by Yohan J. John
But if we strip away the old-fashioned terminology, how different is the concept of a brain area for “wit” from the concept of a “cognitive area” in the brain? How different is the idea of a center of “amativeness” from the idea that oxytocin is a love molecule? And is the idea that conscientiousness is baked into the brain any different from the idea that morality or altruism is baked into the genome?
Search a Little Longer
A version by Rafiq Kathwari
After Sir Mohammad Iqbal
Lift the veil from your face
The stars are witness
Stop teasing
Reveal yourself
Passion is in your heart
Become a healer
Stop begging on the mountain like Moses
The flame is within you
Create a new Mecca with every breath
Rid yourself of idolatry
Observe the limits of this garden
Even if you want to boast
First create the confidence of Alexander
To lust after the glory of Darius
Rafiq Kathwari’s debut collection of poems is available here.
By Namit Arora
On being transgender in India and glimpses from The Truth About Me, a powerful memoir by A. Revathi. It aims to introduce readers ‘to the lives of hijras, their distinct culture, and their dreams and desires.’
Most Indians encounter hijras at some point in their lives. Hijras are the most visible subset of transgender people in South Asia, usually biological men who identify more closely as being female or feminine. They often appear in groups, and most Indians associate them with singing and dancing, flashy women’s attire and makeup, aggressive begging styles, acts and manners that are like burlesques of femininity, a distinctive hand-clap, and the blessing of newlyweds and newborn males in exchange for gifts.
Most modern societies embrace a binary idea of gender. To the biologically salient binary division of humans into male/female, they attach binary social-behavioral norms. They presume two discrete ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ identities to which all biological males and females are expected to conform. These two gender identities are imbued with ideal, essential, and distinct social roles and traits. In other words, the binary schema assumes a default alignment between sex, gender, and sexuality. In reality, however, gender identities and sexual orientations are not binary and exist on a spectrum, including for people who identify as transgender—an umbrella term for those whose inner sense of their gender conflicts with the presumed norms for their assigned sex (unlike for cisgender people). Transgender people often feel they’re neither ‘men’ nor ‘women’.
According to biologist Robert Sapolsky, ‘Gender in humans is on a continuum, coming in scads of variants, where genes, organs, hormones, external appearance, and psychosexual identification can vary independently, and where many people have categories of gender identification going on in their heads (and brains) that bear no resemblance to yours’. Many cultures have granted a distinct identity to various types of transgender people, including South Asian, Native American, Indonesian, Polynesian, and Omanese cultures. A landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2014 legalized a third gender in India, including hijras and other transgender people.
by Max Sirak
“Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness. While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal—health, beauty, money, or power—is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy.”
Mihaly Csikszentmilayi wrote that in Flow.
Both Csikszentmilayi and Aristotle are right.
We want the things we want because we think they will make us happy.
We want money because we think it gives us the freedom to live the way we want and fulfilling our whims makes us happy.
We want to be beautiful because being treated that way feels good – and feeling good makes us happy.
We want health because the alternative, being sick, sucks and makes us not happy.
We want power because with it, we think we will be able to do whatever it is we want and that will make us happy.
Money, power, beauty, and health – think about how much of our lives are spent chasing these things.
Pretty much all of it.
(And for those out there who are shaking their heads about the innocence of children – I'd like to point out that I was literally chasing beauty (girls) around the playground at recess in first grade…so…yeah.)
But while we may while our lives away in pursuit of those four things, how many of us actually get them?
More importantly – do we even enjoy the process of trying to get them? Because, if we don't and yet we spend most of the hours of our days in pursuit – then are we even enjoying our lives?
And if we aren't enjoying what little time we do have on this planet – then aren't we missing the point?
Do you see what I'm getting at here?
by Saurabh Jha
Their premise always struck me as being specious. I once took them through a thought experiment. Imagine, I said, you travel in time to the Bengal famine. There was a lot of equality then – people were equally malnourished. The muscle wasting from marasmus made sure that everyone’s ribs protruded equally. The loss of protein from kwashiorkor made sure everyone’s belly popped out without prejudice. Starvation because of poverty is a great leveler. It cares not about gender, caste or religion. It is non-judgmental.
