another thought on modernism

let me clarify that modernism said, "man is asocial and ahistorical". when i say socio- economic, circumstantial and political context of situations, i mean it differently. when we analyse modern era, we put it in the contexts mentioned above. it has nothing to do with the theory of modernism.
i read something very intresting in wikipedia( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution) which put some things in perspective. it said that the belief system in Europe focused on indiviuals and that of China focused on inter personal relationships between people. the belief system in Europe were largely products of Judaeo- Christianity. lets go a step further and say that the fundamentals of Islam and Christianity are similar. Islam is people oriented religion, which tells you how to be in a society, however, the core of Islam lies in an indiviual's equation with god. therefore, Christianity is also introspective and self- reflexive.
lets generalize here. the Europe is the Occident and China- the Orient. what holds true of Europe, holds true of other continents in northern hemisphere. what holds true of China, holds true of the entire Orient, (it certainly does for India). maybe this is the reason why, modernism took shape the way it did back then. it focused solely on an indiviual's fight with the nature.

post modernism and cultural baggage

i am revising what i know, so that i can put my thoughts in context. if you already know the following, skip it.

before the first world war in 1914, things made sense in the world- religion, the equation between powerful and powerless as it manifested in humans through the equation of god and mortals. post world war II, people questioned everything around them- religion and the raison d'etre of human existence. the reasons are as follows:

• industrial revolution in the 20th century and hence the urbanization
• the Charles Darwin theory (Origin Of Species)
• Freud and Jung's psychoanalysis (the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious, like wise- the ego, the superego and the id. man's unconscious is supervised by an unknown force)
• Scientific progression (men could fly and carriages were without horses)
• the most important- mass massacre, dirty politics and the paraphernalia of the world wars. from that stemmed modernism.

the word 'modernism' coined by Bernard Bergonzi in 1971 and Ezra Pound said 'Make It New'. because of world wars, the countries all over the world became closer and aware of each other. nothing was absolute- like god and the belief systems attached with it, everything was questionable and relative (like truth- there is no absolute truth but one and that is death- everything else is influenced by a person's circumstantial, socio-economic and political context).

the quest of finding 'who are we?' gave birth to study of anthropology. before that it never existed because God had created humans. the study of anthropology dug out the concept of myths. the modern literature makes ample use of local and global myths in their works- 'The Potrait Of Artist As A Young Man'. all these elements triggered the irrationality of human beings and their behaviour. people were grappling with the knowledge flood. after 1930's came post modernism- existentialism and nihilism.

Friedrick Nietsczhe's philosophy comes first in minds of those who think existentialism. 'Man is Superman'. he rejected the christian morality and the doctrine of the power of god. if religion taught us that god created man then Nietzche taught us that man created god because society has to have ethics.

therefore, in modern age roughly beginning in USA and Europe in 1900 culminated in post modernism till roughly around 1950's. Science, Anthropology, Philosophy and Psychology developed.

well, if you are wondering the India has not featured in any of this intellectual movements then, you will also notice that she got her independence in 1947. which means when the world was struggling with "who are we?", we were making "Us". we had problems in making our country and finding our indiviuality which we lost in those 150 years of colonization. this cultural baggage of enslavement is harming us still where we become the passive consumers of many things in society. it is harmful because injustice becomes rampant and we are immobilised. we carry enormous fear of authority and are afraid of questioning.

thank you- Mrs Snober Satarawala- my M.A teacher (Wadia College- Pune), from whose notes i religiously wrote the blog

learning problems

our elders endlessly tell us that we dont live the life they led in their youth. how bored and cliched that sounded. i grew up listening to that and much more. now the whole pattern ranging from, 'go out- play, climb trees, read newspapers, listen to elders, eat right etc', is fitting itself together in my life at 23. these were all parables, which back then we did not understand, 'why do they (the elders) repeat the same endlessly?' now i realize that the repetition was to tell me something i would realize much later in my life. many educated youth are exposed to passivity from childhood. we get everything in cut and dried manner. love, education, friends, media, jobs... the list goes on... before it becomes boring, i want to clarify that we have become passive consumers of everything around us. this passivity is the result of post modernism and our cultural baggage of being colonized. these explainations will follow in the next blog

raj sarkar to get over

raj thackeray got arrested around 22 october 2008, on the grounds of inciting communal disharmony. when i heard that, i sighed with relief. at least there is some hope that raj sarkar will get over. they have done enough damage already. in IPC 153, there is a provision where a person can be persecuted on the grounds of fanning volatile religious angst. raj thackeray and family have not contributed to anything great in mumbai or elsewhere. however, it is surprising how the shiv sena (bal thackeray's) has brilliant shakha pramukhs. i am not kidding. look at anand dighe and the shakha pramukh/ nagarsevika of chunnabhatti... these people did real work. it is not easy to digest that a political party which solely survives on gundagardi has good people working for them. if people are that good then why do they support cheap gundagardi by joining a party like shiv sena (MNS is no different from shiv sena). one thing that i disagree with is raj's hatred towards everybody who is not from mumbai. it is taking mumbai meri jaan wala funda to the extreme. until india does not develop uniformally nothing will change. migration will continue to over populous cities... raj is reacting to a surface problem, probably afraid to scratch it.