Deaf Generation

After the invention of computer, it has constantly been prophesized that robot will replace mankind and will rule the world in future. But what no one has ever dreamed that prophecy will come true so soon. Here we are, in 2nd decade of 21st century, a walking live robot or worse a puppet with Strings in multiple hands.

 This is the generation of deaf. Deaf people walking robotically all over the place – Scene just like in Matrix. Hell breaks loose in our surrounding, but we walk in our regular pace as if nothing has happened, nothing fall on our deaf ear – plugged with an ear phone ;)

It is ubiquitous, it is everywhere – while jogging, travelling, walking, hanging from crowded bus, driving, studying, working, and eating. It has become the world’s dearest object – nothing more is important than listening song with dear ear phone – what does it matter if people behind you are shouting for help or some bomb is exploding behind. Everything is behind me, ahead me is me and and my iPod.

In 18th century England was running huge trade deficit with China and their every efforts were failed to close this deficit (As they hardly had anything to sell to China). They devised a novel method and started black marketing opium to Chinese people. Once the Chinese were addicted, English were the king. All out flowing gold (which England use to pay China to buy silk, tea etc) were back in England through opium.

Earphone is today’s opium, efficiently addicting people to such an extent that they are nothing but a puppet of music and electronics’ industry. This addiction is infecting the masses with an alarming rate but it remains completely unnoticed.

The sad fact of the world is that the fate of millions always remains in few hands. Addiction of ear phone is just an example of how behavioral pattern of generation upon generation is being changed to tap the unexplored area of profit, without thinking of its implication. Music was once celebration of life and was a way to connect – but it has gradually become a device to disconnect with the world. Invention of recorder, tape, Walkman, iPod etc was not a life changing invention (not even necessary) but they came along to change consumer behavior to tap a huge market. And result is apparent now – a deaf generation, who would kill you if you dare to unplug them.

May be my point is little (or big) lost here. It is hard to see any point in anything which is against invention or innovation. It’s the accepted way of life and an expected norm of moving forward. Any deviation from this established norm will be branded as anti-development. But again, is development always good? Is growing beyond 7 ft and keep growing till life time good for mankind? My point again is that we need to define the boundary, we need to identify our limit, Otherwise world would crash behind us and we would keep walking with devil singing lullaby to our ear.

Adaptation to alteration – Is human race knocking the door of Dark Age?

World is moving fast, as fast as sometimes I feel my head spinning.  Every day one and other technologies are constantly becoming obsolete by one or other new technologies. Dynamicism is at its zenith and everything is in it’s engulf. Rate of technological progress has far exceeded the rate of human population growth.

So, are we at the height of civilization, or as we say height of renaissance or age of enlightenment?

Let me define the word enlightenment, of course as per my own definition. Enlightening is a beautiful word and it has ability to give a beautiful meaning to one’s existence. An enlightened human is a complete human being with complete cognizance of his/her surrounding and ability to cope with it effectively keeping in mind of every macro and micro life existed in planet. Is today’s technocratism leading to us to that?

Since the time of Darwin mankind has known the secret of adaptism. Adaptation has become the buzzword and has been the matter of pride for mankind. But in the subsequent 250 years, concept of adaption was slowly replaced by concept of alteration. Alteration is the buzzword today – if we can’t adapt, we alter. If we can’t cope up with nature we alter the nature itself. Technological progress, genetic modification, destruction of natural habitat, examples are numerous.

When we talk about impending danger on human race (only human race actually, other species are encouraged to preserve just to facilitated existence of human race, i.e. to maintain balance in ecosystem) by global warming and numerous other reason, we only talk about macro facilitator like logging, mining, infrastructure etc etc. We never talk about the micro development in our life which is actually leading to these macro reasons. We never talk about everyday small small technological invention or innovation. We hail those technocracies as they make our life simpler.  Writing a letter was replaced by mobile phone. Not only time taken in communication was greatly reduced it also relieved the pain inflicted by pen on delicate hand of human being.  Pen is replaced by keypad or keyboard which was faster and much easier.  Very soon human hand stared tiring out with keypad and then came the touch screen. Why push a button to type, just touch it. Several micro second of human life was saved by switching from pushing to touching. Now we are tired of touching to, our delicate hand is gradually becoming incapable of doing that, so we are coming up next with smart phone which can understand from our gesture what we want, after some years they would be capable to compile our mind directly and work accordingly. We don’t even have to blink our eyes. Some time it’s just dreadful to think that where it is going to stop? Earlier we used our brain to adapt ourselves to our environment, but now we are slave of our brain and working tirelessly to face altercation with our environment.