You say to a starving Bengali: “I have a solution. It’ll give you food, occasional shelter, internet and a mobile phone. But here’s the catch. An ostentatious man called Mukesh Ambani will own the most expensive house in the world, and because you’ll always be reminded of his house, you might feel like crap. You’ll live longer, be well fed, but will feel like crap when you see someone driving a Mercedes. Want it? It’s called capitalism.” I suspect the starving Bengali might say “hell yes, please bring on this inequality. I want food. I don’t give a damn about this Ambani fellow.”
by Elise Hempel
Then came afterward. My daughter had already started clearing out her things back in July, as she prepared to join her boyfriend in Texas, and I'd begun my own, more severe clearing out in November (dining-room table, a bed? – who needs those?). But now I had to do the “deep cleaning,” the hands-and-knees phase where you discover that your house had all along been merely a roofed dumpster. Now I had to scrape from the kitchen junk drawer an amazing number of somehow-glued-down pennies. And figure out what to do with a thousand Aeropostle and Abercrombie bags my daughter had accumulated over the years and I'd stuffed into the closet, removing them in a compact “closet shape” like can-shaped cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving. I had to sift through boxes of tossed photographs, and all of my daughter's artwork I'd saved since her birth, some of it bearing her crayoned command SAVE, KEEP, like an official government stamp, which I'd obviously obeyed. Most of it I'd meticulously dated and labeled myself (“first drawing of a smile,” “first drawing of a smile with cheek marks,” etc., etc.). It took a long time. But I savored my tunneling journey into the time-capsule, the little “treasures” I kept finding, like my daughter's black and shriveled pacifier at the back of a kitchen cupboard, or a dusty dog-chew that had rolled under my dresser out of a snout's reach.
I should have done it as my brother had with his own house several years ago – toss it all into a pod, some storage lockers, and call it a day. But I had time, at least a month, until closing. Each day, I'd leave my boyfriend's house around 10 a.m. and linger at my own house until 4 p.m. I'd eat lunch at my house, take my dog, Groucho, for a walk on our usual routes, wander through the widening rooms and gaze out the windows, sit and write my melancholy poems.
by Carol A. Westbrook
In case you have never seen one, a Press Ganey survey is a multi-page questionnaire in which you asked to rate your experiences during a hospital or outpatient clinic visit, from 0 (bad) to 5 (best). The completed questionnaire is mailed to Press Ganey, which compiles and analyzes the data, and reports the results to the hospital or health care system that ordered the survey.
The survey asks questions like, “Did you have to wait long to see your doctor? Was the staff pleasant? Was the waiting room clean? Did your doctor take enough time to explain things to you? Did your doctor smile and shake your hand? Did the valet parker return your car promptly?” It also does not ask questions that the health care organization does not want to hear, for example, “Was your doctor given enough time with you? Did you actually get to see the doctor instead of the nurse practitioner? “Press Ganey has been called an Angels' List for clinics and hospitals.
That is why administrators love Press Ganey surveys–because they know that good scores will bring in more business. They also have the side benefit of providing an outlet for unsatisfied or angry patients who otherwise would be pounding on their door. Giving a doctor a “0” makes a disgruntled customer feel that he is addressing a problem, without the manager ever having to do anything about it!
Most importantly, though, patient satisfaction scores provide “objective” data that can be used to manipulate physicians by lowering their salaries or even firing them if they do not maintain a high score.
by Aasem Bakhshi
This letter was written in 2013 as a self-reflection exercise in response to Karen Armstrong's letter which she wrote in 2011 to the people of Pakistan to discover compassion in their daily lives 1.
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
While driving back, I kept reflecting on some finer nuances of your discourse from various angles, as well as your 'charter of compassion' and found it necessary to engage with you at a more intimate level.
I should perhaps mention, right from the start, that I am cognizant of all your work. I do not claim to have read each word of it, but I have at least read each and every word you wrote about Muslim tradition and of course, about God. I mention this so you must not misconstrue me for a biased and misplaced prattler; rather, contrary to that, I am so overwhelmed by your desire to see a harmonious world that I thought it necessary to convey to you that you must know a little more about it.
