Less Indian More Human.

This is in response to a message I received, pointing out a major problem with India: criminals in politics:

I have long since moved beyond the concepts of "nation state" and "country" in my heart, mind and spirit.  To me, we are a species on this planet, and that's it.  Every equation we have with every other member of this species in my view, therefore, should not be tainted by our perceptions of identity based on invisible or visible lines drawn to separate us into various collectives.  Even more fundamentally, I tend to question the need for a sense of ownership, entitlement, and belonging.  And when did any of us agree to belong to any of these collectives?

I do take note however, that some of these collectives have flourished while others have failed, and I recognize that this collective called "India" is an idea just like the others. Some of us may have an exaggerated sense of belonging with this idea, and some of us may not.  I, personally, look upon it as an accident that I am "Indian", and hence, for reasons I have no interest in fighting against, I accept that fact.  It should suffice that I am a human with a name to boot, and apparently fingerprints and DNA that can identify me incredibly well, but for some reason, I am loaded with all these other definitions.  Whatever.

We have been conditioned to imagine that it is somehow important that we care for this country, or any country.  I simply ask "why"?  I mean, what in the essence of a human being makes us care for one country more than say, another one?  Why this divide amongst us?  Why this unquestioning signing up to belong to just ONE country?  Why do we need borders and divisions that no other species seems to need, and then argue for "open" borders that augment more co-operation between countries?  That sounds crazy to me.

In fact, by agreeing mutely to this bizarre alienation, and the ensuing sense of competition, we have all but forgotten everything about confluence and coexistence, and now, we have a direct interest in other countries being less well off than ours!  How much in tune can this possibly be with the journey of the human soul and our most natural existence as humans within humanity?  We are out of tune, and the enemy is patriotism which really is another word for separatism.  To hell with all the other 194 countries, I will wave ONLY my flag!

The result is that on many occasions, we have under the influence of an imagined need to belong to some country, and even worse, under the heady umbrella of patriotism, sworn to be proud of even what should be questioned, condemned, punished and put to shame for millions of reasons.  The problem with these fractionalized collectives is that our standards of performance, excellence and indeed development are limited by the best that we can do "within" this collective.  However, our perceptions need not be.

I don't think it is natural for us to care about an artificial concept.  "Country" is most definitely an artificial concept, brought upon by fear, the need to control, and the need to intimidate and deceive.  The time for all this may soon pass.  There are things we care about instinctively as human beings, and we genuinely care about the welfare of our species, so that we may survive within it and help proliferate it.  We can be in love with anyone, and would rush to help another human in distress regardless of what nationality that person is.  That is the essential nature of being a human.  This essential nature deserves a canvas much much bigger in scope than what a nation possibly can provide.

So, what does this "nation" provide?  If something threatens our survival, we will naturally defend ourselves.  But for the nation, we have the armed forces.  But within this artificially imposed border called India, we have no natural, instinctive, honest response to the decay of this collective from any other perspective.  We do not have to feel ashamed of this.  In the true sense, we are all the more human for not caring up until the point where our survival may be threatened.

This is where I see the biggest dichotomy.  Some human beings, namely, our ancestors, "chose" to define what is now called "India".  But many of us that are Indians today did not choose to be Indians.  So, why would we automatically want to belong to this club and work for its well being?  From a culture that has been around for thousands of years, somewhere, perhaps in our infinite wisdom, we choose not to take this artificial collective so seriously!  We have God to protect us from all the ills of the "world", which in many cases are the ills of just this very country!  But why is it suddenly God's job, when we proudly proclaim on the Vidhana Soudha, that "Government Work is God's Work!"?  So, it must be God doing a really bad job!

Jokes apart, our crisis within this collective is right now, is not one of having too few people to do good - we have millions of them, but one of having next to nobody to question and strongly fight all that is wrong.  Because when it comes to fighting wrong, our survival might be in jeopardy.  Evil has a way of hitting back in unpleasant ways when threatened!  We believe nonsense like "Satyameva Jayate" even when truth doesn't win!  But believing in it completely absolves us of the responsibility of having to fight against evil.

