Friday, 24 May 2024

Fanaticism involves an existential defect

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

19 hours ago — Dalal at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry and conducted this engaging interview. They discuss yoga, free will, Man's relationship with the Divine, and ...
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In his video snippet, Dr. @ElstKoenraad debunks the legend of Saint Thomas coming to India and being martyred there, asserting it is entirely fabricated. Historical evidence suggests Thomas never reached India but may have traveled to Afghanistan or eastern Iran. The only source is an apocryphal text written 200 years later, describing Persian-speaking regions. He criticizes the false accusation against Brahmins for Thomas's death and questions why this legend persists unchallenged. Watch the full talk here: youtu.be/E9rikx6G1m4 #SangamTalks

https://x.com/sangamtalks/status/1793969348467441969?t=Urzwndgir_SXZlxmiS1N5w&s=19

My Ram saves millions of Sitas from the fire. That is the difference. Happy Birthday Raja Rammohan Roy .

Thanks @cinemawoman2

https://x.com/MahuaMoitra/status/1793323067533324413?t=3W39HuadzrYQJON_p6dhAg&s=19

Prashant Kishor really embarrassed himself in the interview with Karan Thapar and came across as someone who simply cannot tolerate being wrong about anything. That said, it’s insane how many people are blindly giving in to the absurd conspiracy theory of PK being a BJP agent.

https://x.com/DearthOfSid/status/1793676055112569235?t=1MRfVJIqD5ia9NzvAlyzmw&s=19

I wish your charges against Modi were true @Jairam_Ramesh !

To allege that Modi is anti reservations, आरक्षण विरोधी, is a cruel joke.

India today needs a leader who can put an end to all reservations, all quotas.

Pity Congress is stuck with failed formulas.
You are so bright and yet you can’t come up with smarter ideas.

https://x.com/madhukishwar/status/1793322001702310169?t=1htw9_emQHDCkPwGTXF-hw&s=19

The problem with a BJP voter is their inability to understand that expecting accountability of ministers is not a stand against them. We can question the PM as citizens. We can disagree with his policies. The blind devotion to Modi is more akin to a cult than a democracy

https://x.com/Sanginamby/status/1793828954224406955?t=RFh7hzV5zJFAJmSl0t8A9g&s=19

Yes, BJP supporters need to learn from liberals how to ask questions.

Liberals accepted Nehru, Indira G, Rajiv G, Sonia G and now Rahul G as their leader because these were the best talent India could offer. The fact that they are all from same family is pure coincidence, not result of blind devotion.

https://x.com/AbhishBanerj/status/1793933641342714284?t=MbW4bVTapTaV1JGo0VyzWQ&s=19

Imagine if Patauadis son and grandson were to Captain India;  if Drbhabas son and grandson were to be the head of BARC, if MGK son and grandson were to the head of ISRO,  if Milkha singhs son and grandson insisted on running the 400m, Imagine  all the people practicing dynasty

https://x.com/Murali78669678/status/1793954288252903681?t=hnWSVdspvksdbQiIvdmmfQ&s=19

Judges don't go on vacation when there is a summer break in the #SupremeCourtofIndia. That is when they retreat to reflect over the myriad issues in a world where people fight disputes in a miasmic mix of arrogance and stupidity.

https://x.com/madversity/status/1792440320908526027?t=3K9_iM1zG2vVSQhr9bFa9A&s=19

The importance of @dhruv_rathee
My piece for @TheQuint explains why this year's polls make it
YouTube vs WhatsApp And How Digital Mavericks Are Testing Dubious #Elections2024 Narratives
#DhruvRathee #RavishKumar #RanveerAllahbadia

https://x.com/madversity/status/1792852380561948862?t=SVLBM23lLwD6XUZa9om-rA&s=19

Sad fact is most reporters are increasingly providing only raw material. Most anchors are compromised. That leaves YouTubers ground to explain and interpret.

My article here explains how it works

https://x.com/madversity/status/1792956695125340324?t=qe96UoC1Wpy6JMpG_5tjqA&s=19

Always good for the media to question those in power (whosoever). Because it can correct the bias inherent in the awesome machineries of power, state and hubris.

https://x.com/madversity/status/1793486336177119365?t=dqH_Uyvs267MGUDj289d3g&s=19

I have believed the elites matter in indirect ways. Their words and views are telegraphed down the social hierarchy and discussed at the grassroots. Their vote is not important. But their thoughts are vital

https://x.com/madversity/status/1792955707651944706?t=twaX4lF_lTKtS8n5OzkkQA&s=19

The spectacular meltdown of Prashant Kishor in an interview with @thewire_in when Karan Thapar confronts him with his own tweet that predicted a rout for the Congress in Himachal. Kishor angrily denies he ever said it even as Thapar pulls up his tweet…

https://x.com/rohini_sgh/status/1793345332677595150?t=FYpOjgVdF-r2whllVC_Fpw&s=19

If you listen closely, in Gayatri Spivak and Martha Nussbaum’s condescending tantrums, you hear the fading roar, or more like the last gasp of not just a generation, but an entire “South Asianist” academic industry that realizes its epistemic monopoly is over. 

Intellectual gaslighting has a shelf-life & it’s expired.