Should I tell you about my favorite work of yours? No, it's not about histories of God or fundamentalism, or genesis of faith-based traditions; rather, it's the one about your own climb out of so-called darkness through that proverbial spiral staircase 2. On a lighter note, I do understand that you love to tell the world about yourself, since it's your third autobiography. However, I found it amazing to find in you a person who has opted for religious truth, found it uncongenial, learnt ways to handle that uncongeniality and finally ended up being empathetic to it; that too, despite your ultimate disregard of its metaphysical truth value.
But I tend to digress, since this missive is not about you, but me and the world I live in. I am neither a critic nor a scholar, and not even a formal student of any religion or tradition. I do not claim to have any solutions, neither short-term nor long-term. My motivation is merely to open up and reveal more of my true self and underlying societal being, that in my humble opinion, you do not seem to know too well.
by Brooks Riley
by Maniza Naqvi
Because that's a twitter-worthy bit of history right there: a place called Golimar and a condition called Golibaz. And what ties them together? Defense. The word Defense in Pakistan mean posh real estate developments. These are the places where the concept of equity and transparency and integrity go to die. These are the acres and acres of lands the Pakistan Military establishment awarded itself for its service to the country. The word military, in Pakistan, means absolute power, like the feudals of yesteryears–only more so, it is therefore the largest land owner in Pakistan. And the leasing off of these awarded lands from the military to civilians at fabulous prices for housing developments has been a profitable business. And that there is a bit of political economy—well the whole thing actually.
Professor Ayesha Jalal, the most excellent historian says ‘Pakistan's domestic dilemmas were inextricably linked to international conflicts (here). Besides the bullets and the blasts and the lies or because of them—business is booming for a few in Pakistan. Real estate–never better. Golf courses, fancy mosques, Yacht clubs, swimming pools, high rise apartments for the wealthy and shopping malls are expanding and flourishing. Residential developments for the rich are big business. Exports are off the charts for our textiles. Look at our IT sector. Could be even better if the fuel and electricity issues could be resolved. There are air-conditioned shopping malls and women work there as sales girls and even as security guards. Many of the sales girls and the security women working there wear hijabs. There's piped in music and azaan in the Malls along with the cheesy French fries and pizza. There are fast food courts. All classes of people mingle together in a clean air conditioned safe environment. Just like Dubai.
So what's the problem? Perween Rahman got shot and killed–murdered–for documenting land grabbing and trying to get legal rights documented for villagers who were in danger of being forcibly removed by land developers. The Supreme Court has ordered that her murderers be found by April 20, 2016. And there's Sabeen Mahmud shot and killed–murderd– for most probably talking about land grabbing too. In her murder case, a key witness and a key investigator in the case have both been killed since.
by Chris Bacas
Z was a generous and kind man. Still, in a diner, he could embarrass me to death. Last off the bus, joining us at a crowded table, he rubbed bleary eyes, grabbed utensils in his fists and banged them loudly. We lowered our heads while sugar packets and jelly cups scattered. Sometimes, we scattered. “Hungry bear….hung-gree bear…. HUNGRY BEAR!”
On a Mississippi river boat cruise, the widow of our namesake showed up. It was her right to join us, gratis, anytime. She treated her “employee” like an incompetent peon. Z bit his tongue, hard. On the last night, drunk and thoroughly addled, the widow felt emboldened to make a speech. Taking the microphone, she rambled about the greatness of her late husband (an undisputed fact) and his kindness (pure fantasy). Teary-eyed, she ended with: “..and…wherever he is, I know ALL the Angels are playing trombones” A devilish grin on his face, Z looked straight down, toward the River Lethe, and stomped his foot twice, saying loudly “you hear that,_______, you hear that?” Despite his indentured servitude, our leader was a colleague more than a boss. For that alone, I grew to love him. 
