November 22, 2018

For the first time since school, they had a playground

Buzzfeed India is talking about Auroville, an intentional community est by white settlers in south India in 1968, and I have some thoughts on neocolonialism, national identity, and the allure of utopia: (THREAD) https://t.co/G3IMLFHujd
https://twitter.com/j_namakkal/status/1064900916053196801?s=19
That Auroville, a white, neocolonial settlement, looks like paradise to Buzzfeed only speaks to the success of it as a neocolonial project.
(I wrote an article on this history of Auroville, available here https://t.co/HFWa5baTxX)

I have been there there is no conflict between the Europeans and Tamizhs in that village. Rega’s attempt is shallow aping of a western narrative while urs seems to be motivated by ur dislike for Sri Aurobindo’s movement. But these narratives r full of mischief. https://t.co/IjrP88YkYb
https://twitter.com/Rabid_Troll/status/1065251388563832832?s=19

Alfred North Whitehead: Extension and the Theory of the Physical Universe https://t.co/niE8lveD4M
https://twitter.com/ThouArtThat/status/1065112079340728320?s=19

World According To Quantum Mechanics, The: Why The Laws Of Physics Make Perfect Sense After All
M Ulrich, J Manu - 2018

As the story goes Alfassa started having visions of a "dark Asiatic figure whom she called Krishna who used to be clad in 'vision dress' (dhoti)". Later she identified the person in her visions as Aurobindo. Indians know her as 'The Mother'. Below are some excerpts of their work. https://t.co/SQHw9cFud0
https://twitter.com/GreatGameIndia/status/1064867743877525504?s=19
#THREAD
The Cosmic Movement's penetration of Indian Freedom Struggle, Politics, Education & Religion.
This thread focuses on advanced threat perception from this group. Although this is a vast network covering many areas we concentrate here on key players driving it forward. https://t.co/vm0NsuUnls
https://twitter.com/GreatGameIndia/status/1063711279368552448?s=19

Above is a brief rendering of the two World Wars as seen by Mother Mirra & Aurobindo; offered without comment. Next we will see how from this base the Cosmic Movement expands and lays the foundation of Freemasonic lodges all across India. Stay tuned. https://t.co/OGM0KUnpQB
https://twitter.com/GreatGameIndia/status/1064904892937134080?s=19

"How Gandhi avoided the pitfall of Aurobindo’s approach to civil resistance"  https://t.co/OfrDogmOyn (don't agree but interesting ...)
https://twitter.com/sshingavi/status/1064828146527207424?s=19

Sanskriti University has signed an MOU with Shri Aurobindo Society to offer certificate, diploma and degree programs in Vedic sciences. This has paved the way for opening of School of Vedic Sciences at Sanskriti University. Read more:
https://t.co/9PDtW0WjnD https://t.co/Rru3Qly9cW
https://twitter.com/sanskritigroup1/status/1064802014373265408?s=19

Aim of this paper is to make readers aware about place of Kama in Bharatiya scriptures and culture along with message of Kamashastram https://t.co/5aE9x8Nf7L #India #Hinduism #Sexuality
https://twitter.com/IndiaFactsOrg/status/1064924304553390081?s=19

#5 Mandir narrative maybe irrelevant by 2020
Towns are getting urbanized.
Gap b/w cities & towns has narrowed down due to Jio.
Veer Di Wedding was a hit because of women in towns.
Semi-urbans are consuming more liberal content these days.
More Hindus will be seculars going fwd.
https://twitter.com/arunv2808/status/1064113475939520512?s=19
#6 The rural/semi-urban population has been the core strength for Hindutva. They turn into secular, progressive Hindu haters & BJP's gone
The Left media appeals to these semi-urbaners.
Rather, pro-Hindu voices will be gone.
My two cents : BJP will put on a secular face going fwd
#27 The way @jack has been dealt by the RW handles,is really encouraging signs of a growing number of people who are proud to call themselves Hindu
Hindus have an habit of getting complacent with small victories. We can only rest when the schools start teaching Hindu philosophies
https://twitter.com/arunv2808/status/1064586547729559552?s=19
#37 Need pro-Hindu media houses.
This won't come from ones who have studied liberal arts all their life. It comes only out of a mind unaffected by Marxist education. I know such youths who are keen to work on one. Absence of an ecosystem makes them do this on a leisure basis.
https://twitter.com/arunv2808/status/1064928263322001408?s=19

