The shock of its birth

"Our civilization—a civilization which might be perhaps described as aiming at humaneness and reasonableness, at equality and freedom; a civilization which is still in its infancy, as it were, and which continues to grow in spite of the fact that it has been so often betrayed by so many of the intellectual leaders of mankind. This civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth—the transition from the tribal or ‘closed society’, with its submission to magical forces, to the ‘open society’ which sets free the critical powers of man. The shock of this transition is one of the factors that have made possible the rise of those reactionary movements which have tried, and still try, to overthrow civilization and to return to tribalism. What we call nowadays totalitarianism belongs to a tradition which is just as old or just as young as our civilization itself."

The art of prophecy

“The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future.”

~ Mark Twain

You cannot ignore self-delusion

"You cannot ignore self-delusion. The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know. Lack of knowledge and delusion about the quality of your knowledge come together—the same process that makes you know less also makes you satisfied with your knowledge. Next , instead of the range of forecasts, we will concern ourselves with the accuracy of forecasts, i. e. , the ability to predict the number itself."

The critical examination of our theories

"There is only one element of rationality in our attempts to know the world: it is the critical examination of our theories. These theories themselves are guesswork. We do not know, we only guess. If you ask me, 'How do you know?' my reply would be, I don't; I only propose a guess. If you are interested in my problem, I shall be most happy if you criticize my guess, and if you offer counterproposals, I in turn will try to criticize them.'"

Our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final

"It thus leads, almost by necessity, to the realization that our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement; that our knowledge, our doctrine, is conjectural; that it consists of guesses, of hypotheses, rather than of final and certain truths; and that criticism and critical discussion are our only means of getting nearer to the truth. It thus leads to the tradition of bold conjectures and of free criticism"

They are all presented as restatements of the true sayings

"In this way all changes of doctrine - if any - are surreptitious changes . They are all presented as restatements of the true sayings of the master, of his own words, his own meaning, his own intentions ."

New ideas are heresies

"In all or almost all civilizations we find something like religious and cosmological teaching, and in many societies we find schools. Now schools, especially primitive schools, all have, it appears, a characteristic structure and function. Far from being places of critical discussion they make it their task to impart a definite doctrine, and to preserve it, pure and unchanged. It is the task of a school to hand on the tradition, the doctrine of its founder, its first master, to the next generation, and to this end the most important thing is to keep the doctrine inviolate. A school of this kind never admits a new idea. New ideas are heresies, and lead to schisms; should a member of the school try to change the doctrine, then he is expelled as a heretic. But the heretic claims, as a rule, that his is the true doctrine of the founder. Thus not even the inventor admits that he has introduced an invention; he believes, rather, that he is returning to the true orthodoxy which has somehow been perverted."

Specialization may be a great temptation for the scientist

"Specialization may be a great temptation for the scientist. For the philosopher it is the mortal sin."

How the need for workers were met

"But this sort of chaotic mistreatment was not reserved only for prisoners. At crucial moments of the civil war , the emergency needs of the Red Army and the Soviet state overrode every thing else, from re-education to revenge to considerations of justice. In October 1918, the commander of the northern front sent a request to the Petrograd military commission for 800 workers, urgently needed for road construction and trench digging. As a result , “a number of citizens from the former merchant classes were invited to appear at Soviet headquarters, allegedly for the purpose of registration for possible labor duty at some future date. When these citizens appeared for registration , they were placed under arrest and sent to the Semenovsky barracks to await their dispatch to the front . ” When even this did not produce enough workers, the local Soviet—the local ruling council —simply surrounded a part of Nevsky Prospekt , Petrograd’s main shopping street , arrested every one without a Party card or a certificate proving they worked for a government institution , and marched them off to a nearby barracks. Later , the women were released, but the men were packed off to the north : “not one of the thus strangely mobilized men was allowed to settle his family affairs, to say goodbye to his relatives, or to obtain suitable clothing and footwear. ”"

Without mercy , without sparing

“Without mercy , without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin . . . let there be floods of blood of the bourgeoisie—more blood, as much as possible . . . ”
~ Krasnaya  Gazeta

People were to be sentenced not for what they had done

"From the very earliest days of the new Soviet state, in other words, people were to be sentenced not for what they had done, but for who they were."

The story of your life was your own

"In fact , reading the accounts of those who survived both , one is struck more by the differences between the victims’ experiences than by the differences between the two camp systems. Each tale has its own unique qualities, each camp held different sorts of horrors for people of different characters. In Germany you could die of cruelty , in Russia you could die of despair . In Auschwitz you could die in a gas chamber , in Kolyma you could freeze to death in the snow . You could die in a German forest or a Siberian waste-land, you could die in a mining accident or you could die in a cattle train . But in the end, the story of your life was your own."

