APHORISM: FREEDOM

(Originally posted on CRI)

1.  First step towards being free is to realize you are enslaved.
2. Freedom is like zero gravity. Both can only be simulated in this world, and never truly achieved.

QUOTES: BREAD AND CIRCUS DEMOCRACY

(Originally posted at CRI)

“A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally has no internal feedback for self correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens…which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it…which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses’

“Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader–the barbarians enter Rome.”

To Sail Beyond the Sunset

APHORISM: INTELLECTUALISM

(Posted On CRI)

1. Most of the times intellectual discourse amount to debating choice of cutlery on a sinking ship.
2. The difference between a drunk and intellectual is that while former looks under lamp post for key misplaced somewhere else, later actually insists that keys should have been misplaced under lamp post

Aphorism: Reason & Freedom

Reason is like electromagnetic radiation. Freedom is like mutation. Use discretion.

Aphorism: Language

In any society language holds the key to social consciousness. Those who control the language, control  the levers of society. The control of language is the most potent force one can wield. Accepting the dictum that power corrodes human mind, authority over language awakes the inner tyrant of even the most well intentioned, turning them into despots bent on subjugating the society, even without them aware of the metamorphosis or being antagonistic to such despotism.

Aphorism: India

India is the only country that went from poverty to nihilism without affluence in between.

Original Oscar Wilde quote here .

Aphorism: Rebel

Best way to vanquish a revolutionary is to declare him a Messiah.
Which is why Romans anointed Jesus as Christ.

Aphorism: Conforming Rebellion

To rebel is to be Gothic.

Aphorism: Public Good

Worst form of tyranny is in name of public good and social justice.
(Originally posted here )

Aphorism: Liberalism

Underneath liberalism is the belief in individualism which is somewhat similar to holding that a human being is nothing more than aggregate of his cells.

Which is why I like to call it induhvidualism.

Aphorism: History

We can't change our history.

Aphorism: Journalism

Journalism is first refuge of overreaching incompetency.

Aphorism: Bhakti

Civilizations like humans are mortal. With time, they wither, and die, leaving misery and suffering behind. This marks the onset of dark ages when ignorance and superstition prevail. What remains of society is marked by selfishness, and anarchy. In that darkness if there is anything that can bring light is Bhakti, selfless devotion to Ishwara who pervades the cosmos and illuminates our innermost conscious. Marx couldn't have been more wrong when he called religion as opiate of masses. For the truth is, religion is elixir of humanity, Amrit  which is capable of reanimating vanquished and listless

Aphorism: Bigot

Nature is bigot.

Aphorism: Irrationality

Life. Without rational will be inconvenient, without irrational, inconceivable.

Aphorism (Reason India Can Not Fight Terrorism)

India has been secularized.

Aphorism: Indian democracy

Indian democracy is a constant struggle between ignorant and superficial

Aphorism: Twilight zone

Communist ideal of serving man is eerily similar to Kanamits.

A journey which begins with spirit creating the matter and ends with matter (or material affluence) destroying spirit.

Twilight zone, indeed !

Aphorism : Dead past liberalism

For liberals history begins from the moment that has just passed away, or to be more precise from some event in time which is a convenient peg for liberal mythology. Any attempt to correct this notion and inject a perspective of history is illiberal/communal/fascistic.

Hence history of communal strife begins from Godhra/Mumbai riots/Ayudhya prior to which India lived in communal bliss. Partition or Ram Mandir is irrelevant, a distraction from pressing concern of this moment. Any one who dares to disobey the liberal dictum must be prepared to be slandered and stigmatized.

It is like 50 first dates, only without Drew Barrymore.

PS. Talking of dead past, I always thought this story was flirting with authoritarianism.

Aphorism: Individualism

Individualism as a end results in the most pathetic kind of conformity. Hence the demographics of hard rock.