బ్రతకటానికి బ్రతకటం

"Evolution is the greatest idea anyone has ever had" -Daniel C. Dennett

Generally the phrase "living for living's sake" is used in a rather derogatory tone, as if to say that a being's life purpose must be greater than "just living".

I've been reading a bit about evolution lately: KL Evans' Charlie Kaufman, Screenwriter (surprisingly fecund in more ways than one), half of Jerry A. Coyne's Why Evolution is True (accessible and fascinating) and am a quarter way through James Suzman's Work (astounding both in its intellectual scope and TIL moments) and a WhatsApp forward with this info¹. And it’s beginning to dawn on me that the imposition of particular ways of living to transcend over 'basic living' is, in the world I live in, rather misplaced.

I think I understand what people mean when they say 'just living'. In that connotation, it means to live to eat, sleep, procreate and stay alive as long as you can. The 'quality of life' doesn't matter. And I think I agree with it, especially having rallied against that kind of unremarkable living for years now. But I think that disdain comes from, atleast from me, being unable to grasp the giant strides humanity, the species, has taken over the past few millennia where people have exponentially gained more comfort and security that now they spend most of their day worrying about how to live their lives. It's an astounding achievement to so easily overlook.

If I'd been born, say, 10,000 years ago, a large chunk of my day, and consequently life, would've been spent in extremely trying circumstances. Staying alive and passing my genes on would have been the biggest achievement. You know, 'basic living'. And now such a life is frowned upon by many². Now we (have to) work on improving our lives and creating/ doing something of value for other beings. This could be something as primitive as gaining social status to something more sophisticated (there’s my value judgement) as advancing knowledge. There is definitely a qualitative difference between the two but by their design of being driven by the ends, they're similar.

In the chapter on fire, James Suzman reasons that once we'd learnt to tame fire, we could eat a larger variety of foods (thereby decreasing food-gathering time), did not have to spend nights worrying about carnivorous animals and spent nights gathered around a crackling fire developing social bonds and subsequently telling stories; We had more leisure. And yet, using Levi-Strauss' structural model, he argues that that, paradoxically, led to the creation of the concept of work. The earliest humans till then were purely biologically driven. Once they found it easy to find food, stay securely and procreate fairly easily, they realised that they were bored. They had time in their hands with nothing to do. And that probably led to the creation and evolution of culture, which then started an accelerated feedback loop³ where it became easier and easier to fulfill life's basic obligations and spend time doing more ‘fun’ stuff, and we had more and more time to fill. Ergo, you have art, and science, and all those wonderful things. And also consumerism and mid-life crises.

These ideas in my mind then struck bonds with what I'd read a few months ago: a part of Erich Fromm's Man in the age of Capitalist Society (meta-Social Studies if you will) and a brief introduction to Alistair MacIntyre's narrative being (from Michael Sandel's terrific, and very useful, Justice). And then it dawned on me, hopefully rightly, that once we got past physical compulsions, as a society we started creating subtler needs and aspirations for our members⁴. Both our physical, mental and spiritual environments took shape to find the least-resistant way for life to move forward⁵.

This is a non-teleological view of the universe which brings me to the starting point of this post- The point, in as much as there is, of life is to live. It's a question I've been grappling with for years and even though I've had similar epiphanies in the past, and by all evidence this will be short-lived as well, it seems both ludicrous to state it but also emancipating.

Having said all this, I must also say that I believe that all lives are not equal. I don't say this from a Social Darwinist stance but what I learnt from Sandel's chapters on Kant. I think Kant's articulation of, among other things, freedom is absolutely terrific. And because I found Sandel's example so accessible, I'll just use that:

Imagine you are walking on the road on a very hot afternoon. You are sweaty and tired when you come across a hoarding for Coka-Cola with splashy colours and a photograph of a really enticing cold bottle. You start salivating. Now, you could just walk across the street to a store and buy it. Every part of your body is craving for it. As you start to make your way, a small voice pops up in your head that reminds you that its not at all good for your health and that maybe you should drink water. You resist that thought. It becomes louder. You tell it that it's only this one time, it should be fine. It tells you that you'll feel worse once the hit wears off. You tell it to bugger off, you are free to do what you want and if you want to drink a cola, you will drink a cola.

Now, you might think that you are making a choice, expressing your freedom. But in reality, you are slave to your 'lower' biological urges and have been manipulated by a well-designed advertisement. On the other hand, when you resist that impulse, inspite of the fact that you are seemingly bound a 'virtuous' cause, you are experiencing a higher freedom. He makes the distinction between those two freedoms as heteronomy (following a more desire-driven impulse) vs autonomy (a more objective, reason-guided calling).

I don't generally end with advice but I'm compelled to give in case someone, especially a later version of me,  finds it useful:

1. Environments are important. Structures are stunningly useful and once instated can be hard to budge. (“We shape our buildings thereafter they shape us” -Winston Churchill) That’s why it’s so important to design our environment to (I don’t want to use the word optimise) give as much support as possible for our lives to blossom. Yes, there's a lot to unpack in that statement and I don't want to get into an argument about it now, but as a heuristic, its important to remember that our environments have a much bigger impact on our lives than we like to think. But are they deterministic? I don't think so, I think we still have 'elbow room'.
   
2. As you grow older, the plasticity of your brain decreases and you become more set in your ways. So old people literally have a hard time changing their ways. I don't know what I can do about it except try to keep it at bay for as long as possible. Apparently, as you grow older, your world narrows down because your brain makes the choice to protect your body⁶. Which is why being fit is so important.
   

The 'rightest' way to live is to keep finding what makes you feel deeply alive, I have a few broad markers for identifying that state but a lot of the knowledge is also experiential, and act accordingly. Admittedly, I'm a beginner student of evolution but in many ways, it has created more wonder and clarity within me than the bit of religious searching I've done over the years. 

--

I actually wrote most of this piece about a week ago but sat on it because I felt what came out was valuable and it would be best if I could 'work' on it further to shape it into a better form. A lot of thinking has happened this week (specifically around a startup idea, what I want to do with my life, and how do I work) and I think I'm not a very calculative/ rational person when it comes to living. The more I try to shape my life, bring it to order to improve it, the more I fail. I could be lazy, incompetent, undisciplined, and not as intelligent as I like to believe I am, but I find joy in reading and writing in this sort of messy way. I seek to find processes so that I can tap this 'joy of work' at will but it creates more anxiety than I like.

Bottomline, I don't really know what's the right thing to do. Thankfully, I seem to atleast identify some of the moments when I'm feeling really alive. Maybe life is like that, islands of joy in a sea of ennui, confusion, anxiety. Is it wrong/ right to want joy all the time?

¹ A few other resources that don't specifically deal with Biological/ Cultural Evolution also helped: Vinay Sitapati's Jugalbandi (a ripping yarn with many insights), Amit Varma's conversation with Krish Ashok (my tongue was salivating but not more than my mind), C Thi Ngyuen's Agency as Art

² Reminds me of Inkoroju vellipoindu from Amaravathi Kathalu and Bangaru Murugu. They 'simply lived' without worrying too much about the purpose of their lives

³ The bit on brain plasticity was a marvel. Unlike most other creatures which evolved to thrive in a certain environment, we learned to learn and so can adapt to/ dominate many environments quite easily

⁴ I don't know if we came up with it as much as life evolved in those ways. Like Yuval Noah Harari's pithy quote says, 'We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.'

⁵ At this point I have a non-teleological view of the universe

⁶ I got this nugget from this absolutely terrific Airbnb experience that Anindo suggested

P.S- I should probably post the stuff I wrote as part of my BWW workshop. It seems ridiculous to 'hold' onto them to unleash more 'value' from them later. When did I become so transactional?

P.P.S- Maybe I won't become anything more than an occasional blogger? Maybe I don't have it in me to be a successful writer. Why is that so bad? Why am I so driven by that image of myself? Because I live in a society that tells me to use the talent I have, improve it via hard work and achieve success (material wealth, social recognition, attributable impact on society etc.)? Maybe that's not such a bad idea, but is it a particularly good one?

why write

How long has it been since I sat down after midnight while music played through the earphones and started blogging. Not writing for a deadline nor something I think I ought to. Just the simple act of opening this page and start typing. The most recent image I can conjure up in my head is from, probably, 2014 and I'm sitting in my computer room in Dilsukh Nagar. What might I've been listening to? Maybe The Grand Budapest Hotel OST. Or maybe Shankarabharanam or Saagara Sangamam, my perennial favourites, like I'm doing right now.

I started watching Shankarabharanam earlier in the evening. I don't think I've ever watched the entire film. I've been meaning to write on Viswanath gari films for a while now, especially since I discussed it with the Cinema Kaburlu guys, Chaitanya and Teja, for a video essay and I've been putting it off. Ofcourse, I haven't seen a majority of his films, but the ones I like, I've watched, thought of, spoken about, listened to quite a bit. They would be, in the order of preference, Saagara Sangamam, Swarna Kamalam, Subhalekha, Shankarabharanam, Swathi Muthyam, Swathi Kiranam I think. But what do I write? An introduction, an interpretation, a tribute? I don't know enough to write a study and I'm not preposterous enough to write my take- "This is what I think, its my opinion". I hope I'm not filled with as much hubris yet.

