How much is the description of the deterrent weapon true for atomic weapons? And deterrence against what? If the answer is war itself, it is indeed in a world full of atomic weapons that wars are still happening.

One of the biggest farces in our world today is the concept that the way to prevent atomic weapons is to build more and more of them. Napalm bombs, chemical and biological weapons all were supposed to be never used. But they were. In fact, nuclear weapons themselves were used.

And will be used again.

Like politics is behind wars, behind weapons there is fear – not rational debate or thought. And when fear rules, the chance of nuclear weapons being used is more over those countries which have them, in the fear that otherwise they may be used by them.

The biggest weakness of weapons is that they exist. Test and usage are unavoidable stages of any technological endeavor.

When weapons go beyond self-defense and even wars to the stage of dispassionate mass-killings, like in the case of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, they affect human character and behavior. It is in this context that nuclear weapon ban should be seen , different from even the conceptions of disarmament and world piece. Unlike other weapons used during war, it is not something which affects just the soldiers or even the citizens of their time. It moves beyond time and space. Wherever it is used and whenever it is used, it affects all living beings elsewhere and also the generations to come.

Those who make and keep nuclear weapons will have to accept the contempt and hate they have for all of life, whatever be the justification they have for them.

85 mathrubhumi

What makes any job valuable is the satisfaction gained while completing it. What makes any knowledge important is what it materializes in life. Indeed, the pleasure and satisfaction obtained while performing it is what which elevates any occupation to greatness. Man wishes to see what he learned and trained for getting realized. This is what binds knowledge to life.

The one exception to this is in military science and its training. The amount of research which is done in this field worldwide is huge. Worldwide, men get trained in this much more than in any other field. At the same time, all sensible people wish that an opportunity to use this knowledge never arises. It becomes a science which is different from, alienated from, life. Perhaps something that extinguishes the vigor of life.

The artificiality of military life is much deeper and wider than that in a modern industrial society. In both, men work for the benefit of someone or something else. Like racehorses. But while in a city, you may actually see this ’someone/something’ once in a while even if by accident, in military life the tragedy is that it will always remain unseen.

A soldier hopes that he never reaches his destination, making his profession mentally the most artificial. There is no better example of the alienated man that Erich Fromm describes than the military man. A military man hopes that he never gets a chance to use the knowledge he has accumulated. Because, using the knowledge is destroying the thing on which the knowledge is used on.

Pastor John Hagee, a spiritual advisor of John McCain has got a book called Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World. He predicts that Russian and Arab armies will invade Israel and be destroyed by God. Israel will then be the site of a battle between China and the West, and will be led by the Anti-Christ, in his role as the head of European Union! Then Jesus will return and, of course, win.

Why is monotheistic faith better than polytheistic? I mean, either you believe – if you believe in, like, a magic person who can do magic things, why is it different – so different if it’s Superman or the Fantastic Four?

I give God more credit that religious people do. It is so insulting to God that you would imagine him up there reading these petitions, ‘God, please give me a real estate business’.My personal savior is common sense. And as far as God goes, I prefer to believe in one that would want me to use the excellent brain he gave us all.

I was just at the newly opened Creationist Museum in Kentucky…. And they have this exhibit of a giant dinosaur…with a saddle on its back. Because the world is only 5000 years old, so man and the dinosaurs had to coexist, and, of course, we rode them. A theory I thought laughable at the age of eight when I saw it on THE FLINTSTONES!

Previously – Break 1 – Bill Maher’s Best

In ‘Life of Solon‘, Plutarch mentions that under Solon, there were laws which allowed any citizen to go to court on behalf of a victim and if necessary, even to arrest the wrongdoer. This should perhaps be the earliest example of something close to the public interest litigation of today. When asked which society could be called the best ruled one, Solon is supposed to have said that it would be the one in which the unaffected man shows as much interest in punishing a wrongdoer as the victim of the crime.

Moving this same idea forward, Solon even ruled that someone who remained neutral during a revolution would lose his voting rights. The principle behind it is noteworthy – that people shouldn’t stand apart without any interest in public affairs. Plutarch says that Solon had intended that people should not have any pretense that they are not responsible for the incidents and disturbances in their lands and become selfish, interested only in their own affairs.

