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March 23, 2016

Absorbing technology takes time; Laws are essentially codified ethics

Long ago during early 1950s, the per capita economic incomes of India and Korea were almost... Absorbing technology takes time and cannot be done overnight. In other words, Korean policy makers understood the need to emphasis the entire value chain of the whole process. 
The average man on the street is not militaristic here and the flowering of spiritual power that Shri Vivekananda or Sri Aurobindo stood for requires a different space altogether. Genuine Indian spirituality is about connections, connections, connections...
Higher education is about letting the transformational power of education come to full fruition. State controls on higher education cannot work here as is being displayed by many campus incidents in India today. Political class, please think value chain, value chain, value chain...

 
There are two Hinduisms; one which takes its stand on the kitchen and seeks its Paradise by...

We are headed into an amazing--and scary--future. Most worrisome is that laws can’t keep up with tech: http://wadhwa.com/2016/03/05/apple-vs-fbi-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-as-laws-cant-keep-up-with-tech/ …

Today, technology is progressing on an exponential curve; advances that would take decades now happen in years, sometimes months.
Technology is moving faster than our ability to understand it and there is no consensus on what is ethical. It isn’t just the lawmakers who are not well-informed, the originators of the technologies themselves don’t understand the full ramifications of what they are creating. They may take strong positions today based on their emotions and financial interests but as they learn more, they too will change their views.
Laws are essentially codified ethics, a consensus that is reached by society on what is right and wrong. This happens only after people understand the issues and have seen the pros and cons.
But how can our policy makers and institutions keep up with the advances when the originators of the technologies themselves can’t?
There is no answer to this question.
For more, visit my website: www.wadhwa.com and follow me on Twitter: @wadhwa.
What happens when our smartphones are more intelligent than us?http://wadhwa.com/2015/04/23/the-coming-problem-of-our-iphone-being-more-intelligent-than-us/ … --I don't think anyone really knows
Kurzweil tells me he is not worried. He believes we will create a benevolent intelligence and use it to enhance ourselves. He sees technology as a double-edged sword, just like fire, which has kept us warm but has also burned down our villages. He believes that technology will enable us to address the problems that have long plagued human civilization—such as disease, hunger, energy, education, and clean water—and that we can use it for good.
These advances in technology are a near certainty. The question is whether humanity will rise to the occasion and use them in a beneficial way. We can either build a Star Trek future, in which our civilization rises to new heights, or descend into a Mad Max world. It is up to us.

, , ,  

The Bombardier Beetle


Sri Aurobindo Studies - WordPress.com
Sri Aurobindo distinguishes these: "Reason or intellect is only the lower buddhi; it is dependent for its action on the percepts of the sense-mind and ...

knramesh
Maharishi Aurobindo's BHAVANI BHARATI -Tamil commentary of mine was serialised in Samskitasri magazine some time back. It is a beautiful book ...

@LenteCurrite Aurobindo & Bose had qualified for ICS, IIRC. So VP Menon type jobs. @sarkar_swati
@sarkar_swati Gokhale was delighted to seize Tilak presses. Surendranath silently seized Aurobindo's :)

@abhijitmajumder Only The Mother & Sri Aurobindo hold the clue and offer robust counter ideology. But people continue to ignore Savitri Era.

Speaking on Sri Aurobindo and Kashmir Shaivism in a Seminar on Abhinavagugupta and Kashmir Shaivism organised at... http://fb.me/4Z0ps3sDU 

@HDFC_Bank partners with Sri Aurobindo Society to train 4 lakh school teachers in #UP: http://bit.ly/25loKnY via @NYOOOZ_NOW

