Ten Issues - 7

1- How America Can Rise Again : The simplest measure of whether a culture is dominant is whether outsiders want to be part of it Any great nation can be judged on two parameters : continued openness to immigration, and a continued concentration of universities that people around the world want to attend.

2- (Hi)Story, Truth and Nation: South Africa is facing the process of developing a new identity for itself and its people, and to deal with its past. Jyoti Mistry looks at the meaning of nations and the nation state in examining this process of creation of a national identity. Story-telling, history and memory play vital parts, particularly in South Africa, in building this "whole". In a story that has no end in sight, she looks at how a country is dealing with its past and stepping into its future.

3- A virtual counter-revolution: The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it. The future of the internet is looking bleak;

4- Power, privilege, corruption, hypocrisy : There is nothing to be proud of India's ranking in the Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index 2009. The country ranked low also in the Bribe Payers Index among emerging economic giants.

5- The Economics of Monogamy and Polygyny : Overview of the the economics surrounding marriage institutions by professor Marina Adshade who teaches a popular undergraduate course called "Economics of Sex and Love," in which students apply the analytical and statistical tools available to economists to examine human sexuality.

6- Creating scientific culture : The first step towards an African culture of science is to make science relevant to local people, says development expert Oyeniyi Akande.

7-Loving the enemy: Al qaeda version of west - 9/11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed exploited his trial to remind the court of its own human rights obligations, while Osama bin Laden's video statements include appeals to religious pluralism. Al-Qaeda's use of liberal categories is central to its rhetoric on war and justice, writes Faisal Devji.

8- Language, Poetry, and Singularity: A joint Arab-Jewish identity seems an impossibility given the current political situation in the Middle East. And yet it was a reality, exemplified by Arabic-speaking Jews and their writers. In his extensive essay Reuven Snir investigates the complex history of Arab Jews.

9- Fellows Friday with Sunita Nadhamuni: Water and sanitation are among the most crucial issues facing India today, Sunita Nadhamuni notes in her interview with TED. But while these problems are daunting, Sunita says India’s many innovations in managing water can teach the rest of the world a thing or two.

10- An Open Letter to Manmohan Singh : Not everyone is happy with the working of our appointed prime minister due to his apathy towards corruption and the issue becomes large as an IAS officer wrote an open letter in Livemint journal - The government has lost all credibility with the people, and the buck stops with Manmohan Singh;

Quotes:

“The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion” - Henry Steele Commager

"Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government." - B. R. Ambedkar

The Buddha said: ‘If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.’

Overviewing Society

1- Human Values Unite, Religious Values Divide!

There are many different initiatives to strengthen the dialogue between cultures and religions, but they have not let to the desired results. The prominent Palestinian professor of philosophy Sari Nusseibeh see the weak points of such dialogue.

Nusseibeh: Whenever we talk about such a dialogue, we only ever mean the dialogue between the monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and we never speak about the relationship between Buddhism and Hinduism, where there aren't any very serious problems. On the contrary: Shintoism was originally the dominant religion in Japan, and when Buddhism came from China, the Japanese didn't give up their Shintoism, but became Buddhists as well and united the two religions.

The problems seem to emerge primarily between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, because they are so similar and have the same origin. Buddhism and Shintoism could co-exist precisely because they are so different.

The solution lies above all in the abandonment of all religious fanaticism, and in our orienting ourselves on human values, and not on religious values, because everyone can agree on the former. And if a religious principle is in conflict with a human principle, then we have to uphold the latter. That's the only way we will come to mutual acceptance.

2- ‘The Social Network’ and the case against intellectual property rights

Ideas — in this case, an online student network — bear none of the qualities of property. They are abstract and intangible. They don’t exist in any physical sense. If another thinker has the same idea, the original thinker is not suddenly deprived of access to the idea; it simply multiplies.

This is not the equivalent of stealing your friend’s apple. It’s the equivalent of having an apple exactly identical to your friend’s appear in the palm of your hand. Your friend still has his apple.

