Review: The “Sleepless” Wit of A.D. Godley’s The Casual Ward
If you have ever felt that political rhetoric is a circle of empty promises, or that the “spirit of the age” (Zeitgeist) is moving a bit too fast for comfort, you are not alone. You are simply experiencing a classic case of Agrypnia—a term Peter Schmies might define as a spiritual wakefulness, but which A.D. Godley used to dissect the hypocrisies of the British Empire over a century ago.
The Casual Ward (1912) is not just a book of parodies; it is a surgical strike against the “spoon-feeding” culture of education and the “double-speak” of politics.
The Socratic Sting: Politics and Bribes
In the dialogue “Philogeorgos,” Godley brings Socrates back to life to haunt the halls of modern campaigning. He exposes the thin line between a “bribe” and a “promise.” When a wine-seller offers free drinks for votes, it’s a scandal. When a politician promises “Free Food” or “Three Acres and a Cow,” it’s a platform. As Godley’s Socrates notes:
> “When the wine-seller offers Free Drinks… the vote is sold; but when you offer Free Food… it is not the vote which is sold, but only the voter.”
>
The Timbuktu Solution: Education for Sale
Perhaps the most “darkly” humorous section is the “Tutor’s Expedient.” Faced with a “Spruce Youth” who owns an Encyclopædia Pananglica but hasn’t read a word of Homer, and an American Rhodes Scholar elected solely for “Moral Character,” the Oxford Don does the only logical thing: he ships them off to a “Branch Establishment” in Timbuktu.
Godley mocks the imperial arrogance that assumes “Tone and Tradition” can be packed in a crate. The “Zariba” (stockade) in the desert becomes a mirror for the University itself—a place where “Cannibalism is permitted if authorized by the Dean,” provided you have a personal interview first. It is a scathing critique of a bureaucracy that values regulations over reality.
The Feedback Loop of Knowledge
Finally, Godley introduces us to Feedingspoon and Fadmonger. Through these characters, we see the death of original thought. Knowledge is an inscription misinterpreted by a German, copied by an Englishman, lectured by a Tutor, and noted by a student who barely understands it. By the time the Examiner marks the paper, the “truth” is so far removed that it has become a ghost.
Verdict
The Casual Ward reminds us that while the “sky changes” (Coelum non animum mutant), the human heart—especially the political and academic heart—remains remarkably consistent. Godley stays “wide awake” so that we don’t have to sleep-walk through the slogans of our own time.
🖋️ About the Author: A.D. Godley (1856–1925)
Alfred Denis Godley was a man of two worlds. To the public, he was the Public Orator of Oxford University, a prestigious role where he composed grand Latin speeches to honor world leaders and dignitaries. To the literary world, he was the master of the “light verse” and the biting prose parody.
* The Scholar: A Fellow of Magdalen College, he was a giant in the world of “Greats” (Classics).
* The Wit: He was a frequent contributor to the Oxford Magazine, where he skewered the very institution he represented.
* The Legacy: Godley is perhaps most famous for his “Macaronic” verse (mixing Latin and English), such as his poem about the motorcar (The Motor Bus).
* The “Agrypnos“: Godley’s work is defined by a refusal to be bored or fooled. He used the ancient languages of the past to prove that the “modern” world was often just an old folly in a new frock coat.
H. P. Lovecraft and Walter John Held: Irony From Pages of UAPA
THE SPECTATOR for June-July, 1914, though somewhat trite in title, is the first number of a magazine notable for its quality. Walter John Held is without doubt one of the most enterprising youths who have ever joined the ranks of the association, though his views on paid subscriptions and advertisements show his still imperfect acquisition of the true amateur spirit. Mr. Held mistakes commercial progress for artistic development, believing that the aim of every amateur in his ascent toward professional authorship is to write remunerative matter. He therefore considers a publisher’s advancement to be best shown in ability to extract an odd penny now and then from a few subscribers who really subscribe only out of courtesy. We wish that Mr. Held might come to consider amateur journalism in its higher aspects; as a medium for improvement in literature and taste; an aid to the cultivation of the art for its own sake in the manner of gentlemen, not of cheap tradesmen. The selection of commercial prosperity as a goal will ruin any true literary progress, and dull the artistic aspiration of the student as soon as his mercenary instincts shall have been satisfied. Besides, there is really no sound business principle in the so-called “sale” of little papers. No youth could ever found or sustain a real magazine of substantial price and more than nominal circulation. The various ten-cents-a-year journals which some[19] “amateurs” try to edit are no logical steps toward actually professional publishing. The latter comes only after literary skill has been attained, and literary skill must at first be developed without regard for immediate monetary profit.
[ This passage reflects his views on amateur journalism as compared to professional]
This passage is a foundational text for understanding the philosophy of the Amateur Journalism movement, and it is quintessential H.P. Lovecraft. At its core, it outlines a sharp, elitist divide between “Art for Art’s Sake” and “Commercialism.”
The “Gentleman” vs. The “Tradesman”
The reviewer (Lovecraft) views the UAPA not as a business school, but as a literary gymnasium. His critique of Walter John Held is based on a few key aristocratic ideals:
* The Amateur Spirit: To Lovecraft, “Amateur” does not mean “unskilled”; it means “motivated by love” (from the Latin amator). He believes that once you introduce money—even an “odd penny”—you corrupt the purity of the work.
