Solemn 2009th death anniversary of Caesar Augustus:
Today I write to you with great joy to announce the establishment of méǵh₂s. So far I have been referring to this project—the essays, the video content that I introduced in the last post here, the overall enterprise of reflection into the questions I’m pursuing—as “this project”. I have now consolidated these operations under a proper appellation and banner: méǵh₂s.
If it is an appellation, then the first question one would have is: Comment l'appelle-t-on? Or rather: Comment le prononce-t-on? That is, in the common tongue: How the hell do you say that? méǵh₂s may be pronounced as “mégas” (μέγας) or “महस्”, whichever you prefer.1 méǵh₂s is the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction for the substantive that means (the) great or (the) big. Common words and word-parts we use today, making up notable parts of the Indo-European imaginary, derive from this, such as the “mega-” of European languages and “maha” of Indian languages. “Mega” is specifically derived from the Ancient Greek μέγας (“mégas”), a nearer descendant of the progenitor méǵh₂s, and “maha” is likewise more proximally derived from the Sanskrit महस्. Since Proto-Indo-European is more a reconstructed or reverse-engineered linguistic system than a real language that exists with any attested life-breath, I figured it would not be entirely inappropriate to confer the designation, in this branding, with the aural rendition of μέγας/mégas or महस्. In any case, to those who understand the basic idea, thrust and objective of this project, this name should make sense.
There is a now a website for this enterprise, a common headwater, as it were, for the different parts of the project that flow in their own ways: www.megh2s.com.
As one can see on going there, apart from explaining the what, how and who of this endeavor (and through the “who”, a page collecting many of my significant writings over the last several years, including some unpublished in my recent great Vichara reset), there are links to not just this newsletter and the YouTube channel, but also to something called the “Edifice”. This is the newest—though in some ways the oldest—addition to this project—with which, now introduced, I will henceforth indeed call it méǵh₂s rather than “this x”. The initial readers of my work from 2021 will remember that I had a network of notes on Roam Research that accompanied the newsletters. I did not maintain that well over the months, and eventually that system, which I had called the Ansatz, fell into disuse. There were a few reasons this happened, but two of them were:
Roam wasn’t the best technology for my purposes.
I wasn’t following the best approach to creating, extrapolating or identifying connections.
I am now introducing a new network of notes. It will be made using Obsidian. More significantly on the reader’s end, compared to last time, (at least the publically visible parts of) it will be more limited. This will be so in two respects:
In keeping with the streamlined philosophical focus on this Vichara redux, it will primarily be a network just of philosophical ideas.
Rather than the wild, arguably over-the-top approach of the Roam network, in which each page had many links coming into and going out of it (very often over 10), which could get fairly overwhelming and disorienting, each page here will have the minimal possible number of links to pages that are directly relevant to its content.
This approach will fit together with the essays being written here. These essays can be represented as small structures of individual ideas that come together in a specific conceptual, logical way. These mini-structures aren’t totally linear, but given the linear form of the essay-medium, they have some rough linearity to them. This form plays its purpose in larger thought-projects. We usually cognize in what we call trains of thought. These trains of thought have a number of train-cars—individual, modular ideas—that come together into that train, which together is apparent and coherent as having a starting point or main question it pursues, and a conclusion or answer, even if tentative or limited in its scope to just that frame or mini-structure, that it reaches. Thus each essay can be represented visually as well, as something resembling a flowchart or diagram of ideas. I plan on doing that starting with the coming essay.
Now, notes in my new network of ideas will be linked according to the same structure. I will release notes in that structure when I publish each essay. However, given the modular nature of each idea or note, it may come to conjoin with or be part of other such trains of thought or mini-structures as well. Thus each such mini-structure will be connected to other such structures. The shape of each structure will mesh with and into other structures. As the conceptual system sought to be developed in méǵh₂s grows, so will the visual layout and connections of its concepts into a megastructure—the Edifice. I cannot predict the ultimate shape of this megastructure, the ultimate flowchart or graphical representation of this conceptual endeavor. There may be multiple ways to fit connect all the nodes, out of which some can be composed into a better visual design or arrangement. It may not be possible to create order out of the nodes in two dimensions, or even three. I don’t know, but I am excited to add this visual exercise to my work and see what comes of it.
In just some minutes, I will be releasing the first proper essay of Vichara, along with its graphical rendition, its corresponding idea-pages in the Edifice, and two YouTube videos going along with it: one a longer video-essay covering all essential parts of the essay with the arguments for them, and the other a short summary sketch of the essay or an outline of what the written/video essay contain.
I hope to release content on all three of these fronts consistently from there.
Finally: If you find the concept of méǵh₂s itself or the concepts being developed through méǵh₂s to be worthwhile, interesting or cool, please do share it. Need it to be said, I hope for my work not to be for the void, but for whatever may be the metaphysical and experiential antithesis of that.
Those who can read both the Devanagari and Latin script may recognize that these two are actually phonetically different (though similar). Yes, I am engaging in some language-play, but hopefully the etymological discussion above makes sense of it.