Certainly not my style this- Mushy things like love and how I relate to the word or what I have found out about it. But there is this Dog at the tea shop. It’s a cross between a German Shepherd and a regular street mutt. It sniffs all my friends and invariably rubs its body and stands close to just one of my friends. He pets it regularly, sometimes staring into its eyes. I felt jealous and it won’t be the 1st time.
There was Tiger, a dog of the same breed, of slightly less build. I have vague memories of naming him when he was pup, along with a horde of my cousins. I think we were all excited back then, fondling him with our little hands, and I took a liking to tiger. I watched him grow and have some fond memories- he used to walk with me till my tuition place a street away and then ran back home every time.
Yet I felt he loved me a little less or rather he loved my grandfather a little more. And it always bothered me a little. My grandfather did nothing for tiger other than maybe chase stray dogs away his walking stick when ever they went for a walk (tiger was a total wuss, scared to death by street dogs). They just kind of hung out; my grandfather did not even pet him! Tiger would just lie by my grandfather’s chair, just sitting there till my grandfather chased him away when ever there were guests. It made no sense to me. And it came to me, years later, today at the tea shop.
It’s not the biscuits, it’s not even if you genuinely care for the person (or dog in this case) its just hanging out. By hanging out without trying to change them, or even showering your love on them, there is this warm feeling of acceptance, security and even a deep profound love which is not easily understood. I tried too hard- I fed him with biscuits, I tried to give him a bath and I even tried to make him wear a collar. Not surprisingly he rejected all that love.
When my grandfather died Tiger whined all day and ran around the house a million times howling in vain. I never saw him that way before or ever again. Tiger was a happy dog, always wagging his tail and jumping on me in excitement. I wondered on that day if he will ever be happy again. My grandma moved to Chennai with us and the house in Nagercoil was left to tenants who promised to take care of Tiger. A year later when I went back to Nagercoil to stay in the house for a couple of days Tiger was there. Running around the house, gaining more and more momentum each time he leapt onto me, I could tell he was very happy to see me. Like an idiot I tried to give him a bath again. Today years later at the teashop I learn the lesson of a Dog and love and how it has nothing to do with biscuits and baths. Tiger died later that year sometime.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Orkutting ourselves to death (The Final part)
Neil Postman in his book ‘Amusing ourselves to Death’ said, “Television is our cultures principal mode of knowing itself.” ( Johnson 2005:62) But now Google has become our cultures principle mode of knowing itself. And unlike other media the internet is a participatory communication media. Steve Jobs likes to describe the difference between television and web as the difference between lean-back and sit-forward media (Johnson 2005:118). But Neil Postman believes there is a problem with networking technologies like internet and primarily the computer. A few excerpts from his speech ‘Informing ourselves to Death’:
I believe I know something about what technologies do to culture, and I know even more about what technologies undo in a culture. The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking.
This pessimism towards the internet and its effects is further heaped on by L.X.Jerome in his article ‘Mediated youth culture’ where he says that the television and computer have made our thinking and discourse highly fragmented, incoherent, trivial and above all, entertaining. Jerome comically asks us to imagine the media telling us-
‘Dear Reader/Viewer, the world is too complicated. But we make it easy for you and give the world in easy doses. All you need to do is simply to swallow. Just swallow it. Just do it.’
The dangers of the internet are further exaggerated by Bernado M. Villegas in his article ‘Social impact of new communication Technologies’ who says-
Many fret that the world can be morally corrupted by the internet….These phobias…are based on fears that are a result of actual occurrences cyperporn, incitement to violence or racial hatred, etc.-there has arisen in all countries a call for censorship and other government regulations. The article then goes on to sat that ‘an orderly society may be traded off more readily with personal freedom [is personal freedom a bad thing?] as Asians discover the new media such as the Internet and satellite TV’.
But the internet is like all new technologies which have its cynics when relatively new. But as the days go by the youth generally nod off the danger signs and plunge into its vicissitudes for the good.