We are bombarded with lies, day in and day out.  But we accept some of these lies, purely because it takes too much effort to yell back, "Hey, that's a bunch of sh**!".  Evolution is essentially a search for truth, and all the truth that I have so far found is that we, as Indians, are all running from it all the time, sometimes just to stay sane!  The greatness of any society as I see it, is the ability of its members to live closest to the truths that guide them.  To this end, I dare say, we in India collectively live the most unspiritual, cowardly, selfish lives, and we have every justification for doing so, no doubt.  How else could we ruin so much in a mere 63 years?

We have also been fed this nonsense that we are a great country, but if only we stopped to understand that a great country doesn't automatically translate to a great nation, we would not have all these murderers and rapists and crooks and other shenanigans in Parliament!  Above them all still stands a meticulously maintained engraving screaming "Satyameva Jayate" isn't there?  What could be a bigger insult to our collective?  And for those of us who care - what are we going to do about it?  Can we atleast now, in all honesty, agree to change that to "Jhootameva Jayate" or whatever stands for "Untruth alone triumphs"?

I don't fall for any of the jingoistic feel good nonsense that people spew out on a daily basis either.  Like - "We stand in solidarity with the victims of this terrorist attack!".  What exactly does that mean?  The next time, we will jump in the line of fire and take the bullets?  Why're we so afraid to really say what goes on in our minds, like "Thank God that wasn't me!"?  This "feel good" nonsense is actually up to "no good".  This is not grace under pressure, it is lying under pressure to say something good, even if it is not true.  Our patriotism and the need to belong to this imagined collective force us to ugly places like this.

By subscribing to this incomplete and flawed idea of Country, we may also have voluntarily surrendered to this escapist notion that we in India live in a "beautiful chaos" that miraculously survives as a country, ably aided by the power of God.  This is the romantic notion that is pushed upon us, and many of us, including the dubious "Bollywood" film industry help promote it.  We're actually proud of this.

And then, despite having a government working under the Indian flag, consisting mostly of crooks with nothing but looting and pillaging on their minds, look at the number of flag waving ads. shamelessly promoting something as stupid as motorcycle sales!  Dhak Dhak Go!  India Go!  Go where?  To #143 on the Human Development Index?  That's where we are, and there aren't 10,000 countries on that list either.

I do not have hope in this idea called India.  I have some optimism for some elements of what constitutes India, but that is miniscule.  The search for reasons, and the blame game only serves to exacerbate the pain of existing on this land mass defined by the boundaries we have in our mind for this "nation" and "notion" called India.

Each time we invest ourselves in this idea called India or just about any other "nation", we limit ourselves and we limit the power of our potential.

However, I think some of us can apply ourselves to the uplifting of humanity as a whole, and hopefully, no nation will be left out.

I personally simply don't have to be less human to be more Indian.

BSK

An ally called Objective Reality

There are four thousand young people who move into the city of Los Angeles on a daily basis, following their dream of becoming successful actors in the cinema industry. Many of them have intense belief - an emotional component that is equally noteworthy amongst youngsters moving to cities like Mumbai and Chennai, following the same dream.

A week away from being slapped in the face by the outcome of the US presidential election, John McCain believes he will win and go on to become the next president. There is a theoretical chance of course, but it is akin to needing 36 runs in the last over of a cricket match - possible, but highly improbable. That's why it has never been achieved. That is objective reality. All knowledge begs us to respect this objective reality, while this pesky thing called "belief" can often step in to reinforce the impossible chance!

Faith and belief are inherently risky things to give any sort of importance to, unless all objective reality and the acknowledgment of such has already been comprehensively thrown out! Belief is that elusive something you will hear from people who succeeded against impossible odds. The truth is, belief played no part, but statistics did. The odds were not beaten, merely reinforced. Those who succeed in these circumstances do so because there already exists a small window of opportunity and they are willing to hang in there hoping to be lucky. It has nothing to do with belief when the chance of being hit by lightning is actually bigger than the chance of winning the biggest lotteries.

