Intellisage

Money and the Man

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Let me begin with a trick question: What do you think is the most important word in this wise saying from Somerset Maugham?

Money is the sixth sense that allows you to enjoy the other five.

Did you like most people, say it was “enjoy”? Did you as a reaction to the whole sentence also think: “ah yes, that’s true!” If you have answered yes to both questions read on, and find out where you really stand!Read More

Culture: Reunifying Rumi

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There are many versions of the legendary first encounter between Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi and his spiritual mentor Shams of Tabriz. Most describe the moment as Rumi, the religious scholar, sitting by a pond, immersed in his scholarly reading, when Shams, a stranger to him, comes by and asks him what he is doing. “You will not understand,” Rumi is reported to have replied, upon which Shams throws all of Rumi’s books in the pond. But the books spring back up dry, defying the laws of physics. At this point, Shams is reported to have said, “But you do not understand.”Read More

Reading George Saunders

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Imagine sitting in a comfortable air-conditioned inter-city bus, and knowing that for two hours you can immerse yourself in a book you have wanted to read for a while. You read the first two pages…and stop. You are irritated by something: you wish to pay attention to the spell-binding prose; you stop reading.Read More

Thinking, Fast and Slow

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Books on thinking have a special attraction to all reflective people who are aware that things to think about are always in plenty but methods of how to think about them are not. This book has been praised justly I think as having ‘a life time’s worth of wisdom’.

Luckily I read the Introduction first. Although the usual habit of dipping into a book and reading random passages is quite strong, Kahneman in the opening pages specifies the two systems by which our brain processes material for decision and action. He calls them System 1 and System 2.They are like two characters that are like a thread woven into the fabric of our thinking. I found this explanation most illuminating and sobering. Illuminating in making me see the categories of thinking I use systemically. Sobering in revealing to me that I was not as rational and as clear a thinker as I thought I was!

While written by an economist, the book is very honest about the limitations of economics and is a very good companion to be read with The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely.

Reviewed on 26 April, 2015

A Confirmed Vision

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In learning and studying Islam, all self-respecting individuals are confronted with a problem which bothers them without exception. It is a matter of common observation that whenever we show and present the green passport on any of the airports of the world in the first world, anywhere in the developed world, a curious look comes on the face of the immigration officer. If that look were to have words it would be something like: here comes the fundamentalist, the backward person, the drug pusher, the person who is not in the world, who doesn’t understand the values of modern civilized living! This is an uneducated, uncivilized person. That is the kind of feedback we often get and what the look says. One feels deeply hurt and humiliated. How has come this to happen? It wasn’t always like this.Read More

LIVING LIKE KINGS AND HATING IT: THE DILEMMAS OF LIVING IN PAKISTAN VS ABROAD

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The whole issue of migration to a different land is a class issue. We are not talking about the great mass of illiterate and semi-literate people who have dreams: we are talking about those who have made it and are professionals of some sort… those who have as it were the best of both worlds and still choose to live abroad. Whatever their inner compulsions, I for one must share with you my own dilemmas, my own peculiar reasons for staying home.

There is a grave tension in the minds of all the parents who have college age children. So total is the collapse of the College system that one wonders at the thick skinned ness of those who do not know or pretend that they do not know of the utter worthless ness of the two years of what laughingly passes for studies in Classes 11 and 12 in our country.Read More