Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Blog Post Number 500

The journey of four years of blogging has touch the milestone of 500th post today. What I learned in this journey has brought enormous changes inside me. Unlearning of false traditions has taken lot of time and efforts but it was a worth living experience. The idea of personal solidarity and the idea of societal cooperation are two conflicting concepts that has tormented me as a scholar. It is like dilemma of looking for the independence without becoming alien to one's surroundings.

Education is never over-rated. An institution is meant to broaden your horizon but self learning also makes you more open minded. We might go to an Ivy League/IIT/IIM and come out with nothing or might go to a decent school and come out with a lot. What has started as a hobby in the college has been taken by me as a serious learning portal and it has paid me much in the level of insights of human behavior.

These four years of writing creates the illusion of a linear narrative and gives events the semblance of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Real life is never like that; I had observed the past from a deterministic point of view, where causes lead to effects. While world is more probabilistic in nature here outcomes are driven by invisible or chance events.

To discredit uncertainty in a documenting rules of the process with the acquired knowledge is to deny the element of chaos and chance in planning for future. Predictions can be falsified and uncertainty has an empirical significance. Trial and error is only way to the growth in the world of experience and learning. That I learned on how to see the future.
We tend to fit our perceptions of the world into the model we have constructed in our minds about how the world works. It is easier to accept as valid evidence that fits our model than it is evidence that doesn’t. Some of this filtering is at an unconscious level – our minds are constantly trying to make valid perceptions out of the evidence of the senses.

I am still focused more on those matters in society which we can easily target, rather than those which needs to be self-corrected. The life has new goals as one of them is to empower individuals through education and to promote the kind of diversity which genuinely enriches a culture and democracy. I will present now a brilliant paragraph read today aptly suited on wisdom of life by Rational Fool :
Regimes come and go. So do gods, messiahs, and religions. What endure are ideas, ideas tested by reason and evidence. The ideas of liberty and equality - that all people are free and equal, and no individual or collective may be granted exclusive privileges and immunities in law - these are enduring ideals that have guided humanity along the path of civilization. The rest, however passionately embraced by the populace at a moment in history, are destined to perish in the Darwinian struggle for survival. I never tired of quoting Queen Sheelavati from the film, Anaahat, directed by Amol Palekhar: "Wisdom," she said to her troubled husband and the King of Shravasti, "is knowing the difference between the transient and the eternity".

Ten Issues - 12

1- Why We Have More Sympathy for Baby Jessica Than for Darfur by Dan Ariely. VIDEO
Focusing on the struggles of an individual appeals to our emotions and makes us care. As the numbers of people suffering get bigger, our cognition, calculation, and thoughtfulness are activated—and we care less ; A NGO on this concept is Rangde;

2- The danger of Being good : - The miracle of individual choice may be what is keeping us safe as a society. Some people just choose to be good, no matter what. This is the story of what happens to them

3- Freedom of speech and expression and the law of sedition in India: Text of keynote address delivered by Colin Gonsalves at the inauguration of Persistence Resistance 2011, New Delhi

4- Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks bluntly about politics and diplomacy, making the case that women's issues deserve a place at the center of foreign policy. Far from being a "soft" issue, she says, women's issues are often the very hardest ones, dealing directly with life and death. A frank and funny Q & A with Pat Mitchell from the Paley Center.

5- Jugalbandi: Hindustani music is our music By Namita Devidayal : Despite the modern claims to lineage, little is known of the Subcontinent’s classical music forms – beyond the centuries of cross-community collaboration that were required.

6-Jugalbandi: Divided scores By Yousuf Saeed : Though there was a general decline in classical music in Pakistan after Partition, there are many uplifting stories of how musical traditions have been kept alive and even enriched.

7- Poetry of Resistance, recited by Sudhanva Deshpande :



8- Indie and the Indian Middle Class by Arjun on PFC.

9- The Opening : If I was ever asked to host a Bollywood Awards night, here is how I would open it - BY Great Bong.
"Some people call this the “Oscar night for India”. I disagree. To quote a great man, we here dare to go beyond the Oscars. Tell me sir, would the Oscars have the Best Actress dancing an item number—-can you imagine Helen Mirren being made to dance if she wants an Oscar? Can you think of Robert De Niro fighting backstage and calling an angry press-conference because Al Pacino won an award? Can you imagine the award being taken away from Hillary Swank and given to Meryl Streep, just because maybe she is the brand ambassador of the event’s sponsors or because Hillary Swank came late to the show?Can you imagine Keanu Reeves winning The Best Actor Award every year? Can you imagine a movie like “Expendables” getting twelve nominations? No."
10- A Big Think Interview With the British author and activist Raj Patel.
Quote of the Day : Any concession to majoritarianism corrodes a democratic order. It creates two classes of citizens: those who belong to the definitive majority become ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ citizens, while those who fall outside this category have to be ‘naturalized’ through tolerance. Not only does constitutional majoritarianism create discontent and disaffection amongst minorities (reduced as they are to second-class citizenship), it allows religious extremists to set the political agenda because they can use the constitution as warrant for their never-ending quest to realize the perfect Buddhist or Islamic or Hindu state. --- Mukul Kesavan

Ten Issues - 11

1- State legitimacy and resistance : State derives its legitimacy from its institutions. Its these institutions that give State credibility and roots to live in the society of hostile crowds.

2-The ‘Viral’ Revolutions of Our Times – Post national Reflections by Aditya Nigam

3- Interview to Devinder Sharma :- On Food Crisis and Corruption. An Interview with One World South Asia: "Corruption has fuelled India's economic growth.

4- Growth and other concerns by Amartya Sen

5- Comments and Responses by the author : Socialism of 21st Century : Author Sunil

6-  An Interview with Guernica Magazine. In the wake of sedition charges by the Indian government, Arundhati Roy describes the stupidest question she gets asked, the cuss-word that made her respect the power of language, and the limits of preaching nonviolence.

7- The multi-individual society By Pratap Bhanu Mehta - An look on liberalism and multiculturalism.

8- Reluctant heroes: International recognition offers a degree of protection to investigative reporters. But, writes Lydia Cacho, being in the limelight presents a new set of dilemmas.

9- Information technology and economic change: The impact of the printing press BY Jeremiah Dittmar.

10- All Religions are not same, but Fundamentalists Are By M J Akbar : The four principles of a modern society, which is a necessary prerequisite of a modern state, are gender equality, political equality, religious equality and economic equity.

Quote of the Day: People do not like to be treated like fools, or backward infants, or extras in some parade. There is a natural and inborn resistance to such tutelage, for the simple-enough reasons that young people want to be regarded as adults, and parents can't bear to be humiliated in front of their children. One of Francis Fukuyama's better observations, drawing on his study of Hegel and Nietzsche, was that history shows people just as prepared to fight for honor and recognition as they are for less abstract concepts like food or territory. --- Christopher Hitchens