Tag: mohandas gandhi

freedom according to camus, adler, gandhi, buddhism and modernity

Since Protagoras’ famous “man is the measure of all things,” declaring human freedom as an unlimited absolute, philosophers have been fascinated with the idea of freedom.

Philosopher/scholar Adler categorized freedom as:

  1. self-realization
  2. acquired state of mind
  3. self-determination: to determine — not necessarily carry-out — wishes/actions in life

Gandhi thought, “freedom isn’t worth having if it doesn’t connote freedom to err.”

Hindu/Buddhist freedom is embedded in moksha; to Chuang Tzu freedom meant “free yourself from the world.”

In modern China/world, freedom is “fusion of personal, national, social, civic, and moral freedoms” or “liberation, self-development, independent personality/responsibility, democracy/human-rights, spiritual-cultural necessity, privacy, autonomy/self-mastery.

gandhi, world blunders and google’s idea of 21st century

Mohandas Gandhi gave to his grandson Arun Gandhi a piece of paper on their final day together, shortly before his assassination, which had a title “Seven Blunders of the World”:

  1. Wealth without work.
  2. Pleasure without conscience.
  3. Knowledge without character.
  4. Commerce without morality.
  5. Science without humanity.
  6. Worship without sacrifice.
  7. Politics without principle.

Doesn’t sounds like a value-based 21st century vision, does it?

A Google search for “21st century vision” gives more than 55 million results. Google Trends would only take “21st century.” The result: Philippines and Tagalog language have more trending of “21st century” than America and English.