If anyone insults or humiliates me in an online forum i look for ways to get even with that person. Often my attempts to get even with that person has led to my becoming friends with that person. For instance, both Huzefa Kapasi and Ratan tried to bully me on sulekha during my early years. I fought back and then some kind of mutual respect developed and we became friendly. But there have also been occasions when my attempt to get even has led to some kind of perpetual animosity. The chief example of this was a person called Brhaspati who used to post under his real name on sulekha before he switched to Brhaspati. We had a disagreement on our views on Indian philosophy. He was fond of Advaita Vedanta, and i detested Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Budhism while having respect for Sankhya, Nyaya-Vaisesika, and Lokayata/Charvaka.

I am still amazed at the power of online discussions that discussions on such an esoteric subject led to abuses being freely exchanged. I recall Brhaspati claiming that i had been born from a canine womb and i am sure i must have said something nasty to him as well. Vakavaka Pakapaka was around during the Rashmun vs Brhaspati debate. Vakavaka claims Brhaspati managed to squash me in the debate; this is because Vakavaka is also an Advaitin. Both Vakavaka and Brhaspati had the deepest reverence for Adi Sankara, and i kept criticizing Sankara in posts titled 'Adi Sankara and sudras', 'The hypocrisy of Adi Sankara', 'Adi Sankara and Manu Smriti', 'Adi Sankara--Enemy of Reason', 'Science vs Adi Sankara' and so on. These posts got Brhaspati and Vakavaka hopping mad. I recall there was another guy called Sree and for quite a while it was these three guys versus me in philosophical discussions. Anything i would post on Advaita and Adi Sankara was subjected to criticism which in turn quickly became very personal. (Occasionally, some other posters would join them in making some snide remark at me. I remember a female poster, also an Advaitin, taking up the cause of Adi Sankara and pooh poohing the Charvaka philosophy on which i was writing about.) Unknown to them, however, this 3 versus 1 fight was honing my debating skills. Really, i must thank Brhaspati for honing me into a good online debater--capable of handling destructive criticism by numerous posters simultaneously.

(to be continued)

I may give one more example. This is about Propagandhi and the infamous duel thread (featuring a khukri) which was referred to on multiple times on this forum. The sequence of events was that Propagandhi had started to bully me because of some of my posts which perhaps he found disagreeable to him. So i had to find a way to hit back at him and stop the bullying. I decided to adopt an unorthodox tactic. It was the tactic of using graphic violence.

At that time there was a korean kid in a US college who had killed several people and then killed himself. The unusual thing about this kid was that he had taken some courses in creative writing and his essays for this course were publicly available for viewing. I had read those essays out of curiosity and so was somewhat familiar with how the mind of this kid of working. The essays, i must mention, were full of outrageous graphic violence. you could tell that this was a seriously mentally disturbed kid.

Anyways, i decided to adopt the same writing style--of graphic violence--that the korean kid had used in his essays to counter Propagandhi's bullying. Propagandhi was taken aback of course. I invited him to a duel and assured him that i am good with a Khukri. The Khukri is a Gurkha knife known for being extremely sharp and utilitarian. Propagandhi i think said that he would arrange for bus tickets for me if i agreed to meet him for the duel. Eventually though the whole thing became a farce. Propagandhi started finding it funny. He started describing the duel in a comical way--with female cheerleaders present and so on.
Eventually the same thing happened that had happened in the case of Huzefa and Ratan: mutual respect developed and he never bullied me again. This continued for quite some time--until my fall out with Charvaka. That's when we became antagonistic again.

(to be continued)

Translation: Doucheman is a juvenile idiot. 

