Books

This essay is a part of my research on Impact of civilization over individual human life and is not a direct response to the any other post under this subject.

There has been some inquisitiveness in me regarding the self-help books that have been marketed as "life-Changing", more by the publishers than Authors themselves, A great example of such a book which has been also a great best-seller is "7 habits of highly effective people" by Stephen R. Covey, the book comes across as a solution to all our major pains and sufferings in life, infact one of my high-school teacher took keen interest in making me go through the experience when she saw in me bouts of depression as I came to know that we human beings are just one billionth part of the universe in terms of both space and time. 

She told me, that the book would anyway help, perhaps not realizing that Bhagwat Gita would have been a better self help book in the conditions that I was in. 

But then in the years that passed by, i realized books don't generally help, they could change a habit or two in you, or attitudes that bring you down, but never your experience of life, most of the books simply target your brain, arousing in it the ability to question the existing norms, bring you on a brink of your own personal renaissance and then let you go, leave you, allowing you to form your own experiences. 

But no-one can be truly driven by brain, thinking brain can drive your plans when you tend to keep your emotions at bay, but never your reactions to spontaneous situations, they are specifically governed by sub-conscious which not many books tend to as much as touch. 

Of the more famous books I can recall Ayn Rand's fountainhead which had the ability to drive sub-conscious of some people, it strikes deeper, but then not always for good, because Ayan Rand was driven by her hate for Soviet Era governance and loathed almost everything that Communists stood for. 

On the other hand we have a certain commentaries by OSHO, whose talks are also meant to strike deeper but give a very hateful preview of the world, I remember not coming out of my room for two days after reading his commentary "Einstein the Buddha", and even after those depressing days I did not really like the world for an year or so.

Besides everyone knows from the childhood that one has to be "good" to other people, one has to be "compassionate", "incorruptible", "human", but its not just the illiterate pirates of Somalia who do wrong stuff, but people like us who commit heinous anti-civilization crimes every day, and wonder at our own ability to grasp religions and moral science, which has been taught to us from the start of our life.  

To be good, one needs a guru, to come out of pain and suffering one needs an environment which strikes deeper than the superficial thought but in its intrinsic nature drives us towards love, if such an environment does not exist around one, one has no option but to pray and build it, with-in and with-out, books shall help, improve your vocabulary and understanding of the language, they'd help you to communicate and debate, argue and prosper, books can help you become a hero, a scholar, but books alone can never get you out of pain and suffering.

On Religion

This is an essay associated with my ongoing research on Impact of a civilization over an individual human life

When the whole of Pakistan is mulling over the 'blasphemy' law, indicating that disrespect of religion, which 'does not even exist' is a higher crime than taking away the life of a human being in a semi barbaric way. India is planning to come out with its own version of a law against blasphemy, and it is the 'ruling' congress party which is trying to create a religion of its own, with the prophet as 'Gandhi'. 

Of all the laws that exist in India today, not many have seen the daylight of expert implementation, so much so, that from morning till evening I break a thousand small laws, like going on the bike without a helmet, breaking signals when I see no policeman around, overtaking from the left, parking the bike on the road, using pirated softwares, opening websites that are not suitable etc.;  but am rarely fined(with money?) or sent to jail. But because of these crimes, all I have inside me is that vague sense of fear that something might just be tracking me down and would punish me once it sees me doing more than I am supposed to. The guilt is foremost, and the most obvious implication.

Every time our well meaning parliament with 'Iqbal' quoting leader comes out with a law, this fear in me increases, and this time it has increased manifolds, because teenager jokes range from Krishna to Gandhi and may not always be decent or sane. So indeed a teenager who forwards a message to a friend, which has any indication of the presence of the ‘Gandhi’ term may be sent across to a jail, or can be fined, though he may not be aware of a glimpse of this notorious law that might just be tool to avenge personal issues.

There could be comments over what is the likehood of a such a situation? Who sends a teenager to Jail? Have you been sent to Jail? Well, then what is the use of such draconian inanity from the highest governing authority in India? Does it only target books and curtail freedom of speech? Does it only curtail the political opponents of the Great Indian National Congress? Does it define a measure in which the whole of Pakistan would one day be in Indian Jails? Is hating Gandhi wrong? Is it a national duty to just love Gandhi and love him for whatever he stood by? Do I not love my country if I do not like what Gandhi preached and did? If these questions could be answered, there is a strong chance that people like me could be satiated, but then "On Religion", I keep on wondering if this is another religion with a set of rituals in the making?

A religion, which centuries on would be as impervious as the religions of today, and what would make them dangerous are the cults and legends associated, perhaps 'Fasting' would a law in India sometimes in the late 24^th century. People who do not fast, might be in Jail the very next day, or if you eat something on the day of fast because you are unable to resist the natural instinct of hunger and someone sees you, he might avenge your misdeed by taking your photograph with his digital mobile camera and get you convicted with the help of the state. A situation that we all, in our highest consciousness oppose in the state of Pakistan.

