Mother, thou axe obsidian to thine obedient's slaughter

Albeit we are such stone as against which sacred mountains, snow-clad, up rise
Flint heart- must thy kick to the chest, yet, Love Connubial, surprise?

Mother, thou axe obsidian to thine obedient's slaughter
Mercy skull garland thee, Himavat's daughter

Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone? [a reference to Kali as the daughter of Himalaya]

Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?

Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother.

You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.

It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but you will not listen.^[15]

sung by the tragic Pannalal Bhattacharya

Aestheto-Vegetarianism & South African Labour militancy.

"Boss, we quit- the celery is too low'.

   From Time immemorial, this has been the cri de couer of South African Labour. 

   The question Prof. Honeytits Obwaweyo-Golem addresses, in her magisterial 'Aestheto-Vegetarianism & South African Labour militancy' (O.U.P. 2012),  is why complaints about under-bred celery- as opposed to plebeian asparagus or Grammar School Oik truffles- have so vitiated class relationships in the Republic of South Africa.
 Contrary to expectations, she places the blame not at the door of Mahatma Gandhi- who, as Kathryn Tidrick points out,  followed Tolstoy in romanticizing the soteriological properties of peasant stock celery- but on Nelson Mandela's nuanced response to Walter Sisulu's cryptics with reference to 'proleto-celerification' as the correct, dialectically materialist, problematization of the post- Nongqawuse Xhosa Nobility.
 In the context of the current upsurge of Labour militancy in the Johannesberg area, Prof. Obawayeo Golem's book will be welcomed by all not utterly indifferent to the Industrial Relations aspect of Aestheto-Vegetarian ideology as, if not its chef d'oeuvre then, at any rate, a salutary coup de pouce or nudge in the right direction.
  

best philosophy blog post ever?

Click here for a searing expose of Kripke faking the results of his thought experiments.
Then, be sure to vote for it here, on the 3 quarks website, for the best philosophy blog post prize they are offering.

I, Ashvatthama, being of unsound mind

I, Ashvatthama, being of unsound mind

Make this Will in favor of all Mankind

Though I must live & Death thy lot

Krishna's curse is but Thought

Max Muller

The Race's childhood in the Veda's page

Or aught, not cant, in Kant's senile rage*

 Time ne'er lost what Max Muller found

An Orient Sky but beneath the ground.

*Gerhard Lehmann observes, in the first fascicle, Kant's retreat, caused by his declining health, from the discursive development of an argument. Instead, Kant concentrates "more and more on one point," by incessantly redefining Transcendental Philosophy. A series of redefinitions that, as Lehmann puts it, finally become "enigmatic" when Kant determines Transcendental Philosophy as "galvanism" (AA XXI, 133, 135) and comes to see its principle in "Zoroaster" (AA XXI, 156).(27)

tan mrshaa mosha-dharma

(Nagarjuna)

What the mind, like a mouse

deviously steals

is as unreal as the unicorn

Not thy mount, Ekadanta.

Faith vs Expectations

Classical Economics castigated something called 'chrematistics'- 'getting rich' as opposed to 'getting by'- and, it might be argued, Economics has struggled to keep a distinction between the Real and the Nominal in its theorizing because 'Money is the root of all Evil.' 

A separate issue is whether a similar, or systemic, confusion or confounding, of two quite different things- Faith & Expectations- also obtains.
True, Money is Credit- in the sense that to credit someone or something is to believe someone or something, but to what extent is this based on Expectations?- i.e. some sort of rational calculation of what will happen- and to what extent is it based on Faith?- not a rational calculation but something involving one’s ethos, who one is to oneself.

    Some Institutions still require a profession of Faith from us. We are required to pledge alleigance to the State and to accept what it deems legal tender in settlement of entitlements and obligations even if our Expectation is that the State might collapse. Some professions, the Law, Medicine, Accountancy, actually Banking and Broking and so on too, require a profession of Faith such that an indefeasible duty is created even if that conflicts with rationally arrived at Expectations. Yet, the astonishing progress of Science and the utter marginalization of Theology, militates for every Institution demanding Faith- or requiring Faith to function properly- to try to convert Faith into Expectations by some maneuver more or less illicit.
The Rational Expectations doctrine together with the Efficient Markets Hypothesis had the effect, for the financial sector, of taking Faith- as in good Faith and bad Faith, ‘integrity’ as against being a greedy s.o.b- out of the equation on the grounds that it wasn’t needed- it was the feather Dumbo held with his trunk, he thought he needed it to fly, but he didn’t, his big ears were doing all the heavy lifting.
This would have been fine so long as preference diversity didn’t change too much. Economists know that bad things happen when preference diversity is too great or too small. What they don’t know how to do is separate revealed preferences from true preferences- if such a thing exists. The problem this gives rise to is that, even if everybody subscribes to the correct Economic theory and all relevant information is instantly reflected in prices, still an element of impredicativity has entered the system and so there is no Muth Rational solution- i.e. Rational Expectations faces an aporia. It seems getting rid of Faith and Faith based Identity wasn’t such a good idea- Dumbo without his magic feather is just a clumsy pachyderm tripped up by his own big ears.

This isn’t a real big problem. Evolution is about Conserving Information even at the price of the occasional revolutionary saltation. Human Societies are very good at producing the next best thing to Faith- viz. the Expectation that your Life is gonna suck big time- and so Economics will triumph over Chrematistics, Expectations will be pruned back to Faith like proportions- the wagon will trundle on.
And it is this, the fact that the wagon trundles on, which is what is wrong with any grand narrative that promises to’ set our present moment against the sweep of history so as to explain our predicament and help us find footholds for changing it.’- we all know in advance that such grand narratives are a magic feather while Dumbo’s Momma is caged up in that wagon ever rolling on.

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