May 12, 2010
 I first encountered the Ramayana, perhaps as most Indian kids do these days, in the pages of an Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) “comic” book. The drawings were figurative. Lord Rama was a handsome blue-skinned man, Sita was a fair and beautiful woman, Ravana had a mustache, and so on. I liked the drawings, but I remember not being impressed by the tale. It was weepy. Mushy. The skies seemed perpetually overcast with duty, betrayal, duty, loneliness, duty and bereavement. I didn’t like monkeys and there were far too many of them in the story. I didn’t consider the bow and arrow—Lord Rama’s weapon of choice– to be a hero’s weapon. Maces, swords, Ninja claws, axes and teeth—now, those were weapons. What was heroic about shooting at people from a distance? And where were ACK’s curvy sari-clad women, the one consolation of my otherwise celibate childhood? When I finished the story, I concluded that the Ramayana was one of those tales written solely to punish kids for having time and bloom on their side.
But it’s no one’s fault. The Ramayana is simply not a story suitable for kids. It’s also not a story suitable for most adults either. Else why would south-Asians make and re-make this tale over the long centuries? Discontent is one of the great gifts of this magnificent epic. To read this tale is to be seized with the urge to re-make it. Perhaps it’s because of its deterministic hero, Lord Rama. Deterministic characters, like existential ones, offer no definite purchase, and so we find ourselves, like Sisyphus, shoulder to stone, feet on earth, pushing once more for a resolution we can never attain.
Since the Ramayana is rich in relationships, there are many ways to study Lord Rama from a psychological point of view. One of the best is R. P. Goldman’s analysisR. P. Goldman. “Ramah Sahalaksmanah: Psychological and Literary Aspects of the Composite Hero of Valmiki’s Ramayana.” Indian J. of Philosophy, Vol. 8, 1980, pp. 149-189.† of the relationship between Lord Rama and his brother Lakshmana. I’m going to take a different track. I’m going to look at the god-king’s relationship with dharma.
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September 6, 2006
The Vaio’s recent near-lobotomy experience got me thinking. It had happened because of ZoneAlarm’s inability to clean up after itself, which is nothing unusual or remarkable in the world of software. My particular situation had been well-documented, and there were only a finite set of possibilities. In the worst case, I could’ve done a clean install of WinXP. It would’ve been painful and humiliating for sure, but then, dignity has no evolutionary value. It could’ve been a lot worse.
How much worse?
Well, any virus based on any regular pattern can, in principle, be killed. Given enough time– a finite amount of time– an antidote can be devised for "stable viruses." So how about a virus that morphs into different forms, that has antigenic mutability? Something like the software equivalents of retroviruses like HIV and influenza? After all, even after millions of years of human evolution, the flu still managed to kill more people in the 20th century than the two world wars combined. In fact, the scenario can be worsened. Epidemiologists worry about designer viruses, such as Edwin D. Kilbourne‘s Maximally Malignant Virus, or the MMV. As Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child describe it in their novel, Mount Dragon:
"The MMV would have, he [Kilbourne] theorized, the environmental stability of polio, the antigenic mutability of influenza, the unrestricted host range of rabies, the latency of herpes….It would be far more devastating than a nuclear war. Why? A nuclear war is self-limiting. But with the spread of an MMV, every infected person becomes a brand-new walking bomb. And today’s transmission routes are so widespread, so quickly achieved by international travelers, it only takes a few carriers for a virus to go global."
Great doomsday stuff. But inaccurate. Epidemics starve to death. No steady supply of susceptibles, end of epidemic. Period. It’s called the Kermack-McKendrick threshold theorem. And Dr. Kilbourne is skeptical of these doomsday viruses as well. As he said in a recent interview:
"Let me just say that a virus of any kind that has a mortality rate of 50 percent is killing itself, because it will have nowhere to go if it wipes out all the hosts. So it is not in the virus’s interest to kill many people."
There’s also a major difference between infected people and infected computers. Unlike computers, people don’t neatly unzip into software and hardware. We are, as the late Dr. Robert Rosen explained, fabrications rather than simulations. The analogy between computer viruses and biological viruses may be relatively accurate, but the analogy between people and computers is fundamentally flawed.
Besides, we’ll soon have far more sophisticated techniques to fight the kind of viruses we see today. (The current strategy of running our machines like totalitarian states cannot stand. Totalitarian states are brittle. Worse, they breed for virulence by eliminating the easy, the weak and the incompetent.)
So is that it? Are we safe because we can always restore-image the disk, do a clean install, no matter how deadly the virus? Or is there a virus for which the only "cure" is to trash the machine itself?
