November 08, 2018 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Before Camus there was
The second course for humans to take when
faced with the paradox of absurd is:
(2.) To take recourse to another lie and
saying that there is a higher spiritual purpose in the afterlife that God
provides.
It is obvious from the observation of the
masses that the later path seems far more popular among us apes.
In the second category of people there are
again two types of apes.
There is one category that is out rightly
religious and takes the religious mythologies in their face value and as
literal truths.
Even here he is choosy and considers only
his personal ones to be true and the rest belonging to others as mythological
stories and maybe even developing contempt and scorn for them.
Then there is second category of human ape
that is intelligent enough to accept that these mythological stories defies
everything that he experiences everyday and so he treats them figuratively.
Yet he finds an escape route through the
mumbo-jumbo of spiritualism and transcendental realm which is a vague and fuzzy
philosophy that anyone is free to treat it as they wish to.
Spiritualism is a free-for-all and a
no-holds-barred game which seems to suit all players, draws great crowds and at
the end almost everybody goes home pleased and content except for perhaps few
who possess the honesty to see through it.
Eastern philosophies are rife with it and
have found great appeal among the average Westerners who have no life goals and
ambitions to clutch upon.
The first one to encounter the paradox of
absurd was not Albert Camus who gets most of the credit for it but a
philosopher from Denmark who was born way back in 1813 (a century before Camus)
in an affluent family in Copenhagen.
His name was Søren Kierkegaard and he makes
for a difficult reading; His writings, to me, are exactly a mirror image of
Asimov’s lucid and clear style and therefore I would not digress too much into
his life or work.
This is what my exemplar essayist Isaac
Asimov wrote about writing (keep in mind that he was not a successful scientist
and maybe even a failed one) and it is possible that I may be repeating it but
the repetition is worth every word of it:
“I made up my mind long ago to follow one
cardinal rule in all my writing – to be clear.
I have given up all thought of writing
poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that
might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer Prize.
I would write merely clearly and in this
way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the
professional critics – Well, they can do whatever they wish.”
These three lines have become the
guidelines for all my amateurish and legal writings that I hope will establish
good relationship with my handful of readers, advocates and of course the
judges assuming the trials are fair and clean.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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