Principles. Practicality. Pride

I am, um, committing the crime of generalizing things and bucketing them. Wait! You can't warn me because I've warned myself.  But the fact is that I normally think about such things, write down whatever occurs to me and then leave it to my subconscious mind (which is apparently more in tune with the Universe) to apply it only in situations wherein it ought to be . And, note that I don't hang them - my generalizations, I mean - around my neck and make it my primary instrument of perception and interpretation. You'd better believe me ;-)

Righto! All the nonsensical prelude aside, here is what I cooked up as I inhaled what must have been carbon monoxide and watched riders/drivers break rules and jeopardize the lives of many innocent people on the roads at ~8.32 am. There are broadly three kinds of thinking that people engage in while going about their daily decisions. Thoughts that are driven by Principles, Practicality or Pride. (My mind keeps discovering words that alliterate or rhyme when I set out to explain - unnecessarily, of course - various phenomena in the world and I pretend to play along by expanding them into lengthy and meandering paragraphs.)

Coming back to our - ok, my - three categories of thoughts that in turn dictate to decision making, a lot depends on both, people's inherent nature and how they've been nurtured. Parenting (apart from one's individuality), methinks, has a Major (M in caps) impact on whether we are driven predominantly by principles, practicality or pride.

If your Parents thought they were at the far right of the chart of human evolution, gave you less or no room for making mistakes, sermonized at the drop of a hat, did not allow you to break any of the so-called rules, were rarely lenient, were attached to their value-system, culturally sensitive and so on, *and* you lent yourself to all of this or succumbed to it (depending on the way you see it ;-)), you are likely to now be an adult largely driven by principles; mostly those that were conditioned into you by your parents. In certain cases, you may have, of course, added a few self-discovered principles to the list that was thrust down your throat.

The point to note, however, is that if you were a rebel despite your Parents being obsessed with idealistic and rigid rules and approaches, then you may now be an adult driven by pride.

If you were subjected to so-called "smart" and in-touch-with-reality parenting, you are probably an adult driven by practicality. If your Parents' focus was almost always on survival, people-handling tactics and techniques, financial security, materialistic prosperity and the like, you surely grew up seeing yourself as a self-serving cog in the world's chaotic wheel. If you watched your parents sacrifice a few or several ideals and principles in order to obtain results and get to the finishing point in the various races run by society, you are likely to be a person who values practical thinking. You may very well be one of those street-smart adults who rarely gets bogged down by the world's evil ways and, in fact, knows how to get what he wants without creating much of a flutter. You undoubtedly have earned a lot of naive and clueless people's admiration. Sweet-talking, subtle wins in psychological or emotional battles and a certain type of ruthlessness are perhaps your forte.

Brings me to, unarguably, the most meaningless kind of parenting. That which results in children who grow up to pat and pamper their pride every day of their miserable lives. They lose track of logic and have no idea what values are all about. The most important thing happens to be empty egoism and vanity. They are so focused on fulfilling their ego's needs that they neither let the people with principles propose the vision nor let the ones who are practical get things moving or done. Come to think of it, they may not even know why they are doing what they are doing and are so narcissistic that they believe the world exists to serve them. Good luck to them because they must be careful not to kill people on their way to nowhere. O_o

Principle-based thinking more often than not results in condescending curmudgeons. Practical thinking results in ruthless rascals. Pride, ewww, delivers repulsive reptiles. That, my dear friends, is what we, the human race, are all about. Tada. Om Shanti.

Social Media

Disclaimer: Please ask your mobile service provider to activate your sense of humor before reading further.

Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, including you, except Yours Truly is merely and purely coincidental.

Selfies, sunsets, babies and cats

Some bouquets and a few brickbats

Like, comment or lazily lurk

Fool around, think a bit or just burp

Boast a bit or somewhat less or a lot

Declare whether life is cool or hot 

Birthdays, weddings, parties and all

Trips to everywhere, now on the wall

What was for lunch and what for dinner

Who is the saint and who the sinner

Sports, movies, politics and religion

What to embrace and what to shun

Obsess about an idea or a cause   

And garner some passing applause

Share nonsensical poetry 

Indulge in honest or random flattery 

Talk about this; talk about that

Go around in circles; say Howzzat 

Wonder what the heck is happening

And quit the whole damn thing 

Is your sense of humor intact? *Peace*

Please continue what you were doing.

