Saturday, December 30, 2006 

Ideology, Religion & Science

Let me start with the gross definitions for the above terms about which I shall put forth my views.

An ideology is an organized collection of ideas or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society. The main purpose behind an ideology is to offer change in society through a normative thought process (what the world ought to be). Ideologies tend to be abstract thoughts applied to reality.

Religion is the adherence to codified beliefs and rituals that (generally) involve a faith in a spiritual nature and a study of inherited ancestral traditions, knowledge and wisdom related to understanding human life. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to faith as well as to the larger shared systems of belief.

Science is "knowledge attained through study or practice," or "knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws. It uses observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena. Science continually seeks to gain increased understanding and, where appropriate, the possibility for control of many specific aspects of the world.

Its time to take head-on on this bullshit. The BJP national council meeting concluded recently and the party had amended its constitution to induct RSS 'pracharaks' into important positions and reaffirmed one of its core ideology to build Ram temple in Ayodhya.Not that BJP is bad, our PM has recently remarked that minorities must have the first claim on the country’s resources and it was obviously a move to appease the Muslim community in large.

There was another comment which has been irritating me for sometime now, the Pope had reminded us of an earlier quote by Emperor Manuel II Paleologus "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. I shall not delve on the atrocities of the Church to gain power during the 11-15th centuries.

I really can’t understand the vigor the saffron heads possess to build Ram temple when there are so many issues lined up against us and at least 30 % of our population is below poverty. It is a holy crap statement Mr. Singh when there is such a wide income disparity building in the society which may lead to a social oppression in the near future. I never expected such a naive remark from the pontiff who heads the one billion Catholics when there are signs of a religious cold war between Islam and Christianity.

I don’t know how long they are going to take the commons for a ride in the name of Ideology. There is nothing wrong in having faith and to practice it. I don’t know what sense it makes to provoke negative sentiments of other faiths by people who can make all the difference between life and death for a mass.

I shall take the liberty to distinguish the religion from ideology. Ideology involves the invoking of a superior attitude whereas religion may not encourage a condescending feeling. The classic case of BJP is to invoke the ideology of Hindutuva identity although Hinduism does not preach such a superior or narcissist attitude. There has been an inclination to collaborate faith (which is based on complete trust) with ideologies which is dictated by a pioneering group. As faith is completely decoupled from reasoning, a sect of the society try to invoke impulsive emotions for their own thirst for power.

There was another disturbing news item which was showed on Christmas eve in CNN-IBN.It had indicated how caste system has stayed intact in the churches. I can't sound more than "what holy crap!!”.Atleast my basic understanding about the basic principles of different faiths is that they teach us to live a god life in harmony with the world around us codifying different morals for them. I don’t know what justice we can provide to what is being done or instigated.

As I try to understand religion or science, I see both of them as a methodology to understand. Religions seeks to understand god whereas science seeks to understand the nature. Faith operates on trust whereas science seeks the truth through reasoning. Religions claim ultimate wisdom through god whereas sciences postulate theories to understand them.

At least I reasonably assume that both seek to understand the truth. I shall quote the recent issues such as stem cell research and the concept of intelligent design where both science and religion have tried to overwhelm their supremacy rather than seek co-existence. Both of them have their limitations; faith cannot be proved whereas science is limited to concurrent knowledge.

Science allows a feedback system where current theories can be challenged and the celebrated theories can be replaced by new theories which more accurately represent a phenomenon. Adaption is the cardinal rule for a theory to survive, if it cannot release a new version it becomes obsolete. At times both science and faith show arrogance and adamancy without any respect for its basic purpose of existence, to provide us a better life!!

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8:56 am | |

Thursday, December 21, 2006 

Right or Wrong?


The other day, I took a break from my hectic work ( I know you don't want to believe it, if you were to extrapolate my last few months).It was quite late, the cubicles in my floor were filled with some of my fellow compatriots who were giving their contribution to increase the revenue of youtube, some were appreciating the CG abilities of online games, some were enriching their networking abilities through Gmail and Orkut and there were others like me who self proclaimed the liberty to talk about anything.

One of my colleagues had remarked, as to how one person took the license to treasure two long hours to watch friends series in the office. It was not a kind of surprise to me because I had on one occasion cherished a four hour limit on the friends series in office. I could empathize with him, I confronted “What is wrong if people can amuse themselves with such activities when they have no work or deliverables".