Very disappointed with this article by @AbhishBanerj. This comes across as totally ignorant of research methodology and particularly qualitative research.
Expected a much better response.
You ofcourse can't fly planes based on ethnographic studies!!!
https://t.co/cGskOkVakp
https://twitter.com/pratyasharath/status/1065135275431489536?s=19
Qualitative research is representative. Not randomized. It is purposive and has always been. Because the intention is to explore trends, not establish them.
Samples and sources are not the same.
@YearOfTheKraken had written a much more thorough piece on this.

@firaism Yeah. Marquez is the absolute best. Wish I knew Spanish to read him in the original :(
https://twitter.com/AgentSaffron/status/332209960240947200?s=19

@AgentSaffron @firaism Please read René Leys and Life: A User's Manual if not already. Thanks.
https://twitter.com/SavitriEraParty/status/332489953508478976?s=19

@mkatju @sujataanandan My vote is for "Life: A User's Manual" (French) although I have not read it fully.

Do's and Dont's dog us all our lives. No wonder, Life a User's Manual (1978) by Georges Perec is merely a novel, experimental and beguiling.
https://twitter.com/SavitriEraParty/status/863653407839600641?s=19

[Bartlebooth (whose name combines Herman Melville's Bartleby & Valery Larbaud's Barnabooth) dies while he is about to finish 439th puzzle.]
https://twitter.com/SavitriEraParty/status/247979445795815424?s=19

I read about Bartlebooth (Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec: Bartlebooth then sends each painting back to France...) in Jean Baudrillard: A Study in Cultural Metaphysics by Charles Levin. A character I always remember like Tom (Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe).
https://twitter.com/NathTusar/status/1065133068745236480?s=19

Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra can be said to be comparable to Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec. Anamdas Ka Potha by Hazari Prasad Dwivedi and Agni aur Barkha (Agni Mattu Male, The Fire and the Rain) by Girish Karnad are equally complex https://t.co/DFDiCBqK42
https://twitter.com/NathTusar/status/1065271227458105344?s=19

René Leys is another fascinating novel Charles Levin discusses in his Baudrillard book. Cf. The Phantom Hour, a short story by Sri Aurobindo. [Sturge Maynard rose from the fireside and looked out on the blackish yellow blinding fog] https://t.co/m0rOQrWAdY https://t.co/1StG8FASap
https://twitter.com/NathTusar/status/1065290124685041665?s=19

Solomon’s proverbs and Confessions by Augustine, Rousseau, Tolstoy, and Gandhi are famous. Sri Aurobindo too has written enough in First person so as to fill one full volume titled: Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest (CWSA 36) https://t.co/XBl2sUvK5c

Many young people have asked me for a list of books they should read. The select list of books I regard the best: http://t.co/maMD1yaMWv
https://twitter.com/mkatju/status/477494277723791360?s=19
@ArpitGargDelhi There are some immortal books in literature which every educated person shd read. However, nobody is compelling u to read thm

A concerted attempt to delegitimate Vedas, desacralise tradition & make Hindus hate themselves; unfortunately for "cultural materialists" reliable social data is so hard to extrapolate from "poetry" & "myth" that most of their prejudices come crashing down like a pack of cards? https://t.co/1aOqPlIjCi
https://twitter.com/MakrandParanspe/status/1065437460665167872?s=19