* The Aristocracy of Letters: He uses the phrase “in the manner of gentlemen, not of cheap tradesmen.” This reflects an 18th-century mindset where writing for money was seen as slightly “vulgar.” A gentleman writes to improve his “literary taste” and “intellectual vigor,” not to fill a ledger.
* The Fallacy of the “Ten-Cent” Paper: He argues that these tiny subscription fees are a farce. Since no amateur can actually run a profitable magazine, trying to charge for it is just a “logical error.” He believes one should develop skill first, and only when that skill is perfected should one look toward the professional, remunerative world.
Comparison of Ideologies
| Feature | The “Amateur” View (Lovecraft) | The “Commercial” View (Held) |
|—|—|—|
| Primary Goal | Self-improvement and artistic purity. | Growth, circulation, and revenue. |
| Success Metric | Refinement of prose and “rhetorical taste.” | Ability to attract paid subscribers. |
| Writing Style | Classical, formal, and elevated. | Pragmatic and “remunerative.” |
| Final Objective | Perfection of the craft before entering the world. | Using the amateur press as a business launchpad. |
Historical Irony
There is a profound irony in this passage. Lovecraft spent much of his later life struggling in extreme poverty, often refusing to “sully” his work for commercial appeal, yet he spent years as a “ghostwriter” and revisionist for hire—effectively becoming the “tradesman” he warned Held against, just to survive.
Walter John Held, on the other hand, was following the “American Dream” model of the early 20th century: using a hobby to learn the mechanics of the marketplace.
In a twist of fate that aligns perfectly with the reviewer’s debate over “commercialism,” Walter John Held did not become a famous literary figure, but he arguably “made it big” in the very world the critic (H.P. Lovecraft) warned him against: business and industry.
While his literary “spectating” largely faded after the amateur years, Held pursued the “mercenary instincts” the reviewer loathed and found considerable professional success.
His Career Beyond Amateur Journalism
The “enterprising youth” described in the 1914 review transitioned into the professional world exactly as his early focus on advertisements and subscriptions suggested he would.
* Advertising & Marketing: Walter John Held moved into the corporate sector, eventually becoming a notable executive. He spent a significant portion of his career with Standard Oil of California (now Chevron).
* The “Tradesman” Triumphs: Far from being “ruined” by commercial prosperity, Held became a respected expert in business correspondence and office management. He even authored professional books and articles on these topics, such as The Great Task of Making the Office Pay.
* Literary Footprint: His name survives in the literary world today primarily because of the critique you shared. Because H.P. Lovecraft was the one who “roasted” him in the UAPA’s Department of Public Criticism, Held is immortalized as the pragmatic foil to Lovecraft’s high-minded “gentlemanly” ideals.
The Irony
The irony is twofold:
* Lovecraft, who championed “Art for Art’s sake” and detested writing for money, died in poverty with his genius largely unrecognized.
* Held, who was mocked for wanting to “extract an odd penny,” achieved the stability and professional status that the “commercial” mindset he was criticized for usually aims to secure.
Proposed Roads To Freedom Bertrand Russel
Patriotism is willing to die for foolish reasons.
“The problem of Africa is, of course, a part of the wider problems of Imperialism, but it is that part in which the application of Socialist principles is most difficult. In regard to Asia, and more particularly in regard to India and Persia, the application of principles is clear in theory though difficult in political practice. The obstacles to self-government which exist in Africa do not exist in the same measure in Asia. What stands in the way of freedom of Asiatic populations is not their lack of intelligence, but only their lack of military prowess, which makes them an easy prey to our lust for dominion. This lust would probably be in temporary abeyance on the morrow of a Socialist revolution, and at such a moment a new departure in Asiatic policy might be taken with permanently beneficial results. I do not mean, of course, that we should force upon India that form of democratic government which we have developed for our own needs. I mean rather that we should leave India to choose its own form of government, its own manner of education and its own type of civilization. India has an ancient tradition, very different from that of Western Europe, a tradition highly valued by educated Hindoos, but not loved by our schools and colleges. The Hindoo Nationalist feels that his country has a type of culture containing elements of value that are absent, or much less marked, in the West; he wishes to be free to preserve this, and desires political freedom for such reasons rather than for those that would most naturally appeal to an Englishman in the same subject position. The belief of the European in his own Kultur tends to be fanatical and ruthless, and for this reason, as much as for any other, the independence of extra-European civilization is of real importance to the world, for it is not by a dead uniformity that the world as a whole is most enriched.”-The Proposed Roads To Freedom, Chapter 6th, International Relations, Bertrand Russel
This passage from Proposed Roads to Freedom (1918) is a remarkable testament to Bertrand Russell’s foresight. Written at a time when the British Empire was still at its height, Russell argues for a “new departure” in policy that honors the “independence of extra-European civilization.”
The Core Argument: Pluralism vs. Uniformity
Russell’s main point is that India’s value to the world lies in its difference.