Under the pseudonym 'Benedetta Tripodi', Anouk Barberousse, Professor of Philosophy at the Université Paris Sorbonne, and Philippe Huneman, Research Director at the Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (CNRS), submitted to the on-line journal Badiou Studies a paper entitled “Ontology, Neutrality and the Strive for (non)Being-Queer”[1]. It was in answer to a call for papers on the topic “Towards a Badiousian Queer Feminism.” The paper was accepted after a process of peer-review, and published in the December 2015 issue of the journal. Yet the paper was written with the specific the aim of absolute meaninglessness. Neither of the true authors could begin to explain what it meant. In a text published on April 1 on the Carnet Zilsel, the authors of the hoax told their story, and explained their project and the goal of the exercise. After this revelation, Badiou Studies withdrew the paper from its website. However, the website Retraction Watch recorded this episode, with comments by both the journal as well as the authors of the fake paper. Here, we provide the context and the meaning of this hoax according to their authors.
The Benedetta Tripodi hoax aims at unravelling the legitimating strategy that consists in presenting Alain Badiou’s philosophy as the central current in metaphysics and political theory in France. Our analysis does not intend to refute Badiou’s theory once and for all, though it does aim, by unravelling some of its weaknesses, to call into question the consistency of the overall construction. By casting a doubt on the philosophical seriousness of Badiou's writings and of the commentaries of his admirers all over the world, it defeats the argument that would establish the eminency of its metaphysical value simply from its current intellectual fame.
If indeed the journal devoted to Badiou allows for the publication of a wholly meaningless paper –for whatever reasons: obliviousness, lack of critical sense, etc.– this reveals a genuine problem within the club of Badiou’s readers. On these grounds, it is clear that Badiou’s international reputation cannot justify his objective supremacy as a philosopher. On the contrary one has to question the nature of this reputation as well as its sociological grounds.
Segue
.
in shifts from bright to dim
there is no edge, no interim,
as also none exists from wide to slim
.
the sun comes up in orange blaze
night evaporates in such displays
lines are indiscernible in nights to days
.
when life from bud to apple goes
and succulence and color grows
earth is smoothly changing pose
.
breath segues in respiration
in which we find no separations
as intervals might mean cessation
.
birth moves on to what comes next
years tick off from more to less,
what follows then we have to guess
.
Jim Culleny
4/8/16
by Emrys Westacott
1) What features of jokes or amusing situations prompt us to laugh?
2) What psychological mechanism is called into play by the things we find amusing?
3) What evolutionary process led to the phenomenon of human laughter and our capacity for humor?
The first question has often been posed by thinkers seeking to identify the essence of humor, the thing that all amusing phenomena have in common. The second question sees humor as a possible avenue of insight into human nature. Philosophers and psychologists who have sought to understand humor and laughter have typically focused on (1) and (2). The third question has only been asked more recently as the popularity of evolutionist thinking has grown.
The evolutionary question is certainly fascinating and has produced some ingenious hypotheses. Perhaps the simplest view is that laughter originated in the cry of triumph let out by a victorious hunter or warrior. As Stephen Leacock puts it: “The savage who first cracked his enemy over the head with a tomahawk and shouted “Ha ha!” was the first humorist.
More subtle is the “false alarm” theory which notes that we typically laugh after some gradually built-up expectation is resolved in a non-threatening way. This happens, for instance, when we hear the punch line of a joke, when we are saved from danger, or when the monster threatening us with outstretched talons turns out to be a tickling monster. The theory suggests that laughter began as a specific kind of signal from one individual to others that what had seemed threatening was in fact harmless.
by Carl Pierer
“(…) [M]y own body is the primordial habit, the one that conditions all others and by which they can be understood. Its near presence and its invariable perspective are not a factual necessity, since factual necessity presupposes them. (…) I observe external objects with my body, I handle them, inspect them, and walk around them. But when it comes to my body, I never observe it itself. I would need a second body to be able to do so, which would itself be unobservable.” —Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception, p. 93)
In this quotation, Merleau-Ponty argues that the body cannot be thought as an object among others. If it could, then it would need to be given to us as an object of perception. But, unlike genuine objects of perception:
This essay will focus on (2.) to illustrate how thinking about its ‘near presence' and ‘inevitable perspective' reveals the inherited view to render our relation to the body ambiguous, one that fits neither that of a subject nor that of an object. This ambiguity will lead to the idea of the ‘primordial habit'. It would then be but a small step to show that the distinction is based on this primordial relation, yet to do so is beyond this essay.
by Brooks Riley
by Mathangi Krishnamurthy
Those lists I peruse a couple of times a week, “Ten Ways to be more Productive”, “Fifty Tips to Happiness”, and “The One Secret to finding your Purpose in Life”, all tell me to stop reading the newspaper. But this I cannot do. Long years ago, I was taught by well-meaning, upstanding, middle-class family members, that to be engaged in the business of the world, one must read the newspaper. And after all, if I am not nationalist enough to yell out praises at the nation morning, noon, and night, I can, at least, in good old Benedict Anderson fashion, read the damn newspaper.
