151–160 of 337 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shakespeare is worthwhile but much easier to understand when you see it performed, which is how it was meant to be experienced anyway.
Yes, exactly. A lot of people forget that he wrote ‘plays’ and not ‘reads’
A lot of European literature was poetry for the same reason. Its only because literacy rates have risen that prose has become more popular.
> In August 2018, in the last month of my three-month sabbatical, I arrived at the Hamta village in Himachal Pradesh. I rented a one-room cottage, and my caretakers were Dolma Aunty and Kalzang Uncle, a couple well into their 70’s. I got to this part and realized: I've read this article before in some form. It's a really common trope to head out to some remote area of Asia and admire how happy people are. There's oft…
It’s a common trope among urban Indians. They’re enamoured by the simple and rustic living of the villages and think of them as noble savages. I grew up in rural India and I always recommend people to read Dr. Ambedkar’s rights on this subject.
My family is from rural HP/JK/Ladakh, and a homestay like Hamta is not representative of rural HP/JK/LA/UK.
> They’re enamoured by the simple and rustic living of the villages and think of them as noble savages
I think it goes both ways. They either over-idealize it, or overly berate it.
I feel it's also state dependent to a certain extent, with some states better at rural administrative capacity (eg. Kerala, HP, PB, JK) than others (eg. KA, TG, GJ).
Something I've noticed is states that don't have a primary city tend to have slightly better rural administrative capacity, as it at least incentivizes small town or T3/4 economies to develop instead of being invested in a single mega city.
For those of you who're interested in the Wikipedia Philosophy thing, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-llumS2rA8I
For my part, one of the most striking things which I recall from my youth was reading Dumas' _The Count of Monte Cristo_ and the Abbé Faria contending that everything a gentleman needed to make his way in life was contained in less than 100 books --- which he had memorized the content of, and could impart to the young Edmond Dantes. A naïve younger me tried to brute force this by reading one non-fiction book from eac…
I love this idea, and the lost is full of gems, but I see a couple of issues. If you actually intend you or anyone else to read these and stay sane I'd remove the mathematical tables (there is value in reading these, but only for a very rare soul), the Bible (lots of really dry stuff about begetting and knowing), the complete works of Shakespeare (hard to understand without careful study, way too long to cafefully st…
I'd suggest replacing the Bible with just the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke[0], and John). Removing it entirely seems like a mistake since you'd lose a lot of the literary and moral underpinnings of Western culture, but having to read the bible in its entirely sounds exhausting. I did it (reading all four gospels) recently and can attest even outside of the religious aspects the retelling of the same tragic story in four different was is a fascinating literary experience.
[0] Technically we should through Acts in there too since Luke-Acts are essentially one book, but it's not a gospel so I left it out. Plus quite frankly while I did read it I found it way more boring than the others; turns out that Jesus fellow is a way more interesting main character than Paul :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But let’s not overly-romanticize ancient thinkers: Plato and Aristotle held fundamentally different views on knowledge. 1) everyone agrees “overly” Romanticizing is wrong. By definition of “overly”. 2) why should having a fundamentally different view on knowledge disqualify something from being romanticized? Isnt romanticizing precisely for things that are different? 3) i think its a mischaracterization to say Plato…
> everyone agrees “overly” is wrong I mean, apparently not - this author alone takes Plato’s cave allegory at face value without spending even a moment to criticize it. > I think it’s a mischaracterization… It is not. Read Meno. Socrates thought this, and has a very painful example of trying to prove it. Plato thought the exact same.
Does HE say hes over romanticizing it? No.
He would probably argue hes not over-romanticizing it. So the question isnt if over-romanticizing is improper (which is true by definition of “over”). The question is if he actually is over romanticizing.
>It is not. Read Meno. Socrates thought this, and has a very painful example of trying to prove it. Plato thought the exact same.
Im not contesting that Plato believed in reincarnation. But its not true that he thought knowledge comes from "past lives" (as in when you were previously some other person). He believed the _soul_ had direct access to knowledge. In a past life you would have only had an impression as well. This is all downstream of his actual theory of the forms though. Why not attack that if you want to attack his theory of knowledge.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a common trope among urban Indians. They’re enamoured by the simple and rustic living of the villages and think of them as noble savages. I grew up in rural India and I always recommend people to read Dr. Ambedkar’s rights on this subject.