Ins and outs of Gulag

"Although arrests were constant , so too were releases. Prisoners were freed because they finished their sentences, because they were let into the Red Army , because they were invalids or women with small children , because they had been promoted from captive to guard. As a result , the total number of prisoners in the camps generally hovered around two million , but the total number of Soviet citizens who had some experience of the camps, as political or criminal prisoners, is far higher . From 1929, when the Gulag began its major expansion , until 1953, when Stalin died, the best estimates indicate that some eighteen million people passed through this massive system. About another six million were sent into exile, deported to the Kazakh deserts or the Siberian forests. Legally obliged to remain in their exile villages, they too were forced laborers, even though they did not live behind barbed wire."

The Gulag civilization

"Contrary to popular assumption , the Gulag did not cease growing in the 1930s, but rather continued to expand throughout the Second World War and the 1940s, reaching its apex in the early 1950s. By that time the camps had come to play a central role in the Soviet economy . They produced a third of the country’s gold, much of its coal and timber , and a great deal of almost every thing else. In the course of the Soviet Union’s existence, at least 476 distinct camp complexes came into being, consisting of thousands of individual camps, each of which contained anywhere from a few hundred to many thousands of people.The prisoners worked in almost every industry imaginable—logging, mining, construction , factory work, farming, the designing of airplanes and artillery —and lived, in effect , in a country within a country , almost a separate civilization .The Gulag had its own laws, its own customs, its own morality , even its own slang. It spawned its own literature, its own villains, its own heroes, and it left its mark upon all who passed through it , whether as prisoners or guards. Years after being released, the Gulag’s inhabitants were often able to recognize former inmates on the street simply from “the look in their eyes. ”"

Success and luck

"A successful person will try to convince you that his achievements could not possibly be accidental , just as a gambler who wins at roulette seven times in a row will explain to you that the odds against such a streak are one in several million, so you either have to believe some transcendental intervention is in play or accept his skills and insight in picking the winning numbers. But if you take into account the quantity of gamblers out there, and the number of gambling sessions (several million episodes in total), then it becomes obvious that such strokes of luck are bound to happen. And if you are talking about them, they have happened to you."

Entertaining obligations

Many people seem to entertain the view that, other people are for the purpose of their entertainment; to listen to them when they have something to say, to go along with their activities, whatever they may wish to do at a given time period in their lives, to mold their lives according to their momentary whims; and if the other person does not oblige then they invoke the moral and ethical responsibilities of humans towards other humans (well, more specifically, themselves) (more like moral blackmailing).

Why can’t people find entertainment in themselves, in their solitude? There is nothing wrong with group activities, if all participants are there of their own accord, their own will and not forced into it in the name of moral obligations for keeping relationships.

To believe that they are indestructible

"Not necessarily. Consider the following: of all the colorful adventurers who have lived on our planet , many were occasionally crushed, and a few did bounce back repeatedly. It is those who survive who will tend to believe that they are indestructible; they will have a long and interesting enough experience to write books about it . Until, of course …"

Statistics are invisible

"Our neglect of silent evidence kills people daily. Assume that a drug saves many people from a potentially dangerous ailment , but runs the risk of killing a few, with a net benefit to society. Would a doctor prescribe it? He has no incentive to do so. The lawyers of the person hurt by the side effects will go after the doctor like attack dogs, while the lives saved by the drug might not be accounted for anywhere. A life saved is a statistic; a person hurt is an anecdote. Statistics are invisible; anecdotes are salient ."

The unseen cemetery of invisible consequences

"Governments are great at telling you what they did, but not what they did not do. In fact , they engage in what could be labeled as phony “philanthropy,” the activity of helping people in a visible and sensational way without taking into account the unseen cemetery of invisible consequences."

Moral responsibility for every endangered species

"The stability of species. Take the number of species that we now consider extinct . For a long time scientists took the number of such species as that implied from an analysis of the extant fossils. But this number ignores the silent cemetery of species that came and left without leaving traces in the form of fossils; the fossils that we have managed to find correspond to a smaller proportion of all species that came and disappeared. This implies that our biodiversity was far greater than it seemed at first examination. A more worrisome consequence is that the rate of extinction of species maybe far greater than we think—close to 99.5 percent of species that transited through earth are now extinct , a number that scientists have kept raising through time. Life is a great deal more fragile than we have allowed for. But this does not mean we (humans) should feel guilty for extinctions around us; nor does it mean that we should act to stop them—species were coming and going before we started messing up the environment . There is no need to feel moral responsibility for every endangered species."

We need to see the cause

"The fund-management industry claims that some people are extremely skilled, since year after year they have outperformed the market . They will identify these “geniuses” and convince you of their abilities. Every year you fire the losers, leaving only the winners, and thus end up with long-term steady winners. Since you do not observe the cemetery of failed investors, you will think that it is a good business, and that some operators are considerably better than others. Of course an explanation will be readily provided for the success of the lucky survivors: “He eats tofu, ” “She works late; just the other day I called her office at eight P.M. …” Or of course, “She is naturally lazy. People with that type of laziness can see things clearly. ” By the mechanism of retrospective determinism we will find the “cause”—actually, we need to see the cause."