The experience with Charvaka was bitter from a personal perspective while being wonderfully enriching from a debating perspective. Charvaka and I had had friendly relations on sulekha. We had exchanged notes. I had written to him enquiring about his father's health when he posted on sulekha something about his father's health issues.
And then there was the mutual interest in studying indian philosophy from a scientific/rational perspective. he was one of the few people i met who shared my enthusiasm of studying indian philosophy not from a religious/spiritual perspective but from a scientific/rational perspective. I wrote many posts on the Charvaka philosophy and he endorsed all of them. He also endorsed my posts on Adi Sankara and Vedanta. Indeed there is not a single philosophy post of mine with which he expressed any disagreement. He became an ally in the dispute with Seva and Sandilya who were pushing for what may be called the anti-thesis of a rational/scientific study of indian philosophy. i was very pleased with Charvaka because of this. And he must have developed respect for me because it was only after my posts on Charvaka philosophy that he started using the handle Charvaka. Prior to my posts he had never referred to the Charvakas and in fact i recall him saying he would be asking and discussing the Charvakas with his father on his next trip to India.

There is one other anecdote about Charvaka that i would like to share. Adi Sankara, in his commentary to the Brahma Sutra, had claimed that the sudras are not entitled to philosophical wisdom and they should be tortured or executed if they tried to study the Vedas. I had given the quotes from Sankara's commentary to the Brahma sutra, but Seva and sandilya claimed that i was misquoting Adi Sankara and that Sankara had never said in his commentary to the Brahma Sutra what i was claiming. A few years after this the complete text of Adi Sankara's commentary to the Brahma Sutra was published online in which all the quotes i had given were present. (It was the same translation.) I started a thread on this and started quoting extracts from the online commentary showing Adi Sankara's views on sudras. At that time Charvaka had ridiculed sandilya and Seva for questioning the authenticity of my posts (which were made a few years prior to the publishing of the commentary on the internet) about Adi Sankara's views on sudras as described in Sankara's commentary on the Brahma sutra.

Even on indian history, he strongly endorsed my views on Akbar and Jahangir in particular.

----
It was quite interesting to find that on this forum my relations with Charvaka--after initially being friendly--became more and more antagonistic. It started off, i believe, with my posts endorsing the Congress party and praising the Congress leader Digvijaya Singh in particular. The reason for the praise of the Congress party was that i believe strongly in secularism and i believed that the Congress--despite its defects--was the only party which could take on the BJP which i deemed to be communal. The reason for the praise for Digvijaya was that he was slamming hindutva fundamentalism (to which i am also opposed to). It will be argued that he was not slamming islamic fundamentalism adequately and this is probably true, but in the context of India i always viewed Hindutva fundamentalism to be the greater danger to Indian secularism. Islamic fundamentalism would always remain on the lunatic fringe while Hindutva fundamentalism had the potential to become mainstream.

Anyways, it is probably true that i overdid the Diggy Raja posts. But what followed was Charvaka coining the phrase 'Rashmun Method' and using it again and again in his posts. I felt he was trying to undermine my credibility to such an extent that my views on any topic would not be taken seriously by most posters here. I started responding to Charvaka's Rashmun Method posts. My initial response was, however, clumsy. I started off by claiming that he had himself mentioned that he comes from a family of priests who do not know proper sanskrit and who have been a making a living by fleecing unsuspecting clients. When he questioned my statement, i went to sulekha and got Seva to confirm that what i was saying was true (to the extent that Seva confirmed that the priests in Charvaka's family did not know proper sanskrit and did not perform the hindu rituals correctly as per what Charvaka had said earlier on Sulekha) . In retrospect, that was a mistake. I should have quickly coined 'PP Method' and should have started using PP Method whenever he would use Rashmun Method. That would have put an end to this nonsense. But the feeling of hurt and betrayal was such that i became emotional. This forum is for ex-Sulekha posters and i was the oldest Sulekha poster here after Huzefa and Kris. Surely i could have been given more respect by Charvaka.

There is a lesson here for Indian secularism. Charvaka and I were both thoroughly secular (at least intellectually) and yet we were fighting bitterly amongst ourselves. I have yet to see hindutvas fighting bitterly amongst themselves in any online forum. There just seems to be much greater unity amongst them. and this explains, partly, why they are ruling India today even though they do not command the majority vote.

(to be continued)

Dude, you surely are jobless!!

