tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27235810556632445292024-03-02T00:05:39.413-08:00Honnasiri's CatchA corner of the Universe where this inconspicuous observer makes notes about a strange world and a bunch of things it represents. Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-77875392632185029482022-08-21T06:04:00.014-07:002022-09-04T10:34:45.669-07:00Sec 295(a): 295 reasons too many to take offense? <div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Pride before a fall, they say. The only thing they don't say is how long before the fall. Let's take a case in point. India prides itself on a lot of things. Among those are secularism and a rich & envied cultural history. We're well known for our food, dance forms, and indigenous sciences, among a long list. But what about the pride this fame brings? </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, all those who hope that the saying is true are right. It's what happened with Nupur Sharma, Munawwar Farruiqui, Mohammed Zubair and every person booked under IPC section 295A. All of these cases were filed by a random single individual and blossomed into nationwide movements. If the previous sentence doesn't call out the glaring faultline that this pride rests on, and makes it obvious, the next one will. All it took for statements, addressing the expression of pride, by a free individual to be eligible to be counted as crime is for another such free individual, over-stuffed with pride, to wake up one morning in their tiny, disconnected Universe and scream "danger". On basis of merit, better reason should outscore a disconnected Universe. On basis of majority, the disconnected Universe of the majority wins over any reason at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is this very act of law -Section 295A of the IPC (a British legal relic) that has encouraged our offendability by normalising a disconnected identity. Today, anyone can wake up, feel "offended" and lay the groundwork for the next national issue all at one go. They don't need credibility, nor does their actual grouse. All they need is to claim that someone somewhere who doesn't know they exist, with their own particular set of values, has managed to offend them from that distance. That's all that is ever important till their disconnected Universe has been restored to its off-balance once again. </div><div><br /></div><div>The law specifically speaks against "deliberate and malicious intent to outrage religious feelings". In a country where beliefs (and their many versions) grow on the next tree, it is practically suicide. The only thing "deliberate" and "malicious" about offense taken, leading to action under it, is that we can be so high nosed about diverse views. </div><div><br /></div><div>Going by the origin of the law around 1929, the Indian Muslim community (ironically), then, demanded a law against insult to religious feelings because a book was published which hurt their sentiments. The publisher was not convicted because no law existed that could convict him. Enter Section 295(A). The lawmakers who passed it added that a writer might insult a religion to facilitate social reform by grabbing attention, therefore necessating the words, <i>deliberate and malicious intention. </i></div><div><br /></div><div>It would seen that the only intent that would seem "deliberate and malicious", according to said individuals who live in tiny universes tucked into an otherwise interconnected world, is a challenge to a status quo that keeps their puny corner of the world untouchable, even at the expense of any other corner in the cosmos. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">The only way that totally random, isolated individuals can stay away from overtaking national discourse with their baby cries is by ignoring the babies and their immaturity. Everyone knows what happens when an immature child throws tantrums and is obliged because we want to keep the peace, when the mature adults around them who don't throw tantrums know the value of compromise and evolve forward as one towards actual unity. But then we are in the habit of entrusting the whole future of our land to certain single individuals because we love worst case scenarios that do better over better case scenarios that possibly may not be, that are our only way out. Talk about desperation.</div></div></div></div></div><p></p>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-78248173390161241902022-06-30T10:03:00.001-07:002023-04-24T00:50:39.950-07:00Does your politics make you a pig? <div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Time, despite the inevitable changes, needs a few constants otherwise we lose ourselves, like manners i.e. civility, grace, respect - that age-old value that can seem really old school sometimes. The manners that maketh the man, they say. They also mark the man apart by miles from those people with lesser or, worse, none of this standard.</div></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">This golden role can be offered no excuse, none at all. The problem, however, arises with the ongoing intense political age where person and politics know no boundaries. Intentional politicking usually involves supporting one side in total, including its bad parts, to avoid the fallouts of the other side(s) in total to achieve the best world possible yet. Depending on how desperate you are for that world, reason starts to fade, irrationality takes its place and you can't make out the difference between the two. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">That's when you lose the manners that maketh you. Name-calling, condescending, patronizing and other collectively influenced adverse behaviour becomes a part of "fair play". Grace you knoweth not. The only grace you had was when you let the opposite side have their "grace period" but now time's up. Sore player is thy middle name. The only advantage is that there is no referee and no one to give you a red or yellow card. It's a free-for-all. In a world where politics is played like a game, with sworn team loyalty included, the only thing that kept it a sport worth playing is manners - even at the cost of the good of the world. But now, you've even lost that. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">That, ladies and gentlemen (if we're still that when politik) is the nutshell of how we trade blows when we don't like a set of ideas that are, or might soon become, a part of our world. What we stupidly forget is that politicians will come and go. They will always have their agenda however much it looks like they're not here just to screw us over. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Soon, you'll have to expand that old poem by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (which is long enough in its latest modern version) to include your group as well: </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak because I was not a socialist.</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">The big question to ask, and be honest about answering, as the timeless gold standard is: Does your politics make you a pig? Do you turn into a vile version of anything when you politik? If yes, it isn't worth it. It turns into a monster that your mind justifies at every turn with too many blind spots to count! </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">If you can bring yourself to see reason, your desperation for change, or constant, is exactly what your opponents want. The statement works vice versa, speaking to your opponents. Being feral about expressing it only increases the wall between you and them. Insisting on your way or the highway gets no one anywhere. There's only one plate to eat out of, and no one's going to give up on their chances of thriving. There's going to be war over it, if it comes to that. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">When we choose our pro- or anti-stances, somehow we mix up the fact that people (who we believe we're fighting for) and ideas (which we believe are the only way) are, in fact, the same thing. Ideas exist for people and all people need to helped by ideas. We can differ and some ideas can't really be accomodated side by side because they cancel each other out but the best ones really stand out and speak to everyone. That's how you know they are the best ones. They're also the most sensible ones.</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">If we're truly sincere with ourselves, challenging as it is, finding these ideas are really simple. The problem is the ideologies that we've convinced ourselves will save us. They all come separately packaged, clearly marked and pre-meditated. Not one of them is without ill-motive, tucked away in their history, save maybe a few exceptions. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">We can unpack them and make our own rules of engagement. Not everyone will notice at first but this is a better way to actually converse across our schisms than constant hair-splitting bickering. We can make manners the centerpiece and common sense the goal. Avoid "narratives" and look for proven facts. Stop mistrusting "perceived intentions" and take people at their word believing they are indeed sincere with their stances. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">With civility back, civilians get the full spotlight and the politicians are given all the space to truly serve. Not the upotia we may we be at ever, but at least our vision ahead is set straight. Also, with no ideal, even the most impossible ones, we're dead people walking. The only question that remains to be answered is to whose tune?</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div><br></div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-86636517084163406652022-06-09T10:33:00.001-07:002022-06-09T12:07:41.947-07:00...and then they came for you<div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Sometimes it takes what seems like the wrong punch to get the right effect by an expected person - like the recent backlash by many Muslim countries about Nupur Sharma's statements on Prophet Mohammed. Just a disclaimer though: their response is not a complete defense of what many Indian Muslims go through in a stated secular country like India - whether it is by the 1976 assertion of "secular" in the Preamble or the claim that Hinduism is anyway secular making the former unnecessary. The international response is on an equal level to how many Muslims are made to face struggles at home in India. The mirror just flipped. It's all show and no substance, just with a different name. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">The countries, which registered their opposition, practice a somewhat equal intolerance of beliefs other than theirs, as does the Hindutva brigade that has been on the rise in the past few months, whose words these very countries have raised an issue with. They, both, have the same cultural and/or religious motivation to do but are just on opposite ends of the same spectrum of religious intolerance. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">The fact that it took this particular outrage from lands far away when there was enough noise being raised back home speaks for the true heart of the majority rulers of this country. As some tweets went, oil is indeed thicker than water. The Government couldn't care any less for their own but will do anything for their economic lifelines. It's another matter that they've brought the country to a point that it needs so much dependence on lifelines. It's also a separate matter that Governments usually don't care unless you are a pawn they can use. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Of course, all is not well back at home even with the Government's own supporters up in arms about them bowing down to greater powers. Many supporters are angry that they caved but perhaps they should understand that their loyalty was never seen as loyalty but just convenient steps up towards the Government's goal. It's tragic that they are surprised. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">What best describes this is the poem by Martin Niemöller which describes this phenomenon that people should not be surprised by anymore - but they still choose to be. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">First they came for the Communists</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">And I did not speak out</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Because I was not a Communist</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Then they came for the Socialists</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">And I did not speak out</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Because I was not a Socialist</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Then they came for the trade unionists</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">And I did not speak out</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Because I was not a trade unionist</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Then they came for the Jews</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">And I did not speak out</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Because I was not a Jew</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">Then they came for me</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">And there was no one left</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">To speak out for me</div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">The last stanza is for the Hindutva loyal gang that is angry with the Government appeasing, which also supports, or ignores, the strong anti-Muslim sentiment prevalent in many places. They didn't realize that like, any other political movement, their 'loyalty' only makes them pawns in the game - like everyone under a government today. They are not any leadership's first priority and all leaderships are usually as selfish as the previous one. They were happy at Muslims being pawns that had no more use because they weren't pawns (yet) but now their time has come and it's a revelation they can't handle. </div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><br></div><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">The lesson to learn here is that if you want someone to speak out for you when they come for you, you should also speak out for them, when they come for them. A simpler way to say that is to speak up for everyone when and how you can - whether it's on social media or what you silently believe and never say but becomes your vote. Also, ideological loyalty to people and individuals will always sting you in the back. You protect your own and you help other people protect their own while we all strive for a world in which everyone doesn't have to protect their own. </div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-11124281837806100802021-08-06T09:12:00.000-07:002023-04-24T00:51:00.689-07:00Culture under threat, or imagination on fire?<p> India is rife with cultural-socio-moral uncles and aunties who allege that Indian culture is being "threatened" with the cool crowd joining their gang lately. Their list of grievances ranges from Hindu temples being lost or neglected to the mass switch to choosing western food over Indian food. While they may have a case, let's take a deeper look at this threat that they perceive. It has four main stages: the emotional, the delusions, the justification, and the damage. <br><br><b>The Emotional</b><br><br>We know that sensitivity runs high in India. It's deep in our blood. We're, after all, an emotional bunch. What we're particularly sensitive about status quo. <i>It defines who we are basis our relationship with somebody else. It's like always defining India via the idea of Pakistan, and not what India is inherently without Pakistan.</i> It's our norm which becomes our comfort & soon enough our identity - and then all we know and love (however toxic the idea). <br><br><b>The Delusions<br></b><br>We assume the positions of power play to protect it. How it works? Everyone's either sitting or standing. There's a hot seat, and you're either sitting on it and standing up to it. You're doing either one or the other, and you don't choose your fate. <i>You just wake up to it and stay on the same side of the divide. You're locked in and have zero mobility options.</i> Whether you suffer it or thrive on it, you're supposed to live up to that fate like it's your religious duty that you will be beheaded for if you fail. <br><br><b>The Justification <br></b><br>There are three kinds of responses.<br><br>Suffer your fate<br>(You're lucky if you don't have to)<br><br>Fight your fate<br>(You just have to be an ingrate who is absolutely not thankful for what's handed to them)<br><br>Reason through fates<br>(How dare you even attempt to change the way things are, even if both sides don't get a good, equal deal in the end)<br><br>If you enjoy the status quo, you protect it. If you suffer from it, you oppose it. <i>You could also try to be a better responder (because status quo has pushed the morality of everyday society into a form too depraved to rationally address for anyone to be the bigger person anymore)</i>. Whatever you choose to do, you will be opposed because we've assumed the delusion that is the status quo, and it becomes your life, living, and being. Chipping away at it because it is unjust simply means chipping away at a little piece of us, a little at a time. I mean, just because those standing have directly inherited some of the places they can go, statuses they can hold and, therefore, happiness they can experience that those standing can't ever because someone decided to toss a coin and arbitrarily decide that doesn't mean we have to turn things over, does it?