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Tuesday 25 August 2015

"Existence" Certificate.



M P Subramanian 
Dear  & respected Sir,
Greetings from your loving friend !
I really enjoyed the forwarded message of Mr P.
Ramanathan and take it into heart to realise  that
not only LIC, all the Employers are insisting from their
ex-employees for the same certificate of EXISTENCE
every year for the continued payment of pension.
   My suggestion is that why not these Employers go ahead
merely on the basis of self attested life certificates as in
the case of novel idea introduced by our present Honourable 
PM  when he was as the Chief Minister of Gujarat and thereafter
to in various Govt . offices in Delhi too , similar to that of his 
earlier action. To prove the correctness, there are ample records 
also are available in their office  numerous files.
This practice will not only eliminate various inconveniences of
the ex-employees who have almost exhausted energy of their life,
to run from one pillar to another to prove  his/ her self existence 
with the unknown person solely for the purpose of pension.
 On most of the occasions there is every possibility of declining 
that they are not known to them earlier or insist  for any identity. 
In such circumstances the situations goes worst.
Respected MPS  Sir, Please think over it and suggest some
enervated idea at least for the future generations. 
Kind Regards,
SKS

     That's right : it is "Existence" Certificate and not "Life" Certificate because LIC knows only too well that the pittance doled out by it under the guise of 'pension' to earlier retirees does not enable them to lead a decent 'life" and so "Life" Certificate will be a misnomer in their case at least, right?
     Remember that favourite phrase of LIC's - "By way of abundant caution"?
     As for "Existence" Certificate I hold that it's enough if we ourselves convince LIC that we THINK and so we EXIST taking a cue from Descartes instead of going after serving LIC Class I / II Officers, HGAs, Bank Managers, Medical Practitioners, etc.
     Or we can emulate that spunky girl in the joke who whipped out her compact, took out her mirror, looked at it and declared : "Yes, it's me all right" when asked by a bank clerk to prove her identity. We can go to the nearest office of LIC with a mirror, look at it and declare ourselves on which the head of that office / authorised official would convey our existence to our respective pension disbursing offices.
     I know my fellow pensioners are capable of suggesting various other ingenious methods also to prove to LIC that we "EXIST" (somehow?)

René Descartes (1596–1650)

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
Cogito, ergo sum
Philosophy
Alternative titles: I think, therefore I am; Je pense, donc je suis

Cogito, ergo sum, ( Latin: “I think, therefore I am)
Descartes, René [Credit: National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland]
dictum coined by the French philosopher René Descartes in his Discourse on Method (1637) as a first step in demonstrating the attainability of certain knowledge. It is the only statement to survive the test of his methodic doubt. The statement is indubitable, as Descartes argued in the second of his six Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), because even if an all-powerful demon were to try to deceive him into thinking that he exists when he does not, he would have to exist in order for the demon to deceive him. Therefore, whenever he thinks, he exists. Furthermore, as he argued in his replies to critics in the second edition (1642) of the Meditations, the statement “I am” (sum) expresses an immediate intuition, not the conclusion of a piece of reasoning (regarding the steps of which he could be deceived), and is thus indubitable. However, in a later work, the Principles of Philosophy (1644), Descartes suggested that the cogito is indeed the conclusion of a syllogism whose premises include the propositions that he is thinking and that whatever thinks must exist.

NEW WORLD ENCYCLOPAEDIA

Cogito ergo sum

"Cogito, ergo sum" (Latin: "I am thinking, therefore I exist," or traditionally "I think, therefore I am") is a philosophical phrase by René Descartes, and it is a translation of Descartes' original French statement: "Je pense, donc je suis," which occurs in his Discourse on Method (1637).

Descartes understood "certainty" as the primary characteristic of valid knowledge. He conducted a series of thought experiments (regarding methodic doubt) in order to find the indubitable, self-evident truth expressed by this phrase. The interpretation of this phrase has been subject to numerous philosophical debates. The phrase expresses a skeptical intellectual climate which is indicative of early modern philosophy.

Although the idea expressed in "cogito ergo sum" is widely attributed to Descartes, many predecessors offer similar arguments—particularly Augustine of Hippo in De Civitate Dei (books XI, 26), who also anticipates modern refutations of the concept. (In Principles of Philosophy,§7: "Ac proinde haec cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum, est omnium prima et certissima etc."). Since Descartes, the phrase has grown popular beyond the field of philosophy.


P Ramanathan <suprashanth2@gmail.com>