By George

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

One of my favorite stand-up comics is George Carlin. Irreverent, outrageous, with malice towards all; he is a treat to watch. If you have Comedy Central on cable you can sometimes catch his shows. You are all Diseased is a good show. Please note that if you do watch him, remember to bear with him. He starts slow, but like most things worth the mention, he's good in the middle.

Here are some opinions that George holds. He holds them rather loosely but, and will give them to you readily:

If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little. 

I don't like to think of laws as rules you have to follow, but more as suggestions. 

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. 

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong. 

The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other going in opposite directions.

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done."

Ah Discordia!

I have suddenly, and without serious provocation, decided to become a committed Discordian. What (on earth) is a Discordian, you may ask. Wikipedia has this definition.

Discordianism is a modern, Chaos-based religion or pseudoreligion founded in either 1958 or 1959. It has been described as both an elaborate joke disguised as a religion, and as a religion disguised as an elaborate joke. Some of its followers make the claim that it is "a religion disguised as a joke disguised as a religion." It can be viewed as a simple rejection of reductionism and dualism, even falsifiability — not in concept different from postmodernism or certain trends in the philosophy of mathematics. It has also been described as "Zen for roundeyes," and converges with some of the more absurdist interpretations of the Rinzai school.

Discordians worship Eris, the Greek goddess of Discord. You know, that hoochie who caused so much grief by supposedly causing the Trojan war. Legend has it that she is some serious badass and mean like you wouldna believe. We Discordians maintain that she is merely misunderstood.

Discordians live by the following two rules, or not:

(1) There are no rules anywhere.
(2) The Goddess Prevails.

To add to the confusion, we also have a law of Fives that we strictly follow, or sometimes ignore depending on mood:

(1) ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR ARE MULTIPLES OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO 5.
(2) The Law of Fives is never wrong.

I've been told that we also have a Book. Not a book, stupid. A Book. It is yay big and brown in colour. Of course, I may be wrong about the colour. It is called the Principia Discordia and contains within its pages--about 523 pages cover to cover not including the preface--absolutely everything worth knowing. And some stuff that is outright pornographic...no wait, that's a different book.

The Principia Discordia is organized along the lines of the Bible.

Well, don't hold me to any of this, I sure haven't read it.

Oh, by the by, the Principia Discordia is based heavily on and steals liberally from an earlier source called the Honest Book of Truth (HBT), which is lost to us forever. Legend has it that the HBT was taken by a garbage collector who refused to return it.

Here's some philosophy from the Book that I found useful, and I am saying that only to get you to read this stuff:

The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Eristic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making. With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us.
The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept.
We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle.
Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.

And he was a Tentmaker

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help -- for It
As impotently moves as you or I.

-- Omar Khayyam

The Existential Angst of a Hindu Terrorist

I was reading a past issue of Time magazine at a hair salon the other day.

An article on terrorism in Iraq by Sunnis caught my attention. On one of the pages of that article was a sidebar. A sidebar authored by a couple of Indians (I wants to riddle you heh: how many Indians does it take to author a sidebar. One to hold it and another to screw it in, no wait, that's a lightbulb, ha, ha).

Now we all know that sidebars serve an important purpose. I don't know what that important purpose is, but this one seemed to serve the important purpose of being a Guilt-ridden Overly-PC Over-compensator.

Terrorism is not the exclusive preserve of Islam, the sidebar informed us. Lest we, the average impressionable reader, think it. A suitable supporting example was provided by the Indian authors who had Hindu sounding names.

A Hindu organization called the LTTE, operating in Sri Lanka, has carried out the most suicide bombings of any terrorist organization in the world, they informed us. 

What, misinformed reader, you thought we Hindus were spineless cows, did you? You wouldn't know it by simply looking at us, but we are second to none when it comes to blowing up women and children. Don't go by our general economic success or levels of education or principles of religious tolerance and secularism. It's all an elaborate charade. We are a violent, bigoted people, bent on converting people to our violent, polytheistic, illogical point of view. Whenever we have been in the majority in any country, we have visited terrors on the minority and exterminated or converted them mercilessly and caused a huge reduction in their population. We have brutally suppressed freedom of religion. We have also been a bunch of prolifically-breeding-royal-pain-in-the-asses when in the minority in any country, and have insisted on our own medieval personal laws and contributed to fragmentation and partition of the host country. 

We are terrible. In fact, we make Islam really look like a "religion of peace."

The above paragraph, minus my weak sarcasm, contains a premise. The premise is that terrorism is not the exclusive preserve of Islam. This is followed by what seems to be an inductive proof.