Labels

Labels. We can't think without using them, can we? They turn into disastrous and murderous weapons when we employ them to judge people, events and ideas. How many times do we pause before sticking an imaginary label on someone or something? How many times are we willing to pull off that label despite realizing that perception is different from reality. How many times are we incorrigibly convinced that our labels are right forever? 

Is it possible to stop our conditioning, experiences and intellectual limitations from dictating to our labels? Can we settle for labels that are empty until we are sufficiently engaged with the person, event or idea to know that the labels must perhaps remain empty forever? I don't know (to quote my niece on most matters). 

The right place for labels is in the mind's lab where we secretly examine the label from multiple angles and don't let any of our prejudices and past experiences influence us while at it and......finally, shred them to pieces rather than let them splatter black on things yet to come. 

Chimp Behavior

Don't ever judge a Chimpanzee by the way it behaves while stuck in a cage, especially if it has never been locked up in a cage, in the past. (You may, however, arrive at a few thoughtful conclusions about its nature when you study it in its natural habitat). 

The poor creature will need to be locked up in a cage regularly and frequently enough for there to be a reliable pattern in its behavior. If it is true that apes learn from mistakes, then there could be an improvement over a period of time. Only if the Chimp is conscious of its behavior and desires to change it. What this implies is that you may end up changing its natural behavior when you subject it continuously to an alien environment. 

Perception

When you remind yourself every day that others may never ever see things from your perspective, you grow more tolerant and self-reliant. 

When you remind yourself every day that you may never ever see things from others' perspective, you grow more compassionate and learn to leave them alone.

Thoughts...

Recent ideas and thoughts that I'd like to gather on this blog. 

Life, Psychology

When you compare, you lose your CORE. What you are left with is only mpa - madness, (self)pity or arrogance. Hint: CO-mpa-RE.

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Success 

The only situation in which you can blame yourself wholeheartedly for inappropriate results is when you hold the reigns. It's no use saying that the reigns are not in your hands. Sometimes, you need to realize the need to grab it and then grab it somehow (sigh...but how?) or shut up, dance to others' tunes and, ultimately, waste your time, effort and energy. 

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Life

Situations wherein one connects with nature, (or good human interpretations of nature like music, stories or art), a human being or a paradox are perhaps the only times in which one feels truly alive and aware. Not when one accomplishes something for that ceases to matter after a while, not when one gets an idea for that may become obsolete or change and evolve, not even when one learns something for one may have to unlearn that under different circumstances.

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Social, Relationships, Mentoring

Advice is plain ice. Insight is choco-nut delight or fruit-n-nut delight (as you like it).
Plain ice is free and can be dunked into anything and everything. Water, juice, coffee, tea etc. It treats everything as equal. A customized ice cream on the other hand needs effort, knowledge and patience and is consumed with relish. It is lovingly garnished with nuts and delivered one spoon at a time. 

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Psychology, Human Behavior, Conditioning 

To have an open mind is akin to standing in front of fast approaching waves on the sea shore. You must be prepared to withstand the worst onslaught. It may touch your feet gently and go away. It may wet you just a little or a lot. It may overwhelm you, knock you down and fill your mouth with water that you are likely to spit out in an instant. The thing to note, however, is that the grains of sand that stick to you drop off as you walk back home.    

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Sharing

When you genuinely share what you know - not because you want to teach others, not because you want to influence or manipulate others, not because you want to be acknowledged or praised, and not because you want to receive something in return but because you simply want to express yourself and connect with another mind - you can't really fathom the impact it has on others and what you yourself end up learning and earning from it.

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God, Life

One of the most common situations that people (rationalists) use to question whether God exists is to point their finger at seemingly nice people suffering or dying either too early or in an unfair manner. It can't possibly be that simple if there is no such thing as "the single truth". They might as well be questioning our knowledge of the intricacies of Karma, the existence of free will and its consequences and the complex interdependence of society.

