Very idea of omniscient beings could be partial

New Powers of Consciousness Come With Gnostic Evolution from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

At the same time, as each new power evolves, it becomes easier for the recognition of the essential Oneness of all existence, and thus, each new power gains new capacities of insight, and breaks down the walls between the individual units that lead a more or less fragmented and isolated existence due to the limitations of their characteristic mode of consciousness, in the lower hemisphere of Matter, Life and Mind.

How intellectual conversion happens (and elephants) from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele

This process of intellectual conversion can happen both from “religion” to atheism and from atheism to “religion” – just as it does from one “religion” to another. Even if we grant that only one of these worldviews (whether atheism, a single “religion”, or some specific combination) happens to be true, there are still going to be many intelligent people who move away from it… The classical Jain tradition encapsulated a view something like this in its doctrine of anekāntavāda (many-sidedness), often expressed in the parable of the blind men grasping the elephant… But then the positing of an omniscient being doesn’t solve that problem – for we are not ourselves that being. The very idea that there are omniscient beings could itself turn out to be partial, superseded by a higher truth. What a recognition of partiality does is remind us to doubt, to acknowledge uncertainty even as we try to grasp higher and less partial truths – we just need to remember that we still need to live and act even in the face of this doubt.

What would Rousseau make of our selfish age? - Terry Eagleton - guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 June 2012 - 300 years after Rousseau's birth, the great Enlightenment philosopher would surely be horrified by modern Europe

Young adults, he thought, should be allowed to develop their capabilities in their distinctive way. They should also delight in doing so as an end in itself. In the higher education systems of today's world, this outlandish idea is almost dead on its feet. It is nearly as alien as the notion that the purpose of education is to serve the empire. Universities are no longer educational in any sense of the word that Rousseau would have recognised. Instead, they have become unabashed instruments of capital.

Why liberals are dogmatic ideologues WSJ.com (Indian pinkish even worse) from Shadow Warrior by nizhal yoddha

He means Islam: "Demographic curves are very hard to bend," he says. "Unless something changes in Europe in the next century, it will eventually be a Muslim continent. Let me say it diplomatically: Most religions are tribal to some degree.”

Once There Was Hindutva Terror ...? from Communalism Watch by c-info by Subhash Gatade

fascination for violence in the saffron parivar seems to have reached its pinnacle with the phenomenon of Hindutva terror. It has been more than a decade that this phenomenon has raised its head which saw many avoidable deaths. Here we witness activists, workers, Pracharaks of the ’cause’ collecting arms, storing explosives, engaging themselves in arms

Zizek’s gift to reviewers from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko

“For example, many essays on Joyce’s Ulysses–and often the best ones –were written by scholars who had not read the whole book; the same goes for books on Kant or Hegel, where a truly detailed knowledge only gives rise to a boring specialist exegesis, rather than living insights. The best interpretations of Hegel are always partial: they extrapolate the totality from a particular figure of thought or of dialectical movement. As a rule, it is not a reading of a thick book by Hegel himself, but some striking, detailed observation–often wrong or at least one-sided–made by an interpreter that allows us to grasp Hegel’s thought in its living movement.” pg. 279-80 of Less Than Nothing

another good two-pager by Žižek from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman) am passing the time with the Gabriel/Žižek Mythology, Madness, and Laughter, a three-essay collection on German Idealism. It reminds me that one of Žižek’s strongest genres is one that he utilizes mostly in passing– the mid-length, sidebar-type digression pasted into the middle of the text.

Žižek’s bread-and-butter method, of course, is to take some apparently simple phenomenon and subject it to a Hegelo-Lacanian spiral of increasingly complicated ironic and counter-intuitive reversals. This dazzles but sometimes tires me. Yet the moments when I like him best are those apparently subordinate passages where he makes a more general point, sometimes in a spirit of humor and sometimes in a spirit of humane general life wisdom.

Harman Live from Larval Subjects (Levi Bryant)

Here’s a great interview with Harman over at faslyncyc. In my view, Graham is the great philosopher of lassen sein, letting be, or what he calls “sincerity”. This is, for me, the essence of his ontology and his practice. It is an ontology in resolute refusal of both judgment and commodification; the anti-commidificationist/fetishist philosophy par excellance. To preserve the singularity, the dignity of things and persons, is the core of Harman’s thought. A beautiful vibration. This interview is a testament to that.

TOC -a Multimedia Epic about Time- from Posthuman Destinies by abdul lateef (Richard Carlson)

This Novel is extensively reviewed by Katherine Hayles in her latest book How We Think/Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis - that itself, is arguably the single best exploration of Digital Humanism, Techno-genesis, and Education in the 21st century, and which we hope to provide some more information on soon. 

Mystical Anarchism by Simon Critchley from Posthuman Destinies by abdul lateef

I’d like to make two suggestions for areas in which this utopian impulse might live on, two experiments, if you will: One from contemporary art, one from contemporary radical politics. These two areas can be interestingly linked. Indeed, if a tendency marks our time, then it is the increasing difficulty in separating forms of collaborative art from experimental politics.

Tweets SavitriEraParty: Now suddenly troll vitriol has subsided and Twitter seems to be a sane lane. But then, what else can make the place interesting? Read Heehs?

2h - SonaliRanade ‏@sonaliranade All quiet from #Modi #Trolls after Economic Times debunked their myth making in Gujarat. That's news! http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/what-works-and-what-doesnt-in-narendra-modis-gujarat/articleshow/14533602.cms

3h - Prakash Kini ‏@KuntreeBoy I strongly suggest @ndtv change their logo to sth like the HMV dog. Even the first animal to be domesticated isn't this loyal to its masters

1h - Dailygrinder ‏@Dailygrinder1 Physical labor has a mysterious cleansing power over the mind. Not just exercise, the act of exerting bodily to develop or create something. Retweeted by Vijay Vikram

4h - Mihir Jha ‏@Mihirkumarjha Every fire starts in the belly. Only way to douse it to go office and do some work. Its monday, Okay? Good Morning:-) #quote #gyaan ;)