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.

ON ‘EVERYTHING IS NOT ART, EVEN IF THE ARTIST SAYS SO’

Ancient Greek Sculpture

Before I begin, I must state my reasons for writing this. I find an increasing number of contradictions in the field of art pertaining to the question that what can be truly called as art and what cannot. Today there are no standards and the trend is that just about anything the artist says is supposed to be art and is to be accepted likewise.

This is the beginning of my journey aimed at bringing about a valid and coherent understanding of art and to give reasonable answers to such questions and clarify related contradictions. The aim of this article is to bring clarity in this matter and show where we have gone wrong and how we can correct it.

'The Fountain' by Marcel Duchamp

Today the situation in art is bad and it is further degrading, but the situation cannot be called unfortunate because the degradation did not come about by natural default but has resulted from wrong ideas and rationalizations which most of the artists, critics and intellectuals have been supporting, propagating and giving credence to since a very long time now. The condition has become quite deplorable but what exactly is wrong seems to be hidden from immediate logic. People mostly agree subconsciously if not consciously that something surely is wrong and something is definitely missing but one is not sure as to what it is that is wrong and why is it so. I will show here in exact terms what is wrong and what is missing and why the accepted conventional philosophy on art has become worthless and can no longer pave the way towards a worthy future.

The present day situation as I described above has directly resulted from abandonment and destruction of ‘reason’ in the field of art. This destruction has been brought about by destroying the meaning and the concept of ‘art’. The most effective way to destroy any concept is by inflating and expanding its meaning in such a way that the concept begins to mean ‘anything and everything’. The same has happened with art, initially art had a valid definition but today there is no definition because the concept has been raped and distorted by so called intellectuals and the result is there for all to see and witness i.e. the seemingly vivid yet wonderfully boring and chaotic art of today. Innocent people and new upcoming young artists have fallen victim to this anti-conceptual perspective and have taken to this by gulping down hook, line and sinker as did their predecessors. One of the villains who began to destroy the concept of art was Mr. Marcel Duchamp, I will tell about him later on in this article.

Sometimes breaking the convention to arrive at something new does not mean that you are on the right track and you are making worthy progress. This same is what happened within the field of art. Artists from the Dadaist movement  thought that by doing all sorts of crazy things they were reaching towards something worthy but actually they were not. The Dadaists prided themselves to be rule breakers and defiers of tradition but they could do only that and nothing else. Rule breaking is one thing but to arrive at something worthy is another and here they failed badly. Seen historically they seem to have been significant but not in the way one may think, they have been significant just like an error in time – Like the rise and fall of communism in Russia or as significant as Hitler in Germany or the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Meaning that they broke rules and revolted but could find anything better and worthy to replace the broken rules with. ‘Today’ is influenced by the past and the dreams of future but to understand ‘Today’ properly one must grasp the entire thing properly i.e. the forest, but it has to be grasped by looking at all the trees closely and then again from a distance to see the whole at once and all the while never losing one’s reason. Here one must first grasp what exactly is art and how it can be and should be defined and why.

So to recount all this I will begin at the beginning by stating one primary cause which affects everything done by man whether it is art or anything else. This primary cause is man’s perception i.e. his view of reality and his understanding of it. What does his perception depend upon? It depends on the Philosophy which man holds as true. Now what is ‘Philosophy’? Philosophy is a conceptual and comprehensive view of reality, it is like a map or a master key to understanding life and reality. A person cannot do without it, everyone must have some kind of philosophy. So philosophy is the precondition for everything we do including art and the nature of philosophy we hold true guides our actions in every possible way. 

So what is art? I think that art is nothing but reality ‘concretized’ according to the artist’s view and comprehension of reality. By reality I mean everything that exists. So what does an artist do? An artist understands the world i.e. reality based upon his reason and capacity and then he expresses his comprehension by recreating his view of reality in form of an artwork. The form of expression could be painting, music, literature or dance etc. But what one recreates always depends upon one’s view of reality and thus on philosophy one believes in.

For example look at Greeks what view of man did they project in their artworks. They portrayed men as Gods in their sculptures i.e. for them man was something very great and man held the highest status in their picture of reality. Contrasting with that now look at the works of artists of today, they display blank canvasses, urinate in galleries as performances, exhibit urinals, poop and rotting flesh as artworks and what not. The critics and the reviewers glorify all this using fancy language and faulty reasoning and they are successfully able to fool everyone making all believe that an empty chair or a plastic cow with fifteen udders is a piece of great artwork. They succeeded because that have destroyed the definition and concept first so they have a pseudo philosophy in which just about everything they proclaim to be art is art. One does not have to think long and hard to see the degradation and the nature of it once things are put into a proper objective perspective.