My colleague acknowledged as to how even he had found such Time Relishing Tactics (TRT), but he would not prolong it for more than half an hour. He said it was not fair to do such non-value adding activities for such long durations in office. I knew that the only way people find respite for doing certain ( I am being conservative) dirty jobs is by regaling themselves with such offline (non-value adding to the business).If I can speak for myself I find it offending to kill boredom and all I can do is to procrastinate or dissipate my frustration only by such activities. I can neither complain of the work because that is where Indian companies are in the value chain.

I was traveling in my friend's car enroute to meet our undergraduate friend. It was really intimidating to watch four people packed up in a two wheeler. Both of us dissented, as how foolish those people were, without any respect for safety. I offered my opinion as to how they could not afford a car,the had the necessity to travel faster amidst the state of public transport. Everybody had their own reason to judge whether something was wrong or right.

How often are we caught up with ethical dilemmas and moral judgments?. Pre-marital sex or divorces do not undergo the same moral judgment as in the western world. Does it mean that people in the western world are a whole bunch of unethical people?. What kind of moral judgment flourishes our mind when somebody quits a job for the want of money, what is wrong in subjecting ourselves to higher valuations in the market.

What was perfectly right to me was absolutely wrong to somebody else although each of us had valid reasons. Each of us had our own definition or measure as to what was right or wrong. The proportion of the activity had determined the outcome of the judgment rather than the signs of the activity itself.

We are more often influenced by the judgment of the pertaining societal guidelines as well. I felt that the framework for moral judgment is determined by the individual freedom or constraint to think or act about the same. Our judgment of right or wrong most often reflect the liberty of our mind, conditioned by the past, the experiences of the present and our willingness to give a chance for the same in the future.

There are no rigid rules to what is right or wrong and it is more determined by the dimensions of our mind and experiences. Is there something called half right or wrong?. Is it possible for something to be perfectly right without being wrong?. Is it always possible for something tobe right or wrong for eternity?.Who am i to determine what is right or wrong?.Can i live without judging whether something is right or wrong?

Am I Right or Wrong?

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8:35 am | |

Thursday, December 14, 2006 

India & Sports: a Good Joke?

It gives me an awkward feeling when I think that India managed to siphon only around 9 gold medals by now whereas our close neighbor plundered 147 gold medals in the Asian games. I really cannot stop refuting nor can I prevent myself from showing my dissent against the commentators who happily blame the poor athletes for putting up this abysmal performance. Dare shall we have the guts to spur such disrespect for their spirit.

If anybody has to be blamed for this pathetic state, it is the process and the attitude of the people about sports. How many of our parents would have allowed us to take up sports as a profession. We would rather be highly paid coolies morphed in the name of engineers and business graduates working for the progress of any other economy than bring laurels in sports for our country.

Let us not put a hollow statement that there is dearth of talent in this country. I certainly feel that If we cannot find talent in this 100 crore population, we can never find it elsewhere. There is a huge hue and cry that the Indian hockey team has put us to shame as they have failed to qualify to medals phase. How many of us have know that Holland has around 200 stadiums and India has hardly 20 turf stadiums and still we claim that hockey is our national sport.

We have very often observed our friends or acquaintances who were good sportspersons but dissuaded themselves from taking sports as a profession. They would choose or be forced to be a mediocre analyst rather than show their proficiency as great sportsmen. There is either the lack of parental support, social acknowledgement to take such a sporting career or financial stability to do so. There is always this fear which prevents them.

Success at the highest level of sports is all about high levels of competition and we can achieve high level of competitiveness only when we have a good talent pool. To attract the best of the breed, there needs to be a paradigm shift in the way we perceive sporting as a career option. There need to be a major impetus on sports & the essential infrastructure at all levels to breed a competitive talent pool. We need to understand that sports are as important as academics in developing a holistic personality and nation. An innate sportsperson can be identified at a very young age and they should be tuned from there.

There is this argument which crops up, in this nation when half of them are impoverished by poverty and illiteracy, is it really necessary that sports be given such impetus. If we are going to accept this fatalism, we shall at least have the grace to abstain ourselves from blaming the people who had the passion or at least the guts to take a risk to choose a sporting profession inspite of depleted infrastructure and adequate competitive environment. I am not going to deny the politics in the system but I can vouch that talent would prevail in the end if the system is corrected..

I am encouraged by the way the corporates sponsor the non mass sports like formula racing, tennis and golf. I get some respite that encouragement and funds are flowing from the private sector when the government has it own focus.Atleast we need to have the courage of what China did some years ago.China abstained itself from Olympics and other sports events till it reached a competitive level.

We should cultivate the culture to enjoy sports other than cricket atleast !!

