u/NoSecond4091

When you look back at childhood comic strips, they seem to make so much more sense than they did when you first read them. There is something profoundly beautiful about the way a child receives the world. 😊

One person makes a gentle, philosophical remark about time and mortality… how we won’t be around to see a small tree grow. It is the kind of statement that carries the weight of experience, the quiet and humble acceptance of a limited lifespan.

The other hears something entirely different. He hears a logistical announcement. “Where are we going?”

This is the mind before the ego has fully taken over. The ego loves to make everything about itself. It personalizes. It assumes every statement is a reference to its own journey. But here, there is no such assumption. There is no anxiety… only curiosity. The listener simply receives.
When we look back at such moments as adults, they make a different kind of sense. They remind us of a time when we were not yet the center of our own universe. The child’s mind is porous, unguarded. It does not immediately filter everything through “What does this mean for ME?”

As we grow older, the ego thickens. Every conversation becomes a mirror. Every statement is scanned for hidden implications about our worth, our future, our security. We lose the ability to hear things as they are. We are always adding “ME ME ME ME !!!” to the equation.

If you observe carefully, this interaction is a beautiful teaching ~ Innocence is the capacity to let the world be what it is, without immediately making it about you. And perhaps, in looking back, we are being invited to return to that state… even just for a moment… and simply observe a tree, a comment, and maybe our life, without asking, “Where are we going?”

The above photograph captures one of the famous portraits of the leading intellectual figure of twentieth-century existentialism “Jean-Paul Sartre” wandering casually through the streets of Venice. This image was taken during mid-1960s shortly after he declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964. He was the first person to voluntarily reject such a prestigious award at that time. This was not the first time when Sartre rejected any institutionalised honour but he actually had a lifelong pattern of rejecting official state recognitions.

Now, one of the main reasons why Sartre declined to take the Nobel Prize because, he didn’t want himself to be institutionalised or transformed by the official honours. According to him, “a writer must refuse to be turned into an institution. He felt that receiving a title like "Nobel Prize winner" would add an objective weight to his name that he did not earn through his words alone..” Sartre argued that his readers should only be influenced by the power of his written words, not by the prestige or pressure of an external prize.

The photograph frames the French philosopher in deep solitary reflection lost in the self’s music detached momentarily with the outer world, at the backdrop of historic Italian aesthetic scenery bereft of any traces of sadness or hurt in his face caused as a result of rejecting such a prestigious honour. Now this is not just some random captured famous ‘existential photography’ to be admired blindly, but this actually tells us a lot about the nature of true philosophy and writing. Sometimes it’s not just ‘only’ about the heavily recognised prestige or pressure of authority from where a good work or writing comes, but theres a lot more behind that. It never depends truly on the educational degree or institutionalised fame of the speaker from where the philosophy is coming.. the source of that writing can’t be that cheap. Although, its obviously possible that later the writer does get associated with lots of famous awards and authorities, but that will be a coincidence caused as a natural outflow of his work’s impact and not necessarily as a mandatory phenomenon.

Sartre’s thought process reveals a lot about this source. It reveals very evidently via his own personality that this very source of that powerful innocent writing can only come when the writer is truly flowing with the whole existence.. just like the photograph is depicting a completely free personality of a ‘human being’ chilling and walking like any other normal living creature of his species and not some ‘special authorised person’ walking down in the streets with the label of his educational and institutional achievements. Maybe that kind of free union with the existence is needed for that deep quality of existential philosophy to flow out in paper.

The existence is simple and beautiful.. it only demands for a surrender. But, we distort that surrender taking secure shelters under our establishments and pride and fall short of that union forever. We start claiming ourselves as ‘special’ as if we are the only one who is there for the rest of species to be looked at and admired. But, the main question is: what’s the point of being special and preaching to follow specialisations if you yourself loose that free flowing union with life’s existence. Existence can’t be judged.. or predefined to grant only few rules as priorities. Existence is free flowing unless we intervene and restrict the flow from happening.

▪️Maybe we need to ask ourselves that: “Why have we become so un-lively that we choose to admire and listen only those words which come from high powered institutions and authorities? If we do that, then are we listening actually to those words or just following some authority blindly in lust of walking behind power?”

The participants are in full preparation mode. 💪

From planning to practicing, the energy and enthusiasm are contagious. 🌟

Can't wait to see everyone bring their best on stage! 💪🏻

so Elon Musk recently said AI is gonna surpass human intelligence within 5 years. and look, dude builds rockets, builds EVs, genuinely impressive stuff, no hate there

but this claim made me pause. been following Acharya Prashant for a while now (dude's an IIT-IIM grad turned philosophy teacher, has a following in the tens of millions at this point) and one thing that stuck with me from his work is that intelligence and intellect are not the same word wearing different clothes

intellect is the ability to solve, calculate, predict, optimize. that's what machines are getting scary good at. intelligence in the deeper sense is about awareness, about knowing the self, about being able to see your own conditioning. that's not a compute problem, that's a completely different domain

so when someone says AI will "surpass human intelligence" what's actually meant is AI will out-calculate us. sure, maybe. but that's a different claim entirely, and mixing the two up makes for a good headline, not a good argument

not trying to dunk on the guy, dude's brilliant in his field. it's just, you don't ask a rocket scientist to explain consciousness.

Elon Musk be like, move fast and break epistemology

meme attached