Steven Johnson in his book ‘Everything Bad is Good for you’ argues:
‘The screen is not just something you manipulate, but something you project you identity onto, a place to work through the story of your life as it unfolds.’
(Johnson 2005:119)
I am not going to argue with Postman’s claim that that the technology involved (the internet) is undoing culture but I am saying this undoing is for the good. And as for his claims that the computer and its information (i.e. the internet) cannot answer any fundamental questions we need to address, well it does not have to for the internet was man made not a holy grail which answers life’s questions. But the internet does make our lives more meaningful and humane. It does provide an organizing moral framework. It frees us from the cultural hegemony that binds us and teaches us about personal freedom. Aldous Huxley in his essay ‘Hallucinogens: A philosophers visionary prediction’ asks the question:
What can and what should the individual do to improve his ironically equivocal relationship with culture in which he finds himself embedded? How can he continue to enjoy the benefits of culture without at the same time being stupefied or frenziedly intoxicated by its poisons? (Huxley 1963:552)
My answer to these questions is to join the networking site Orkut and to be actively involved in Orkut Media and communities. (We shall not discuss Huxley’s answers which you can guess from title)
Time magazine in their cover page (dated Jan 2007) declared the ‘Person of the year’ as ‘You’ (the reader and the public in general). Because ‘You control the information Age. Welcome to your world.’ And time explains why we the common youth are special-
‘And we dint just watch (like with television), we also worked …We made facebook profiles [similar to Orkut]…reviewed books at Amazon and recorded pod casts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs when we got dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open source software [like Linux which Microsoft is working overtime to fend off].”
The article is about individuals around the world who would have gone unnoticed but for Orkut, YouTube, and the blogosphere.
References
FLICK, UWE, 2002. An introduction to qualitative research . New Delhi: Sage publications
POSTMAN, NEIL,1986. Amusing ourselves to death. New York: Penguin Books.
JOHNSON, STEVEN, 2005. Everything Bad is Good for you. New York: Riverhead books.
GORE.M.S, 1977. Indian Youth Process of socialization. Vishwa yuvak Kendra.
NAGERA, HUMBERTO, 1969. Basic Psychoanalytic concepts on the libido theory. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
FRANKL, VIKTOR, 2004. Mans Search for meaning . Rider books
FREUD, SIGMUND, 1962. Civilization Society and religion, Group Psychology and its discontents. England :Penguin Group .
THODY, PHILIP, 2003. Introdunig Sarte. Victoria Mcpherson’s Printing Group.
TIDD, Ursula, 2004. Introducing Simone de Beauvior. New York: Routledge.
NAIPAUL,V.,S., 1977. India a wounded Civilaization New Delhi: Penguin India.
SAMOVAR, LARRY, 2001. Communication between cultures :Belmount USA Wadsworth.
WARREN, RICK, 2002 .What on earth am I here for? USA: Zondervan
DURKHEIM EMILE, 1951 Suicide London Routledge
KAKKAR, SUDHIR, 1996. Indian Identity. New Delhi: Penguin India.
POSTMAN ,NEIL Informing ourselves to Death (Online) http://www.frostbytes.com
[ Accessed Time 1600 Date 24th Oct 2007]
I believe I know something about what technologies do to culture, and I know even more about what technologies undo in a culture. The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking.
This pessimism towards the internet and its effects is further heaped on by L.X.Jerome in his article ‘Mediated youth culture’ where he says that the television and computer have made our thinking and discourse highly fragmented, incoherent, trivial and above all, entertaining. Jerome comically asks us to imagine the media telling us-
‘Dear Reader/Viewer, the world is too complicated. But we make it easy for you and give the world in easy doses. All you need to do is simply to swallow. Just swallow it. Just do it.’
The dangers of the internet are further exaggerated by Bernado M. Villegas in his article ‘Social impact of new communication Technologies’ who says-
Many fret that the world can be morally corrupted by the internet….These phobias…are based on fears that are a result of actual occurrences cyperporn, incitement to violence or racial hatred, etc.-there has arisen in all countries a call for censorship and other government regulations. The article then goes on to sat that ‘an orderly society may be traded off more readily with personal freedom [is personal freedom a bad thing?] as Asians discover the new media such as the Internet and satellite TV’.