<br><br><b>The Damage<br></b><br>While <i>emotions have steeped us, delusions have eaten us, and justifications have driven us, the damage is killing us</i>. We can simply turn tables over (or fight to keep them as is) and protect our own at any cost - whatever kind of monsters it turns us into.<i> Whoever wins, there will always be sitting & standing, sides, oppression, anger, pride, undue privilege, and more enough to cause delusions, justification, and damage that is even worse</i>. There is no monster you want to become that's worth the effort. Yes, we are our history, and history isn't taught by questioning it into non-existence after applying to it better standards of humanity. It is always taught by simply propagating it further without question, however inhumane, and power tags along. As we go along, it is natural (but not justified) to justify our delusions and wash our hands of the damage we cause in the simple name of pride.<br><br>This is a cycle that mankind had gone through a gazillion times and more. <i>We have come to survive on threat systems after pitting us against one another. Our instincts are normalised to fear and defense</i>. We believe that we have to be aware with eyes at the back of our head and on the sides, watching out for people who will take our way of life away from us with respect to food, fashion, God, values, belief, and freedom. That's how we were taught in the absence of a threat - mostly because those who taught us needed to justify the cultural ego they held onto in their head. It found its way into the centre of our brains and made all of that real to us, even when it wasn't. We created threats out of thin air by shaving off beards, raping and murdering lower caste people, and killing people who fit our stereotype of those who kill a sacred animal, among a few examples. <br><br><i>Threat perception is a highly emotional response - especially when it comes to the delusions that play to our advantage. We respond with snap reactions and don't revisit them. Our mind slowly tries to justify them (in support), and they turn into genuine threats - whether or not they are real.</i> What is an actual reality we should reasonably be in fear of (knowing why), and what is just a bad dream that haunts us because we refuse to live with our feet on the ground becomes very difficult to decipher. Somehow, it is easier to decipher other people as a different species that deserves less than what ours does - though they are just the same.</p>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-61264175499219078982021-03-09T07:27:00.001-08:002021-03-10T20:56:36.708-08:00Is equability the new dreaded equality?<div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true"><div data-pm-slice="1 1 []" data-en-clipboard="true">The way we play politics tends to be magnetic, just like we are inclined to only choose leaders who display a 'magnetic' personality. When we pick either side, we stick to it wearing loyalty on our sleeves until death (or so it would seem). <b>The only sin you can commit is changing sides, just as much you as you can never go wrong by sticking with your side, regardless of what it makes you believe or defend. </b> You've got to be a team player, or you're no player at all - even if you don't see sense in the strategy. Sometimes, that includes randomly taking one for the team, ironically. </div><div><br></div><div>This results in diametric opposites in views - boxised versions of how best one's country must be run: capitalism vs. socialism/communism, welfare vs. earned privileges, affirmative action (reservation) vs. society benevolence, and the topic of this article: <b>equality vs. equability</b>.</div><div><br></div><div>The whole context to this war over ideology is, on one side, the belief that <b>the happiest world is one in which every person has the environment and the freedom to succeed and achieve limitlessly with skill is the only limitation. In other words, you should be able to achieve whatever you want, if you can pull it off. </b>This world rewards you fairly for the effort you actually make and the success you create in the process is yours to take. So, the more you put in, the more you reap. Or simply put the best win. </div><div><br></div><div>The ignored sidenote here is that <b>reward should be preceded by fair advantage. That is to say, if life was a track race, everyone must be exactly similarly poised to win - the only impediment being how well they are able to eventually perform. </b>They start at an equidistant starting point to the finish line and have the same minimum standard running quality gear and training & facilities. Anyone with any less is at a disadvantage and the competition is not fair - whatever all the fuss about it is worth. This kind of a world is perfectly fair to ensure that only the best performers win and their success should be proportional to performance. Neither of them should have an inherent advantage over and above the performance they pull off. </div><div><br></div><div>As in a real-life track event, all these factors are achievable if all participants are equally well off to afford them, or can match up to those who can afford them easily with access to them i.e. financial support, benefactors, ability to take loans, official support from sports organisations, etc. Those who are well off have the privilege of waltzing through all of this with no stress, unlike those who don't, which makes this idealistic equality impossible. Balancing it involves the natural benefit of years and years of privilege. </div><div><br></div><div>As much as we try to get as close as possible to construct a world where we are relatively equal enough to call it a fair race, we realise that even if we can, we really can't. There are too many variables in between. What we can do is to ensure that life goes on, even for the darkest of those who fall under those variables. Their fate is worsened by the fact that we live in a world where work and life are intertwined. </div><div><br></div><div>To have a better life, people take up better work because nothing should come completely free in a healthy world. The competition to get this better life can get ahead of itself, though, where it is more about the competition for its own sake and less about that better life (if at all) - perhaps the genesis of the rat race. The problem with its obsession is that there will always be losers, with more of them losing the harder we play. </div><div><br></div><div>Our performance in this rat race defines our access, or lack thereof, to the very basics that define a good, healthy, human life. The more losers, the more people "lose" the opportunity to get these things, the more out of reach they get. This turns the tables completely on what society was. Society used to be structured to feed, clothe and sustain its citizens. Now, all those resources have become dog and the bone candy for people's ambitions, and only a few lucky winners have the human privilege of being comfortably fed. The other humans become dogs to the rest, eating breadcrumbs that fall off the table. </div><div><br></div><div>In the equality vs. equability debate, we mask this battle of victors and losers as the next level of human worth, where we better ourselves unconditionally without counting the cost. One of the first problems of this progression is assuming that we all are in an equal place and privilege to take up this challenge. In truth, it is an exercise of boredom that the privileged winners have from when this has been done before, over and over by those before them. It only causes a split between the really few winners and the many losers who then get relegated to breadcrumbs for life. <b>While</b> <b>one side insists that you should be able to achieve whatever you want, if you can pull it off, the other side asks, "what if you can't?"</b></div><div><br></div><div>With our stubborn resistance, equality can only be brought by distribution, just like how it was before the rat race was on. Not necessarily handouts, but availability, access, and equal access to availability: when everyone was better poised to win, and work and life weren't intertwined. There was a hunger for success but we knew the limit of it to be our sustainable sustenance and nothing more.<b> It doesn't take much to know that you've lost the plot when you've bargained the Holy Grail for personal glory but greed is a bitch. </b></div><div><br></div><div>The privileged winners believe in a kind of equality which says that nothing is of value unless it is earned, full and well. That makes perfect sense in a perfect world. What doesn't is that anything they do will always be advantageous against the others unless there is drastic action to address the inequality between the two groups i.e. equitability. <b>The reason we have to resort to handouts, today, is because we lost our minds a long time ago and let the sin multiply to a point where even the best-balanced medicine won't work wonders. </b>This is where complete student loan waivers, free houses for those how never historically had decent ones, better-by-miles education access to those generations never had the privilege, and the like. </div><div><br></div><div>What is needed is a jolt to the system and it will jolt both sides. That's the only way you can fully repair a permanently broken structure. Of course, there will be bruises to egos but that's a part of the journey to equal progress. You win some, you lose some, en route to a happy world. If you don't want any of that, you will always be at the butt end of a broken one. </div><div><br></div><div>One of the reasons the world has come down to this is because <b>we have confused thrills for kills - like we confuse a sports game for real life. </b>A game is played, a team is cheered, a winner wins, and everyone cheering gets back to their not-so-exciting lives based around putting food on the table, and trying to stay away from getting to be the ones who eat the crumbs that fall off. The game is the thrill. It's what we entertain ourselves with for a break from the kill: putting food on the table every day. But a skewed world interchanges them. Putting food becomes the thrill while we kill survival. If we are so cruel as to make play work, and work play, what's at stake, and raises it dangerously, is our happiness and survival - all to fuel ambition we are too proud to shake off. Ambition can only ensure food on the table for very few of us, even in its best avatar. The rest us just have to make do with crumbs.</div><div><br></div><div>Trying to create any kind of paradise in an equal world is impossible. <b>Paradises are myths. It is we who make up for paradise that it can ever be and prove the myth to be real.</b> The world that we take pride in bares open our best values as individuals and as a group. We can go with the survival of the fittest to the point that death for its sake is alright, highlighting power and ego. We could, otherwise, choose to take care of everyone so that we all get to eat and live happily and well without having to beg our way up into better chances of survival - whether it's a socialist paradise, a capitalist haven or a thought through system that embodies only the best of our virtues. </div></div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-92105326848795022812020-10-31T21:51:00.001-07:002020-10-31T21:51:42.421-07:00Anything but a headless response<div>When information overwhelms us, oversimplification is the order of the day - or that is the modern state that we have evolved to (if you'd like to call that modern). We are not capable of the patience of taking in, and keeping every detail, while we build a story that's truly worthy of all of them. That is the unfortunate case with how we react when we most need to, like the Nice killing. </div><div><br></div><div>Let's look at the information and calculate the oversimplification. We can, then, get a clearer picture and choose an adequate response. </div><div><br></div><div><b>The Information</b>: </div><div><br></div><div>The adherents of extremist belief have decided that their belief ranks above humanity, enough to consider another human worthless (and worthy of death) just because they celebrate other values. One set of sacred values directly, and oppositely, clashed with another like they were sworn enemies to begin with - except that they were not. </div><div><br></div><div>It's just the wrong place for both to exist together. They're at natural loggerheads with each other. The primary culture is not uptight for most. It allows almost everything, repressing nothing except repression of what's allowed. One is the local original and has the primary right. The other is a guest in someone else's home and has only secondary rights, yet (only when there is a clash). </div><div><br></div><div><b>The Oversimplification</b>:</div><div><br></div><div>The keyword here is "all". One person does not represent all people, though it analyzes the situation easier They could represent some of them, possibly a lot of them, but certainly not every single one of them. The offended Muslim killers are not all Muslims. All Muslims don't believe that they should be able to kill people at first offense. Unfortunately, the loudest and the most stupid among us tend to speak for all, or the most, of us to those who won't take the time to understand every side of the story. </div><div><br></div><div>Now that we've defined the two, let's look at where lines could be crossed in our responses. Here, "our" response alludes to the "all" factor backwards. While we respond individually, we are not outside of influence. An anonymous Muslim will group our individual responses and define it anonymously collectively, and use that to take it out on anonymous people (like some of the follow-up attacks) just as we have an anonymous collective view of them and we may take it out on any Muslim. While individuals come from community and we can't just sever the link, we shouldn't let the bad apples necessarily define the rest with our ignorant - both ways. </div><div><br></div><div>Now let's look at the responses: </div><div><b><br></b></div><div><b>All Muslims are responsible because they are acting on what they believe and practice. That's an active choice they make and they are culpable. </b></div><div><br></div><div>It makes logical sense since we need to nip this in the bud. Some questions that can be asked is what are people taught that make them like this and how much of a danger those buds are to creating menaces and murder in society that can be sparked so easily. </div><div><br></div><div>People who say this most likely ignore multiple issues in their home societies and countries and become hypocritical to say it.</div><div><br></div><div><b>The killer was wrong as was the cartoon itself. Freedom of speech must have a limit and the anger of the murders is justified.</b> </div><div> </div><div>All murder is wrong as much as people who ridicule religion to the extent that what Charlie Hebdo does is less about content and more about effect I.e. they want their point of view to hurt that bad to those people who hold them. Just saying something you want to say and getting a message across for sure, at any cost, are two different things. Those with the above view seem to say yes to the first wrong but what about the second wrong almost like it's a justification. The weight we give to our arguments show our allegiances. </div><div><br></div><div>Charlie Hebdo was doing its thing much before Muslims started pouring into France. They reserve the first right to keep things as they are. The murdering immigrants would expect the same courtesy if these people visited their restrictive countries. Only if their homelands offered the freedom to change things at first disapproval, should they expect French society to change theirs with equal speed? We can't measure backward and forward societies by different barometers. </div><div><br></div><div>Now let's look at what our responses should be. </div><div><br></div><div>1) Murder is wrong</div><div>2) Charlie Hebdo does cross a clear line (and they know it)</div><div>3) Non-original inhabitants enter into a pecking order of societal values they must give way for</div><div>3) All people are not Charlie Hebdo or potential offended murderers</div><div>4) Punishment or retribution makes sense to those people who actually did the thing (unlike the teacher) not everyone else who simply seems like them in some fashion</div><div>5) There is a larger root factor of what (and how) many Muslims are taught to believe (that) which needs to be clearly addressed (like banning mosques that teach such ideology) but a blanket ban won't work</div><div><br></div><div>Any simplification of the above for the safety of one over the other ruins actual legal justice and blames innocent people disproportionately. We need to rightly place we/us from which we extract him/her before we mix them up in our effort to address everyone right.