close your ears and open your mind

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.”

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Now the next time you watch news or entertainment or anything else – close your ears and open your mind!

shant gadhadhari bheem, shant

Everyone gets used to everything. Once I met a Chinese lady who was on a study trip here. We got talking at a mutual friends place and I asked her, “how is it possible for the Chinese to live without real freedom”. How can the government control everything and the Chinese become used to it without revolt?” She said “its just the way of life and you get used to it. Without meaning disrespect, but in India there is a tribe which pushes one of its own daughters into prostitution. It’s just it. Over a period of time you don’t know what else”. I guess it’s true to some extent. People are great at adapting to surroundings and get used to it. I always wonder. Like in some regimes like North Korea, how could a mad cap dictator survive with the kind of atrocities committed by him? Don’t the people revolt, know that it’s stupid and this cant work like this? I guess not.

Many years ago I had a long and memorable chat with my dad. It was when I was in school. I argued that non violence was the best means. We were so many of us. All we needed was one Indian to kill one British and we were done. We outnumbered them by a large margin. It doesn’t work that way. I think George Bernad Shaw said ‘Progress depends on the unreasonable man’. He is right as well. People prefer status quo but status quo must be challenged. I want change but I am also part of people. So what am I? an unreasonable man or a status quo man?

I think a lot depends on age. When I was much younger I was impatient. Time was running out. I would hop jobs and go for the best offer, the best job and flirt with many. As age progressed, I found myself ready to play the waiting game. Waiting waiting waiting.  So did cobwebs grow under my back side. Have I lost the fire I once had? Well yes and no.

Oh yes the bland rage that I had is gone. I am no longer the angry young man I once was. Ready to change the world and refusing to see logic and patience. But I guess you can’t ever continue with that rage. It burns you and those around you. You learn to shimmer and crouch and learn to direct it. Not hitting every ball and waiting for the right ball is also aggression. Dour defense is as aggressive as flashy stroke play. It’s how you define aggression.

I was and still will always be extremely aggressive. But the manifestation has changed. It comes out differently. I miss the idiot I once was but I am also thankful that I am no longer the idiot I once was. One realizes that the world can’t be changed in one day. It takes time and patience. Also one acknowledges that the world’s priorities are different from yours and it’s definitely not true that yours are the most important priorities alive. So this kind of patience is critical to the living and adapting to the environment around you. Especially, if you are the aggressive sorts. Aggression is a means to an end.

I have also learnt that naturally aggressive people and toppers and people in high places can’t just tone down that easily. If some has reached somewhere they have reached there by aiming and working towards it. And if you think they are not aggressive. I think you must think again. Its only that their priorities or world wisdom tells them something that you don’t know. When I was much younger I would be eager to criticize and complain. Now I hold my horses.  It’s important to understand the context and put yourself in their shoes. Now figure, are you really that sure of the situation. Are you jumping to conclusions without assigning probabilities? Like today at the gymkhana I overheard some conversation where the person said ‘that is the solution. That’s the only way to solve it.’ It struck me hard. I have learnt to say more often than not “that SEEMS to me as the solution to the problem”. Because you never know.

Recently Rahul Gandhi got screwed in the media for the interview he had on a news channel. He answered randomly to questions asked. No matter what he was asked, his answers were something else. Woah. Easily one of the worst possible interviews. He lost a lot of his urban English speaking fans. But hell, I am not ready to haul him over coals yet. He is definitely not stupid. I always like to look at the other side. Why did he say thus? What was on his mind? What would have been the strategic reasoning behind it? Was he that naïve? I don’t believe that the truth is that simple as it is made out to be. Yes it sounded bad, but was there another game that was being played?

Restraining aggression is easily one of the most difficult things to do. Rather let me reword that one  - Redirecting aggression is easily one of the most difficult things to do. Curbing your natural instinct while honing it so that you don’t lose your mojo is just a bloody difficult thing to do.

I am reminded of my boss who used to say “shant gadhadhari bheem, shant”. If you are born after 1980 you won’t really get the reference. This was from the epic serialised version of the Mahabharat, wherein the eldest of the Pandavs continuously held back the biggest of the Pandavs, namely Bheem. Shant – Peace. Peace.

And talking of being used to something. I love my desk in the mornings and I am so used to it. I will really miss this when I leave. As and when I leave.