lay audiences in villages and folk festivals. The story also came to be recited during royal sacrifices, where the Brahmins slowly took over its delivery and evolution, eventually writing it down in Sanskrit. Its "final form" dates from 300 BCE-300 CE and ranges from 75K to 100K verses, seven to ten times the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. (Read an outline of the story here.)

Curiosity for Mars

NASA just launched its newest Mars rover, Curiosity. This super cool animation shows how it will get to Mars and some things it'll do there.

Our Animals, Ourselves

A very interesting piece by my friend Justin E. H. Smith on our shared history with animals and how it has changed over time.

... Our adult humanity consists in cutting off ties of community with animals, ceasing, as Lévi-Strauss put it, to think with them. When on occasion adults begin again to think about animals, if not with them, it is to assess whether animals deserve the status of rights-bearers. Animal rights, should there be such things, are now thought to flow from neurophysiological features and behavioral aptitudes: recognizing oneself in the mirror, running through mazes, stacking blocks to reach a banana.

But what is forgotten here is that the animals are being tested for re-admission to a community from which they were previously expelled, and not because they were judged to lack the minimum requirements for the granting of rights. They were expelled because they are hairy brutes, and we learned to be ashamed of thinking of them as our kin. This shame only increased when Darwin confirmed our kinship, thus telling us something Paleolithic hunters already knew full well. Morality doubled up its effort to preserve a distinction that seemed to be slipping away. Since the 19th century, science has colluded with morality, always allowing some trivial marker of human uniqueness or other to function as a token for entry into the privileged moral universe of human beings. "They don't have syntax, so we can eat them," is how Richard Sorabji brilliantly reduces this collusion to absurdity.

And is there a better video to pair this with than Frans de Waal's lecture on what science tells us about our shared morality with animals?

 

Finally, "What sort of thoughts can animals have? Tim Crane discusses the intriguing issue of what apes and monkeys are capable of thinking about in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast." (Via 3QD)

Sørensen on World Order

An insightful talk by Georg Sørensen on the world order today, where he considers four dimensions: (a) war and peace, (b) global economy, (c) institutions and governance, and (d) global environment. Sørensen is distinguished professor of international politics and economics in Denmark and has written fifteen books "on international relations and development issues. His research areas include society and politics, international community, democracy and development, prospects for a liberal world order, transformations of the state and its effects on international relations." If you like this, check out another recent talk by him on Democracy and Democratization.

In his new book, A Liberal World Order in Crisis, Sørensen quotes me in his final chapter (from my essay, Being Liberal in a Plural World).

 

Dharavi: India's Model Slum?

Dharavi, Asia's largest slum, is usually spoken of as a hell-hole and a shame for urban India. Here is a very different viewpoint. "Look beyond the stereotype," says urban development consultant Prakash M. Apte, "and you'll find a successful settlement with a vibrant community and economy. But developers want to raze it all and start again ... Dharavi is a model that should be replicated, not redeveloped."

The Indian megacity of Mumbai has an estimated population of about 14 million. Of those, only about 35% live in 'regular' permanent housing. The other 65% live in informal settlements, which for more than a third of those people means squatting on sidewalks and under bridges. The rest -- nearly 6 million people -- occupy settlements on private and public open lands, some of which are more than 50 years old. Dharavi is one of the most famous, but unlike all others and despite its common depiction as a "slum", it is actually a successful work-cum-residential settlement. Developers have been trying to redevelop the area for years, but Dharavi is a model settlement that needs to be replicated, not replaced.

Located in the heart of Mumbai, Dharavi has a population of more than 600,000 people residing in 100,000 makeshift homes, and one of the world’s highest population densities at more than 12,000 persons per acre. It is just across from the Bandra- Kurla Complex—a fast developing commercial center that has overtaken Nariman Point, the current downtown of Mumbai—and is also located close to Mumbai’s domestic and international airports. Despite its plastic and tin structures and lack of infrastructure, Dharavi is a unique, vibrant, and thriving 'cottage' industry complex, the only one of its kind in the world.

More here (browse the comments too). Below is a related TED Talk by Robert Neuwirth who finds "squatter cities—where a billion people now make their homes—to be thriving centers of ingenuity and innovation." Check out another TED Talk by Steward Brand on squatter cities.