</div><div></div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-33984031839706184582020-09-10T12:53:00.001-07:002020-09-10T12:53:10.943-07:00What the Rhea-Sushant fiasco is trying to show us (which we're too dumb to hear)<div>The Sushant Singh Rajput - Rhea Chakraborty media fiasco is like the nth lesson in a multitude of social behavior patterns that we refuse to take as a learning opportunity. It's giving us the opportunity not to do what is our most tribal response and rise above it to seek better horizons with better instincts. </div><div><br></div><div>Let's do a top assessment of its latest developments, without going into the details. An actor is dead. His girlfriend is suspected. His family and his girlfriend's family start a cycle of tit-for-tat: you speak, I oppose, and is currently in the nth Inception style sub story of that cycle. A state police started the investigation. They didn't move on it. Now with public pressure and a media trial, it went to the CBI. But the frenzy hasn't stopped. The only defense of ot is that all people want is #justice for.. some for Sushant and some for Rhea. They swear by the details that he said this and she said that. The strength in the details, they beg, is in their truth - of course, with twists are being added everyday, making the tag of truth less and less relevant. </div><div><br></div><div>There's plenty of information on both sides. Every time one side seems more credible, the other says something to take that away from them. In this mess, people have chosen their sides. Those who continue to mourn for Sushant miss the man ans are fuelled by anger. Those who continue to fight for Rhea ask that she not be labelled just because she was on the wrong side of his life when he died. </div><div><br></div><div>Sushant's fans don't want to wait for an investigation, claiming all the information that upholds their cause and are hellbent with the conviction that Rhea is a witch and she needs to be hunted down - all in honour of their screen prince. Rhea's supporters in the mix ask for due process with the right of everyone to claim and contradict without a public trial, in addition to a media one amid what seems like a ever-developing story. </div><div><br></div><div>Whatever you choose, there are a few things you should note: </div><div><br></div><div>Emotions may change facts in your head but they don't change facts on the ground.</div><div><br></div><div> Just because you feel strongly for something you are predisposed to, and go into withdrawal when it's gone, it doesn't change whatever it was that eventually happened once we find out. Facts must drive how you eventuality come to feel, if you want to objectively align with whatever eventually did. You will feel similarly when something you like is being attacked. </div><div><br></div><div>The story is evolving. Don't keep stagnated points of view just yet</div><div><br></div><div>Don't let your half-mature emotions come in the way of a half-evolved set of information, that is evolving further. There are twists and turns that you can't predict, which you neither should exclude or ignore once they arise </div><div><br></div><div>Anything can be true </div><div><br></div><div>As with two sides of a legal case, you could never know who's hiding what. It could be what it seems in your head right now. It could also be the complete opposite, eventually. </div><div><br></div><div>Watch your narratives</div><div> </div><div>In order to back up emotionally charged views, narratives, not fast changing facts (updated with immediate denials from the opposite side), are like the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle even if they don't actually exist. We will seek what our minds choose to seek the smaller we set our target for. </div><div><br></div><div>You are always better than your unthinking, over passionate best</div><div><br></div><div>Bottomline, if you haven't painfully checked your behavior against all your non-suspicions, you are not even trying. Everything goes circularly so that the reality you want to see does not get affected. </div><div><br></div><div>What everyone needs is #justiceforsushant by finding out what killed him and, at the same time, #justiceforrhea from people who want to make their minds based on preset loyalties. </div><div><br></div><div>Funfact: with deathly loyalty, facts never matter, nor does any slither of truth. We'd have better luck with any actual justice at all if we keep our ideas to ourself and watch as the information cycle is completed before we start making full opinions again. </div><div></div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-25658499328998784232020-08-14T22:51:00.001-07:002020-08-15T01:49:32.782-07:00From our wounds, we must heal<div>We've just turned a new leaf in India's history that closed one wound with the building of a temple. Like every other, this one redeemed itself, but in the process, it festered another - innocently, of course. As much as wounds need to be healed, we also need to recognise that it is wounds that cause other wounds in a perpetual cycle that we've set off for generations and decades now. The world has come far, in pain and time, with history repeating itself in bigger cycles than the last, on and on. </div><div><br></div><div>Pain inspires justice; by that, I mean vengeance. And that inspires violence, which gives us these wounds. All this is because what we need is healing, and that's the only thing we never seek. </div><div><br></div><div>Wounds can be of many kinds - the death of a loved one (or people), continuous cultural oppression, being robbed of identity and/or dignity, preventing people from opportunity, etc. Each wound is, first, personal, then multiplied by the community that feels it. For this, vengeance is natural. We tend to equate it to justice like blood for blood, eye for eye and hand for hand, but let's clearly identify the markers. </div><div><br></div><div>Vengeance is about you (individually) and how you feel. It stops and ends there, feel being the keyword. It is momentary, if achieved, and doesn't resurrect what was lost. Justice is less about how you feel. It has a larger effect in light of the fact that many other people also have cause to feel this way. It looks at preventing the same thing from happening again to anyone else in the future - both by punishment for the responsible and/or restitution for the victim. </div><div><br></div><div>Any wound will always be tragic and wrong. When we move from feelings to reality, we must accept that the loss of certain things will remain painful, how much ever we avenge them. The dead can't be brought back to life, and nothing else with ever be a substitute for the real thing. The pain stays, but unfortunately, we can't get back time. At best, we can address how to avoid this in the future. We can protect people's rights against similar loss. </div><div><br></div><div>Instead of responding how we do, we get stuck in a loop of pain where someone keeps getting hurt and causes hurt in retaliation (hoping to address it). But there is reconciliation only in going past our loss, for our own good before we tackle the injustice for the good of everyone, once our motives to avenge die out—moving from self-centered vengeance to justice for everyone. </div><div><br></div><div>In other words, we need to heal inside. </div><div><br></div><div>Once done (or once we're well on our way in), we can address the issue without superimposing our pain over everyone else's and talk about true justice and not vengeance in its name. </div><div><br></div><div>Most of us experience some loss, which we can't get back, like people who have died. When it comes to those that we can (e.g. cultural or religious power/rights), we need to do an ours vs. theirs check. Most times, this is a result of a power play between the two sides. We've innocently inherited our privilege, as much as someone else has lost out on them. It's entirely possible that we grew up with these privileges as our own identity when someone else should have had a lot more of it - only because their ancestors suffered, directly or indirectly, when our ancestors' took, or kept, that from them many moons ago. </div><div><br></div><div>But we are not our parents' keepers, but those privileges are still us, i.e. our identity - the very reason we judtify fighting each other in a loop. It's natural for us to defend them to death. We carry them forward in the process, creating the future. If ever, reconciliation can only happen when we understand which side of the fence we are on and see if we can help the other side up. Even if we can't trace the power play, we will be able to see the inequality - which we can correct by leveling it. That should not necessarily mean giving up what we have but destroying the walls of discrimination and bias that allowed them to, and some things to make up for lost time.</div><div><br></div><div>In the process of opening the doors to those on the other side of the fence, we will find something astonishing, maybe: that we are not all that different at all. Our differences only hide our similarities. We're reaching out for the same things, but just in very different ways. We shouldn't idolize our different identities beyond what makes us all the same in what we want, need and desire. </div><div><br></div><div><div>If we don't break this loop, we inevitably deem everyone but ourselves as worthy of these things, when we all deserve them equally. That is the only discrimination that we need to avoid. From our wounds, we must rise above and heal. </div><div></div></div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-35870337865173114952020-07-19T06:13:00.004-07:002020-07-24T23:22:53.289-07:00Out with the bathwater. In with the baby.It's never wise to throw the baby with the bath water, even if you didn't understand the figurative meaning of the idiom but just the literal. It fits in with a lot of events, especially of late - statues being taken down, cancel culture, objectionable history trying to be changed/addressed. <br><br>The phrase literally originates when, in days long ago with non-existent plumbing like today, water had to be brought with difficulty and used for the entire family to bathe, before being thrown out. The last one in was the baby, being smaller and easier to forget about. Hence, the phrase. The figurative meaning is that we should not end up throwing out the attached or easy-to-miss good while throwing out the bad. <br><br>This origin and meaning has massive likening to us today, as we are i.e. we are the last ones (yet) in a long line of whatever culture and values we hold. We're way younger than our ancestors when they championed it. Now, while we celebrate it, we could still have a lot of that dark, dirty water left from that process. We are literally the baby in the bath water. And the idiom asks to keep us alive. The only question is if it's possible at all to only throw out the dirty bathwater, given our identity in, and clear attachment to it. <br><br>A few questions still remain. Do we all have the privilege of having some water left to waddle in, however murky? Do all of us have the privilege of pride and dignity that would allow us to bathe at all, figuratively? Clearly, no. <br><br>In a <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2020/06/forgive-them-for-they-know-not-what.html">previous article</a>, I argue that there always only two kinds of people - those with power and those without. Those with power, somewhere along the line, gained their reputation by taking from those without power today, stealing their right to an wholesome identity so they (the powerful) can have the one they want. Anyone with power, even down all those years, is using stolen property for their benefit that's been way due to be returned. <br><br>When you talk of cancel culture, slaver statues being brought down, and history being attempted to be removed, we are talking about the fact that the bathwater we don't need comes attached with the baby. In this case, you literally cannot throw the baby out with the bath water. It's impossible because they are too attached. <br><br>I also <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2020/06/forgive-them-for-they-know-not-what.html">argue</a> that when people seize power over someone else/other people, that power becomes them and the only way to keep the baby is to keep the water. If we can't, anything else we do is futile. This time, let's call the bathwater a trail of blood, figuratively and literally (if it's the case). <br><br>Since we can't, we'd have to do the next best thing - humble the powerful, because they aren't going to humble themselves, give up their power and start bringing about equality. Their power may be all they have as an identity, and they've never faced or gotten used to people standing up to them. They've had it handed to them on a silver platter and innocently believe that everyone should earn their piece rightfully or, equally, be lucky to inherit it. <br><br>What we would not be trying to do is take away all they got. They can keep that. We're just gonna make sure that we cut off exclusive supply and make access to it equal. Those who want these stolen privileges can have them along with everyone else. No more profiling with bias - by police, during job interviews, with prospective tenants or or any other situation. Data on disprivilege and steps to help those individuals and communities get on an equal footing. No charity, just due. Just unlocking all those closed doors that the powerful chose to lock up and occupy inside. <br><br>But they're not going to give in easily. Even if the battle's legitimate, they're going to go berserk in rage and sound loopy, but they'll hold onto and flaunt that power and privilege for dear life, sometimes with extremely politically right honesty (the irony!). It's war, if it comes to that. The bathwater must go. The baby must stay. <br>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-57866762117615924422020-06-24T08:01:00.001-07:002020-06-28T19:23:07.151-07:00Forgive them for they know not what they do (before you fight back)<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="0 0 []">As we speak, the world is getting terribly polarised everywhere. We are stretching our capacity for ideologies and beliefs to incredible extents, letting the cracks speak more than our views themselves. We're creating islands and we're not even trying to build bridges between them. This is making the ideas in our heads increasingly idealistic. </div><div><br></div><div>It's worth taking a step back and just, for a moment, consider what brought us here. Is it the pressure that blew, pent up for all those decades and centuries, that it just had to blow? Are our differences really worth it? Let's delve in without trying to set everybody else on fire for not aligning with what we hold true.</div><div><br></div><div>We need to understand, first, that all political views begin with identity, which is why we are so vehement about them. When someone's against you, it's like they are being denied a part of what is essentially, undeniably, and unarguably themselves. It's as sacred as anything can get. Even if a set of views don't actually take away any of their freedoms, they are taking away their potential to exist in the way they are and choose to be. This Identity is also a (relative) definer of truth. Any view that's opposite to theirs hints at their truth being wrong and their dentity just won't have it. It, otherwise, wouldn't be worth following as much.