But the internet is like all new technologies which have its cynics when relatively new. But as the days go by the youth generally nod off the danger signs and plunge into its vicissitudes for the good.
Steven Johnson in his book ‘Everything Bad is Good for you’ argues:
‘The screen is not just something you manipulate, but something you project you identity onto, a place to work through the story of your life as it unfolds.’
(Johnson 2005:119)
I am not going to argue with Postman’s claim that that the technology involved (the internet) is undoing culture but I am saying this undoing is for the good. And as for his claims that the computer and its information (i.e. the internet) cannot answer any fundamental questions we need to address, well it does not have to for the internet was man made not a holy grail which answers life’s questions. But the internet does make our lives more meaningful and humane. It does provide an organizing moral framework. It frees us from the cultural hegemony that binds us and teaches us about personal freedom. Aldous Huxley in his essay ‘Hallucinogens: A philosophers visionary prediction’ asks the question:
What can and what should the individual do to improve his ironically equivocal relationship with culture in which he finds himself embedded? How can he continue to enjoy the benefits of culture without at the same time being stupefied or frenziedly intoxicated by its poisons? (Huxley 1963:552)
My answer to these questions is to join the networking site Orkut and to be actively involved in Orkut Media and communities. (We shall not discuss Huxley’s answers which you can guess from title)
Time magazine in their cover page (dated Jan 2007) declared the ‘Person of the year’ as ‘You’ (the reader and the public in general). Because ‘You control the information Age. Welcome to your world.’ And time explains why we the common youth are special-
‘And we dint just watch (like with television), we also worked …We made facebook profiles [similar to Orkut]…reviewed books at Amazon and recorded pod casts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs when we got dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open source software [like Linux which Microsoft is working overtime to fend off].”
The article is about individuals around the world who would have gone unnoticed but for Orkut, YouTube, and the blogosphere.
References
FLICK, UWE, 2002. An introduction to qualitative research . New Delhi: Sage publications
POSTMAN, NEIL,1986. Amusing ourselves to death. New York: Penguin Books.
JOHNSON, STEVEN, 2005. Everything Bad is Good for you. New York: Riverhead books.
GORE.M.S, 1977. Indian Youth Process of socialization. Vishwa yuvak Kendra.
NAGERA, HUMBERTO, 1969. Basic Psychoanalytic concepts on the libido theory. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
FRANKL, VIKTOR, 2004. Mans Search for meaning . Rider books
FREUD, SIGMUND, 1962. Civilization Society and religion, Group Psychology and its discontents. England :Penguin Group .
THODY, PHILIP, 2003. Introdunig Sarte. Victoria Mcpherson’s Printing Group.
TIDD, Ursula, 2004. Introducing Simone de Beauvior. New York: Routledge.
NAIPAUL,V.,S., 1977. India a wounded Civilaization New Delhi: Penguin India.
SAMOVAR, LARRY, 2001. Communication between cultures :Belmount USA Wadsworth.
WARREN, RICK, 2002 .What on earth am I here for? USA: Zondervan
DURKHEIM EMILE, 1951 Suicide London Routledge
KAKKAR, SUDHIR, 1996. Indian Identity. New Delhi: Penguin India.