The reality is, even the ones who didn't hang around long enough to tell us their stories, those who failed and had to give up, also had belief! Even if they had hung around longer, they would have failed, just because the statistics are stacked against them. Why then, do we promote this nonsense called belief, faith, and so on? Quite simply it is because of our inability to tell someone to base their efforts on mere statistical chance! Faith and belief can give us something to hold on to, however illusionary that may be - to stay positive and run hard while not really acknowledging that sometimes, effort can only go that far, and beyond that, we are as much creatures of chance as we are anything else we might imagine.

In taking stock of an individual's chances of becoming rich, for instance, neither effort nor faith, neither objectivism nor prayer can actually guarantee a favourable result. But those who did take their opportunities and based their judgement on a fundamentally sound direction definitely came out on top. People in the community of successful businesses will put less on faith and more on running hard when they know it is time to accelerate their efforts. This is based on acknowledging the objective realities before them. But asking Tiger Woods to be a standout example of "high performance" that we can all emulate is a bit too much. For a genius breakout success like Tiger Woods to take place, a lot of elements have to naturally find their places together. Vijay Singh probably puts in more effort than Woods, but hasn't seen the same kind of success.

What works in the favour of enterprising people engaged in business ventures is that the onus comes onto them, and on certain market factors which they can still work to their advantage, giving importance to understanding and processing information. There are usually many ways to succeed, unlike actors, for instance, whose success depends on someone else's perceptions at a particular time and a potentially life altering decision that might simply "work out". So, what advice can we sincerely give someone who wants to pursue a chance of being successful in a highly unpredictable line of endeavour? The truthful advice would indeed be "Do your best to prepare for an opportunity that might never come!"

The power of prayer is the one unknown that is yet to be acknowledged as a balance tilter. Coming from someone as competitive and celebrated as Billie Jean King, who said she would have achieved a lot more had she realized the power of prayer earlier on, there has to be some truth to it. There are some parts of this realm outside the purview of knowledge that can be applied to every individual. Hence, it is a challenge to ask people to pray and be serious about it!

The truth is, there is an objective reality that stares down upon us all the time. Some of us acknowledge it and use it to our advantage. Most will perish under its intense glare by ignoring it - it is just too cold to handle for most of us. All suffering is because of a refusal to acknowledge the presence of an objective reality. Knowledge can free us, even while being painful. Faith can destroy us, even while being positive. Stupidity, on the other hand, can be the sweetest, shortest ride to doom. It takes stupidity to use faith instead of knowledge.

In choosing our friends and relationships, it doesn't take much for us to decide what influence is good for us and what can be potentially destructive. And yet, all over human society, we can see some of us stuck in relationships that are purely corrosive, erosive of all good energy, and heading towards, at best, a prolonged state of agony. Yet, we will continue to hear from people their summary dismissal of all objective reality, giving themselves excuses and reasons to maintain status quo just for the comfort of the familiar.

There is no guarantee that we live longer by using the seat belt. But it definitely improves our chance of survival in a collision. It is by observing more and more of reality that we have longer life spans today than we did during the stone age. Humans have not progressed by faith and belief. Every step we have taken forward, we have taken because of someone's worship of knowledge and an embrace of curiosity.

And yet, we pray, consult psychics, perform rituals, give our Gods special places in our inconsistent, inconsequential lives, and put unnecessary pressure on them to perform where we might fail! We wear lucky stones, lucky colours, look for auspicious times to do things and basically do everything in our power to ignore objective reality that tells us simply what we need to do better or more than others to get ahead. Now, the number one cause for us to do this has to be laziness. How convenient if we can blame luck instead of lack of effort or understanding! The second more important cause for us to choose this line of reasoning is fear - fear that we might fail despite our best efforts. Fear and ignorance! The two biggest, least mysterious causes for all human problems. May we live to fight them! And may we celebrate reality for the best friend it is!