Even though they may not have been codified like this, similar public interests would have been there in the ancient laws of tribal groups. The ancient civilizations which existed before the arising of the feudal system were indeed the continuations of tribal systems. In fact, like the industrial era of modern times, even the pre-feudal world had its own limited ‘industrial era’. The political systems of Grecian democracy and the Magadhan power-monopolist state were contributions of that primitive industrial system.

Whether it is in tribal societies or in civilizational ones, the one thing about pre-feudal societies was the importance of public law over private law. So concepts like that of Solon. But with the coming of feudalism and later, of capitalism, private property obtained predominance in affairs of the society and private law obtained prominence over public law. A mark of this was the locus standi principle – that only someone who has the suffered injustice can approach the court.

Man creates law by translating his conceptions of justice into words. His desires and inspirations do solidify in them for sure, but only those till a particular step in his journey. Man is continually moving on. So even while his desires and inspirations till a particular step solidify, he would have moved forward from them. Then he will have to break those laws which don’t conform to his new conceptions of justice. And when the law breaking becomes frequent, circumstances emerge when new laws have to solidify.

What this means is that there will never be a time when law and order is perfectly maintained.

As the embodiment and the instrument of man’s sense of justice, his laws should undoubtedly be followed and implemented without equivocation. But like being followed, being broken is also its purpose. Only laws which while insisting on being followed, also accept that they can be broken, become full ‘laws’.

As Laws are practiced by following them, it is indeed important to recognize that they are also formed by breaking their earlier conceptions. If lawmakers understand this systemic weakness inherent in laws and the strength in lawbreaking, a lot of human tragedies can be avoided. Instead,what we see are yesterday’s lawbreakers insisting that law does not need to go forward anymore when they become the lawmakers.

Hence the fight for the new conceptions of justice by some become law and order problems in the eyes of those who were in a similar state before. Some even try to stop this with force. What they actually do is to canonize their own creations above themselves and make everyone slaves to it.

But man doesn’t stop the revolt and rebellion which are part of his nature. The necessary bending of the laws though then becomes very painful and unnecessarily so.

I bought my copy of Aalkoottam this year. And thatz ’cause the copy I had, that of my dad had started to disintegrate. Was arranging books again a few days ago when I noticed the dates on that old one.

Both of us bought it when we were 27.
And the book is by and large a bunch of random musings from people around that age.

Truth is stranger. etc.etc.

There is a picture drawn by a German artist in the 15th century. The context is Alexander’s India attack and he is making a brave attempt to draw an animal unknown to him. The picture shows an elephant and an infantryman. The elephant is drawn having half the height of the infantryman, with a tusk shaped like a trumpet and legs with hooves like those of a bull . The courage of this painter should indeed be admired. He tried bravely to move beyond the boundaries of the corner of the world known and accessible to him.

Man’s imagination has always wanted to soar as further as it could – in his art, in his philosophy, in his worldview. He never wanted to stay still at someplace or be to be restricted to some state of being. In fact, man’s moralities, his art was always indifferent to boundaries. Of course, he had his limitations of his times imposed on him – limitations of geography, limitations of his medium, the customs and practices he may have had to adopt in particular circumstances and particular occasions.

But to celebrate these as nationalities and cultural and social ‘identities’ would be to forget the aspirations and imaginations of those forefathers and to celebrate their limitations and misfortunes. It is a double turning back. We are not even idealizing the limitations of our times but idealizing the limitations of our forefathers who did not have our possibilities.

Long time back and under some circumstances a people grew their hair long and always carried their swords with them. When their descendants today, generations later, ignoring the reality of the times they live in, still do the same, is it a move forward or back? What about those who begin movements announcing that those rituals and ceremonies and their symbols and practices which began when an old culture began to decay, are all the which brings us national identity in the modern world. Man’s urge is to spread beyond borders and move forward with the times. To retreat from that, to make small places, to try to stand still is retrogressive – whether it is in politics, culture or art.

Protest movements have always happened in history. But they can appear as a result of both progress and retrogression. Whether they support or oppose the natural and progressive movement of history should be the criteria of understanding them and indeed, judging them. All which come wearing new colors need not show growth, many in fact show decay.

