GOLD - THE GREAT WARRIOR

"For more than two thousand years gold's natural qualities made it man's universal medium of exchange. In contrast to political money, gold is honest money that survived the ages and will live on long after the political fiats of today have gone the way of all paper."

---Hans F. Sennholz---

Throughout centuries, men have experimented with the idea of money and they have tried thousands of different things as money but the only thing left standing today, as money, after all that time and after all that struggle, is Gold. This shiny yellow metal is in fact a great warrior and it has defeated the mightiest of the mighty who tried to manipulate its value; it still remains today, as strong as ever and as valid as ever. Gold has defeated every fraud on the face of the earth to assert and reveal its real value since thousands of years. There is no other substance that by its intrinsic value can compare to gold. Gold is the ultimate money and it has stood the test of time but what is it so about gold that makes is so?

This shiny yellow metal chunk is no ordinary metal but it has certain qualities and certain special virtues that make it the best candidate to be considered as money and as a store of value. Before we find out why gold is the only real money, let us first understand what is money?

Money is a common medium of exchange of value of goods and services. Money is not only a medium of exchange but it is also a medium of saving the value of your goods and services over the time. In short, money is a medium of storing wealth in a very portable way. Gold is the most ideal form for storing wealth for the following reasons:

#   Gold is durable and does not rot even if kept for thousands of years.

#   Gold being a metal is malleable and can be made into jewelry and hence is used to wear as ornaments which is a great way to store your wealth.

#   Gold is desirable: The luster and the shine of this metal is unique and something that people desire very much of their free aesthetic sense. It is a medium of exchange acceptable to all and thus can be used to buy things anywhere and anytime.

#   Since gold is a metal it is homogeneous and divisible in such a way that each part will retain all the properties of the metal. This makes it very easy to mold into any shape or size and denomination.

#   Gold cannot be printed hence no government or bank can duplicate it.

#   Gold is very valuable: Gold is valuable because it is present in exactly such limited quantity and it perpetually remains so much in demand. An ounce of gold can buy a lot more than a truck load of iron. 

#   Gold is portable: Since it is homogeneous, divisible and valuable, it can store a large amount of wealth in a tiny quantity. One can easily carry it in one’s pockets and hold it in the palm of one’s hand.

Today in the world, there is yet another war against Gold. This war is being waged by the banks and the government. They have replaced gold with currency backed by nothing. Initially currency was backed by Gold. When a currency is backed by gold it means that the government can only print currency proportionate to the physical Gold it has in its vaults. This restricts the amount of currency that the government can print because Gold is limited. A gold standard currency is always limited in quantity and hence it cannot be inflated and people who hold such gold backed currency will not have to face the brunt of inflation and their purchasing power will not be harmed.

Unfortunately today we are on currency which is no more backed by Gold and the government and the banks are able to print unlimited amounts of it thus creating massive inflation and robbing people of purchasing power. The world we live in has limited resources and thus limited goods and services is what we can produce and when we print unlimited currency, then more currency chases the limited amount of goods and services and thus the price increases and this is inflation. Inflation kills savings and pushes out savers and forces people to gamble with their currency. Because when you put currency in the bank and you get 8% annual interest on your currency but the real inflation is 12% you are then in effect losing your purchasing power by 4% annually. So you would be forced to take the money and put it in risky investments such as bonds, stock markets etc.

Why do I use the word ‘currency’ above to denote what the government and banks print and not money? The reason is that both are quite different. Currency is printed on paper or it is stored in computers and books in the form of electronic blips and numbers but with real money you cannot do that. With Gold you cannot do that, you cannot print it on paper and you cannot store it in an electronic form on computers. It is physical and it cannot be duplicated.  Consider this example; suppose you are walking down the road and on the side walk you find a stray piece of soiled paper then would you pick it up and clean it and keep it in your purse?  But suppose you are walking along the road another time you find a piece of gold fallen on the side walk, would you pick it up or just walk on avoiding it? The answer is obvious that you would not pick up any stray paper but you would definitely pick up a piece of gold no matter how deformed it is or in whatever shape it is. The paper that we call currency is just a paper with some print and once you remove the print all you have is ordinary paper and nothing more. That’s how fragile the modern day currency is. Initially, when currency was gold-backed, the print of the paper called currency meant something because by law it was backed by an equivalent amount of gold stored away in the vaults, but the present day currency is backed by nothing. It is a big joke. All of us working so hard to earn some pieces of paper backed by nothing, having no intrinsic value and which continuously go down in purchasing power due to inflation, is simply ridiculous. Modern day currency is a scam designed to steal away people’s produce and hard work and make them poorer. Modern day currency is in fact an impostor parading around as money which it is not. History has shown that there have been many such impostors in the past and they have all been beaten time and again by Gold.

Gold as money or even Currency solidly backed by gold, i.e., gold standard is the only moral and practical way for people on the earth to live together under a system that has freedom and justice for all etched deeply at its core. The only money which cannot be manipulated or printed by any authority is the money that will be good for people. People who work hard need something that will store the value of their hard work over the time and when needed can be readily exchanged. The price of gold a hundred years ago in terms of dollar was $20 an ounce. Suppose you kept those 20 dollars in a box and that one ounce Gold too in it and opened it today then which would retain its purchasing power, the $20 or the ounce of Gold? The answer is simple. Gold is the ideal form of money and it entails economic freedom. Under gold standard, neither the government nor the bank can confiscate people’s wealth in a hidden way. People’s wealth earned by their hard work will remain safe and their purchasing power will not be diminished or stolen away by inflation created by excess currency printing. For an economy to function in the most efficient way, one of the most important things to be ensured is that the monetary system is a just and fair one and which does not take away the people’s wealth.