The Critique of “Kultur”: He criticizes the European belief that their specific culture is universal or superior. He warns that a “dead uniformity” would impoverish the world.
Self-Determination: He argues that India shouldn’t just be free, but free to choose its own type of civilization—one that might not look like British democracy or education.
The Obstacle: He explicitly states that India’s lack of freedom isn’t due to a “lack of intelligence,” but rather a “lack of military prowess” that leaves it vulnerable to European “lust for dominion.”
I started reading this book a few weeks ago. It analysed Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism after giving a brief introduction of Marx, Bakunin and Kropotkin. It discusses Work and Pay in the fourth chapter. Science and Art under Socialism is discussed in chapter seventh. The concluding chapter is: The World As it Could be Made.
Title: Proposed Roads to Freedom
Author: Bertrand Russell
Release date: October 1, 1996 [eBook #690]
Most recently updated: February 9, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Charles Keller using OmniPage Professional OCR software donated by Caere Corporation
I chose this Project Gutenberg work to read because I wanted to read something from Bertrand Russel. I read a few essays on Philosophy first, then I read “The Problem Of China,” then I picked this book. When I had just begun to attend college I joined The British Library in Bhopal to improve my English Vocabulary and Comprehension. A History of Western Philosophy, which I misquoted as “The History of Western Philosophy” on many platforms, left a lasting impact on my mind. I recently discovered that Russel was awarded a Nobel Prize in literature in 1950 and that book played a great role in it. Bertrand Russel, despite being born in an aristocratic family and earning a title of third Earl found himself in impoverished circumstances and ended up in prison multiple times. He continued to read for eight hours and wrote four hours everyday for those six months. Other prison inmates used to sweep his room during that time because of his privileged background. The reason why he ended up in a prison was because his views were not harmonious with the British government of his time. In the old age he was again sent to prison just for a few days because of his activism for World Peace. He lived up to a mature age of 97.
“The above proposition is occasionally useful.”
The Two “Principias”
Isaac Newton (1687): Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).
Russell & Whitehead (1910–1913): Principia Mathematica.
Why the similar name?
Russell and Whitehead chose this title as a deliberate homage (and a bit of a bold statement).
Establishing Authority: Newton’s Principia is arguably the most important book in the history of science because it used mathematics to explain the physical laws of the universe (gravity, motion).
The New Frontier: Russell and Whitehead wanted their book to do for Logic what Newton’s did for Physics. They weren’t just writing a math book; they were trying to prove that all of mathematics could be derived from pure logic.
The “Foundations”: By calling it Principia (Principles), they were signaling that they were digging down to the very bedrock of human thought.
The Famous “1 + 1 = 2”
While Newton explained why the planets move, Russell and Whitehead spent over 360 pages just getting to the point where they could definitively prove that 1 + 1 = 2.
In the margins of that famous proof, they added a dry, witty comment:
The first quote above discusses the situation in Africa and India at the time this book was being published(1918.) It was the time when the first world war was about to end and India was still far from freedom. This gives us a unique insight into the situation from the viewpoint of a British humanitarian philosopher.
Sowing of wild oats stops
1. I remember Dr. Win Wenger, Ph D and his book The Einstein Factor, in which forty years of age was given as some kind of benchmark. I don’t know if ‘life begins at forty or ends.’ I don’t know if sowing of wild oats stops completely at forty.
2. It was this statement “sowing of wild oats…” in the context of “Genetic Study of Geniuses” by Catherine M. Cox quoted by Win that was somewhat difficult to interpret for me when I was reading this book. I asked Arun Sipani who was living in the same building I was living in. He interpreted it for me. It was 22 years ago.
3. This year seemed the most difficult in comparison to all previous years. It seemed more difficult even compared to COVID 19 pandemic years peak. I visited the village where my parents were working when my primary education began. I remember the room where my mother wrote first couple of English language words and drew couple of pictures to illustrate them. I visited the village after two decades. The banyan tree has disappeared. Its descendant is there. Some structures have remained, which sometimes raise doubt if I was at the same place.
4. The journey was difficult. It was as difficult as events preceding the journey were. Then I started walking frequently to escape the daily grind of household. It wasn’t easy out there, yet it seemed it was some source of change, some comfort, perhaps finding new job opportunity to change my lifestyle.
5. I started working in a cafe after meeting some acquaintances from pandemic years. Young entrepreneurs. As I started working I found out how much had changed. Being a regular patron of their services was completely different from being an employee. I thought I deserved respect, I thought I deserved fair treatment from educated enterpreneurs. I even dedicated a weblog to it.
6. The work gradually got hectic. I needed to pay for commute and it exceeded the earning. Almost no balance left. It was merely being employed for the sake of being employed. Their business was faltering. It seemed as if odds were against us. Against me.
7. It wasn’t a wrong interpretation. Soon after quitting the only job which might have meant regular source of livelihood my father who recently got his retirement from a long career in government service met with a tragic accident and got admitted into a hospital.
8. After a few months I was supposed to be admitted into the same hospital with a similar procedure as if it was due for a long time. Prior to that I had to undergo injuries multiple times. Injuries which seemed strange and inexplicable at times and took longer to heal than before.
