Meta philosophical investigation.

It is a process of investigating the evolution of thought in a philosopher as he goes through life. For this the philosopher must leave the desire to formulate his ideas as one self contained holistic system,  instead he should concentrate on leaving his thoughts in such a manner that the observer can glean the temporal and personal context of the thought.

Nature of original thought

Assuming a deterministic world,  what is the cause of new ideas. Are they merely a reflection of an image of the real world that impinges on the neural networks of the brain?

Does Our unique neural structures that expresses itself as a unique perspective would process this image according to its peculiarities and output it as a new idea?

A question to ponder here is the nature of the system at play that makes the unique structures that does the processing. Is the structure an accurate reflection of the real world by evolutionary heuristics? Some say it accurate only in as much as it aids in survival. Either way, we are dealing with independent dual concurrent systems: that of the more individualistic heuristic neural processing system and a wider cultural and physical system that acts as receptacle of the processed output of the former. One thing to note here is that both systems are observable at the individual level. That is to say that the DNA is the only medium on which the algorithms for both systems are stored.

The dual system acts as a check and balance on each other.

Demonitization is symbolic.

In the case of Demonitization,  the direct measurable eventuality is not the whole story.  What economists can't take into account is the incidental and symbolic effect. A case can be made for it using the following example and reasoning. In the example of crime,  it is not just a fear of punishment or a rational cost benefit analysis that causes an individual to stay away from crime. There are natural and cultural forces at play.  But the effect of a person staying away from crime (for any reason)  has a reinforcing effect on the system. That can be due to cultural linkage or due to a change in the cost benefit balance.  This is true of the inverse as well.  An increase in crime by a unit can have the effect of reinforcing this behaviour by cultural appropriation or  by change in the risk. One more criminal mean more resources are needed to police the system.  In the case of Demonitization the same forces are at play.  One needn't enforce the policy in a case by case basis but need only to utilise natural forces. 

An infinte regress of frameworks.

We are at risk of such a thing; If we delve too deeply into the archeology of our minds. What do we call the framework studying a man engaged in an existential study of himself?

Need to preserve temporality of opinion.

Any opinion bears a temporal element. This is notwithstanding man's desire for his opinions to be eternal. But this state of affairs need not be taken as unfortunate because  it offers opportunity to learn bigger things.

The temporality of opinion is a facet of the human condition that must be investigated and accepted fully instead of being ignored or swept under the rug as it is being done now. A meta study of an opinion offers the opportunity to understand the undercurrents of the "higher" human mind as it expresses itself in a most organic manner; especially about matters relating to morality.

Ascetic to moralist.

What quality must a man posses in order for him to remain  Ascetic without drifting towards blatant moralism?

Inherent prejudice in Tamil culture

That Malayalee girls are more beautiful  is a common attitude that is held by many people in the south, especially tamilians. The source of this attitude lies in certain historical cultural complexes held by the Tamil population. The gist of this attitude can be summed up as “white is beautiful” and “black is ugly”. This ingrained prejudice is very so often pointed out and attacked by the Tamil nationalist as part of their narrow narrative dividing south Indians and North indians as races. I will not go into those narratives. That is all too familiar. What I would like to point out is the manifestation of the prejudice in a psychological sense and what the prognosis for it is.

The ingrained prejudice stemming from possibly caste oppression of the past, manifests itself as an inferiority complex in the population. It effects the lower castes and the darker skinned peoples as one would imagine it would as they were the victims of discrimination and were classified as lower class. But it also affects the higher castes and the fair skinned. (The link between the concepts of beauty and that of class are fairly well known. I won't go into too much details; but just to freshen up: people of lower class look upto the higher class for standards of beauty.) One expressed manifestation of this is found in this thread, where people like asin and rekha are used to typify the physical essence of the malayalee. The typical malayalee is dark skinned. If you don't believe me, go outside and count the number of dark skinned and white skinned people you see on the streets. The inferiority complex is more exemplified by the absence of any dark skinned lead actresses than the prominence of punjabi women in South Indian films.