Once again, the world finds itself in the midst of one such great war of Currency versus Gold. Will Gold win this war too? I leave this for the reader to decide. All I will say is that the answer is there in the reading of history. Gold has always won and defeated the scourge of fiat currency time after time and the conditions this time are very similar too. As the governments and the banks of the world are struggling hard to keep this world going on a fraudulent system, will Gold once again provide justice and will it avenge the truth and honesty that the system has attempted to destroy. This great war of Gold versus Currency is underway right now. Let’s buckle our seat belts and see who wins. Gold is the hero of the people while fiat currency is the stooge on the side of the governments and banks. It is a war essentially between good and evil. On which side do you wish to stand? Good or Evil!?

VOLUNTARY TAXATION - THE ROAD TO REAL PROSPERITY

"Government should NEVER be able to do anything YOU can't do."

---Ron Paul---

Voluntary taxation is an alien idea to most. The idea is so alien and so blatantly opposed to our way of ingrained thinking that most would feel outright scandalized. Voluntary taxation means that you pay taxes only if you want to and no one will pressurize you or threaten you if you choose to not pay.

We all have been living in a system where taxation is not only compulsory but is considered criminal if one does not pay it. Do we ever question the validity of this kind of taxation? Why is it that this idea is so prevalent and why is it that our taxes perpetually keep on increasing? Why does it never happen ever in history that one day we wake up and the government tells us that our taxes will be reduced now onwards? We need to ask the question whether all this taxation through the centuries has helped us get really prosperous as we should or could we have done better? What is the real equation of taxation? This article will unravel the crux of this matter and explain how our prosperity and happiness are connected to something such as taxation. 

Human needs include not just food, water and air but many other things and the greatest among those needs is ‘happiness’. All human action directly or indirectly is aimed towards a single endeavor – The achievement of happiness. But there are so many of us here each having infinite desires but we live in a world of limited resources. What is the best system under which we can make the most of what we have and none of human labor or wealth goes to waste or in the hands of those who have not rightfully earned it? 

Let us try to understand how it works by imagining a little story which is as follows;

Imagine that you are renovating your house and you intend to get it done in the best possible way and in the least possible time and cost so that you can start to live better and enjoy the wonderful newly renovated ambience of your home. Well, first of all you would need to hire a competent interior designer and an equally competent workman like the carpenter, the painter, the electrician etc. When each of them do their respective jobs properly and in mutual sync then the house will get renovated efficiently and quickly. 

Now suppose you have a society watchman whose job is no more than to provide security and who suddenly forces you and takes over the job of interior designer. This watchman being illiterate and absolutely new to the field of interior aesthetics and has no expertise whatsoever. Just imagine how the renovation work will proceed. Well, he begins his work as a designer and in his ignorance and arrogance, he first designs badly and has no work plan so he overrides your wishes and also disregards the pleas of the workmen and rejects all their advice. He forces the carpenter to do the painting work and the painter to do the electrical work and the electrician to do the carpenter’s work. What do you think happens as a result? What you get is total disaster and your house interiors in a messy state.Would you like to hire an able and expert man of your choice to do the work or would you like to be bullied by someone like the watchman in this instance into hiring him despite his lack of expertise to renovate a house. The answer is obvious! 

This seemingly fanciful example has a stark parallel to the reality we live in. We all live in this world together which has limited resources and we all desire to achieve the maximum prosperity and growth for each of us. For this we need to use our resources with maximum efficiency and we cannot hire the watchman in the above story to do the job. We are constantly renovating the world and our lives through the resources we have at hand. But today by slow process of inaction and inability to challenge validity of the accepted idea of compulsory taxation we have unfortunately given the reigns of renovation to the watchman who in character is same as the government. In real world the situation is even worse than that of the story above because here the government not only has taken over the renovation but has started to dictate things and intrude in our lives beyond its moral eligibility.

Money is an objective equivalent of the wealth that we create. When your money is taken away forcefully by a third party in the form of taxes on the pretext that your money will be used in your favor then be assured that it won’t be used as promised. The widely accepted idea of compulsory taxation in truth is an affront to the idea of democracy and is immoral. To forcefully tax people and use that money not according to their wants is taking power away from the people. Voluntary taxation is an idea exactly opposite of this. Under voluntary taxation, people hold total power and money is not wasted because it allows people to use their money to sort out their problems as they wish and no outsider can understand the problems of the people better than the people themselves.


Suppose you want to make a piece of furniture, like say a chair and you give your money to the milkman to do the job instead of the carpenter then not only will the quality of work be compromised but also your time and money will be wasted and would result in diminished productivity because the milkman has no skill in the making of a chair and he cannot make it as efficiently as the carpenter and of equivalent quality. The same thing the government does… it taxes away your money and re-allocates a miniscule amount not according to the actual free market need of the people but according to the whims and fancies of the central planners . The remaining major chunk of tax money just disappears somewhere. The next year the government again taxes you but the tax must be higher this time because of inflation and because the government has opened newer departments and started other schemes supposedly to help you so it needs more funds. So eventually the people have to give larger and larger shares of their earnings as taxes and hence they have to work more and more for less and less, thus leading to a kind of financial bondage. Just ask a farmer who is forced to commit suicide if he is interested to send a spaceship on the moon or if he is interested in Commonwealth Games, while his family is dying of hunger. This system never helps people in reality and it has never alleviated poverty because it is a system that reduces investment money and thus reduces growth and constricts the economy and thus diminishes the prosperity of the people.

Voluntary taxation would work like a super voting machine and the only reason that people will be incentivized to pay taxes voluntarily would be if they see that it will actually benefit them and if their ‘self interest’ is served. If there is garbage and water stagnation in your locality and if it hurts you enough then out of your own self interest you would want to get it cleaned and you would offer to pay for it. Voluntary taxation will empower the people with true power as it should be in a real democracy. People vote not merely with their ballot but also with their money. Whatever people will want, their money will flow towards it to make it happen. A central government cannot know what the problems of the people are and how to best solve them. Today the governments are very large and they are increasingly interfering with different aspects of our lives. To fund all its activities, the government needs to tax people more and more and must force them increasingly. This tax money does not come from the people’s consumption capital but from their savings, i.e; their investment capital. When this investment capital is diminished and taxed away, that would simply mean less money for investment which in turn would mean lesser productive enterprises and lesser job opportunities and lesser growth. This creates a huge economic distortion of such epic proportions that to maintain it becomes increasingly difficult and more and more laws are enforced on the people and their taxes must keep on increasing and at the same time majority of people become poorer.