Marxism is a philosophy. Communism is a political system based on Marxism or so say its creators. Philosophies can have good and bad sides. They may have relevance or lack thereof at different times. But no successes or failures. In other words, it is not right to subject them to the criterion of success and failure – because they are some understandings which occur to man at some stage of evolution of mankind.

When a political system originates inspired by a philosophy the first possibility that we should think of is that this particular inspiration need not be a successful translation.

It would be more right to characterize the communism of today in the name of Lenin, rather than that of Marx. Lenin was a politician, not a philosopher. To the question whether Marxian thought could have inspired any other model other than this, the only possible answer is that of course it was possible. But for that too victory or defeat could have happened. It is also possible that a new political system inspired by Marxism could develop, revised based on the new circumstances.

The use of the word revision is conscious. Revision is necessary and to an extent inevitable for any philosophy. In a way, aren’t the philosophies that we see, largely revisions of the ones of the past? It is also not necessary for a political system to develop after a philosophy. It can go on as a philosophy living on by affecting human minds in some way, ignoring the final fates of victory and defeat which is bound to happen for its translation.

I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

Here’s another question I have. How come when it’s us, it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelette? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen; that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we’re better than chickens. [brief pause] See, nobody can do it! You know why? ‘Cause chickens are decent people. You don’t see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No. You don’t see a chicken strapping some guy into a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you? When’s the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh? Doesn’t happen… ’cause chickens are decent people.

Religion has actually convinced people … that there’s an invisible man … living in the sky … who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do! And if you do any of these 10 things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry, forever and ever, ’til the end of time! … But he loves you! … He loves you. He loves you and he needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, all-wise, but somehow – just can’t handle money!

Try explaining Hitler to a kid.

I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it.

The history of Greece and Rome teaches us that not just monarchy but even majority rule can hinder human freedom. It was democratic Greece which ruled against Socrates. It is not necessary that a system in which, instead of one person, the majority takes decisions will be less intolerant and less cruel. If the elected representatives have supreme and unquestioned authority, they can use the same system of ‘democracy’, which brought them to power, to keep it aside.

They can bring in oligarchy and autocracy.

That is why the history of the growth of human freedom has been intolerant of not just the autocracy of the king but also of the autocracy of the majority. Ideas and institutions evolved throughout history to fight against all kinds of autocracy – Courts, Universities, Academies, the concepts of Natural Justice, Morality and Ethics, all products of wisdom and enlightenment.

Which dictator has not said that he took over power as per the wishes of the people and to fulfill their needs? In fact Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin may all have won majorities during much of their reigns. But an autocrat does not become a democrat just because he has the support of the majority. What makes democracy is the special place that minorities have in them. It is very dangerous to think that when elected representatives take over the absolute powers previously vested with kings or colonial powers, the system automatically becomes a free and democratic one. If people can be reduced to their representatives, then their representatives can also be reduced to an autocrat.

Head counting and electing representatives does exist in democracy. But democracy is much more than that. It is a realization of the values that civilization has been shaping for centuries.

Puritanism is not an element of a class based society or a patriarchal one. It is useful for all domineering systems. But it is also not correct to consider sexual freedom to be the standard for measuring the freedom of a society.

There is something which is linked to all this – male supremacy. Man works. The woman looks after the home. The man is the hero. There is no heroine. Rather the heroine is only a bit actress.  It is said that in animals the female has less sexual urge than the male. So the male has to physically attack and subjugate the female to copulate. In human beings that is not the case.

Perhaps a reason why male dominance still persists is that men wish and are able to own the woman and keep her as private property. In our societies as long as male supremacy persists, even if sexual freedom comes, the exploiter male will bend that too and convert it to something which is useful to him.

May 1972, extracted from a Letter to Govindan

Civilization was moved forward through its difficult paths by a minority who thought differently, who used their intellect. Many a time, a minority who were disliked during their times.

And not by the mob which just births and dies, or the kings or the politicians who built their fiefdoms using them.

When democracy becomes just a head count, when the voice of the minority is subdued, when the intellectual is no longer needed, then what is lost is not just democracy but civilization itself.

by hugh macleod.

sometimes all times a picture cartoon is worth… etc etc…

One of the triggers for the series of pogroms against Jews in Russia after the assassination of Tzar Alexander II was that there was a Jewish girl among the revolutionaries who threw the bomb. The repeated pogroms against the jews are said to have led them to Zionism. The ignored cry of innocence from Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly accused of treason by the French made Theodore Hersel start thinking of a homeland for the Jews.