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August 27, 2006
A couple of days ago, C-SPAN aired Thomas P. M. Barnett’s lecture at the National Defense University in Fort McNair. While it didn’t "transfix" me, as it did drdave, I’ve to admit the guy does know how to make Powerpoint slides fly. Barnett speaks like he’s firing bullet points, and has the relaxed certainty of those who think in mutually exclusive necessities.
According to Barnett, in the summer of 1998, Admiral Art Cebrowski– the current head of the Orwellian-sounding "Office of Force Transformation"– asked him to:
"…look at the Year 2000 problem and treat it as a heuristic opportunity to explore how globalization– spread of the global economy, the rise of all this connectedness– was altering our sense and understanding of the very essential nature of international stability, international instability, definitions of crisis."
What the Admiral was saying, I think, was that he wanted his staff to spend time– what little remained– with their families, stocking up on dog chow and AAA batteries, trying on Mad Max outfits, etc. before Y2K hit the non-working fans. Barnett, however, took Cebrowski at his word.
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May 14, 2006
The homepage of the Univ. of Virginia’s Division Of Perceptual Studies quotes Thomas Jefferson:
"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led."
It is a fine quote, exactly the sort of postprandial statement one can imagine Jefferson making at Monticello, with a glass of Chateau d’Yquem in one hand and Sally in the other. They don’t make presidents like him anymore.
But perhaps they do. That is, if Dr. Ian Stevenson is right.
Ian Stevenson‘s a medical doctor (internal medicine) trained at McGill University, the author of many peer-reviewed articles, and a former chaired professor at UVa. Dr. Stevenson’s pursuit of the truth has led him into very odd territory. In the 60s through the 80s, he investigated cases in India, Ceylon, Brazil, Alaska, and Lebanon that were "suggestive of reincarnation."
There’s a rough pattern to these reincarnation stories. A child– usually between two and four years of age — begins to claim that he/she is actually so-and-so, now deceased. Parents resist said claims. Eventually, contact with so-and-so’s family is made. Dénouement follows. At some point, ranging from 3 weeks to twenty years, Stevenson shows up with his tape recorder and interpreter. He interviews the families, cross-checks claims, classifies events into a typology, and then re-conducts the interviews with a second translator. The book describes twenty representative cases. His conclusion:
"In the cases of the present collection we have evidence of the occurrence of patterns which the present personality is not known to have inherited or acquired after birth in the present life. And in some instances these patterns match corresponding and specific features of an identified deceased personality. In such cases we have then in principle, I believe, some evidence for human survival of physical death. I say in principle, because I continue aware [sic] of particular weaknesses in the present cases."
In short, there are events suggestive of reincarnation. I think he’s mistaken. But whatever one may think of his extraordinary conclusion, the book will induce respect. His case reports are painfully detailed, monumentally tedious and reassuringly detached. It’s shoe-leather research rather than arm-chair research. It’s Masters and Johnson sans lubrication. The book is a lovely testament to what empiricism is all about.
Assuming the evidence is not manufactured out of whole cloth (in which case the book ranks with great literature), there’s a neat little puzzle to be explained. Some of the cases are rather disquieting, especially the cases of Pramod and Swarnalata. Stevenson’s methodology is not that of the doctor or the physicist but that of the detective.
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March 18, 2006
It’s hard to know when a difference makes a difference.  For example, if you’re Humpty Dumpty, your ‘cravat’ could just as well be your ‘belt’. Or not. Likewise, the Patriot act was what used to happen in Victorian bedrooms and though the situation is a tad different these days, the original meaning still works. But ever since the Republicans discovered framing, things have gotten tricky. ‘Clean air’ is about smog permits. ‘Tax relief’ means ‘let’s help the rich.’ ‘Sex’ means ‘let’s not.’ But some words did not need any changing at all; ‘traditional’ family values, for example, never did mean ‘liberal’ family values.
In a recent talk at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, made an off-hand comment:
Are the Saudi people conservative? Yes. Are we traditional? Yes…
It’s
an interesting distinction. Isn’t ‘tradition’ what conservatives conserve? Could a non-conservative claim to be traditional?
As I see it, a traditionalist is someone who uses the past in his/her daily life. For a traditionalist, the past is neither dead nor inaccessible. If a particular tradition no longer works – slavery or foot-binding or burning widows – it is modified to make a new tradition. The modification is usually a series of minor changes: a sari may be exchanged for a salwar, a particular dish may no longer be cooked, a man may go to Lamaze class, a Bollywood movie may include a gay character, etc.