Cemetery of the failed

"Now take a look at the cemetery. It is quite difficult to do so because people who fail do not seem to write memoirs, and, if they did, those business publishers I know would not even consider giving them the courtesy of a returned phone call (as to returned e-mail , fuhgedit). Readers would not pay $26. 95 for a story of failure, even if you convinced them that it had more useful tricks than a story of success. The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now consider the cemetery. The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism, et cetera. Just like the population of millionaires. There maybe some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck . Plain luck ."

The cemetery symbol

Cemetery, of what purpose is that piece of land? Is it for the dead, but of what use is to them, the atoms, the molecules, that once constituted a conscious being? None whatsoever. The cemetery is there to serve us, the still living. The tomb stones, the raised structures, flowers, visitors; they are there to numb the pain of living with the knowledge, the premonition, of our own demise, departure, into the void; by giving us a toy of reassurance, that we would, too, be remembered, honored and visited; as if the rectangular, concrete structure is us. Is it too hard to imagine, while visiting a grave, while attending a funeral, ourselves, switching places with the dead, as an act of mental simulation, the imagination? The fear and panic of total oblivion; the cemetery, it pats us reassuringly, that it would not be the case. The delusions that we erect, opiates self administered. People would come and talk to us, pouring out their hearts, of how badly life is treating them after us. It is there to remind us of our refusal to let our grip go, mentally, while we live and observe others die, right and left, of life and living; refusal to accept our oblivion. It is the final symbol of our narcissistic love for life, ourselves, our refusal to accept our mortality. It is a placebo for the slowly dying, death being the chronic disease of life, parasite to the experience of living.

Do chimps perceive other minds?

"Now , determining whether a chimp has thoughts about others’ thoughts is a rather tricky research question . But Povinelli had some ingenious ways of going about it . For example, in a famous series of experiments published as a monograph titled What Young Chimpanzees Know about Seeing (1996), Povinelli trained his group of seven apes to come into the lab one at a time, reach their arms through a hole in a Plexiglas partition , and beg for a food reward from one of two human experimenters. There were two holes, one in front of each of the two experimenters, respectively . If the chimps reached out to person A, then person A would hand them the treat . If the chimps reached out to person B, person B would give it to them instead. But the chimps got only one choice between these two experimenters before the next trial began and the chimp next in line made its own selection .

After the animals got the gist of this simple game, the real experiment began . The rules remained the same—again , reach through one of the holes to get that person to fetch your treat—but now when the chimp entered the lab, it saw one of the experimenters wearing a blindfold, or with her back turned, her eyes closed, or even wearing a bucket over her head. The other experimenter , meanwhile, had her eyes wide open and was watching the chimp attentively .

If you’re thinking like an experimental psychologist , then the purpose of the study should at this point be jumping out at you . Povinelli hypothesized that if chimpanzees have a theory of mind, well then they should quite clearly pick the person who can see them over the one who can’t . After all , picking the unsighted experimenter would leave the chimp without its prize because—being unable to see the chimp’s gesture toward her—this person can’t possibly know she has been chosen . The point is that to avoid making the wrong choice, the animal must take the perspective of the person , or at least attribute the mental state of “not seeing” to her.

Povinelli and his coauthor , Timothy Eddy , surprised almost every one when they found that the chimps failed to show a preference between the two experimenters. By contrast , in a similar game, even two-year-old children showed a clear preference for the sighted person . Other cleverly designed studies followed, by both Povinelli and others, all presumably showing that , contrary to what we had been led to believe by the “visual rhetoric” of those Goodall-esque documentaries, chimps aren’t entirely like us after all ; in particular , they lack a theory of mind and fail to reason about what others see, know, feel , believe, or intend."

Social Neanderthals

"Neanderthals occasionally scooped out a depression for the fire, but only rarely lined the pit with stone, or built the hearth in any significant way . And the hearths were not predictably centered in the living area; they were in fact rather haphazardly placed…Neanderthals appear not to have sat around their fires for storytelling, or ritual, keeping the fire intense, and using it as the metaphorical center of the social group. If Neanderthals did not , or could not , maintain shared group attention for purely social purposes, then their lives were very different from our own.
~ Frederick Coolidge and Thomas Wynn - The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking (2009)"

The difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal

“The difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is…one of degree and not of kind”
~ Darwin

Diminishing other people’s humanity

"On some occasions other people’s souls stare out at us so vividly that our thinking is tilted heavily toward seeing them as richly experiential agents like ourselves. On other occasions, however , such as when relations with our neighbors grow sour or during periods of intense sociopolitical turmoil and violence, we’re vulnerable to diminishing other people’s humanity , objectifying other human beings as mere “disgusting” or stock bodies."