The consequence of this prejudice in tthe population manifests as a peculiar cultural phenomenon. The tamils are the population that cares least about their physical appearance. They dress horribly, don't care for makeup, makes little effort to distinguish their appearance. (One could say that this lack of vanity has its moral merits. But I don't want to go into that. ) This attitude is in contrast to the population of our North east for instance, who care very much about their appearance, they spend money and effort to look fashionable. A population more apt for comparison with the tamil population is that of the Africans. Africans are also dark skinned, but I have heard that they spend hours doing their hair and makeup before going to parties. As vain as it may appear to our outer middle ethos, it distinguishes them in some ways in our inner middle class minds. More importantly it distinguishes them in their own mind. Imagine what people (including dark skinned omes) will think if they saw a dark skinned Indian girl dyes her hair or put corn rows. I have seen many people passing comments on middle class dark girls who try to be “western”. The same people wouldn't mind a white girl doing it. It is because of a conflict of ideas. Dark skin is lower class, they shouldn't try to be western, which is upper class. Put simply, they don't think of themselves as ugly. We do.

Inspite of the supposed political awakening of the tamil nationalist, the inferiority complex is latent in their minds. It would not allow them to imagine as dark skinned heroine. In order to eliminate the prejudice at least in the sense of beauty standards the tamils population needs to be more vain.

The failed existential experiment.

Perhaps an important  event in the last century is the birth and death of existentialism.  It's birth was an inevitable consequence of the death of God.  But on what do we blame it death?

Existentialism tried to burst out of its negativist shell into a positive world and take a positive form.  As we know anything that takes positive form is inevitably subject to the degradation of existence. This is especially true if that existence is contingent on humanity; culturally, in this instance.  Anything that should take form must rely on solids and as any existentialist would know there are very few things that are solid. 

Purpose through business

Concerning the middle class malayali:
Our generation it seems, gains a certain sense of self esteem in being a working cog in the business machinery (Here the oft repeated  narratives of the hard working Japanese from our school days  comes to mind) . It would seem like our previous generation gained self esteem from a similar narrative of their own. They saw themselves as more of the cog in the collective socialist engine.  Being a cog seems to be the common motif. If we venture further back,  the cog might have been of a social engine. 

What will it be engine of the coming generation.

Apparent Will to Power in Communist leaders.

In order to build on the thought I must introduce here a very popular narrative used for explaining many cultural phenomenon in society. That is one of the money motive: "they did it for the money". I have seen this used to explain anything from fascism to drug abuse to terrorism. For example one explanation that I hear for people joining Isis is that they give money to recruits. People see this as the source of "evil". You can see the prevalence of this narrative from phrases like, "money is the root of evil" or "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!" I do not discount the money motive but a much more powerful and obvious motive is there on the surface. That is motive of power and influence. People want to feel important, they want to have influence over others. They want to be better than others and they want to dominate others. This emotion is visible in the gross form in such actions as violence; for example the violence of the Nazis against Jews. Or it can be seen in subtle forms in many people who want to impose their views on others. It is also evident in quorans who want to feel superior by imparting their knowledge on lesser folk. For a person who has felt marginalized throughout their life for reasons like racism, poverty or their own psychological weakness— for example a poor immigrant—violence is the easiest way for then to dominate someone else and feel significant and powerful. But violence is violence and is limted (especially the variety that you see from your french immigrant) in its potential to acquire lasting power. For that your means and end need validation. This is man's mortal weakness; he cannot self validate. He need institutions for that. A random act of violence makes you a criminal or a psychopath. An act of violence validated by an institution makes you a terrorist and/or a martyr. All human cultural institutions serves the added function of being an instrument of validation; be it a Nobel Academy validating scientific achievement or an isis validating violence against unbelievers.

Coming back to the question of communists—we can take the example of China and Mao—we have to examine the cultural institutes that are in play. On the one hand we have traditional institutions of feudalism and casteism that validates the domination of one set of individuals over others. The institution of private property and the institution of servitude and the institution of inheritance no doubt favored few individuals over other. Individuals who benefited form these institutions are the ones traditionally in power. And they have the motivation to stay in that preferential position. One of the many merits of this position is that they have the means to influence more people with that power. At the time of Mao the traditional means to power (feudal authority) was crumbling, against the rising peasant movement. His means to power was gravely threatened . Is such a scenario, the organism in him would be looking to jump ships from the failing traditionalist institution to the one that allows him to maintain power. So it is not surprising that he joined the revolution. Joining the opposing camp is not not only allows him to gain power over the lowly peasants but also him former peers: the landlords and the bourgeoisie. This is most evidenced by the cultural revolution where Mao had the bourgeoisie shamed publicly and had their institutions destroyed, thereby tightening his position against a revival of traditionalist institutions. The organism in Mao took a bold step against traditional institutions and he emerged at the top of the new system.

