Passivity

I was listening to a radio programme with a host (epithet loveguru) who in between songs, takes questions on matters “related to the heart” and heard this conversation (translated from Hindi)
A girl: I had a proposal for marriage. I liked the guy but our kundalis didn’t match. Now I have another proposal where the kundalis match. I [...]

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 [...]

Book Review: The Future of Freedom

Summary
Fareed Zakaria’s book “The Future of Freedom – Illiberal Democracy at Home & Abroad” is a critique of democracy. Zakaria notes that democracy is not the same thing as constitutional liberty. He notes that democracy is a process of selecting governments whereas constitutional liberalism is about selecting government’s goals and refers to the Western tradition [...]

Culture

What is a culture? What is its role in man’s life? Can a culture be good or bad?
The concept culture refers to shared beliefs, practices, tastes, values, attitudes etc. A culture plays many important roles in man’s life
Cognitive:
As a child grows, he learns by observing the world around him. An important part of this learning [...]

Patriotism

The concept of patriotism (atleast from what I remember of my school education) is presented as a self-evident virtue requiring no justification. It is presented as a virtue by merely describing it with positive (and often hyperbolic) adjectives and by associating it with the concept of sacrifice (which is also presented in the same way). In [...]

Today’s Cultural Vacuum

This post began as a reply to a comment on my previous post that said “We must do something about it otherwise it will be too late.” but I decided it was worthy of posting as an entry by itself1. So here goes.
Indeed now is the time to do something about improving our culture. The [...]

Applied Religion

This article in “The Times of India” reports
“…The Mumbai police on Monday suspended the licences of 34 errant cinema halls across the city for a period ranging between four and eight days…”
“A month ago, when a section of Marathi film producers called on Patil to protest against the failure of theatre owners to exhibit Marathi [...]

Tolerance vs Censorship

In a recent article Time to stand up for a tolerant society, Shashi Tharoor asks “Is India becoming a playground for the intolerant?”. While the concern is well-founded, the identification of the problem is not. There are two separate issues here, tolerance and censorship.
Tolerance is a moral concept. It applies to individuals and not to society. It [...]