Sir, you are absolutely spot-on: the strategy is to deflect from the hateful placard @jack displayed to stale & unconvincing EPW-style "research"--much of the latter, when it comes to classical India, informed by thinly disguised prejudice & unwarranted extrapolations. https://t.co/1aOqPlIjCi
https://twitter.com/MakrandParanspe/status/1065438407571243008?s=19

If you are curious and interested in calling the bluff of 'Brahminical Patriarchy' peddlers, I would recommend Uma Chakravarti's paper. You can read it here:
https://t.co/pqG7bgQCn9
https://twitter.com/KanchanGupta/status/1065116924596510720?s=19

This article by Sanjeev Nayyar, based on Dharampal's writings and British surveys, is a most inconvenient inconvenience to "Brahminical patriarchy" Hinduphobic narratives... 
"Were Backward Classes always suppressed in India" https://t.co/qGq9BobyCV
https://twitter.com/sanjeev1927/status/1065177916823269377?s=19

Prof please watch the video in the link, where in a tall Hindu Mathadhipati is openly criticizing spiritual conduct of another tall figure (Sri Aurobindo) 
https://t.co/ObBt97ASey 
If our own house is not in order, why always accuse others?
https://twitter.com/viadipankar/status/1065438849877204992?s=19

Then, out of nowhere, the internet happened. It was the early 2000s and blogs and an infant social media universe came into being. It wasn't tech heavy. The arts students liked it. For the first time since school, they had a playground.
https://twitter.com/vimoh/status/1040183472155910144?s=19
Why is it then, that privileged members of the science caste consider themselves capable of holding forth on humanities subjects even though they never had that education? They literally rejected that education. They were applauded for not being interested.
https://twitter.com/vimoh/status/1040183512018513920?s=19
And they JUST CAN'T DIGEST IT because their lives have been lives of educational privilege. They have always been the top rung of Indian society. They were brought up on the lie that they are better than everyone else. They have always been the ones destined for "success".

However, the two cultures are meeting. Internet is a great melting pot. Today, cognitive science, aesthetics, art, coding, engineering all combine to create real changes in our lives. I should not leave out the third stream - commerce - which drives the fusion
https://twitter.com/OdiaCulture/status/1065204898206269440?s=19

In fairness, these studies were observational studies, so they do not prove higher LDL-C directly protected against dementia. We can hypothesize why higher levels of LDL-C are associated with lower incidence of dementia. It could be a marker of overall health or nutritional status, it could be that LDL-C directly improves the health of neurons and prevents brain atrophy, or it could be more related to lack of diabetes or ApoE4 status for which a study may not always completely control.

FYI Auroville was not 'established by a bunch of white people'. That Buzzfeed title is racist and inaccurate. It was established by the Mother, who wasn't white AFAIK, and who was the spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, an Indian. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were so close..... that you cannot completely distinguish between the two after some point, so there is a sense in which Sri Aurobindo had a part to play in the establishment of Auroville. Further, not only Europeans, but local people and others also had a role to play in the establishment of..Auroville.
https://twitter.com/S_Si_G/status/1065366092292505601?s=19

Some books listed already are excellent but one that was gifted by a friend is an old book first issued in the 1940's, 'I Dare You!' by William Danforth. The language 'dates' it but the messages on self improvement are timeless. Here is a free .pdf https://t.co/uGODUywh0p
https://twitter.com/ddsoffice/status/1047344560123273216?s=19

Progress and Poverty by Henry George. The greatest American thinker nobody has ever heard of. Reverting to classical economic thought and applying his Land Value Tax theory, i was able to see the cat. Once you see the cat you always can see the car
https://twitter.com/beezerism/status/1047343339102724097?s=19

Pollyanna and The Little Prince..they are simple books but both remind me of simple things in life to be happy about that most people forgot to do or think in this huge and complicated world..
https://twitter.com/kmikze02/status/1065086089617002496?s=19

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