I follow the premise. I agree with it. Any sufficiently bigoted moron can pick up an automatic weapon and become a terrorist. So it is quite true that Islam does not have an exclusive monopoly on terrorism (even though this fact is scant comfort to people who point out that eighty percent of radicalism in the world today can be laid at Islam's doorstep).

But I have a bit of a problem with the proof.

It is true that LTTE uses terrorism. But what exactly makes the LTTE a Hindu organization? I do not get that. Is it because its leader Prabhakaran is a Methodist? Is it because the LTTE co-founder and primary theoritician Anton Balasingham is a devoted Christian? Or is it because that almost thirty percent of its members are Christians? Or perhaps because their stated aim is to establish an autonomous Tamil homeland within Sri Lanka? And of course, as any cretin with half a brain knows, when somebody says Tamil, they really mean Hindu.

No wait, I know what it is. Most of the members of the LTTE are Hindus. So that's what makes it a Hindu organization. So that's how it is. 

It is crystal clear to me now. In fact, I have just learnt an important lesson. It is always wise to view an organization in terms of the religious identity of its majority group, no matter what the stated aim of the organization is.

Thanks to that epiphany, many things now fall into place. The Republican party is a Christian organization, I have just realized. Come to think of it, so is the Democratic party. FIFA is a Christian organization. The Olympic Committee is Christian. The United Nations is a Christian organization, soon to become Islamic. Microsoft is Christian (Damn those Christians, they control everything). India, however, is a Hindu nation, and don't you forget it.

To take an ethno-political issue and give it a religious spin requires a certain kind of gall and dishonesty. That, and the knowledge that your average reader, an American, is really not terribly informed about anything that goes on to the east of Europe (or even in Eastern Europe, for that matter) and will swallow as gospel anything that is reported in an important-looking piece of glossy paper. That helps too.

Time is a widely respected magazine. Americans--who publish it--place great faith in it. It is also read faithfully and uncritically by the gaggle of brainwashed Macaulyites which most educated Indians, myself included, are.

So I wonder, given the circulation numbers of Time and its associated ability to form opinion, does this (mis-)characterization of the LTTE as a Hindu terrorist organization constitute libel?

I Despair, Therefore I am

I sometimes go and idly look at the noisy, vast, labyrinthine spiderweb of the blogosphere. Some blogs are truly awe inspiring. A hundred links to everywhere. Links to the latest news, latest gossip, whatnot.

Makes me feel small and stupid and uninformed. Self-awareness comes late to some, but when it comes, it sticks.

Discussion Question: Didn't somebody or the other say that you are truly enlightened when you have achieved complete self-realization. So how about a guy who realizes very completely that he is small, stupid and uninformed? Is he now enlightened? Has he attained Buddha-hood? Please tell to me. I wants to know.

Getting back to what I was saying, I have often resolved to be johnny-on-the-spot with the latest news. "If it's happening in the world today, it'll be on my blog tomorrow; complete with a half-assed analysis," I have frequently said to myself. But as the sage among us will appreciate, there is an universe of difference between saying pretty stuff and actually getting off your dead ass and doing it.

So, the short takeaway is this. You want latest news, intelligent analyses, hot pictures of Ashley Simpson, go look at a newspaper.

Having set expectations, here is an article from rediff.com from July 21:

A Dalit autorickshaw driver was blinded in a Bihar village for asking Rs 50 as fare.

Sanjay Paswan, in his early 30s, was blinded by a group of five men on Tuesday in the presence of a village headman of Balua panchayat in Maner near Patna.

Paswan's relatives said that after the incident, the local police refused to lodge a police complaint as the attackers enjoyed political patronage.

"When he asked for the fare, they abused and threatened him. Then, they beat him and dragged him to the village mukhiya (headman) where he was beaten up again. Finally they blinded him with an umbrella," Paswan's younger brother said.
Read more at: http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/jul/21dalit.htm

If you did bother to read that complete article right now, or have read it before, I am sure that you, like me, will be intrigued by the title of the story. Which goes: "Dalit blinded for demanding fare". Why is the title phrased like this? Wouldn't it convey an equal amount of relevant information if it were worded thus: "Man blinded for demanding fare".

I scanned the story carefully. Nothing in it suggested that Mr. Paswan's being a Dalit specifically contributed to getting his eyes poked out. Or that had he been a non-Dalit, he would have avoided this hideous fate.

There was also no mention of the caste of the attackers. I didn't see anything that suggested that (A) they were of a higher caste and (B) it was precisely this fact that caused them to attack and brutalize Mr. Paswan. The article only said that the attackers enjoyed "political patronage."

