This will be a pinned thread to capture some of my video and text based outreach on Dharmic topics in recent past (2020 onwards). Putting this here just for ease of sharing and ready reference.

Yes, i didn't know why authors like him are not central in designing humanities courses.

Naipaul on Bullock cart 🤔

Wasn't aware. But this gets a free pass as creative freedom. Not surprising. Global phenomenon. There are approved oppressor categories who deserve contempt all the time and there are approved oppressed categories that always deserve support and sympathy. Creative people take liberties in narrating stories to suit this Oppressor-Oppressed framing aesthetics all the time.

Savarna means "Oppressor-Outsider" this is what TM Krishna gaaru is saying. I don't know about whom you are talking about, but with this kind of self-flagellating self-loathing Oppressor-Oppressed mindset likes of you need to be kept out from any sane serious conversations on all the topics mentioned below 😂

A.K.Saran is a very good thinker on these matters. Sad we don't have (m)any like him now. This is the kind of humanities work that should've happened in India.

Very dangerous books. Not recommended. Haven't read them all cover to cover but aware of the contents of most. They challenge the prevailing status quo.

Reposting the reply incase if anyone likes such books. Here are some of the books which i liked around modern physiological human behavior/decision making bridging tradition and modernity. I read most of them and also added some todos here. Will add more. Ignore typos. 1. Man and Nature by Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2. The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. I quoted this before multiple times and ongoing favorite. Also his interviews. 3. The Disappearance of Rituals & The Scent of Time -- by byung chul han Check the thread in my profile. 4. The Crisis of the Modern World by rene gueon 5. Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth - another recent fav. Enough on my tl. 6. The Technological Society by Jacqueos ellul 7. The Unsettling of America & The Essential Wendell Berry - long time favs. 8. The Bugbear of Literacy by AnandaK Coomaraswamy. I haven't read it fully. You can also pick up his widely available book of essays. Another book in my todo. The Need for Roots by Simone Weil.

We need to find good examples of traditional knowledge system based innovation. How are new ideas, methods and technologies spawned and accepted or rejected in an Indian knowledge systems based setup? How was it done in the past? It wasn't like everything existed all the time and nothing new ever got created? It was also not like anything and everything got accepted? Different cultures seemed to be tuned towards different ways of living? These questions need to be wrestled with a bit I think. Otherwise we give this xerox machine from bullock cart era vibes when we talk about Indian knowledge systems. Giving an impression of replication of tried and tested from pre-colonial era.

Vanishing kothars: The Himalayan granaries that once secured food for generations downtoearth.org.in/food/vani…

🤣

Saw a post here criticising Jayanthi Natarajan and Jairam Ramesh for stalling development in the name of environmental permission raj In Congress era. Aware of that criticism. But I don't want to also jump ship to the other extreme position to say all environmentalism is either doomsday alarmism or anti national activism that wants to pull India down etc. We need to find some balance. Yes there is the alarmism aspect. Not like world has collapsed from early 60s environmentalism days. There is that 'end is near' alarmism aspect which needs to be avoided. But that shouldn't mean dismissing all concerns enmasse. Take Indian cities for examples. Choking aspects are real. Groundwater depletion is real. Traffic issues due to high density private vehicle only thinking is real. Waste management concerns and dumpyard pyramid concerns are real. Industrial waste issues are real. We can't just dismiss any and every form of environmental activism as a anti development conspiracy. Yes TN Sterlite like activism is a problem as it just makes us import dependent and burns more money over time. But concerns on indiscriminate damming of rivers shouldn't be dismissed in same vein as a anti development conspiracy. Recently BJP government itself agreed to put limits on building more hydroelectric power projects on Ganga. Limits aren't a bad thing. Governance also isn't a bad thing. We need to figure out the balance. Everything isn't about do nothing and starve extremism or let India not progress negativity.

There is a town in Zapopan, Mexico where large scale textile installations show traditional weaving techniques from nearby artisan communities 📹Fotografiayas

సిటీ మొత్తానికి రెండు మూడంతస్ధుల రోడ్లేయమని నేనెప్పుదో చెప్పా... నామాటెవరైనా వింటేగా.......

😳

జై ఫ్లైఓవరాబాద్..