The wheels have turned one circle and now we have the communists in the role of the oligarchy. Anyone looking for power in China would have to gain validation from the now traditionalist communist or go all out and risk by betting on a competing institution. Only one thing is sure that man carries with him the instinct for both traditionalism and revolution. That is the main force behind evolution.

Irony of time

It's may be that the very instruments that we invented to save time are the main culprits in us having very little time. 

The Newtonian cultural paradigm.

In the quest for the understanding of natural phenomenon, humans had to contend with cultural paradigm that inevitably coloured the narrative.  For example the caveman attempting to explain the rain would have espoused such self evident premises of his cultural paradigm as 'everything heavy falls down' or 'anything heavy that poised to fall must have been raised to that position by some force': resulting in such creative explanations as rain gods.

The cultural paradigm as we know, later shifted to other self evident Newtonian premises. In this paradigm the case of falling objects,  say an apple,  is attributed to other creative and fanciful ideas like gravitational force. Keeping the spirit of discovery of the generation, the case of ascertaining the role of chance or luck in the evolution of life on earth is a worthy realm of investigation. Not surprisingly, the improbability of life in all its complexity arising from mechanistic actions in the primitive ocean, arouse in both the creationists and the positivists much creativity. The line of reasoning followed by both camps will inevitably suffer from a lack of clarity. This is because they both suffer from the same shortcoming. That they are both limited by the Newtonian paradigm. 

The cost of optimism

The trend of distilling and nurturing positive emotions, for example the likes of passion and curiosity,  in education,  to the exclusion (or attempt there of) of negative ones may not bring about the positive outcome that is wished for.  In fact our whole history teaches the opposite. 

If this is the case therein lies a dilemma . That of the dose of negative that is to be imparted. Methodology to be used.  And the mode of decision making required to reach a consensus.

The lottery

Against insurmountable odds, again and again people surprise us by winning lotteries. It could be said that for each lottery there are few such exceptional individuals. If only some how we could emulate then so that there are more of such success stories. 

Logical paradoxes.

Most logical paradox arise because of the assumption of free will.  Once you have that mistake sorted out,  you have to solution to most paradoxes.  Liars paradox for instance. 

Free thought and action.

Could it be that real free thought can happen only when it contradicts the action of the individual or entity that espouses it.  Of thought born and acted upon it is hard to ascertain the causal relation.  Was the though merely the reflection of the action ahead of time or did the thought really cause the action.

In the case where the two contradict the relation is much clearer; or at least easier to judge.  An thought that contradicts subsequent action is not a temporal reflection it can only be an anomaly. It is indeed a free thought.

Latent idea of free will in modern thought

Even in viewpoints that ostensibly oppose the existence of free will, there is inevitably a latent premise of free will.  This is unavoidable as all thought rely on language; and through language the implication of free will creeps into most propositions. Words like "I" invariable engenders questions of free will. "I" by cultural precedent and practical considerations always indicate the existence of a free individual. Therefore, any argument against free will that relies on natural languages will have holes in them. But this doesn't disprove free will. Lack of evidence against is never evidence for. The lack of free will is something that has to be felt. But then again that same man feels free will too. 

An objective yardstick to genius.

What separates the genius of a child taking his first step from the genius of a Mozart is hardly a step in a million.

A case to arouse opinions on morality

Heidegger's tryst with Nazism is surely enough for all his opinions to be invalidated. A man who associated with something as grossly inhumane as Nazism is surely unfit to theorize about humanity.

An alternate perspective the above fact about heidegger will surely arouse moralistic opinions in almost all; from the stoics to the most objective materialists.  It is this: that Nazism far from being inhumane is the most humane.  Humane, maybe not in the traditional sense of being compassionate, but in a more literal sense of representing the essence of humanism. From the traditional sense of the word we have such usages as, "the boy treated the dog humanely by feeding it", and the negative, "boy treated the dog in humanely by hurting it." But we now know having tasted the fruit of right and wrong that is scientific enlightenment, that this traditional usage is outdated. Cruelty is as human as kindness. So it could be said, "humanely tortured"  as we used to say, "humanely treated". So it cannot be held against heidegger that he as inhumane. He was just justhumane.