Which has been my biggest fear with the podcasts as well. I recorded a couple of podcasts with Cinema Kaburlu on Trivikram, then I did one on Rohit and Sasi's work despite telling myself not to do it (I just had to do it, I immensely admire Nirudyoga Natulu, Story Discussion 1 & 2 and if this was 2013/4, this blog would've had quite a few posts going gaga over their work) and a few days ago did a recording with Medi Chaitanya on Meheranna's Chedu Poolu anthology as a trial. The reason I told, keep telling, myself not to do a podcast: Its too easy. Nothing against the medium- I absolutely love and admire Amit Varma's Seen Unseen but there's so much work behind every episode and the conversations are of such a high calibre. I don't want to be the guy droning on in a podcast, a bloody uncle who's peloing gyaan because he found the mic. There's a wonderful exchange in The end of the tour where DFW says that he doesn't want to become someone who writes one book and spends his time going to parties and talking about it (scene 96- read it, its articulated way better there). Ofcourse, I've done nothing comparable to Infinite Jest, not even managed to finish reading it, but the even minuscule feedback the podcasts have gotten has made me very nervous.

A voice in my head says that I'm unnecessarily complicating what was done for fun and with honesty. But a louder, saner voice I think, tells me that all the good intentions in the world don't mean shit when they're not backed up by serious work and rigorous thougt. To paraphrase Venkat Rao's The Gervais Principle, I'd rather be the sociopath, can accept myself as a loser but never, ever want to end up a clueless idiot. Thankfully, my years of exalting at whatever comes out of my head as inspired are over. Or I desperately hope. Ofcourse, it is a valid question to ask, what this blog is then? Its a semi-public forum where I try to wrestle with my thoughts and express them with as much honesty as possible. I might do this as a journal but I have scattered notes in many places over the years and this blog is a much better organisational drawer. This blog is also sort of a backup: all my "work" is here in case I don't end up creating anything of value ever. My engraving on the beam, a feeble shout to the universe.

These thoughts have been running in my head since the last two days as I've tried to start on Viswanath gari essay. Most of it is plain laziness, a hope that inspiration will strike and drive me, fear that what I have to say is neither original nor "correct", an inability to look seriously at anything I create, but also, somewhere deep inside, a feeling of futility. What difference is it going to make? I'm not complaining, I feel thankful for being able to feel all these things. I've also been meaning to write a couple of Telugu essays to send to Rajanna for Sakshi (one of them is putting together learnings from The Great Derangement, Michael Sandel's Justice, a bit from Fromm and maybe Alasdair MacIntyre), and I have the basic structure sketched but I haven't taken off from there. 

I feel so cut-off from the world (wow, talk about the tyranny of distance), as if all my actions are futile and frivolous, that I haven't found inspiration to put out what's going on inside. The podcast recordings slightly helped I guess. But ofcourse, as the world is tackling COVID, climate change, authoritarian regimes, discrimination and injustice, what is the point of squabbling over the work of a writer-director or interpreting/ cherishing the work of another director? Somehow, I'm unable to summon my old self and respond with a buzzkill remark. I genuinely think right now that, yes, words I write are too less, and mostly self-serving, but I feel obliged to put them out. Not entirely because I'm weak and cowardly and unimaginative and its easy to do that than more powerful actions and all those things; also because they're alive and powerful and important. Because, and I can't find another other way to say this, it's the right thing to do.

writing this post feels so good

Mary Cooper: Sweetheart, are you sick? 

Sheldon: I hope so, because if this is well, life isn’t worth living. 

-The Big Bang Theory 

 

I hope I'm having a mid-life crisis. Otherwise, there is no reason for me to mope around half-heartedly. I'm so bored, and I use that word fully understanding the privileged life I'm living. I spent years running a process in the back of my head that sought to find out anything more to life than its material aspects. Now, I just want to engage deeply with what's here and now.

 

I find it sometimes difficult to teach in an Art dept. in a research university. The disciplinary epistemology is, unsurprisingly, relentlessly Idealist, anti-intellectual, and theological, wrapped in the American presumption that self-actualization is the point of everything. 

-Benjamin H Bratton on Twitter

 

What is a good life? మంచిగ బతుకుడంటేంది? అదేదో లాబ్ల టెస్ట్ చేసి ఒక ఫార్ములా కనుక్కున్నంక దాన్ని అప్లై చేసుడు కాదు అనిపిస్తుంది ఈ మధ్య. I read a while ago that part of the problem with Humanities over the past few decades has been its reformulation as Social "Sciences". And as much as the practitioners can learn something from the Scientific approach, a different modality is required to assess the situations ((I have a problem using the word, er, problem when talking about many real-life events/ situations; Because they're not problems to be solved but happenings to see, understand, dance with, learn from etc.) it deals with. 

Anyway, back to my immediate situation. 

I don't know how many of you think about "How to live?", but I do; a lot. It's another matter that most of it is either short-lived or confined to the space within but I relish having conversations with, and around, that question. I did and, fortunately, still do. Because without that question being the central focus of my life, and it doesn't have to be like a formal problem that I need to solve but more like a guiding light, I don't think I'm doing much justice to being human (though it would be hubristic of me to assume that other types of being don't/ can't do it).

 

I want to stop hedging everything I do. I'm so risk averse that it inevitably pushes me into the 'mainstream' route despite knowing other options. It is evident in the way I speak/ write¹;, in how I deal with taking a stand, in how I take life decisions. I refuse to fully embrace my gut instinct. That quality in itself is not probably a bad thing, its better to be skeptical about my own claims to knowledge and clarity, but I've taken the game to the other extreme where I just follow what others insist on, probably for a good reason, probably not, and then whine about it later. I don't want to come out on the losing side. And its bizarre because I consciously refrain from framing life in those terms. 

 

Lose against who? Because I don't mind 'losing' in material terms as long as I make experiential/  narrative gains. I think there are two opponents:

    1. Posterity- This is a big deal for me. I don't want to grow old and looking back realise than I'd taken the wrong turn somewhere and ended up far from where I ought to have been. This presupposes the fact that our lives are teleological and that there's one correct way in which I can achieve self-actualization. Where I can transcend all doubt and regret. Even I know with some certainty that this is ludicrous. I'm always going to have regrets (which in itself is a function of my present state of mind than past events). And if not, and if the universe has a purpose for me, I needn't worry about taking the wrong turn because I will eventually be led to light. And anyway, its ridiculously hard to second guess the 'right' thing to do going forward not partly because right and wrong are posterior labels.

    2. Audience- "लोग क्या कहेंगे?" I have no idea who these bloody people are or why I want to impress them. Sravani is convinced I perform to an imaginary gallery inside my head and I think she maybe right. I'm always performing, giving imaginary interviews, humbly deflecting compliments, cherry-picking anecdotes to fill New Yorker type profiles. And it is this audience I'm most afraid of disappointing². This feeling probably comes from growing up with a sense of entitlement and while that may have given my more than a little intellectual confidence, it has also led me to believe that, and there's no unarrogant way to put this, I'm built for greater things than most people. Although, I don't seem to have the necessary ingredients needed to accomplish that.

Thus far we've covered the personal angle. Now, to a more social view.

I understand that we need first principles to guide us into living the good life. But I also know principles come from experience, are not sacred, and might sometimes have to be broken to do the right thing. If they are broken, we call the person lacking integrity and doing arbitrary things as a matter of convenience or malice. If they are not broken and things move downwards, we say the person lacks imagination and courage to go beyond prescription and do the right thing. This is as much true for running a constituency as much as its true for following a certain social script you get handed over to you for being born in a certain place at a certain time. 

Again in The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon talks about Münchhausen's Trilemma:

 

This is a classic example of Münchhausen's Trilemma: either the reason is predicated on a series of sub-reasons, leading to an infinite regression; or it tracks back to arbitrary axiomatic statements; or it's ultimately circular: i.e., I'm moving out because I'm moving out. 

-Sheldon Cooper

This is the problem with searching for prescriptions for How to Live. Because I've lost belief in the sacred, I can't believe in something for its own sake. But the moment it becomes more prosaic, it loses its sheen, and thereby, its power. Either way, I don't get the simplistic, one-size-fits-all mantra for life. To claim individual sovereignty is to strike a (Faustian?) bargain to carry the load of my actions and their outcomes. And yet, I also know that's not entirely feasibly, not just for reasons of practicality but also because we now see that the world is complexly interwoven and not only can we not really ascertain the outcomes of our actions but also that we're too powerless in the larger scale of things³.

I've meandered a bit here but its such a relief to be able to write, even if its just a bunch of convoluted thoughts. I want to meet interesting people, see different places and lifestyles, read gorgeous writing, do something meaningful; And document my experiences. I've come to the conclusion that there's no permanent panacea for dissatisfaction and confusion, and maybe that's not a bad thing, but in as much as I can navigate the world to increase a few aspects of being, I'd really like to work on it.

God, reading this post, I'm so thankful and relieved at being able to blog this. I'm probably never going to be a 'great' writer, and I don't know if I want to be, but as long as I can blog, regularly and honestly with atleast a modicum of grace, I don't want to ask for more.

¹ The fact my writing is so obfuscatory is because of my personality. (We could discuss later how the mask reveals more than it'd like to) 

    1. Because I don't want to 'tamper' with the high-quality thought process that's unspooling, I don't like to work on it. Maybe a part of it has also got to do with the fact that staring at it head on only reflects my incompetence and breaks the delusion of profound truth. 

