<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Metaphysical Musings]]></title><description><![CDATA[Essays and blogs on philosophy, belletrism, and current affairs. ]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 07 Nov 2026 01:20:59 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[Lifestyle Changes for a Dictionary/On Embracing Words]]></title><description><![CDATA[Sometimes, when one is reading, the rows and rows of words lose their meaning. They are deserted, abandoned, left as a husk: a sound. The strange property that allows words to form a picture in the mind, to be transmogrified into something of value, vanishes. As if this special aspect of language like an opal butterfly wing were clipped, leaving only the legs, the abdomen, and the head as empty irregularities and odd edges, curlicues and serifs, on the ground and on the page. The narrative...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/lifestyle-changes-for-a-dictionary-on-embracing-words</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a3994df72415ea9e53b3fa7</guid><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:03:51 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_26054c0e65394920ba53661000320005~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_305,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[On Painted Water/David Hockney's California]]></title><description><![CDATA[Water is ineffable. To truly convey the experience of reality, as opposed to an image of it, one must abandon techniques based on imitation; one must delineate the essence of the element in different ways, different to nature’s inherent compositions. Differences in portrayal can then be read as the unique characteristics of an individual’s - the painter’s - perception. This essay concerns the liminal differences between reality and painted depictions of it, and how beauty arises in that very...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/on-painted-water-david-hockney-s-california</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a39947372415ea9e53b3ea2</guid><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:01:26 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_0b88c31985b4403c907ddb749b8a855e~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Symbols of Literacy and Reading in the Early Black Atlantic]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scenes of reading in early Black Atlantic literature are often taken as autobiography: the enslaved subject acquiring Western literacy as a tool to bargain for freedom. This misreads them. When James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Phillis Wheatley, and Prince Hall write about literacy, they are not describing a skill but staging it for a white readership that used print culture - authentication prefaces, signed certifications, the demand for proof - to police the boundaries of human subjectivity....]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/symbols-of-literacy-and-reading-in-the-early-black-atlantic</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a3993d7c2608e75017e641e</guid><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:58:33 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_a2198a8448644b1aa29ab5e3488cda91~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light by Claude Monet at The Getty]]></title><description><![CDATA[For this assignment, I went to the Getty. As much as I wanted to go to the new David Geffen Galleries, or the Broad Museum, even the Hammer, the promise of the Getty’s venerable collection stole my wandering eye. The Center is perched over the languorous hills of the fancy part of LA, it sits tall and lofty and bone-white. There’s a gorgeous garden there. The day I happened to go there just happened to be a grey miserable one.  The painting caught my attention because of how haunting it is. I...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/the-portal-of-rouen-cathedral-in-morning-light-by-claude-monet-at-the-getty</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a3992e272415ea9e53b3b04</guid><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:56:21 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_31b49d1463e74dc2be28adc3d8312793~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Late Capitalism is eating you alive and making everything the same: on Ling Ma's Severance and Byung-Chul Han's Burnout Society]]></title><description><![CDATA[Severance  reads as factory lines of sentences, queues of commas lined up with ideas leading to a fevered apocalypse. It is a text that fully inhabits its ideas, in plot and form. It is full of modern-day malaise, detailing the experience of living after capitalism has stopped progressing and is instead manifested through monotony, automation, and homogeneity. How capitalistic structures have reached a complacency of new corporate-slop-shop-restaurants and the poverty cycle. Ma attributes...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/late-capitalism-is-eating-you-alive-and-making-everything-the-same-on-ling-ma-s-severance-and-byung</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b35e2ed558374c818e2197</guid><pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 03:33:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_7ca73804f5e94d49b9944f999afea0b4~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_407,h_600,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[How and to what extent is the literary and aesthetic nature of the Faustian Bargain and its consequences used to explore morality in Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy Doctor Faustus?]]></title><description><![CDATA[Introduction: Doctor Faustus - first performed in either 1592 or 1593 and officially published posthumously in 1604 is an Elizabethan era tragedy. Summing it up in adjectives, it is a short, beautiful, and haunting text. In Doctor Faustus, a romantic quality is imputed to the epistemically dissatisfied Renaissance man and his quest for knowledge through the gothic imagery, fantastical adventures, and the intrigue of the occult between heaven and hell. However, by the end,  Doctor Faustus is a...