Poor lad, so he existed too!

Yesterday , when they told me that the assistant in the tobacconist’s had committed suicide, I couldn’t believe it . Poor lad, so he existed too! We had all forgotten that , all of us. We who knew him only about as well as those who didn’t know him at all. We’ll forget him more easily tomorrow . But what is certain is that he had a soul, enough to kill himself . Passions? Worries? Of course. But for me, and for the rest of humanity , all that remains is the memory of a foolish smile above a grubby woolen jacket that didn’t fit properly at the shoulders. That is all that remains to me of someone who felt deeply enough to kill himself , because, after all there’s no other reason to kill oneself.
~ Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet (1916)

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again.”
~ Sylvia Plath -  “Mad Girl’s Love Song”  (1953)

The tragedy of sexual intercourse

“The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul .”
~ William Butler Yeats

Singular bubble of consciousness

“To have to face the fact of being oneself—one self , this self and none other , this secret packet of phenomena, this singular bubble of consciousness. Press up against each other as we may , and the bubbles remain essentially inviolate. Share the same body even , be joined like Siamese twins, and there still remain two quite separate consciousnesses.”

Gorgias dilemma

"Yet for all his eloquence, there was something that pestered Gorgias throughout his life. In spite of his inimitable ability to domesticate language so that even the most elusive of concepts would play like docile animals at his every command, he was frustrated by the fact that even a wordsmith such as he couldn’t effectively communicate his innermost experiences to another listener in a way that perfectly reflected his private reality . Dressed up in language and filtered through another person’s brain , one’s subjective experiences are inevitably transfigured into a wholly different thing, so much so that Gorgias felt it fair to say that the speaker’s mind can never truly be known . Thoughts said aloud are mutant by nature. No matter how expertly one plumbs the depths of subjective understanding, Gorgias realized to his horror , or how artistically rendered and devastatingly precise language maybe, truth still falls on ears that hear something altogether different from what exists in reality ."

Natural selection’s most successful hoaxes ever

"Or , just maybe, you will come to acknowledge that , like the rest of us, you are a hopeless pawn in one of natural selection’s most successful hoaxes ever—and smile at the sheer ingenuity involved in pulling it off , at the very thought of such mindless cleverness."

I include my body in my causa-sui project

"I do not exist to be used as an instrument of physical procreation in the interests of the race; my individuality is so total and integral that I include my body in my causa-sui project."

Your own father

"You cannot become your own father until you can have your own sons; and natural-born sons would not do, because they do not have "the qualities of immortality associated with genius. ""

The uniqueness of the genius

"The uniqueness of the genius also cuts off his roots. He is a phenomenon that was not foreshadowed; he doesn't seem to have any traceable debts to the qualities of others; he seems to have sprung self-generated out of nature. We might say that he has the "purest" causa-sui project: He is truly without a family, the father of himself."

'Empty is the argument of the philosopher

'Empty is the argument of the philosopher by which no human disease is healed; for just as there is no benefit in medicine if it does not drive out bodily diseases, so there is no benefit in philosophy if it does not drive out the disease of the soul.'
~ Epicurus

The happiness religion

"This new [secular] religion , as happiness has, in certain ways, become as though a faith: with political, corporate and social institutions acting as churches, certain advocates and gurus as ministers, and, vitally, one’s self the god."

'A man's master

'A man's master is he who is able to confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Whoever then would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave.'
~ Epictetus

My grief is unbearable

"The great Persian king, Darius, was bemoaning to the noted Greek philosopher Democritus the loss of his wife. After more conventional means of appeasing the king failed, Democritus challenged the king to find three persons in the whole of his great kingdom who had never suffered from grief and to inscribe their names on to the tomb of his departed wife. This once done, he promised to bring his queen back to life. When Darius could not name three persons, Democritus thereafter laughed heartily at the great king for thinking that he alone suffered such grief and undeservedly so."

Jinnah - out-manoeuvring of his opponents

"Jinnah's main concern during this period was to bring Hindus and Muslims together politically. He felt this would ensure him a more secure place in India's public life. He worked hard to see that the coming annual sessions of both the Congress and the League took place in Bombay. To create the right atmosphere for unity he persuaded the President-elect of the League Mazhar-ul-Haque to take the lead and extend a hand of friendship to the Hindus. For this move Jinnah received wholehearted support of the Congress but some sections of the League were strongly opposed to it for they feared that it would destroy the independence and importance of their organisation. Despite Haque's assurance that there was no question of the League merging with the Congress, Hasrat Mohani and others mounted a virulent attack on Jinnah. They denounced him as an agent of the Hindus. They said he neither looked nor behaved like a Muslim nor did he speak their language; they accused him of lacking in knowledge of the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet. How could such a Muslim speak on their behalf, they asked. Haque was aghast at the intensity of their attack; it was followed by violent demonstrations against Jinnah. In the commotion Haque adjourned the meeting; this was then held the following day behind closed doors at the Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay. Jinnah mobilised his supporters and managed to get a resolution passed authorising the President of the League to appoint a committee to formulate a scheme of political and administrative reforms in collaboration with the Congress. It was to be then jointly presented to the British. In the game of power politics he was able to show that he could easily out-manoeuvre his opponents."