    2. Because making a statement means being open to be held accountable to it later and though I make a point of saying I'm not afraid to be wrong, maybe I am. Or maybe its just intellectual honesty. Because only my doubt is experiential, most clarity seems borrowed and temporary.

In his poetic Physics in Seven Brief Lessons, Carlo Rovelli exalts doubt. I hope he knows how insidious it can be. And I also hope my doubt is more intellectual honesty than just cowardice and/ or laziness.

² Truth be told I'm also afraid of disappointing/ confronting many real people but in that case, atleast occasionally, my rebellious streak breaks out.

³ Could that be one of the reasons for the rise of spiritual gurus advocating individual action as the highest calling?

read, write, write, read

Many of us live by scripts. Our life goals, aspirations, disappointments, perceived insults, escapisms, for that matter almost everything we do after waking up everyday are defined by scripts. Scripts that have been handed down to us by our family, our social circle, the religion and the country we're born in, most importantly the century and decade we're born in among others.

They're like the railtracks of our lives. I think its a useful metaphor. We stop at various stations, travel parallelly with others for times long and short, our reality is defined by what space of the world we're traversing through and who's cordoning us. Infact, when someone's life takes a turn for, what we assume is, the worse, we say that they have been derailed. I suppose the purpose of experience and education is to grow more conscious of those tracks and figure out if we want to head the way the tracks are guiding us.

--

I've been trying to get this blogpost out for over two months now. There are a few notes scribbled here and there on what I wanted to write about: primarily around Amitav Ghosh's deeply insightful The Great Derangement, Mike Elias' post Wittgenstein's Revenge on Ribbonfarm, Prof. Mehta's phenomenal SeenUnseen episode, Sean Illing's essay Flood the zone with shit and, maybe, a bit of Drew Austin.

My constant affectation of saying that I'm unable to write, that I have nothing to write about, that I don't really want to write because I'm afraid it'll only show my incompetence has turned into a curse. I haven't been able to write since the past many weeks. And ofcourse when I don't write, it means I'm not thinking (because this is the only avenue where I let my thoughts unspool) and that's bloody terrifying. I haven't also been able to read much (not just books but even essays and online articles) and what's worse, haven't been able to listen to the more intensive podcasts (specifically The Seen and the Unseen). I only have been listening diligently to NL Hafta and the only reason is because its almost entertainment with a whiff of news to elude the guilt gene.

Damn I need to write. And often. Albeit the imperfect, confusing, inconsistent, meandering, self-indulgent stuff I write. It is my primary tether to reality without which I'm forever scrambling to stay afloat in the vigorous flow of information bits I consume. And I need to keep reading, abandoning books, essays, Wikipedia articles as I do, without which my mind seems to disintegrate and chip-off in medium-sized chunks while its looking at itself.

<Fit in the Geoff Dyer quote from Out of Sheer Rage that I read recently and which is perfectly apt here but I can't seem to remember what its exactly or where I read it. I think its got something do with surety being always just-elusive but not in such a crass language.>

While I can't seem to find that quote, I will leave you with these ones. They perfectly illustrate why I find it incredibly hard to read Dyer: Because he gives voice to my deepest anxieties in gorgeous, lilting prose which creates in me shame for appropriating his words, and envy at his ability to hold onto feelings I am unable to even look at and force them into definite, sharply boundaried words which then makes my skin tingle with electrifying humiliation.
 

“I am always on the edge of what I am doing. I do everything badly, sloppily, to get it over with so that I can get on to the next thing that I will do badly and sloppily so that I can then do nothing - which I do anxiously, distractedly, wondering all the time if there isn't something else I should be getting on with.”― Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence

“The sea: you watch it for a while, lose interest, and then, because there is nothing else to look at, go back to watching it. It fills you with great thoughts which, leading nowhere and having nothing to focus on except the unfocused mass of the sea, dissolve into a vacancy which in turn, for want of any other defining characteristic, you feel content to term 'awe'.”― Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence

Balagopal Reading Group- 17 Oct 2020

Balagopal Reading Group
Development-Globalization-Democracy

Two aspects to Globalization:

• The entire world becoming an uninhibited, unrestrained marketplace
• A revolution in communications connecting anyone from corners of the world

Readings- 

Mr. Wolfensohn and his falsehoods- K. Balagopal/ 24-11-2000

"..has been refuted by the Opposition parties, but in understandably vague terms"- understandable because they also agree/ collude with and ostensible opposition is just political posturing?

Need more context around this-Possibly this BV Raghavulu essay (yet to read)

BG raises the question of distinction between guidelines, even conditions, and behaviour-altering prescriptions

The tussle of highest power between Republic Sovereignty and Multi-National Corporations is quite old. But is it really that different from the collusion of Big Business and a National Government?

-Mandatory Policy Directive:

1. Governmental subsidy should be reduced and eventually be taken down to zero
2. Cross-subsidy: "the rich could be charged more so that the poor could be charged less" should be completely eliminated
3. Tariff proposals must be approved by the World Bank
4. By 2007, distribution of electricity must be completely in private hands
5. Tariff payable by customers must increase by 15% for first two years, and 12% thereafter

To what extent should the executive have unguided fiat? And when is it okay for the legislature to create an independent body to oversee its workings? Isn't the office of the CAG an example of that? Also, this reminds me of a P Sainath talk criticising the Jan Lokpal Bill for wanting to create an 'independent', unaccountable body to oversee the workings of the elected representatives.

"Mr. Wolfensohn was telling lies"- What were they?

I remember this time when CBN wanted to turn into the CEO of Andhra Pradesh and wanted to run an efficient Economic state-corporation a la Singapore.

The World Bank is obsessed with giving out loans to third-world countries, under the guise of poverty alleviation, because:
"as little as possible of Society’s savings should get into the hands of the State, because that way lies fiscal profligacy and economic disaster, or so the new wisdom says. And then, as much as possible of the resources that do get into the State’s coffers must be put to use for developing the high-tech and high-cost infrastructure that multinational Capital needs if it is to grace these wretched lands."
"The World Bank's model of restructuring puts a high premium on the capitalisation of all natural resources"- This, though quite obvious since the past few years, must still have been accepted knowledge even at the time of writing. That this obsession with 'growth' was unsustainable and, more importantly, unrequired. This is the famed insatiable hunger of capital. I guess most of us thought that those in power knew what they were doing until GFC blew away all pretensions of control and anything other than greed.

"These natural means of livelihood – of `poverty alleviation’ - are put out of the reach of the poor, and reserved for the engines of growth."

Infact seen this way, populism is an expression of democracy where a large group of shunned people get together to pull down the 'elites'. The bigger problem ofcourse is to prevent from a new elite rising up. I need to read up if any society (larger than a tribe of few hundred people, if even that) has managed to create a more equitable society for large periods of time. And if not, why our 'liberal' obsession with that? Or is a vocal opposition to that idea in itself the means and the end to keep power in check?

The World Social Forum Arrives in Hyderabad (Opposition to Globalization)- K. Balagopal/ 09-08-2002

Opposition to World Bank-style Globalization must be global itself:
So that those in power get to see the large numbers of people opposing them
So that people opposing globalization for various reasons get a chance to speak with each other. Some of those flavours of opposition:
Leftist groups who believe that Globalization is only an intensification of capital exploitation
Environmental groups, artisan groups, housing rights groups etc.- Possibly because they're against the global homogenization of everywhere (?)
Some who may not oppose capitalism or the market-economy but believe that "in the form of neo-liberalism it lacks the minimal human concern that civilised existence demands"

Principal international agents of Globalization: the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO etc.

World Social Forum meets at the time, and as opposition to, World Economic Forum on the first principle that Social Concern is missing from the prescriptions of WEF on the Third World.

They identified Discrimination as the opposite pole of Globalization.

The intention of the WSF is good but to organise something at this scale requires large funds and that means, obviously, to reach out to the 'Elites of WEF'.

Its the same old problem: Should you protest against Facebook's policies on Facebook itself? If I don't, I might show personal integrity but it is detrimental to my cause. And if I do, I might be able to reach large sections of people but my message would be corrupted before I get a chance to say it.

Another: As a liberal nation, should I allow illiberal organizations to form in my country. If I don't, I'm undermining my own principles. And if I do, I'm letting an enemy build enough forces to pull me down despite my nobler intentions. And ofcourse liberalism is not a suicide pact.

The best answer I've received so far to this conundrum has come from Kapil Komireddi in this wonderful, despite Komireddi's know-it-all tone, conversation with Amit Varma around his book, Malevolent Republic. Komireddi argues that Khilnani's Idea of India, which in itself is an articulation of Nehru's vision, is the one idea that can hold all the other ideas of India, and the same can't be said for, say, the Hindutva Idea of India, and so making that a much higher principle.

So I think that Mathematical formulations of political problems is not always the best way to proceed and to enter the realm of politics is to move away from definite absolutes to a more porous reality. Like Prof. Pratap Bhanu Mehta says, a politician who compromises is a way better politicians than the one who argues as if he has an autonomy over truth. Ofcourse, its important to understand the reason for compromise and if its purely lacking in higher principles.

"People’s movements tend to be represented in international gatherings by those who have access to funds, who are not those who are truly representative of the ideas and aspirations of the masses."- I don't understand if he's saying this is a good or a bad thing.

Do turkeys enjoy Thanksgiving? 