</div><div><br></div><div>The second thing we need to understand is that identity is (for most) defined by power. We get our identity depending on which side of the fence we historically fall on - both individuals and community. In that sense, identity can be a privilege or a curse. And if you're the better off, you spend all your life defending it. If not, the less said the better. Sometimes, the mere pride you get to flaunt isn't enough. As they say, it's lonely on the top and that gets to the head. You need an "other" to make the kick that flaunting delivers worth it. That bring us to the others - the worse off. </div><div><br></div><div>The worse off are always in the shadows. The better off aren't responsible for what their ancestors collectively made of them (ending up on their side of the fence). They just carry it forward instinctively, and collectively, without blinking an eye lid, finding ways to make the others their own personal court jesters when they're not ignoring and dismissing them. They believe that when equality became a thing (after it was fought for, if it was won), it demolished that fence. And, then, all those decades, centuries and possibly millennia of oppression just vanished in that instant, and now all's perfectly well. The better off have no idea of the lack of privilege that they never had. They'll never know the pain the negative multiplication of various factors - poverty, discrimination, lack of opportunity, oppression, being trampled on and more - of every kind, across generations, which is a chain that has never stopped. They only know the truth of plenty, at least access. </div><div><br></div><div>Thus, all humans fall into either of these two categories - the powerful and over-powered i.e. the better off and the worse off. Both are not complicit in how they got there. They were not party to the power play that preceded their individual privileges and defined their identity. But they are party to what happens under their watch that will define the future generation. They can stop the chain, or derail it, only if they have that power. </div><div><br></div><div>To do this, individuals and communities have to identify their power status, each. For those worse off, it's easy. They live, breathe and choke on it everyday. They'd derail it at the first chance they'd get, if they could. The onus of change lies on the powerful - the better off, if they'd only step up and identify the bug. Their comfort is the others' pain. They survive of blood that would not belong to them in a world where power is obsolete. That's why such a world is the only solution available. </div><div><br></div><div>But it won't go away that easy, if it is going to go away at all. The problem is that they, themselves, are the bug. Power is them and they are the power. Take it away and you'd be asking for them to vanish because that's everything they are - even when it's nothing they did to fall on their side of the fence and inherit it. Soon enough, everything becomes emotional. Any sliver of chance that they spot the bug in themselves is lost. You don't convince your oppressor by speaking to their morality. There is no easy way out of this tussle between the pulling and the pushing. The only thing that's for certain is that it will go on till there's a victor and no one's inclined to give up, give in or cease fire. </div><div><br></div><div>While we are pushing our edges more with time, we need to understand the key to why we disagree so much, and that whatever we fight about is about who we are, essentially. We are being ourselves perfectly as we exercise it our power statuses, which is the problem. You shouldn't expect any less from anyone who hasn't been educated or exposed beyond the comfort of their immediate world and culture. If the best hearted humans saw aliens in person, they would be racist to them too. That's the ideal instinctive response. But those who have had the opportunity of educating and exposing themselves beyond their own little world have the knowledge to go beyond their instincts and act like they know better. When you don't still, change is still coming, but a long way off. </div><div><br></div><div>When it's the powerful vs. the powerless, depending on your local context it can be colour vs. better colour, race vs. superior race, ethnicity vs. other ethnicity, people vs. different people, and privilege vs. lack of it. Remember that with the powerful, you have to first forgive them for they know not what they do. Truly. That's before you call out the bullshit and fight back.<br></div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-51182526700893753492020-05-22T23:54:00.001-07:002020-05-22T23:54:10.925-07:00#MeTooMigrant, but with clear privilege<div>The COVID-19 crisis in India has unleashed the mass movement of poor migrant labourers (the key word here) that has people rightly up in arms. Whether you blame the government or not, it is something that cannot be right and needs to be righted. In response, some people have used the twitter hash tag #metoomigrant to say that they, too, are by definition migrants i.e. they migrated from their hometown to another place to make it, just like these people. When the migrant labourers came from nothing to nothing to (relatively) bargain for a little something, the #metoomigrants came from something to something else usually bargaining for a lot more (else they wouldn't even come). </div><div><br></div><div>We are all migrants because we all come from somewhere. Even if it wasn't us who made the arduous journey, we are here in our privilege because someone else did. That is why we sit pretty with that privilege today. As long as your ancestor many generations ago didn't move a micro inch from where they were born, your privilege is built on migrant movement from a particular time period. If you don't have an idea of what it looked like, it was more or less like how many such migrant labourers are attempting to walk home for thousands of kilometers just so that they have a better deal. </div><div><br></div><div>Once you truly understand get these distinctions and similarities, your response can be a more sober one than #metoomigrant. If that doesn't get through your head and your heart, it's privilege that is clouding your best senses. It's seeped into your bones and has made you thick skinned disabling you from understanding any other reality apart from your own. You could have been that migrant but for a twist of fate. That is not a privilege you claim. It's a privilege you should be thankful for. </div><div><br></div><div>It's a privilege you share, since you have the good fortune of it. If you can't effectively share it, the least you do is not mock, be grateful for what you have and show that you feel the compassion. Just the basic will do. More, if you are moved </div><div><br></div><div>To add to the tragedy, because (at least not all of) our privilege actually fell from the sky, #metoomigrant attempts establish common ground with those walking home. It identifies hard work on equal basis that all work is equal work. It forgets that, while all of us earn our success and failure, all of us are not equally predisposed with resources, skill, comfort and a cushion that we ourselves did not work for. All work may be equal work but privilege we work from is not equal.</div><div><br></div><div>The only thing that's common between the richer and the poorer migrant is the rat race to remain above threshold - where they can feed, clothe and house themselves with the simplest of dignities. The only thing different between them is that one is perfectly equipped to stay above, and the other is equipped to constantly stay below. One is a contradiction of the other, nullifying any similarity. </div><div><br></div><div>Unless you individually invented everything good about your life as you stand, every inch of good fortune you have is blatant privilege. You can splash it around with inherited ego or you could choose to help someone break above the threshold (with it costing very little) so that they can pass it on with gratitude. </div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-10805437185547027602020-05-05T06:39:00.001-07:002020-05-05T06:47:18.220-07:00The copweb of a police state amid Corona<div>For those with the simplistic understanding of Government, there are only two ways that responses can swing to the many cases of police beating that has/has been happening in India under lockdown: I don't know what to do but this is ridiculous or the police know what they're doing so the person must have done something wrong. For those with more nuanced understanding, it will be: The police have a stressful job handling the lockdown, a part of which is a small percentage of error or this is wrong and the result of the lack of sensitisation. For those with a heart, it will be: this is wrong and this must stop. </div><div><br></div><div>Ever since India has been under lockdown till April 13th, the police have been given unusual superpowers to maintain law and order. This, itself, isn't unusual. What is, though, is the eagerness they are ready to use the stick with, when people are moving about within rules of curfew and when they aren't. All states have allowed shops selling essentials to remain open , among other establishments, and individual people to get their food stock from these shops. Yet, cops have been stopping people from ensuring they don't starve at home and make sure they send them home with a beating.</div><div><br></div><div>There was a man who had stepped out to get milk and who was killed. Two medical personnel in Telengana and Noida were stopped and harassed. One man was shot in Karnataka after he retaliated. There are videos of the cops kicking them first. More and more videos surface everyday of violence that on-duty cops choose as their method. The Goa authorities have asked for action on people who move out of the house to buy essentials while ensuring there isn't enough stock. Some of these have been addressed, while some have not and the new ones continue to take place.</div><div><br></div><div>There could be multiple reasons for this behavior. One is that they don't know what to do and they have been given clear instructions to prevent something, as instructed by their higher ups, so they desperately embody those instructions and draw no lines when handling violations. What we do know for sure is that cops are the robots of State machinery. They don't speak their own mind, or exercise any such freedom. They simply follow orders, any orders that their higher up gives, with no empathy even if they feel it or it is natural to. </div><div><br></div><div>It could be a deep instinct to be the State machinery they are supposed to be, and nothing else. Unlike politicians, they don't have an agenda. They only serve to keep society at the legal status quo of the day, and enforce it. Any protest against them should be directed at their bosses - the politicians in power. Given the present scenario, however, using lathi power to keep status quo does not help. </div><div><br></div><div>The goal, now, is to keep COVID-19 away and they seem to be taking a very parent-child attitude with it, along with their lathis. The problem there is that we - law keepers (police) and its beneficiaries (citizens) - are all equals and must be treated so, to begin with. Discipline by the rod is the opposite of people being equals. Power/hierarchical relationships between equals are dealt using the principle of consequence. What you do is let them suffer the natural consequence (which means taking them to jail, marking them for self-quarantine or something similar). Yes, there are many adults who display juvenile intelligence for their age, even in a COVID free world.</div><div><br></div><div>There is a burden of people screwing up by not staying in and that effecting the end result of a COVID-19 free country (which is anyway the one we want to be thankful for). Their folly will become the nation's folly and the Government's burden. And if the Government insists on taking parental control over people with this premise, it only worsens this burden. </div><div><br></div><div>When dealing with unruly children, parents have the choice of working towards the goals of either changed behavior or a changed child (who will give them changed behavior). With the first one, you miss out on the other. That is also the Government's/long arm of the law's dilemma. They can either achieve the status quo that they want and leave a very confused people, or build people to whom the message is clear and understood (and who will also comply for most). And just like it is with parenting, the bigger-minded leaders take the second option - which is a longer route. It involves more care, kindness and concern for a much wider, sustainable goal. </div><div><br></div><div>This concern is necessary once you recognise that your errant citizens are indeed children (with their understanding of COVID-19 safe behaviour) and need to be handled like they are. They are not essentially capable of understanding the adult things you are teling them (if they've been informed well enough). You need to explain things to them better, or differently so that it sinks in. Speak at their level. Give them space to learn. Specially educate them by assuming they are dumb (regardless of how much of that is true). What you do not do is bust into their juvenile thinking with a rod because they don't understand. The defensive responsive instinct that comes along with their mindset will ensure that they will eventually never learn. You will have to keep on disciplining them and they will continue to stay stubborn. They will never understand enough to keep the discipline we need so that everyone's safe and your lathi will keep you busy. To avoid the lathi, you'd need to aim deeper and crack the root of the issue. </div><div><br></div><div>If they still don't seem to understand, eliminate their struggles since you want to keep them since the burden falls on your head. Not everyone can probably afford to work from home or live equipped enough under lockdown. A lot of what they do is under some kind of desperation or disassociation. This lockdown is not a kind phase for most humans anywhere. It does things to you that you're never probably aware you're doing and why. We've never been here and will do strange things in response to how such a thing makes us feel. </div><div><br></div><div>Strange times require kindness and not fear. There's enough fear as it is without the stick. The point of tough love is not drive people further away from you beyond the point of redemption, or towards that point. With the police acting as trained and the Government restricting their burden, the people are left behind. Sometimes parents do inexplicable things because their children really need to stay away from danger, more than ever. With citizens and governance, that doesn't work because we are never parent-child, but equals. If a section of them aren't, it rests on the incumbent Government to make them equals. It inherited the responsibility. If it won't happen overnight, then more-than-regular kindness and sensitivity is in order to account for the imbalance. </div><div><br></div><div>In a scientifically aware and more or less intelligent generation, it is not lathis that will beat the corona virus out of society but more noteworthy use of brains, and scientific and medical intelligence instead. Let's save our lathis for another day and hope that day doesn't come. </div><div></div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-18561705301411729812020-03-28T08:37:00.001-07:002020-05-14T21:21:11.324-07:00COVID-19 has put the human into humanity<div>COVID-19 has been turning our world upside down. People who always had maids are doing all the housework. Recipes that were hidden, feared and unknown are coming out of the woodworks. People are bucking up and learning how to stay with essentials for longer. Most of all, people have been given their right value in society faster than the blink of an eyelid. It's like a grand return to humanity. That's the biggest upside down. <br></div><div><br></div><div>The whole crisis is happening primarily because people are in ultimate danger, not businesses or economy. It brought forward the supreme perspective that people, the soul of industry, are always never indispensable in any scenario, however competitive our business instincts get. It's almost as if the world discovered the morals and ethics that they were ignoring all these centuries and decades, well influenced by an industrialised society. If we really didn't care deep down, and we are cold hearted, we wouldn't be giving in that easily to shutting everything down, despite economic loss. </div><div><br></div><div>But the switch has been a hard one to make, even for those making it sincerely. While some companies shutdown and shifted to work from home fast (or equivalent arrangement when possible), others waited to be given orders from the government or waited till everything was really serious. All you had to do is say that you were not well at work and the fear of you being infectous would bring an immediate request to go home and stay there as long as needed to get better, no questions asked. When would most people have that privilege during a non-COVID-19 threat era? </div><div><br></div><div>The way most industries tend to function, they know their true source of growth: people. More specifically, people who, like the big bosses, work so they can rest and truly enjoy living, as opposed to living to work. It's also true that to enjoy those advantages, they need a well-industrialized setup so that good profits can be made which allows them to give better pay and benefits (in a reasonably fair pay setup). It's even more true that getting too obsessed with pay usually leaves you with no life outside work and deep emptiness inside that professional passion stands no chance filling. The more you try, it's an insatiable pit that brings you no happiness. </div><div><br></div><div>This is what most businesses are designed to run after, taking employees (people) along who try to balance paying bills, ensuring their and their family's security, and building general happiness - all at once. It's a whole system that builds grand dreams on stilts and needs more and more to stay upright and stable with time and growth Get the balance wrong and you get sucked into black hole which is very difficult to get out of. Get hooked onto the wrong thing and it'll pull you in further. That's a memo to employer and employee. </div><div><br></div><div>Yes, success is great. But every successful man and woman goes back home, and they work to sustain that home and keep it a happy place that they can enjoy it with the rest of the family. More hours at office so that they can do it better only prevents them from doing it more, or just doing it at all.</div><div><br></div><div>This isn't only industry that has grown into this. Society has too. We don't look at people with the perspective of them because human like us, but with how useful they they can be to us and what price that is worth. We're all walking around with a tag on our heads that always translate to sustenance and happiness. Those paying us are trying to lower their costs with the best price they can get, and vice versa. Our entire outlook is based on an extreme of affordability, but can we afford the kind of world that creates? We can't escape being inequitably valued by our jobs with how much we eventually can contribute to them. We can't also escape a valuation system that puts people's contribution to less than what allows them to be happily human. </div><div><br></div><div>The switch to honouring people as the true centre of society and industry is real, at least as long as the present threat exists. Now that society and industry has grown an unexpected conscience, will that conscience also be a future benchmark once there isn't a virus to be scared of? </div><div></div>Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-25024936614325063712020-01-29T05:28:00.000-08:002020-02-05T06:14:57.508-08:00Ditch your borders. Create a new order. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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One look at a map of all the world's regions, while looking up their history hand-in-hand, will tell you a tale that's wider than what any of them stand by as their cultural identity today. You will easily notice a filtered down version that's only a figment of the big picture that was decades and centuries ago. Countries came, changed, got abolished and went before the century could blink into the next one. What was communities and freer movement became polities and boundaries. When did this happen? When did we become myopic? More has become less. Multiple has become singular. Heterogeneous is becoming homogeneous. Multilingual has become unilingual. Multicolour has become black and white, or just black and white. If this hasn't happened yet, it's happening. </div>