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Leadership, Psychology, Human Behavior

Two familiar but always interesting things that caught my attention in a recent movie I watched.
a. Even the most challenging of tasks that the people concerned are skeptical of will begin to look appealing and worthwhile when a leader uses the right words - cleverly connected and genuine words - to inspire and encourage them. Underlying this simple truth is the more complex fact that the leader must have an uncanny knack of customizing the message in order for it to speak to a specific person in a specific context. The more reusable the message, as it flows down the hierarchy, the better! ;-) And, in the real world, there will, of course, be people whose minds need to be pried open.  b. The human ego can sometimes expand to a size that is bigger than the galaxy we live in and when it crosses a certain circumference area, it ceases to look awful and starts looking hilarious  

The Power of the Written Word

"Each of us has a deep-seated need to reciprocate favors, regardless of whether the quid pro quo is on par with one another. Each of us has a deep-seated need to maintain an internally consistent view of who we are as individuals."

"Apparently, the simple act of writing something down, no matter how innocuous, becomes our perspective. We behave—and change our beliefs, accordingly—to satisfy a need to remain consistent with what we write" 

Source: http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2013/02/05/the-persuasive-innovator-influencing-people-to-collaborate/

Voices

It's always a cacophony of voices
The voice looking for someone to blame
The voice lurking around for fame

The voice that loses the heart of the problem
The voice that focuses only on 'they' and 'them'
The voice that is obsessed with the cause
The voice that screams without a pause

The voice that brims with sympathy and sorrow 
The voice that is not itself but borrowed
The voice that calls for instant action
The voice that craves for a permanent solution

The voice that forgets the flaws of the soul within
The voice that just wants revenge for sin
The voice that is suppressed and silent
The voice that reacts to the herd and is compelled to vent

The voice that, despite the despair, wants to dominate
The voice that, meanwhile, meekly subscribes to fate
The voice that knows no reality
The voice that is recorded for posterity 

It's always a cacophony of voices
(Why not?) After all, it's a world full of choices

Tidbits

There is surely a STRONG link between childhood memories & happiness as an adult. Re-experiencing things that once gave you comfort perhaps reconnects the nodes in your brain to bring you deja vu Happiness.

(Think of that nice song you heard plenty of times as a kid. The walk you had with Grandma in your village. The movie you watched with cousins and laughed your head off. I am sure this is the case even with the not-so-nice memories. Childhood experiences are so so critical.)

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We must invent a body sensor+audio device that'll boom out a context-sensitive quote or two when one begins to get angry. :-)

Imagine: You are about to scream at someone because they are slow on the uptake and this device immediately says in a deep and strong voice "Be kind to everyone - Dalai Lama" or something to that effect.

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What fills the huge gap between education and attitude or behavior? The gap that we rarely fill......! Inspiration, introspection, insight AND extreme effort! Sigh. E.x.t.r.e.m.e E.f.f.o.r.t indeed.

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Life sometimes delivers gifts that seem wonderful until you spot the hidden price tag that it has forgotten to remove......and your attention shifts elsewhere. ;-) 

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Simplicity is not how easy it is for the TECHIES to IMPLEMENT the solution! It is how easy it is for the USER to understand and USE the solution! A TV may have a million circuits embedded inside it, but at the end of the day, the knobs outside must be just enough and easy to operate. 

Solitude and Truth

Solitude and truth are lead characters in the same story. Solitude is equipped with a strong sieve that does not let a single grain of truth escape unfiltered. Somewhat like being able to hear even a pin drop amidst silence.

Hero Worship

Reading about Lance Armstrong reminds me of something that occurred to me in June....earlier this year (but I don't recall the context).

"When companies or people are almost worshiped, they either die trying to justify the reputation or resort to unbelievable tactics"

Merlin-Sid-Buck-Dory

This is the utterly butterly Friday of the Nonsense. Warning: If you don't watch animation movies or watch them but cannot relate to any of the characters therein, you may not understand a single word of this post and may also, as a bonus, face the risk of experiencing permanently temporary (or temporarily permanent in certain cases) insanity.

Imagine a character like Merlin the Magician (Shrek) who was fired from his school, who fumbles and blunders but says all sorts of profound things related to soul-searching, truth and introspection.

Now imagine how it would be for him to go on a vacation with the following characters.

The extremely lazy, ignorant but kind and lovable Sloth, Sid (Ice Age)

The flamboyant, brave, clever and crazy Weasel, Buckminister (Madagascar - Ice Age!)