(This was not part of the readings but was shared as it was a speech at WSF 2004)
 

Discussion-

Like Gujarat was the laboratory of Hindutva, AP was the laboratory for Neo-Liberal reforms.

Basheerbagh 2000 protests

Neo-liberalism is not the state moving away from regulating the market but re-regulating it to suit the need of MNCs

Electricity is : Production -> Transmission -> Distribution

And WB forced CBN to unbundle and handover distribution to private firms

WSF one crucial schism was between Social Forums and NGOs

Why are NGOs more accepted than Armed Resistance in a Capitalist society?

EPW article- Electricity Bill 2020

Direct Benefit Transfer is a way to slowly remove Subsidy

"Now we are no more citizens, we are tax-paying consumers"

This is being celebrated by the middle-class because they think corporations improve on efficiency

Chomsky- The pandemic is a creation of the neo-liberal product

Progressive International

Do we want everyone to oppose Capitalism or we want to create a coalition?

Amartya Sen's conception of Freedom

Federalism vs Capitalism- Stars Project in Education. Federalism is interested in State-building and as such is not in favour of or against Capitalism. But now we see Big Capital using Federal structure to entrench itself further.

"State not being the bigger power must compromise infront of Capital"

Protest infront of two companies profiting from Iraqi war (from the Roy essay)- Related topic is SC recently ruling that Shaheen Bagh protestors cannot protest and inconvenience people for long times. But if the protest is not causing disruption, isn't it just posturing?

From ascendancy of free markets of that time, we've come down to countries wanting to close down their borders

The importance of groups representing themselves (Eg: Not an Economist talking on behalf of farmers regarding Farmers Bills 2020)

Even well-meaning leaders, once they come into power, inevitably end up being controlled by capitalists. What can be done to fight that?

Amaravati example: Inter-Shudra rivalrly between Kammas and Reddys

30,000 acres of land was taken without spilling a drop of blood

"Ideology has served its purpose when it becomes commonsense"

Another participant: The Inter-Shudra rivalry is not an essential part of it.

Narmada Bachao Andolan opposed WB in the 1990s.

WB pulled out of Amaravati because Jagan, who is more pro-welfare, won with a huge mandate and they felt that their demands would not be met.

Apart from the economic dispossession, there is also cultural dispossession. The sacred sites of tribals have literally been submerged."The perversion of mind is more dangerous than appropriation of matter"- BG
All said and done, you must agree that Capitalism is enticing.

<I left the discussion about an hour in>

Migrations and the making of cultures in Early India- Prof. Romila Thapar

Prof. Satish Chandra Memorial Lecture

Lecture Notes-

Introduction by Prof. Mridula Mukherjee-

Prof. Satish Chandra's work- Argued it wasn't Aurangzeb's religious outlook but structural issues with Jagirdari System that led to the decline of the Mughal Empire. Part of galaxy of RS Sharma, Romila Thapar, Romila Thapar, Arjun Dev.

Indian Historical Congress

Indian Ocean Studies

His work was inspired by the Anti-Imperialist, Nationalist framework of the Allahabad School. And by Marxist thought.
He was always stringently secular.

Prof. Romila Thapar's work- Pre-eminent Historian of Early India

Books- Penguin History of Early India, Ashoka and decline of Maurya Empire, Past and Prejudice, Past is present

Her work was to focus away from kings to a larger public.

She rejected the idea of India as an unchanging society and worked extensively to answer the British question that Indians didn't have a sense of history

Migration and the Making of Culture in Early India- Prof. Romila Thapar

Prof. Chandra's contribution- Indian History advanced out of a Colonial perspective and even a national perspective to a much larger scope.

"How does the past relate to the present was a question all of us were driven by"
If you understand the past, you might begin to understand the present. And if you are able to understand the present, you might begin to understand what the future holds.

The choice is subject is in the nature of a plea that India's historians should focus more on migrations as shapers of cultures
3 examples:
1. Aryans in 2 BCE
2. Kushans in Early centuries CE
3. Arab traders in second millennia

Today we may call them foreigners but earlier we understand how much they contributed to the host culture

Migration should not be mistaken for Invasion
Invasion: Can be dated to a particular point in time. A large body of trained and armed soldiers, who use maximum violence to conquer and loot. If they're victorious, they take over governance and appropriate revenue
Migration: Entirely different in historical impact. Is not a uniform process. Who came, from where, to where etc. Large groups of people in a slow place move about. Migrants transported their goods and cattle, so their progress was slow.

Migrations do not become invasions; Invasions at most indicate possibility of a migration

Pre-modern times:
Pastoralists- for new grazing lands or when they were driven out. Look for places with similar ecology and more sparsely populated regions. A small group generally set out first.
Peasants- seldom migrate. When they migrated, it was because of high taxes.
Traders- Much lesser numbers compared to pastoralists. Migrant traders often had partners in their home country.
Eg: Cities like Bukhara had areas specifically assigned for traders

Historians these days are arguing that what we call tradition is invented. But the invention of patterns of living come from many sources including many groups who migrated to an area and settled there.
a. If the language of the migrator and the host differ, then one of them adopts or a mixed language comes up
b. Status is based on technology, if the migrant brings superior technology and Inter-marriage (surprisingly high numbers)
c. Religion

The above dimensions contribute to creating an identity. Identities are consciously constructed and are multiple.

1. Harappa- There's a new argument now if Aryan speakers were migrants or indigenous people
Data to consider- Structure of linguistics of Indo-Aryan language, DNA and Genetics etc.
Rig Veda- It was familiar to only North-western parts of India. The later Vedas speak of regions in the East.
Shatapatha Brahmana
Language of Rig Veda similar to language of Old Iranian
Awastha- Apta Hindu/ Saptha Sindhu
The mlechchas (who couldn't speak the Indo-Aryan language) confused the r and l sound.
Dravidian languages do not have the retroflexive sound- Ta, Tha, Da, Dha, Na
Aryavarna vs Dasavarna- The dasas are culturally differentiated (amanusha, adeva) and are said to be phallic worshippers.
Aryas were associated with the horse. People consigned to more servile work started to be addressed as dasas/ dasis.

Wealth- Cattle, dasis etc.
Satyakama Jabala- Brahmin father, dasi mother

One of the things genetic analyses are teaching us is that there is no absolute purity of descent. "We are all hopelessly mixed".

Symbiosis- Peasants let pastoralists after crop is harvested for the animal to eat the stubble and improve the soil by animal droppings

2. Same area but a millennium later- Type migration here is different from the first. These are pastoralists who later became traders.

--Abandoned at this point in the lecture because I was bored

A short course on Indian Communism

A short course on Indian Communism, 1920-1947 taught by Vijay Prashad

Class 1

Readings:
Russia and India- Gandhi
Why I am an atheist- Bhagat Singh
Castes, Classes, and Parties in Modern Political Development- EMS Namboodiripad
History of the Communist Movement in India (LeftWord Books)- Chapter 1

Class notes:
Internationalism or Extinction- Noam Chomsky
For many people in Africa or South America, the prospect of extinction doesn't begin on 06-Aug-1945 (Hiroshima Day)
"Barbarism vs Socialism" -Rosa Luxemberg
Extinction is not just about Nuclear winter. It is about inter-generational hunger and lack of opportunities to develop.

Communism is the part of dialectic of human history
The Jail Notebook- Bhagat Singh

Today's agenda- Indian Radicalism before Communism
Communism in India doesn't come from outside. It comes from the context of Indian history itself.
Indian struggles predate Communist Movement by a hundred years.
The British were terrified about these agitators coming from Moscow.
How the British reshaped Social life in India and created new class structures.
There have been movements against the wretchedness of caste since hundreds of years. Eg: Buddhism (Ajeevikas)
There is scholarship that argues that Imperialism destroyed India and things might have been different. But India didn't need the British to be wretched.

Irfan Habib's books- Tulika books

"Some argue that pre-British India was dynamic. I argue that it was involuted." -VP
Caste is the main disciplinary instrument to draw more and more surplus from labour. There was no incentive to improve technologically.
When the Mughals come in, there is a break from the places they come from. The same is true for many rulers who come in. This is important.
When the Mongols went to Europe, they were not able to maintain their supply chains. It was not possible technologically. That's why their empires couldn't expand beyond a certain size. The same is true for Mughals. But by the time the British come, technology is improved for them to be able to stay linked.
Until the British, invaders who came ended up settling in.
Christianity came to South Asia before it came to Europe (St. Thomas dies near Nungambakam)
The settlers remain- This becomes very important for the Economic life of a society

When the Portuguese came in (and most trade was in luxury goods), the rulers ignored them because most revenue came from owning land and not from trade.
The English don't arrive as a force of the British Empire. They come as a Joint Stock Company. This, we see, is the beginning of Capitalism.
Indian Economic life was fairly static.
Note to self: Must read Dalrymple's Anarchy
Joint Stock Companies are a very clever way of raising capital and sharing risks. That's what the share market is.
"Approach of Dalrymple's White Mughals is so romantic, so unnecessary. Even if they lived in Calcutta, even if they enjoyed Hindustani music, the structure of what they were doing was to take wealth from India and take it elsewhere"
Dalrymple's argument is that the British were part of India until 1857. That maybe true socially or culturally but not true economically. They were already leeching.

