-State shall constantly expand & hunt new capital
-Economic activity=revenue & prosperity
-Keep private sector out of critical areas
-Free trade & foreign goods benefit citizens
-Centralization & standardization
-Low taxes~20%
The Father of Economic thought
In an ideal world Adam Smith & Karl Marx should be compared to Kautilya. Not the other way around. This is not one man's ideas. This is most ancient statecraft & accumulated wisdom inherited from one of the three cradles of civilization-Sindhu-Saraswathy.
Why should India-and the world-be perpetually stuck in the violent 'Socialism vs Capitalism' paradigm? Why are the complexities & possibilities of the world restricted like this ? Why should the standards and definitions be immutably fixed in their colonial forms?
People are tempted to call Kautilya a capitalist. Our minds are conditioned to process everything ancient & native with anything colonial & alien. He was neither capitalist nor socialist. These are ideologies, not scientific truths. Kautilya was a pragmatist, not an ideologue
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"There is an unoriginated, uncompounded, unformed. Otherwise, O mendicants, there is no escape from the world of the originated, compounded and formed"
Udana VIII.3
Buddha realized his ethical precepts collapse without assuming an anchor, a Thing-in-Itself.
He thus endorsed the prevailing notions of dhamma & Karma almost in toto. Thus, he failed to make any distinction between faith & philosophy. But he left behind a powerful concept for his successors to build on-
"Bhava-nirodha nibbānaṃ"- "To withdraw from the Flux, is nirvana"
"All are impermanent-body, perception, thoughts & consciousness."
Buddha does not accept the "Self" elaborately described in the upanishads as the "Thing". Even 'consciousness' does not escape flux.
Then what is the "Thing-in-itself"?
Buddha answers only by Silence & Negations
Me: "Grandma! What is the rational reason for altruism? Evil is thriving in this world. Why should I be a good person? You have a responsibility to guide me!"
Grandma:"Mone, don't you want to go to heaven?"
😭I have to parent myself
The Equation of altruism
The same question troubled George Price, theoretical biologist, for years. Finally he discovered the mathematical basis of Altruism. In this simplified form it means- The greater the genetic distance, the lesser the chance of altruistic behavior.
When the equation's implications strike you, the ruthlessness of evolution & much of global human nastiness is clear
George, depressed, spent the rest of life BREAKING his own equation. He even brought beggars home.
Suicide
Good man Kind man Wise man
May the void embrace you
"If a thing is truly infinite, can it really have finite parts?
Are discrete points of infinity potentially infinite?"
Adi Shankara
730 CE
"Thank you Shankara. Mathematically I found that when the variable attains its maximum value, the differential vanishes"
Bhaskara II
1150 CE
Without doubt, modern math emerged from Indic philosophy. The world needs to accept this. Math is being taught without the foundation of *correct* philosophies that inspired it. Worse, it is taught with *wrong* church ideals & fake stories like falling apples & naked Archimedes.
I could detect a possible connection with my limited reading. If mathematicians & Sanskrit scholars work together, we can decipher the axiomatic rationale behind Bhaskara & Madhava. How did their minds work?
India has the potential to alter the philosophy & direction of Science
I am astonished by the Sanskrit scientific vocabulary, my heritage, I was denied.
"ജാലികാസിരവിന്യാസം, സമാന്തരസിരവിന്യാസം എന്നിവ തരം തിരിക്കുക"
I can't even understand what botanical concept that stands for! I never thought I'd be reading a middle school textbook this eagerly.
These students are doing more for preserving our heritage than most of us can ever do in a lifetime. The least we can do is strive to create a society where they are not discriminated or disadvantaged in any way.
Did Immanuel Kant(1724-1804) study/steal Indic philosophy?
-Distinct similarities with Chandrakirti(600 CE)
-His "categorical imperative" is niṣkāmakarma
-Vedic 'maya' & Kant's 'thing in itself'
-According to Hermann Jacobi(b 1850), Kant's 'Aesthetics' relies on Hindu treatises
-Kant talked of Indian culture in his lecture at königsberg university
-Helmuth Von Glasenapp's book 'Kant and religions of the east' has Indic religious passages from Kant's writings that no one knew of.
-His student Johann Fichte(1762-1814)published a book influenced by Advaita
What is the use of a philosopher who talks of high ethics if he practices none of it?
"Portuguese, Dutch and English have been, year after year, shipping home treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been left to watch it. Schlegel, Bopp, Humboldt etc are our East Indian sailors. Bonn and Munich(Universities) will be good factories"
-Georg Brandes
The west is drunk with a false notion that their 17th century philosophical explosion is an independent achievement. A neurotic & successful self-deception. But the truth is, from Kant to Nietzsche, Vedic-Buddhist philosophy and logic was ripped to shreds to make it happen.
Which is fine. Its wisdom after all. Take & share. Just as the Rishis and Bodhisattvas intended. But to drain the mind of a civilization for centuries, even as you colonize it into ruin, deny the intellectual debts while corrupting every page of its history with racist garbage...