9. My mother got transferred to a new work place which only aggravated the situation. There was a birth in the extended family.
10. It rained like never before and roofs were leaking. It was a consistent source of concern without any escape.
11. The tuition jobs were also lost as students disappeared on some excuse or the other. I was supposed to get psychiatric treatment which only aggravated the situation. Students didn’t even pay fees and I kept hearing rumors.
12. Under medication or by design I went through worst kind of conditioning which made me re-evaluate my entire lifestyle. It wasn’t polite. It was as abusive as it gets. It might even qualify as description of purgatory or hell. Though I have already used these for similar upheavals before.
13. I was trying to make sense of the trauma and disaster. Trying to find out if there was an acute famine which necessitates giving up on all sources of comfort. There were no clues. People were keeping up appearances like before. There was no news of a world wide disaster. I thought maybe it was the end for me and after a few days of fasting I would get Sallekhana ( Jainism), Paryopvesh (Hinduism) or Euthanasia ( European English term). It might also have made sense if it was consistent. I kept working on Free Rice website which was supported by United Nations World Food Program. I was working on a difficult project which was supposed to be completed by the end of this year had there not been as many tragedies within a single year as happened in this year or in the last few years.
14. I was supposed to keep working and following the new code of conduct without going to previous diet or comfort level.
15. I finally got over the forty years mark without getting to see the end. The clearly defined end meant not having to see similar identities or not going through similar events all over again. That criteria was clear even during the acceptance of all the trauma. It didn’t get fulfilled. It wasn’t a typical Sallekhana or Euthanasia.
Son of Gilchrist and Buddhist Priest!
Yesterday, I spent some time on Rafaello Palandri’s Weblog who’s a Buddhist Priest and fond of McGilchrist whose name is new to me. My feedback on his article stirred some counters by him. Here’s a link https://raffaellopalandri.wordpress.com/author/rpalandri/
to his weblog if you want to visit our conversation. I was at work and didn’t have access to quiet personal computer to describe in detail what might sound like frivolous banter to some. The article with title beginning with “Neurological Frameworks” is the one where I showcase internal martial arts to Palandri.
Though it might sound like ad hominem: Buddhism is atheistic as far as I know. A Buddhist Priest is a paradox. Who does he intermediate to if there’s no absolute authority and plethora of gods admitted by Shakyamuni are no better than loan sharks. Within the brackets are excerpts from Palandri’s article and below them my comments which as per “blogging etiquettes” taught in WordPress blogging 101 alumni course suit better to such articles rather than wasting someone’s comments trail by hijacking it. I used to engage in such conversations when I first started accessing internet in 2005. Time and degeneration : how it gives weightage to your excursions and rambling ( look what I did again in the name of Dharma! }]
[Within this framework, attention operates not merely as a spotlight but as an architectonic force that configures the landscape of perception itself. Attentional mechanisms are asymmetrically distributed across cerebral hemispheres, and herein lies the crucial insight advanced by Iain McGilchrist in The Master and His Emissary. The left hemisphere tends toward focused, linear, abstract, and decontextualized attention—useful for manipulation and categorization. Conversely, the right hemisphere offers a holistic, contextual, and embodied mode of awareness—one more attuned to relational depth and novelty.]
1.Left Right Hemispheres
The human brain is divided into two hemispheres, the left and the right, each controlling opposite sides of the body and processing different types of information. The left hemisphere is typically associated with language, logic, and analytical thinking, while the right hemisphere is linked to creativity, spatial awareness, and intuition.
Research has shown that both hemispheres of the brain are used equally and work together, rather than one being dominant over the other. A study involving 1,000 participants found no evidence of overall left or right brain dominance.
While specific functions may be more prominent in one hemisphere, such as language processing being more dominant in the left hemisphere, both sides of the brain are involved in most tasks.
The idea that people can be classified as left-brained or right-brained is a popular myth. The brain’s hemispheres do have different specializations, but they function as a cohesive unit, and the brain uses both sides for most activities.
In summary, while the left and right hemispheres have distinct roles, they work together to perform various cognitive functions, and there is no evidence to support the notion of overall left or right brain dominance.
[ An AI generated answer. Please verify the critical facts. ]
[ Attention shapes what is salient. Neural networks—especially those involving the Default Mode Network, Salience Network, and Central Executive Network—compete and collaborate to stabilize our sense of what is real. The implications are staggering: even so-called “objective reality” is filtered through a nexus of selective neural processes.
The attentional bias of the left hemisphere can lead to a reductive world of fragmented parts, while the right’s open stance supports integrative, experiential meaning. Thus, reality becomes neither entirely subjective nor objective, but an emergent product of dynamic neural modeling. ]
2. That’s a weak premise and a lot of presupposition when experiments as suggested upthread have shown that there’s very little proof to validate this left right brain dominance. To take an ongoing research as a solid substance to create a cult like master and emissary is just that : another cult.