The biggest question that comes to mind whenever the idea of voluntary taxation is brought up is that who will build the public utilities and who will support the military and where will the money come from. It is generally thought that if voluntary taxation is implemented and if no one pays taxes how will the government carry out its activities. The answer to that is that the people will build the roads, hospitals and schools etc. People can do this by forming small local groups and collecting money for such purposes. When people start building like this from funds collected with voluntary consent then money and resources get used with maximum efficiency as you cut out the watchman completely out of the picture and thus a lot of money can be saved. When you ask the watchman to do the same work, he will not only deliver a very poor quality of performance but will siphon off huge amounts from your funds for his personal benefit.


Under voluntary taxation, one of the greatest fear is that what if people won’t pay any tax or pay very less tax. The first thing to understand is that under such a system the size of the government as compared to what it is today would be extremely small. The government job would roughly include no more than to maintain the army, the judicial system and the police system to ensure its enforcement to maintain law and order and apart from that the government will not be allowed to interfere in anything. The amount of money needed to maintain this would be extremely miniscule, thus leaving people with a lot of surplus savings. A tiny portion of these savings, people can use to build and maintain public utilities, social welfare, military etc. Even after all this, people would still be left with huge surplus savings which will get reinvested in new enterprises and create greater growth and job opportunities. No one would want to put their money into offshore tax havens such as the Swiss Banks any more because their money is safe here, so all that money will stay within the country and fuel further economic growth of the nation.

Why would people pay voluntarily? For the same reason that people pay voluntarily for Mediclaim, insurance, the maid, the sweeper, the tailor, the garbage collector, the milkman, the doctor etc.; because it is in their ‘self interest.’ A frugal government that does not step outside its justifiable bounds and which does not stifle economic activity by unjustifiable interference and which gets no incentive to siphon off people’s money will be a government in every one’s interest and benefit. Such a government will only be possible under a system of voluntary taxation where the true power at all times is vested in the hands of the people. Under such a system, there will be a great outburst of economic activity and innovation, that will change the course of the nation and the people’s lives in a positive and dramatic way. A nation of people who can utilize their resources with maximum efficiency and who can keep their earnings as they wish and who no more live under fear of their wealth being confiscated will be a nation of people who are on the road that leads to true prosperity.

Voluntary taxation is a system that has far reaching implications. It is the only system that can achieve the greatest efficiency in utilization of resources and thus achieve greatest real growth. It is the only system that truly empowers people in all respects by enabling people to vote with their money. It is a system that will check the massive corruption that goes on in our country. It is a system where people can work and keep their earnings and have freedom to achieve their highest potentials. It is a system that can spark a new era of great economic activity benefiting people from all walks of life. It is a system that will truly set people on the road to freedom and prosperity. It is a system of the future, if mankind ever wants to live free.

BLACK MONEY - A DECEPTIVE IDEA

The words ‘Black Money’ catch almost everyone's attention instantaneously and arouse curiosity as to the story behind it and about those involved. If someone’s name gets connected with hoarding black money, we tend to look at them with disdain as if the person has committed a big crime. The general thinking is that black money is bad.

The intent of this article is to present a contrary view on the very idea of black money and to prove and affirm that Black Money is not actually so black and tainted as many people are led to believe. In this article, we will find out how the idea of labeling unaccounted money as black is deceptive, what constitutes this deception and who stands to profit or to lose from it.

What is Black money?
There are many prevailing definitions of black money, among them, the most common is that black money is money that is earned illegally and not disclosed for taxation. The general perception among people is that illegal is always wrong but in truth it is not so.

To understand black money, we must first understand what is illegal. Illegal is not necessarily something that is wrong but it is something that is done outside the government set laws. Hence, the illegally earned money does not necessarily mean that the money has been earned by dishonest means but rather that it is the money which has just not been disclosed to the government. Hence, a reasonable definition of black money would be, ‘The money which is unaccounted to the government is called 'Black Money.'

Who is it that wants so desperately to label the unaccounted money as 'black' and make it sound so ominous and dishonest? Who stands to gain the most by labeling unaccounted money as black money? Surely, it is not the people who stand to gain but in fact it is the government which profits by labeling unaccounted money as black money. The government wants huge amounts of money to function for which it must tax people to the maximum and therefore it requires an account of all their earnings. However, the important question one must ask is whether the government itself, in reality, ever gives a fair accounting of the amount it collects as taxes. There is no such accounting.
 

It is stated that the idea of black money is most needed to indict criminals who make huge sums of money by unscrupulous means; but then why penalize the entire population for the misdeeds of a few?! The idea of black money is in actuality a means to facilitate more taxation of people’s earnings.

Money is money and most of the money is usually earned by honest trade among people. The idea of black money is a flawed idea. It is put into place in order to deceive everyone into thinking that black money is necessarily dishonest money and people who have this kind of money are definitely dishonest too. If the government lets people keep what they earn then the people will not be forced to hoard money in order to escape excessive taxation. On the contrary, they will invest freely in new enterprises, thus creating even greater and more sustainable growth. It is wrong to think that the government can do a better job at utilizing the tax money than the people themselves. History demonstrates that the governments have never been able to utilize tax money more efficiently than its free willed citizens. It is precisely because of the government's inefficiency and lack of accountability, that results in a perpetual rise in taxes, leaving lesser money in our pockets. The idea of projecting black money as always necessarily being bad is nothing but a cheap gimmick to tax everyone at an ever increasing rate.
 

If only people could keep and utilize their earnings as they wish, there would be without doubt great prosperity for all but this can never happen until the idea of black money is exposed and rejected, thus paving the way for a free economic system where one can unhesitatingly unleash one's productive abilities without fear of anyone taking away their rightfully deserved earnings.