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/how-and-to-what-extent-is-the-literary-and-aesthetic-nature-of-the-faustian-bargain-and-its-conseque</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b3616bd0cd2535b527596b</guid><pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 03:32:57 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_10b1c4dbfef949c9aa56cc9b0d4daa2f~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_600,h_499,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[To what extent was Deng Xiaoping successful in reconciling a communist political vision with capitalist economic practices?]]></title><description><![CDATA[To what extent was Deng Xiaoping successful in reconciling a communist political vision with capitalist economic practices? The two main sources used by this investigation are Immanuel Hsü’s ‘The Rise of Modern China’ (specifically Part 7: China after Mao) and Martin King Whyte’s essay ‘China’s Post-Socialist Inequality’. The sources are distinct in their outlook. In Part 7, Hsu provides a micro survey of Deng’s actions and their immediate effects on China’s people, economy, and culture....]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/to-what-extent-was-deng-xiaoping-successful-in-reconciling-a-communist-political-vision-with-capital</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b36c2aecfce39c49ab3d79</guid><pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 03:32:52 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_b8be6a328bef47758f9b7a9a80fb95ba~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Family and Community, Subjection and Subjugation: A Comparative Analysis of The Colour Purple and Chronicle of a Death Foretold]]></title><description><![CDATA[Analyzing and comparing The Color Purple  by Alice Walker and Chronicle of a Death Foretold  by Gabriel García Márquez offers a similar yet different exploration of family, community relationships, and themes of power. Generally, power is represented through the autonomy and agency of individual characters. If a character does not have such autonomy, they are to a large degree powerless. The context a character is written into dictates this. Both novels delve into how these dynamics influence...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/family-and-community-subjection-and-subjugation-a-comparative-analysis-of-the-colour-purple-and-ch</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b368ecd558374c818e37bc</guid><pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2026 04:32:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_4fb9c6c2d0c84c388398b3b6f4d270f8~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Modernity in the Middle East]]></title><description><![CDATA[Tahrir Square, Cairo, 2011 Middle eastern states agued by previous economic crises and political disunity became “modern” as they were subsumed by the greater world system through the forces of integration, peripheralization, defensive developmentalism, and imperialism. However, as this system progressed, modernity changed from being a Eurocentric concept to a universal conduct that found a unique place in Middle Eastern empires and nation states. Over 19 th  and 20 th  century reform,...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/modernity-in-the-middle-east</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b49de36f1601b21824d750</guid><pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2025 08:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_f51e952f017540d49a35d833e3e533bb~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_675,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[My Bruin Review Article]]></title><description><![CDATA[If you’re a Bruin Baddie, Baudrillard’s for you! Sharing the first article I wrote for the Bruin Review, an independent alternative, opinion and satire (just be everything why don't you) magazine. Check it out here: https://bruinreview.wordpress.com/2025/12/20/if-youre-a-bruin-baddie-baudrillards-for-you/ With the rise of UCLA’s social media presence, false realities confront us everywhere. UCLA is losing its physical sense of self in favour of online culture. UCLA’s symbolism has become...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/my-bruin-review-article</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b4970fd7b18f7389d2a9ab</guid><pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2025 08:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_bc97a823de2645ac893078f5037ba3d9~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pariah - excerpts, pt. 2]]></title><description><![CDATA[Gertrude did not know of her sex, skin, or self. She was everything at once. You lost your spark Shiraz. She worked in aesthetics, in the shapes and sounds and spaces in between, the way odd combinations flurry your semantic sense and memory. She believed we had, or at least ought to have, moved past the idea of a “story”. Of “plots”. My period’s late. This time makes it too many times. What could that mean? I saw her for the first time, her and her gorgeous cheekbone, buckled lips, and...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/pariah-excerpts-pt-2</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b370c6ecfce39c49ab472d</guid><pubDate>Sun, 01 Jun 2025 03:32:37 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_8f2bef31774d4115bd62870a197230cf~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pariah - excerpts, pt. 1]]></title><description><![CDATA[My last book was awful. Pretentious, frivolous, wordy, turgid, and horrible. It has been 7 years since its publication. I still hate it. I used to think big words would lead me to literary fame - land me amongst the literati. Instead, it has led to 7 years of refusing to put ink to paper, afraid that I’ll create another ugly collection of uncomfortable sentences. I couldn’t refuse my controversial ideas though, that’s why I write my secret story from time to time. There are few pleasures...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/pariah-excerpts-pt-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b36e44ecfce39c49ab41cb</guid><pubDate>Wed, 14 May 2025 03:32:32 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_b3837a57d91f4e288ae03dc7be0096f4~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Women in Goethe’s 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' and Dostoevsky’s ‘Notes from Underground']]></title><description><![CDATA[The portrayal of female characters in fiction can be simplified to an admixture of stereotypes. Stereotypes inform the gender roles that female characters are often written into a piece of literature to fulfil. It starts with a material role to which some broader social expectation is imputed. In older classic texts, rarely is the woman something beyond a wife, a mother, a widow or a servant. In playing stereotypical roles, they provide love, support, maternal sympathy and other things to the...