Peace in the Favelas

Here is a success story from the favelas, or shantytowns, of Rio de Janeiro. Plagued for years by violent crime, the favelas were awash in gangs, drug dealers, and high-end automatic weapons that even the local police didn't have; thousands were killed during shootouts. The police were afraid to go in; kids growing up in the favelas idolized gang leaders; fear ruled the streets. The horrifying movie City of God, based on a true story, captured all this brilliantly well. However, with the soccer world cup and the Olympics coming up, the government recently adopted a whole new approach to addressing this problem and it is working out really well. Check out this report by Al Jazeera.

India's Silent War

From Imran Garda of Al Jazeera comes this rare, insightful, and truly heartrending report on the plight of the Adivasis. "A 40-year long civil war has been raging in the jungles of central and eastern India. It is one of the world's largest armed conflicts but it remains largely ignored outside of India. Caught in the crossfire of it are the Adivasis, who are believed to be India's earliest inhabitants. A loose collection of tribes ... about 84 million of these indigenous people, which is about eight per cent of the country's population. ... The uprising by Maoist fighters and its brutal suppression by the Indian government, has claimed more than 10,000 lives since 1980, and displaced 12 million people." But numbers do not reveal the larger tragedy, stories like this do, which we hardly ever find in the Indian media. (Via Usha.)

Revisiting the Bhagavad Gita

Here is a clip from Peter Brook’s brilliant adaptation of the Mahabharata (1989). It contains the film’s rendition of the Bhagavad Gita. I am rereading the Gita now and plan to write a review soon. I’ll argue that given the catastrophic destruction of life by the war’s end, a more reasonable response to the Gita is to question, rather than admire, Krishna’s "wisdom", and to see Arjuna’s straightforward doubts about the war as more genuine and human. In my estimation, the arguments that Krishna employs to convince Arjuna to fight are not very convincing, and are often pernicious. By extension, I think the Gita is not a worthy guide to life (or the ‘inner battlefield’), at least not in terms of moral reasoning. It seems to me that Krishna, using a dazzling array of abstract ideas and psychology, brainwashes Arjuna into thinking that he has penetrated his illusions to understand ‘ultimate reality’, from which vantage point the great warrior is able to overcome all his moral doubts: hardly a commendable state.

My critique will be hard to dismiss as an example of Western/Eurocentric bias (especially by irate Indian readers, some of whom did just that with Wendy Doniger’s take on the Gita), for I intend to amplify a critique of the Gita’s philosophical worldview that was extant within India even two millennia ago, in the thought of the Buddha himself and then Nagarjuna. (To be continued...)

Miss Representation

Go see the very well put together documentary film, Miss Representation, which explores "the media’s limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls." While not in theaters (yet?), click on the movie website to locate a screening near you (trailer below). 

The Chinese are Coming

This breezy BBC documentary (early 2011) explores the nature and impact of China's rising influence around the world, especially in Africa, Brazil, and the U.S., and how China is reshaping the balance of power among nations.

Over a million Chinese now live and work in Africa, running high-yield chicken farms to giant mining operations, selling goods, lending money, building infrastructure. Inevitably, they have also brought with them a range of cultural values and economic practices that cause friction at times. Pop pundit Tom Friedman says of the chinese: "what's most unsettling to most Americans is not their communism, it's their capitalism". That said, you can also see this two-hour documentary as a series of human stories from a rapidly changing world—from Angola, Zambia, Congo, Tanzania, Brazil, and the U.S.—and ponder the role each of us plays in the unfolding of the world as it does.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Steve Jobs is dead. Watch once again his Stanford commencement speech, 2005. Also check out two interesting articles about him. The first introduces his biological father from Syria, and the circumstances that led his biological parents to put him up for adoption in the U.S. The second is a view into the mind of the amazing inventor he later became. It comes from an ex-colleague and the former CEO of Apple, John Sculley. And finally, from The Simpsons show, come satirical clips on Steve Mobs of Mapple, on thinking differently, and on a Mapple Store.

Battling Bad Science

"Every day there are news reports of new health advice, but how can you know if they're right? Doctor and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre shows us, at high speed, the ways evidence can be distorted, from the blindingly obvious nutrition claims to the very subtle tricks of the pharmaceutical industry." If you like this, check out another related performance by Goldacre from last year.

A Decade of War Costs

A look at what the wars of the post-9/11 decade cost the American economy (more data here):

Guinier on Redefining Merit

A brilliant short lecture by Lani Guinier, professor of law at Harvard and civil rights activist, on what merit means, why we need to redefine it, the benefits of diversity in approaching complex problems, what standardized tests like the SAT reveal about you ("what kind of car your parents drive"), and why we have moved into an era of "modern scientific racism" (via Anu Ramdas).

