“Lucknow Boy” tells the story of Vinod Mehta who left his home with a third class BA degree and later rose to edit some of India’s prominent publications. While doing one retarded job after another in Britain, he was forced to confront the fact that his ignorance was, to put it mildly, colossal. Like many of us, he learnt it the ‘hard’ way. His first English girl friend and her father wanted to know the informed Indian’s perspective on the Colombo plan. As it often happens, he didn’t have the faintest clue and his attempt to ‘impress’ was not altogether successful. Before long, he was ditched.
When he returned to India, he was 27 and with his modest savings quickly running out, he was expected to soon make a honest living instead of living off his long-suffering parents. His long hair, kurta-pyjama and broken English ensured that his first job after returning from Britain was that of an advertising copywriter in Bombay. He was a dreadful copywriter, but his first book “Bombay: A private View” was not as big a flop as he had expected. Not surprisingly, he started having delusions of grandiosity. He soon got a job as the editor of Debonair, a Magazine which was known for its lurid pictures. His father only wanted to know whether he will get a salary every month, and was relieved to know that he will. Continue Reading →
“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”-Two dogs talking to each other, in a Peter Steiner cartoon
I owe almost everything good which happened to me since my late teens to the internet. I mean it. I got every job and freelancing assignment of mine over the internet. I cannot think of any relationship-virtual or real life- which would have flourished to the extent it had without the internet. The internet opened up a huge body of literature, which would have been otherwise inaccessible to me. In the absence of the web, would I have discovered libertarianism or have been able to study Economics in a way which is even remotely comparable to the way I do today? I seriously doubt. Would I have been able to interact with, and learn from some of the greatest minds of our generation with such ease? I think not. I started blogging around eight years back, when I was a boy. Would I have written as much as I have without knowing “that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too”? It never mattered that it could be just one. But, it mattered that the internet made it all the more possible. Continue Reading →
Fed up hearing again and again that I resemble Sheldon Cooper, I Googled him. Juicy bits from Wikipedia:
“Sheldon is characterized as having an overtly intellectual personality: he exhibits a strict adherence to routine, a tenuous understanding of irony, sarcasm and humor, a vocal admiration for his superior intellect, and a general lack of humility or empathy.
He was taunted and bullied by the neighborhood children and his classmates. He claims they were threatened by his intelligence.
Aside from his idiosyncrasies, Sheldon is logical. He possesses an eidetic memory and an IQ of 187, although he claims his IQ cannot be accurately measured by normal tests.
Despite his intelligence, Sheldon is usually inept in most social interactions. His eccentricities, direct remarks, and demanding nature put him at odds with his own friends and especially Penny. He has a distinct lack of emotional maturity and is often baffled by even the most common social interactions. He not only fails to understand the simplest sarcastic jokes made by Leonard, but also regards Penny’s sadness over one of her breakups with blatant confusion. However, recently, he has begun to understand the concept of sarcasm, attempting unsuccessfully to employ it himself towards Penny in the second season,and successfully employing it towards his friends in the third season. Sheldon occasionally uses slang (in a very unnatural fashion), and follows jokes with his catchphrase “Bazinga!”. He is not entirely sure how to hug someone, and avoids human contact whenever possible. Continue Reading →
Sarcasm and socially unacceptable behavior has nearly ruined my life in all normal ways. It has also made it incredibly amusing and funny on a deeper and much more important level.
As every human action boils down to trade, I have to admit that overall my strategy was not at all a rip-off. In fact, it was a wonderful deal, a reasonable trade-off. I have behaved in such a manner for various reasons which are rather complicated. I would say it is often because of my honesty, good-will, benevolence, deep love for humanity-and of course, my naïve, gullible nature!