The entertaining, forgetful, helpful and funny Fish, Dory (Finding Nemo)

Any idea how awesome that would be? Rocks you to the soles, uh? Why....even I would love to go on a vacation with these quirky and unique characters. Actually, I have a brilliant idea. An idea that normally strikes you only once in a life time. How would it be to make a movie with all these characters together....on a vacation? If you decide to make it, make sure you mention your source of inspiration. That's all. 

PS: I thought of Bugs Bunny as well, but, hey, he would steal the entire show and people would find it difficult to shift their attention to any of the other characters except perhaps Buck. 

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PS2: I made an unforgivable omission. I forgot to add King Julien to this list.

Lunatic, narcissistic, talkative and talented Lemur (Madagascar)

Perspective, Perception, Reality

http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_perspective_is_everything.html



Must-watch video. Good businesses and ideas find the sweet spot between technology, economics and psychology. 


Extract: I think it's because there's an imbalance, an asymmetry, in the way we treat creative, emotionally-driven psychological ideas versus the way we treat rational, numerical, spreadsheet-driven ideas. If you're a creative person, I think quite rightly, you have to share all your ideas for approval with people much more rational than you. You have to go in and you have to have a cost-benefit analysis, a feasibility study, an ROI study and so forth. And I think that's probably right. But this does not apply the other way around. People who have an existing framework, an economic framework, an engineering framework, feel that actually logic is its own answer. What they don't say is, "Well the numbers all seem to add up, but before I present this idea, I'll go and show it to some really crazy people to see if they can come up with something better." And so we, artificially I think, prioritize what I'd call mechanistic ideas over psychological ideas.




Extract: One of the great mistakes, I think, of economics is it fails to understand that what something is, whether it's retirement, unemployment, cost, is a function, not only of its amount, but also its meaning.


Extract: Now von Mises said that modern economists make exactly the same mistake with regard to advertising and marketing. He says, if you run a restaurant, there is no healthy distinction to be made between the value you create by cooking the food and the value you create by sweeping the floor. One of them creates, perhaps, the primary product -- the thing we think we're paying for -- the other one creates a context within which we can enjoy and appreciate that product. And the idea that one of them should actually have priority over the other is fundamentally wrong.

One Truth

I'd never disagree with this, even if my life depended on it. :-) (And, if the person being subjected to such a phenomena also has a categorical view on what is right/wrong, nothing on Earth can possibly save the people associated with him/her!). 


When I looked up Born on Wikipedia, I found something amusing and interesting. He is supposed to have contributed significantly to the field of quantum mechanics. Now, whether he was able to discover the secrets of quantum mechanics because he did not believe in one single truth or vice versa is something we may never find out. ;-)


A supplementary caveat to this quote may, arguably, be that it should not matter as long as people keep their beliefs to themselves and do not try to manipulate others (directly or indirectly) to tow their line. So, if, for example, I believed that there is no God but made no attempts to brainwash or ridicule others (who believed that there is a God), I should not be considered an evil entity in society. But does my belief remain within me, in reality?


Not necessarily. Even if I made no conscious effort to change the mental make-up of others, if my belief is strong enough, it is likely to be reflected in my actions (if not via words of advice) and that may in turn influence someone to suddenly become a skeptic (sticking to the example above). Am I an evil entity in such a situation? 


I think not. After all, my genuine and embedded thoughts will naturally emerge via my actions, choices, behavior etc. What others are influenced by because of their self-motivated observations and introspective conclusions cannot be attributed to me. (A charismatic and inward looking leader or author may easily influence hundreds of people without even intending to)


What is, however, a deciding factor in concluding whether I am potentially an evil entity or not is whether, in spite of my strong convictions, I have the attitude and the ability to be open to listening to people who have opposite views and consider their views sincerely. The key point here is to not be casually dismissive of opinions different from one's own. The need is to be mature enough to understand that a different view is a result of different and deeply embedded experiences, contexts, mental abilities and so forth. I may not be convinced by an opposite view, ultimately, because of being married to my own thoughts or because of being unable to relate to foreign examples or values of the other party. But that is fine as long as I continue to be ready to listen to the same or a variation of the view in future and untiringly reconsider my views, inspect it from unexplored angles and see it from various distances. (Unfortunately, it is also, apparently, important to retain one's sanity during such situations ;-). While the nicer lot have to focus on not losing their own sanity, the, er, rowdy lot will have to focus on not driving the other person up the wall). 