Why, pray, you ask, are you so melancholic? This isn't on me, I plead. I am in the throes of PMS. Now the thing, of course, is that I may or may not be. Not that PMS is not real. But its symptoms, ranging across 200 or more possible sensations, and consequences, provide a wide ambit of possibilities. And within this ambit of possibilities, it feels as though my body gives me the permission to feel all those things that I keep tightly suppressed for worry of work, schedules, time, and money. So for a couple of days a month, I feel free. To not be cheerful, or happy, or certain, or plant my feet on the ground. I feel the freedom to be burdened, and uncomfortable. And this of course, is a gendered function; not a function of the female gender mind you, but a gendered function. For both, the inability and ability to show emotion, are deeply gendered propositions. The one that gives in to deeply felt traumas, and hysteria, and dislocations is weak, and not in control. But the one that is otherwise controlled, but feels compelled at key moments to give in to emotion is primal. And I'm in the throes of a primal PMS.
by Akim Reinhardt
You can fool all the people some of the time
and some of the people all the time,
but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
A French Protestant named Jacques Abbadie authored an early incarnation of the adage in 1684.
In 1754, the French editors Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert helped cement its popularity.
The phrase doesn't show up in American letters until some Prohibitionist politicians started using it in 1885. Twenty years after Lincoln died.
Until recently, I simply took at face value the common claim that these were Lincoln's words. It's not a very important issue, so what would push me to question it?
My decision to title this article.
A little healthy skepticism is all it took. After all, lots of famous quotes are misattributed to famous people, ergo the Yogi Berra line: “I really didn't say everything I said.” Which he really did say.
So before titling and publishing this essay, I looked up the maxim at a reputable site with citations, just to be sure. And presto: suddenly I am, at least in this regard, all of the people some of the time, and not some of the people all of the time.
You really don't want to be some of those people who get fooled all the time. Which brings us to Donald Trump.
He's very good at fooling people. At the moment, he's successfully fooling millions of Republican voters into thinking he'd be a good president generally, and more specifically, that if elected he could actually do many of the outlandish things he's claiming, like getting Mexico to pay for a wall.
Thus, the question lurks forebodingly: Are we living through “some of the time?”
Is this the moment when Donald Trump fools all of the people, or at least enough of the ones who call themselves Republicans, that he lands the GOP's presidential nomination?
Only in myth is death an illusion,
but there’s beauty in hope
and hope in myth
and myth in true profusion
…………….. —Angela DiSperanza
.
Grief to Myth
When they came to the tomb’s stone
it was set aside as if the occupant they’d loved
had gone to breakfast with friends
leaving a folded sheet for them
and some linen strips or not
and, as some say, a young man or an angel or two
who said, Your hope’s still in the world,
go find it. So their sadness left,
their grief became hope,
hope turned to myth
as word spread on myth’s wings
with love’s wind behind it
.
Jim Culleny
Easter, 2016
by Sarah Firisen
But yes, I’m glad I’m alive now. Even so, let’s not kid ourselves that the fight has been won, even if we end up with President Hillary Clinton come January. No matter where you look, women continue to be undervalued and underrepresented, and that’s the good end of the scale. When I say that there’s never been a safer, healthier and fairer time to be a woman, I really mean in the west. Women are still treated as chattel across much of Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and beyond. But even in the west, we have a long way to go. Even though women are now better educated than men, equally interested in the same careers and with almost as much experience in the workplace, a recent New York Times article cited the depressing fact that not only are women still earning about 87 cents on the dollar for the same job as men, but “when women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines — for the very same jobs that more men were doing before.” And it seems this is job agnostic and actually also works in the opposite direction: jobs pay more once they start being done by men “Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige.”