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/women-in-goethe-s-the-sorrows-of-young-werther-and-dostoevsky-s-notes-from-underground</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b36b57ecfce39c49ab3bc0</guid><pubDate>Mon, 02 Dec 2024 04:32:48 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_8dee9cbec02b4d86b789bce613f700d9~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Do we need custodians of knowledge?]]></title><description><![CDATA[What is a custodian? A custodian has a responsibility to protect a field of knowledge. Through that responsibility, a custodian has the power to influence this field of knowledge by controlling what affects it. Custodians appear in many forms: critics, researchers, academics; executives in large firms and high-ranking officials in governments. A custodian has a connotation of being ethical, moral, and one with expertise in their field. The consensus of custodians should theoretically follow a...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/do-we-need-custodians-of-knowledge</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b49d6b6f1601b21824d5f0</guid><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jul 2024 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_cc33b5225f28404581bd85c8794a7ac7~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_850,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[On p(Doom)]]></title><description><![CDATA[1) What is P(Doom) and how do we assess it? 2) Is there anything systematic we know that impacts these assessments? 3) How do naive people versus tech professionals make these assessments? P(Doom) is the probability that artificial intelligence will lead be an existential risk to humanity.  The subject of existential risks of AI has been trending recently, with many senior and well respected figures in the field giving worrying views on it (this will be discussed later on). There are...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/on-p-doom</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b49c08d7b18f7389d2b5a7</guid><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jul 2024 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_6091ae848af942049f6b5894efa3a458~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Hearts Aglow]]></title><description><![CDATA[I look from afar, Ablaze, aglow, askance, I see the tears crawling down And I see the rancour of ecstasy, The rancour of misery, Arraigned to the chain of Dancing bodies, in trance, In the bear’s snare. Trap. Trapped. I see the rose madder on the cheeks and around the eyes and on their lips, Dry and drier. I see the indwelling rose bud, it swells with desire, it blooms, it blooms, and then the monophthong strikes and the petals darken and fall off and it diffuses into the smoky haze of the...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/hearts-aglow</link><guid isPermaLink="false">63c16958ab194266136e5381</guid><pubDate>Sun, 16 Jun 2024 01:05:29 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[I Wait]]></title><description><![CDATA[In the twisted melody where all falls into the gutter I saw it but did you see it too? Have you ever seen something like it? A bleeding man in a false platoon. The arabesque chiaroscuro, it played to the night, The strobes of light evade my sight, But where were you, where were you? I beckoned, I called But you remained in the budding grove Refusing to recall How the sun has passed and into the night we come How the white lilies have bloomed The young child has awoken Yet you do not recall...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/i-wait</link><guid isPermaLink="false">63c168614ce4fdbbc6221c24</guid><pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2024 01:05:24 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Philosophy of Dudeism - Modern Day Taoism]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Big Lebowski is a film released by the Coen Brothers in 1998. Despite being pigeon-holed into the crime-comedy genre, which is true...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/the-philosophy-of-dudeism-modern-day-taoism</link><guid isPermaLink="false">64fc4e4a71e05d0032821e10</guid><pubDate>Sat, 09 Sep 2023 11:24:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_f1b81147c6b54592a976e7b3f19117e8~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_644,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Project Panopticon]]></title><description><![CDATA[Historically, India has always been a diverse, and more importantly inclusive nation.  Transgender people have been a part of Indian society for centuries. There is evidence in Puranic texts of people whose gender was neither male nor female, called the third gender, who were prevalent in ancient India. This prevalence stretched to the Mughal Empire, where transgender individuals had powerful and respected roles within the Royal Court of the Mughal Empire as administrators, political...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/project-panopticon</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b4ad59c0bc1d0b8ea08002</guid><pubDate>Thu, 10 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_e2144af1d3f3488bbe238c7e3a08aaa8~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Experience Machine and The Utility Monster]]></title><description><![CDATA[Robert Nozick was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century and an extremely important figure in ethics, moral and political...]]></description><link>https://www.metaphysical-musings.com/post/the-experience-machine-and-the-utility-monster-2</link><guid isPermaLink="false">64a578d6f3ace8505c67d2d0</guid><pubDate>Wed, 05 Jul 2023 14:06:22 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a73a44_9f9c0973fae8445eadf60209382c8517~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_320,h_289,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Advik Lahiri</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>