Edifices in sand

If I were to think of one book which has come to influence my worldview in a very fundamental way then it would have to be the mad and raging narrative by U. G. Krishnamurthy with the highly discouraging title 'mind is a myth.' I remember feeling a distinct sense of relief as the book proceeded to destroy many ideas and concepts that we have all been told, consciously or subconsciously, are important and sacrosanct. These narratives are part of growing up and are impressed upon us all by people and by institutions which command an automatic authority in the eyes of a lowly individual. They are impressed upon us by the very fact that everyone else seems to think that they are great ideas. What one doesn't realize, or rather doesn't have the courage to believe, is that 'thinking' is an activity which is done more in theory than in practice by an overwhelming majority. Therefore, ideas which seem like such good ones owing to their wide adoption happen to be so often because questioning them is not something which comes naturally to us. Many of these ideas may still turn out to be very valuable to many but they definitely don't pass through that process of critical inquiry on an individual basis and are rather merely taken as truths without questioning. Some of these ideas are part of the zeitgeist and are, therefore, hugely popular. An example would be atheism in the current times. However, just because ideas are fashionable doesn't mean their followers are not deluded. Coming back to my experience with the book, I definitely did not learn anything positive from it. This is, perhaps, just as well given the highly nihilistic nature of the text. My experience, therefore, was mainly in the form of the negation of the authorities of various social, emotional, and intellectual institutions. This came as a huge relief because I often found myself lost and disillusioned with the general essence of these institutions which seemed designed to cloud the nature of affairs rather than explain them. The general idea is the following: there is a certain truth which is worthy of being attained, however, it is known to only a few who have to guide the normal population through the treacherous path of enlightenment. These few derive immense power, prestige, and following because they claim to have exclusive rights on the final knowledge and the people who believe in them become mere pawns in a game being played out at a level beyond their comprehension. This may sound conspiratorial but one only has to look critically at the business of spirituality or the business of vanity or the business of politics to realize that it's not. There is an intense din all around us which is trying to convince us that we need to be at a different place, possess better and more stuff, ascend imaginary ladders, belong to broad political groups and support leaders of dubious distinction, work towards being happy, be good citizens and good parents and good sons and good brothers and sisters, be thinner and look 10 years younger, earn more and be successful. Who has time to think when there is so much to be done! What the book did was to lay bare the essence of this ridiculous race, this vicious path which conveniently and assuredly loops back on itself and to leave it all there for the reader to make of it what he/she will. The ideas are not new obviously but they are presented with the bluntness which I didn't find anywhere else before or since.

That was several years ago. Since then I have realized that the mere negation of ideas as presented in that book is not enough, at least not to me. The first reason is that such an attitude can take away the pleasure inherent in the different aspects of life. The second is that it makes you replace one deficiency, the problem of too much noise with another, too much silence. You revel in each broken structure until there is little left to serve as a foundation for a coherent edifice of thought. And maybe it is all a mere pastime but such edifices are great fun to build. To dissect the world around you, to find patterns which are not immediately visible, to discern the inevitable wheels of history taking another turn, it's all fun. And it cannot be reasonably carried out on a negative philosophy. To have that pleasure one must be able to place things and actions in broader contexts than they were intended for, as parts of cycles which have longer durations than single lives, as colors in a huge pattern with intricate and repeating designs. And to do that one needs to to  be able to take history with the respect it deserves as an indicator of the rhythms of the present and the tunes of the future, more accurate at higher abstractions and less at smaller ones. This further requires setting aside the nihilistic view of things, which is correct in the largest scheme, or so I feel, and taking apart philosophies, men, and events to see what they say about the today and the tomorrow. For nothing more than the fun of the exercise.