Now let's get two things out of the way.

(1) My heart goes out to Mr. Paswan and I futilely hope that God will visit terrible judgement on his attackers. What else do you want me to say? The law will certainly not visit anything on them; this is Bihar we're talking about here.

(2) I identify myself as a Hindu to the core but I am the first to admit that a statistically significant section of Hindus are casteist bigots. That includes some close family and some of my friends and close acquaintances. (You want gentle truth, get out of my blog.) Also, I know that egregious stuff goes on in Bihar and elsewhere in India in the name of caste.

But that sort of reporting as noted above is irresponsible and leading because it insinuates a high-caste on low-caste crime without backing that up with sufficient proof. I don't know if the bias is due to an error of omission (maybe Mr. Paswan's being Dalit really had something to do with his fate and the reporter simply forgot to mention it) or commission. 

If it is not one of omission, I would say that there is an excellent chance that this reporter, this Sahay guy, is also a bigot. And I wonder, is this sort of wording deliberately calculated to inflame passions and further embitter and pit Hindu against Hindu? And I am stupefied by the fact that it is another Hindu who is doing the embittering and pitting.

I despair for my country and for the culture that I grew up in. And I feel lonely in my despair.

An Unasked-for Explanation of my General Rudeness towards Gandhi

Why do I Gandhi-bash so? Some reasons that come to mind.

(A) It is satisfying and safe. He's dead and can't defend himself.

(B) I am a contrarian. Whenever I see a million people worshipping an object, I question the quality of that object. Intelligence is not exempt from the laws of statistics. One person is smart. A million people, on average, are dumb.

(C) I have way too much time on my hands.

I have noticed that we Indians tend to glorify our heroes a bit much. Why do we do this? Do we lack heroes? Do we miss having role models? Is this why we concentrate all our lovin' on one individual? Is this why we pick one well-known hombre, inflate his qualities and put him safely up on a pedestal out of reach of all criticism?

Why is Gandhi a "Mahatma"? Why does Subhash Bose not get that honor? Or Khudiram Bose? Or Bhagat Singh? Or Aurobindo Ghosh? Or wasshisname that blew up the British courthouse? It bothers me that a certain, admittedly famous, individual named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi gets so much attention.

That is why I bash Gandhi. Because somebody has to overcompensate, no?

I also think that we lack a certain persepective in thinking about Gandhi and other similarly famous men. 

Some perspective, guys, is all I ask. Some perspective.

Gandhi was a man.

A man who contributed to our freedom struggle. Was he a great soul, as the moniker says? He was no more or no less so than the scores of other leaders who also contributed their blood and sweat to the freedom struggle. He was obviously not a coward, as some recent Hindi movies would have us believe. It takes a lot of courage to stand up and not back down from your convictions, even when they are demonstrably wrong on more than one occasion. He was no more a coward than George W. Bush is a coward. But simply being courageous does not make you great.

We humans are not terribly discerning in handing out certificates of greatness. Take as an example, Aleksandros the Macedonian. Pray tell, why do we call him Alexander the Great? To an impartial observer, this particular character would strike me as a man with way too much time and an excellent army (which his father, Prince Philip of Macedon, had painstakingly built up) on his hands. A man who used this army to carve a path of destruction through the Ancient World for no apparent reason other than bragging rights. What legacy did he leave the world? The Hellenic legacy in the east, such as it is, was promptly wiped clean with the Islamic invasion of Persia.

Was the size of his empire impressive? Well, first, the size of one's empire does not make one great, it makes one colonial. Second, his empire was quite provincial when compared to the colossal empire that Chengiz Khan and his successors, Ogotai and Kublai, built up. Or compared to the British colonial empire. Even the Mauryan empire comes close in size. And quite frankly, people like Chengiz and his grandson Kublai Khan left a more lasting legacy in China and Russia than Alexander did on the lands he conquered. Same goes for the Brits; they left a mark, and how. So why is Chengiz Khan not billed Chengiz The Great?

Ergo, one must be careful when evaluating a man's reputation of greatness. This applies to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi also.

Yabbut, but he must have been an extremely smart man to have three hundred million people follow him devotedly, I hear some people say.

Sometimes people follow a man not because the man is smart, but because the people are not terribly bright. Take a Laloo Prasad Yadav. Is he smart, because of his unchallenged position in Bihari politics? No, Biharis are dumb, for tolerating him. 

Is Jyoti Basu, who lorded it over Bengal for 21 years and paupered it with a defunct ideology, smart? No, Bengalis are f***ing obtuse, for being so easily led. Do not ascribe to greatness what can adequately be explained by stupidity.