Shamik Dasgupta

Bhangra night in SF

Just human beings, coming together to acknowledge the transcendent, in whatever way it hits us.

Dig it.

Sometimes it is annoyingly shallow and political, other times it is deep and spiritually enlightening.

Either way, there is something very awesome about participating in a spiritual practice stripped of all bells and whistles. >>

What I love about the Quakers is their no-nonsense attitude and egalitarianism.

We are all spiritual equals. We just sit in a circle, in silence, and that’s it. No leader, no robes, no incense, nothing. If anyone has anything to say they can stand up and speak. >>

I am also experimenting with the Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday mornings. Each has their virtues and vices.

The Zen Center offers more in terms of meditation guidance, but one has to put up with a certain degree of costume and pomp and circumstance. >>

It feels a bit weird. I don’t know if I would call myself "a Quaker”. I certainly do not believe in the Christian god, but I don’t think many Quakers at this meeting do.

I’ve always identified as an atheist and ontologically speaking that hasn’t changed, I don’t think. >>

Today marks one year since I started sitting with the Quakers on Sunday mornings.

Coincidentally, while writing out a sticky name tag on the way in I found that they had made me a permanent laminated label to use, just like the regulars. Which I suppose I am at this point? >>

At the Greek theatre in Berkeley, easily my favorite venue in the world 😊

Earth, Wind, and Fire!

Universal Soldier Donovan · Fairytale (Deluxe Expanded Edition) · Song · 1965

No comment needed

open.spotify.com/track/5n1P2I...

Uplifting group of women bringing a groove #NoKings

#NoKings Oakland, with my daughter Dylan fighting the power 👊🏽

We are Nobel laureates, scientists, writers and artists. The threat of fascism is back | Open letter As in 1925, when Mussolini was in power, we must openly defy the brutal imposition of the fascist ideology

In the Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Home - Open Letter Against the rise of Fascism in 2025 The 2025 letter has been signed by over 400 academics, including 31 Nobel Prize winners. Join them in defending democracy. Our goal The letter is a collective denunciation of the mounting threats to a...

I’m happy to have signed this open letter protesting the rise of fascism around the world and defending principles of democracy and intellectual freedom.

Please consider supporting this global initiative - especially on the eve of Trump’s gratuitous military parade.

stopreturnfascism.org

“Thought is a way of concealing truth.”
-Alan Watts

More great epigraph material :)

Sly Stone to Miles Davis: “Get your mother-fuckin ass out, don’t ever play that voodoo shit here” 😂

Legend ❤️

RIP 😥

Is Elon the Darth Vedar character who brings down the emperor from within?

Philosophers: “I have questions about Premise 3”

Pashto
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Spanish
Tagalog
Thai
Tibetan
Tigrinya
Ukrainian
Urdu
Vietnamese

and

English

The USA is and always has been a melting pot. That is where it draws its strength. ❤️💙

It felt timely that at my kid’s middle school graduation today a bunch of diverse students lined up on stage to offer the same welcome greeting in the following languages:

Amharic
Arabic
Bengali
Cantonese
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Malay
Mandarin
👇🏽

what did ya’ll think “globalize the intifada” meant? vibes? papers? essays?

Then it happened again in 2016 with “Realism and the Absence of Value” on an early morning bus from Heathrow to Oxford.

It’s an interesting feeling, as if experiencing a philosophical theory "from the inside".

It’s only happened to me a handful of times. The first occasion was with my very first paper “Individuals”. I remember riding on New Jersey Transit in ~2007, looking out at the scene passing by and suddenly seeing it vividly as an array of empty nodes in a qualitative structure. >>

Thankfully, this is basically the view of truth and reference I develop in “Undoing the Truth Fetish”! I was already into that view, obviously, but it's very cool to *viscerally experience* the core idea behind a philosophical position. >>

They were all just modifications of this great field of awareness, popping and pulsing and fading in their own time.

Putnam’s slogan was that any account of representation is “just more theory”. I think a more illuminating slogan is that any thought is just more birdsong. >>

And that’s when it struck me: the idea that one event in the field could reach out and “point to” another is completely absurd! No less absurd than the idea that birdsong “points at” a color, or that a shape “points at” a thought. >>

I was sitting in a wide field of awareness. There were sounds of birdsong, sights of colors and shapes… and thoughts. But I wasn’t the author of the thoughts any more than I was the author of the birdsong; they were all just events unfolding in this field of awareness on their own accord. >>

Another thing from the meditation retreat:

I think it was on day 3 that it dawned on me that Putnam’s model theoretic argument is *obviously* correct. I mean, duh. *Of course* representation isn’t a thing! 👇🏽

And philosophically this experience of doing without a do-er, of thought without a thinker, feels super interesting and I hope to explore it more this summer.

One final note: disengaging from the news and social media was just fabulous. Highly recommended :)