ON BEAUTY

W   H   A   T         I   S         B   E   A   U   T   Y

“BEAUTY” 

Philosophers have philosophized and intellectuals have rationalized about ‘beauty’. Have they succeeded? I think not, but what I think is that only a very few have, and the rest have only managed to build imaginary castles in the air without any solid foundations, and into these castles they have imprisoned most of the people of the world.

I don’t intend to demean anybody in this way, but the idea of beauty has been so very drastically misunderstood and misrepresented that I think strong words are needed indeed to express this idea with due gravity for what it actually means.

Beauty in simplest essential terms is nothing but a ‘sense of harmony and perfection’. This harmony and perfection applies to anything that we wish to take up with the intention of aesthetic examination, whether it be an ordinary pebble, a painting, music, nature, human body, human character etc. It even applies to the realm of ideas.

An idea, an object or anything at all can be considered beautiful if all of their constituent parts fit together into a coherent logical structure and project harmony and perfection. A perfectly proportioned human face looks beautiful because of the nature and arrangement of its constituent parts i.e. when the eye, the mouth, the nose and the overall shape are all, harmoniously integrated together. Suppose it were not so and the face were disfigured, like an uneven forehead and a nose flattened sideways one eye smaller than the other, cleft lips etc. then one would certainly not find such a face beautiful because different parts contradict, are asymmetrical and hence disharmonious. Beauty is not always merely visual but can also be abstract and can sometimes, be grasped in conceptual terms. For example, the character of a person, which depends on appraisal of the sum total of the virtues possessed by that person, can make the person beautiful in an abstract way, or consider a scientific theory, in which all parts fit together and are able to explain flawlessly a true picture of reality. An example is Einstein’s theory of relativity, though the theory does not explain everything but it definitely is able to explain successfully with unerring consistency, a true picture of reality pertaining to massive objects. The theory is coherent in itself and demonstrable to be true and thus it is quite harmonious in the way all its parts fit together to explain reality as it is.       

    

The present day widely accepted notion of beauty is, “beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.” This thinking originated in ancient Greece and today it is still going strong because philosophers like Hume and the intellectual brigade with similar ideologies have been keeping it alive. Hume said that, “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them." I am sure almost everyone agrees to this and today most of the world swears by it when questioned about beauty, but this idea is actually wrong. There are inherent fundamental flaws in it, which are so great, and their impact so wide and far reaching that none realize the damage they have incurred to our understanding of not only beauty but even other important areas of life.

This very notion, even if it looks right and logical on the surface constitutes the greatest fallacy pertaining to the idea of beauty. Much of the modern art is a direct result of this flawed conception of beauty and this article is, aimed at refuting this idea and showing reasons why it is wrong. Furthermore, the article’s goal is to bring about a proper understanding of what beauty truly means and show an overall picture of how beauty must be understood and why.

“Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.” Let us first examine the statement and see if it really is as ‘fallacious’ as I say it is. One chief direct implication of this statement is that beauty is something, which depends only on an individual’s perception and hence is independent of the outside reality, i.e. that anything we choose to call as beautiful must be beautiful because we say it is beautiful. This constitutes a purely subjectivist thinking on which most of the modern and  contemporary art is based. The premise that ‘anything we choose to call as beautiful, must be beautiful because we say it is beautiful,’ is a wrong one because it evades the consideration of ethics and morality in defining and understanding of what beauty is.

Now one may ask, what has ethics and morality got to do with beauty? Well here is the answer. Beauty is a positive concept because the very idea of beauty rests on a morality that is positive and ethics that is life enhancing. If we do not have the idea of good and bad then we cannot have the idea of beauty. For example consider dog shit, it may be hard to believe but there are really some people who will say it is beautiful, but when you ask them what is ‘beauty’ they will not be able to define it and will give a hazy and meaningless reply. So, in absence of any objective definition people gain free license to call something, anything they wish and this is exactly the matter with the idea of beauty in the world of today. To appreciate dog shit and call it beautiful one has to evade the ethical and morality considerations because there is no other way to call it beautiful without feeling any kind of guilt. To such a person each and everything can be beautiful. Dog shit and the Monalisa painting are to be held in equal regard, even a cheat and a noble man of character are supposed to be equal too. Such a person does not judge, but merely accepts any and every random thing as beautiful, ugly, good or bad because for such a person there is no such thing as good and bad because either everything is good or everything is bad. For such a person, the capacity to judge beauty or anything at all, has been paralyzed due to the moral and ethical evasions. Hence, the only way for such a person to justify his or her stand is by adhering to the notion that beauty does not depend on reality but is entirely dependent only on one’s perception and thinking. This adherence gives one an escape from judging anyone or anything. It works by providing refuge inside a faulty philosophical framework, which gives them guiltless freedom to do and proclaim as they please without testing its basis in reality.

The biggest hurdle in the way of an objective definition of beauty comes from the popular rationalization, i.e., “what is beautiful for one may not be beautiful for another and vice-versa.” The statement is true in a certain context, but here too lies a big inherent flaw in the way its meaning is generally interpreted and comprehended. Let me illustrate with an example. Let us consider people of different racial groups, the blacks and the whites. Now it is obvious that, what maybe considered beautiful by the white may not seem beautiful to the black. A white man may not like the facial structure and the skin color of a black woman and may think her to be ugly, whereas a black man may positively find the same woman to be beautiful. So, who is right? Well, both are right, but not in the way one might think, but for entirely different reasons.

On immediate reflection people usually get stumped by this example and begin to think that beauty must indeed depend only on our perception and hence beauty must really be a subjective idea and no other standards can be possible to define it. Due to such superficial examination, they must conclude that beauty truly lies in the eyes of the beholder. But in truth this is not the case, the error will become clear once we examine the example even more deeply.