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At a closer look, the crux of the issue is between identities (where you're from, what you eat, how you dress, what language you speak) and boundaries (i.e. political divisions i.e. countries i.e. lines that separate what was once vast regions of lesser politicized society that was home to a block/blocks of similar, and sometimes different, identities). Communities and people were separated by lines drawn by a few men (and women) seeking power through them. Order enables power and makes it easier to establish control. In order (no pun intended) to get there, we take the route that involves culling all this variety, leaving us smaller and stupider, up to our noses in inflated border-influenced nationalist loyalties.<br />
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Barring these few, the vastly outnumbering majority was happy living their lives without boundaries celebrating everything they defined to be the good life (if they could). Life was lived on an individual level by everyone where they made their associations beyond the boundaries, on a personal level, without any taboo. But power came along and the new lines they drew started to define more than just boundaries. It was the gateway to more power, disrupting the majority's boundariless lives, and telling them that their boundaries, instead, were right (and no other), with some even going to point of murdering, killing and punishing for it. </div>
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Go centuries and decades forward, and we are here with you reading this. You've been told where your community's boundaries are and how sacred they are (though they came about through a sub-human push and pull of power). You've been taught to judge the people on the other side to be less or more worthy of you. You're probably also fuelled with jealously or pride basis who's on what side of that line. All of this because it was taught to you within and by these man-made boundaries. All those days and years converted imaginary boundaries into real ones, and very silly ones too.</div>
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The truly unimaginary value boundaries are <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/05/when-identity-trumps-economics.html" target="_blank">economical</a>, as are most things. They help lock in where the beginning and end of your general happiness quotient is as a larger national community (i.e. a nation). Everybody who's legal homeland is the area within gets the benefits that is reaped/of the land and resources as governments allow. Beyond these two, they have no meaning. Overrate them and you start digging your own grave. Underrate them and you thin out your happiness quotient. </div>
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As with your <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/03/when-country-meets-home.html" target="_blank">house</a>, you won't let in anyone who doesn't belong. You will also choose your guests and your compassion. Countries will continue to find ways to keep their guest policies useful to their own people, and their requirements and advantage. Some governments are cautious, while some turn into full fledged corporations themselves in the process. </div>
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But sometimes, it's more than just guests. There are times that we are the closest, only or (one of the) biggest hope(s) for those outside our boundaries who don't belong inside. If you want to be crude enough to reject them because they don't belong, and only if, think of it like maintaining your backyard. If you want to live in a nice neighbourhood, you may have just have to assist cleaning up. Of course, you can set your own terms. A part of this compassion is rooted in the fact that you enjoy a land that's perfectly home and fellow human beings don't. It should be the yearning of every citizen of Earth who has this privilege to see it through for those who don't.</div>
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The line should be drawn at making imaginary lines real, and making real ones imaginary. So, then, which is which? The answer to that is abolishment of boundaries themselves, at least in the minds of people. The more evolved humans on Planet Earth live as people outside boundaries, while understanding that they grew up in them for practical reasons (but they don't let the boundaries necessarily define them). The lesser evolved ones define themselves by their boundaries and only know and recognize that world. The highest evolved humans value boundariless learning while staying stuck to their roots. </div>
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Boundaries should at best serve administrative purposes. They should be bridges instead. They should never inhibit or prevent transfer or exchange of anything good and desirable by people on both sides. The best ideas inside one should also last equally well outside it. The worst ones stop breathing or have to go on life support. That's your litmus test of whether you're living in a well protected bubble to believe them in the first place. </div>
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With the almost death of boundaries, come the almost death of states (or just their power). While being stateless in a boundaried world is hell personified, being stateless in a boundariless world is human paradise. There are no limitations to anything good that you can borrow from your neighbours. Statelessness as a frame of mind can be much more liberating and educating than statelessness in reality is. It's simply a case of nationalism vs. humanity (i.e. borders vs. bridges). </div>
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Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-75356125923768037772020-01-07T19:37:00.001-08:002020-01-07T21:42:22.720-08:00Long Live The Revolution!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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During the last few days, you would have heard much sloganeering, thanks to the opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Bill and the almost proposed nationwide NRC. To those who choose a different political voice, it can be a big nuisance to the head and the ears but there is something eerily common about the Left-influenced big, loud, brash protest style, the opposite (seemingly) rational response to issues and the main stream in-power method of creating their solutions for the country. Though each style points to different preferences, they are all trying to do the same thing for the ones who practice them—use their voice and power for the end they want it to serve. </div>
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The Left (and all associated and similar) is rooted in people movements among the lower strata of society. These people don't have a big say in matters of politics. In most recent history, power had eluded them. Their voice will seek to demand what they want when they themselves can't bring it about. Speaking, asking and demanding is their only way until they have better equity in the say of how the country is run. It's their only route out and it sounds more desperate the more they don't get what they need, or want—desperate enough to kill your eardrums and make some people annoyed. </div>
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The ones in the power are simply doing what the protesters are doing—seeking the change they want—but they're just using a different route that doesn't need slogans. They have the authority to act and are even stretching all the aspects of their mandate to ensure the reality they want. The rational (not-in-power) have less to lose. Their support for issues is based on an objective moral barometer that they sit back, analyze and think about before responding. They have a big enough cushion (at the moment) to offset any possible, predictable loss, if they don't go out on the streets and sloganeer. </div>
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All this—policy, passing laws, protesting, objection—is all but the same thing: using your political voice. It is about expressing and acting on/for/towards your idea of what you'd like for your country. What makes it many different things is that it's seen through the lens of all these different hopes: the wider their range, the more separate they seem. The more separate we view them, the more we despise them instead of understanding them. </div>
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There are some questions we need to ask first. Can a nation want things that are so different? Can one nation cater to so many different people, if we consider the entire range of these views legitimate? Are those asking for what we consider preposterous even rooted in any common history to justifiably hold those views? In a multicultural and religious nation such as India, is everyone obliged to follow the majority narrative? What happens to the lifestyles of those whose cultures and thought don't fall in line? India, hardly homogeneous, is all its <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2018/08/india-all-it-is-cracked-up-to-be.html" target="_blank">cracked up to be</a> fined by. We can't afford to have the <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-return-of-majority-wins.html" target="_blank">majority approach</a> unless we want to design a slow majority cultural whitewash. </div>
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If we are this different indeed, it makes no sense to cast aspersions simply because someone else thinks unlike us when it comes to country. We need to, at the least, accept and allow it. In the case of the CAA and NRC protests, we can best have a reasoned, calmer response or even just say, "Better luck next time. More of you should vote for the parties that have views you are protesting in favour of". However crude that may sound, if that's our individual base national instinct, so be it. We can do better if we really want. There's absolutely no need to try and shut them up, write them off or attempt to stamp on their views. That would imply that there's a right and a wrong to this. There can't be one since a <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/03/when-country-meets-home.html" target="_blank">Nation is Home,</a> and home once is home forever. They can't be thrown out, at best disciplined only if necessary and reasonable. More importantly, they need to be heard and be granted what they're due, without discrimination like everybody else. </div>
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But, back to the ear-jarring and annoying protests. In the above described utopia, if we are going to look at these different methods of expression and spot the similarity, our outlook has to change. The Left has always been about revolution as a mode when necessary. They either seized it by taking power (leaving behind indefensible, autocratic examples) or held steadfast to ensure that the downtrodden are lifted by those in power - Government (since that's one of the things that good governance involves). Their commitment to no one being left behind is vehement. </div>
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The beauty of their trademark method of protesting is that it's a reasonable, accessible means with which anyone can claim their due say and space in a free society, and impress upon it their mark with full representation of the depth of emotion and impact. Protest also allows the authority denying us something to feel the same pinch they're making us feel. It must be seen as a mirror of what the people feel, as raw as they do. The recent protests also included people who were protesting in support of other people whom they believe will be victims, not just for themselves. </div>
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It is well known that most of the protests happened because the Government didn't like the first few ones and decided to clamp down on them. What's also notable is that the action of the people (response by people also exercising their political voice) who support this view of the Government resorted to sticks, stones and masks instead of speaking their minds like protestors, like reasonable people. It is safe to say that those who don't understand this about peaceful protest, or at least don't display this understanding of it, don't understand connection to one another as varied human beings with different backgrounds and suffering. A red light goes off for them in their heads despite the fact that they took to the streets when the Government they opposed was in power, because they themselves were powerless. </div>
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The right to peaceful protest, and the art of it, needs to be preserved, taught, allowed and practiced to its fullest extremes. It is the one voice that can never be taken away, nor should it be. What is worthy to be noted is that it has no value when people are not trampled on, for obvious reasons. Those who use it conveniently when not in power and walk all over it when someone else does it when in power are but hypocrites. It will always be desperate thing it is, because it is an urgent matter that people are being trampled on. We must note that when people do gather in true desperation to protest, it isn't super organized. It is just like-minded people who welcome all those who are also like-minded. In the company of many thousands of such singularly like-minded, there will be a few rogues, as in any crowd. Protests anywhere shouldn't be tagged violent because of the rogues, unless the cause of gathering itself was violent. </div>
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Long live the Revolution! </div>
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Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-21129177402276622402019-09-25T02:04:00.000-07:002019-09-25T09:58:08.950-07:00The Minority Threat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Many world disasters we'd rather forget start with a conspiracy theory told to the least secure but most empowered sections of society. "Original" inhabitants vs. the "non-original" natives. Locals vs. immigrants. Pure blood vs. Mixed blood. 'Right' born vs. 'Wrong' born. One skin color vs. the other. One religion or culture vs. the other. What starts as cognitive dissonance of the majority with reality becomes fear play and then power grab so that their worst fears can be kept from coming true. You have to reasonably discount their cognitive dissonance and, in effect, their very response as a result. <br />
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This sequence of events is not surprising. The secret lies in majorities and minorities. The division between them is the fact that history runs deeper than we know. When we try to balance its innocent-then evil bits, those who benefited from them over generations and centuries have a blood reflex. Though those positions of power cease to officially exist and exert authority like then, the pride never left and, like a rabid wolf, it needs to be fed. I'm talking of most sections of people who always had the upper hand - Brahmins, upper castes, zamindars, patriarchal men and any other human who assumes and holds themselves powerful over or controls another human. A nation may make us equal people but society needs to catch up and completely open their gates to let it in. It is most stubborn. <br />
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To understand it better, we need to first acquaint ourselves with Instinctive Ideology. Here's a <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-5-truths-of-happy-people-and-country.html" target="_blank">primer first</a>: The Individual is central to Home and, by extension, to Society, Government and Nation. If done right, all of these must serve them i.e. you, me and every other Indian towards achieving Individual Happiness each. That's the chain of command.<br />
