Friday, August 30, 2019

WhoWas Tolstoy - A Short Para by Gorky

I am posting this short paragraph written about Tolstoy by Russian writer Gorky. All who don't know who was Tolstoy, can read it and know him, as long as they know who Gorky was.
"I once saw him as, perhaps, no one has ever seen him. I was walking over to him at Gaspra along the coast, and behind Yussupor’s estate, on the shore among the stones I saw his smallish, angular figure in a gray, crumpled, ragged suit and crumpled hat. He was sitting with his head on his hands, the wind blowing the silvery hairs of his beard through his fingers: he was looking into the distance out to sea, and the little greenish waves rolled up obediently to his feet and fondled them as they were telling something about themselves to the old magician. It was a day of sun and cloud, and the shadows of the clouds glided over the stones, and with the stones the old man grew now bright and now dark. The bowlders were large, riven by cracks and covered with smelly seaweed; there had been a high tide. He, too, seemed to me like an old stone come to life, who knows all the beginnings and the ends of things, who considers when and what will be the end of the stone, of the grasses of the earth, of the waters of the sea, and of the whole universe from the pebble to the sun. And the sea is part of his soul, and everything around him comes from him, out of him. In the musing motionlessness of the old man I felt something fateful, magical, something which went down into the darkness beneath him and stretched up like a search-light into the blue emptiness above the earth; as though it were he, his concentrated will, which was drawing the waves to him and repelling them, which was ruling the movements of cloud and shadow, which was stirring the stones to life. Suddenly, in a moment of madness, I felt, “It is possible, he will get up, wave his hand, and the sea will become solid and glassy, the stones will begin to move and cry out, everything around him will come to life, acquire a voice, and speak in their different voices of themselves, of him, against him.” I cannot express in words what I felt rather than thought at that moment; in my soul there was joy and fear, and then everything blended in one happy thought: “I am not an orphan on the earth, so long as this man lives on it.”
“Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy” By Maxim Gorky

Sunday, June 30, 2019

Anton Makarenko Quote "बच्चे मानवीय विचार का एक अभिन्न अंग हैं, ऐसा लगता है कि वे उस सीमा के निशान हैं, जिनसे अधिक नीचे कोई आदमी गिर नहीं सकता है"

"साहित्य के महारथियों के प्रति न्याय करने के लिये यह कहना होगा कि वे अपने पतित नायकों के प्रति क्रूर कभी नहीं रहे, इन लेखकों ने हमेशा ऐतिहासिक मानवतावाद के प्रतिनिधियों की हैसियत से अपनी बात कही, जो निसन्देह एक उपलब्धि है और मानवजाति का एक ्रआभूषण है। ऐसा प्रतीत होता है कि सारे अपराधों में विश्वासघात ही एक ऐसा अपराध है जिसे साहित्य में, ... कोई सहानुभूति नहीं मिली। शेष सभी (आपराधिक) मामलों में अपराधी या टुच्चे-बदमाशों के अन्धकारपूरित-अन्ताकरण में सदैव एक उजाला कोना, एक मरुद्यान होता है, जिसके प्रभाव की दया से नीच से नीचतम मनुष्य भी मनुष्य बने रहते हैं।

बहुधा, यह कोना अपने या किसी और के बच्चे के प्रति प्यार का कोना होता था। बच्चे मानवीय विचार का एक अभिन्न अंग हैं, ऐसा लगता है कि वे उस सीमा के निशान हैं, जिनसे अधिक नीचे कोई आदमी गिर नहीं सकता है। बच्चों के विरुद्ध अपराध मानवता की सीमा से नीचे है."
आन्तोन मकारेन्को

देश में घटित हो रहे बच्चों  के प्रति अपराध की घटनाओं और प्रशासन व राज्यसत्ता की आपराधिक लापरवाही के कारण बीमारी और कुपोषण से मर रहे बच्चों के बारे में संजीदगी से सोचें तो ऐसा लगता है कि वर्तमान समाज की मानवीयता नष्ट हो रही है। कुछ लोग उस सीमा तक असंवेदनसील हो चुके हैं कि उन्हे इंसान नहीं कहा जा सकता।

