Skip to main content

Simplicity



Profound truths are often as simple as Einstein’s famous formula, E=mc2 or Benjamin Disraeli’s aphorism, “Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age regret.” Beneath the apparent simplicity lies immense profundity. That every mass is a terrific bundle of energy is at once simple and profound. The growth from youth’s blunders to the regrets of old age is also simple and profound.

   Most people refuse to understand the simplicity as well as profundity of truths that matter. They like to add colours and flavours to truths in order to make them more bearable or more attractive (apparently) or to wield them as weapons for self-aggrandisement. Then we get all sorts of religions and creeds and isms. And the concomitant struggles and strife.

   “The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts,” said Alfred North Whitehead. “We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.’”

   Unless we understand the profundity that lies hidden beneath the apparent simplicity, we are likely to fall into many traps like power games. Do people really want profundity? That’s an interesting question. The answer is, more often than not, No. People want power or something that makes them feel good about themselves. Consequently there is neither simplicity nor profundity.  Instead there are falsehoods masquerading as truths.

   We are part of a gargantuan procession of masquerades.  Anyone who refuses to play along becomes a caricature labelled as antinational or something like that. It’s a funny world. Who should I thank for all this fun?

PS. Written for In(di)spire Edition 224: #simplicity


Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. Well analyzed the topic and brought out the reality in the world thru' this Post.. Thanks for sharing the Post, Matheikal!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Sunita Williams and Narendra Modi

An Indian artist celebrating Sunita Williams' return Prime Minister Modi has extended a cordial invitation to Sunita Williams. In a Letter dated 1 Mar 2025, Modi expressed India’s pride in her achievements and extended the invitation. “After your return, we are looking forward to seeing you in India. It will be a pleasure for India to host one of its most illustrious daughters.” Will Ms Williams accept the invitation? I have serious reservations. She won’t, in all probability. Her cousin was allegedly murdered by Modi’s men during the investigation of the 2002 Gujarat riots. The young generation in India are probably not aware of the 2002 riots in Gujarat orchestrated by Modi and his party for political mileage. In the last few years, whenever I raised the question in my classes, hardly one or two students out of the 200-odd ones were faintly aware of the riots. Inhuman violence was unleashed in Gujarat against the Muslim community after some Hindu pilgrims were attacked on...

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

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