I remember exactly when Uppili (Marathadi Saamiyaar) and i had a falling out. It happened several years ago when a professor of arts in a Gujarat university was manhandled along with some of his students (one of whom was imprisoned) because they had made some paintings which were depicting hindu gods and goddesses and which were sensual (if not erotic)  in nature. Uppili was defending the action of the Gujarat govt and of the hindutvas to manhandle the painters (and imprison one of them) and i was on the side of the painters. I was watching indian television at the time and i saw the professor on tv; he was weeping. this had such a strong impact on me that when Uppili started defending the persecution of the painters i went after him.

Uptill then we had cordial relations. It was only after i went after him on this particular issue that our relations became bitter and from then onwards Uppili would never cease to hound me. Whenever anyone would attack me Uppili would make sure to join in. This continued for years and he became a constant irritant.

The debating lesson here was that there is no point sticking your neck out for any cause and making enemies along the way. i should not have gone after Uppili after he had articulated his position in the matter. After all, this is a democracy.

The political lesson here was something i learnt later. I was under the impression at the time i slammed Uppili that he belonged to the lunatic fringe. It turned out that i was wrong. A significant number of Indians thought the way Uppili did. And because he was not a part of the lunatic fringe this gave Uppili a greater right to articulate his views. After all, he was a representative of all those people who thought along these (in my opinion communal) lines and the way to handle such people is not by slamming them but by being patient and appealing to their sense of justice, by persuading them through reason and logic, and by bringing to their attention historical facts.

(to be continued)

During my fight with Charvaka on this forum, several posters had joined in on behalf of Charvaka to slam me. Some of them (like Richard Hed) are no longer posting. Altogether, at various points of time i was slammed by more than half a dozen posters. But i felt the key people supporting Charvaka were Hellsangel, Tracy Whitney, and Propagandhi. It was as if these three were 'joined at the hip' with Charvaka.

Propagandhi had of course reignited his old fight with me. Hellsangel was always close to Charvaka. And i felt Tracy Whitney was going after me during this slugfest because she desperately wanted to ingratiate herself with Charvaka (which to some extent all those who were slamming me were doing in my biased opinion). Luke Warmus (michelle2) has claimed that Charvaka has a habit of instigating his friends against people he dislikes and fights with. Whether Luke is right or wrong, the fact is that Charvaka also had a fight with Luke, and the same three people (Hellsangel, Tracy, and Propagandhi) were also slamming Luke viciously. In Luke's case there were also truthbetold and Merlot who were also going after him.

At any rate, since the slugfest with Charvaka continued for a long time and since these three people (Propagandhi, Hellsangel, and Tracy) were attacking me the maximum i was annoyed with all three of them. At some point of time i decided i would do something about my annoyance.

After the fight with Charvaka was over (after he decided to block me on the forum after fighting with me for over an year), tempers of all sides was cooled. after one vigorous issue based (i forget what the issue was) argument, Hellsangel started avoiding me completely. Propagandhi would occasionally snipe at me, and i would snipe right back.
Tracy Whitney was unusual. She and i had cordial relations. I was polite to her and this was reciprocated. But then every now and then her tone would be condescending, occasionally i thought she was taking pot shots at me. Once she started a thread titled with a condescending title featuring my handle name (which she later deleted). Now the thing was that although i am ordinarily patient with people taking pot shots at me, i felt she no longer was entitled to any of my patience and if she misbehaved the slightest with me i would punish her.

Propagandhi and i exchanged some very nasty posts during which i reminded him of some of the things Luke Warmus had told him following which he immediately added a footnote to all his posts targeting me. Propagandhi was handled after i noticed that he had used an abusive terminology (breaking my neck and shitting down my throat or something like that) which had a very close match in terms of the words with what Tuppy Glossop had said to Gussy Fink Nottle in Right Ho! Jeeves which is a book by PG Wodehouse. (This was after Gussie had managed to win over the affections of Tuppy's fiancee.) Again and again i kept bringing to Propa's attention that the words he was telling me were Tuppy Glossop's. This annoyed him no end and once he asked me "Who the fuck are Tuppy and Gussy? Some cartoon characters you still pull your pud to?". I had a good laugh when i read that. Anyways, thanks to Tuppy Glossop, Propa's sniping at me ceased. Handling Propa through humor proved to be a winner.