It would be better if the parliament takes a break for some days, ask its execution mechanism what is the state and feedback of the laws that it has been churning out for decades, have they been misused in the meantime? Have they at first place been even implemented, it would help us take a step forward, and to an extent avoid misplacing and disrespecting Gandhi in the Indian context, or in the world preview.

http://www.indianexpress.com/ news/govt-to-make-insulting- gandhi-a-crime/769604/

Corporate world order

People have appalauded the way the corporates have shaped up in the last half century,
while wars of great magnitudes have not really happened, and we live in the times of relative peace(now I who was born in 1986 have really not seen the former times, the only major violent movements that I have really encountered are the riots after Ayodhya, bombings by terrorists at places in the country, and lastly some uprisings here and there in the world, but have not really lived a fearful existence),slave oriented businesses have given way to much human oriented  approach, where emloyees have a say in the governance and people as such have the power to decide their own fate. We have offices with the state of art furnitures, and policies which defy the security concerns of the employees. There is a need to appalaud the governments too, they have shown a proactive approach in tackling these money giants after centuries of imperial enslavement all over the world.

But I wonder where all this has really taken us, being an employee of a MNC myself. What i see around is that the appalause is for the photographs of people which symbolize a concern which really is not there, it symbolizes a modernity which still is but the surface of the feudal mindset, it symbolizes a tradition which leads the whole civilization to globalization, but deep within the inherent differences are the same, the whole situation, never really changed, all that ever changed were the masks that people wear.

In India(I am not much aware of the situation in the rest of the world) a college passout who is being picked up by the corporates for "campus" selection has to sign a bond with the organization, stating that he would pay such and such a sum if he leaves before "the stipulated time period", the compensation is mentioned but never the growth rate in the same, working conditions, or the work that a person would have to do. A year hence a person is in a position where he might not really get the adequate increment, as he deems justifyable for his efforts, nor would be satiated with the kind of work he is doing, but he cannot leave the organization because a bond is in place and he obviously is no position to pay the bond amount which ranges from 50,000 rs to 400000 rs. And there is no legal escape either because practically fighting a case against corporate giants would always let you in trouble, there is nothing that you can do about the state of Police and courts in this country.

A slavery of this kind has surely become a practice in the lucrative corporate sector(a bond in lieu of every training is the new theme) and the practices which range from employee satisfaction survey to best employer awards are nothing but a hoax call to cheat public as a whole and to bring in "talents" which are allowed to be easily wasted by creating situations in which the talents not only survive with great effort but sail through to become one of those devout corporates with arrogance of a local landlord.

A better economic order certainly demands minimum wastage or optimum ulitization of resources thereof. There is surely nothing more than the Human resource that any company has taking into consideration the dynamic nature of the resource and also application of true intelligence (our world is far away from its own imagination of building machines which can overtake humans in terms of common sense), and to be wasting it for simple computations and repetetive practices because a 'software' costs more is surely no way to build on a less wasteful enterprize. It might give way to a disinterested, much shattered, dissatisfied and wasteful, human being with a much more destructive mindset than necessary at any given time for a civilization.

Human life against economic growth

There is a long distance that we as humans have to travel to form a complex and exhaustive solution to the problems that have risen because they are reactions to complicated situations.

There are many who believe that world as such is a simple place, ideal solutions are simpler, for example a simple pulley and a process as simple as conversion of electricity to mechanical work is driving big forces such as trains which inarguably are the carriers of development of any human society.

It is important to also understand that the human motive to its core, is always value based. 
It always arises of a need, and never greed. But then implementing systems that are made of need gives rise to situations that allow that system to bypass its actual objective and become an element of greed. In this I could presume that the forces behind this greed are never the forces that theorised the system.

Soviet Union when conceptualized by the bolsheviks had an element of humanity in it which capitalism lacked. It was truly the need of the hour, but then Stalin and the rest of the Kremlin to follow allowed that system to plunder the very basis of itself, at large suffocating humans by killing their basic right to Independence.

What I want to converge to by relating this is that simple solutions and complex situations in the society do not always go hand in hand, but we assume things, make them simple, allow some elements to go out of our hand, which may be a wastage of certian money, in industries, or the wastage of a few people in civilizations as a whole.

Mathematics is a language of assumption, we classify things from the beginning of our lives, and start assuming that one apple is identical to another apple irrespective of the fact that two apples will never be the same in their size, or taste or color. It is good to classifly but wrong to make a religion out of this classification and keep on assuming that one apple is always identical to another apple, make it an axiom and extrapolate. Because those small differences which did not "matter" intially would start mattering when the quantities increase. Integration, which is now an inseperable part of maths was added to it somewhere in the 18th century of some complex problems that Newton faced. He built a law and today one who does not know Integration or the law of Newton fails in science. 

The problem is not that humans can't see all this, they very well can, but then this classification and integration have so well absorbed in society that an independent human analysis and comprehension does not take shape. Therefore a man, who does not have the field experience can sit on the top, make a simple policy for any complex situation by using numerous tools that mathematics has to offer, and implement it down to the very bottom, where people who are the least immune suffer the outcomes. If on an average a human being is happy, it is denoted as success, if on an average a human being is sad, its a failure and the tool of calculation is remade, reshaped and allowed to re-experiment with human lives. 

You call it capitalism or socialism or facism or any other form of institution that has affected human conscience in the recent history of the world, it has been a mathematical tool, using extrapolation which has been a result of classification and has affected the world adversly, even though its primary motive has been simple, secure and value based.

There is obviously a need to classify, but then like boundaries of any tool,if human lives, their independence, and peace are kept as constants, as things which should not be altered or touched in any possible way, then perhaps we would step onto the next bigger system that the world is about to see.