Category: Society & Culture

  • Moral Signs

    A little more than a year back, I remember writing a post on identity – what exactly constitutes the individual – work, relationships, consumption, combinations of these…….

    More recently, I read a Scott Adams post which actually asks the same question ‘Who are you?’ He also provides his best answer to it ‘You are what you learn’. It’s an interesting point and I do agree that what you learn is what gives you additional perspective. It changes the way you view older experiences and how you react to new experiences. And so, despite believing in being prisoners of birth to some extent, and knowing that the apple never falls far from the tree, and at the risk of generalisation, I would tend to agree.

    Which brings me to learning. In an earlier era, our ‘channels’ of learning were limited – parents, relatives, friends, teachers, literature, some amounts of media, and so on. Limited when compared to the abundance that a media explosion and the internet have brought into our lives. Sometime back, I read a post in the NYT titled ‘If it feels right‘, which discussed a study on the role of morality (rather, the lack of it) in the lives of America’s youth. The author clarifies that it isn’t as though they are living a life of debauchery, it’s just that they don’t even think of moral dilemmas, the meaning of life and such. The study ‘found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism’, mostly because they have not been given the resources to develop their thinking on such matters.

    It led me to think about the moral frameworks that were instilled in us by our sources when were young. At the very least, value systems existed, though obviously their ‘quality’ would be a subjective affair. I wonder, if in this era of abundant sources, we are missing out on inculcating the basic moral guidelines that are necessary for a society’s sustenance and  evolution. If people are what they learn, then the least we could do is take a closer look at our own moral framework. The next generation, despite the abundance of sources, could be learning from it. Or perhaps this is the way it has always been, between generations. 🙂

    until next time, moral poultice

    PS: a beauuuutiful related video

  • Irascible

    In Nayantara Sahgal’s “This Time of Morning” (review later), there is an episode (p 247- 250) where one of the characters recollects the first time he had seen the British’s Divide and Rule policy in action, in the context of religion.

    To summarise, towards the end of 1919, a Swami Satyanand, who had a reputation for his protests and fiery speeches against the British, and was a hero figure in all communities, once began a speech on the steps of the Juma Mosque in Allahabad. He said he had chosen the location because he wanted to emphasise that the name of the faith didn’t matter. With the mullah standing behind him, he began to speak of the messages in the Bhagvad Gita as a rapt crowd listened. The policemen arrived suddenly, and even as the Swami kept saying that the police were ‘our’ brothers and the crowd should stand still, he was attacked, finally collapsing beneath the arch. The mullah wept as he was carried inside, and later, when he came out to announce that the swami was dead.

    The next day, the English dailies carried the news that the Swami had died at the Juma Mosque and insinuated that the Swami had deliberately tried to incite the Muslim community and had died as a result. It also chose to emphasise that mutual seclusion was the only way to peace among the communities, and this was what the government was trying to do. The regional dailies were warned against carrying the news at all. And though Muslims and Hindus joined the procession which ended with the Swami’s pyre being lit by the mullah, none of the dailies covered it.

    The book is a work of fiction though historical figures also play minor roles. But many incidents and scenarios are based on real events, and the above incident seems highly possible. It made me realise that the only perspective we can derive of the events that happened then are from newspaper reports and in some cases, journals/books written by people who lived then. But the latter is not so easy to find, and we mostly rely on the former.

    I read this book during the time that Mr.Sibal was making his infamous censorship statements, and the internet began its #outrage. (Yes, I did 2) The above episode gave me a glimpse of what the internet has achieved in terms of documenting data and what we, and the generations to follow, would be missing out, if censorship came to life. Thankfully, even George W Bush has said “You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box” 🙂

    until next time, Jaise Har Ek Baat Pe Democracy Me Lagne Lag Gaya Ban 🙂

  • A life less lived..

    Quite a while back, I remember writing about people who, despite their circumstances, continue to plod on through life, not giving up on it. I ended it with a quote from ‘The Hurt Locker’ by James ‘Everyone’s a coward about something.‘ I added that sometimes it’s life, and sometimes it’s death.

    I was reminded of this when I read about the Goa couple‘s suicide and another one closer home – a person I knew, if only for a few months – one which came as a rude shock. In the first case, Anand Ranthidevan and his wife Deepa took a very deliberate and seemingly well thought through decision to end their lives, planned down to the last detail. The label I’ve heard several times in conversations – real and virtual – is disturbed. I don’t subscribe to that, it’s probably the reaction from a society which just cannot accept that people without any troubles could really make a conscious decision to end their lives. I can actually identify with it because in conversations with friends, I’ve toyed with the idea of driving off a cliff at say 55-60, when a life has been lived fully.

