1. Teleology – Eyes are there because man has to see. (Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, GWF Hegel)
2. Metaphysical Naturalism – Eyes are there because they’re there. No more questions. (Thales, Anaxagoras, Democritus)
3. Naturalized Epistemology – Stop being philosophical. If you want answers, conduct experiments. (WVO Quine)
4. Cooperative Naturalism – If you’re missing a finger, it’s that way for a reason.
5. Metaphysics – The study of things outside of any field of science. (Aristotle)
6. Pataphysics – The study of things outside of any field of metaphysics. (Alfred Jarry)
7. Substantive Dualism – The mind is separate from the body. (Rene Descartes)
8. Property Dualism – The mind “emerges” from the brain but is not a separate thing. (Frank Cameron Jackson)
9. Physicalism – The mind is nothing special. It will be explained by science someday. (Otto Neurath)
10. Monism – The mind and body are one. (Parmenides)
11. Functionalism – Mental states are “states” only if they cause some emotions to surface. (Hilary Putnam)
12. Perspectivism – There is no absolute truth. Everything is a perspective. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
13. Existentialism – All thoughts philosophical should be used to make the human condition better. (Soren Kierkegaard)
14. Nihilism – Life is meaningless. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
15. Absurdism – If you’re looking for a “universal truth”, you’re doomed. You know why? Because there’s no such thing! (Albert Camus)

There you go, now you can use these fancy words and sound really smart!

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Earlier, it was just food. Now, it is to match the potential of another man who has greater accessibility to resources than one does by various means. Earlier, it was one’s hunting skills and endurability that made the difference. Now, it is the ability to be different.

As the society continued to evolve with the technology at use, the ideals that shaped it became different. This is an obvious deduction because the better the tech is, the more the needs that are easily supplanted, and more complex the needs that remain to be fulfilled. To that end, the stimulating ideals were replaced with something that appeared to always exist as a redeeming factor.

As tech flourished, infinitely many tradables cropped up, and it became hard to establish a measure that would place all of them on the same table: one profession required more literary talent, the other required more actuarial skill, and a third required more cunning than anything else. There was no variable they shared to which they could be scaled on the same measure.

The underlying importance of this “ideal necessity” gave rise to some important movements: Communism and Romanticism, to name two. Communists claimed that the value-nullifier rested with the laborer, whose professed skill was manifested as the commodities; Romanticists reserved the right of the human skill to the property when it came to art – an idea that later evolved into the idealistic (and French) phrase “l’art pour l’art“. Romanticism died out with the culmination of the Renaissance era, but Communism lived on – sadly, in other more radical forms. Anyway, skill was at one end of the spectrum. At the other end lay money, capitalism, and impetuses that would distort the notion of equality in more ways than one. What was common to the three revolutions was that they were massively revolutionary.

Communists' Party

Money is the most common, if not the only, nullifier today. But that must not deter us from believing that other forms of equality could exist. As a numerical value was tagged to each manifestation of skill, the importance of the skill was diluted in the pursuit of earning more money.

The Lady of Shallot

Pioneers of each revolution will speak for their beliefs through what they do and why they do it: John William Waterhouse‘s ‘The Lady of Shallot‘ was one of the most notable works of art from the Romanticist movement period – its notability arising mostly from Waterhouse’s beliefs that concurred with the demands of Romanticism; Karl Marx‘s Communist manifesto turned the heads of business leaders from around the world not because it was something new, but because it was a distortionary but extemporaneous innovation. In fact, the lure that capitalism holds today is also mostly because people are repulsed by the possibly radical socialism and statism that an evolving form of Communism suggests, and lesser so because of the convenient strength of the nullifier.

There is a common philosophical belief that when we do something for the sake of an ideal we firmly believe in, the product at the end of the ideal-skill-manifest-product chain is benefited the most. If you want to make money just for the sake of making money, then only your hoarding capabilities will benefit – if you lose out on anything else, it is not worth complaining about.

The equality in which your belief rests holds true for one nullifier, not any other. If you are creating a work of art, it will be most beautiful if you do it for art’s sake – and since art itself is born from the outlook of the self, it will be a perfect product. If you are charting a neoteric business model, pick a nullifier and trust to hope in only what the nullifier can make possible.

Many men. Many products. Many nullifiers. In such a mess, fundamental and reformist ideas are lost out, possibly giving rise to the belief that the process of civilization is past its peak and well on its way down. Historians point to the Incas and the Mayans and call them perfect state-systems. But today we have something that they didn’t: technology. Consider using technology as a nullifier. It is behind today’s art (in satisfying the aesthetic senses), today’s work (in paying tribute to human capabilities), and in today’s money (in satiating the human needs). Even though it is regarded so importantly because it is so indispensable, tech is the new nullifier.

In a major experiment with technical education, the Tamil Nadu government has decided to introduce Bachelors of Engineering (BE) course in the civil and mechanical disciplines in the Tamil medium also in 15 constituent colleges of the four Anna Universities. The state would create an additional cumulative 1,800 seats in these institutions to accommodate students who prefer to study BE in Tamil medium.

