Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Joseph S Nye, American political scientist, mooted the concept of ‘soft power’ as a means of gaining ascendancy in the world.  Military and economy give a country its hard power.  Soft power is its ability to persuade other countries to want what it wants them to want. Mr Modi is getting the support of many countries against Pakistan using persuasive tactics as well as realpolitik.  He is relying more on soft power and rightly so.  No one but perverted minds would want a war especially between India and Pakistan because such a war is most likely to escalate into a world war. Soft power can be effective only when it rests solidly on the foundation of substantial hard power.  It is also related to culture and ideology.  The Western civilisation spread rapidly across the world because it was firmly established on a secure hard power foundation.  America was a practical El Dorado. Russia’s communism crumpled when its hard power hit the dust.  Soft power becomes impotent wit

Yahweh by Michelangelo Recently I stumbled upon a quote from Robert G Ingersoll’s book, Some Mistakes of Moses .  The quote which puts the Jewish God on a dissection table is reproduced below: It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch. There are people who believe in such a heartless, mirthless, starkly absurd God too.  It is then that I fell on the contemplation whether most gods aren’t similar one way or

A view from my veranda this morning It’s a beautiful Monday morning.  The beginning of another working week.  I stood outside my house looking at the eastern sky where the morning sun was struggling to shine through the clouds.   Clouds make the sun more beautiful, more desirable.  What is the sky without both the sun and the clouds?  What is life without both joys and sorrows?  Without the  positive and the negative? It’s Monday morning and I should like to start the week with all the cheer I can muster.  The morning sky, however, warns me that cheer alone cannot make up life.  What would Shakespeare’s Othello be without Iago?  Imagine Milton’s Paradise Lost without Satan. Who doesn’t want to be positive, cheerful and good?  The problem is life won’t ever give those things alone.  There’s no light without darkness. I welcome this beautiful Monday morning with its sun and the clouds. I take Nietzsche along with me as I walk into the cloudy morning.  H