    But just like the question in the earlier post – why people continued to plod on, I am interested in the flip side too. Why do people choose to end it? In situations where the individual is troubled by something – physical/emotional/under the influence of a drug, there is probably a point where he/she feels the problem cannot be solved, and chooses to end the journey.

    The Goa incident is different because the individuals were in their prime, at least in terms of age. When sports personalities, actors etc retire at the ‘right’ time, they sometimes use the ‘Why retire now vs Why don’t you retire now’ line. Can one think of life that dispassionately? Probably, if one knew what lay after, or if one didn’t care, or thought it wasn’t worth the effort. Or when one felt that one’s existence didn’t matter to anyone but the self. Or maybe there when there was no problem worth solving. What do you think?

    until next, life </span>

  • In the beginning…

    Over on the other blog, I had discussed one of my favourite 2012 trend decks – by Ross Dawson. Within that, my favourite trend was #4 – Institutions in question, in which he talks of political situations (Arab unrest), and the change in status of financial institutions leading to movements like Occupy Wall Street. The last slide is titled “Transformation not apocalypse”, in which he mentions the significance of 2012 for several reasons – from the Mayan calendar’s end of the word prophecy to it being hailed as the year of the Singularity – a subject that keeps popping up on this blog. 🙂

    I, for one, believe that we’re in for a transformation. But it’s not just the political, economic or even technological changes happening around us, I think we’re fundamentally going to change as individuals and how we relate to others – society. So it’s not just the economic and political institutions that will be transformed, but even social institutions – marriage, family, parenthood, friendship and so on.

    As the average human life span increases thanks to medical advances, the ‘rational’ reasons underpinning these social institutions will be under scrutiny. I have a feeling that technology will soon allow us to find surrogates for each of these, one way or the other. It isn’t as though the institutions themselves will disappear, but their importance and the solidity they had thus far enjoyed would diminish. What exactly the changes would be is something I’m still trying to imagine, but the effect of social networks on relationships is probably the beginning of this transformation, and we are likely to be known as the generation under whose watch it all began.

    until next time, a happy 2012 to you 🙂

  • A social club of one

    Sometime back, I read a post on @daddysan’s blog on choices and how we “defend freedom of choice but we criticize those who exercise it because those choices may not be concurrent with ours.”  To be noted that the thrust of the argument is not on ‘labeling’ products/services per se, but labeling the people who consume it, more so in cases when it’s a personal choice and doesn’t endanger or even affect others in a significant way.

    I found this post interesting because I have always been intrigued by choices and their significance, not just from the perspective of whether they are choices at all, but also from that of the judgmental robes we like to wear. The last time I had written about the latter was in the context of expertise. But a comment on this post gave me quite a new direction for thought. More on that in a bit.

    In the context of the post itself, though I understand that labeling (and battles around them) has probably been around from the time the species became 2 in number, I think the publishing power that the internet created has taken it to a whole new level. So while “people who smoke/drink versus those who don’t”, “people who apply coconut oil on their hair versus those who don’t” and so on have had battles fought with much fervour, the internet’s ability to aggregate opinion has escalated many issues to war levels, like the examples daddysan has used.

    And so I wonder if it has something to do with the ‘Like’ necessity that has increased its hold over our lives recently. Social endorsement, even from total strangers. When I am a consumer of X, and you chose to buy Y instead of X, it is as though you have not ‘Liked/Retweeted’ my awesome intelligence in choosing X. Peer reaction was probably a major factor in my choice, whether I acknowledge it or not, and in saying that I have gone wrong, you have invoked my ego and brought up the subject of whether I chose X purely for its tangible or even intangible benefits or whether I chose it to conform to some section’s decree. Now, you probably didn’t mean to do any of this, and also are under some sort of peer review process yourself, but that’s irrelevant and it’s now war. Just like many of the Likes/shares/retweets are from people I don’t even really know, the war just brings in all sorts of strangers and camps.

    For the record, I have exactly one Apple product, which was gifted to me, and if it has any iron parts, it should be rusted by now. I read Chetan Bhagat and when I get a chance, take potshots at him. Just can’t resist. 😀 I think Ponytail sucks, and again, don’t lose a chance to crack a line at his expense, but I have held back much since the time he made a movie with the awesome Funny Deol. Joke sako to Joke low is the policy.

    But, enough. The comment that made me think was made by Jo Chopra McGowan, and it was about how individual choices add up, affect others, and could probably end up in impacting popular culture/lifestyles etc. I’d never thought of it that way. But yes, most of us/our actions influence at least one other person, and so the chain goes. More often than not, our reasons for doing so remain un-shared, and somehow one personal choice could create a conformity wave. Obviously the easy way to stop it is to make conscious choices and that brings us to the vicinity of square one. 🙂

    until next time, unheard mentality!