www.thekendra.com/dance-dramas5.html
Chhau Mayurbhanj Choreography: Krishna Chandra Naik & Shashidharan Nair Music: B.K. Gupta Script, Costumes, Direction: Shobha Deepak Singh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vS0FRzyOBo
Jul 26, 2010 - Uploaded by sbkkinTimeless Stories by SBKK ... Mayurbhanj Chhau bY GurukulChhau Dance Sangam (GCDS) - Duration: 8:59. musecstacy1 30,506 views. 8:59.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKKCsp_o6sU
Dec 5, 2013 - Uploaded by News FundaPublished on 5 Dec 2013 Delhi Youth Festival in CP Delhi : Malti Shyam's students to perform kathak, Madhimita Rao's students to perform Oddissi, Madhvi Mudgal's students to perform Odissi, Guru Singh Jeet Singh's group to perform Manipuri, Deepti Om Cherry's group to perform Mohiniattam, Sashidharan Nair's students to perform Chhau dance, Guru Jai Rama Rao's students to perform Kuchipuri, Jai Lakshmi Ishwar's students to perform Bharatnatyam, Sona Mansingh's group to perform Bharatnatyam. Besides, International Kathakali Centre's students will perform Kathakali and Kavita Thakur's students will perform Kathak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-NiXRrGXIw
Sep 29, 2011 - Uploaded by sadhyasantoshnairchhau residency for kala nidhi dance festival 2011 at Toronto. ...Mayurbhanj Chhau dance workshop at Toronto conducted by santosh nair, ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79aG0k4_Rg
Mar 3, 2016 - Uploaded by National Dance Institute Part of NDI's 1991 Event of the Year "CHAKRA -A Celebration of India" Choreographed and Performed by ...

www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/theatre/.../article428981.ece
May 13, 2010 - Shashidharan Nair has been dancing professionally for over 35 years. Of these, nearly ... Shashidharan Nair in a Chhau pose. V Geetanath · ».

www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/article1416305.ece?service=printJan 13, 2013 - ... the soul, Parikrama is knit together by Shashidharan Nair, the Chhau guru who has given the Bharatiya Kala Kendra several choreographies.

Om Anandmayi Chaitanyamayi Jagjit Singh | Sri Maa Sri ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJF4wn37c74
2 hours ago - Uploaded by Odia Academy
Om Anandmayi Chaitanyamayi Jagjit Singh


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March 12, 2016

Sri Aurobindo and Nietzsche are Heracliteans

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8132222237
Sharad Deshpande - 2015 - ‎Philosophy As Margaret Chatterjee points out, both Aurobindo and Nietzsche were Heracliteans and 'philosophers of the dawn.' They sought to infuse their philosophies ...

www.jstor.org/stable/1399699 Margaret Chatterjee is aware that the concept of the 'spiritual' has had a complex ... interest in the thought of Sri Aurobindo makes sense, for Sri Aurobindo.

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1438404379
Hananya Goodman - 2012 - ‎Religion The volume concludes with Margaret Chatterjee's exploration of two of this century's most creative mystical teachers in India and Israel: Sri Aurobindo Ghose ...

www.thenile.com.au › ... › Phenomenology & Existentialism Hinterlands and Horizons by Margaret Chatterjee 
The reader is exposed to a brilliant array of thinkers, among them Husserl, Buber, Levinas, Sri Aurobindo, Radhakrishnan, Keshav Chunder Sen, and Mendelsohn. Each essay can stand on its own, but the thread of the search for amity gives them a supervening unity. — Anthony J. Parel, University of Calgary

Auroville Radio Program by : Renu
Rod revisits the topic of change in Auroville, in this hour long conversation we touch the topics of; Ideology, Town Planning, Economy, International Zone, Growth, Statistics, Working Groups, after the Retreat (?) … and the urgent need for critical thinking in Auroville.

THE INTEGRAL PARADIGM OF KNOWLEDGE: Day 3
Guest Presenters:
Natalia Pavlovskaya -Science and Sociology
Ananta Giri -Philosophy and Psychology
Arnab Chowdhury- Music and Poetry
Tong Schraa-Liu -Business and Society
Matthew Rich-Tolsma- Metatheory and Educational Praxis
Final day presentations of a seminar on the integration of senses, the faculties, the individual, universal, and transcendent Self; the approaches and disciplines of knowledge -seeing, hearing , speaking, thinking.
An exploration in the light of Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of Upanishads and Vedas.


Program by : The-Unstitute THE INTEGRAL PARADIGM OF KNOWLEDGE: Day 3

Savitri Era of those who adore, Om Sri Aurobindo & The Mother.
The Vital Soul In the Human Body - it is possible for the human individual to shift his standpoint from the physical to the vital, and thereby embody force and focus from the vital worlds th...