In certain cases, it may be slightly simpler and involve letting go of a situation (by avoiding the exploration of alternative views till a more conducive situation comes up in the future) because you clearly see that the other person may never understand your point of view and accept the simultaneous existence of two views because of not having gone through an essential experience (that you, however, went through). 

More food for thought: 

RT @freedomsway: "Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

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No idea where I went with this post. :-) Whew. Let me know if I drove you up the wall, but for reasons different from those mentioned above. ;-)

Observers Anonymous

People who tend to observe a lot, arguably, can't seem to help analyzing (sources being mostly limited to what they notice and what they immediately connect it with) and thereafter judging people and situations. Mostly a sad thing, methinks. Especially if they commit things to their long-term memory and never question their conclusions again. Scientific thinkers, in particular, may find it difficult to avoid applying this to the situations they are in. 

Life, Beauty, Soul, Context

Thought-provoking experiment and some profound observations by Washington Post.


Wonder why it reminds me of KM programs in organizations ;-) Do we always work out of context? How does one play music in such a way that passers-by change their priorities and stop and listen? Ha ha ha!

Quotes:

Pearls Before Breakfast - washingtonpost.com

• In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?
• The event had been described to him as a test of whether, in an incongruous context, ordinary people would recognize genius.
• IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?
• What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?
• At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change." This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.
• Context matters

• The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.
• Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.
• What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. -- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies
• This is about having the wrong priorities," Lane said.
• "Yeah, other people just were not getting it. It just wasn't registering. That was baffling to me."

A Single Story?

If there's only one thing you plan to do this entire week, then please watch this video. :-)


http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Context Rules

When one doesn't take the complete context into consideration, nothing may make sense. Things may seem contradictory and illogical. Decisions and conclusions under such circumstances can and, most probably, will go wrong. I may enjoy watching a speeding car in a Formula 1 race, but not on a busy road. Logic is a function of the context (if there is such a thing as universal logic). Detectives probably crack the case more because of the clues that the context provides than because of those provided by the content. Right? Wrong?

Warning: A Wandering Mind

How does one deal with the paradox of “be yourself” and “adjust” (the famous term that used to be associated with Bangalore and its people before the former became a cosmopolitan city) at the same time? In the long run, is happiness a consequence of listening to your heart and doing things your way or “adjusting” with what is? What if the situation you are in involves entities outside of your well thought-out and deeply absorbed (or prejudiced) value-system or communication model or something else equally important? Is it okay to kill a little part of you – in a virtual sense - and adapt yourself to the situation while pretending to align with it even if you are not perhaps really doing so? Is it okay to live with the attitude that you may, after-all, change or things will change or, well, you can change things somewhere down the path? Does it make more sense to be practical and result-oriented rather than attach yourself to a subconsciously acquired (some of it may be natural, if genetic causes can be labeled as natural) value-system (or communication model or…..)? Or, more alarmingly, how do you know it is not your ego that wears a clever disguise and convinces you to be the way you are?

An episode involving the ethics of a social worker triggered me off to muse about the identity of the so-called “truth” and the validity of a black and white world as opposed to a grayish world. I then attempted to see it from the perspective of the Mahabharatha, when a brave woman I know responded and declared that Sri Krishna may have won the war for the Pandavas by deceit but he achieved his goal (justifiable to some and not so justifiable to others) he set out to achieve and that is all, perhaps, that mattered. Outsiders, she said, only watch and debate his methods. How do you blend your thinking and action? If Sri Krishna is the answer to today’s ruthless, ambiguous and vague world, then what is the importance of the unquestioned obedience and love that Lord Rama is identified with? Go ahead. Share your wisdom. Some of you are capable of running a correspondence course on the human psychology in the context of relationships/communities, like the Master might say! ;-)  

Success or Joy

A young and budding singer gets contradictory advice from established singers in the same forum. While one e.s stresses that he must not focus on showing (or tapping into) his talent but understand what constitutes winning (=mass acceptance), another e.s says the mark of a 'true musician' is to sing for 'himself' (my interpretation: do what is 'right' and do something simply for its challenging experience). This is likely to be a never-ending dilemma for some of us, irrespective of our professions.