(to be continued)

the first bit of information (consisting of a peccadillo)  that i knew about tracy was Kinnera's picture that she had shared without Kinnera's permission. at the time i thought nothing of it--and just put it away in my memory. But then there were two extended fights with tracy. i dont even remember now what we were fighting about except that we were both trying to show the other something along the lines of 'i have a bigger prick'. in the second of these extended fights i used the information about kinnera's picture. it was as if she had received a punch on her solar plexus. she reacted with surprise, and then sent me a private note in which she said she is taking a break from the forum and then she did leave the forum for about three months. In that private note she denied sending kinnera's picture to anyone. But during Tracy's break from the forum Kinnera informed me in a forum post that Tracy had apologized to her for sharing her picture.

When Tracy returned and we had another confrontation i had to give her a link to Kinnera's post to accept her fault unconditionally. Otherwise she was trying to equivocate out of the mess she had landed in.

i then kept using other information i had about her other peccadillos and now she was no match as a debating opponent. I had a clear advantage because i had the goods on her and what was more she did not even know how much i knew. In her second note to me, which again i did not reply to, she said she wanted to know 'the extent of damage'.

I have mentioned my annoyance and desire to get even with Tracy as the reason for going after her. This is partly but not wholly true. I do not wish to publicly disclose the other reason(s).

----------

douchemun: you might be mistaking your mental illnesses, namely, inability to let go and crazed monkey-like obsessive compulsiveness as debating skills.

Propagandhi711 wrote:douchemun: you might be mistaking your mental illnesses, namely, inability to let go and crazed monkey-like obsessive compulsiveness as debating skills.

Says the man who is crazy enough to keep slamming me in every single post of his through a footnote. Propa, if you are not crazy and do not suffer from crazed monkey-like obsessive compulsiveness you will immediately let go and remove the footnote through which you have been attacking me in every post of yours.

Rashmun wrote:

Propagandhi711 wrote:douchemun: you might be mistaking your mental illnesses, namely, inability to let go and crazed monkey-like obsessive compulsiveness as debating skills.

Says the man who is crazy enough to keep slamming me in every single post of his through a footnote. Propa, if you are not crazy and do not suffer from crazed monkey-like obsessive compulsiveness you will immediately let go and remove the footnote through which you have been attacking me in every post of yours.

my kid started trying this tack at 4 yrs old

Propagandhi711 wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Propagandhi711 wrote:douchemun: you might be mistaking your mental illnesses, namely, inability to let go and crazed monkey-like obsessive compulsiveness as debating skills.

Says the man who is crazy enough to keep slamming me in every single post of his through a footnote. Propa, if you are not crazy and do not suffer from crazed monkey-like obsessive compulsiveness you will immediately let go and remove the footnote through which you have been attacking me in every post of yours.

my kid started trying this tack at 4 yrs old

Does this mean your 4 year old is smarter than you?

Rashmun wrote:

Propagandhi711 wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Propagandhi711 wrote:douchemun: you might be mistaking your mental illnesses, namely, inability to let go and crazed monkey-like obsessive compulsiveness as debating skills.

Says the man who is crazy enough to keep slamming me in every single post of his through a footnote. Propa, if you are not crazy and do not suffer from crazed monkey-like obsessive compulsiveness you will immediately let go and remove the footnote through which you have been attacking me in every post of yours.

my kid started trying this tack at 4 yrs old

Does this mean your 4 year old is smarter than you?

I hope so and yes

what is  scientific/rational way to study religion or philosophy?

truthbetold wrote:what is  scientific/rational way to study religion or philosophy?

Any portion of any philosophy or religion that is hostile or antagonistic to science has to be opposed while anything promoting or compatible with science has to be accepted and supported. This is captured by what the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy says: "Nothing is to be accepted unless it is in accordance with reason and experience."Unfortunately the
Nyaya school also contains some material which is not scientific but that is because the Nyaya philosophers were making speculations at a time when science was not as advanced as it is today. And the Nyayayikas seemed to agree with Poincare that it is better to foresee without certainty than not to foresee at all.