My Too (Many) Cents

Cleaning our room is something which we all know we should be doing but keep skimping out on. Recently, I cleaned out my room and my books and I had a unique insight which I thought was worth sharing (Yes, my blog is pretty random). So, how does a room or an office space or a toilet or anything get dirty? It happens with the passage of time, when you do not know the specified place to put something or when you skimp out on keeping it where you know you should. However, that which is not kept in order continues to remain where it has been put. Each time you leave your room, you are reminded of the fact that you decided to hang up your jeans right there instead of folding them and putting them back in your wardrobe or something along those lines. Over time, the pile of clothes reminding you of your laziness or your disorder keeps growing until it becomes unbearable to look at, so you either clean it all up with humility or start littering another part.  This I think, is exactly the m...

 As someone who just recently finished school, the phrase "someone is working really hard" is something that has been thrown around a lot for students, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that hard work or to be more precise, self-flagellating effort is pretty worthless and is in fact indicative of some deep rooted problems which need to be resolved. Now, just saying this probably has some alarm bells ringing for you, since as a society we romanticize such activity a lot, but once I explain my points I think you would have a better understanding of what I mean.  The Stories we Tell ourselves Our personality and our social interactions are mostly made up of stories; stories we tell each other and stories we tell ourselves. The fact that stories are convenient fictions created to derive meaning from objective reality does not deter them from having profound effects on that same objective reality; Money for example, is a story that we tell ourselves, but a huge pro...

I came upon this line of thought (I like the metaphor of a line of thought because it represents an image of a line of moves in chess in my mind, which is exactly what I believe this to be) while dealing with what this framework calls the problem of frameworks.  The problem of framework basically examines whether there is any grounding or consistent framework through which you can analyze the world at all. There is a deep sense of unease in accepting relativistic or nihilistic frameworks however even those themselves are consistent frameworks at a meta level. The brain, like Krishnamurti would say likes to function in total security. This problem deals with that very same meta level, and whether there is any consistent algorithm (for lack of a better word) to derive security or meaning or rather meta-meaning (if that is a word, since nihilism has in itself a sort of security built into it). Dogmatic ideologies would have you believe that the answer to this is a yes (these answers...

Introduction  Haikyuu is one of my favorite pieces of media of all time. Apart from the art style and the animation, there is something extremely deep that the series is able to grasp at emotionally and it had a lasting impact on me when I watched it (and one of the few things I consider worth re-watching). Though the story is full of many monologues and perspectives of different characters, I believe that it has even more philosophical depth than what would be demonstrated by just those words alone and that is what was able to connect even more deeply with me. The more that I think about it, the richer insights it conceals, and as it plays out on screen there is some substance to it which defies merely linguistic conceptions. I think other pieces of media or art probably have such substance behind them too, however nowhere is it more clearly relatable to me, (from what I've seen until now) than Haikyuu.  Hunger What Haikyuu is really about for me, is an attempt to describe th...

 As my previous posts might have shown I'm currently in the process of trying to digest my way through Heidegger's question concerning technology. I don't get much time to read usually so I haven't been making much progress but his ideas relating to technology seem extremely brilliant to me. Though I haven't gotten through and internalized exactly what the essay means to say yet, a lot of different ideas have been bouncing around in my head. I could have started off directly with the ideas but this preface seemed necessary to highlight what got me onto this line of thinking, though I would like to think that these ideas lie on a previously untraveled trail. I also think it's more important to do philosophy than talk about philosophy i.e. to talk about and create ideas instead of discuss a history of ideas to validate some crystallization of a worldview you have come to so I don't really know how much of these ideas are mine and how much are already about to ...

 I read a quote somewhere recently which went along the lines of "Smart people get paid to do what they like". It reminded me of something I'd read (probably in the Almanack of Naval Ravikant) about how having competition itself indicates a kind of inefficiency when compared to authenticity(he probably mentioned it in more succinct terms or caveated it but that's how I remember it). The basic idea here is that authentic creativity which flows from the individual is something that no one can be better than that individual at. I thought a bit along those lines and this is what I ended up with. In our society, we're basically compensated with money proportional to how much we change the world around us. The percentage of money out of this which we keep for ourselves is dependent on our own needs or desires. This seemed well and good prima facie without deliberating about it but then I realized that it doesn't quite cover all scenarios. Many (probably in fact most...

Introduction So, I recently watched the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once and though it's received widespread critical acclaim as a great movie, I didn't quite like it as much as I feel the myriad of people around me did. Now don't get me wrong, I think as a narrative it ties all the small ends it introduces masterfully, the humor though catered to an older demographic does land and the performances/music etc. were great (seemed great to me as a layman, I'm not knowledgeable enough to pick it apart). What I take issue with is the philosophy it pushes forward - optimistic nihilism. And just in case it wasn't clear, this opinion is entirely my own and you might disagree. Nihilism and Absurdism The movie makes the point accurately that we continuously undergo more Copernican shifts which displace us farther from our self conceptions of having a central place in the universe. At one point even explicitly stating this sentiment in dialogue. It gives Optimistic Nih...

