Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Applying present day morality to someone from the distant past is, of course, unfair. Unfortunately, that’s just human nature. But nowadays, it’s even worse, says Andrew Sullivan: “Discrediting a thinker’s broad worldview or legacy by discovering some statement from the distant past revealing him or her to be a bigot by today’s standards is a depressing degeneration in our intellectual life.” As an example, he cites Picasso: “Picasso was morally monstrous; but his painting is transcendent. And if you cannot disentangle the two, you are attacking a key liberal principle: that ideas and works of art should be considered on their merits, and not on the virtue or vice of their proponents.” Other such examples include “excoriating Thomas Jefferson as a bigot and hypocrite, David Hume as a vicious racist, Immanuel Kant of all people for white supremacism”. What’s next, asks Sullivan, should we throw out Plato and Aristotle because hey, they supported slavery?   Sullivan wonde...

The famous “runaway trolley problem” goes like this: an out of control trolley on tracks is hurtling down towards 5 people and will certainly kill them; would you be OK killing some 6 th person to save the five? Robert Sapolsky in his best-selling book, Behave , analyzes it at length with more and more variations. First, it matters how the scenario is phrased: 1)       If the option is to pull a lever that diverts the trolley onto a different track where the 6 th person is standing, 70 to 90% would do it; 2)      But if the option is to push the 6 th person physically into the path of the trolley, 70 to 90% would not do it. As Sapolsky says: “The same numerical trade-off, but utterly different decisions.” So is the key difference is that we don’t want to get our hands dirty (literally)? They changed the option from pushing physically to push with a pole. No difference: people were just as reluctant as the push physicall...

The Brits and the Americans usually talk contemptuously about the French. I guess the Brits feel that way due to all the wars they’ve fought with France over centuries. And the Americans feel the French surrendered without a fight to the Nazis and then had to be “saved” by the Yankees. Subsequent events reinforced the animosity: in the 1970’s, Charles de Gaulle said he didn’t trust the dollar and wanted to convert all of France’s dollars into gold. And the French, unlike the Brits, refused to be America’s poodle in the Iraq war. In India, (for most of us) our opinion of France is largely based on Paris and the Eiffel Tower. And if you like arts and paintings, there’s no place like the Louvre. Plus, the French language sounds sexy. What’s not to like about the French? Other than their reluctance to speak in English… Among the Europeans, I feel the French are the least hypocritical and moralistic nation. They do what they want to do. And couldn’t care less about what others do....