The problem with Colonialism wasn't that they were English. The problem was that a structure of exploitation was created. They were no more exotic than the Persians or anyone else.
The EIC became land revenue collectors in Bengal.
In India nobody drank tea till the 19th century. It started because the English started dumping it from the Chinese. And they were paying it by the Silver and Gold mined from South America. The Chinese wanted bullion because they refused to trade with any other commodity. The English didn't like that, so they did two things: 1. They started selling Sea Slugs (and so colonised Fiji) 2. And Opium (and forced (?) them to be addicted).
The Forbes family, among others, made their money from the Opium trade. "These old money families smell of Opium".

Perpetual Motion Machine of profit.
Imperialism- Take money from the working people of a place and move it to a different place where people didn't work for that money

Utsa Patnaik- From 1765 till 1938, the British took out 45 trillion dollars.
Marx's Capital- There is a tendency to substitute labour by machine

• EIC were able to do it without changing the structure because caste was already in place Eg: Even today one million people manually clean sewers (and this is usually along caste lines)
• Abundance of labour, cheapness of labour Eg: Till today many Indian households have manual labour clean their homes
• Lack of economic incentive to invest in improvement of social relations
• This form of Imperialism is like Finance Capital. It is extremely short-term
  

The railroad was constructed to move goods to ports. It was not done to improve the lives of people.
Social relations of production.

-Commodification of Labour-No other option than to sell labour to Capitalist

• Free from Bondage
• Free to Starve

Wage theft is built into the system

-Brutalisation of Labour

1757 is the Diwani in Bengal- Right to collect land revenue

1770- Catastrophic famine in Bengal. 1/3rd of the population dies.
Till 1943 famine in Bengal, they come one after the other.
These famines were not happening prior to the imperial conquest.
The commodification of land- Revenue was not in kind, it was in cash. Commercialisation of Agriculture- If you can't pay, either you're kicked out of the land or have to turn to the money-lender.

Development of Capitalism in Russia- Lenin

It wasn't the British that colonised India. It was Imperialism. It was a dynamic capitalist system that overcame them without destroying them.

Marx in 1853- "British has to do two things in India. Destructive and Regenerative." Later he wrote that they didn't destroy Asiatic society, they just took and put it to their use. The form was in collusion with the wretchedness of caste and patriarchy etc.
Neel Darpan- Play in 1861- Critique of Indigo plantation society

British trade was financed by slave trade and theft.

Max Weber- Capitalism is produced because of Protestant Saving.
VP - "He was dreaming".
Capital comes dripping from the Earth with blood. Primitive Accumulation.

Deccan uprising of 1875- They burnt the house of the moneylender and not the sheriff

Abstract form of capital against concrete form of physical power

1. Zamindari System- Creation of the landlord class. They supplanted institutions of the Mughal state.
2. South India- Thomas Munroe (who had read Riccardo)- Ryotwari system- the state collects tax from the farmer.

Dadabhai Naoroji- "Drain of wealth from India". India was being charged to pay for the bills of Imperialism.

Caste and Class are not identical systems. But there is a very strong correlation.
Ambedar's interrogation of Marxism- including his paper On the origins of Caste- Ambedkar and Communism

Sanyasi and Fakir rebellions- Late 1700s
Peasant uprisings- "Defensive movement" because they don't want to give such high taxes

Tibagha Movement
Santhal Hool- Tribal rebellions: They are against commercialisation
"Restorative struggles"- They want the old way. "We want our kings back". Bahadur Shah Zafar, Jhansi Rani

1800 Vellore Mutiny- issues of animal fat

"It is wrong to call 1857 an Indian mutiny. There was very little rebellion in South India"
Recommendation: Satyajit Ray's Shatranj ke Khilari (based on Premchand's story)
Awadh is the only place where there's mass uprising.
Nepali soldiers were told that if you defeat Lucknow you can take whatever you want. The big prize in Nepal casinos was once called Lucknow Loot.

At this time people like Raja Rammohan Roy were quick to realise and argue that Indian society is weak and the internal weaknesses need to be rectified. Problems of hierarchy, caste and gender. This is where Social reform starts.
The trajectory of the middle class radical. They take interest in Socialist ideas.

You can't have freedom until you have social wealth- Tagore
People like Tagore, Bankim Chandra and other mainstream celebrated thinkers talk about Socialism. But it is indigenous, it doesn't necessarily come from outside.

In 1885 a bunch of fairly heterogeneous people create the Indian National Congress. They are mainly middle-class petitioners asking for more room, more say in their rule.
1905 uprising in Bengal- Swadeshi movement. Its against the partition of Bengal on religious lines by Lord Curzon.
Gandhi says that you need a much bigger project that self-interest; You need patriotism.

A lot of the political ideas associated with Gandhi come to the fore around this time when Tilak is arrested: boycott of goods, Hartal etc.

Gandhi's essential political character was moderation. He understands that Congress was a national platform even though they don't understand power. They think that the British government is a government of reason and not of capital and power.

• The Congress is useful for its organization and not its political line
• Students were extraordinarily committed. But they were infatuated by the cult of the bomb. It was classic anarchist. But they bring self-sacrifice and a lack of self-interest
• There are mass struggles all overThe Gandhian project was about bringing these three things together.
• You see this in Champaran which then leads to non-cooperation movement.
  

Problems are many:

• Gandhi's a serial compromise with the capitalists. He tells the workers that believe in the capitalists. They are guardians of your wealth.
• He compromises with caste. He has problems with implementation but not the idea of it
• He also compromises with imperialism to a certain extent. He is reluctant to call for Poorna Swaraj. (Its the Gadar babas who create a party in California in 1913 and call for it)

There was a big gap between between these two which led to the Communist-Socialist intervention.
This is the socio-political milieu in which communists/ socialists enter the fray.

The role of the organizer- You can't build a cadre until you have people working full-time
Deepesh Chakabarty's book on jute workers. "It was shocking to see how disparaging it was to the organizers."
"A soldier is a peasant with a rifle" -Lenin

a balloon ride, 10k views, and some clarity

The last few days have been quite eventful. 

We went to Hunter Valley, a beautiful place, and thanks to Sravani, rode a hot air balloon. I was skeptical about the ride, assuming that I'd be bored standing in a soaring basket for an hour, but it turned out to be an amazing experience. The weather was a delight and the ride was incredible. One of the things we didn't realise until the pilot mentioned it, and which seems obvious in hindsight, is that because the balloon is propelled by the wind, you don't really feel movement. Because you're not fighting against the environment, it feels calm and reassuring. Take what life lessons you want from that. We were also thrilled to have a Masterchef-ish fine dining lunch and it was another memorable experience in its own right. Third anniversary turned out to be, despite our sour mood for not being able to cross the state, unexpectedly good.  

In other news, I sent the Cinema Kaburlu essay to Baradwaj Rangan sir as a submission for Reader's Write-in because I felt a few of his readers might enjoy watching it. He said he couldn't publish an already published work but said that he and his team liked the video a lot and asked if we were open to it being published on Film Companion South. That was an offer we couldn't resist and so now it's on their Youtube channel with over 10k views, way above anything I could've hoped for. 

More interestingly, after a brief mail from Meheranna got me thinking, I had the wonderful luck to read and discuss Isaac Singer's Gimpel the Fool in the Bangalore Writer's Workshop, and had sort of a eureka moment. Though now the write-up seems like an analysis of Telugu cinema, especially after FC posted it and the discussions that followed, what I was originally trying to understand was the relationship between myths and society. 

Why are we who we are as a people? What shapes our individual worldviews and our identities as one people? Language, geography and race seem basic but then we started identifying with others based on our shared myths- religion, nation etc. What qualities do we prize in our people, how do we process misfortune, what 'life lessons' do we teach our children? 

The fact that the most basic of our beliefs are learned came into my conscious thought after I had the immense fortune to read Erich Fromm's Man in Capitalist Society (which I haven't finished yet) and Rick Roderick's Masters of Suspicion (an astounding tour de force of intellectual history). And because I watched these films around the same time, I thought I saw patterns in them that reflected what I was learning. So I used those films to understand what Fromm and Roderick were saying. The film comparison actually started after listening to Devdutt Pattanaik compare Rama & Krishna to Rajnikanth. Then I was able to put those two together and say that:

    1. since so much of the 'Hindu' worldview (avatars, karma, bhagwan stuti, rebirth etc.) comes from our 'religious' stories- stories of gods, their devotees and the relationships of the god when s/he takes a human form

    and 

    2. since that must have percolated into the minds of writers as it does to most of us, 

    ergo,

Our stories (predominantly film because that's our only true pop culture) must reflect those ideologies. And we probably like them so much because they meet our expectations of what the protagonist does.

Another learning from this entire process is that though I've always treasured bottom-up, organic learning, top-down, conscious questioning also has its uses. 

Good stuff. 

Justice- class 10

Notes from class

What is the relationship between theory and practice? What is the relationship between individual responsibility, with limited power,  and the obligation of justice?

There is an interweaving variable between theory and practice- that's politics.

Two facts of politics :    

    a. there are many of us

    b. we profoundly disagree

How does theory of justice respond to these two?