Defenders of intellectual property protections will object to your apple on the grounds that its existence lowers the value of your friend’s apple; your friend won’t bother to grow apples if you can obtain yours for free. This creates a free rider problem, they allege, in which nobody grows apples and there are none to be copied.

But such thinking ignores that fame can be as compelling a reason to produce something as fortune.

During a legal hearing, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg makes the ultimate statement against intellectual property rights, asking, “Does a guy who makes a really good chair owe money to anyone who ever made a chair?” If people value Facebook and the system that made its development possible, the answer should be a resounding no.

3- The Others Talk: Women's issues, sexual issues, female genital mutilation, virginity problems and "honour killings” are all related to patriarchy and class. Rape is the result of the lack of dedicated societal attention to the safety, respect, and prosperity of women in peace time, as well as in war. That is why empowering women is so necessary to preserve and reform our culture.

Here is an inspiring lecture in which "Kavita Ramdas talks about three encounters with powerful women who fight to make the world better—while preserving the traditions that sustain them." On her bio page is this quote: "Being a philanthropist doesn't mean necessarily writing a huge check. It can mean mobilizing your community to start asking questions." Kavita Ramdas directs the Global Fund for Women, the largest foundation in the world supporting women's human rights across all borders.

Passing thoughts on Higher Education

I always have a idealism that education brings erudition and clarity in ideas; empathise and understand, lead and act to bring changes. And educational institutes catalyses this happening. I feel privileged to become a part of the ITBHU in 2004. It was feeling of eliteness and ecstasy of qualifying IIT JEE after dropping out 2 years post intermediate. Now, IT BHU is on the verge of conversion into IIT. ITBHU has potential and it will always have potential if the attitude of authority remains same despite of effective converted into IIT.  BHU is ranked as top most university in India and IT BHU ranks in top 10 technical college of the country. Still, I can see the slow and orthodox behaviour of the authorities in day to day work. I started thinking about institutional aging and condition of universities in India.

Intellectual license permit raj is there in our all universities that is why we are out of world rankings based on any parameters. Universities are merely a passing-by station for most of the students. Our educational institutes has a large shortfall of teachers and a lacklustre administration. Indian college are social slums of the intellectual where action is resisted in favour of status. Initiative and experiment may led to wrong results, that is the way administration of the colleges are run overall. Andre Betellei notes, this approach has turned or universities into mere ABC factories, degree giving institutions whose primary focus is not education but conducting exams.

The truth is that the desire for change has to come from the top of the institutional pyramid. A rule of thumb for efficiency standards is that they should be 'tough' but not panic inducing'. Time and space is needed to react with new initiatives. When the best will not accommodate for inclusive policies and behave like elite branded model for market economy, its decay starts at the moment only. Flexibility to adopt new academic models and inclusion of lesser social and economical privileged scholars have to be incepted in our educational institute.

Let us go ahead and make our universities with Asian first and world latter in the similarity of Bologna movement that shake up the European academic centers. Latin America has 1980's as its lost decade due to bad policies despite of having a quite young population; India has large young population. The shortage of job is most combustible driver for social change. The failure to meet the needs of a vast young population can lead to instability and political rebellion against government. The push factor of economic forces with the pull factor of education can bring a lot of change to our educational institutions.

Knowledge and University :

The prime task of the university is to ensure the radical autonomy of the practice of knowledge. Without the autonomy of knowledge and education, the social world would necessarily be limited to the brutal reproduction of power and economic coercion. In other words, the university must be driven by political logic and not by economic logic.This means the radical autonomy of education.

Knowledge without education is impossible. Education without institutions is impossible. And knowledge is also impossible without an ethos of knowledge, without freedom of thought and a community of thought. Is there a contradiction between these axiomatic conditions? Is it possible to strike a balance between education and the common work of conception, co-thinking and invention? In other words, can we find the right balance between the "community" of knowledge and the "institution" of knowledge? In a philosophical critique of the pragmatic reduction of knowledge, Boyan Manchev defines the university as "locus of the unconditionally political". Read further in Theses on education and the experience of critical thought.

