The Divided Consciousness of Our Times

Hey, Good to read this - though for no basis in "fact and reason" ;) Hadnt heard of "negative capability" - though I guess its yet another way of stating the oft-repeated message of renunciation of senses, sensory pleasure and seeking of wisdom through "knowing". Am not quite sure but I remember reading something somewhere to the effect that THE TRUTH can be attained through multiple routes - through sensory perception (e.g. love), through thought, through belief and through complete surrender. The routes are different, some take longer and some not so long but they all take you THERE. Anyways, just spare a thought on the structure of your piece and a few sections which appear esoteric - unashamedly that too :) Cheers Ajay

what i was basically getting at was how difficult it sometimes is to accept the unfairness/ irrationality of life and enjoying yourself without losing a sense of your social responsibility, conversely, geting weighed down and moralising; teh difficulty in not letting ironies in life turn you indifferent or submitting to "cynical realism"... aldous huxley defines it as "the intelligent man's excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation". negative capability is not renunciation but engagement with the hurly burly of life; surviving the realisation that there is no One Absolute that can help make sense of reality; that no single system is valid/ authentic; that there are several possible realities and truths, each being a socio-ideological construct, the product of competing systems of thought...n.c. is about being comfortable with relativity [of ideas, truths...]...essentially, [in non-obscure and layman terms!] the idea that the messier the better/ variety is the spice of life. p.s: im not so sure ther is a "There" to be arrived at, Knowledge being a continuous process of questioning and destabilising older ideas...

Okay, that makes things clearer but raises more questions. What are these social responsibilities? Are they defined by some moral framework? Arent these responsibilities the call of an individual? Don't they change with time? What is the apparent justification for fulfilling these responsibilities, if the overall framework itself is , as you put it, full of ironies? I guess I am offering "an intelligient man's" excuses for doing nothing in an intolerable , or actually, inexplicable situations. Actually, I used the term "renunciation" a bit loosely, what I probably meant was surrendering to the fact that with our limited faculties, the framework cannot be deciphered and one might as well "submit" to the ironies and then ... And then, I am confiused. What happens next? If one doesnt know, cannot come to grips with a particular "socio-ideological" construct, then how does one take decisions esp. the ones where rational, ideological, social and gut level decisions are at conflicts? Let me pose one question - for e.g. - "Why should we continue to live when we have the choice of dying every moment?" Obviously we ( at least most of us) make the choice of living. Is it out of our social responsibility? The spice of life might leave a different taste in the mouths of different people !! As for your last statement "im not so sure ther is a "There" to be arrived at, Knowledge being a continuous process of questioning and destabilising older ideas..." - well none of us is sure ... the question is "What process are you referring to?" - My lifetime process? The "karmic cycle" of rebirth? Okay, I am going back to fulfill my social responsibility of working for a living. Thanks for listening. Ajay

I think that any living system - be it an untouched mountain lake in the wilderness or the post-modern human society - is in a constant state of conflict and synthesis. There is nothing alarming in that - this is the stuff that life is made of - it is as fundamental reality as we can possibly understand with our epistemological constructs So why treat the former as the beauty and bounty of nature and the latter as riddled with inescapable irony?? 0KB

cudnt agree more with ya kreep..its hard to remain pissed for long when there is so much beauty in this world!!!