Confessions of Eccentrics

Confessions of Eccentrics

Product ID: 8737

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Author: K V Kunhikrishnan
Publisher: Somaiya
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 227
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8170392403

Description

This book is not deliberately planned. It is something which came into being naturally like a plant sprouting and growing from a stray seed.

Some of the discussants in Ekkentros Forum were often meeting casually, and while talking, lapsing into discussion on a wide variety of topics. On reviewing the recordings of these discussions, it was felt that these were eminently readable and worth publishing. It would normally be difficult to get a wide variety of points of view on a topic from widely different angles at one and the same place. This book, as if by accident, has several points of view on the topics selected.

Normally, in any seminar, it is noticed that most people talk on a subject more to impress others in the group rather than to go into the subject or to express their own views. This informal group had no need to impress others. All knew each other closely, and their ideas were expressed freely, even, though, academically, they don't know much about a subject.

Ten highly educated individuals with a variety of professional background — a retired senior civil servant, four doctors, there academics, a lawyer and a journalist with a keen interest in ideas — have made a conscious effort to convert casual conversation into a focused exchange of ideas on twenty fundamental themes: lateral thinking as opposed to structured linear reasoning for understanding the nature of the universe and human relationships; modes of apprehension of reality; the difference between rational and intuitive thinking; paradoxical truth, life, death; faith, religion, mysticism; wit, humor, nonsense; vulgarity, obscenity, pornography, boredom; stupidity; love, affection and devotion; culture, ethics and morals; and so on.

The range of themes discussed in the book is indeed impressive. It covers almost all the issues currently agitating the minds of those who are given to asking fundamental questions about life, human relationships, and the nature of truth and knowledge. Much of the discussion is interesting, stimulating and even provocative. The drawings and illustrations that intersperse the text are of great artistic merit.

Contents

Preface

Off-Track Thinking
Fear and Anguish
Brain, Thought and Intuition
Zen
Sufi Mysticism
Beautiful Nonsense
Wit, Humor and Jokes
Belief, Blind and Not Blind
Magic and Miracles
Death, Clinical and Otherwise
Life After Death
Vulgarity, Obscenity and Pornography
Boredom
Love and Devotion
Living
Foolishness and Stupidity
Culture
Escapism
Ethics and Morals
Hypocrisy

Index