Three Weblinks on Higher Education:

1- The Unsecret Shopper Goes Shopping: Iowa State University - The idea of “shopping” for a college or university seems pretentious on the surface, unless you’re Bill Gates or Kate Gosselin, both of whom could buy Drake; Look at universities fees and their offerings as they are retail stores.

2-The Science Network (TSN): Its mission is to build an online science and society agora, or public square, dedicated to the discussion of issues at the intersection of science and social policy. By engaging a diverse community of concerned constituencies in conversation, on and offline through signature meetings, video programming, and in developing partnerships with public television stations, TSN is creating a scientific no-spin zone - a trusted destination free from the tyranny of the sound bite.

3- Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission? : College should be a cultural journey, an intellectual expedition, a voyage confronting new ideas and information. But as Tuition charges at both public and private colleges have rising high, admissions are becoming tough for common man.

Thought of the Day:

Our society, throughout school, college, and life, conditions people to treat failing as something to be ashamed of, not as a learning experience. This breeds a subconscious but intense fear of failure, since it's now associated with shame/humiliation. This obviously leads to risk-aversion in the vast majority of the population. The key message here is, 'failure is a stepping stone, not a tombstone'.

Identity and Intolerance

I was reading a review of Amartya Sen's book 'Identity and Violence'. According to the reviewer, the book argues for the reasonableness of the violence of identity. Quoting few paragraphs of review here will be necessary to form basis of mine essay.

"He (Sen) takes aim at what he calls the 'solitarist' approach to human identity, which sees human beings as members of exactly one group. In a related vein, Sen criticizes the solitarist approach to civilizations. Influential texts like Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order" take a drubbing for assuming monolithic Western and Eastern civilizations.

The originality of this critique is that it eschews trite appeals to the common humanity of those in savage conflict. Instead, Sen invokes the myriad identities within each individual. Because all of us contain multitudes, we can choose among our identities, emphasizing those we share with others rather than those we do not. Sen acknowledges, as he must, that such choices will be limited by external circumstances. Still, to concede that identity choices are constrained is a far cry from the claim that identity is destiny.

The strength of Sen's argument lies in its intuitive nature: "In our normal lives we see ourselves as members of a variety of groups." Its weakness lies in its failure to explain why, at critical junctures, we disown that knowledge."

I am puzzled by such intricate relation of identity, tolerance and violence while going through this piece only. Identity is the one of the basic cultural aspect that is inherited and believed by an individual in any society. Most of our identities can be communal, religious, regional, ethnic, national and even sectarian in the nature. Belonging to fanboy clubs or to the political party establish ours identity in the society.

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as religions based on sacred books, all want the whole world in their own image – this is their identity, to which all alterities must – they so wish – yield. This monotheistic vision has led to the crusades, holocaust and many wars among the believers. Even in the today’s Europe, with its increasingly bland, homogenized culture, there is little room for those who want to march to the beat of a different drummer. Whether it’s Muslims who dress differently, or gypsies who want to live according to their traditional way of life, more people in the West are insisting that they don’t want to live with communities who do not conform.

While the eastern religions celebrate diversity, they have their own pitfalls. Despite of several years of co existence, there is an unwritten rule of not mingling through marriage of one religion or caste. The caste system by associating certain identities- upper caste denominations like with power and privilege while disempowering untouchables has in fact institutionalized violence on a daily basis in Indian society.

There are beliefs attached to the institutions that each one perceives regarding 'others' those who don't share their customs and perceptions. The idea of untouchability, the idea that woman is a temptress and inferior to man, and the idea that homosexuality is a mortal sin that is punishable by death, are not benign private beliefs. So is not the idea that apostates, blasphemers, and unbelievers can, and should be, exterminated. Even few victims of such nonsense beliefs became part of mainstream, fewer raise their concern. Most of them are done muted by institutional propaganda.