In contrast, a conservative’s relationship is not with the past, but with the future. The conservative does not love the past as much as he fears the future. The Shiv Sainiks flip out on Valentine’s day not because Urvashi never sent a "I heart you" to Pururava (she did), but because their version of the future only permits docile women. The actual past is quite irrelevant for a conservative.
After a number of detailed studies on how institutions adopt new technology, the late Elting E. Morison, came to the conclusion that we needed,
…a relatively greater reverence for the mere process of living in a society than we possess today, and a relatively smaller respect for and attachment to any special product of a society, a product either as finite as a bathroom fixture or as conceptual as a fixed and final definition of our Constitution or our democracy.
[Source: Man, Machines, and Modern Times. M.I.T. Press. 1995. pp. 43]
Perhaps this identification with process as opposed to artifacts is what separates a traditionalist from a conservative.
Consider the often hideous precepts of the Manusmriti. How can a Brahmin parent (say) square this ghastly text with his/her kid? A conservative parent would have to lie, because his/her idealized past can admit no evil. In contrast, a traditionalist only needs continuity, not permanence. Such a parent can not only acknowledge the many mistakes made but also the possibility of recovering from them. Even better, the traditionalist’s own life is a living example of such transformation.
It’s a difference that makes a difference.
October 6, 2005
In 1857, Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), the first female American astronomer, went on a tour of Europe.
She was already very famous . At 29, she’d discovered a comet (after calculating its expected position), was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences a year later, and was the first female professor of the United States. These bland biographical details obscure a more interesting story. It was an age where women were considered too stupid to be entrusted with the vote. It was an age where a Thomas Huxley could argue that women were not worthy of membership in learned societies because they were, ipso facto, amateurs. It was an age where the American Academy felt it necessary to mention in their 1848 report that they’d decided to grant her membership "in spite of her being a woman" [1]. The next admission of a female to that august assembly would be in 1943!
In Europe, she met everybody who was somebody: Roget, Babbage, Humboldt, Somerville, George Airy, Leverrier, Stokes, Struve, Herschel … the list is a who’s who of 19th century Arts & Science. Her diary reveals a keen mind with a droll sense of humor [13]. For example, she comments that:
Thus far England has impressed me seriously; I cannot imagine how it has ever earned the name of ‘Merrie England.’
She demolishes the ever-reliably pompus William Whewell with:
An Englishmen is proud; a Cambridge man is the proudest of Englishmen; and Dr. Whewell, the proudest of Cambridge men.
She comments about a statue of Dr. Johnson that, "It must be like him, for it is exceedingly ugly."
Then there’s her entry on November 2, 1858. She commented that:
It was hard for me to become accustomed to English ideas of caste. I heard Professor Sedgwick say that Miss Herschel, the daughter of Sir John and niece to Caroline, married a Gordon. ‘Such a great match for her!’ he added; and when I asked what match could be great for a daughter of the Herschels, I was told that she had married one of the queen’s household, and was asked to sit in the presence of the queen!
"When I hear a missionary tell that the pariah caste sit on the ground, the peasant caste lift themselves by the thickness of a leaf, and the next rank by the thickness of a stalk, it seems to me that the heathen has reached a high state of civilization — precisely that which Victoria has reached when she permits a Herschel to sit in her presence!
This particular entry got me thinking. It’s a natural and intuitive analogy. However, Ms. Mitchell made two errors. First, though the caste system is related to class, race and religion, it’s a very distinct entity. Second, though the caste system establishes a pecking order, it’s not a hierarchy. I will attempt to justify both statements.
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I first encountered the Ramayana, perhaps as most Indian kids do these days, in the pages of an Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) “comic” book. The drawings were figurative. Lord Rama was a handsome blue-skinned man, Sita was a fair and beautiful woman, Ravana had a mustache, and so on. I liked the drawings, but I remember not being impressed by the tale. It was weepy. Mushy. The skies seemed perpetually overcast with duty, betrayal, duty, loneliness, duty and bereavement. I didn’t like monkeys and there were far too many of them in the story. I didn’t consider the bow and arrow—Lord Rama’s weapon of choice– to be a hero’s weapon. Maces, swords, Ninja claws, axes and teeth—now, those were weapons. What was heroic about shooting at people from a distance? And where were ACK’s curvy sari-clad women, the one consolation of my otherwise celibate childhood? When I finished the story, I concluded that the Ramayana was one of those tales written solely to punish kids for having time and bloom on their side.
