Secularism, Enlightenment and India

A colleague sent me this link to an article in The Hindu and asked for my thoughts. From the article
For a long time it was held that a close link existed between the modernisation of society and the secularisation of the population. Consequently, it was argued that the influence of religion declined in post-enlightenment society. [...]

The moral vs the practical

Via NoodleFood I came across this blog post on time management. The post is quite good in general but one particular point is not.
Determine what matters most to you. Make a list of the people, activities, and things in your life that mean the most to you and then spend the vast majority of your time focusing on these [...]

Deep rooted altruism

Plenty of work coupled with a lack of motivation to spend time on editing has meant that its been quite a while since I last wrote a proper,  thought-out post although I do have plenty of accumulated material to write about. While the lack of motivation hasn’t changed, I thought I should just put this down.
In a short conversation over [...]

Charity

Just as I began writing this post, I saw this short piece by Kendall J.
There is an idea that I’ve heard repeated at various times in my life, that there is not enough charitable feeling in naturally “self-centered” man to be of meaningful help to those in need. When I respond that there is ample benevolence [...]

Fear of commercialization and the malevolent universe premise

In my previous incomplete post (published by mistake), I quoted a news report on the one year bar on architect Hafeez Contractor for appearing in an advertisement and asked why some professionals are not allowed to advertise. In a comment, Aristotle The Geek explains:
Most professions in India are regulated by so called autonomous bodies brought into being [...]

Economics in one unlearnt lesson

I recently found the time to read Henry Hazlitt’s book “Economics in One Lesson” (available online here). The book conclusively demonstrates that any attempts to coerce the free market can only result in the short term gains of special interest groups at the expense of everyone else and that even these short term gains are more than [...]

Satyam chairman Raju’s crime and the Times’ reaction

About a couple of weeks back, I had a very interesting conversation with a friend (and former classmate). The converstion started off with him telling another friend that “a day will come when you will look for a meaning, a larger purpose in your job/life”. I enquired what he meant by a larger purpose and the conversation [...]

Moral Absolutes

In a comment on my previous post “Terrorism and moral outrage“, wgreen asked
The inward sense of justice is evidence of the existence of moral “absolutes”. How do you justify the existence of such absolutes?
Is an inward sense of justice really evidence of the existence of moral absolutes? Consider the concept ‘justice’. Without any absolute (universal and [...]

Altruism, Pragmatism and Moral Relativism

Man is faced with choices in every conscious moment. To make these choices, he needs a code of ethics – a morality. For his choices to be successful, his moral code must be based on the facts of reality (including his own nature). Properly, a code of ethics must be derived from the nature of existence and [...]