Lacan - Today I found myself rereading Lacan’s 8th seminar (transference) after 15 years. I try to put myself in the shoes of his audience. He had such a remarkabl...

New Issue of Journal of Indian Philosophy (44.1) - This issue of JIP is edited by Christopher Minkowski and has a special focus on Appayya Dīkṣita. Please see this link for contents.

Surendra Singh Chouhan’s Review of J. B. P. More’s A Critique of Modern Civilisation and Thought: Facts, Non-facts and Ideas - Title: A Critique of Modern Civilisation and Thought: Facts, Non-facts and Ideas. Author: J. B. P. More. Publisher: TLPMS & Illakiya, Pondicherry. Number o...

Sri Aurobindo's thought-system draws on various philosophical roots - Rod: Critical Thinking is needed Auroville Radio Rod talks on; Idealogy, Growth, Statistics, Working Groups and the urgent need for critical thinking in Aur...

Sri Aurobindo’s Concept of the Nation-Soul (2) – Kishor Gandhi - (3) Admitting that the society or group, like the individual has, besides its soul, also a mind, life and body, the important question immediately arises...

Evolution aimed at the divinisation of all that is - Studies in Modern Jewish and Hindu Thought - Page 105 https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=0230372856 M. Chatterjee - 2016 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions Speak...

No one should have to “work their way through college.” No one. - If a college education is important, both for individual life opportunities and for society as a whole, then it deserves every student’s full attention. Sc...

M. Alan Kazlev, Levi R. Bryant, and Elisa Freschi - Faith is a purely personal as well as irrational affair. So, the devotees of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo have their own justification and reason for their f...

T. V. Kapali Sastry, V. Madhusudan Reddy, and R. L. Kashyap - Letsgethere ‏@letsgethere 13h An interview w/ Dr S Mishra, Director of the Sri Aurobindo Foundation http://scroll.in/article/804770/authentic-vande-mataram-...

LOONY TUNES no. 131 - Loony Tunes no. 131 *1* *Kevin Carson* posts (29 Feb) on *Herbal and Natural Remedies for Diabetes* HERE http://gonasoo.xyz/the-iron-fist-behind-the-invisi...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, V. K. Gokak, and R. Jagannathan - Evergreen Essays Karan Singh, Kundan Singh, Makarand Paranjape, and Sampadananda Mishra - World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilizations" wpfdc.org/ Today’s ...

The Yogi-King Aswapati receives an inner message (SH 192, B4C03, pp 369-370) -Savitri Class in Hindi with Alok Pandey (SH 192) 9th March 2016 at the Dining Room Hall, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India. Savitri Book Four : The ...


Karan Singh, Kundan Singh, Makarand Paranjape, and Sampadananda Mishra - World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilizations" wpfdc.org/ Today’s India Has the Potential to Build a New World Order By Come Carpentier, Sunday Guardian Live...

- On *The American Interest* podcast, Alexander S. Duff on Heideggerian thought in counter-liberalism circles.


Moonje, Hedgewar, and Mookerjee deviated from Sri Aurobindo's direction - Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty 21 May 2012 [Dr BS Moonje did not want the RSS to be what it is today. The RSS today is not run by ideology. Anand Moon...

G.H. Langley, P Colaço, and N. Pearson - Excellence in Professional Work A Consciousness Approach — M. S. Srinivasan ISBN: 978-81-7060-367-2 Publisher: AuroPublications, Sri Aurobindo Society, Po...

Datta, Amal Kiran, and Kishor Gandhi - Lahiri 4:54 PM, March 08, 2016 A very well composed material. Amal Kiran's interpretations through his article 'The Supermind's Descent and The Mind of Ligh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElvDglPIcBQ
Nov 29, 2010 - Uploaded by Lok Vincent
Talk by Prof Makarand R Paranjape The problem of pain Pain is the hand of nature sculpturing men to ...