It is often said that “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit”. We also hear “A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility.” I have always wondered whether there could be notions which are so far from the truth. How someone of normal intelligence can seriously hold any of these moralistic, “church sermon” like rationalizations is completely beyond me! Rational inquiries of moral philosophers were confined to politically correct, “mushy” virtues like unconditional love, kindness, compassion and benevolence. Even moral philosophers who took pride in their political incorrectness had confined their rigorous analysis to more worthy virtues like integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride and of course, selfishness. Very few have anything good to say on one of the most feared, despised, sickening, malevolent, humiliating form of doublespeak which makes people flee and shun the light of the day: sarcasm. When even apostles of selfishness like Nathaniel Branden say “Aside from cases of violent coercion, as when someone points a gun at you, you are responsible for your reactions. No one “makes” you become sarcastic”, we should know that the fate of sarcasm is bleak indeed. A bit of iconoclasm is therefore in order.
We might say that sarcasm is a “conversational scapegoat”, and unfairly so. The socially beneficial effects of sarcasm need to be defended hard. Sarcasm goes against the inflicting person, but it helps the truth reach him faster, in ways which are not too obvious. A man faces a painful dilemma when he faces deeply insulting sarcasm. He is compelled to prove his backbone by a tight slap-or he can listen silently, smiling like an imbecile thinking he is being smart & tactful. The sad fact is that it proves that he has neither intelligence nor a backbone, as the one who hurled the insult might know too well that it is true and didn’t expect a slap, precisely for that reason! I remember an instance when I hurled an insult which hits where it hurts the most-family, and the victim listened silently, not out of fear of a more public humiliation, but because he knew it was just another general, categorical statement intended at no one in particular- and because only truth hurts-and because he was a man of immense self esteem. Well crafted sarcasm puts such a person in the position of a mink that walks blindly into a scented trap. If it hurts so much, it can only be because it is true and such sarcasm deserves the highest praise, not condemnation. Given certain narrow assumptions, truth as such should never hurt the innocent. Like happiness, “Truth” should be considered an Aristotelian “chief good”, pursued for its own sake. As scathing sarcasm is often truth, it should be ranked higher. Continue Reading →
The internet can be amusing. Yet, some of our experiences on the internet can strike us as bizarre. A few days back, I happened to talk to a middle aged woman based in the US. I was in a playful mood. I asked her how “Randroidism” is going on. She suddenly lashed out saying that Objectivism is a complete philosophy and the term I used was derogatory. She suggested that I should soon get myself psychologically treated, proceeding to remove me from her list. I found her behavior immature for a woman of her age, and as I barely knew her, I laughed it off and soon forgot the whole incident.
I never understood people who hold personal grudges against ones who disagree. I have friends who disagree with me on issues in which I can turn really emotional, and I haven’t held this even slightly against them. I am certainly convinced that they are wrong, but I am better off debating a well read, intelligent socialist than an abysmally read libertarian. After all, what is the point in a debate if we agree on everything? Continue Reading →
“There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.”- H. L. Mencken
One of my earliest memories is that of pondering over dusty Magazines piled up in an unused room of my house. I have always had a liking for the written word. My parents tell me that even when I was crawling, I displayed deep excitement whenever I saw a newspaper or a book. Somehow I learned to read certain letters-the first one being “V”, and was proud of my struggle to make sense of it. I would often point to the letter “V” and say “Look, this is V”. I am lately being deeply suspicious of the “Nurture Assumption”, as when I was a boy, no one encouraged me to read anything beyond school work. If anything, I was actively discouraged whenever I ventured beyond my course material. I used to hide novels inside my school books and read. It was a habit I retained till the end of college. Continue Reading →
I have been thinking hard since my late teens of what David Friedman explicitly wrote in his book “Law’s Order”. “Consequences are an important part of what we want. The doctrine fiat justicia, ruat coelum (let justice be done though the skies fall) is, in my experience, uniformly proclaimed by people who are confident that doing justice will not, in fact, bring down the sky.” I find it striking that despite my driving passion for justice, I have always looked suspiciously at libertarians who argue that the moral argument is the most compelling one. One thing in common with many of them is that they have no satisfactory theory of morality.
In the words of David Friedman: “Justice does not give an adequate account of law, both because it is irrelevant to a surprisingly large number of legal issues and because we have no adequate theory of what makes some rules just and some unjust.” I find most of the standard points of view in morality-specifically natural law, utilitarianism and argumentation ethics lacking in many important ways. When we argue on the lines of any of these, we sudden run into obvious difficulties.