Question to Grok: Review this from Wendell Berry lens Grok output: From Wendell Berry’s lens, this post celebrates the very industrial mindset he spent decades critiquing.The X post responds to a video of an autonomous robot from Tri Robotics patrolling fields at night with UV light to kill pathogens and pests—chemical-free, “at scale.” The author calls it a “nightmare” for degrowth ecologists, arguing that entrepreneurs and markets deliver real environmental solutions through innovation and abundance, not constraints or “renunciation.” It accuses political ecology of wanting power and control over society rather than genuine problem-solving, framing technology and progress as the path to plenty without sacrifice. Wendell Berry—a Kentucky farmer, poet, essayist, and agrarian thinker—would likely find parts of this argument superficially appealing but ultimately misguided. He would see it as another example of “technological solutionism” that papers over deeper failures in industrial agriculture. Berry’s Core Lens on Agriculture and Technology Berry’s worldview centers on place, stewardship, limits, and human-scale relationships with the land:Farming is not primarily an industrial process of maximizing output but a cultural and ecological art of caring for a specific piece of ground over generations. It requires intimate local knowledge, diversity (polycultures, rotations, integration of plants and animals), and building soil health through biological processes rather than external inputs. Industrial agriculture—large-scale monocultures, heavy mechanization, chemical or now robotic interventions, corporate control, and abstraction of land into a commodity—simplifies ecosystems, destroys soil, erodes biodiversity, pollutes water, and dismantles rural communities. Problems created by one layer of industrial “progress” (e.g., pest explosions in monocultures) are then “solved” by the next layer of technology. Technology is not neutral. Berry is skeptical of devices and systems that replace human presence, labor, and judgment with machines, especially when they enable greater scale and abstraction. He defended the original Luddites not as anti-progress but as people asserting that certain values (community, meaningful work, ecological health) rightly take precedence over unchecked industrialization. He repeatedly warned against the belief that quantitative gains (more yield, fewer chemicals via robots) automatically equal net improvement when soil loss, social disintegration, and loss of local knowledge are ignored. True environmental care comes from local responsibility and restraint, not distant entrepreneurs scaling solutions or top-down ideologies. Berry advocated “thinking little”—personal and community-level actions rooted in affection for a place—over grand schemes, whether corporate or governmental. He was deeply ecological but rooted his ecology in agrarian practice, not political ecology movements that sometimes veer toward coercion or abstract global targets. How the Post Holds Up (and Fails) Under Berry’s ScrutinyWhere Berry might nod in partial agreement: He shared skepticism toward certain strains of political environmentalism that prioritize ideology, alarmism, or centralized control over practical, place-based stewardship. Berry criticized both corporate exploitation and bureaucratic or coercive “solutions.” The post’s jab at ecologists wanting to “rule over men” rather than preserve nature echoes Berry’s wariness of abstract power structures (whether socialist, corporate, or environmentalist) that treat people and land as means to distant ends. Reducing chemical use is better than the status quo of heavy pesticide reliance. Berry farmed with attention to natural processes and opposed the chemical treadmill. Where Berry would sharply disagree—and see the post as missing the forest for the trees: The robot is classic industrial problem-solving: a high-tech machine enabling continued large-scale monoculture production without addressing why pests and pathogens thrive in the first place (simplified ecosystems lacking biodiversity, beneficial insects, and healthy soil). Berry would argue this is not “solving” environmental challenges but extending the industrial logic that created them—replacing one external input (chemicals) with another (UV robots, data systems, corporate tech). It still treats the field as a factory floor to be optimized at night by autonomous machines, rather than a living community tended by knowledgeable people. Celebrating “abundance” through ingenuity and markets without “renunciation” or limits clashes with Berry’s insistence on sufficiency and net accounting. More production via intensification often degrades the land’s long-term capacity. Berry emphasized that industrial “progress” frequently shows gains in narrow metrics while externalizing costs (soil depletion, loss of rural vitality, dependence on complex supply chains for the robots themselves). He asked for the full ledger, not just the sales pitch of “more with less chemicals.” The hero of the story—the entrepreneur delivering scalable tech—stands in contrast to Berry’s ideal: the local farmer as steward who lives with the consequences of his decisions, passes knowledge to the next generation, and works with nature’s complexity rather than dominating it through ever-more-sophisticated machinery. Scaling solutions via distant innovators often further abstracts agriculture from place and community. Berry would likely view the underlying system (large fields, monocultures implied by “at scale” pest control) as the core issue. His preferred path involves diversified, smaller farms that build resilience ecologically—through rotations, cover crops, beneficial organisms, and human attention—not technological patches that allow the simplification to continue. In short, from Berry’s perspective, this technology might reduce one symptom (chemical residues) while reinforcing the disease: an agriculture of extraction and abstraction that distances humans from the land they depend on. True solutions, for Berry, lie in rebuilding local, diversified, human-scale systems that respect nature’s limits and reward careful stewardship—not in ever-cleverer machines that let industrial agriculture evade those limits a little longer.Berry often wrote that the care of the earth is our most ancient responsibility and our most pleasing one when done well. A night-roaming UV robot might kill pests efficiently, but it does little to restore the pleasure, knowledge, or rooted affection that come from a farmer walking their own fields in daylight, observing, adapting, and participating in the living web of a place. The post frames technology as the redeemer that makes degrowth or limits unnecessary. Berry would counter that genuine ecological health requires a certain humility and willingness to accept limits—on scale, on simplification, on the endless substitution of machines for care. The robot might be clever engineering, but from his agrarian lens, it remains a symptom of a culture still trying to have its industrial cake and eat the land too.

Possible 😀 There is a time lag in finding out consequences always!

Good post on ecologism vs new technology solutionism..

Cette vidéo est un véritable cauchemar éveillé pour l'écologiste décroissant. Un robot qui traque la nuit les pathogènes et les nuisibles à la lumière ultraviolette, sans un gramme de produit chimique, ce n'est pas un gadget... De quoi faire s'effondrer toute la théologie écologiste. Ici, c'est bien l'entrepreneur et le marché qui offrent une solution réellement efficace aux défis environnementaux. Pas de contrainte, pas de retour en arrière et pas de renoncement. L'entrepreneur résout le problème en créant de l'abondance là où l'on nous promettait la pénurie. Le rôle du progrès a toujours été celui-là : produire de l'abondance à partir de la rareté naturelle avec comme moyen ultime l'ingéniosité humaine. Reste alors une question : si la technologie résout réellement les problèmes que l'écologisme prétend combattre, pourquoi l'écologisme la déteste-t-il à ce point ? Tout simplement parce que ce qu'il veut, ce n'est pas une nature préservée, c'est une société administrée, dont il serait aux manettes. Comme toutes les autres idéologies constructivistes, socialistes et collectivistes, ce qui importe vraiment à l'écologiste ce n'est pas de résoudre les défis de son temps, c'est de régner sur les hommes de son temps. Le héros sera toujours l'entrepreneur, jamais celui qui le déteste.

So lowering standards does have consequences then? We seem to believe as a nation that lowering standards has no serious consequences whatsoever.