A theory should grant us:   

    a. all of us equal, moral standing (unlike with nature and animals where it might be benevolent but one-sided). Other people need to be treated as independent.

    b. i. we might disagree that we should treat each other independently. So everything that follows might be moot including "do unto others.." and that "I have no natural authority over you (not even I'm smarter than you, so I have authority over you)". I have been endowed by god, or birth, or something is becomes valid. This is not a political conception because it's not taking the other person's moral right or difference seriously.

        ii. and even if we agree on the previous point, the problem of disagreement becomes an even more challenging problem- To come up with a moral rule that acknowledges our plurality and difference and yet to come up with laws that all of us agree with.

Social Contract Theory from Rousseau to John Rawls.

The realm of politics is the realm of legitimacy and persuasion. It is not a domain of taking a pre-existing truth and imposing it on the world.

The problem of truth in politics is very particular- It is simply that we disagree. So we could go round in circles or undermine the other's legitimacy.

How do we agree that our world stands on equality and moral legitimacy- By acting like that.

"The powerful can do what they want and the weak must suffer what they can"- This is also one form of negotiation. By putting a gun to your head. But for us to feel legitimate, both parties must feel that this is an agreement that they would've freely chosen.

In a modern society, politics is the only bridge between theory and practice- You can't say I'm god's regent or a philosopher king.

Kant- "The only authority we have is the free agreement of reasoning beings"

How do get people included in this circle of politics?- Jews and Palestinians, Hindus-Muslims, racism etc.

One way to think of the advancement of justice- The cause of justice is the cause of giving more and more people equal standing by overcoming arbitrary factors.

Richard Rorty- "Justice is simply the expansion of loyalties".

"Just because of who you are there is no reciprocity of rights" - That is the problem of ethnic exclusion. The harder question is why do we do this, why do we feel like denying some people a fundamental political relationship? Earlier we did this on hierarchy, now we do it on difference. This question cannot be solved by theory of justice and one way to do it is to understand your own psychology. The activity of politics is to bridge the gap between unjust reality and just theory by crafting new relationships between us. 

participant: Education entitlement- what if the other knows less, what do we do then?

participant: When you put it this way, you've reduced politicians to managers of principles of justice.

participant: Is fascism a form or politics or is it outside the realm of politics?

participant: Foucault's Discipline and Punish- Problem of justice is the problem of distribution of power.

prof: According to Foucault, all constituencies of human relationship is power through and through. Even this, the fact that we should mutually agree is infact an imposition of a certain demand. "Why should I justify myself for anything?" Also, there is something dangerous and insidious in saying that because you consented to some laws, you are bound by them now. A mad king who said because I have power, in any way, I can take your head off for a crime. As brutal as that is it is atleast clear and out in the open. The problem with us justice folks is that we try to, in sense, rationalise it. Because we agreed to these procedures, now that you have committed a crime, it's not us that are punishing you but yourself. 

Duryodhana- "Justice just is the interest of the stronger in which we get the weak to participate to legitimize the chains we bind them in"- Thrasymachus, Nietzsche, Marx, Foucault all say something like this.

Marx- "The nice thing about feudal power is that nobody pretended otherwise"

Even asserting that we are free and equal is a form of intimation

Response 1: Performative contradiction- Even the skeptics don't believe their skepticism because if I exercised power against them, their personal reaction would be a feeling of injustice, not understanding and acceptance of power relationship experientially.

The idea is to expand this feeling to others as well.

Response 2: Practical- We are individual but we also like the goods of social co-operation. To say that just the fact of social co-operation puts us at the mercy of somebody else, although that's true to some extent, it is difficult to imagine a human condition without a social contract.

Either the skeptics can occupy an ultra-anarchist position or it has to occupy a nihilistic position- There are no questions of legitimacy or justice to be asked.

Response 3: More ambitious- Why is the theory of justice good for me outside of utilitarian and pragmatic answers? On the face of it, it is a huge burden; So why? Plato, in the experiment of Gyges's ring, is the only philosopher who took this question seriously. The essential question is: do we act just for it's own sake or because we're afraid of punishment?

    a. When I say justice is not good for us, what kind of social contract do I have in mind? The good of a just society is that when you are part of it, you gain more pleasure than when you are 'independent'. Would you be protected by security guards all the time? We act as if injustice pays but we don't acknowledge the hidden costs of insecurity, guilt etc.

Reading recommendation: Plato's description of the tyrant. A tyrant is the paradigm of the unjust person. He's the ultimate anti-political creature, someone who's constantly restless. "When do I have enough power such that.. "- the longing is insatiable. When you look at the life of a tyrant, it's a deeply unhappy life.

What is insatiability indicating- that you don't have a conception of your own good.

Would any of you be able to inhabit a completely Darwinian world? Rhetorically it is brilliant but can you imagine and do you want to live in such a world?

Shanti parv, Kant- Being just is good for you. Living with integrity is to live without integral contradiction.

Simone De Beauvoir- The city and the soul are intimately connected. How you are connected to others gives you a sense of your own being?

Stoicism: Whether or not we can make the world just is a different question. What we have is our mind and soul. 

Gandhi: You are the change you want to see in the world. The route through which your transformation changes the world is through exemplarity. At its fundamental articulation, that is what Satyagraha is.

participant: A lot depends on society in which an agent finds himself in. Game theory and incentive structure. What if many are willing to be unjust. Then do I still hold onto my sense of justice?

Sherlock Holmes- "Your grasp of the obvious amazes me"

Bentham: "Any robust theory must begin with equality theory and that we're all self-interested creatures"

Mill: "My worry is that it is not descriptive of people sometimes, but that if everyone believed in this, they would start becoming like that"

Human nature is reflexive in that sense. Often public opinion is a self-fulfilling construct- I act like this because I think this is public opinion and because I act that way, it becomes public opinion.

Gandhi steps out and lifts the pall of fear. It's not that the exemplary hero changes your mind. It's that more people feel empowered because they can now believe that more people are thinking like that.

Levels of difference- You can tolerate someone for having a different view but can you tolerate someone who doesn't believe in the reciprocity principle. When those people come and seek toleration, that difference doesn't have the same moral standing as a political difference. 

What I call the liberal contradiction?

Fully ideological politics is an oxymoron- If you go into politics thinking that the only kind of victory that counts it making the world correspond to your ideology, then chances are you won't take differences seriously. Because you believe you have a monopoly over truth. You have to bring integrity which is very different from ideological purity. Ideological purity is the demand that they must conform to you. Ideology is easier, integrity is much harder. 

"If people disagree with you, let me elect another people"

Free speech and deplatforming people: Their legal rights to speak cannot be abrogated. For instance, you are not free in a classroom. Our fiduciary responsibility is to make everyone comfortable. Free speech is institutionally contextual. There are some things you can't say in a court of law, doesn't mean the court is against free speech. 

Rawls- Basic structure of society. 

State is obviously a sight of justice. Should religious organizations be just, should families be just?

One of the big challenges for a liberal society is that we do grant people freedom of association which means people will choose associations (like a gold club) with an internal structure of authority and exclusivity principles.

Morality or justice appropriate to the state- We should treat each other equally, the state should treat each other equally, authority by consent etc. 

Should all intermediary sights also uphold these rules?

In the name of associational diversity, we have allowed injustices despite knowing that it would play a consequential role in larger society (gender inequality in a house plays out).

We don't want the state to be found on god's word but my religious organization can be run that way. Is the state crossing its limits when it tries to meddle with it? If it tries to impose the same rules as that of state, then is all talk of diversity just lip-service?  

There will be many political parties with each having a different set of rules of membership and thus practising exclusivity of some sort (Eg: if you do not agree with CPI polit bureau diktats, you need to leave). This is not the place to scream democracy.

Is the harm being produced by that intermediate association so large that the state has to step in. And that's tricky because it might not be apparent but so widespread that it has an impact on people as citizens.

Rationalist vs pluralist conception of associational life.

Radhakamal Mukherjee: What keeps a liberal society liberal is that even though no association has liberal power, the sum of it is that the society is liberal because of the fragmentation of power. You are flattening out the wold in a different way.

-Should MPs be allowed to defect?

    a. Because they're part of a democracy, they should be democratic.

    b. If you don't like the party, leave and join a different party. If you violate the rules of a party, you're out.

Michael Walzer- Spheres of justice

Private home owners not letting their houses to people from a certain religion:

    a. My property, my choice

    b. But if it's systemic, institutional discrimination (Eg: no Muslims) though is a problem

        Exclusion where you think the tenant is not going to pay rent is legitimate. 

"People don't give to lawyers because they think lawyers won't vacate and it's hard to defeat them in a court of law"

Bill in Partialiament- Shashi Tharoor- Horizontal discrimination in housing

Q: If my assessment that this person won't pay rent is justified, why not the opinion that says that people from a particular religion are bad tenants? If I can discriminate based on Economic status, why not on religion, gender etc. What is the moral difference?

Libertarians: In things that affect only me, I must be sovereign. 

Boundaries of freedom: Defines harm that is non-questionable

Segregation is interesting because its a lot of individual decisions adding up to social discrimination. 

If black people move into a neighbourhood, the belief is that property prices will dip. Let's assume that most people are not racist but by being rational, they end up discriminating.

Heroes are tipping points because they tap into the suppressed sentiment that I had assumed that no one would do it, so I hadn't done it.

Heroism is an act of faith but there are lots of incidents where people do heroic acts for their own sake but nothing happens. An act of heroism is not enough in itself.

Why is Irom Sharmila not more of a national hero, why are protests against AFSPA not more in the public consciousness?