Jinnah and public

"Subsequently during his election campaigns he cultivated the Muslim voters belonging to different sections. All of them were much appreciative of his sincere efforts for the welfare of the community. Jinnah was courteous and considerate to them but not easily accessible to anyone on a personal basis. He always kept the public at arm's length; he was happy to plead for them but did not want to mingle with them. Once one of his colleagues requested him to shake hands with people at receptions. Jinnah was irritated: "If I shake hands with one I shall have to shake hands with all. And there is no time for that.""

Jinnah–The opportunist

"Despite his resolute opposition to the introduction of separate electorate for the Muslims, Jinnah did not hesitate to take personal advantage of it and contested the election to the Viceroy's Executive Council from the reserved Muslim constituency of Bombay and got himself elected. The voters disregarded his opposition to reservation and were carried away by his brilliant advocacy at the bar and his arresting personality. He was the first non-official Muslim to sit on the Viceroy's Executive Council in 1910."

Jinnah–condemnation of the provision of reserving separate seats for the Muslims

"However despite the protest by the Congress, the provision for separate electorate for the Muslims was made by the British in the Indian Councils' Act of 1909. In the twenty­ fifth session of the Congress at Allahabad in 1910, Jinnah moved a resolution condernning the provision of reserving separate seats for the Muslims, especially in its application to municipalities, district boards and other local bodies. He said it would sow the seed of division between the Hindus and the Muslims and keep them politically apart."

Jinnah’s animosity towards League

"The Aga Khan. who was elected as the first President of the League, pointed out subsequently that Jinnah was "our doughtiest opponent in 1906". He had publicly denounced the League's . communal move. In the words of the Aga Khan, "Jinnah came out in bitter hostility towards all that I and my friends had done and were trying to do". He opposed the League's stand of favouring separate electorate for the Muslims and described it "as a poisonous dose to divide the nation against itself ". He collaborated with the Congress and actively worked against the Muslim communalists, calling them enemies of the nation. He had been much influenced by the speeches of Naoroji, Mehta and Gokhale whom he adored. Naoroji as Congress President had emphasised the need for "a thorough union of all the people" and pleaded with Hindus and Muslims to "sink or swim together. Without this union, all efforts will be in vain," he added. Jinnah was in full agreement with this view. He deprecated the contrary separatist policy advocated by the League."

Jinnah and question of separate electorate for Muslims

"The Muslim leadership of that time was, however, not in tune with Jinnah's unqualified nationalism. They did not like the idea of uniting with the Hindus without obtaining the maximum safeguards for the Muslims. They carved out a separate political path for the community. On October 1, 1906, over fifty Muslim leaders from all over India met the Viceroy Lord Minto in a deputation and presented him a memorandum incorporating their special demands. In his reply the Viceroy assured them that ". . . I am as firmly convinced as I believe you to be that any electoral representation in India would be doomed to mischievous failure which aimed at granting a personal enfranchisement regardless of the beliefs and traditions of the communities composing the population of this continent." Minto assured them of separate electorate which goaded them to form the All-India Muslim League in Dacca on December 31, 1906. Jinnah reacted strongly against it. He organised, along with a few friends, a countermove in · · Calcutta at the same time to warn the Muslims not to succumb to the British policy of "divide and rule" which was being endorsed by the newly formed League. He said it would eventually harm the Muslims and deprive them of participation in national life."

Jinnah: Opposition to All-India Muslim League

"The partition of Bengal by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, had led to violent agitation in the province; it had also spread to other parts of India. Muslims favoured the divide since they were in a majority in the Eastern part but Jinnah took a stand against it. He stood solidly by the agitating Hindu Bengalis and denounced Lord Curzon for his unpatriotic action which had generated discord between the Hindus and the Muslims. Strangely, in 1947, he was the person mainly responsible for partitioning Bengal on the ground that Hindus and Muslims could not be lumped together. They needed separate homelands, free from the domination of each other. In 1906 Jinnah even refused to join the All-India Muslim League, founded in Dacca as a counter force to the Congress. But much later, he made the same League the instrument for dividing India and lorded over it as its supreme leader for almost a decade from 1937 to 1947. Earlier Jinnah used to be, in fact, horrified at the sycophancy exhibited by the Muslim aristocrats to the British and publicly opposed the need to form the League. He criticised its leaders for the hostility they displayed against the Hindus and the divisive stand they took in politics."