There is always a precondition to judging anything or calling anything beautiful or ugly, that precondition is, ‘having knowledge’ about the thing under scrutiny. Because, without possessing any previous knowledge at all, you cannot have any reference for judging anything, you would be just like a newborn who has just opened its eyes to the world. Based on this ‘knowledge’, one develops a system of values, according to which, one judges the good, bad, right, wrong, beautiful, ugly etc. in varying degrees. Now, this ‘precondition knowledge’ that one possesses, does not come from mere imagination but it has to have a basis in reality which one has perceived in the past and integrated by thinking. Hence, the standards by which we judge anything, will have to be based on reality.

Now, the white man who has been raised among the whites, will have a different set of aesthetic values than that of a black man who has been raised in quite a different cultural and social conditions. Both men’s aesthetic appraisal will be quite different, because their value systems will differ and will depend to a great extent, on their cultural and social influences and also on their evolutionary differences. But, this does not mean that beauty is dependent merely on their personal whims and fancies. Because one has to keep in mind the social, cultural influences and evolutionary differences that go into the appraisal of the woman. To the black man, the aesthetic elements of the black woman will be more important due to his particular and unique cultural,social and evolutionary influences, than to the white man.

A male monkey would find a female monkey more beautiful than a female of human species. Why? Mainly because of the inherent evolutionary differences between the two dissimilar species. I will not say ‘cultural differences’ because monkeys do not have a highly developed and complex cultural structure as do humans, so it would be safe to assume that the cultural influence in monkeys, would hardly play a noteworthy part in the appraisal of an individual of their own species.

One might further interject and object, that what about when people of different racial background sometimes find each other to be beautiful. The answer is simple, because the value system they hold as true keeps changing and evolving as one learns more and more and one and one can then at times, override such cultural and social differences and consider them to be quite unimportant in appraisal of an individual of different racial background but of the same species. This is what learning brings to us. A person devoid of learning and stunted philosophical growth will not be able to appreciate something like art at the same level and within the same range of contexts as a learned person. So the conclusion is that, what we already know, influences to a great extent, our conception and appraisal of something as beautiful.

Now, there are those who think that beauty is a property of an object and no observer is required to judge it. They are few in numbers, but they are there with this definition of theirs and hence it must be discussed here, in order to get as complete picture as possible. The kind of definition propounded by them is a result of an intrinsic mode of thought. According to which something is supposed to be beautiful all by itself and it is a quality the object possesses automatically and is supposed to exist in some unknown and undefined dimension, independent of any need to be perceived. Well, this too, is erroneous and the error will become very apparent in a short while as we proceed further.

Beauty : How much is it actually based in reality and how much is it real, does it only reside in our imagination and nowhere else as Hume says? Well, let’s see. Consider again the example of a well-proportioned face, suppose that one finds such a face beautiful, now consider the question, why does one find the face beautiful? Is it that the observer is just imagining it or is the observer hallucinating that there actually is a beautiful face? The answer is ‘obviously not.’ Because, since the face is there, it is for real and it is exists. The essential to note is that the face actually must exist before the person perceives it. Now suppose the face were not perfectly proportioned and it were ugly, having cleft lips, lopsided head and drooping eyes and an uneven nose and very bad pale skin. Will the person still find the face as beautiful as the well proportioned one? The answer is ‘obviously not.’ A person actually finds a face beautiful or ugly, because the person first perceives the characteristics like the shape, symmetry, proportion, color etc which must be inherent in the object (face) and if these characteristics change then whatever he perceives will change too accordingly. Hence, the obvious implication to be drawn is that for doing an aesthetic appraisal of an object, it has to exist first, and it must have specific inherent qualities and characteristics which are absolute properties of the object itself. Then, through our senses, we perceive it (object) and appraise it on the basis of our knowledge, conceptual ability and philosophical criterion that we have learned beforehand in our life.

Hence, the conclusion is that beauty must depend on two things, the absolute qualities possessed by an object and, our perception and appraisal of its aesthetics. Hence, the ‘subjectivist’s’ thinking that beauty lies only in the eyes of beholder is wrong and the ‘intrinsic’ rationalization is wrong too, that beauty is an independent property of an object and exists in some unknown dimension having no need for an observer for perceiving it. ‘Beauty’ is therefore a positive thing, it is a sense of harmony and it depends on the object under observation and on the observer observing the object for aesthetic appraisal. Beauty does not merely depend on random whimsical thinking and imagination of a person and neither is it a totally absolute and independent quality possessed by any object outside of observation.

Most of the modern art and contemporary art is a result of this flawed conception of beauty. The Dadaists have done away with the idea of ethics and morality and have influenced a whole generation of artists with their flawed subjectivist ideology. The result is for all to see, art without beauty. It reflects the state of consciousness of the Mankind as a whole. It is very important for us to re-establish the right ideas and principles of beauty in art and also within our lives, if we are to see better times, in spirit and in kind. Good art nourishes the spirit and does not kill or diminish it. The purpose of beauty in art and elsewhere is the survival of consciousness, to show us life and not death.

Thank You.           

ON THE STATE OF THE WORLD (PART-II) : THE IDEA OF FREEDOM

The idea of freedom is something so important for man that without which life would be unlivable and meaningless. Men have fought wars, risked their lives and done what not to achieve this thing called freedom. What is freedom? Why is it so essential? These questions may seem simple but they do not have as easy answers as one might immediately think. Almost everyone has a good idea as to what freedom is, but very few people know in exact terms what it actually means and entails in the fullest sense. This article is about the meaning of freedom in all of its essential and valid context and its various far-reaching implications, which remain mostly hidden from the immediate common perception.

What is freedom? Dictionary defines freedom as, ‘the condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints.’ This is quite accurate definition but it is important for each person to understand it because the idea of freedom is so very necessary for living life. The key to fully understanding this idea lies in two essential things i.e. first, comprehending its meaning and, second, understanding its implications in different contexts.

Freedom and Its Possibility and Impossibility : Consider this, a hypothetical situation in which there is just only one human being living on earth all alone, then in such a situation, the idea of freedom cannot be applicable. The reason being that in this situation, no one else is present there who can threaten or affect his existence or violate his privacy in any way. Hence, that lonely human being is left free to live, act and think as he chooses and has no threat to face, at least not from another human being. So, it follows from this that the idea of freedom can be considered valid only when two or more humans are living in such a way that they have to interact with one another on various levels to coexist peacefully.