[ From Kant’s transcendental idealism—where space, time, and causality are categories of mind—to Husserl’s phenomenology, which sought to bracket the world and return to the structures of consciousness itself, the history of philosophy reveals a recurring awareness: that we see not the world itself, but a world as mediated through us. ]
3. As stated elsewhere on WordPress Husserl and Heidegger are a lot of pseudo Philosophy.
[ Heidegger‘s notion of being-in-the-world (Dasein) further expands this paradigm by dissolving the subject-object dichotomy: reality is disclosed through modes of attunement or moods—existential ]
4. Moods? Hahaha, maybe Heidegger personally suffered from insomnia and bipolar disorders. Why make a philosophy out of it? Why not.
[equivalents to cognitive frames. Language, too, is not a mere vessel of expression but the horizon of disclosure. Wittgenstein‘s later philosophy articulates this insight through his concept of language games, where meaning arises not from intrinsic semantics but from rule-bound uses within forms of life.]
5. Wittegenstein ok because Russel said so. And Russel won Nobel Peace Prize. And Rajneesh Osho said they were brilliant as a professor and pupil.
[ To draw from McGilchrist‘s profound synthesis:
“The model we choose to use to understand something determines what we find.”
Iain McGilchrist
This deceptively simple statement captures the core of both neuroscientific and philosophical insights: our conceptual apparatuses do not neutrally reflect a pre-given reality but construct and delimit what counts as reality in the first place. The very framing of a question prefigures its answer.]
6. UG Krishnamurthy used it ad infinitum ad absurdum ad nauseum. And even Socratic dialogues point to the same. I neither consider it profound nor synthesis. All Indian schools of Philosophy use this question and answer model to promote conversation until it rests in silence.
[ When Descartes adopted the method of doubt, he unearthed a mechanistic dualism; when Spinoza emphasized immanence and necessity, he found a pantheistic monism.
What they saw was shaped by how they looked. ]
7. Yes, similar to Son of Gilchrist and UG and others.
[ CULTURAL-HISTORICAL CONSEQUENCES: EPOCHAL SHIFTS IN ATTENTIONAL MODES
Historical epochs are undergirded by dominant modes of attention and cognitive orientation. ]
8. Alright.
[ The axial age, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the postmodern era each instantiated not only new ideologies but also new cognitive dispositions. The Enlightenment, for example, privileged the left-hemispheric mode: clarity, abstraction, atomism, and control. Cartesian rationalism and Newtonian physics reinforced a mechanistic ontology that demanded manipulation over communion.
In contrast, indigenous epistemologies and oral traditions have often preserved right-hemispheric modes: integrative, relational, cyclical, and embodied understandings of reality. These systems were not less “rational” but engaged with the world through a different cognitive ethos—one that saw knowledge as something lived, not just represented.]
9. Argument does seem profound in favor of those traditions but if they were enough you wouldn’t be using these technologies. Similarly, when you start defending your essays against some perceived counter arguments like mine you use what you call language, logic or left brain technologies instead of letting it rest in silence and resolving itself in the way of Dao or Wu-Wei.
[ Modernity’s legacy—via industrialization, digitization, and algorithmic governance—has exacerbated left-hemispheric dominance. Surveillance capitalism, behavioral nudging, and quantified self-metrics disembed us from qualitative immediacy and immerse us in abstracted feedback loops. Cultural attention is increasingly transactional, externalized, and fragmentary. What becomes real is what can be measured, categorized, and commodified. ]
10. It’s only when we try to criticize the record keeping in a more accurate format that we start looking at drawbacks of technology. I have two other suggestions to offer:
Look at it as work in progress where a very small fragment raises caution. To explain it: chaos is not allowed but a fragment of a whole which is working fine. After all that’s essence of mantra “Om Mani payme hum” or “Padme Hum”
As an aside: etymology of money comes from some Latin word for mint but this Buddhist mantra clearly recalls mani or shining head of a naga or lover of reality or elephant or enlightened jewel being equivalent to wealth which is translated as material wealth or currency in the modern context.
This is merely a conjecture, an imaginary suggestion which is only supported by intuitive art: similar to Nick Bostrum’s Simulation Hypothesis: all this technology is merely past signatures of a very highly evolved civilization which has been in existence since forever. Most of our species as homosapiens or maybe our entire ecosystems including animals and plants etc are being tested for next stage.
I think Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon and Pan-audicon ( I propose that for all senses) help you with surveillance capitalism because surveyors are also being surveyed which brings you to consciousness looking back at itself or transcendental opulence.
[ This cognitive colonization has led to what McGilchrist calls a “hall of mirrors”,Stoi where abstraction reflects abstraction, and we become strangers to the texture of lived experience. Reclaiming our right-hemispheric capacities thus becomes not only a psychological imperative but a cultural resistance to epistemic impoverishment. ]
11. I think no matter how much you try these models point to the biological organism of man-model or Purusha Sukta of Vedas. Is it really freedom to associate yourself with any form no matter how superior it sounds. Left brain, right brain, balance, then what? Lizards love their forms as much as you love yours .
[ STOIC INTERPRETATIONS: ATTENTION AS RATIONAL ASSENT AND INNER FREEDOM
In Stoicism, the shaping of reality is an ethical and epistemological act.
The Stoics, particularly Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, emphasize that what disturbs us is not events themselves but our judgments about them. This Stoic axiom—“It is not things themselves that trouble us, but our opinions about things”—anticipates cognitive-behavioral insights and aligns with the notion that attention and interpretative frameworks co-construct reality.