We have to know where the stopping point is. The much talked invention and innovation have to have some limit. And that limit should be defined by their usefulness in our ecosystem. Today millions of human being is involved in this mindless innovation in order to make human life much simpler. But this is resulting in making our life much complex and thrusting us to a kind of dark age where everything would be beyond our comprehension.  When nature shows its wrath, we are as helpless as those cave man of 12000 BC with more damage which could ever been inflicted in history of mankind. How technology has made it better. Instead of participating in mindless technological race (Google, Microsoft, IBM etc etc) why aren't we putting our energy into real human problem - the problem of disaster, suffering, poverty, population, habitat loss, species extintion, again the list is very long. 

I might sound like a doomsday predictor moron but we are at the juncture of falling into a dark pit from where it would be near impossible for human race to recover.  We have to say enough is enough. We have thought enough about our own comfort and development. We have achieved enough. Now it’s the time to think about those who have been constantly neglected in 10000 years history of mankind. Now it’s time to go back. Now it’s time to go back to nature and nurture it. We have graduated from the college of development long back and forgotten all our lessons. It’s time to go back to school to learn the basic.

Sholay ke funde

Yesterday my long-long pending childhood wish was fulfilled, thanks to the new 3D technology. Jurassic park was re-released in 3-D and I got opportunity to watch for the first time in my life and that also on big tantalizing screen. My patience (resolute to not to watch it on television ;) ) was amply rewarded, in short I loved it.

Jurassic park encouraged me to watch one of the Bollywood iconic movie (of course on YouTube – Sholay, which topped in my big unwatched famous Bollywood movies list.

Next few minutes I am going to bore you with, which might look like a movie review, but it’s not. I just intend bore you more by highlighting some of the problems in our society and Sholay is just a facilitator, so no offence to Sholay fansJ.

My observation started from the scene where Sanjeev Kumar urf Thakur recounted his first encounter with jai and Biru. Scene involved encounter between bundle of dacoits and trio of Jai, Beeru and Thakur.  One by one faceless dacoits were fell through the bullet of our hero (though numbers never seemed to be dwindling), my heart cried - hey stop it, atleast know the person before killing. How many endless faceless persons are sacrificed just like that in between the war of our hero and villain? Does anyone wonder what their life story is, of course they are not just born to live invisible and die invisible. I have seen many war movies, mostly from Hollywood. Huge army marching ahead at the order of king and one by one being felled at the hand of opposition. It feels like that those are army of wood men not a real human with flesh and pain. Hero is injured, and then whole world is at pain to save him. But what about that dead faceless soldier on the fields who has left his/her family behind in search of better life for them.

My 2^nd observation was, needless to say, caricature of female character. I don’t want to elaborate much but it was humiliating to watch as always. An ideal widow bahu of a comparatively progressive Thakur living a completely black out or I say white out life, what do you want to convey? Is this the image of perfect female? Any way since its 70s movie, it’s pardonable. But I don’t think much has improved in our cinema world since 70s, except for the technology, money power and fancy dresses.

The machoism was all rampant and it’s impossible to imagine how many people and movies and in turn through those movies again how many millions it has inspired in last 27 years. Any way I feel like talking about these is completely moo point (If you are wondering what’s moo then you have to refer Joey’s dictionary ;)).

The plain devil caricature of villain was nothing but overwhelming. Of course you enjoy it in movie and your whole conscious cries out to kill that bastard and nothing gives you more satisfaction than gruesome end of that dare devil.

The plain portray of black and white poses a social dilemma to our society, and movies are just exacerbating that. The depiction of merciless killing gives moral authority to the person who wants to bring their own version of justice and how many people are sacrificed at the altar of this justice doesn't matter. I don’t know if this happen in real world or not but realization of even 0.01% of these movies is catastrophic for the civilization.

Gandhiji has always said that, don’t hate the man but hate the wrongness in him, don’t kill the man but kill the devil inside him. Our bapu knew that every man possesses both dark and bright side. For some one bright side is more prominent and for someone this dark side is more prominent. Killing a man would kill both side of his and world would gain nothing out of it but killing the dark inside man would bring his/her bright side to the world. Every person has a story, a history, a trail and its necessary to traverse those trails to understand that person.

Any way coming to the point, I couldn't finish the movie as it was difficult to digest without killing the human inside me. When a Dinosaur rips off the man without thinking anything it is understandable, but when a man does the same thing, well no comment.  

What’s the moral of the story?

I got to create my own version of Sholay.

Are you ready to watch? ;)

Irrationality of rational

Human being is supposed to be a rational animal. But throughout the history its action could hardly be qualified for the definition of rationality even though the definition of rationality has been created by none other than but human being itself. When Herbert Simon adopted the concept of bounded rationality by rejecting rationality, he was so much correct in assuming so.