The world is like this i.e. there are not one or two but many of us trying to live and exist together peacefully, but, there are some among us who like to interfere deliberately in various ways and make life miserable for others. It is a human tendency to interfere often into other’s business forcefully, hence, this can become a cause of misery for many. One does not want any such uncalled interference, therefore, to avert this and keep each one free of such intrusions, freedom and other related ideas are needed and ought to be enforced accordingly. It is this need to live peacefully that makes the idea of freedom possible and necessary.

Freedom and Happiness : One reason as to why freedom is important is, because, it is connected with happiness. ‘The final commodity sought by everyone in life is happiness.’ All humans activities, be it thinking, doing art, writing literature, climbing mountains or even fighting wars etc., are all ultimately aimed, directly or indirectly towards  achieving happiness. Freedom and happiness are inseparable because happiness depends upon freedom. When force and restraint are imposed on someone in an unjustified way, it acts as a killer of freedom and hence of happiness too. Hence, it is very vital for men to be free in order to live a worthy life and to achieve their true potentials.

Freedom and Slavery : Another way to understand the idea of freedom and its importance is by understanding the idea of slavery because understanding this provides a valid and easily comprehensible context for understanding the idea of freedom. The fundamental characteristic of humans is that they cannot work under any kind compulsion of which they do not approve. Slavery is coercing one to act or think in a way one does not want and hence it always leads to misery and unhappiness. Freedom on the other hand allows men to act as they choose, think as they choose and enables men to live a life which is free from outside coercion.

Freedom and Its Source : Almost all the countries of the world grant a number of basic freedoms to their people in form of rights, among them the most important are, the right to freedom of speech, right to equality before law, freedom to practice one’s choice of religion etc. But the important thing to note is that all these rights are an outcome of one single right which is the ’right to live’. It is by recognizing and establishing this right to ‘live’, we can understand all other rights relating to freedom, which are in place to maintain our peaceful coexistence. So what does this ‘right to live’ mean? It simply means that that one has a right to live and do with one’s own life as one wishes and that no one else must be allowed to violate this right in any way. To ensure that this right remains intact and do not get violated, all the other rights as mentioned above are put in place and are enforced by law.

Freedom and The Need for Restrictions and Prohibitions : The world, has always been overrun by restrictions and prohibitions. There is a reason for this. When so many numbers of people live together on a place like earth then to ensure peaceful coexistence of all, certain restrictions are required. Restrictions are put in place to safeguard wellbeing of an individual or group from another individual or group. Restrictions and prohibitions are good if they are justifiable and can be proven and demonstrated to be necessary. For example, murdering another person is prohibited by law and it is deemed  as punishable offence. This is a justified prohibition because it is necessary for safeguarding lives of an individual. This kind of prohibition restricts the abuse of freedom of others. Hence, only those restrictions are justified and must be observed which uphold freedom and save men from any unwarranted outside coercion.

Freedom and The Need For Removing Unjustifiable Prohibitions : There are so many other restrictions, which are unjustified and they violate our freedom directly or indirectly. Many of these restrictions are hard to see for what they actually are because they remain mostly hidden beneath layers of uncertain and hazy ideas. The most important thing to note is that many of such restrictions are put in to place by deliberate intentions and not by natural default.

Like for example, let us consider the prohibition on alcohol sale and consumption as is currently imposed by the government in the state of Gujarat. This prohibition, is currently imposed using various false and unjustifiable pretexts such as that of saving people from the harmful effects of alcohol, also on the pretext of maintaining women’s safety and that of Gujarat being the land of Gandhi etc. What it means for the people of Gujarat is that the government can now decide what grown and intelligent men ought to consume and what they ought not to consume and if any one defies this then they become liable to get forcibly punished. This is, in essential terms a direct violation of the right to life as I have stated above in this article. This prohibition threatens and undermines our basic freedom. Today, the government has taken this much liberty and if nothing is done then the government may also start assuming more powers and lay down even more such restrictions. The government may then begin to decide what one should wear, whom one should interact with or with whom one should not interact. In short the government may become like an unbearable Nanny who is out to slowly take away all of your freedoms. This is not a fantastical situation which I am constructing here, but a very possible one, it has happened in the past. ‘When the powers of the government go unchecked by the people then the government tends to slowly increase in size and become dictatorial in nature.’

Freedom and Mental Slavery : Even though human slavery, as we know of it, was abolished long before, like in Britain and in America it was abolished around one and a half century ago but today a different kind of slavery exists in the world and this too threatens and undermines our freedom in a very profound way. It is the slavery of the mind, i.e. mental slavery. This undermines our freedom because it shackles our growth in many ways. In simple terms, this kind of slavery means an unconditional support by an individual or a group for wrong ideas. Let me illuminate using some examples, the best one  is the idea of adhering to a religion without questioning its validity in a proper critical manner. Most of the religions on earth have roots deep in the past and are built mostly on assumptions many of which are usually unproved and taken to be true on mere faith. When seen through a lens of reason, the inherent contradictions within any religious system become easily visible and those who follow such religion blindly are no more free than prisoners of war in an actual prison.  

Sports, sex and screen : Three things continually keep the minds of the younger generation engaged all the time which is not all good and the media makes all believe that things will perpetually remain rosy and we are progressing with ease and no one must be much concerned about all this and about the future. The younger generation need to understand this and must learn think right and do right in order to be safe and ensure a better future.

Freedom to think definitely exists but real freedom of thought is not possible until one becomes capable to think in a critical and rational way. Brainwashing of mind by wrong ideas, either deliberately or innocently stands to threaten this in an enormous way. Hence, one must examine ideas very critically before accepting them to be true.