Glenny on Organized Crime

Journalist Misha Glenny on "organized crime networks worldwide, which have grown to an estimated 15% of the global economy. From the Russian mafia, to giant drug cartels, his sources include not just intelligence and law enforcement officials but criminal insiders."

The Lost City of Ugarit

(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily.)

With Syria in the news, I’ve dusted off an account I wrote a few months after my visit there in Feb 2001. I’ve also created an 8-min video from my archives, using music by Fairuz for soundtrack. While I look at contemporary Syrian society and politics, the bulk of my narrative is on Ugarit, a nearly 4,000-year-old city held to be the birthplace of the alphabet. We know a fair bit about it from its surviving clay tablets, written in this first alphabet. One tablet even has this timeless reminder to men: ‘Do not tell your wife where you hide your money.’

The road to Lattakia goes over the Anti-Lebanon Range. I had left Aleppo under a blue sky at noon; now a thick fog rolls in, tall conifers appear in the valleys, visibility drops. The pop Arabic music in the bus gets louder but does not deter my fellow passengers from dozing. Handsome villages with brick houses, clean streets, and small domed mosques appear now and again. The bus stops at a rest area with gift shops and restaurants and arrives in Lattakia by early evening. I take a cab to the city center and find a hotel. It is my tenth day in Syria.

Lattakia lies on the Mediterranean coast of Syria and is one of its most modern towns. I see well-groomed women flaunting their feminine charms in tight jeans, sleek coats, flowing dark hair, makeup, décolletage. It feels like Eastern Europe. The evening prayer from a mosque comes wafting down rooftops just in time to remind me: I am in an Islamic country. Its socialistic aims clearly run counter to those of radical Islam, virtually absent in Syria. Just days ago, curiosity led me to ask a few urban young men: which Arab country has the hottest women? The winner: Lebanon, Syria next, and tied for third spot: Tunisia, Jordan, Kuwait. I imagine local young women waging a million mutinies daily—in dress, movement, occupation, choice of mates. Each new threshold crossed a potential source of angst and family drama. An intricate web of connections, customs, certitudes, all subject to modernizing change.

Alva Noë on Consciousness

In Out of Our Heads, Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë, "restates and reexamines the problem of consciousness, and ... suggests that rather than being something that happens inside us, consciousness is something we do. Debunking an outmoded philosophy that holds the scientific study of consciousness captive, Out of Our Heads is a fresh attempt at understanding our minds and how we interact with the world around us." Here is an excerpt from a review:

The key assumption behind the science of consciousness is that consciousness is an internal process that occurs in the brain.  Noë's chief goal in the book is to show that this highly questionable, yet unquestioned assumption, has led the consciousness research astray; in brief, the search for consciousness has focused on where it isn't.  Noë opens by challenging this assumption, and offers an alternative picture.  Instead of characterizing consciousness as an internal process (like digestion) Noë proposes a picture which takes consciousness to be an activity (like dancing).  To try to understand consciousness by just focusing on the brain's neural activity is tantamount to trying to understand dancing strictly in terms of the muscles.  In the latter case, the muscles certainly play a part in the explanation, but they can hardly be the entire story.  Analogously for the explanation of consciousness: brain processes are a part of the story, but they are not the whole story, even if they have been given an undue amount of attention.

Today I came across this brilliant talk by Noe in which he explains his key ideas about consciousness to a general audience, and which seem to me exactly right, though I submit that they are not so new as some reviews suggest—perhaps Noe's particular exposition and focus on the topic create that impression. His line of thinking in fact goes back directly (via philosophers like Hubert Dreyfus) to Heidegger, as well as to Wittgenstein. Enjoy the talk—if you like it, check out this conversation and a talk on Edge.org.

The Culture of Gaming

Broadcast on public radio, an interesting "look at the history, the culture and the future of video games. Whether you know it or not you're likely a gamer and games are creeping into nearly every aspect of life; an hour on how far video games have come and where they're going."

Mexico and the War on Drugs

Al-Jazeera has this sad and chilling report from Ciudad Juaraz, a border town in Mexico now embroiled in the absurd American war on drugs:

Once known as a booming industrial city and a model of economic progress in Mexico, the border city of Juarez has become infamous as the murder capital of the world. More than 8,000 people have been killed there since 2008, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to carry out his offensive against the drug cartels.

The official story is that the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels are fighting for the city and the access it provides to the multi-billion dollar US drug market only a few hundred metres away.  On this episode of Fault Lines, Josh Rushing travels to Ciudad Juarez, and asks how human life there came to be worth so much less than the drugs being trafficked through.