So in simple terms an artist creates an artwork depending upon how he sees and comprehends reality. But the artist sees and comprehends reality on the basis of the philosophy he or she holds true. But in truth reality is something that is independent of what one thinks about it so to have an accurate and valid picture of reality one must have a picture that is true, provable and non-contradictory. So to comprehend this true picture of reality one must have a correct philosophic system and it can only be possible if it is based on reason. But with an impaired and erroneous philosophy one will not have a true picture of reality and hence such an artist will recreate an erroneous and unworthy projection of reality in his or her artwork. Since art too is affected by philosophy then any change in one’s philosophy will affect one’s art and will reflect in it through various processes of which usually the artist is unaware but the change continues to manifest in the art. Between what is art and what is not, a number of intermediate levels exist which can be judged by the merit of the artwork.

An artwork must have a theme and subject matter if it has to be complete and remain in connection with reality. A said artwork lacking these two cannot be a valid artwork because an artwork has to be about something. If an artist says that his artwork is about nothing then he can never be proven right because to say the word ‘Nothing’ and to understand its meaning the artist must have had to refer to something even if in abstract and conceptual terms. One may not just escape it under any circumstance.

I will illustrate here by a famous case of the artist Marcel Duchamp, who called a ceramic urinal purchased from somewhere as his artwork. His justification being that he made the effort to choose and display it as an artwork and so this makes it an artwork by calling it ‘the fountain’ and it no further remains a mere urinal. It is transformed into a wonderful artwork just like that, Voila! And bravo too! But observe closely and ask how? Can one truly discern the ‘How’ in this, is it via reason and logic. No, of course not! The artwork contains neither a valid theme nor a subject. One would argue that the purported subject matter is the title ‘The fountain’, but is it so in reality. It is not, observe further that what it remains after so much thinking and fancy conceptualizing is still is a mere ordinary urinal and also that its true purpose for making the urinal was as utilitarian object, it was meant to be used as just a urinal. The artist tried to justify his artwork by categorizing it as ‘ready made’ sculpture. On the surface this idea may seems somewhat right but subconsciously it seems faulty and further deeper analysis will deem it worthless, let us see. Observe if the sculpture is ready made then it implies that the artist has not even made it but he has just played the role of a curator. Now a curator cannot be called an artist because he does not perform processes required to create art. So what I am arriving at is that even if Marcel Duchamp said that it was an artwork the truth is that it was not an artwork but a mere urinal because there is no way to justify it reasonably, the only way it can be justified is by using a irrational conceptual framework as Marcel Duchamp and other Dadaists constructed and fooled the world. Today the same kind of circus is going on in many places and a battalion of artists, curators, critics and intellectuals are doing their best to keep this circus running and many people of the world are falling easy prey to it but once all this is seen with an eye of reason then the circus doesn’t seem funny but disgusting. 

Many more examples exist today - plastic chairs, wielded utensils, broken and rusted tin boxes, crushed cars are called art. By what mental integrations does an artist connect a plastic chair with reality and deem it worthy of expression of something worthwhile. Imagine what would be the view of reality held by any such artists. Imagine what philosophy they must be holding as true and how much do they truly grasp the reality in which they live. Does it not indicate a breakdown of philosophy in some of those who ever had any and not to talk of the artists who never had any remotely coherent philosophy. Some of such artists are at the top, they have fooled everyone including maybe themselves never once questioning along their journey the nature of art and reality or what purpose does art serve or should serve. Such artists hold that art cannot be reasoned and it depends on merely the arbitrary whims and fancies of their fantastical imagining. Critics have tagged along such artists and they have developed together a seemingly sustainable yet unsustainable eco-system that does not show us life but death. The level of art has dropped to such dismal levels in many quarters that I wonder have they ever actually seen, felt and understood the works of Da-Vinci and Michelangelo.

The essential which I finally want to get across is that don’t fall prey to the prevalent conventional philosophy, hold reason as your best friend and dig deeper to arrive at the truth of the matter so that you can steer clear of such nonsense and reject it for good.

Thank You.