Skip to main content

Buridan’s Ass


Source
Buridan’s Ass, named after 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan, is both hungry and thirsty.  It is placed midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water.  If the ass decides to exercise its free will, it will starve to death.  When it turns to the haystack, it can exercise its freedom to choose water first instead.  And when it turns to the water, its free will can interfere again.  Thus it can go on exercising its freedom of choice until it dies of starvation amid food and water.


Let’s take the example of Kashmir.  Indian patriots are supposedly in love with that piece of land.  Their love denies freedom to the people of the land to choose their own destiny.  Hence the civil war kind of situation in the state. 

The question is whether the Indian patriots are really motivated by love.  Or by greed for the land.  Or by nationalist pride.  Or plain greed, hatred or sheer perversion.

Love does not create the kind of situation that prevails in Kashmir.  Love liberates.  It does not enslave.  It cannot go about shooting unarmed people (unless stones are counted as arms) with machine guns.

The people of Kashmir are caught between freedom and love.  They love their homeland and they want freedom to live in that homeland.  Freedom from gau rakshaks, for example.  Freedom from people who impose themselves in the name of culture, religion, gods that include cows.

What’s the consequence?  Strife.

The ass needs both food and water.  Buridan’s Ass will not die of starvation except in philosophical discourses because the ass will choose one or the other and get on with life.  It needs both the hay and the water. 

We need both freedom and love.  Existence without one is a hypothetical conjecture fit for blogging discourses.  Denial of any will lead to destruction of the individual.  Or to strife.


Comments

  1. 'freedom to the people of the land to choose their own destiny..'?
    I beg to differ, Tom sir. That means the Indian government (irrespective of which political party runs it) should allow Khalistan, Bodoland, Tamil Liberation and the likes too to choose their own destiny?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Amit ji. If the people have strong reasons for their demands the govt must listen to them and find solutions. In fact, many of these are creations of the govt itself for political purposes. Khalistan was Indira Gandhi's political agenda. Bodoland is based on genuine grievances that need be addressed. Tamil liberation was Sri Lanka's problem, not ours. Kashmir problem has been aggravated by Muslim bashing in India. It has now gone out of control... Time to ask whether we can find amicable solutions and stop hatred-based policies.

      Delete
  2. I can get what you are saying, the freedom and love are equally important and a choice from two equally weighted options presents and confounds indecision.

    But love towards homeland and freedom from intolerance of a particular section are two things which are not equally weighted. If they have more love for their homeland than their need of freedom, then a solution to come across is a possibility. And I am betting that they do have more love towards their homeland. It would be scary to think otherwise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The notion of freedom assumes some worthwhile significance only in some socio-political context. That's why I brought in the Kashmir example. In individual affairs, the issue is rather insignificant.

      In the case of Kashmir, the people have been alienated from the majoritarian nationalism and the solution lies first of all in ridding ourselves of that attitude and the ideology which drives it. But that's only part of the story. Pakistan has played a terribly nasty game in that region which has muddled the game way too far for any solution that is acceptable to both sides. So we will go on asserting that Kashmir is ours and even POK is ours. And they will go on fighting for the same pieces of land. So the fight is the only option. Might is right. Will it lead to nuclear might and its rightness? What will be the fate of the people on both sides of the border then?

      Delete
  3. Love and freedom co-exist. Love can not be in a place that takes your freedom away. In that situation, there will only be fear. Politics of possession has neither love nor freedom, only greed, and desire to dominate.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Dopamine

Fiction Mathai went to the kitchen and picked up a glass. The TV was screening a program called Ask the Doctor . “Dopamine is a sort of hormone that gives us a feeling of happiness or pleasure,” the doc said. “But the problem with it is that it makes us want more of the same thing. You feel happy with one drink and you obviously want more of it. More drink means more happiness…” That’s when Mathai went to pick up his glass and the brandy bottle. It was only morning still. Annamma, his wife, had gone to school as usual to teach Gen Z, an intractable generation. Mathai had retired from a cooperative bank where he was manager in the last few years of his service. Now, as a retired man, he took to watching the TV. It will be more correct to say that he took to flicking channels. He wanted entertainment, but the films and serial programs failed to make sense to him, let alone entertain. The news channels were more entertaining. Our politicians are like the clowns in a circus, he thought...

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...