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What we grow up with at <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/03/when-country-meets-home.html" target="_blank">Home</a> becomes our due Instinct and Identity. It can, cannot, may or may not always be most rational or wise, but becomes who and what we are. It becomes us. And if this Home plays out all the way upto Nation, we have a clash. There's only so much space and bandwidth for it to even remotely be a big loving somewhat homogeneous spread, especially with all the variety this great land offers. As it is, India already shares its space without too many rifts. <br />
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Instinctive Ideology kicks in when people who have the upper hand who haven't shrug off their erstwhile pride seek more than just a fair due of space to assert their Identity. Like it did then, it seeks a monopoly designed to ensure that upper hand. It's like paying rent on a house that you will never use just so that people that other people, unlike you, don't stay in it. All the while, it doesn't have an identity of its own that's based on something outside of denying the 'undeserving' groups of people that same privilege. <br />
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This pride accumulates and settles like dust over the centuries to form a firm hard layer that drives all this Instinct, deep in and way out into the world. The longer it sits there with no context, the more they will need to build and keep a whole empire that feeds this rabid wolf. What this also means is that this digression of sensible society is here to stay for a long, long time. The only way out is to bypass it, intentionally, which starts by fully admitting it exists.<br />
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This will hit where the Good Instinctive Ideology (the one we need) starts. The privileged happen to be so, as do the unprivileged—so far. It's just that we woke up to these things over an unnecessary long period of time. It took centuries! The identities that resulted in it are their legitimate identities i.e. who they are—the Individual in that all important hierarchy. Correcting it snatches away their full due identity from them, as oppressive as it is.<br />
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When the Bad Instinctive Ideology (the one we don't need) kicks in to protect it, things get dirty. The tables are turned with the victims made to be oppressors, and the oppressors victims. If we wind it back all the way up to the beginning of the cycle and see what started it, we will easily be to define the two as they should be. It's a natural protective response, but no society can afford to be protective of a live tumour, unless they want to live in denial.<br />
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As Humanity that accepts the existence and threat of cancer, and that we need to kill the cancerous cells out, this power disease that imbalances society, too, needs to go. While that dust has settled into solid over centuries and will be a big wall, while historically and culturally 'due' pride will be the biggest hindrance, while tradition will always maintain status quo, we must still remove the cancerous cells. The more they remain, the more society will be sick, even if only in its deep, dark corners—like cancer that has every symptom of being benign but is in effect malignant. As for identity stripping, once the disease source is out, the disease doesn't exist anymore. Then, those corners will no more feed rabid wolves that have lost their place and refuse to give up power just because of pride. They will be dead and history. <br />
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Not all the privileged throw their weight around. Not all the seemingly oppressed are suffering. Calling it out doesn't falsely accuse any one in particular. What we can't ignore is that centuries-long oppression has had a mass effect and defines victim and perpetrator collectively (and individually) well, even if it was all done innocently in the name of culture. As for those willing to recognise this and move to better times, we need to accept, correct and affect change without personal, or collective guilt (unless we admit and recognise that we have personally added to it in individual capacity). If the ones who indeed do won't, society at large must unleash gets its best instincts to make it happen, or at least call it out loud so that the crime is clear to start with.<br />
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So, whether you are perpetrator or victim of any kind, here's to a cancer-free society that has a place for everyone to whom it is home, celebrating life as they are happy to do it. </div>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-32777924408440393262019-09-15T12:18:00.001-07:002019-09-15T14:18:51.063-07:00The 5 truths of happy people and country<p dir="ltr">In a troubling time, where culture is playing kingpin and zeal is going for the over-kill, it is a good time for a full reminder of what place each element has in the mix. There are five major truths that create stable, sensible people and country.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>The sole goal is individual happiness </b></p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>Society must enable every individual toward this end</b></p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>Government, a mirror of society, ensure this is in spirit and letter </b></p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>Nation must not replace Home</b></p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>Consent on awareness is absolute</b></p>
<p dir="ltr">Before I unravel them, there's an all-important preface: <b>Home</b>. Home is the <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/03/when-country-meets-home.html">sacred temple</a>. It is an individual phenomenon that every person has an unquestionable right to practice and honour. It is everything we are, from the language we speak to the food we eat to the religion we practice to the values we practice to our sensitivities. Collectively, it is the first lab of humanity, and different for everyone with a lot of partial and whole overlapping that occurs - in either very large groups or much smaller ones.    </p>
<p dir="ltr">I</p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>Individual Happiness</b> is the ultimate goal of all life. Life is at its best when everyone seeks their own individual happiness in all its forms-personal goals to family ones, while respecting and supporting everyone else's right and effort to do the same. When this is achieved, the world is balanced.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">P.S.:- Home freely spills into and defines it.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">II</p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>Society</b> is formed when people come together and it can pose challenges to achieving Individual Happiness. The impediment: Home differs for many groups of members, there isn't space for every variety and the non-majority get the boot leaving them voiceless, unheard and cut off within the crowd. Completely healthy society removes all challenges to realizing Individual Happiness. </p>
<p dir="ltr">P.S.:- Society, with its majoritarian tendencies, holds power and sway, a lot of times even over Law itself.   </p>
<p dir="ltr">III</p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>Government</b>, a functional representation of society, can ensure access to Individual Happiness through the rule of Law. If political will is otherwise, it simply be a mirror of a majoritarian society and just reinforce majority another time over. </p>
<p dir="ltr">P.S.:- The equation that ensures democracy though elections isn't close to near perfect; true democracy isn't a simple mathematical majority. Instead of 50.1 standing to <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-return-of-majority-wins.html">lose voice</a> over 49.9, rendering them unheard, we could simply dedicate the whole percentage of seats to a whole party and have people elect representatives to cover that percentage of seats in a second round of voting. It's not an immediately executable idea, but it's a start to the right direction of discussion. </p>
<p dir="ltr">IV</p>
<p dir="ltr">If we're sticking to the original dream of everyone achieving Individual Happiness, then <b>Nation</b> has to be non-majoritarian. It has to be nonrestrictive to the individuals who aren't the majority and restricted too. </p>
<p dir="ltr">P.S.:- Since we're talking about Home, we need to define family (citizens) first. One definition is anyone who is from India i.e. natives by birth or direct lineage. We sometimes like to troublesomely define this by saying that, being Indian, they must also embrace everything majoritarianly Indian directly defying the unquestionable right to practice and honour what is Home to one (given our diversity) and instead imposing what is Home to the majority other as the "right" version if we are 'Indian enough to be Indian'. Anyone sensible enough to do this is also sensible enough to deny their own sworn country's diversity by calling any such people "anti-national" and the likes. Nation can never be competition to Home, and Nation must oblige and include it. If Individuals make Nations, and Home makes Individuals, then Home(s) define Nation, with superior emphasis.</p>
<p dir="ltr">V</p>
<p dir="ltr"><b><u>Consent</u></b> is not something we're asked when we are brought into this world. We are signed for a lot of things that we reject once we become aware, including those about Nation and Loyalty. If Individual Happiness is where we're heading to, it shouldn't be blocked. <u>We</u> should be able to exercise that Consent and opt out of them, or (if we can't, thanks to Society) openly hold and air our views about them.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">P.S.:- Doing so doesn't make anyone disloyal or ungrateful. Individual Happiness is the ultimate goal, even if we don't consent to our own Home. Like Society, Government and Nation, Home must not hinder Individual Happiness. We must be free to make Individual Happiness Home unquestioned, while fighting, respecting and supporting all others to do it without barriers too. </p>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-76799207380079667872019-08-15T11:15:00.001-07:002019-08-15T20:02:25.590-07:00The nationalism conversation you never had (but it's never too late either)<p dir="ltr">Let me open with: <i>Between the two—being Indian or being from your home town, what are you (if one had to be right and the other wrong)?</i> The catch: One is true, automatically making the other one false. In my case, it will be <i>Am I Indian, or am I </i><i>Bengalurian</i><i>?</i> Chances are that the one that's true will have to be <b>I am Bengalurian</b>. Being Bengalurian first makes me Indian as much as being from Dusseldorf or Reykjavik doesn't, and being from Pune, Delhi, or any place in today's India makes someone else Indian. If you're still confused, get your probability calculators out and figure that one out. </p>
<p dir="ltr">That the case, being Indian has to, therefore, be a sum total of being a Bengalurian, Dilliwalla, Kolkatan, <every single Indian place with people>...n.  This exhaustive list incorporates every element of life including food, lifestyle, religion, social values etc. that each of these people live by, even those that don't make the common majority of what that collectively involves. It is also, more importantly, a bottom up structure implying what India is, rather than telling us what we should be - essentially a non-interfering model. It's impossible to not be Indian if India is where you're from and you live as you please, unless you are being a general nuisance or causing a fall of law and order. There's nothing you specifically have to do to earn the tag. It's simply everything you are.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Overtime, we've turned it around. When our strength should be respecting uncommon differences, we've established mainstream, ignoring them. The larger, louder majority gets to define and regulate cultural rights and wrongs especially with respect to language and nationalism. A true idea of India serves each one of us. Now, the lesser different among us must serve this strange idea of India. It doesn't really add up and become relatable, if it doesn't really represent you. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Nation pride is merely a habit. All the <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/03/when-country-meets-home.html">home </a><a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/03/when-country-meets-home.html"><u>dynamics</u></a> play out there exactly as it does at home. It is also an <a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/05/when-identity-trumps-economics.html">economic construct</a>, a necessary one so it can sustain a country. It should not be understood beyond this. Your country may or may not be the best country in the world. It will not be everyone else's to love as much their own countries. You can call it out its ills for what they are without intending for it to look bad when your only other option is to let it be as bad as it is. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The nationalism model you follow must not be a blindfold that doesn't let you reason. There is nothing sacred about nation and country that you should not ever be able to question. The fears of those who reject this idea are unfounded. They refuse to recognise the uncommon differences of those to whom else their country is home. Their solace should be that home is home and it becomes a way of life that is meant to make, build and benefit us, which it doesn't always. Questioning removes the oppression - making it a good thing. As matter of fact, <u>nationalism</u> should be self questioning and critical. That's how your national heroes aren't turned into god men and your ideas into sacred idols.</p>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-72975188717907638732019-05-08T05:18:00.002-07:002019-05-08T05:18:47.933-07:00The return of "majority wins"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
Growing up, if more than two of us wanted to do some thing and
we're divided, we just take what the majority of the group wants,
determined by the easiest form of voice vote, and do that... and the
semi-teasing in-your-face statement we make to someone who wanted
otherwise is, "majority wins". When we said it then, and as we look back
at it now, it was a cute memory of growing up. Unfortunately, all cute
memories from when we were were growing up become stale and corny if we
use them in the exact same way in responsible, adult situations, like
nation, for example. </div>
<div>
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div>
India is a
parliamentary democracy, though mass voter sentiment is that of a
presidential democratic process. A good contemporary example of this
when everyone is "voting for Modi" when Modi himself is contesting from
one constituency, and not all 543. Every BJP supporter in 540
constituencies doesn't have the privilege of Modi being their
constituency's BJP candidate - as much as they relish the possibility.
But I digress. A parliamentary democracy functions via the majority that
allows 50.1 percentage of the group gets to completely demolish what
49.9 percentage of them want. While the ratio needn't be that extreme,
it's a privilege they're accorded by the "majority wins" logic. </div>
<div>
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div>
It's
that simple you say? Uh huh! But any just, reasonable form of
governance must include the recognition of all voices. The post-winning
chant cannot be that they've "won fair and square" so the detractors and
opposition should shut up. Nobody loses in a democracy. The only thing
that happens is that a government is elected. Any mention of victory and
loss is either technical or a misnomer. These things need a better set
of vocabulary to describe them. </div>
<div>
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div>
If
people seriously think they've "won", apart from these two
explanations, they've converted the gravity of voice, vote and
representation into a popularity contest. The best example here is a
sports match with two teams cheering their throats off for each other.
Neither side is wrong. It's merely their choice of favourite. That one
has a better chance to win doesn't mean that the factors behind that
chance deserve merit, based on just, good, healthy principles. As a
matter of fact, it is the very merit via these principles that makes a
choice the right choice. </div>
<div>
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div>
Just
like how you play a sport can decide your victory, it is so in elections
too. But a game lasts till it's played and then another one is and on
this goes. It's pure entertainment and passion with no relevance
whatsoever to life after the match is over for the crowd. With politics,
this is differentiating factor. Politics can ruin or make their lives
for the next few years. The choice they make in voting decides that. The
present system has made it a majority-minority one. It's supposed to be
a voice one. A worst case scenario of 50.1:49.9 should not alienate the
lesser group. </div>
<div>
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div>
What prevents that
from happening is leaders being agendas to people, not people to them.