Not celebrating, but the heir’s credibility is in shambles. The jig is up—they know we’re on to them and laughing at the absurdity of their covering a political project under a fading veneer of scholarship.

https://x.com/SuhagAShukla/status/1793292655050301894?t=jFJTDzj4Lp26c7WCtiPPQw&s=19

[PDF] Escaping the Global Event: Pan-Islam and the First World War

F Devji - Modern Intellectual History, 2024
The First World War is often seen as marking a transition from a world of empires to that of nation-states. As perhaps the inaugural global event, it is understood as making possible the international order we still inhabit. Yet the war also gave rise to …

Pluralism or Uniformity: Case of (Single) National Curriculum of Pakistan

R Shaikh, C Benedetti - International Journal of Educational Reform, 2024
The Single National Curriculum (SNC) of Pakistan is a federally promoted, politically one-sided policy, with its aim to reform the educational system of Pakistan and bring different educational systems under one uniform curriculum highly induced with …

[PDF] The Resilience of Caste through Yashica Dutt's Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019)

B Cherechés - 2024
… The fervour of Hindutva adherents to protect their cultural values has led to tragic consequences, including “the burned bodies of our children, suicides of our PhD scholars and college students, rapes of young girls and women, asphyxiation of our …

[PDF] The Massacre and Martyr (dom) s of Oak Creek

R Hothi - Cultural Anthropology, 2024
This article concerns how competing investments in the real motivate political disagreement. The ethnography focuses on face-to-face debate in the wake of spectacular white supremacist violence against Sikhs in the United States. Young …

[HTML] THE MASSACRE AND MARTYR (DOM) S OF OAK CREEK: On the Problem of Diaspora, the Economy of Agonism, and the Extimacy of Relation-Making

RS HOTHI
… Young activists and elder institutional decision-makers are both concerned with supremacies white and Hindu, which precede 9/11 and 1984, Trump and Modi, and the war on terror and Hindutva, respectively. However, vying investments in the …

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K Kalyani - Social Change, 2024
This article aims to understand the acts of resistance in the everyday music of oppressed caste communities and the repertoire of anti-caste musical performances in specific moments in history. The everyday soundscape has the potential to bring …

Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva By Janaki Bakhle. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024, p. 501. Hardback, ISBN: 978-0-691-25036-6

A Saghar - International Journal of Asian Studies
… The critical examination of his works by the author shows that the concept of Hindutva is as much about the aesthetic experiences that have been attached to the idea of India itself as it is about the militant political program which targets minority …

[HTML] Sahelis in struggle: Reimagining feminist solidarity and friendship in neoliberal times

J Roy - International Journal of Educational Research Open, 2024
… loveless marriages, towards the end of the decade and the backlash from Hindutva groups around it further put the collective ‘we’ to a test … to the diktats of the Hindutva patriarch - this unlikely coupling of neoliberal ideology with Hindutva …

[PDF] Aspects of Higher Consciousness

MD Molina, L Molina, MW Zappaterra
Objective-Transcendent experiences (TE’s) such as mystical experience, near-death experience, Kundalini awakenings, psychic experiences, and out-of-body experiences share common features. However, the relationship between TE's is not …

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G Žukauskienė - 2024
The dissertation explores the transformative power of human movement and seeks to find a complex approach to movement that resists the instrumental treatment of movement. It offers an overview of and engages with the ideas of Marcel Mauss (1872–1950) …

[PDF] What's so bad about fanaticism?

P Katsafanas
… But this last feature will be accidental: I can be devoted to yoga or to a friendship without being willing to impose extreme costs on others so as to secure these goods. The degree of sacrifice that the object of devotion warrants will depend on the …

So, what’s so bad about fanaticism? Is it bad at all? Cassam claims that fanaticism is bad because it involves commitment to a morally reprehensible end. Battaly claims that fanaticism is neutral: it can be bad, but if it is this will be due to the badness of the fanatic’s end rather than to the fact that the person is fanatical. I’ve argued that these accounts mislocate the concern: we should focus not on the fanatic’s object (their end, goal, ideal, etc.), but on the fanatic’s psychological profile. Battaly is right that the fanatic can adopt good or neutral objects, but nonetheless I’ve argued that fanaticism involves an existential defect and a disposition toward violent intolerance. In that sense, fanaticism is bad. Nonetheless, we can be nuanced in our judgments about particular cases of fanaticism. 

Fanatics can be directed toward morally praiseworthy goals, and the good effects of fanaticism can in some circumstances outweigh the bad aspects.

In making this argument, I’ve distinguished between devotion and fanaticism. I see this as a significant advantage of my account. It gets us what we want: the idea that there’s an extreme form of commitment that is praiseworthy and that is often necessary to achieve important social and political goals. But my account preserves the idea that fanaticism is a vice. And it allows us to say that there can be cases of devotion gone bad, devotion-turned-badly-fanatical.

I will close by mentioning one further point. Aside from offering us the resources to distinguish devotion from fanaticism, my account has a further advantage: it gives us a way of addressing fanaticism. If the core problem with fanaticism is just that the fanatic is directed toward objectionable ends (Cassam’s view), then the solution is to change people’s ends. But if the core problem with fanaticism is an existential one—a defect of character, of one’s way of relating to value quite generally—then the solution is to change people’s characters. That is no easy task—but, if we have any hope of mitigating the strife and discord caused by fanaticism, it is a crucial one.

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