Focus. Are you focusing right now as you read this blog? Focus is something which has been well documented to improve decision making, higher degrees of focus and presence correlate with higher levels of happiness and it intuitively makes sense to say that the more one concentrates on anything the better they will do at it.  Focus and concentration are also scarce. After all you have only 24 hours in the day and however many limited amount of years in your life. A rough estimate of the amount of focus can be the intensity with which you focus at something multiplied by the time you are working at it and it also intuitively makes sense that this quantity would be correlated with the progress you make at any task or any aspect of life. Focus is an important resource, perhaps the most important one an individual has to offer. Companies now operate in an economy of attention, coming up with better and bigger algorithms to keep us hooked onto these sites, to advertise to us, and to even...

Hello everyone, I recently found this poem I wrote 3 years ago for a water conservation contest. The sky cried, The plants died, The mountains separated from their snow-clad bride, A thin stream emerged, laden with guilt it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? With childish purity and tumultuous flow, Helping the mountains thrive and grow, Repaying the debt it did owe, A river emerged, with its life built it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? Coming down, from when the world was at its feet, Supporting civilizations from heat, giving wheat and concrete. Thinking that its work was complete, It approached the sea, and laden with silt it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? The stream was now old and one with the sea, Corals bloomed with pearls of wisdom, while fishes swam free, But the cycle of life had to continue and the sky had a tax to levy, As it evaporated, covering its deathbed with a quilt it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? The tap was open! The bucket was broken! Could no one...

This quote of Nietzsche's is perhaps his most well known quote and many people have different (mis)interpretations of it, but mostly used to refer to how the scientific revolution led to increasing secularization and rendered earlier conceptions of god unbelievable. That conception of god in the west had been a source of most ethical and aesthetic judgements so Nietzsche foresaw the 'death of god' (correctly) to have great implications. This poem is not  the explanation I think Nietzsche meant originally, this is a fun idea I had which could be another alternate interpretation which I decided to flesh out. Here I consider the linguistic implications of the phrase 'God is dead' basically meaning 'God' is a dead word , which is pretty much the nature of all words/language or at least in daily parlance where we forget the feeling or phenomenological state that should be associated with words. It also expresses hope for a return to idealist paradigms which is pr...

The paper is where my creativity goes to die Like the dying carcass of a newly swatted fly, Like the fluid of a paint becoming rigid when it dries, Like an addict coming down from his ecstatic high, Like a baby which doesn't quite understand so it cries, Like the difference between the truth and our many unlies, Like surrendering to authority to try and get by. When I see the process beginning I give up and sigh, It uses me as a medium rather uncaring of my agency To express itself without a care for human decency But when It's finished it's not quite it What I just wrote seems full of shit. Not a self deprecative false modesty But rather a recognition of the absolute's beauty. And rather confounding nature of the expression of pure potentiality. And maybe this is how it is meant to be. Everyday lexicon is too unfree. Metaphors wrapped in infinite chains of self reference Trying to grasp (at) the sea in a jug To take some home to quench our thirst But our sweaty hands l...

This year I applied to around 15 universities to continue my studies. Where I got rejected from 8 universities at once yesterday, which was probably one of the biggest failures I would have faced in my life but oddly where other failures in my life have left me stumbling, gasping, resentful or jealous, this only strengthened my resolve to be better. Here I want to write what I learnt from it, hopefully you can learn somethings from what is basically a glorified journal entry too. etymology the word failure in its oldest word roots often comes from a feeling of stumbling or falling. An interesting aside about the etymology is that somewhere along the line, the word which originally comes from stumbling or falling got related to self deception, trick, or be lacking. This is something I'll come back to later. what it actually means in most circumstances How does failure actually come about in today's world? Most often it comes about due to not performing upto a certain expectatio...

Hello everyone, these are some short poems I wrote recently which I decided to post because I haven't posted in a bit. Loneliness When becoming becomes unbecoming, When longing no longer succumbs to numbing, But on the path of the ascetic, I stumbled and wept, Desperately objecting to my wicked desire attaching to objects. My dispassion for the world rages like a fire. Doesn't that raging fire betray your desire? For liberation from this world of pain and sorrow, To turn away from, and never see the morrow, You will still falter, Your journey still remains, Until you sacrifice at the altar, your want to obtain, Which will sublate the you in the you, And the you which you have accrued, And you will finally understand what you have pursued. Meaning Standing on top of the mountain Contemplated the wanderer. What purpose had his pursuits Of only climbing higher? Tired and exhausted, He finally wanted to sit down. But he wanted to sit down Only when he knew others wouldn't frown...

The word insecurities comes from the prefix 'In' which means 'not' and the word secure. If we consider the etymology of the word secure, it used to have two meanings, one which encompasses the meaning that we consider today, i.e. without fear of harm, carefree or 'dreading no evil' from the Latin word securus. However, it also had another meaning, which was a negative one in the sense of recklessness and carelessness.  Insecurity is today considered explicitly negative, but considering the other meaning, how can being free from carelessness be explicitly negative? Considering both poles which make up the definition of the word, I think the word in it's totality represents the careful teeter dance of being cognizant of societal expectations so as to not deceive ourselves, but at the same time not letting Societal expectations make us anxious or dread them. Here, I seek to address the second meaning of insecurity. Insecurities are what make us want to continuo...