Isreal was born.

The cruelty, intolerance and the superstitions of the Europeans – from the Russians to the British has now caused pain and suffering to an innocent group of people far away, in Palestine.

The thirst for justice inside man is very strong. But many a time, that itself can make him propagate unspeakable injustice on others. The people of the middle east, the cradle of human civilization, pay with interest for Europe’s sins.

(From Courts – 1989)

Image Courtesy – Davidb1 , loimere

If churches don’t have to pay taxes, they also can’t call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that’s one of those services that goes along with paying in. I’ll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain.

“Religion” is a magic word that allows priesthoods to do anything they want to people. The Taliban kept their women in beekeeper suits. The Catholics got away with fucking kids!

They say Islam means peace, and I know to hundreds of millions it does, but it is also a religion that was born a conqueror. From the death of Mohammad in 632 to the Battle of Tours in 732, the army coming out of the Arabian desert “converted” half the world in a only one hundred years, and you don’t do that by handing out flyers and singing “Kumbaya.”

The Catholic Church needs to change its name to Tollhouse Cookies. A new study reveals the tally of Catholic priests who’ve been accused of molestation in the United States is approaching 5,000, which means it’s time to change the name and start over. That’s what Phillop Morris did when their name became synonymous with lung cancer – they became the good people at the Altria company. Kentucky Fried Chicken wanted you to forget the “fried” part and beame KFC. So how ’bout it, Roman Catholic Church – or should I say “RCC”?

In bible there are the words: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: and no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Not a lot of wiggle room there. Put that next to “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet,” and it’s pretty much “pick a side.” One lane open on the highway to heaven.

I don’t believe God is a single parent who writes books.

Image courtesty – archman8 , otterfreak

How can you differentiate faith from superstition? In a way, aren’t all beliefs, including the faith in god, superstitions? It is not possible to differentiate between faith and superstition and hence enable lawful action on the latter by the government. The populace can be asked to use their reason and intelligence. The society and the organizations in it can try hard to spread that message. That is it.

But this does not mean that governments have not tried to do it. Long ago kings would announce that only their faiths to be true and would attack everything else denouncing them as superstitions. In the middle ages, the Catholic Church cruelly hunted down all faiths and practices that existed before them. The Communist party in the Soviet Union, in the same way, hunted down and made inquisitions against the beliefs that existed before them. If one analyzes these persecutions a bit deeper, one understands that none of these were really for rooting out superstitions. In fact, they were meant to replace old superstitions with new ones. All governments which are made conforming to religious faiths and ideological purity will have their own unquestionable belief systems and practices. Also their own anointed saints and undefendable villains.

That is why it is not advisable that governments should take over the belief-superstition debates. Though a lot of governments across the world do identify themselves with particular beliefs, enlightened modern administrations do not attempt to do this.

Reason tells us that astrology, sorcery and giving offerings in places of worship are superstitions. But you cannot bring a law that man should only go to a place of worship and pray and should not give offerings. Whether to believe in astrology or to give offerings, whether to accept faith healing or prayer healing, whether to go for a pilgrimage are all personal choices. Someone with a rational temperament realizes that the people who do these are getting cheated; even some among the believers know that.

But in a democratic system, one has the right to get cheated.

If you exclude the freedom to say whether they have been cheated once in five years, isn’t democracy itself a system in which people recognize that they are cheated continually but still continue to believe in?

It is when beliefs/superstitions supersede an individual’s right to choose and badly affects the society and others in it that law and government have a role to play. Even today we read about people who give children, sometimes their own children as offerings to goddess Kali. We now have laws to arrest them and charge them for murder. But when similar deeds are done in an idealized pretext of religious beliefs, the civil society and the governing system withdraws, not knowing how to deal with it.

There are gods which ask for the blood of some other children from their children. And not just among the ‘heathen’ gods, but among the ‘true’ monotheistic gods too. When one worships a god which asks a father for his son’s life, when one idolizes the father who does that and then celebrates that old story by taking the lives of lakhs of animals, what type of beliefs does that cause to form in someone who sees this happening from childhood. Is that mind then not a place where someone else who says that innocents are to be killed by god’s orders can sow his seeds?