Freedom and The Threat From The Government : One of the biggest threats to freedom usually comes from big oversized governments. Our country India too, like most of other countries in the world has big oversized government. Our government perpetrates policies in economics and politics, which indirectly affect our freedom in various ways.

Henry Ford, The great entrepreneur, engineer and car manufacturer said, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Henry Ford said this about America, but I think the same is true for India as well. Our monetary system is flawed and it is flawed to the core. I will not go into details here and will tackle it in another article but as for now the truth of the matter is that our monetary system is designed to get the wealth in the hands of few by deceit. The banks and the government work together in collusion and people are continually being robbed of their hard-earned wealth via the greatest robbing mechanism in the world called INFLATION. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer and an imbalance is in the making that cannot good in the long run for any country and its people.

Not many are aware but our Indian government has managed to clock a Debt to GDP ratio of 90% at present and still going ahead unfazed. What this means is that the government has overspent its reserves and is in debt up to 90% of our gross domestic product. So who will pay for all this? Of course the answer is simple, it is we the gullible people who will pay! How will we pay? By higher taxes and inflation! Our freedom is threatened because we have to face the ravages of losing our wealth due to lost buying power. A child somewhere needed books to study to secure his future but parents can no more afford because with their 2000 rupees now they can only buy things worth 1500 and hence they must forfeit the books to accommodate for other pressing needs. Someone needed urgent medical care somewhere but now their money in the bank savings account is worth less than what it was worth before and hence they can no more manage the required medical care etc. etc. etc…

Here I have presented with only a couple of examples of government threat but in truth to cover everything appropriately, a hundred articles will not suffice.      

Conclusion : To be really free in the fullest context, I believe, that one must be free from any outside physical coercion and one must have the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints of any sort. But adding to this I also think that at the same time one must also strive to be free from all sorts of wrong ideas which can easily corrupt one's thinking.

Today is 15^th of August as I finish writing this article, It is our Independence Day. But this 'Independence Day' means nothing more than getting free of the British rule and coming under the hood of Indian rule while the rules of the game remain unchanged. I think that this ‘Independence Day’ in truth does not signify our independence in the real sense. We are in fact, interdependent and enslaved in a big way and with no end in sight. Things need to be changed in a drastic and fundamental way to pave the way for a valid future. This is the time for us to awaken and to bring about a revolution in spirit and in mind and fight the wrongs that have pervaded within our nation and within us.

Swatantrata Ki Jai Ho!

Thank You. 

ON THE STATE OF THE WORLD (PART-I) : THE ASSAULT ON THE MIND

The story of man

‘Uncertainty plunges men into such darkness from which only the very rare emerge.’

The world is a great place, great in every imaginable sense and the story of man has been a heroic one, but this story has been blotched with occasional dark periods. What are these dark periods? What caused these dark periods when men suffered and became victims of the intellectual brigade of their times and before? Can we avoid this and if so, how? What exactly is going on in the world? One must ask these vital questions so that one may learn right lessons from them and prevent unwanted suffering and disillusionment.

We humans are making tremendous progress in science and technology, real visible unparalleled progress but our cultural and philosophical state remains not only stunted, but also is getting worsened, our morality is being corrupted, our truthfulness being depleted, our reason being slowly destroyed. What is causing this? Those who propagate false ideas have waged a war on the mind and have made innocent people their victims and it is not happening by default but happening deliberately at the behest of a handful and they are assaulting the mind with wrong ideas. It is happening in religion, art, schools, colleges, politics, economics, culture etc. This article is an attempt at revealing the true state of what exactly is happening, why it is happening and how to correct it.   

For centuries, preachers have been preaching potato philosophy to the mindless multitudes, like cunning parasites they are, seeking to devour not the blood in the veins but seeking to kill the thinking mind. None is safe from their assault, not even those who think themselves to be outside the multitude. They are right now also carrying out this assault on your mind so be prepared and arm yourself, not with guns and ammunition but with ‘reason’ if you are to survive like a man and beat them in their own great evil game.

‘The greatest injury one can inflict on an individual is not by hurting him physically but by making the individual believe in wrong ideas.’ An individual’s thinking and philosophy affects his entire life and if this gets infiltrated with wrong ideas then it will impact each and everything adversely. This is exactly what is going on in the world today, our intellectuals, teachers, leaders, gurus etc. have been doing a dastardly job, they have conned and conned and conned the people for so very long and in so many various ways that now that the ‘wrong’ has become the new ‘right.’ Truth is being deliberately suppressed ever so more and as a result, today, falsehood, treachery and myopia are having a bull run, but the bull run cannot just go on forever hence eventually at some point in time a peak will definitely be reached. I don’t know exactly when it will happen but I do know is that when the truth has played out its course and the toxic energy of wrong ideas built over the decades and centuries starts to explode, then the people will truly start to awaken to the truth and there will be a revolution, a transforming and liberating revolution! We are moving towards it for sure and such is the state of the world I see and foresee.

Mr. Karl Marx

The intellectuals of any time always set the standards for any culture and prevalent thinking in the society because they come out with the dominant ideas and these ideas slowly seep down the hierarchy into the multitude and are absorbed and assimilated by them. When such intellectuals propound faulty ideas then imagine what would happen, the entire base all the way down the hierarchy gets affected severely. 

For example, let us look at Karl Marx, a man of formidable intellect and the most influential socialist who lived more than a century ago. He was a philosopher, economic theorist and sociologist who constructed the socio-political theory called Marxism. He wrote ’The communist Manifesto’ and ‘Das Kapital’, two most influential books in which his socialist ideas were expressed. His ideas have been widely adopted even if they have always led to disastrous results. The greatest experiment of Marxist socialism was demonstrated before in Russia via the formation of USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) by overthrowing the czarist and aristocratic rule and establishing a socialist state. The USSR however eventually broke up with drastic repercussions because Marxist ideas about economy just did not work. Marxist ideas are fundamentally flawed and that is the reason why they never work and always lead to strife, unhappiness and oppression.