--

And with that I finish the course. What an honour it has been to be in the presence of someone as brilliant as Prof. Pratap Bhanu Mehta and to share space with such intelligent, articulate, passionate people. Absolutely loved the course. 

now reading: Nassim Taleb's Antifragile

Taleb's Fooled by Randomness is one of my favourite books. It gave me frameworks and mental models that I've used extensively, so much so that they've slipped below the radar now. As far as I remember, it was where I discovered Karl Popper and epistemological skepticism (which is a fancy way of saying question and understand where your beliefs and certainties come from and don't be too attached to them). I had many epiphanies while listening to that book, which I did while driving to and from Seal sometime in late 2014. 

Detour: After a long time, the latest eureka moment I had in the presence of a formidable intellect was in one of Prof. Mehta's early Justice classes. I don't remember the exact topic of discussion now but when he was dissecting a social phenomena in mathematical fashion, it struck me that the point of education, the primary purpose of education, is to de-invisibilize the structures shaping our actions, desires and judgements. This is to go beyond first principles, which I believe are more conscious, and find the factors creating them. Infact, in retrospect, I think this realization first came into my consciousness while reading Erich Fromm's Man in the Age of Capitalist Society but I didn't recognise it then. A part of me sees that the triteness of that aphorism but possibly because it wasn't imposed on me and came from experience and struggle, I'm totally enamoured by its power. 

Anyway, I am about to start reading Antifragile, having abandoned Black Swan a few years ago because I found Taleb insufferable and yet because I find him a brilliant, idiosyncratic generalist, I thought I'd give him another shot. This post is as a thought diary of that book reading.

--

I like the idea of chapter summaries. Yesterday, I heard Samanth Subramaniam talk to Amit Varma about writing (creative) non-fiction in this insightful interview and I had a couple of takeaways:

    1. Essays have primarily two aspects: themes and angles. You may bring a particular lens, economic, sociological, historical etc., to the proceedings, and you look to cover multiple themes- risk, public institutions, urban planning etc.

    2. Good writing has subtext. Themes are stacked in layers and a writer's primary duty is to weave the narrative through them.

Chapter summaries seem to be part of that design framework. And considering how discursive Taleb's writing is, as one reviewer wonderfully put it, fractal-like, it seems a good idea to share it with the reader.

Digression: My writing has always been bottom-up, literally, because I see myself as a transcriber of what floats up, from the depths of my mind, into my consciousness. 

"As if every thought that tumbles through your head was so clever it would be a crime for it not to be shared."- The Social Network

But finally I seem to be able to understand why top-down planning has its uses. I'm particularly wary of these best-of-both-worlds type answers; The purist in me cringes but how many purists ever get much done? Not only does having the plot clothesline going to free me up from constantly worrying of the next steps of the story, it is going to bring writing into workmanship territory, something I've always admired and respected. 

Justice- class 9

Notes from class

Prof. Mehta appreciates AOC's work. Must tell Sravani.

When we speak of Justice typically, you might say it is forward looking. The idea is to create a new social reality. The other dimension is backward looking- some event happened in the past, the object of justice is to come to terms with that past event.

Is punishment corrective or retributive? 

Reparations- colonialism, slavery, caste, the curious case of South Africa

Truth and Reconciliation commission on Partition, Kashmir etc.

Treaty of Versailles- Keynes thought was fundamentally unjust

The assumption was that reparation was subsumed under current social contract. If our current conditions are made just, where does a question of reparation arise? If the contemporary condition of the historically oppresses is fairly just now, why should we go back into history? Opposition to that concern is that, even if we have made current society more just, there is still an independent issue of wrongs done in the past. 

Question of reparations are not the same as retributive justice. 

Nozick- Just outcomes are whatever come out of free transfers as long as those original positions are just.

If a harm was done in the past, are we, the descendants, responsible for it- How do you attribute causal responsibility? When you think of harm, you should have some baseline account. But how do you actually come to the determination that those people would've been better off if not for your actions (Eg: colonialism).

I don't have to get into a debate if India/ West Africa would've done better if they weren't colonised. It is enough to understand that harm was done- but by who's standard. What is the counterfactual you're thinking while ascertaining that harm?

Warren Hastings trial- Edmund Burks

My thought: A pall is cast on those who are given reservations now for injustice against their predecessors. In that sense, they will keep suffering from social injustice.

Susan Faludi- Backlash

Pankaj Mishra essay on How Germans handled their Nazi ancestry and why doesn't the US or India do it

You could say that I'm not a casteist/ racist/ colonialist, then why should I pay? The issue is not that. It is not about individual responsibility. But because of the patterns that were instituted, you have been and are a beneficiary of something that was acquired "unjustly". You can acknowledge the harm without punishing someone. The act of injustice was perpetuated over centuries. The simple question is: Am I identical to my white ancestors. No but you are part of the structure which created those injustices. You may not have committed the crime but you are a beneficiary.

participant: When the EIC came in, they colluded with Indians for symbiotic gains. 

The problem with people who say let's start with a clean state is that you're not acknowledging the pain and suffering my people had to go through. 

Culturalist argument- "It is true that we are better than other people, that white Americans are doing better than black Americans, is less because of our oppression than inherent flaws in them". This is also a favourite colonialist argument.

"I like my black neighbour but the fact that he moved in means my property price is going down"

There are ofcourse variations but the idea is not to count of every single act in history.

Shashi Tharoor's accusations against British colonialism is similar to caste oppression.

Billy Brant- German chancellor went to Warsaw, got down onto a knee and cry. It is a society coming to terms with its unjust acts. But then again, some actions are easier to account for than others.

participant: Can the Indian state morally ask for reparations from Britain when it hasn't resolved its own internal contradictions.

Prof. Mehta- In principle, the moral quality of the entity asking for the reparation is not important. I may have wronged someone but if I'm also wronged, then I don't need to solve the former to get justice for the latter. It is hypocrisy but it can be done.

Some have argued that caste is way more complex than colonialism. But even colonialism is not simplistic, we're just choosing move convenient options. 

We as colonialists have done wrong but it's not differed from most states always. If the British hadn't done it, maybe the French would've or the Marathas. There is no ideological reason behind this ebb and flow of history.

What is the continuing harm?- We don't know because we can imagine the counterfactuals. But then isn't that the question with any justice? Or any understanding of the past? Also, what about looking at these from a modern lens of what's justice or not? Apparently, this is a classic relatavist's argument: That a wrong was done in the past comes from our standard. And the production of the standard of the time, is a collaborate effect in it's own way. It may look horrible to us but caste seemed to have been accepted then. The perpetrators didn't have epistemic access to our formulation of injustice. They were not moral agents who were capable of seeing the truth as we now see.

participant: Isn't injustice an absolute term or am I always having to compare them to other possible injustices and weigh which is less worse.

Is there ever a closure to this grievance? Today Tharoor says that give me a pound a year as gesture. What if someone comes tomorrow and says that is not enough?

Q: In one of our first classes, we discussed about a modern society considering birth an accident and doing everything, atleast in principle, to bring people to a common, equal ground. Then by constantly bucketing people into different identity groups and saying that there is inherent trauma suffered by some, aren't we negating that axiom? If someone discriminates against me based on my caste or colour now, that's wrong. But if they don't, do they still have to acknowledge and apologise?

A: That's the normative goal. One of the common things about caste, race, gender, colonialism is that you as an individual are part of an ideology that denies your individuality. They are denying you a right to be an individual. The objective of reparation is not to keep you as prisoners of this identity. It's to liberate you from that burden. We are using this as an identifier to understand how freedom has been snatched. 

Judith Butler- Medicolegal issues around gender

Post-Apartheid South Africa- You will make society whole by acknowledging the truth. In order to facilitate truth and reconciliation, you have to move away from retributive justice.

Truth and Reconciliation commission- We want them to acknowledge that there was injustice perpetrated. And we want the acknowledgement of truth to be separated from retribution, compensation or punishment. That will create a better new social contract.

participant (regarding acknowledging the truth and seeking forgiveness): Consider India's incidents like the 1984 riots, or Godhra, or Babri. Someone can say that I'm generally a decent human being and I was brainwashed during that period to be part of a cult or a clique, and now I'm saying I'm sorry. But is that enough?

On TRC- By giving on the demand of reparation, it didn't create the foundation for an ongoing just society. It more or less provided exoneration. For all its problems, it is interesting because it provides an alternative mode of thinking than just crime and punishment. The reason people, and communities, came out on a dialogue because the perpetrators were promised amnesty. They took a bet by saying that that was better for society than punishing a few perpetrators. 

In so many areas of our life, we need to confront injustices of the past to move on. And the question of restoration doesn't go away because now you're trying to make a more equal society.

Justice- Class 8

Readings:

Why Nationalism (Ch 1,6,7)- Yale Tamir
Ch 1 : The New Nationalism

Nationalism being on the rise everywhere is surprising. Liberals believed that their century (starting from 1945) would see the end of wars, spread of reason, beginning of new enlightenment- Endless economic growth, expanding opportunities, ongoing increase in well-being.

Trump-Brexit-Le Pen could  have gone either way. No, says the author. They are symptoms of a deeper malaise.