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March 06, 2016

A historian’s dharma is to be vigilant to mythmaking

Quartz - ‎“Keep in mind, humans made up philosophy too.”
Here, Nye suggests philosophy is irrelevant because we’re incapable, as fallible beings, of uncovering the absolute truth. “You’re a human seeking the truth,” he says, “so there are going to be limits.”
Far from a rebuttal of philosophy, this is a component of the field. Many great thinkers recognize this limit on our search for meaning and have written a range of complex papers on the subject, its implications, and the sort of truth that can be uncovered within the constraints of humans’ tiny minds. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, might interest those who share Nye’s skepticism.
Philosophy is not for everyone, and many are perfectly happy to live their lives without trying to figure out what, exactly, Heidegger is saying. But for Nye to talk so condescendingly about the “cool questions” in philosophy suggests that he doesn’t know enough to dismiss it. Because philosophy is in fact incredibly useful for anyone interested in language, knowledge, morality—and science. And yeah, it is pretty cool.

15h ago This is more or less the thesis advanced by Jayarava in his longest comment on this post. The idea is that the (Buddhist) religion is primarily experiential and that philosophy is a later reification which misses the main point at stake and moves the emphasis away from what really counts. Moreover, in the case of Buddhism (but I am inclined to think that no other theology would survive Jayarava’s analysis) the result is full of inner contradictions and does not stand a critical inquire.
Thus, why engaging in philosophical thought, if you care for a given religion? Why entering a field in which you will loose anyway, since sooner or later a new development in, say, physics or neurosciences will show that you are at least partly wrong? Posted at 2:40 PM

Philosopher of the month: David Hume
OUPblog (blog) - ‎2 hours ago‎

Nurse.com (blog) - ‎Mar 4, 2016‎ 

Firstpost - ‎1 hour ago‎ 

The National (blog) - ‎Mar 2, 2016‎ 

The Hindu-13 hours ago
The inaugural panel, comprising Mr. Ram and Professor Gopal Guru of the Centre of Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, spoke ...
“A historian’s dharma is to be vigilant to mythmaking,” said historian K.M. Shrimali as he spoke about ‘How the Sangh Parivar Rewrites History.’ Mr. Shrimali recounted several anecdotes of how the Sangh Parivar had sought to establish its own version of history in educational institutions.
History and facts played a significant role in another panel which sought to argue against the Hindutva appropriation of icons such as Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Shivaji and Bhagat Singh. Chaman Lal, Professor of Indian languages at JNU, and an expert on Bhagat Singh, marvelled at how the freedom fighter has been appropriated as an icon by the Sangh Parivar. Bhagat Singh was, in fact, a prominent Marxist atheist. While CPI (M) member Ashok Dhawale sought to debunk the saffronised version of Shivaji and talked about his progressive tolerance of Muslims, former MP Prakash Ambedkar highlighted the ideological differences between the Sangh Parivar and Dr. Ambedkar’s philosophy.
Mr. Sainath said the more the Indian population had become heterogeneous, the more the media was becoming homogenous with the corporatisation of the media. “We have reduced journalism to a revenue stream,” Mr. Sainath said, as he called the Indian media politically free but imprisoned by profit.

The Indian Express-5 hours ago
“Nothing is more anti-national than RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat’s statement..,” said Ram in the inaugural session of the two-day Mumbai collective event called ‘Celebrating freedom and pluralism: in defence of secularism’.
Noted historian Irfan Habib said they are trying to crush such (rational) debate by subverting academic organisations through the use of a shameless distribution of posts as spoils and imposition of their mythical fantasies in the name of nationalism or value education on schools and universities. “This mounting offensive against democratic and secular principles on which our Constitution is based reminds us of the way fascism had established itself in Germany and Italy. The danger in India now is also as real. What should still fortify us is the fact that India is much larger than the RSS and its cohort,” said Habib in a message as he could not attend the event due to health issues.
In a session on 'Media and communal politics,' journalist P Sainath said a major area of damage is that the media has managed to sell a national vs ...

Catch News-21 hours ago
The journalist P Sainath calculated that it translates into one MoU being signed every 4 seconds. How can you take such a document seriously?" he asked.

Economic Times (blog)-04-Mar-2016
Among B R Ambedkar's lesser known qualities was his heightened sense of irony and humour. The way political parties have been competing ...