The Stoic practice of προαίρεσις / prohairesis (moral will) is precisely the active modulation of one’s attention and judgment. For the Stoics, the λόγος / logos—universal reason—pervades all existence, and wisdom lies in aligning one’s rational faculties with this cosmic order. ]
13. Even with failed attempts as in trial and error it happens. Even sustained attention without palpable action is action. Stoicism or Shakyamuni Buddha’s fable of sending a disciple Anand to bring water from a puddle which was dirty as a test of patience to bring about clarity point towards same thing.
[ Attention becomes a disciplined gaze that filters out externals and focuses on what is within our control. Thus, perception is always already moralized: how we see is how we live. ]
14. Even machines which carry out their tasks properly do the same. You use this art of attention eventually to teach holistic health or natural state way of living. Machines are capable of multitasking and brilliantly devoting themselves to the task at hand. I don’t see how attention is special in human subjects or meditation practitioners who experience Samadhi because earlier the same energy was devoted to multitasking and seemed insufficient to specific profound tasks of finding solutions to great problems.
[ This attention to internal framing allows for psychological resilience and freedom. In a world governed by fate, our one sovereignty lies in our evaluative stance. The Stoics did not deny reality; they reconfigured it by refusing to attend to it on terms dictated by impulse, fear, or desire. Their cognitive framework was one of serene realism, affirming the structure of the cosmos while modulating the self’s relation to it.]
15. I understand it as a practical everyday reality. It’s similar to an old man who is slow to react compared to a young man who has no profundity. Sometimes a combination works. But as a machine this is only being unable to cope with puzzling evolution or reality at everyday existence where I translate this introversion or rest as sleep or death or looking back at oneself but without anything external to it.
[ BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVES: MINDFULNESS, EMPTINESS, AND NON-DUAL AWARENESS
In Buddhism, particularly within the Madhyamaka and Zen traditions, the very notion of an independent, self-existing reality is deconstructed.
All phenomena are empty (शून्य / śūnya)—not in the sense of non-existence, but as devoid of inherent, independent essence. Dependent origination (प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद / pratītyasamutpāda) reveals that things arise in interdependence; thus, what we perceive is conditioned by our mental formations (संस्कार / saṃskāra), attention or mental efforts (मनसिकार / manasikāra), and वासना / vāsanā or संस्कार / samskara, the karmic imprints.
The role of attention is paramount.
In Satipaṭṭhāna (the Four Foundations of Mindfulness), mindfulness is not mere awareness but a precise, ethical, and transformative act of seeing things as they are—without clinging or aversion. This disciplined attention reveals the constructed nature of experience. We do not perceive a pre-given world; we enact a world through craving, aversion, and ignorance.
Zen further radicalizes this by emphasizing non-conceptual awareness (wu-nien, 無念)—a mode of cognition that precedes linguistic and dualistic structuring. Reality, in its suchness (tathātā), can be seen only when the delusive constructs of the discriminating mind are set aside. ]
16. Yes, repeated emphasis on attention actually borders on obsessive compulsive disorder as if it wasn’t enough to save one’s life already. A type of paranoia. Since attention actually is distributed and maintained via internal feedback loops associated with environmental awareness which goes beyond mere personal training it’s not really useful to strain your nevers beyond a certain point.
[ Here, the “model” that McGilchrist refers to is precisely what must be suspended to awaken to unmediated presence.
Thus, in Buddhism, cognitive frameworks are both the veil and the gateway.]
17. Veils and gateways. Nice models.
[ Deluded perception traps us in samsara; rightly attuned attention leads to awakening. By transforming how we attend—through meditation, ethical conduct, and wisdom—we transform the world, not by altering phenomena, but by dissolving the illusory reifications that bind us.]
18. And the machine runs smoothly. Utilitarian machine. Irony.
[ The Ethical Imperative of Cognitive Framing
To understand that our modes of attention shape the world is not a call to solipsism but an invitation to epistemic responsibility.
19. It is to realize that reality is co-authored by our neural dispositions, philosophical premises, historical inheritances, and moral attitudes. Whether through the scientific models we choose, the philosophical systems we inhabit, or the ethical practices we undertake, we are perpetually writing the world into being.
Reclaiming right-hemispheric attention, embracing mindful presence, cultivating rational judgment, and engaging cultural memory are not separate endeavors. They are harmonics of the same deeper insight: that how we attend is what we become.
Indeed, as McGilchrist reminds us, the model determines the find, not merely epistemologically, but ontologically. The real is not out there, awaiting discovery, but here, emerging within the very act of attention.]
20. Neither here nor there. Funny that a model which talks of transcendental wisdom sticks to the biological basis of consciousness which is still unsubstituted as the foundation of reality.
– to be continued…
21. Since this article might garner some attention from Buddhists it might explain how seemingly overnight post COVID Wikipedia had Hinduism with more number of followers compared to Buddhism. I haven’t come across anyone who admitted that let alone refuting that in the pre COVID years Buddhism was the third most followed religion after Christianity and Islam.
A Hero!