In a world, where everyone indiscriminately lives off/for/by food,
happiness and security, discrimination in what you promise shouldn't
even be a factor. What you offer one (once in power) should be designed
so because it's as good for any other. Once we can achieve this, if we
have more problems with the voting choices in front of us, it is because
our ideas don't make rational, economical or people sense. They get
ideological and tip the balance to one side doing a different version of
that discrimination: serving only some but with bias based on
individual favour towards them - ripe ground for crony capitalism, scams
and such. </div>
<div>
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div>
If those eyeing for
power through your vote become regular, everyday people to their
country's people, you wouldn't have to be split over ideas about
capitalism, socialism, economics and whether (and how) they should be
practiced. This will discard the privilege and view of these factors to a
wider one sans the person's own natural bias and privilege. And, this
can be recognised if candidates really walked in the shoes of all the
different kinds of people they seek to represent to know, feel and
understand their position, place and difficulties - each class, caste
and community. We wouldn't have to base our ideas of whether progress is
happening (or that it must certainly be happening) because of a
textbook theory. </div>
<div>
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div>
We would
real-life sympathize with those who indeed don't have, and those whose
worlds and communities that are held-back, and understand where and what
kind of handouts would be necessary, even if it defeats principles at
the core of our idea of a capitalistic economy. We would understand the
freedom that the same kind of economy brings and learn to pair it with
our ideas of (what seems to some as "unearned") welfare so that we get
the best combination of what will work better for the ones who don't
have. The moment you move away from this balance, you will get people
divided over one isolated way tipping everything to one side, and the
majority who vote for that idea win. We have to move towards finding a
way to serve everyone - some more, some less depending on what they
need, not based on how much each one gets. In a world that only majority
wins, democracy with a voice and full representation loses. </div>
</div>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-80392354994970619562019-05-06T21:52:00.002-07:002019-05-06T21:52:35.246-07:00When Identity Trumps Economics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We've established that<a href="http://honnasiriscatch.blogspot.com/2019/03/when-country-meets-home.html" target="_blank"> a country is to its citizens what the home is to the family</a>. *Any* rule and principle applied there also applies to your relationship with country - however complicated. Any idea about it that defeats this idea is eccentric to start with. That being established, let's move on to the next core truth about states and nations. <br /><br />Any country in the modern era - unless you're a tribe that fought off the influence of the modern world - is an intentional economic concept. If they're successful at it, they end up happy and sufficient. If they aren't, and they make that colossal mistake, they are doomed. The key is in their economics. If they can balance their needs and strengths to be a happy, sufficient society, they got it right. If they did that with head-over-heels ideas about cultural, historical, political and social identity issues, they failed to prioritize sensibly.<br /><br />Identity at the cost of balanced economics, even the most basic, is a slippery slope. While identity is intrinsic—the default baggage we come with, economics is not something we have to introduce. The only way our way of life survived up to now is because there was a natural economic system that helped it survive, like a hand in glove thing (one that isn't bad). That's basically the story of every identity that survived. Sometimes it took a naturally-skewed economic system and the society at the time was simple. Their identity was their way of life and was the only world they knew.<br /><br />There was no rationalization <span data-dobid="hdw">vis-à-vis</span> another such way of life—hence, there was no universal consensus on good, bad, best, worst, sensible, mindless, healthy or unhealthy. The tradition of their way of life was honoured with any price it asked, even ones we abhor today like rape, women being second citizens, honour killings etc. It was sacred above all else, despite the costs. Now with better sense, enlightenment, reason and a wide education, we can see the difference between what we didn't know then and whether the honour of our traditions is actually worth it. We also realise that the economics of it needs to make sense, too—just like we realise that it must not come at the cost of identity, just like we understand the better and best of what kind of economics it took for that identity to sustain over centuries up to now. <br /><br />Once we reach this point of the argument, it is easy to understand the archetype naysayer. They are the ones who are brainwashed into a cultural loss theory. They are the ones who missed the bus on the rationalization. To sympathize with their refusal to adapt is easy: they have too much to hold onto to let go off. Here enters the isolated pride factor: when your way of life, which was never challenged so far, is drowned in a sea of multiple identities from around you and it gets rationally picked on for its inherent flaws. You'd naturally jump up to defend it. But if you listen to the newer ideas around you, and realize that growing out can be difficult sometimes (because your world so far was small), you'll see that it doesn't really stand for a lot of things good (or better). Maybe it's time for change?<br /><br />You're left with choosing between fighting for pride of the generations of your way of life(honour) and pride in how that helps you (and your tribe) become a better human(s), us become a better society and the world become a better place (sense) i.e. choose to be stubborn or choose to learn something new everyday. With choice #2, you have the privilege of being a part of something better. With the other one, you could very well be digging your own grave / cultural septic tank which may never die but seethe its own poison ignorance that you never be able to undo.<br /><br />With your own propagated cultural loss theory, isolated pride factor and that cultural septic tank, you get an ideology that opts for identity over economics with its own bias that justifies one for the other. It shows contemporarily in right wing mass propaganda, all over the world, that is largely based on intentionally created untruths from people who are charged with identity, first. This thinking is a large blind spot that blinds them to objectivity - that leads them to unflinching loyalty that's beyond reason. When it is reasoned, it is defended with information and logic that even the brightest get selective with, so as to make sure they don't defeat idea in their head. And they make the transition so smooth! Their ideas find a home, which is no less than a target, that desperately ensures its survival—at any cost. They choose culture over sense, when the two shouldn't be a mutually exclusive option, just like economics over identity (or even vice versa) shouldn't be the political choice democratic citizens are offered. <br /><br />We need to be clear: identity cannot survive with the economics that allow it to and those economics should not be stretched unreasonably and non-sensibly just to maintain an identity the time of which has come (for change or end). With the same time, we learn and realise new things that, sometimes, should be instead, and disown and discard what they replace. Sometimes, we don't have to be this extreme. We can still honour our past, in our future, as long as it is in itself honourable. When it isn't, just the good memories from it will do for keeps. <br /><br />We need to stop restricting women from education, because all our system requires them to do is sit at home and take care of the family while we do the opposite for the men because they are the ones who are supposed to be the bread earners. We need to rethink a special status for cows for religious-funded reasons despite knowing the roles cow-based products once they have passed usabilility as animals. These are just some examples. There are so many, many more, just around you.<br /><br />For those who insist otherwise, I get your heartbreak but you're holding the clock back. The pit you're digging doesn't work for you and it certainly doesn't open the doors of the future while you happily wallow in your illusion. You need to get off that drug. All of us need to watch our political choices so that they are not lopsided leaving an economy in balance while we celebrate values that we are sacrificing that economy for. </div>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-1426838411664111952019-03-14T01:24:00.000-07:002019-03-14T10:12:51.305-07:00When country meets home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Nationalism is
irrationalizable, undebatable and sacred even if lacking at times. It's a
whole religion by itself. Unlike working up to it, with reasons why it
must exist, it is blindly assumed and then dictates how you behave
towards it. See, I get it. This is nationalism - nation, people,
country, culture, roots and those who protect it and ensure it stays
intact. There's a sort of a natal attachment to it which even the most
reasoning naysayers can't deny. But, can it really allowed to flourish,
as freely as it does? Are all the ideas it entails paying the right
homage, even if not reasonable or completely open-eyed, to the core
concept? <br />
<br />
When you're trying to explain something for better clarity, it's normal to take an example outside of the argument's purview to make your point, it being a comparison. Sometimes you hit a roadblock when someone tells you that"'it's not like that. You won't understand", which defeats the whole purpose. The entire goal is to try to understand it by relating the idea to something similar and hopefully find a similar paradigm and make better sense of it. Of course, people do have a right to abide by the ideas that they wish to, even if they don't add up.<br />
<br />
It would seem that we need a new paradigm to understand it better. Let me suggest one. Home. If you're confused, don't worry. I'll have your attention soon enough. Home, like your home, or your house. Now, you grew up in your home, just the way you grew up in India, the cause of our nationalism. In either case, you belong, are from, and identify with nowhere else. It's your primary identity - where you're from. If it was revoked you'd be homeless with no other place that is home to you. <br />
<br />
Being born in that place, you also make that place. As miniscule or large as it may be, the evolution of your home over the years is something that you, by default, build. The place is you and you are it, equally along with every other member. You were born in it. You will die in it. You will also take charge of it and lead it forward as it reflects the way you and its other members evolve. You own it, equally. You owe it no favours for any kind of privilege of calling home. It would be never be that very home, today, without you. <br />
<br />
Ditto with your country. You have been born and bred an Indian by chance of it being your home. You were not "raised" by India. You weren't homeless and in the dumps when Bharat Mata 'gave' you a home you didn't even deserve to begin with, which you should be adversely grateful for. You are India and this is your home with all the rights that come along with it. <br />
<br />
In your home, you are brought up in a particular tradition and culture when you are young, which becomes your primary experience. As you grow up and think for yourself, you ideally choose between various degrees of *honouring that tradition because it becomes your own honour, questioning it to align it relevantly with your growing identity as a person and the better principles of life as you discover them, or simply keeping it a religious distance and showed as much general respect as you can to your heritage. In case you aren't allowed one of these options in your home, **your mind hasn't been allowed to make itself up freely and you exercise an unfree mindset that you have not chosen and don't question for the better. <br />
<br />
Ditto with your country. You could be bred in India but you don't have to agree with the way you were brought up. It's your India to change or keep and you don't need a majority vote on that. By making your choice and exercising the views and actions that come along with it, you do that everyday! The update happens real-time. <br />
<br />
The nationalist view is best defined by *first or **fourth response to what we were taught and told. Those who hold it aren't open to an open mind about home and country and the gates of their ideas about it are shut. If country is indeed home, it gives us far more freedom that they'd like to think they and us should have: far more freedom that their closed minds can clearly handle.<br />
<br />
Regardless of your choice, you never diss your home unless you are woke enough to address what you see is wrong about it. Saying what you think is wrong about it, just as equally as someone has the right to think otherwise, isn't dissing your home. You say what you say because you believe it needs to be woken up. The ones who disagree don't have to agree with you and it's your home, still. Even if you were, if it was a home given to you, it comes with all those rights. Once it's home to someone new who isn't born there too, those rights follow. Ditto with your country.</div>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-17426820195739311382019-02-05T02:55:00.000-08:002020-09-05T06:34:06.072-07:00What's amoral in that?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
Culture and traditions don't come in 200 ml bottle sizes with
suggestions of what they go best with, leaving the mixing and matching
to us. They come in whole specific-brand supermarkets, where it's kept
all in the same family. It's a whole Universes that's all contained in
and you have everything you're supposed to need, if you follow the rule
book to the tee. Anything else is treachery, that we spare no expense
crying about. We chastise, traumatize and cull anything else—what we otherwise call moral policing. </div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
The
treachery is inevitable when old ideas meet different
ones. Unless we're busy getting enraged about it and screaming treason,
cultural interaction is an ongoing experiment in which the older habits
die hard, if we let them. Over time, our ways solidify and become
tradition which becomes our ways which becomes our culture. It is a
spectrum that goes from mild to hard core, with the hard core section
inscribed in stone. It's artfully etched so that it remains untouched
for future immemorial while calendars, clocks and times evolve, for
better or worse. It includes everything that is excluded from being the
experiment that is interhuman interaction at all levels. </div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
As
with everything worth inscribing, it also draws the line separating
what that community should consider good and bad, right and wrong, and
nice and evil. In other words, hard core culture defines our
morals. And as we learn, what is one culture's fodder can another one's
poison. </div>
<div>
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<div>
An essentially harmless
habit, though practiced for decades, can be demonized because another
group of people never heard enough about it. Their whole Universe
consists of the few that's theirs as they live in total isolation from
awareness of the many other ways, good or bad, of the people, right next
door. With lack of competition and reference, there's a big chance that
it becomes their effective God, especially when it's confronted. For
example when a marriage conservative society sees an unmarried boy and
girl together, a similar society sees a girl with short clothes or when
they see people beyond their "marriageable age" still single and
unconcerned, an isolated culture could observe and live and let live. </div>
<div>
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<div>
Their
culture, being the spectrum that it is, didn't require them to care
till they were confronted about it. For the same reason, their meter
read that something was out of range and blew, as did their minds. The
spectrum doesn't allow general rationalised thinking that maybe there
are other worlds out there whose internal reasons to follow their own
lifestyles are as equally irrational as theirs, to which the ideal
response is to be curious. But when it becomes their God, it becomes
sacred which anything but only that is taboo. And if the people are
isolated enough, it can be taboo enough to discard basic things like
humanity, decency and respect, all in the name of culture. </div>
<div>
<br clear="none"></div>
<div>
What
happened is that they never looked out to their window, were left with a
cultural view that didn't add up, didn't abandon their culture God
nonetheless, turned a warped idea that defeats regular humanity into a
well accepted moral in their circles, the warped morals did the damage
and we now have officially dehumanized people, all in the name of
"culture". Top contenders of this phenomenon are (things that
eventually end up as)woman-adverse and restrictive views, honour
killings and female genital mutilation, among many others. </div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
It
is safe to say that humanity can go backward as much as it can go
forward and make its resources of advancement a complete waste.
