Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

Hitler Loses it on Hearing that Modi may Become India’s PM

The day may come when Shri Narendra Modi becomes the PM of India. All of us who fear and dread — chief among them Antonia Maino & her minions such as Diggy Singh, Shashi, Sagarika, Rajdeep, Barkha — that awful day are in good company. It is being reported that dear old Adolf too would not like Modi to lead India. Oh the humanity. Here, take a look.

(The NY Times had a nice write up on the Hitler Meme back in Oct 2008. That clip is from the German movie “Downfall” of 2004.

In the original scene, Hitler is told that his reign of power is over; he then deafens himself to reality, eloquently savages everyone who cost him his dreams, vows revenge and finally resigns himself to private grief. The homemade spoofs plug into this transformation just about any hubristic entity that might come undone . . .

The meme of the parodies — the cultural kernel of them, the part that’s contagious and transmissible — has proved surprisingly hardy, almost unnervingly so. It seems that late-life Hitler can be made to speak for almost anyone in the midst of a crisis.

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Hitchens: Letters to a Young Contrarian

CHitchens “Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”

That’s Christopher Hitchens in Letters to a Young Contrarian.

I agree with Hitchens on many things, but not everything. Distrust compassion? Compassion and empathy are what make us human. I am sure that he is confusing two distinct emotions: perhaps he meant pity. Distrust pity; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Then there’s the very strange “Picture all experts as if they were mammals.” Actually, all experts are mammals. Unless of course that there are experts who are birds or reptiles. Anyway, the man was a brilliant polemicist, amazing writer and a debater par excellence. He was not a deep thinker. But then you cannot be reading & writing thousands of words a day, drinking scotch by the gallons, chain-smoking, debating, speaking at conferences, appearing on TV, making documentaries, reporting from war zones, teaching, traveling the world, promoting books — and also find the time and energy to think deeply. The bottom line: good guy who lived life king sized and mostly poured derision on the pretentious and the fake.

The Internet as the Great Truth-seeking Machine

rashomon Rashomon

After I watched the movie Argo, I had a one of those Rashomon moments, a realization that there is more to the story than was related to you. You may recall Rashomon (1950) introduced the master movie director Akira Kurosawa to the wider world. Set in medieval Japan, it is the story of the rape of a woman and subsequent mutually inconsistent accounts told about the incident by various eye-witnesses. According to Kurosawa, there are no particular truths, no definitive version of what actually happened at a particular time and place. What is recalled and later told depends on the observer and the particular vantage point.
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Shantanu Bhagwat: “On Narendra Modi and the hottest place in hell”

Shantanu Bhagwat has a post at his Reclaiming India blog at The Times of India website in which he states that Indians must not stand as neutral observers in the upcoming general elections because the UPA is “an existential threat to India” and therefore it must go. At the start of the post Shantanu recalls a recent conversation he had with Rajesh Jain. Rajesh made his point through a quote attributed to Dante. “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality”. Shantanu explains why he will not be neutral and is firmly committed to supporting Narendra Modi. Me too. Indeed, Shantanu quotes yours truly in his post. As you may know, I am not one to shy away from taking sides in the good fight.
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Nehru in his own words

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Nehru was Gandhi’s blue-eyed boy and based solely on that dubious distinction, became the first prime minister of India. The sentiment expressed by that quote is consistent with who Nehru apparently was. Some have asked what the source of that quote is. It is from Wikiquote on Nehru. The reference to that quote leads to a 404 error. Apparently that page no longer exists on the Pioneer website. Perhaps one of these days we will figure out the source and its authenticity. But I would not be surprised if much of what Nehru or any of the celebrated Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan’s inconvenient declarations have been removed from the public records. We have to remember that Congress governments have carefully controlled what the public gets to know. India, like all third-rate countries like North Korea and others, suffers from government censorship and control of the media. That makes the national motto — Satyameva Jayate: Truth Alone Prevails — an ironic parody of reality.

The Fenwick Weavers’ Village

USCA Convent
The Convent

In a previous post, I had promised to tell a story if anyone wanted to hear it about how cognitive overload can be detrimental to persuasion. As it happens, Sambaran Mitra and Sridhar Rao (see the comments to the post “How to Tell a Big Lie: Assertion, Repetition and Contagion“), and others emailed me to tell the story. So here it is.
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The Gir

Moonlit treesBack during high school days, Jim Corbett was a favorite author. The other day I was going through my notebooks and came across this bit. I don’t recall which book it is from but I have read it so many times that I know this bit by heart. Read slowly and deliberately, it transports you to the Gir at night.
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How to Tell a Big Lie: Assertion, Repetition & Contagion

Those who wield great influence on humanity unfailingly understand some truth about the nature of human collectives. It could not be otherwise. They are able to hold power over the masses because they know — consciously or not — how to manipulate them.

Every individual is unique. Any and all of his mental and physical attributes may lie anywhere along the spectrum of human variations, not duplicated in its entirety in any other person. The individual person is idiosyncratic and unpredictable in his actions. But the masses behave entirely predictably. Humans are rational but only boundedly so. Psychologists who study group behavior have identified biases and systematic deviations from rational behavior. Those who rule the masses have necessarily to be experts in mass psychology.
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Happy 4th of July

Thomas JEfferson We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
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The Man Who Planted Trees. In real life.

ManWhoPlantedTrees “The Man Who Planted Trees” is one of those inspiring stories that I have re-read dozens of time and I still get goosebumps while reading it.
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