Jinnah’s dislike for Sir Syed Ahmad Khan

"Jinnah too felt more comfortable with the westernised Parsis than the orthodox Muslims involved in politics especially since they were guided by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan whose politics he disliked. He was particularly disturbed with their subservient attitude to the British rulers. He found the Congress, which the Syed opposed bitterly, more to his liking."

Early Jinnah and Indian Muslims

"Along with law, political developments in London also began to interest Jinnah. He admired the British for their sense of fair play and their adherence to the democratic system. All through those years Jinnah showed no interest in the Muslims ·of India or the difficulties they faced. In fact their loyalist stance. in politics appalled him. He was then all for the Congress; its non-communal, nationalistic stand enthused him. In private conversation he often bitterly criticised Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the pre-eminent Muslim leader, for his opposition to the Congress and for his exhortation to the Muslims to keep away from it. That is why in the early twenties when the Muslims started a movement for turning the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, founded by the Syed at Aligarh, into the Muslim University, Jinnah took no part in it, condemning it as a sectarian move to which he refused to subscribe."

Jinnah and the great law givers

"Many years later, when Jinnah was anointed Quaid-i-Azam (or the Great Leader) by his Muslim followers in the late thirties, he gave a different reason for his choice of Lincoln's Inn. He said it was because he saw a portrait there of Prophet Muhammad in the company of great law makers. The occasion was a reception to felicitate him which was organised by the Bar Association of Karachi; "I joined Lincoln's Inn," Jinnah declared, "because there, right at the entrance, I saw a picture of the Prophet included among the great law givers of the world." In fact there is no such picture in Lincoln's Inn. What is more shocking is that Jinnah did not know that any representation of the figure of the Prophet is strictly prohibited in Islam. Books showing any such depiction have been burnt by zealous Muslims. But by then Jinnah had cast such a spell on the Muslims that they overlooked his heretical pronouncement without even a murmur of protest. There is a fresco in Lincoln's Inn painted by G.F. Watt depicting great law givers; in these, some Pakistanis have recently discovered a figure which they claimed represented Prophet Muhammad, but it bears not the slightest resemblance to him as he has been described in the Books of Traditions. This was only a contrived attempt to justify Jinnah's statement."

M.A. Jinnah

"At the time of seeking admission to Lincoln's Inn, Jinnah wrote in his application the family name ''Jinnahbhai". Although he had changed it to Jinnah in the school register, his passport carried the name Jinnahbhai. He was not comfortable with it; it did not fit into the western style which he was so keen to adopt. Hence just before he was called to the bar he wrote a letter to the masters of the Bench of Lincoln's Inn, requesting them to change his name from Mohammed Ali Jinnahbhai to M.A. Jinnah. After some hesitation, relying on the entry in the school register, his request was granted. The document of qualification, therefore, bore the corrected name, as he desired. And so he became M.A. Jinnah ever since."

Jinnah: early education

"Jinnah's date of birth as given by his father in the application for admission to the primary school was October 20, 1875; in the school register he was named Mohammed Ali, son of Jinnahbhai. After a few years, his aunt Manubai Peerbhai who resided in Bombay took Jinnah under her wing; she got him admitted first to Gokuldas School and later to the well­ known Anjuman-i-Islam. He was however not serious about his work at school and spent a great deal of time wandering in the affluent and elegant areas of south Bombay where the British had built some magnificent Gothic buildings. He also enjoyed going to the beach with friends rather than attending classes at school. The result was that his father grew apprehensive about his future; he brought him back to Karachi and admitted him in the Sind madrasa. But Jinnah's indifference to formal education persisted. Fin-ally he was sent to the elitist Christian Mission High School where he became so anglicised that he soon changed his name in the school register to Mohammed Ali Jinnah discarding the "bhai" from his father's name. It however remained Jinnahbhai in other records. He arbitrarily altered his birth date to December 25 in order to coincide it with the birth of Jesus Christ. Even the missionary school could not make him overcome his aversion to studies and he dropped out without appearing for the final matriculation examination."

Jinnah’s religiosity

"Muslim children are taught to read the Quran in Arabic at a very young age; they also learn many verses from it by heart; they are taught to pray namaz and to fast during the month of Ramadan by the time they turn seven. Jinnah could neither read the Quran, nor did he say his prayers nor fast in Ramadan. Even in the heyday of his communal leadership he said his prayers only on the occasion of Eid, and that too, merely as a demonstrative gesture. He did not perform the Haj either which is one of the cardinal articles of the Islamic faith."

Jinnah; change of sect

"No one knows when Mohammed Ali Jinnah was born; there are no reliable records to testify to his date of birth. The Karachi Municipality did not maintain a register of births and deaths until 1876; Jinnah was supposed to have been born in the city in or about 1870. His father belonged to the Khoja community which owes its allegiance to the Aga Khan. This sect is technically Shiite but observes several Hindu ceremonies and customs. In fact even their prayer or their manner of praying does not strictly conform to Islamic precepts; there is a vast difference not only between them and the dominant Sunnis but also other Shiite sects notably the Asnasharis who regard the Aga Khani beliefs and practices as being at variance with theirs. Until recently the orthodox Muslims of various schools did not recognise Aga Khani Khojas as true Muslims. Jinnah therefore did not have a purely· conventional Islamic background and hence in order to get "proper religious acceptance among the generality of Muslims, he changed his sect' much later and became an Asnashari."