Business Standard- 16 hours ago
He was speaking on 'Hindutva's appropriation of B R Ambedkar, Shivaji and Bhagat Singh' during a seminar titled 'Mumbai Collective: ...

Daily News & Analysis- 7 hours ago

The new age that is coming upon us - Despite what Sri Aurobindo tells about the intricacies of yoga and allied esoteric matters, the academic tone of his justifications for writing is very int...

Nation under attack from Marxist anarchists and Hindu Rashtra proponents -Sraddha "a Quarterly devoted to an exposition of the teachings of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo" edited by Arup Basu and published by Sri Aurobindo Centre f...

madurai today March 6, 2016
The Hindu-Sri Aurobindo Study Forum: Sath sang on Sri Aurobindo’s ‘Life divine’ by Prof. Subramony, Nithyatha, Aurolab, Veerapanchan, 10 a.m.

Sri Aurobindo describes some of the methods and results: “This may be done, on the ... Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part Two: The Yoga of Integral ...

Incidentally, the king of Baroda also employed nationalist thinker and latter-day spiritualist Sri Aurobindo as his personal secretary and then made him the Vice ...

Forward Bloc: Aurobindo Ghose, aka Sri Aurobindo. Trinamool: Oh, that Ghose. You can have him. BSP: We take Ambdekar and Sant Ravidas. READ: As old ... 
Congress: How about swapping Bhagat Singh for Chittaranjan Das?
Trinamool: Das is ours, the commies have Das Kapital.
Shiv Sena: We are perfectly content with Shivaji, thank you.
BJP: If we’re getting into history, I bag Rana Pratap. Also Chanakya, Vikramaditya, Ashoka and Manu. Also all Aryans.
MIM: We’ll take the Mughal emperors and Tipu Sultan.
Congress: Nonsense. Akbar was plainly a Congressman.

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=148286889X
Deb Sanjoy Dutta - 2015 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
In the roundabout just outside the main entrance to the garden, was the statue of Lord Curzon, now replaced with that of Sri Aurobindo. But do razing down past and replacing with the new, really change history? The Communist Government of ...

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March 01, 2016

Integrative evolutionism and metapsychology of Sri Aurobindo

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8171000282
Sheojee Pandey - 1987 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead agree on the point that the evolution is emergent. Both theories of evolution admit that higher and ... Owing to the integrated form of matter all levels of existence take birth. As Sri Aurobindo says, "An integration of ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1136484663
C. Mackenzie Brown - 2012 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions Providing new insights into the contemporary creationist-evolution debates, this book looks at the Hindu cultural-religious traditions of India, the Hindu Dharma traditions.12. The Integrative Evolutionism of. Sri Aurobindo Ghose. The development of Indian political activism in the waning decades of the nineteenth century was to play a significant role in Hindu ... 
1 For details of Aurobindo's biography, I have largely relied on Peter Heehs (1989). 2 The transformation does not mean a radical break in Aurobindo's ideals and values. As Robert ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1462883621
Thomas Lombardo, Ph. D. - 2011 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions The ideas of evolution and progress can even take a spiritual form, such as in the writings of the Hindu philosopher and Yoga master, Sri Aurobindo.Aurobindo weaves together evolution with Hinduism in a holistic system, rejecting both the ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8120819373
K. R. Sundararajan, ‎Bithika Mukerji - 2003 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions (15:251) III From his original base in Hindu religion and society in The Foundations of Indian Culture, through a ... Aurobindo's metapsychology, with a dash of evolution in a new key, finally goes beyond spirituality to the Supramental. Here is a ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8120790634
Karan Singh - 2011 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions While at Baroda Sri Aurobindo had begun following some yogic practices, and during the Bengal agitation he was arrested in the ... can be called spiritual nationalism, Sri Aurobindo's general philosophy can well be called spiritual evolution.