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
- I was learning to read. A library of books appeared in a government school in 1990-1991. This box had books from Eklavya publications New Delhi.
- The books had a lasting impact on my subconscious. After coming of age, when I questioned my spiritual enlightenment I looked back at that particular batch of books. It included Chakmak magazine. Not to mention syllabus books.
- Television, radio and local dialect shaped my world view.
- As usually happens to young children I was fascinated by martial arts in Bollywood movies and TV.
- I wanted to be a hero. A filmy hero who was able to defend great causes by being one many army. A saviour.
- Even that was possible as grandpa once told. There was a switch behind the medium size television set we had. That would have let me land in Bombay Bollywood to be a hero.
- Heroes were of many types. Delhi Doordarshan’s sentimental appeal to sacrifice yourself for Matrix, Patrix etc wasn’t really balanced by Bertrand Russell’s “patriotism is willing to die for foolish reasons.” I came across that only after college.
- Therefore, heroes who were warriors or army men brainwashed to die for their countries to receive accolades like Paramveer Chakra or Ashok Chakra.
- If someone thinks I mean they don’t value anything: it’s not so. Yet, in a world view there might not be a need for Jacob’s Ladder or Grave of Fireflies.
- If parents convinced me to not be a warrior I wanted to be at least a policeman. Most of the Bollywood movies which aren’t brainy show policemen as actual action heroes. Administrative officers, Kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucracy, banking, media, politicians, mafia, priesthood and the rest don’t appear in the budding psyche of young children.
- Prompts are merely an excuse to rant. I am deleting old articles to create space for new. Reason is simple: though new WordPress websites are available it’s more difficult to get subscribers or to actually buy as much space as there was a decade ago. I have contemplated about using another platform for blogging but this one seems to be most comfortable at the moment.
- This year I visited that village where people barely recognised me as I was visiting after college days. Even then I was visiting with my father who was a teacher there for almost a decade. The librarian then offered to help me with those books I had read and touched as a young child of five or six.
- They were a treasure. I looked up Eklavya publications archives online but they were different books. It disappointed me like most things online do.
- Look at Spotify or other music apps. Even though classics are available they often come with deluge of compulsory advertisements. As much as home ministry mixing devotional chants with abusive words at such a refined level that a novice gets baffled.
- Art of livings chanting of Om Namah Shivay was mixed with home minister’s swear words during announcement of a new law which was popularised as a meme. Who’s going to protect Dharma?
- And how’s Dharma going to protect its protectors if all you have are life insurance corporations agents who compel you to sign papers without insuring basic life sustenance needs. Are farmers still dying because of loans or bad weather?
- I have definitely come a long way. Doctor Win Wenger PhD suggested that sowing of wild oats stops when you turn forty. I think I convinced myself that I was way past forty. What a relief. I got another job which actually paid instead of labouring for an NGO which actually had a king who was no different from Gujrati kings who only compelled you to surrender your imagined properties to them by showcasing great virtue on occassions which suited them.
- To be or not to be what you wanted to be when you were five is more an analysis of world view created by literature at that time than individual psyche which might have held certain promises for stakeholders who were investing into that world or crop.
- This verse:
- कल भात आएगा,
एक पतीला;
गरम गरम,
और गीला गीला! - Sums up the make up of this five year old’s mind by providence which wanted him to realise his birth in a commune or orphanage where he only talks to a postbox 📬.
- The postbox 📫 takes up role of singer of this refrain which means:
- Tomorrow there will be rice;
- One big bowl full of rice;
- It will be hot steamy rice;
- It will be wet hot steamy rice like you prefer.
- Young, naked five year old crying its heart out to a postbox where crops might have failed. Parents might have abandoned the child. Satellite cameras might have been capturing images to project them onto a Truman Show like grand reality.
- Subconscious of child had questions like those asked by Nachiketa to Yama or those in the Seventh Seal if you would. Upanishads or Vedanta. They’re all answered in due course.
World Wide Words!
What’s something most people don’t understand?
- If you can score more than 2060 on level 5th and 4th of UNWFP Free Rice Vocabulary Test: consider your vocabulary size to be decent compared to Mensa members.
- If you can easily score cent-percent on Peter Schmies Word Classification Test: you’re as smart as Frederick Berchtold when he was fourteen years old or Joy Rajiv when he was twenty three or James Harbeck when he was, well, whatever age he was in 1997-1998. Or you might be as smart as I am in 2025.
- If you know all the words in Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words or in the glossary of Sesquiotica: you might be in the league of extraordinary gentlemen like Language Log authors.
- Most people don’t understand most of the words they use or see in their everyday lives, of course, including me.
- Most people don’t understand that there’s nothing to understand.
- Why not I, me and myself.
- Traction.
- How do I convince myself of relative rarity of words or currency?
I Want To Work More on UNWFP Free Rice Vocabulary Test database
What do you wish you could do more every day?
Puneet Saxena
What is one word that describes you?
- When I was a friend of Brijgopal and Rakesh, I used to see Puneet as a carefree young boy in our class.
- Rakesh left the group and Puneet joined it.
