Monday, August 15, 2011

To understand is to transform what is.



Individualism as is being understood presently seems to be a misplaced concept. When man can’t survive in complete isolation and is dependent upon multitude of things- air, water, sunlight, food and most importantly is ‘social animal’- then how can anything be even thought in terms of an individual? An individual can’t exist! It is a symbiotic existence only! The world exists because it has ‘others’ in it.

Some excerpts from the documentary Zeitgeist:

World peace will be a reality only when we believe: My country is the world and my religion is to do good. There would be no reason for peace to be found or attained!

Challenging one’s systems usually results in insult as apprehensions for being wrong is erroneously associated with failure. When in fact, to be proven wrong should be celebrated for it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding, furthering awareness. There is no such thing as smart human being, for it is merely a matter of time that their ideas are updated.

Earlier, people didn’t know about how nature works, so they invented God in his own image! A guy who gets angry when things are not done right… who brings floods… destruction. All religions have common threat. Religious beliefs have caused more fragmentation than any other ideology! Even every religion has thousands of divisions!

Moreover it is the propagation of false assumption of separation through rejection out of symbiotic relationship of life.  There is no such thing as independence for the whole universe is a unified system of interdependent variables. Each cause with a reaction! It all depends on how well we connect with the world around us.

My future generation can’t hope to inherit a sustainable, peaceful and socially just world unless every child growing in all the underdeveloped countries can also hold same expectation. We have to see that whole world is our community and not just of humans but a community of plants, animals and human… we need to take care of the whole community!

To be environmentally as well as socially aware and sensitive! That’s what will bring joy and pleasure… sustainable! We can call it spirituality… but the fact is joy comes from bliss of connectedness!

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final world in reality - Martin Luther King Jr.

When we understand that the integrity of our personal existences are completely dependent on the integrity of everything else in our world… we have truly understood the meaning of unconditional love. 
For love is existentiality… seeing everything in you and everything as you! For you are all everything as one.

The real resolution is the resolution of consciousness.  

Each one of us first need to eliminate the divisionary materialistic noise we have been conditioned to believe is true. To understand is to transform what is.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

As the contagion spreads...

As the toppling of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt spreads the contagion of democracy to the hitherto untouched ones of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, a new file of facts is taking shape revealing the disheartening state of human rights in the region and the commendable manner in which normalcy was maintained by the ruling regimes (till date) with the allowance of world’s most ‘proclaiming’ democracy – the United States of America.

Violent suppression of protesters follows the anti-government protests demanding the ousting of the respective dictators in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and most recently Morocco as well. These nations have seen the same rulers for more than three decades with state emergency in place in some. These being developing countries, huge inequalities persist in here with degrading labor rights and inhuman working conditions. And now when popular protests are demanding the change in governance they are being met with arms and army. The fact that every one of these dictator happens to be a US ally, though for easily imaginable reasons, makes the mockery of the ideology of democracy.

It has become imperative for the world today to relearn the ideals of democracy and to have the same definition in all ‘democracies’, for modifications destroy the spirit of an ideology altogether. Literally democracy is defined as ‘the government of the people, by the people and for the people.’ And ‘people’ is an inclusive term unaffected by the social, cultural, political and economic status of the people. Yet this doesn’t seem to be the case given the impact these very attributes of political parties and their associates have on almost every elections round the world. Concept of lobbying mars the concept of fair elections; still, a debate is on in India whether to legalize lobbying in the wake of Nira Radia case.

Democracy ensures its citizen a right to express discontent with the working of the government and the ‘development’ course it takes for him. Yet this very right gets curtailed under the draconian rules of sedition. Democracy ensures egalitarian society in terms of equal opportunity but even this facet gets nullified when development is projected as growth in GDP rather than improvement in the critical indices such as IMR, MMR, HDI, unemployment rate, poverty index etc.

And shouldn’t standing to the ideals of democracy mean supporting the human rights in the countries one is associated with, at least the minimum as defined by the International Human Rights Commission. Yet as the world’s largest democracy, India remains silent on the violent suppression of the peaceful protesters against autocracy in their nations. No official statement condemning these atrocities being committed by state on its pupil has been issued. There can be many reasons to it. One- we don’t want to skew our relations with oil exporting majors in the event of the present regimes surviving the protests. Two- we don’t want to give the dissidents at home a reason to amplify their voices. And most importantly we don’t want to fret our ‘Big Brother’ by doing so, for he happens to an ally of almost all the dictators. India one of the founding members of an association as bold as NAM is fast becoming indifferent.

Diplomacy is certainly at the heart of business, international peace and cooperation, but for a country aiming for a permanent membership in UNSC (United Nations Security Council), it becomes essential to take an uninfluenced and individual stand on issues affecting the general well being of nations and their people. Until the world powers unite for the cause of human rights and see to their adherence, violations as those happening today will continue.