Ah. A Ted video after a long time. I will have to go back to
reading and listening a bit more. Some of that has taken a back seat for the moment.
The cliché goes that we are so busy doing what is urgent that we forget to do
what is important. Thats one has rung true for so long and for so many people
and almost everywhere I see, especially in corporate life. I am actually tired
of chasing these crazy things we do all the while, and hence I am trying little bit, bit by bit to reclaim my life. It’s
not going to be an easy thing to do. But I see an opportunity to do so for the next
few months if things play right. Focus on basics, improve your mind, expand it,
read, experiment and learn.
The reason I like this particular video is that the rock star
Hans Rosling and his son make some very interesting points. Yes there is tons
of ignorance in this world. People feed of it and spread the disease of
ignorance. The problem is not ignorance
itself but the ignorance of ignorance. One thing for sure I have learnt by
reading like crazy – is that we are all ignorant. Nobody knows anything really.
There are only angles and more angles. In our quest for science we have
expanded the frontiers of knowledge but they are only theories. I learnt that even
Newton’s laws which we hold so sacrosanct in school don’t really hold up and
hence required Einstein to help us around. I was telling a friend the other day
– in fact I tell almost any one who would care to listen; that after readings o
much, I have turned a cynic, an atheist or an agnostic who possibly questions
everything. Nothing is taken for granted, no knowledge is taken for sure,
everyone has motives and nothing is held to be pure. There is no pure emotion
and there is no pure instinct. Everything has layers and is influenced by
almost everything around it. I think the best way to describe life is using
Shrek – life is like an onion – it has many layers.
I try and remove biases from my life, thought and action all
the time but I still fail. I fail miserably but hell, I try. Knowing that I have
these biases makes me a cynic. A complete cynic cannot love, learn and live and
be happy, but I am a turncoat. I am a cynic but I shut it off to live happy. I love
being loved and I happily bask in it while I stop myself from seeing the
cynicism in it. It’s like a reality check that keeps it in line. Hans Rosling
the video says that biasis come thanks to three things – one – personal bias. Of
course this is something that we all have, it defines who we are and how we
interact with everyone. The challenge is to see everything through this lens –
the fact that we know what we know is immediately a bias. This is what we must
fight everyday. Just because we have had this experience then we shouldn’t be
sure of it. Like I say – your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. That
is the bias in our life.
Second outdated facts – that’s a simple one. we stopped
reading after school and hence – bad facts! Its worse than a personal bias. Here
we believe so much in the fact but forget one single fact – the time value of this
fact!
Third – news bias – this is especially dangerous as mass
hysteria is a result of this stupidity. As mark twain (or whoever) said – if you
don’t read the news you are uninformed but if you do, you are misinformed. News
today is even more dangerous as it takes the form of entertainment and those on
TV are seen as credible. And there starts all the crazy idea formation. If you
control propaganda you control people’s mind – it is not by accident that amongst
the most powerful people in the Nazi government was the minister of Propaganda
- Joseph Goebbels.
Listen to a few pearls of wisdom from his mouth -
“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient
repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a
square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until
they clothe ideas and disguise.”
“Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter
for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to
be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful,
aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a
political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak
differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth,
I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of
practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains,
but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be
popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to
discover intellectual truths.”
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the
government can play.”
--
Now the next time you watch news or entertainment or
anything else – close your ears and open your mind!