- We used to roam around carefree. Unit tests in Maria Mata Convent School Chhatarpur were both a blessing and a curse. I had scored three marks out of twenty five, he had scored zero. Miss Anuja Rathore punished us both with a bamboo stick on palms of our hands.
- Puneet moved on when I joined Kuldeep Shukla to help improve my scores on unit tests.
- Puneet was well built, athletic and later developed fondness for memorizing entire songs like “Aati kyaa khandaala.” Had amazing memory which he seldom employed to memorize lessons.
- We used to play a rugby like tournament during breaks. Teams were fond of having Puneet on their sides because such players ensured victory. The game was a superhit.
- I was trying to develop a martial arts school which was obviously super flop because we had to wash our school dress, not just Rugby but also fights between giants like Avadhesh and Puneet used to render our shirts torn. We were not well respected at our homes.
- He never liked his nick name given to him by our maths teacher “Punnee-laal Parathe Waale” as he frequently used to bring paraathe in his tiffin.
- There was an author named Padumlaal Punnalaal Bakshi in our syllabus, therefore some of our classmates used to annoy him with such names.
- When we met decades afterwards during COVID years: he again insisted on how annoyed he was with such nicknames. His actual nickname was Robbie.
- He used to fervently tell about how he used to burn RGPV copies when review requests used to come. He wasn’t fond of making money. He said he loved his friends but he wasn’t fond of listening to advise. He had a big ego and he was an achiever too.
- I still remember how he came to my house once after school bells with other friends to collect a notebook. Notebook belonged to a girl. The notebooks were cross distributed by our maths teacher who wanted to promote Mohabattein in a monastery.
- Puneet, along with Avadhesh and Abhishek ( Rajpoot) ensured that I wasn’t focussing on studies. They used to create nuisances all the times.
- When Puneet met me during COVID we discussed eschatology. His house was one of the first few houses in that colony when we used to play during childhood. He showcased some strange device in 2021-22 to me, some hidden project he was working on. Needless to say the project was way ahead of my understanding of technology at that time.
- Yesterday I heard that Puneet is no more.
Open Book Free Rice Vocabulary Test Level 5th
- About 7 errors.
- When level 5th is exhausted I should try level 4th.
- I was quite confident with levels 1, 2 and 3 until January.
- After doing Peter Schmies Word Classification Test I started using notebook and pen to overcome difficulties posed by smartphone hacking etc which renders revision almost impossible for archaic words.
- I project completion of level 5th before March.
- Let’s see.
Hagen- Poiseuille Laminar Flow Hypothesis!
1. Georges Pouillet’s student Jean-Léonard Marie Poiseuille was a French physiologist, and the unit of measurement “poise” in fluid dynamics is named after him.
2. Haga comes from Old Norse. Hagen is a surname from Germanic tribes.
3. Hagen-Poiseuille Tesis for laminar flow suggests that there can be liquids flowing through parallel channels without mixing with eachother or without disturbance.
4. Among other researchers Peter Schmid( Schmies) was working with during 1993-2025 there was one gentleman from Sweden who had first national ranking. His own national ranking was 13th.
5. Issac Asimov researched into AI.
Don’t Speak More Than Automattic Guild Lets You Speak No Matter How Many Awards Your Weblog Won in 2015. Not Your Uncle’s Automattic!
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
- Be Yourself, everyone else is taken.
- The quote is by Oscar Wilde.
- Nobody can replace you, even if your copies are assembled en-masse in a Nick Bostrum/ Tesla factory.
- With that said, if having referenced three authorities wasn’t enough: I would like to know how does it actually feel to know all of the words in the UNWFP Free Rice Vocabulary Test database. How does it feel to know all of the words in spelling bee contests. How does it feel to be Sir Donald Bradman or James Harbeck or Founder of a Test like Joint Entrance Examination for engineering students in India or To be founder of Harvard or Massachusetts or To be the founder of United States of America.
- I have pretty good idea by now how it feels to be Gandhi, Kabeer or Prahlaad. I don’t want to feel that.
- I might like to feel superior to others but I can’t dispense Mensa Membership to every student I meet.
- You would really love to know what it feels like to be a Charles Babbage, JRR Tolkein, Or
- Why all these pundits got trapped here trying to undo curses within the lands of haunted dolls.
- They were merely curious. Curiousity killed the cats. Dogs took over. They were Sirius.
- Then, they found more than they were looking for, almost 1408 of Stephen King.
- They resolved to find their Team Cobbs who already had bugs like Mal in their designs.
- What does it feel like to be Amish Alvi or Amish Tripathi: Immortals of Meluha fame? I don’t want to know.
- Where there’s mining: there are reptiles. There are nightmares. Petroleum industries. Oceans.
- It’s like motivating people to be administrators, not in so many words, an idea repeated in Bollywood, Hollywood, Tollywood etc ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad absurdum.
- How does it feel to be Khaleel Zibraan for a day?
- How does it feel to not worry about progenies or ancestors or hungry ghosts?
- How does it feel like to have committed absolutely no sins?
- How does it feel to be.
- How does it feel to not care anymore for celebrities?
- How does it feel?
- Why?
- Who?
- Reductio Ad Absurdum.
24.
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Dancing light of grace 