- The Times of India, TNN, Feb 25, 2010

The Minister of Education in Tamil Nadu (India), K Ponmudy, has announced the introduction of BE courses in select engineering colleges of the Anna University in Tamil. It is going to be piloted first with freshmen students. The minister also added that students would have the option of choosing which medium to study in, English or Tamil.

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Unlike most people in northern India, citizens from southern states – especially Tamil Nadu and Kerala – have been known to consecrate their language and hold it so close to their daily life that both English and the worldliness it brings with it is lost in in an often-meaningless pursuit of nativity.

I am from Tamil Nadu, and if I were to back home and so much as suggest some parallel anglicisation with Tamil, I will be shot down as a “traitor of the culture” – a phrase I am accustomed to hearing these days. There is some English in the Tamil airs, but it is of an esoteric nature. Even Hindi for that matter: speakers of the national language are treated with a different kind of affection, one that is constantly affectated with scorn.

You gotta give it to them!

A cultural disparity does exist, and it will not be a surprise when a Tamilian is mocked in Mumbai or when a Mumbaikar is mocked in Chennai. However, there is no move to embrace anything from either end. Although a pacifist, I am not being one when I hope that the Tamilian mindset will change. There is more to it than meets the eye, including a state-wide cohesion that means progressive thinking will be very slow and very painful.

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To that end, the TN government’s decision to only “introduce” the opportunity to study in Tamil is, simply put, bad and in poor judgment. Of course, the “true” Tamilian won’t see it. After all, 1,800 new seats will be opened up and that too to people who have had no formal education of English. However, in affording such an opportunity, the government is also blindly sidelining the importance of English when it comes to employment.

For example, in 2007, BMW India opened its first production plant in the country in Chennai. If a through-and-through Tamil speaking engineer enters the job scene, how can he hope to be hired? Tamilians have to remember that when Tamil is concerned, it is important only within the state. When the state itself concedes and opens its arms to host European companies on its soil, why can’t it see the cons in denying the college student a global perspective on life?

These states, young though they may seem young when compared to kingdoms of old, have helped create a sociological and political climate that seems saturated with some notions more than others. Such a rapid mental evolution was made possible only with the rise of the reformist, an individual acclimatised to the more important notion of change.

History though scripted and set – in all senses of the word – must always be remembered as something of the past, unchanging but gone. Even though precedences are established over its voluble course, they must only be considered along with the context that it is sleeved in, and the tendency to invoke histrionic lessons must be curtailed if only to open up newer perspectives on current issues. Otherwise, it is obvious (though apparently not so much) that the leaders of today will be driving their new vehicles on old fuel. At one point, it will stutter, stammer, and though it may not stop running, it will only move because of the inertia of motion and the fumes will be dark.

I spoke of a mental evolution earlier – minds evolved, circumstances evolved. People must be pushed to not linger in outdated eras. Vladimir Putin may have enough reason to call Josef Stalin an idiot, and though he may or may not want to for strategic reasons, the people of the state must realize and understand the differences between USSR and Russia, and if they think Stalin was an idiot, they should call him an idiot. The policies of Jawaharlal Nehru and the INC of the 50s and 60s cannot be applied today, and more importantly, they must not be allowed to become precedents in the form of solutions for today’s problems because they were fighting for ends that are achieved and past.

Let us remember our leaders for what they did when they did it, and the things that they came to be known for. Gandhi freed the country from the British without firing a single bullet, and Gandhi also adorned a genteel diplomatic garb in his negotiations with Jinnah. What was more important to you? Form an opinion and stick to it – even if it is radical. Don’t be afraid of criticism if you have sufficient reason to back your judgment. History has only so much bearing.

But something about the snowclone is often overlooked. Here’s an image: when something becomes commonplace in your life, aren’t you usually excited by something that goes against it? Such a thing will always pique your interest because, when it’s a good thing, it makes you change your lifestyle for the better, and when it’s a bad thing, you are forced to ignore it. This is what change is composed of. Businessmen, especially marketers and advertisers, employ such tactics because they have conspicuous results and quickly. If you are looking to start something new, look for the snowclones in that industry. If you find one, go against it and you will have your purple cow.

Today, globalization and technology have together ensured that everyone under their umbra of influence knows most of what the others know. In such a scene, not much can change quickly enough to dispel the formation of a need or even an interest. Consider the industry of mobile phones. Considerable privatization in the communications sector, and cheaper export of technology from developed to developing countries, has accelerated the mobile phone revolution – though the industry itself is only a few decades old, the iPhone or even the Nokia X6 would in the 1980s have constituted science fiction. We quickly have too much, which only means that soon there will be calls for the “more” that today still can’t come to integrate with itself. And since, that way, we’ll have put ourselves at the top of the tech tree, the sky will be the limit.

Don’t let the magnitude of things fog your view – to wade through the pea soup, remember that snowclones will always be snowclones. To be effective in such a world, point out to something that has been there for a long time, and then go directly against it. Although it could be surprising that such antediluvian templates inspire the opposite, it is not difficult to see why. That is what change is all about.