Basically, tolerance is not practising someone else’s rituals. It is taken as accepting someone else ritual should have same respect as yours. Tolerance is a tool to defuse violent religious conflict and reduce persecution of cultural, racial, ethnic, and sexual identities. Tolerate is not to affirm but to conditionally allow what is unwanted or deviant. Heavy with lofty norms and consolidating the dominance of the powerful, tolerance sustains the abjection of the tolerated in such societies . The core differences are never resolved even after passing of long time and co existence does not solve the problem.

Identities such as developed, developing and backward have played a key role in the shaping of economic and social policies in formation of modern world with all the negative consequences of such policies being brushed aside as a trade off for achieving prosperity or civilizing others. That is another aspect of the violence and exploitation done in the name of the cultural supremacy and development.

Book Reviewer ask us few questions about identities that are still unanswered in my mind : Is it because human cognition tends to trade in binaries? Is it because violence creates identity as much as identity creates violence? Is it because human beings fear the choices or solitude a more cosmopolitan outlook would force them to face?

Blind Faith - Denialism

Continuing our exploration of the blind faith, this part of essay will focus on Denialism. First part of the trilogy was on Prohibition. Generally, Denialism is taken as choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid an uncomfortable truth. It is much more than that. Denialism is not simply the knee-jerk refusal to accept the truth, it is a deliberate and often sophisticated attempt to create a kind of pseudo scholarship.

Attacks on scientific consensus employ the simulacra of scholarship and a deceptively readable idiom. Those who debunk the deniers tend to be old-fashioned rationalists or committed activists. Neither group are particularly well suited to looking at the deeper reasons behind denialism, warns Keith Kahn-Harris. We can better read about denialism in this essay Unreasonable Doubt in much precise analytical way. Just quoting one paragraph here -

But one of the most serious failings of a rational, scientific enlightenment is its propensity to be turned against itself, as when a firm scholarly consensus is attacked in the name of scholarship. You can find this subversion of enlightenment in quasi-academic claims that there was no Holocaust during World War Two, that other genocides such as the Armenian genocide never happened, that man-made climate change is a myth, that HIV does not cause AIDS, that evolution is a lie. More broadly, you can find it in the attempts of vested interests – industries, politicians and elites – to refute inconvenient scientific findings.

Basically according to this mindset, one should not introspect and work towards seeking constructive feedback of one's actions and instead find similar faults of others and indirectly justify ourselves. This holds true from nation to individual. Conspiracy theories blooms in such environments led by elites turning backs to any sort of criticism.

Let us take example of or suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan recently. But, instead of seeing the cause of the terrorist acts, the Denial Brigade of Denialistan assert that this must be the doing of anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan forces, or of elements within the regime, such as intelligence agencies. The basic strategy is to mention the names of India, America and Israel for any wrong done in order to fuel the revulsion that already exists in Pakistan against them and to discredit the other argument not by presenting valid arguments but by presenting excuses. The complete denial of failing of Pakistan as a nation due to Talibani and Wahabi forces has already created a havoc situation in Pakistan. State of Denial And Apologetic Defense by Raza Habib Raja clearly describe the situation denial has created in a nation form on the religious faith only.

It is evident that the more one deny own moral and ideological failings, the more aggressive and prominent the physical expressions of our inner most religious and ideological prejudices and hypocrisies become. As this attitude leaves practically no space to the liberals and silent reformers. A failed state doesn't allow any grown-up internal debate, or any appeal against the divine edict. This will swiftly accelerate to an even more failed state and then a rogue one because its limitless paranoia and self-pity must be projected outward.

The tendency to blame external elements for all problems can only be countered by efforts at transparency and seriousness about conflicts. I would like to end this by dedicating the following quote as David Aaronovitch explains in his excellent guidebook Voodoo Histories: "If it can be proved that there has been a conspiracy which has transformed politics and society, then their defeat is not the product of their own inherent weakness or popularity, let alone their mistakes; it is due to the almost demonic ruthlessness of their enemy."