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1136634177
James W. Haag, ‎Gregory R. Peterson, ‎Michael L. Spezio - 2012 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions Each species has its own inherent nature modifiable only within small limits, an early Hindu instance of anti-macroevolutionism. For Aurobindo, spiritualevolution seemed destined to result in Supermanhood, but the teleological implica- tions ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1570034494
Arvind Sharma - 2003 - ‎Preview Dhanpati Pandey, The Arya Samaj and Indian Nationalism, P. A. Parpullil, Swami Dayananda Saraswati's ... For a discussion of Aurobindo's evolutionary theory, see Rama Shanker Srivastava, Sri Aurobindo and the Theories of Evolution.

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=0230372856
M. Chatterjee - 2016 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions Bergman's own ideas about evolution can be found in his paper “The Need for a Courageous Philosophy' which contains ... He goes on to mention Sri Aurobindo “who made the theory of mutual ascent from below and descent from above, the ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=0199718253
Ariel Glucklich Professor of Theology Georgetown University - 2008 - ‎Preview- ‎More editions Hindu Culture in Historical Perspective Ariel Glucklich Professor of Theology Georgetown University ... According to Aurobindo, this is a failure to understand that the new theology ''expressed a deeper truth and a larger range of religious experience, ... and one cannot avoid the impression that the standard, the telos, toward which Aurobindo's evolution is conceived to move was the product of an India ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8178357186
Rajeev Verma - 2009 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions In his vision of new evolution, Sri Aurobindo even foresees the seem ance of a totally new species on earth, which shall ... Swami Dayananda Saraswati As per the Swami Dayananda Saraswati was an significant Hindu religious scholar born ...

Aug 4, 2012 - Sri Aurobindo seems to have foreseen this German defeat. ... The day must inevitably come when he will be able even to originate no less than ...

Fulfilling the Human Aspiration For a Deeper Meaning to Existence - The material life in the world, presented to the human individual as the reality within which he has to live, strive and survive, is not the entirety of ex...

Makarand R. Paranjape, Aparajita Mukhopadhyay, and Brainerd Prince - The Integral Philosophy of Aurobindo: Hermeneutics and the Study of Religion (Routledge Hindu Studies Series) Oct 8, 2016 by Brainerd Prince (Author) Sri A...

Rights are instrumental - The key reason I have turned to MacIntyrean tradition-based inquiry is to make progress on the ethical inquiries that have … Continue reading →

BRILLIANT FICTIONS OF A PLAYWRITE - Dave Begel, contributing writer, reviews a play, ”The Invisible Hand" at The Rep which is described as an unflinching and unique look at the influence of capitalism. (27 February) by Pulitzer Prize playwright, Ayad Akhtar, HERE
The problem with Ayad Akhtar’s theme for his play is that it is based on and albeit common fallacy, not of Adam Smith’s, but of the modern 20th-century economists who misinterpreted Smith’s correct use of metaphors in what he decribed as his “perspicuous writing”. Among the offenders there was Paul Samuelson from 1948 onwards (and, later, several other Nobel Prize winners) who invented a narrative, partly in celebration of booming modern US capitalism and its political celebrations, when flushed with victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, apparent amidst the post-war economic boom that they believed heralded the victory of capitalist economic policies over the failures of rigid state-run Soviet socialism.
Investipedia’s account is quite spurious. 
Smith’s Wealth of Nations is full of detailed criticism of the actual behaviours of “merchants and manufacturers”. He did not enunciate such a role for the “inivsible hand” metaphor, and he definitely saw a role for government intervention by regulations to protect consumers and the population from misguided citizens and governments in an economy, though nothing like on the scale of intervention common today and certainly he was highly critical of government sponsorship of “mercantile political economy” as operated in 18th-century Britain.
Smith did not describe a ‘perfectly competitive’ economy nor did he suggest we could do without government interventions (“party walls” in buildings to prevent the spread of fires; actions to mitigate the spread of of “noxious diseases”; sponsorship of school education in “every parish”; construction of roads; public cleansing of towns; light houses for navigation; and many other interventions.

