Thinking beyond horizons

The human world has never been quite pleasant. There is much misery in it, some of which is our own creation. Natural calamities and pandemics may be beyond our control. But what we create should be within our control. Our thinking should change first of all if our world is to change. That is why a title like Unconventional Thoughts catches our attention. The first thing I noticed about this book by fellow blogger Sreevas Munnoolam is its title: Ten Unconventional Pieces of Thoughts.

This is a short book of just ten chapters and 30-odd pages. The ten topics are disparate with probably only one thing in common between them: the author’s intent to be unconventional.

The first topic to be discussed is alchemy. Though a lot of genuine scientists and researchers devoted much time and energy to alchemy, nothing much came of it. Worse, charlatans used alchemy for swindling gullible people by promising to give them gold in place of baser metals. Sreevas takes a look at some of the genuine researchers from the ancient days to our own Lawrence M Principe. The author rightly concludes that today’s alchemy is no more about the Philosopher’s Stone or immortality but about transmuting people’s thoughts for commercial purposes. There is a subtle suggestion that we could use the technique for enhancing people’s spiritual thinking. That is certainly an unconventional approach to spirituality.

Time and time-travel are Sreevas’s next topics. There is something “mischievous and mysterious” about time. Time is not an absolute and light has a role to play in its existence. Or does it exist only in our minds? Anyway, as the author says, “For us, time is our life and in this time, we exist. Everything else, only the time will tell.”

Sreevas then moves on to some strange quests in our literature like those in the books of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. We love mysteries, he concludes. We do, undoubtedly.

Homo Sapiens have been around for a brief period in the history of the earth and they have done much harm already to the planet, as Yuval Yuval Noah Harari says in his famous book, Sapiens. Sreevas echoes Harari’s concerns.

Déjà vu is the topic of chapter 5. There is an element of mystery in every experience of déjà vu, though the experience is common. Xenophobia follows in the next chapter and the author links it with racism which he admonishes readers to shun like the plague.

The strange charm of conspiracy theories becomes the subject of chapter 7. It is quite natural that the Illuminati succeeds that topic in the next chapter. While the déjà vu and xenophobia are discussed rather casually and briefly, the history of the Illuminati is more exhaustive.

Brevity is a drawback in chapter 9 too which discusses subjectivity. Sreevas chooses to discuss philosophy here focusing on Descartes and Kant. The problem is that philosophers like them are not amenable to such short discussions.

The book concludes with a discussion on ‘Zeitgeist Philosophy: an explanation for the rise of heroes throughout ages’. Once again, we are left wishing for more because the author does not go beyond a superficial look at the topic.

On the whole, Sreevas has made a successful attempt to look at some unconventional topics, to think beyond the normal horizons. The book would have aroused much greater interest in readers if the topics were discussed in some detail.

PS. This review is part of the Ebook Carnival 2020 programme initiated by The Blogchatter. The above book can be downloaded here. 

My book in this series, Great Books for Great Thoughts, is available here.