Hamta isn't even really rural. It's a bunch of homestays just outside of Manali, and is similar to Pahalgam. My family is from rural HP/JK/Ladakh, and a homestay like Hamta is not representative of rural HP/JK/LA/UK. > They’re enamoured by the simple and rustic living of the villages and think of them as noble savages I think it goes both ways. They either over-idealize it, or overly berate it. I feel it's also state…
Your last para rings true. Goa, Kerala, CG and Odisha have better rural administration than MH, TL or KA because of the absence of heavyweight cities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shakespeare is worthwhile but much easier to understand when you see it performed, which is how it was meant to be experienced anyway.
My Shakespeare class in college was based around performing a play at the end of the semester. We read about half a dozen plays, but the bulk of our work was based around preparing to perform Hamlet (each semester, a different play was performed, with fall being Comedies/Histories and Spring being Tragedies/Romances). The big challenge is that a lot of plays are rarely performed. I had the good fortune of hearing an…
Some of the plays have also snuck onto YouTube.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> everyone agrees “overly” is wrong I mean, apparently not - this author alone takes Plato’s cave allegory at face value without spending even a moment to criticize it. > I think it’s a mischaracterization… It is not. Read Meno. Socrates thought this, and has a very painful example of trying to prove it. Plato thought the exact same.
The example he gives about geometry is actually quite interesting. It is one of the early highlights of a deep question: is this knowledge, geometry in this case, learned/learnable or is it, somehow, innate? Do we learn this from scratch or do we have innate pre-existing cognitive structures that are “configured” by experience? If the latter, what does “learning” mean? It’s definitely not what we usually mean. If the…
I think most people’s intuition is that the methodology and conventions are invented but are constrained by some transcendental reality. It seems difficult to argue its instead purely natural or purely convention.
This is very much inline with Platos theory of the forms. I dont really understand the idea that Plato’s ideas are dated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hamta isn't even really rural. It's a bunch of homestays just outside of Manali, and is similar to Pahalgam. My family is from rural HP/JK/Ladakh, and a homestay like Hamta is not representative of rural HP/JK/LA/UK. > They’re enamoured by the simple and rustic living of the villages and think of them as noble savages I think it goes both ways. They either over-idealize it, or overly berate it. I feel it's also state…
Thanks for adding extra context. I wasn’t aware of Hamta. My experience is in rural central and South India but I’ve travelled extensively in Garhwal. How different would you say rural JK/HP/LA/UK is? Your last para rings true. Goa, Kerala, CG and Odisha have better rural administration than MH, TL or KA because of the absence of heavyweight cities.
Rural UK is much poorer than rural HP and JK.
The administrative structure of UK is very top heavy (everything is decided in Dehradun), and Dehradun+Haridwar have caused tourism and real estate induced Dutch Disease to arise. JK and HP also have a tourism economy, but also have a strong industrial base (pharma in HP, heavy industry in JK) plus more investment in higher value rural industries like food processing and fruit cultivation.
HP and JK also have a bottom up political culture with panchayats in a district coalescing into District Planning Committee that includes state civil service cadre and the MLA, so local governance is much more responsive, and has the resources and capacity to invest in infra like cold storage or make the case for an MNC to invest in manufacturing.
Basically, if local government and administration is actually given priority beyond haphazard panchayats, it makes it easier to attract build industries and a semi-industrial rural economy.
> Kerala, CG and Odisha have better rural administration than MH, TL or KA because of the absence of heavyweight cities.
Political culture is also more top-down in states like MH/TG/KA, where the CM office tends to have inordinate control over local planning and panchayat+local government funding is minimal
Even if their administrations had some interest in rural economic development (which in those states they don't), they wouldn't even have the bandwidth because there are too many districts. This is why local government needs to be invested in by states, but locals are the ones who know best about their needs and capabilities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judging from the French movie (with Pierre Niney) I saw last year (which was awesome btw) , and my vague recollection of the book, there's lots of physical skills involved. It's not just an intellectual pursuit, but more like applied science in getting vengeance. Really fun read. Big chunk of social media is self improvement. Stumbled across this guy yesterday and actually gives pretty solid advice. https://www.youtu…
Point! Added: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/803453.The_Sword_and_the... (which I have a copy of and re-read when I was considering taking up fencing, but my wife demurred)
Zen in the Art of Archery - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery