Skip to main content

Quick Review : Blindness of Insight - Dilip Menon

Whom do they address in the books they write?
Is the primary aim to convey the insight received during thought
Or
to use tedious vocabulary that appeals to peers but obfuscates the message to laymen

Maybe I am a bit thick, or I picked up a book not intended for me.
I wanted insights but ended up spending more of my time trying to decode the language and understanding what the author is trying to convey.

*Essay 1 - Why communalism is about caste*
I did not get the answer. The analysis was not convincing enough.
One problem I found in most of the book is the over emphasis on static analysis.
That economics, technology, Time, changes the way people think does not seem to be considered. The views of 1920 is extrapolated to 2000. What drove the actors a century ago drives another set today.
Reforms, Internet, Industrialisation, English.. what effect does these have?

I want answers for Tomorrow based on insights derived from events of yesterday.
Analysis of yesterday based on yesterday does not serve much purpose. Alteast to me.

The author says "neatness of categories like 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' hide the porousness of identities"
Very well said.
My question is, can you define ANY category that is not porous?

An individual is an individual. Classifications of people are bound to be porous.

Actually, in the next essay, the author classifies EMS neatly as a 'brahmin'.
Every publication of EMS is viewed through the prism of his caste based classification.

Maybe EMS did 'use' Marxism to fulfil himself or his caste.
I did not find much use of the analysis because I could not then go on to explain how the same Marxism under different leaders can be used for organised corruption today.

If the aim is to gain insights which would help one identify entrenched, manipulative interests of today; patterns that help build and upkeep these negative structures of today; then I probably need another book as this did not serve the purpose.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Siemens Washing Machine : Kill the Buzzer

The washing machine we have has the habit of sending out an irritating beep after it finishes the wash cycle. Ok enough; but these intermittent beeps go on and on and on till it is sure everyone came back home after your attending your funeral. One awful engineer who programmed the chip. Anyway, been looking around the net if there is a work around. Found this written by some Russian. I didn’t have patience to correct the grammar entirely. If the below does  not work, there is always the option of an Axe and ‘hey Siemens,..Heeeere is Johnyyy!) -- text You can change the volume of the buzzer according to your requirement. The operation procedure: 1. Switch on the machine,turn the program selector to Off . 2. Turn the program selector to cold Easy-care , press the additional function button Intensive stains and dont let go. You can hear the volume of the buzzer from minimum to maximum to off cycled (I didnt hear this!). If you decide the volume that you wa

Sudoku Puzzle Generator

Sudoku puzzles can be generated by a switching the rows and columns of a valid puzzle. The switch has to be done between the 123, 456 and 789 rows/columns. ie; 1 cannot be switched with 7 for example. A random pair can be generated and if a loop is run say 50 times, we get a new puzzle. Then the cells can be hidden again randomly. The following code generates the puzzle from a base character string which is converted to a 81 length Char array. The output is the solution as well as the puzzle with blank (or 0s)               Dim stdArray As String = "317849265245736891869512473456398712732164958981257634174925386693481527528673149"         Dim charArray() As Char = stdArray.ToCharArray         Dim rng As New Random         Dim m As Integer         Dim row1 As Integer         Dim row2 As Integer         Dim col1 As Integer         Dim col2 As Integer         Dim i As Integer         Dim cell1 As Integer         Dim cell2 As Integer         Dim tempC A

HTML Sidebar menu without jQuery

Most examples I found on the net for a responsive sidebar had a reference to jQuery. For two lines of code, I find it an unnecessary overhead. So this is a basic page with no dependencies that has a toggle-able sidebar as well as a media query javascript that hides the sidebar below a breakpoint screen width. Modify as necessary. Maybe tricks could be added such as the one to change the hamburger to X when the sidebar is visible. https://jsbin.com/romiqov/2/edit?html,output <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head>     <meta charset="UTF-8">     <title>SideBar test</title>     <style>         * {             margin: 0;             padding: 0;             font-family:'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;         }         #sidebar {             position: fixed;             width: 200px;             height: 100%;             top: 50px;             left: 0px;             transition