One way to see through such moralists is to ask what they think of pacifism, land reforms, free immigration or anarchy. Many of them oppose at least one of these, and the reason could only be that they wrongly or rightly believe that the end result would be utter chaos. How is a retaliatory war justified when we take civilian deaths into account? How can one oppose free immigration when no one can rightly claim the right to force someone out of his country simply because he happened to be born there? Why is reparations to blacks on slavery morally unjustified? How can one swear by the Non-Aggression principle and still oppose anarchy on moral grounds?
“I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”, so ends the speech of John Galt, the hero of heroes of Atlas Shrugged.
The above sentiment is echoed by many in the libertarian movement, especially Ayn Rand’s followers. Objectivists single out Altruism as a scapegoat for most, if not all of the problems faced by mankind. I myself believed much of the rhetoric years back, when I came across her works for the first time in my life. I still find much merit in them. Given the fact that Voters have systematically biased beliefs, selfishness is likely to significantly improve the way democracy works.
GMU economist Bryan Caplan puts it well: “Why? If selfish voters misinterpret markets as a method for the rich to exploit the poor, at least the rich will still favor markets. They’ll want what they falsely see as their “pound of flesh.” But if unselfish voters misinterpret markets as a method for the rich to exploit the poor, the rich and poor alike will unite against the imaginary evils of the market. Instead of petty squabbling, we get a consensus for folly.” It should be obvious that it is important to emphasize that altruism is not an unconditional virtue in a world where most people wrongly believe that we are our brother’s keepers and get that notion institutionalized. Self interested actions are generally virtuous, as long as it doesn’t involve taking advantage of others. When Caplan says: “I often wish the people around me were more selfish – or at least better at being selfish. I know how to deal with rational, self-interested actors. They’re really quite charming. If I want them to change their behavior, I offer them a deal. While they might hold out for more, at least they don’t take offense.”, I tend to agree. Continue Reading →
It has become the dream of every social democrat to brand himself as a classical liberal. Every such “limited Government” statist is a socialist in disguise, as unaware of it he might be. When he criticizes Central Planning or interventionism, he never really believes his own words. If he does it at all, he doesn’t appreciate it as much as he should. All this is true of Sanjeev Sabhlok-former “Aristocrat of the Bureau” who later found a more comfortable shelter in the Department of Treasury and Finance, Victoria, and is presently nurturing grandiose political ambitions. The emperor of the world’s largest democracy, that is. He even promises to sacrifice his Australian citizenship and return to his motherland if he clearly gets a signal that India badly needs his social engineering. A laudable act of self abnegation, it would be! His viable solution to India’s mis-governance is critically important for our survival and success, he patronizingly reminds us.
Sanjeev Sabhlok’s critique of libertarian anarchy strengthens my position that every statist criticism of anarchy actually projects all the evils of the state on anarchy. I was filled with dismay after a casual glance at his ad hominem attacks on innocent anarchists. We are utopian dreamers with no understanding of social contract, red-tapism or the free rider problem and still spend our time conjuring up imaginative schemes. What’s worse? We haven’t ever drawn up any real contract in our life! Is there any good thing to be said of his article? Yes. Finally, the harsh reality has struck him that anarchists are not simpletons who believe that all human beings are angels. And that is it. Continue Reading →
Bryan Caplan blogs on High IQ misanthropy: “Out of all the reactions I’ve heard to Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, the most disturbing are all variations on “Except stupid people. They shouldn’t have kids.” I could snark, “You mean people like you?” but that would be dishonest. The latter-day proponents of negative eugenics have reasonably high IQs. But their misanthropy is still morally and economically mistaken. Morally, I just have to ask the high-IQ misanthrope, “What did stupid people ever do to you?” Their complaints are pretty petty: The dumb kids asked annoying questions in class, made fun of your Star Trek costume, etc. Are these injuries even remotely awful enough to outweigh the fact that a human being gets to exist and enjoy life? In any case, once you reach adulthood, people of all IQs generally leave you alone if you leave them alone. If you want to give your kids a better childhood than you had, use your brains to make some extra money and move to a nicer neighborhood.” Continue Reading →