Today Marxist ideology mainly ‘socialism’ is everywhere and causing damage all around. The idea gained foothold because on the surface it seems to be very benevolent and harmless hence is readily accepted. Only a deeper analysis of the idea and its nature and historical impact can make one aware beyond any doubt of how evil the ideology really is. Socialism is opposed to capitalism. In socialism, the private ownership of means of production is disallowed unlike that in capitalism where private property ownership is the key essential. Socialism advocates that production of goods and services have to be done to fulfill the needs of the people and not for any personal profit. The idea seems nice and right on the surface, but in reality it always fails to provide for all what it proposes and more than that causes extreme dissension among the people. A socialist system tries to cheat and control the free market forces by controlling every aspect of the economy and this never works and never will because nobody in the entire world is or can be smarter than the free markets. An inevitable outcome of socialism is called communism which is even worse, it is so worse that I intend to devote an entire article about it. Communism attempts to equalize forcefully all different kinds of people having different abilities into one classless social setup i.e. the beggar and the drunkard are supposed to get the same privileges as the man who works earnestly and hard to earn his living. How much more contradictory can it get! However I will deal with this in another article, as for now, I will go as far as to say that this single man called Marx has caused so much damage with his ideas in the world and on such a massive scale that the ravages of Hitler and Mao seem like a mild walk in the park.

Ayn Rand said, ‘A mixed economy is a society in the process of slow death.’  India is a mixed economy! A mixed economy is a combination of state ownership and control of business and privately owned enterprise. This therefore represents a big contradiction as opposed ideas cannot coexist and sustain. The idea of regulating and controlling an economy has always proved to be disastrous and still we cling to it and think it is right only because on the surface it looks right, this is the tragedy of our time that most of us are easily convinced by just the surface appearance. They never dig deeper to find the truth and readily accept whatever is thrown at them.

Einstein, one of my heroes said this about socialism, "I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate (the) grave evils (of capitalism), namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society."

Einstein was and still is my hero, because I admire him for his scientific achievements greatly, but I think his socio-political ideas expressed above are absolutely wrong. I find them to be so fallacious that I fail for words to communicate in this short article the true extent of the inherent evil in this statement of his and I doubt if he himself understood fully the scope and implications of what he was saying. If the great Einstein could fall for such an ideology then what to talk of the common man and of our intellectual political leaders whom we supposedly trust so much. That is why one must question everything and dig deeper to arrive at the truth in any matter so that we can escape unscathed from the assault of wrong ideas.

Another example to note is our present system of education. The education imparted today has an overall effect of killing the passion in the individual and subduing his capacity to think critically in an objective way. The education is aimed at breeding helplessness and lethargy within the student and taming his mind in a way so that he becomes a slave to the system. What is the purpose of education? This aspect when is not clearly defined gets ignored. When it is ignored, the masses start to perceive that having a degree and passing through this education system is all that matters in life. What everyone is doing must be right and therefore unquestionable. Moreover today the education is so much overpriced and advertised as if the end of the world is near if one has not passed through the education system and acquired appropriate degrees, it is of secondary concern that if one has learnt anything of value or not.

What I want to stress here is that the education system is fundamentally flawed and incomplete. It is flawed fundamentally  because, the actual purpose of education i.e. to develop the thinking capacity of an individual is not realized but what happens is that the individual is conditioned and brainwashed to fit the system and become the bearer of wrong ideas and pass them along to the next generation just as his parents did.

The education system is incomplete because ‘philosophy’ is not included along with other subjects of study. This is the greatest drawback in education today and the impact of which is everywhere to see. The moral and cultural bankruptcy in the society today is a direct result of this. Religion, which is a crude and primitive form of philosophy, is taken for granted and deemed sufficiently complete for showing us the way to living a proper life and nothing better is thought possible or required. Hence, the idea of inclusion of proper philosophy is thought to be unnecessary for an education. The students are innocent and naive and their parents and teachers are a product of the same system and hence no worthwhile change takes place and the status quo remains as such.

Last, but not least the example of art is a very important one and hence it has to be discussed here. Literature, music, painting, sculpture etc. are all examples of art, they are different art forms but fundamentally, they serve the same purpose. Art reflects the true state of the society at any given time and even more. Today most of the artists come from the same educational establishment and are a product of the same kind of educational curriculum, and belong to similar intellectual and ideological stream of thought, which was, sown in their minds by the intellectuals whom they followed and looked up for ideological support.

Most of the art, which is being done today, is mostly lifeless and looks like drudgery. There does not seem to be clarity of thought but instead there is a hodgepodge of half-baked ideologies connected and loosely integrated together to guide the intellect of the artists in making art. The artists are confused and disillusioned and are unable to pinpoint what is wrong exactly. What is wrong is that fallacious ideas abound here in this field, and which, are usually considered and taken to be correct without even subjecting them to critical enquiry and there are not many to show the right way ahead.

The picture I have painted above certainly seems to be disconsolate and actually it is but I do not want to imply that the scenario is completely dark and no bright spots are possibly there. In fact, there are many bright spots where right ideas bloom and prosper and worthwhile progress is taking place. Science and technology are some of the bright spots because here there are clear provable ideas to deal with and no messing around with logic and reason is possible because everything is there supported with undeniable proof. People think that it is impossible to bring such clarity in field of philosophy, economics, education, art and other areas of life. But I think with certainty that it is possible and it can be accomplished by having an attitude to challenge different ideas, theories and beliefs via reason and logic, we have to find back our reason and make it the absolute standard in dealing with ideas and everything else. Only then can we be truly liberated and achieve the clarity of mind, a great life and a great future.

The world has suffered more from wrong ideas than from anything else. It is these wrong ideas we have to recognize and reject. It does not matter which field the ideas belong to or which great personality supports such ideas or how many numbers of people believe in these ideas. What matters is that people must not show support for any idea nor adopt any idea blindly without properly understanding it first. People must not hesitate to question the validity of ideas and the only way to do this is by using reason as an instrument of critical inquiry. This is the way to wither the assault of wrong ideas on the mind.

Thank You.