The “invisible hand” metaphor was not about the sufficiency of “economic self-interest” “to guide us”. That is a modern construction and not Adam Smith’s. POSTED BY GAVIN KENNEDY AT 8:19 PM

Andrew Carl Bosworth at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, posts on “Multipolar Future”:complexity, national autonomy, individual sovereignty, neutrality, balance of civilizations” HERE 
“Olde-tyme classical economists often talked about the wisdom of the market, the “invisible hand.”
Quote: “In economics, the invisible hand is a metaphor used by Adam Smith to describe unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions. The phrase is employed by Smith with respect to income distribution (1759) and production (1776).”
Comment
This a false hypothesis. The fact is that the “invisible hand: was hardly mentioned by “classical economists” who lived after Smith died in 1790. Indeed, the invisible hand” metaphor was not mentioned by anybody while Smith was alive and when his two books, Moral Sentiments (1759) and Wealth of Nations(1776) were published and circulating in Europe and North America. 
Most readers appear not to have noticed his use of the fairly common expression of the “invisible hand”, circulating among theologians and preachers in the 17th and 18th centuries (see the great Calvinist orator, the preacher, Thomas Chalmers, in 1836, who, almost alone mentions Smith’s use of the IH. 
For Smith, though, he used the invisible hand as metaphor, not as a descriptive proper noun. The first mentions of the IH and Adam Smith appear in the 1870 (5 mentions) amd later from the 1890s, mentions appeared intermittingly until Paul Samuelson included the IH in his famous textbook on economics (19 editions and 5 million sales to 2010). From then on the modern phenomenon of linking Adam Smith to the modern version of the IH, took off exponentially, to many hundreds of thousands per year and continues daily today.
The quote from a classical textbook is a modern construction of events and not an historical one. ‘Providence’ reported Smith in TMS divided the land between humans; history records a different sequence of events, reported more accurately by Richard Cantilon: “It does not appear that Providence has given the right of possession of Land to one man preferably to another; the most ancient Titles are founded on violence and Conquest” (Cantillon: Essay on the Nature of Commerce, 1730-34/1931). 
Far from a supposedly heavenly arrangement, the agricultural systems that flourished for millennia up to Smith’s times were based on the mutual, often violent, dependence of the landowners on their serfs, slaves, peasants, and labourers - who were the source of their “greatness’ - and their labourers depended on their oppressive Lords - the source of their sustenence from a share of the products of their labour. Without serfs, the landlords would soon perish; without landlords, the serfs would soon starve. But their mutual dependence worked, subject to events - invasions, plagues, famines, wars and environmental disasters. Moreover, Smith drew the conclusion that the long-term consequence was one of the “propagation of the species”. 
Turning to the IH in Wealth of Nations we find a too general interpretation of Smith’s use of the IH metaphor by Andrew Carl Bosworth: He writes: the “phrase” (?) describes “the unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions.” This is far too general an interpretation, though very common in modern textbooks and lectures.
In WN, Smith is discussing a singular case of a merchant who is concerned about the risks to his capital if it is sent abroad, out of his sight and control, and into the hands of a foreign legal system of which he is unsure of its probity. In response, this merchant invests his capital locally where he is surer of the integrity of the legal system, where he knows the other merchants with whom he deals and is confident of the independence of outcome if he has cause to seek legal redress.
However, by acting to protect his interests he intends only his security but in doing so he unintentionally also adds his capital to “domestic revenue and employment”, which is a “public benefit”, albeit outwith his singular intentions.
There is nothing about the IH describing the “unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions” as a general rule. This is an extraordinary and unwarranted assertion by Andrew Carl Bosworth (and by those who generally assert Smith’s singular example into a general rule). 
Indeed, Book 4 of WN, containing the singular use of the IH metaphor in the above example, there are several dozen examples of the intended motivated actions of merchants (and government ministers) in which the outcomes, documented by Adam Smith, are clearly against the interests of consumers, and other merchants, and actually present a mortal threat to the broader interests of the society of which they are members, including inter-country relations and escalating tensions leading to retaliatons, blockades, and outright warfare, which were all too common in the 18th century. 

Smith regarded his analysis in Book 4 as a “violent” criticism of his country’s foreign trade mercantile policy. The invisible hand metaphor did not “describe unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions” as a general rule. Individual actions could and still can provoke violent responses and widespread social suffering too, hence it could not have been a “general rule” of Adam Smith's. POSTED BY GAVIN KENNEDY AT 2:49 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2016

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