Facts are sacred

"Facts are sacred; comment is free."
~ C.P. Scott

The damning argument against Pakistan

"The damning argument against Pakistan is that it took a community spread through out the subcontinent, chopped it into several communities, gave it first one country and then two and left the others dangling in mid-air. People, who once possessed the culture, customs and history of a whole subcontinent were left with neither a nation nor an idea of themselves as a community. Pakistan was a double disaster for the Muslims in India: first they lost their sense of coherence and political strength in the Indian union along with their leadership and middle classes which migrated to Pakistan by the thousands; secondly, they were forever damned in India for having voted for Pakistan and broken the unity of India."

~ Akbar Ahmed (Pakistan's former High Cornmissioner to the United Kingdom)

Jinnah Gandhi comparision

"Jinnah, Gandhi’s greatest adversary, was a complex figure, and their relationship was full of strange paradoxes. Jinnah came from the same part of India as Gandhi, shared his language and culture, and was a lawyer like him. His family were first-generation Hindu converts. ‘Jinnah’ was a Hindu name and reflected the fairly common practice among Hindu converts of retaining part of their original name. Like Gandhi, Jinnah too adored Gokhale and regarded him as his political mentor. Like him, Jinnah had spent many years abroad. And although they worked out very different responses to India, both alike retained an outsider’s perspective. Neither of them was intimately familiar with Indian history or his own religious tradition. Unlike Gandhi, Jinnah was not religious and strongly disapproved of the introduction of religion into politics. He had married a much younger Zoroastrian girl, enjoyed alcohol, and had no objection to pork. He knew Gandhi’s charm and manner of establishing personal relationships, and carefully insulated himself against them. He spoke to him in English rather than their native Gujarati, shook hands with him rather than using the traditional Indian form of greeting with folded palms, and addressed him formally as ‘Mr Gandhi’ in preference to the more respectful ‘Gandhiji’. Gandhi, who had succeeded in winning over or at least commanding the deepest respect of almost all his opponents, including such strong-minded leftist leaders as Subhas Bose and M. N. Roy, failed before a man who was closer to him in many respects than his other opponents."

People have little idea how little glorious war is

“People have little idea how little glorious war is; it is organized murder , pillage and cruelty , and it is seldom that the weight falls on the fighting men —it is on the women , children , and old people…. ”

A person could love one book

"A person could love one book , at most a few—beyond this was a form of promiscuity. Those who talk about books as commodities are inauthentic, just as those who collect acquaintances can be superficial in their friendships. A novel you like resembles a friend. You read it and reread it , getting to know it better. Like a friend, you accept it the way it is; you do not judge it . Montaigne was asked “why” he and the writer Etienne de la Boétie were friends—the kind of question people ask you at a cocktail party as if you knew the answer, or as if there were an answer to know. It was typical of Montaigne to reply, “Parce que c’était lui, p arce que c’était moi” (because it was him and because it was me)."

Hope is a currency for few

"When you look at the empirical record, you not only see that venture capitalists do better than entrepreneurs, but publishers do better than writers, dealers do better than artists, and science does better than scientists (about 50 percent of scientific and scholarly papers, costing months, sometimes years, of effort , are never truly read). The person involved in such gambles is paid in a currency other than material success: hope."

Those who claim that they value process over result

"However, those who claim that they value process over result are not telling the whole truth, assuming of course that they are members of the human species. We often hear the semi-lie that writers do not write for glory, that artists create for the sake of art , because the activity is “its own reward. ” True, these activities can generate a steady flow of auto satisfaction. But this does not mean that artists do not crave some form of attention, or that they would not be better off if they got some publicity; it does not mean that writers do not wake up early Saturday morning to check if The New York Times Book Review has featured their work , even if it is a very long shot , or that they do not keep checking their mailbox for that long-awaited reply from The New Yorker. Even a philosopher the caliber of Hume spent a few weeks sick in bed after the trashing of his masterpiece (what later became known as his version of the Black Swan problem) by some dim-thinking reviewer—whom he knew to be wrong and to have missed his whole point .

Where it gets painful is when you see one of your peers, whom you despise, heading to Stockholm for his Nobel reception."