My thought: Major shocks have us question the structures we inhabit. They have us ask why the structure shook or collapsed. Until that happens, we don't bother to enquire; We are preoccupied with different concerns. But that is not a bug of the system, its a feature. We built those structures precisely so that we could stop thinking about them. Then why do so many pundits who're dissecting the reasons for failure come after the elites/ leaders for 'missing' the warning signs and not acting in time? Admittedly, they misjudged the signs or were too distracted. However, what about the crises they averted by doing what they were doing? Not only does it mean that they're never congratulated for averting crises we don't see (I wonder how incentive structures work with this? If I see that I'm only noticed when I'm seen resolving a crisis, I'm going to make sure that everything I do will come off as courageous firefighting), they will never technically win because we always compare them to a could've-been-better-world.

Paused on page 5

Notes from class:

Partial attachments and political theory.

Assignment: 300-500 word essay that suggests or critically examines-
i. a conceptual dilemma that you encounter or
ii. propose a particular policy that will address what you think is important

-We took a particularly unusual stance to understand democracy better in our previous class

The role of partial attachments in justice
-One of the challenges of thinking about nationalism is that it is deeply entwined with our experience of modernity and democracy
-Democracy required that you configure yourself as a demos: who are we as people
-Power and sovereignty must be exercises in the name of people
-People are individuals and also a collective compact for each others' well-being

Ernest Gellner- "The political dilemma of modernity is that every ideology claims to be universal, but every postcard it sends is disguised with nationalism"
JS Mill- "If you're not part of a nation-state, you're a nobody"

3 questions:
1. Who gets to be a member of the nation? - Membership question
You can say that this question is not amenable to justice. You're converting the arbitrariness of birth to membership of your community.
2. We are a people because we claim a distinctiveness for themselves (language, religion etc.). Who has set the terms of this identity? - Identity question
Process of forming an identity is in itself a clash between competing identity arbitrary attributes.

Origins of Totalitarianism- "Universal ideology is a great idea but its doesn't protect you when you're being dispossessed".

Nationalism is the only modern ideology that deals with death, not communism or liberalism. In that sense, it is the only competition to religion. Dying for the nation or killing for the nation.
It is psychologically important- an antidote to cultural homelessness
Modern economy works around it

Modern nation-state vs empire
1. public education
2. voluntary army vs mercenaries
3. modern state percolate much more culturally

Not only ethno-national, even liberal nationalism is discriminatory.

Q: Ownership is a by-product of discrimination. Then is that justified?

Liberty: Political Freedom
Equality: Economic Freedom
Fraternity: Social Justice

Note to self: Read JNU Nationalism lectures

Q: The state should privilege the rights over identities.
I'm a good Indian when I uphold its constitution. But not everyone who upholds those values can become an Indian.

My question: What if the person in power changes the definition of what it means to be an Indian?

Edward Gibbon about Roman Empire- "All the philosophers thought that religion was false, all people thought it was true and all politicians thought it was useful"

"History is one thing, justice is another"

"History is a fool's paradise"- Gandhi

If you want to say medieval India about conflict, it is true. You want to say its about co-operation, it's true. This is not about facts. It's about what story you want to say. Those who want to say we've always been multi-cultural, will find relevant facts. Those who argue otherwise, will find relevant facts as well. If tomorrow you discover a document that thousands of temples have been destroyed, should that change the nature of modern India?

If the colonialists say that India didn't exist before, that's true for France or England as well. The nation-state is a particularly political form.

Nation vs Nation-state

1. An Australian minister used to quip that, "while we fully understand that first-generation immigrants cheer for sports teams from their country of origin, their Australian born kids should be screaming for Aussie teams". There is this idea that Chinese identity is almost like a qaum. Because I'm an outsider here, I clearly see that many white folks have a soft corner for Europe. It seems to me not much different to the attachment some Indians have for Hindus in Afghanistan than with other Indian Muslims. So where does the religion of religion end and the religion of nation begin?
2. How are we going to reconcile with the fact that more and more children are being born to parents of mixed heritage and live in sort of a rarefied abstract idea of a nation. Like how some Silicon Valley libertarians ask to be granted sovereignty. Are we seeing the expiry of the nation state as we know it?

Susan Okin- Is multiculturalism bad for women? - The demand for multiculturalism is a demand for partial jurisdiction.

Even if you are not a person who thinks culture and nation are tightly intertwined, the state still has to make choices about, say, what languages to use- for effects of scale and for mobility. Or Mumbai's Marathi culture is eroded by many immigrants. How, in that case, can justice be done?

One of the brilliant things about the idea of India is an extraordinary attempt to subvert the European premise
A national unit has a state attached to it

India as State-Nation- Linz, Stepan, Yadav

If India becomes rich and people don't have to migrate for work, then will we become more like the United States- Strong linguistic and territorial links.

Liberal stance : Let people have free choice and however that affects society is a consequence of that free choice. Any structural imposition is elitist. But is it possible to live in a truly egalitarian society and if not, why is it wrong if a well-intentioned, 'intelligent' person tries to improve a people's lot? Hang on, isn't that white saviour complex?

Relationship between identity and justice. 

The constitution is not a suicide pact.

Justice- Class 7

Readings:

Should democracy work through elections or sortition? -Tom Malleson

The Politics of Presence (Ch 2) - Anne Phillips

Class notes:

Philanthropy and higher education (Prof. Mehta's research)

Comparison of 50 trusts pre and post independence

    a. Pre-independence was high

    b. They gave to institutions they did not control

Curzon to Jamshedji: 

"If it's genuine philanthropy, it must be given to institutions you do not control" -C

"I agree. We'll give to independent institutes. And only have minimum oversight" -J

Q: Are lotteries a legitimate form of representation?

Representative (First past the post etc.) - They legislate on our behalf

vs

Direct democracy

Representative Democracy should satisfy:

a. Peace- Transfer of power is peaceful

b. Political Agency- The idea that somehow we have some role and participation in creating the form of     legislation. Gives us dignity in an existential sense. By the people.

c. Responsiveness- For the people. We will not re-elect you if you don't respond to us.

d. Impartiality- Technically, legislature must be for the common good. 

e. Equality- One person one vote. 

f. Representation- Democracy creates a mode of representation.

If we're unsatisfied with our democracy, its probably for one or more of the above reasons.

Do elections satisfy: Responsiveness, Impartiality, Equality, Representation?

Aristotle's definition of democracy: "You ruled and you were ruled in turn"

It takes so much money to even fight an election that most people can't afford it. Then does that mean it's still equal?

Women are less than 50%, ethnic minorities are extremely under represented- Then you might ask, who are the elected representing really?

1. Design democracy better: Quotas, Campaign Finance Reform etc.

2. Sortition/ Lottery

"The drawing of lots is more in the nature of democracy. In an aristocracy voting is appropriate" -Rousseau

You could win because you're wealthy, because you have good social connections, you could win because you're smart, or a mesmerising orator: Rousseau says that democracy is a way of amplifying certain characteristics. Paradoxically, you're electing an aristocracy. It's a way of us saying that some people are superior than others. 

My thought: The Modi type- Someone who's better at winning elections than governance. Then aren't we choosing the wrong type.

If competence is what you want, why do you want democracy? Why aren't you going for a more technocratic system?

We think that our form of democracy is canonical. But until the 19th century, it was understood that democracy by voting is against representation. So the idea was that you had to create a lot of differentiated electorates.

Hume- divide society into main constituents and make sure all of them are represented.

Reminds me of Madhav Khosla's account of how our Constituent Assembly was assembled. Wilful representation across different communities.

But then we're still excluding other types (other forms of division) because you can keep fine-tuning will you come down to a unit of one. 

Yale political theorist- Helene Landemore

Responsiveness: Incentive dimension and Epistemic dimension

If you had a democracy which had no migrant workers, then is it a surprise that we forgot about them? 

Could the Rajya Sabha be created via sortition?

Collective competence of assemblies vs the aristocratic view of competence

If you come from the background that our birth itself is based on deeper cosmological reasoning, then convincing people would be easy. But based on our 'modern' notions of the accident of birth, how will people react to this idea of lottery?

Predictability & Continuity are important in terms of national priorities and foreign relations. How do they correspond to sortition?

Constituent Assembly debates:

1. If it was actually an elected body, it would have too many interest groups- BR

2. If you had a majority body drafting the constitution, then who's going to stop it from being fascist.

How about we have an elected body for day-to-day governance and a sortition body for major decisions?

It was important for the Congress party to show that the CA was mirroring the nation - to gain legitimacy.

Are you going to be better if you don't have the corrupting thought of wanting to be re-elected?

James Fishkin- Deliberative Polling

The idea is not to distribute representation by identity. But conversely, if there is too less representation, it probably means that they don't have political power. Absence acts as a proxy that other reasons are disempowering them.

On what dimension to divide- Why only gender? Why not class? Why not caste? Why not education? Selection of any dimension is in itself an arbitrary act. Then are you congealing those identities?

Politics is the contest of ideas. And ideas are best represented by parties. That's why they've become more important than representation. 

"Really bad books make you think a lot more than really good books sometimes"

If say 40% of the uneducated are represented proportionately, would they then have the incentive to educate themselves?

We are not looking at representation exactly. We're looking for ideas/ arguments which would be missed without their presence. 

The adversarial legal system. 

Because of parties, partisanship has trumped ideology. The club character of politics- I need to win at any cost. That has become much more salient in our representative process. 

Territorial representation vs proportional representation

In a democracy we might not even be able to agree on what values we privilege.

The idea is not to solve the metaphysics of identity. It is to ensure that you're listening to as many voices as possible.