Not even half of the states in India have banned animal offerings. Among these, the state of Bengal, where Communists have been ruling for thirty years is not there. But the state of Kerala is there in the list though that was due to not due to any enlightened government but due to an old king. During Deepavali, celebrated as a festival of lights, the terrible blood laden sights at the Kali temples of Bengal will shock any civilized mind: the cry of the animals which are dragged on in lines and a goddess which drinks the blood of some of her children. When a philosophy which imagines man living in harmony with the whole of the nature around him exists just a shout away, a pragmatic society does not give the dignity it deserves to an animal .

There have been occasions when governments did get involved when beliefs became outrages on humanity itself. Human offerings, infanticide and sati were all banned by the governments of that time. Though most governments have hesitated to protect Women’s rights against religious beliefs.

When the issue is exploiting superstition for financial gain, the government’s role is more clear. Though no less complex and nuanced. That is because fake sannyasis and spiritual commerce did not start yesterday but have a long history. And it did not just happen on a private level. Chanakya’s Arthashastra describes kings who filled coffers by cheating their citizens using fake sannyasis and making places of worship. To instill belief in non-believers, a prisoner, enticed with a reduced sentence, would be asked to denounce the ‘true faith’ of the kingdom. Then he would be killed later by snakes set on their paths by spies of the king. Thus non-believers are also forced to believe in idols. The Karl Rove of his time, Chanakya wrote these in the section dealing with the methods that a king can use to increase revenue.

This is valid for today’s governments too. Many Modern governments encourage religious pilgrimages, aiming to generate revenue. Big Newspapers and ‘revolutionary’ media channels give horoscopes. Many who write horoscopes in newspapers are not even astrologers. They are desk operators who, like the machines which create new Sudoku puzzles, move around the already set results every week. What to say then of the private spiritual businessmen like astrologers and sorcerers. They too just get paid for the work that they do.

Acquiring wealth in itself is of course not legally wrong. Even when it is done by an astrologer, a sorcerer or any other small scale spiritual businessmen to any guru who heads a large organization. The issue is using illegal methods for acquiring wealth. Different departments of the government like Income Tax and Revenue have got both the power and ability to examine whether wealth has been acquired by illegal means. How transparent these so called religious organizations are in their financial dealings though is not known. If they are not, to make them transparent is the job of these government departments.

The illegal and criminal activities which are done under the cover of spirituality are surely deplorable. But these don’t just happen in the name of spirituality. They happen behind the covers of business, politics and even without any cover. Whatever the pretense or the cover, the law should see crime as crime. And enough laws do exist in the country to deal with such crimes. What is needed is that the government officials whose responsibility it is to deal with these infringements of the law, do so disregarding any cover. It is the job of their bosses, the people who are elected by the people, to ensure that these people work in that way.

But what if the elected representatives themselves work under cover? When they are criminals and murderers? The business of spirituality is deplorable. But still more deplorable is the business of politics. Fake sannyasis cheat only those who go to them and those who they manage to entice. The democracy businessmen suck blood from the whole populace.

(2008 June – Mathrubhumi)

Image courtesy – Jose, Twon, Rivo

“There is no profound difference between the farmer and the soldier” Mao said. “When you take your arms in hand, you become soldiers; when you are organized, you become military units.”

Along with the hammer and the sickle, recently a gun was drawn. So, a movement which started as one of the farmer and the worker became one of soldiers too. Soon, it might become one of soldiers exclusively. “Let death be welcome, provided that our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons.” says Che Guevara.

That all great ideologies end up as military campaigns is an irony of history. How much blood did a religion formed after a man who advised love and allowed himself to be crucified spew? Two world wars were fought in this century in the name of democracy. “What is history but the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”, asked Gibbon. Is the standard of human progress the increase in the quality of the weaponry?

All acts of creation begin as ideas. When ideas become faiths acts become repetitive and man becomes a slave of weapons. The first victims of weapons are the ideas which gave birth to them themselves. Weapons kill the ideas and anoint idols, their ghosts. Thus throughout history weapons and idols piled up.

To think that wars are fought between nations or ideas is an illusion. All wars are fought between man and his own creation – the weapons. And in all of them, it is the same side which always gets beaten – that of man.

(1971 May)