Hell is other people

"Many people labor in life under the impression that they are doing something right , yet they may not show solid results for a long time. They need a capacity for continuously adjourned gratification to survive a steady diet of peer cruelty without becoming demoralized. They look like idiots to their cousins, they look like idiots to their peers, they need courage to continue. No confirmation comes to them, no validation, no fawning students, no Nobel , no Shnobel . “How was your year?” brings them a small but containable spasm of pain deep inside, since almost all of their years will seem wasted to someone looking at their life from the outside. Then bang, the lumpy event comes that brings the grand vindication. Or it may never come.
Believe me, it is tough to deal with the social consequences of the appearance of continuous failure. We are social animals; hell is other people."

Selfishness

Usually when someone talks negatively about selfishness, he means selfishness of/in others towards him (excluding his own, which he cannot/does not observe/perceive of course, as being acts of selfishness towards others).

Not talking is an effortful activity

For many, not talking is an effortful activity.

We feel the sting of man-made damage

"Terrorism kills, but the biggest killer remains the environment , responsible for close to 13 million deaths annually. But terrorism causes outrage, which makes us overestimate the likelihood of a potential terrorist attack—and react more violently to one when it happens. We feel the sting of man-made damage far more than that caused by nature."

One death is a tragedy

“One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic. ”
~ Stalin

The very nature of randomness lies in its abstraction

"We learn from repetition—at the expense of events that have not happened before. Events that are non repeatable are ignored before their occurrence, and overestimated after (for a while). After a Black Swan, such as September 11, 2001, people expect it to recur when in fact the odds of that happening have arguably been lowered. We like to think about specific and known Black Swans when in fact the very nature of randomness lies in its abstraction."

Confidence

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1. Confidence
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1.1. Well, I am not so confident about, this whole, being confident, thing.
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1.1.1. Specifically this confidence;"Freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities"

  1.1.1.1. Belief? Knowing that we are capable of holding onto wrong assumptions; belief in what?

    1.1.1.1.1. This whole belief in yourself thing, reeks of stubbornness.

      1.1.1.1.1.1. Stick to your held beliefs, no matter what the reason says.

      1.1.1.1.1.2. Stubbornness in your ignorance and not making/keeping room for the fact that you maybe wrong , even if for once in a while. That at least the possibility of being wrong exists.

    1.1.1.1.2. Haven't we been wrong in the past?

      1.1.1.1.2.1. Can't we still be wrong (about many things)?

  1.1.1.2. Freedom from doubt? Is it wrong to be an skeptic?

    1.1.1.2.1. Confidence in our knowledge?

      1.1.1.2.1.1. That what we know is infallible?

      1.1.1.2.1.2. That we ought to stick to the notion that we are capable knowing the ultimate truths, without all the mental pollution (the biases, the fallacies)?

1.1.2. We are told (and expected) to "be confident" (to show/exude confidence), at many situations.

  1.1.2.1. It is one thing for someone to show confidence (the peacock behavior)

    1.1.2.1.1. It is another thing to fall for it

      1.1.2.1.1.1. To look for candidates that have chests thrust out, stiff necks and speak in voice coming from deep down the throat.

        1.1.2.1.1.1.1. The confident soldiers

          1.1.2.1.1.1.1.1. Give us a task and we shall not question and plunge headlong.

            1.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.1. Suitable aren't such folks for the ones who desire these confident soldiers.

      1.1.2.1.1.2. To like and encourage such people, such behaviour

        1.1.2.1.1.2.1. To mistrust, to discourage, to look down upon, the humble folks.

  1.1.2.2. All the confidence building books, talks, seminars. The stuff sells.

    1.1.2.2.1. It feeds on the notion that people with doubt are sick, weak and useless.

      1.1.2.2.1.1. That thinking about your thoughts is a wastage to time,

        1.1.2.2.1.1.1. That one ought to take pride in his mental arrogance, stubbornness.

        1.1.2.2.1.1.2. That an examined life is for the losers, the unsuccessful.

  1.1.2.3. Stick to your guns no matter what.

  1.1.2.4. Not to doubt our mental prowess

    1.1.2.4.1. Black swans do not exist, since we have never encountered one.

    1.1.2.4.2. Not to show hesitancy (by thinking of other possibilities)

    1.1.2.4.3. Not to challenge ourselves with self re-examination

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1.2. What is so degrading about being humble?
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1.2.1. Living with the possibility that we may not be all knowing.

  1.2.1.1. Why is uttering "I don't know for sure" so difficult, so below our dignity?

Could it be that fables and stories are closer to the truth

"The problem of over causation does not lie with the journalist , but with the public. Nobody would pay one dollar to buy a series of abstract statistics reminiscent of a boring college lecture. We want to be told stories, and there is nothing wrong with that—except that we should check more thoroughly whether the story provides consequential distortions of reality. Could it be that fiction reveals truth while non fiction is a harbor for the liar? Could it be that fables and stories are closer to the truth than is the thoroughly fact-checked ABC News? Just consider that the newspapers try to get impeccable facts, but weave them into a narrative in such a way as to convey the impression of causality (and knowledge). There are fact-checkers, not intellect-checkers. Alas."