Generations can get stuck in a rut because the old people become kings
and queens and make the rules. They only last till the people they
oppressed with stale thinking became staler with it, start leading the
pack with it while they also do their bit to head the free downward
spiral of society. </div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
We need to remember that
the next time we call someone out for obtuse morals, it's time to open
the window, let some light in and educate ourselves about the different
kind of people we are around. Ask, "So, what's amoral in that?", before
you go to town condemning them. If we assert our right to be ourselves,
they should be able to assert the right to be themselves. If we are
concerned about dying culture, we should be as concerned about the death
and rot the same cultures were caused to date. We should also be able
to interpret its effect (good and bad) in terms of what it does to humans
per se, regardless of country and tradition. </div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
We're
human by Planet Earth and biology. Being from a different culture or
tradition doesn't change any of that. Being ignorant about the science
of it and trumping our cultural and traditional pride over it,
eventually ruins our chances of general human happiness. The other thing
is that if you want it to be alive, the benefit is what you give
yourself. So, go ahead and make it so. Why would you beg for it from
someone else? </div>
<br></div>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-71060665411349892902018-11-28T06:24:00.001-08:002018-11-28T06:24:38.931-08:00Whose business is God’s business?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
Sabarimala burns, metaphorically of course, as nation and court
decides. While we fight over it, we need to talk about the deeper issue
of how we treat God and his business, and how we should. <br /><br />God is
everyone's favourite strawman, and Superman too—both at the same time.
The faithful and the faithless hold him in high stead. Those who don't
believe in him don't dismiss but criticize him equally for not being
super enough. He's the guy we either shoot at or pray to when we can't
explain the world (or anything else) to ourselves. He's everything and
all in one for everyone at all times, regardless of whether he claims to
be so. We think he automatically becomes public property and slack is
the least he gets from us.<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />
Surprisingly, it's an extremely good cover up that works. We can embrace
our imperfection while thrashing his. What makes this idea possible is
the fact that he is faceless and quiet the whole time. His absence and
silence gives us the idea that he needs his business here on Earth taken
care of whether we believe in him or not. And that we do with great
glee—whether it's thrashing how out of times & oppressive he is or
how he is misunderstood by those who claim so. We do it like its
religious duty. His business is our business—everybody's business. On
the other hand, everybody else's business is nobody's business. <br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />This
has a downside and an upside. While we all exercise our free rein over
how God ought to work in society and the world, essentials of belief
loses its identity. It becomes rationalised and stands corrected by
those who don't believe in it (whom can just as well just ignore it).
The social structures and the natural charm of the customs they inspire
have imprints all round i.e. typical festival food and snacks, new
clothes, reasons to gather as a community etc. Even for the agnostic,
these mean more than sole worship of a deity. They take on meanings of
community and people. <br /><br />This free rein also keeps away
eccentricity when religion starts to take away humanity from itself with
outdated rules and values, or even just keeping the good, reasonable
ones uncorrupted away from zealous stupidity. All religious believers
are also humans, and religions should never preach any principle or
teach an action that's possibly inhuman. It must never hold its
adherents ransom from fear of not following rules that deny them free
happy, explorative, healthy human existence in society.<br /><br />When we
claim the right to manage God's business, we need to make sure that we
aren't on either extreme. If we are, we're no better than what we're
fighting against. Ideally, we should stick our noses out of anyone and
everyone's belief, while we draw the lines of how we address any major
societal damage their overall belief system is, or is capable of,
causing. There are, of course, cases when such simple activism doesn't
go anywhere and the problem <em>needs</em> to be solved for the world to
indeed be a better place when radical steps are necessary, and lines
must be crossed. When we seek to throw the baby out with the bathwater
i.e. the whole belief, its decades of history and evolution, and the
community and society it has built since, with its ills, ours is never
the best idea. That's robbing society of itself. The intermingling of
the two is undeniable, and they feed off each other in more good ways
than we can list. <br /><br />God, first, belongs to the very community that's centred around him. It is them who <em>need</em> his affairs to even manage them. When we meddle, we essentially poke our noses in <em>their</em>
affairs. As long as they are insulated to the world, we should be
criticizing them at a distance to where this autonomy remains. We have a
reasonable right to interject when their influence goes outside and is
negative. Examples: a religious individual who has a secular profession
(say a teacher) must not impress those views at her secular job (say on
her class). She, for example, is free to do that inside her own religious or family
setting. <br /><br />We could debate the general effect that they will have
by various parameters and respond how we feel is best for humanity (if
there is a danger). Some are clearly inhuman, some clearly aren't, and
others lie on various points on that spectrum. As with any kind of
multi-view issue, we will never agree and the rational risk of claiming
our way by any kind of force or arm twisting isn't going to create a way
forward. <br /><br />We have a mostly legitimate crux where we want to
interfere, destroy, replace ord manage God's affairs for reasons that
are good, and must find a way to make the outcome positive. We need to
find a way in which we can debate the moralities on why something that's
good for God is bad for man and vice verse. We need to understand what
we protect when we lay ourselves on the line to protect his affairs and
our religion, or seek to destroy them and religion. Having a go at each
other isn't the way out. If we must, we must do our homework well and
not seek (and are not due) immediate gratification for our own thinking
and understanding.<br /><br /> We can't take God's business and make it our business lightly. </div>
</div>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-88479849714587131892018-11-15T03:05:00.003-08:002018-11-15T03:06:32.944-08:00When your culture stinks and that's normal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
What's synonymous across people and cultures is that everyone
always honours their tradition i.e. how they grew up. It's, after all,
first response. The mistake in doing that is when it goes unchecked to
become big norm. See, all our traditions may not be good, healthy or
positive. Some cultures and values are steeped in things that
humanity and society need not bring itself to, the first things we need
to clean up if we ever start.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Majority
traditional Indian culture isn't an exception. It has evolved into a
very serious problem: a leftover one. And our response: we happen to
handle it just like we handle our garbage in real life i.e. conveniently
ignore it. Find the closest obscure spot on a main road and shamelessly
dump it there, as it rots and stinks in front of us as we normalise
ourselves to it. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It becomes the potbelly
we drum on and never care to healthily address. Since we all push it
under the carpet, we now have a problem. There's
a bunch of trash sitting around untreated. What do we do about it? The
popular answer is simple: Nothing! Our cultural values are too skewed to
address their own refuse. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The reason for
these leftovers is that we're stuck in time and just don't know where
else to evolve. The values we followed were be all and end all. The
catch is that they also defined whether or not you get any basic respect
around here which made them all the more vital to stick with and we got
addicted. So when the times moved, we were stuck for response and chose
extreme pride instead. When we ended up being the only ones on the
block doing that, we let our fears rule over sense and stuck to our guns
even more. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So, our ways remain stuck and we
remain stuck with a bunch of "timeless values" that sit and ferment till
they dangerously morph into what will soon be a very normal way of
life. While we smile and live that life, inside is a seething rot that
gets fouler by the minute. Of course, we could just as easily introspect
and correct age old customs that rob you of wisdom, but why not let be
the silent creator of destruction anyway? It must be fun to be evil,
no? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Think of culture like a terrarrium: a
complete plant ecosystem in a closed bottle that feeds itself and needs
to be watered only once in 50 years. The culture we religiously follow
under the guise of tradition must be able to afford itself. It should be
a clean, efficient cycle that isn't self-crippling, not eject waste it
can't accommodate or treat, and not need a dose of life injected every
now and then. It should be its own source of the life it needs. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The
only reason we follow such patched up customs is because we have a
deficit problem that's been long untraceable. It goes back a gazillion
generations to when someone needed their respect and decided that
they're going to get it, by hook or by crook. And they've crookedly
gotten us hooked on to a cultural value system that depletes itself
before it even respectably survives for more than two seconds. It makes
into refuse all those who don't fit in to somebody's respect and it
mandates that they sit there and rot. It doesn't matter if they're real
people, as real as that somebody, who just isn't on top of the
hierarchy. If we have the shame to not dispose of them because of what
that would make us, shouldn't we have the shame to give them an equal
place in this ecosystem? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You can't really
blame us, though. Our tradition didn't come with a
moving-forward-with-the-times exit plan. None ever come with that
privilege. What some do come with it reason and rationality. They help
you look beyond your singular values into what they do people as human
individuals in society, and judge whether it's worth it or not. They set
the definition of respect, freedom, happiness and honour for all
involved, first. It doesn't protect its own view. It protects an
individual's right to be, regardless of gender or status, and that's
just the start of how it defines everything else. That means those who
benefit from it aren't the only ones winning excluding those who end
being either used for that benefit or end up being refuse. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If
you're really the nice person from the evil culture you proudly
profess, you will judge your pride by its trash. By that, I mean women
who are given lesser priority and not educated/educated well and married
off instead. The classes of people your habits tend to look down upon,
like the maid who has her own utensils and sit in a place that isn't the
place that everybody else does. The protection you'd oblige to give a
woman at the cost of a full life because you've been wired to know she
must have it. You could also offer it without restricting her, if the
danger is indeed so grave with an intention that belong in 18th, not the
20th, century. Your intention cannot possibly end up being a good one. <br />
<br />
The
list is long. If you can't completely rationalise your behaviour while
treating people with as much respect as you treat yourself, you're on
the slow road to certain death. Like the way you are normalised to the
refuse your values create, you will be a cultural zombie, and not even
know it. If you don't have the option of choosing the behaviour meted
out to you, you need to leave. Fast! You can either be one or the other.
If you either and you stay this way any longer, you will just create a
deficit that you will pass on and the problem will be on someone else's
head.<br />
<br />
What do you choose? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2723581055663244529.post-40082009087866151132018-10-08T16:32:00.000-07:002018-10-09T11:00:20.480-07:00Look beyond your popcorn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Supreme Court judgement that allows movie customers in Maharashtra to take their own food in theatres is having two completely differently ended reactions. One lauds it because now paying for food that's a hop, skip and jump away doesn't cost you more than your movie ticket (which is expensive enough nowadays). The other bemoans it because it takes away from a legitimate business model and employability, by allowing food in.<br /><br />From the wider view, both action and response are overstretched. The complaint was because of the high rates of food sold inside the multiplex and ban on taking food inside, which is a simplistic reduction (but it makes sense). The decision to disallow outside food is defendable from a business point of view but it is just plain stupid to madly overprice it. The other more important observation is that this budiness model banked on the hooked consumer, and it had worked brilliantly till now.<br /><br />All it would have taken to be stopped is for the consumer to play the best card of non-engagement to get their, fairly reasonable, cheaper price of popcorn (without going to court). Eat enough right before the movie—a full meal or a snack so you won't need to eat in between the movie. If everyone does that, prices will have to come down if they still want a happy customer. If they figure it's not worth it keeping them happy like that, food goes out and we don't get our affordable doorstep popcorn. We'll have someone else outside the theatre filling in the demand. If they allow that in, we can just keep out the eating outside the theatre. But that won't happen because we're A.D.D.I.C.T.E.D. We think we deserve our doorstep popcorn (literally and metaphorically). <br /><br />The truth of the matter is that we, the consumer, have fallen into a trap, so well-designed that a clear luxury (in this case, popcorn right outside the theatre door) is now a hard-and-fast right to happiness. It speaks a lot for how we've unrealistically evolved our ideas of happiness, out of our control, to be defined by corporate sales targets. Do we know we spoonfeed their every paisa, and how frantically they scramble to change route at the slightest change of consumer behavior? Behavior that comes to us as easy as breathing.<br /><br />This isn't just the case with popcorn during movies. This is with everything that spells C.O.M.F.O.R.T for us. It's become something we expect without an objective highest standard. The only standard we keep is, literally, not lifting a finger. Any service or product has to let us move the least fingers possible and gives us the comfort we want for it to buy our loyalty. The thought is noble. I mean, how will ideas be pushed to their bigger designs? This is, practically, their biggest incentive to innovate. But when, and if, we reach there, and we're faced with a situation like the cheaper popcorn fix were in, the fall is hard. And the recourse we ended up taking to get our affordable popcorn is harder. <br /><br />But like, whatever will we do without affordable popcorn at closest reach? Both the literal meaning and the metaphor. We really need to rethink how much consumer-like we are getting, so much that it's our entire persona when we interact with anything outside of ourselves. There is nothing wrong with picking things off a shelf to the point so often. Neither is there anything wrong in expecting these things to be within reach (especially with price), when they become an integral part of your daily ecosystem. But there is something wrong with the amount of dependence our entire life and world has on something that doesn't even factor it in.<br /><br />The companies don't care. They're in it for the money and you're a market. When there's a wide enough need to make profit, you're king and queen. When there isn't, you're a victim of a capitalism mindset. But don't worry, the market will still about your biggest needs being made accessible. Without it, the companies can't keep their profit-their reason to be. They're suckers for their own cause. <br /><br />Remember, you always hold the key. You can only give it away, and grab it right back without asking. Just distinguish between that popcorn you die for and something else you really will die because you lack it. </div>
Honnasiri's Catchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13294979488531578265noreply@blogger.com0