Monday, April 8, 2019

"This is not yet scientific age" – by Richard Feynman


Richard Feynman

This is not yet scientific age.
– by Richard Feynman
Reading Richard Feynman in the present age of blind faith is like lighting a candle in the dark room. It is irony of our times that I see a lot of my friends from science and engineering background who are marching like laymen in the shadow of blind faith. I would like to share few paragraphs that I find fascinating about science and reasoning in the writing of Feynman. Here are some quotable paragraphs from the article “The Value Of Science” by Feynman,
“.. in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.
“.. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question - to doubt - to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. Herein lies a responsibility to society.
“We are all sad when we think of the wondrous potentialities human beings seem to have, as contrasted with their small accomplishments. Again and again people have thought that we could do much better. Those of the past saw in the nightmare of their times a dream for the future. We, of their future, see that their dreams, in certain ways surpassed, have in many ways remained dreams. The hopes for the future today are, in good share, those of yesterday.
“If we take everything into account - not only what the ancients knew, but all of what we know today that they didn’t know - then I think we must frankly admit that we do not know. But, in admitting this, we have probably found the open channel. This is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas brought in - a trial-and-error system.
“.. openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.
“We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.
“It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.”
Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.


Stands at the sea,

wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe.

By Richard Feynman
Written in January 1988

Sunday, January 13, 2019

विश्व पुस्तक मेले (2019) में एक दिन

आज पूरा दिन पुस्तचक मेले में बिताने का मौका मिला। आज पुस्तक मेले में प्रगतिशील साहित्य, देश के इतिहास, विश्व की क्रान्तियों के बारे में बताने वाली किताबों की दुकानों के बाहर अनेक नौजवानों और बुजुर्गों की भीड़ दिख रही थी। और बड़ी तादाद में लोग प्रगतिशील साहित्य खरीद भी रहे थे। ऐसा साहित्य जो हमें समाज को देखने की एक वैज्ञानिक दृश्टिकोंण देता है और एक नये भविष्य के सपने देखने के लिये प्ररित करता है।
राजनीतिक विचारधारा को बिना समझे अनुसरण करने वाले फेसबुक के "पढ़े-लिखे" भक्तों की बातें पढ़ कर और देश की मध्यवर्गीय आबादी की राजनीतिक चेतना का पिछड़ा स्तर और और उनकी राजनीतिक कूपमण्डूकता को देख कर जो निराशा होती है उसकी तुलना में आज पुस्तक मेले में प्रगतिशील साहित्य के स्टालों पर नौजवानो-बुजुर्गों की जो भीड़ दिख रही थी वह एक नई आशा पैदा करती है। 
मोबाइल और कम्प्यूटर की स्क्रीन से नज़रें हटा कर बाहर नजर डालें तो समझ में आता है कि फेसबुक पर बैठ-कर तथ्यों को बिना जांचे परखे अनर्गल पोस्ट करने वाले लोगों की बड़ी संख्या वास्तव में उतनी बड़ी नहीं है, बस उनके पास समय और सुविधायें अधिक हैं, इसलिये सेसल मीडिया पर शायद उनकी उपस्थिति भी ज्यादा नज़र आती है।
पुस्तक मेले में प्रेमचन्द, गोर्की, शरतचन्द्र, तोलस्तोय, मार्क्स, लेनिन, विश्व इतिहास से लेकर वैज्ञानिक भौतिकवाद, और दर्शन तथा भारत के इतिहास से सम्बन्धित किताबों के कई स्टाल थे, और इन स्टालों पर लोगों की भीड़ इस बात का संकेत थी कि अभी भी प्रगतिशील साहित्य की माँग करने वाले युवाओं की संख्या काफी अधिक है, जो अँखें बन्द कर के तथ्यों का अनुसरण करने की बजाय उनकी जांच परख कर समाज की वर्तमान परिस्थितियों को समझना चाहते है।

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