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10:17 am | |

Wednesday, December 06, 2006 

That Ever Lasting Smile

There used to be a professor in my class who used to religiously ask this question before he starts his lecture “Are you Happy?".I always thought that it was not such an easy question that can be answered nor did it make prudence to self interrogate to ascertain the same. It is true that we can always distinguish the moment of happiness from other states although the source of happiness somewhat conjugates itself with fluid partners.

There is a guy who serves tea to us in our company, He does not serve the best of beverages although the monotony of the same composition might have lead me to this conclusion but there is something that I relish about him. He has this ability to judge the mood of people by looking at them. Last Wednesday, He suddenly put across this statement to me; he said "You look happy”. I was amused by this because it was the first time in a year that he had to say this to me although we shared a good rapport. I refuted "I am always like that”. He replied " May be you are more happy than what you were earlier”. I could not resist admitting it in private to myself. May be he is right, I could discern the change when I consciously evaluated it. It was the penultimate day, I had opened myself to one of my close chum about the worries that had promulgated my mind for sometime now. I was feeling better after I spoke out.Could be, that is what reflected in my attitude and happy feel factor somehow surfaced.

There is one important thing I had to concede, people who observe you would know if you are really happy. Now, that lead to "What is happiness?”. I came up with answers like smiling, pleasure, joy or feeling good. The more I got to scrutinize my answers; I realized that those were mere outcomes or synonyms to happiness. After some mind wars to reach consensus, I refined "Is happiness the state of feeling when one is satisfied when he gets what he wants?”.The want may be both tangible and intangible. Okay that a fair attempt but I wasn't completely convinced.

Maybe, happiness is the state of being oneself when somebody is satisfying his needs. I got to contemplate "Is happiness a balanced state when one is satisfied ". It couldn't be that way because in such a state of neutrality caused by satisfaction, we cannot enjoy happiness. I got to observe another thing the more we are conscious that we are happy, the state starts to sizzle away. The more we are conscious of having satisfied of our needs, we are not happy.Oops, then what the heck is this happiness, I know for sure that some damn thing happens when we are happy. Something ringed somewhere "Is happiness the state when we are unconscious of our needs in spite of our needs?". I really don’t know.

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10:36 am | |

Friday, December 01, 2006 

WTF moments

We always undergo these moments in life when we are in deep rage to blurt out "What the f**k (WTF) ". Some of us are naive enough to share them with others, some are pompous enough to fake them and others are diffident enough to hide them. I just felt like sharing such discrete events which currently occupies the troposphere of my mind.

Indian cricket is what comes to me first, although I have refused myself to be a diehard fan after the betting scandal. I cannot resist following the game, for I lack options where India has to show its sporting skills. It is not that i am agitated about the recent performance in South Africa, I never had the guts to expects better stuff after witnessing chronic inability of our team to play in seaming and bouncy conditions outside the subcontinent. It is the moment when our honorable MP's took this issue, even one of them had to suggest Greg Chappell about coaching. One of them had a great thought; we should cut their match fees. Our honorable speaker had to say that Greg Chappell does not have to talk about the job of parliamentarians. WTF, it even applies to people who suggest to Chappell. Just because BCCI churns crores of money not every tom dick and harry can comment of how cricket should be run.

Next on the glutinous pipeline is the spurring comment of our own L.K Advani who said in the Lok Sabha that "the conviction of a Cabinet minister in a murder case was an “unprecedented’ development in the annals of India’s Parliamentary history and the situation caused by it was ‘extraordinary’ ". The PM, he demanded, should clarify his position and tender an apology to the nation for re-inducting Soren.WTF, what moral conviction does Advani have to say this after committing the sin of outraging communal thoughts which provoked killings after he had the courage to take up Ratha Yatra in a “secular" country like India.

This has some local content; I was traveling in an auto and suddenly a two-wheeler passed across us like an insane crook. As typical of our auto drivers, he called him names which didn't impact me. What really created havoc in my mind was the way in which the auto driver took the liberty to cross the imminent signal even after it turned red which would have almost triggered an accident. WTF, is judgment of insanity drowned with such bias towards others. Is it that everybody is jobless on the road and the auto driver is smart enough to gain time?

There was a discussion amongst our colleagues about how our corrupt politicians are ruining Indian growth which has the potential to outpace the growth of China.WTF?, How can we expect this from them when we don’t even pay taxes properly. I am not against tax savings, I am more concerned about the method of faking claims to evade tax?

I don’t say that we need to perfect, we just have to understand that we have our own deficiencies. We need to consciously understand them and correct them!!!

Did you say WTF after reading this post?

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3:45 am | |

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