When an animal make a choice, it makes so by having a full cognizance of situation and a clear cut goal. I don’t think they ever have any hesitancy erupting out of sense of ignorance. But we human being are fully aware of out mental limitation and our choices are blinded by our own sense of limitation, which we term as a rational choice in a given situation

When the Finance minister presented the budget yesterday his hands were supposedly tied with different constraint. Galloping inflation, dipping growth numbers, sluggish industrial output, adverse global situation, high oil price, upcoming election and finally disenchantment of mass (which is definitely not new) , doesn't really provide a smooth ride to FM. Hence the resultant package came out as budget has been termed as a rational choice. Does it really present a rational choice and if yes then rational for whom and rational by what?

My motive here is not to comment on budget or any political situations. Situation related to Budget here is just the metaphor to the various situation faced by us in our daily life. We eke out a rational decision out of myriad of conditions or should I say that we just adjust our decision to make it rational in the given circumstance.

I guess I am using lots of jargon and really getting lost in the maze of irrationality ;). Anyway, today I was just talking to a friend and talk just moved over to the matter of felling of trees for commercial gain. Question was just very simple – why can’t we find another way instead of cutting the trees. This simple question has multiple dimensions which is definitely not that simple. A tree planted in the small plot, coming in the way of building a shelter for a small farmer has to go. What rationality we can put up there.  We can cry over builders flattening out a forest but we won’t hesitate if we do same thing when we buy a plot to build house. Land is expensive and who can give it free to tree for sheltering.

Why human life is so complex? Why can’t we take decision just like an average animal? If at all our decision is rational how come it keeps pounding on our conscience. We ourself are responsible for knitting a complex web around our life, but the sad thing is that we are not even trying to understand and stop this. Our constant endeavour to find rationality has catapulted us in world of irrationality L

Eve and Adam: The story retold

Once upon a time there was a tribe. A tribe with wise men and women. Tribe’s affair was seen by them collectively with mutual consultation. Tribe has been gifted with nature’s bounty and plenty was available for them to live their life peacefully. Power struggle was unknown to them as their desires were supplemented by contentment with the resource available to them.

Tribe had a gift from their ancestors – A gift of knowledge in form of “knowledge of tree”. This tree has been bestowing wisdom to tribe for centuries. The mere presence of tree had empowered tribe with ancient knowledge of art of living.

In their perfect heaven there existed two beautiful children – Adam and Eve. They lived happily by complying the simple custom of tribes and continuously growing to join the league of wise men and women.

Once a creature from far away land came to this magical land. It was astonished to see the perfect balance of life in this strange land. It came to know about “Knowledge of tree”. It assumed that knowledge of tree is the secret of the happiness of this land and if it could have a byte from the Tree’s fruit then it could also achieve that happiness.

So it went to tree to pluck the fruit but while doing so it was cornered by Adam and Eve. Both children were astonished as no one in tribe ever bothered to pluck the fruits from knowledge tree. They offered the creature delicious fruits from other trees.

Adam asked it: Why are you plucking that fruit, it’s not eatable. If you are hungry we have lots of trees with delicious fruits, I can bring those to you.

Creature felt as if it was caught while doing a crime. It did not know why it felt that as it was not committing any crime or breaking any rule. But somewhere inside it told him that whatever it was trying to do is not good. But it wants to be as happy as tribe’s people so it ignored its inner voice and decided to misguide the children

It told them: This is the tree of wisdom, its fruit might not be delicious but it will make you wiser than others. You can rule others by being superior to them, so take it with me and you can make the world better place to live.

Children were surprised with its talk but they took it as they did not see any harm in tasting a fruit. The creature happily left the land by accomplishing its goal. Children returned to home.

By eating fruit of wisdom they gained a different wisdom with a different view of world where they can exploit the resources more and bring more comfort to their tribes. They started planning as they thought it was in best interest of their tribes. The elder of tribes were worried about the children’s idea and they warned them against it.

As the time went Adam and Eve grew more ambitious and they thrived to prove themselves to the elders of their tribe. By sensing the impending danger elders of tribe called for the council. Eve advocated her ideas passionately as she believed that it will bring more happiness in tribe. But Adam sensed the opportunity to discredit Eve and implement his plans. He told tribe that he is ready to relinquish his ambitious plans as he took byte of fruits of knowledge tree on insistence of Eve, and for the moment he was blinded by the magic of fruit but he can see the consequences clearly now, so he is ready to subjugate to tribes rule.

Elders were elated by Adam’s subjugation and angry with Eve’s persistence. Tribe gave the verdict and for the first time in history they ask Eve to obey Adam. And from their started the subjugation of many Eves. Though intension of Adam was only his personnel conquest which he thought was in his tribe’s interest but he started a precedent unintentionally which has been continuing for time immemorial.

And since then the human lived unhappily ever after L

Note: Please pardon the plain unstory like language, I am not a story writer J