POSTMAN ,NEIL Informing ourselves to Death (Online) http://www.frostbytes.com
[ Accessed Time 1600 Date 24th Oct 2007]
Saturday, February 28, 2009
What if? and whose fault is it anyway?...... Vol 2
I was back in college, collecting my transfer certificate etc… when I met a really old friend, a classmate from my UG years. I use to rate him as a guy who was kinda like me- Goofy, cuts class and likes being obnoxious. But wait he was talking on the phone to someone and talking about how he is waiting for his Visa. I remember how Friedsman (yes that’s his name) pursued chemistry for his PG as well and I joked how his brain must have gone numb from eating in the Loyola college canteen and sniffing chemicals in the in the lab. Friedsman laughed with me and told me how he got a kick out of pulling professor legs. But now here he was talking about getting a Visa (probably to some strange nation). He was going to do a Ph.D. in some material engineering blah blah in some Japanese college where he will be getting a fully paid fellowship (whatever that was, but the words fully paid registered well). He said it with some pride. Apparently some eminent scientist Ramakrishna (or something) inspired him and due to lack of facilities in India he chooses Japan. My head was spinning- ‘I will be going to German for a post doctoral fellowship’ wow!
Friedsman stood 1st in his class and I was wondering why very few such students got so damn inspired. I hated chemistry. Hated the fact that I had to remember so much and so barely passed Organic chemistry, Physical chemistry and Advanced (gasp) Organic and physical chemistry. Hated how the professors themselves knew little or nothing (except for a few inspired ones of course) and so had to read out notes and dictate them so we as faithful ‘Banks’ redeposit these notes in our exam sheets.
A few really inspired students (3 out of 99 in my class) already came from scientist backgrounds so had it easy according to Frieds, while he himself had to wait for inspiration later on. And I wonder, surely I could have been like Frieds, pursuing pathetically complex concepts in modern chemistry and spending hours even days waiting for results in a chemistry lab. I remember those days in my final year when I used to break test tubes when my error registered more than 1% for an experiment that took 4 hours to complete. Why would anyone put themselves through all that? Inspiration? Well I am an inspired youth now in another field. And I’ve realized that I should stop blaming everything around me if I were to go anywhere. But surely our education system needs a sea change. Our education system is currently like a castrated bull, very depressed but keeps pulling millions of dead weight to another location.
Friedsman stood 1st in his class and I was wondering why very few such students got so damn inspired. I hated chemistry. Hated the fact that I had to remember so much and so barely passed Organic chemistry, Physical chemistry and Advanced (gasp) Organic and physical chemistry. Hated how the professors themselves knew little or nothing (except for a few inspired ones of course) and so had to read out notes and dictate them so we as faithful ‘Banks’ redeposit these notes in our exam sheets.
A few really inspired students (3 out of 99 in my class) already came from scientist backgrounds so had it easy according to Frieds, while he himself had to wait for inspiration later on. And I wonder, surely I could have been like Frieds, pursuing pathetically complex concepts in modern chemistry and spending hours even days waiting for results in a chemistry lab. I remember those days in my final year when I used to break test tubes when my error registered more than 1% for an experiment that took 4 hours to complete. Why would anyone put themselves through all that? Inspiration? Well I am an inspired youth now in another field. And I’ve realized that I should stop blaming everything around me if I were to go anywhere. But surely our education system needs a sea change. Our education system is currently like a castrated bull, very depressed but keeps pulling millions of dead weight to another location.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
What if? and whose fault is it anyway?...... Vol 1
I was back in college for receiving my degree. It had been a while and I was realise I've come a long way. I studied in Chennai till my 5th Std and in Delhi till my 10th. By the time I left Delhi I was this insecure 'Christian' Kid who felt guilty about his sexuality (I am straight but I was guilty yes) had doubts about his looks and thought cracking nasty jokes about people and myself somehow redeemed me from my miserable existence. Then I reached Pune where I learnt that not all girls treat odd looking guys like me badly. Not only did they brush aside my nonsense and accept me as I was but they also played a major role in edifying my personality. Then there was the traumatic 12th std experience which every kid in India goes through, at least those which scrape through high school. Back to Chennai again for my degree in BSc. Chemistry in India's best college (so the India Today magazine proclaims). Alas it was an extension of my high school nightmare. But I enjoyed the show. Came late in the morning, left early, played snooker, watched movies and did everything that young people all over the world do (being discreet) except maybe have sex. Proudly finishing with a first class I applied for a Post graduate degree in subjects like philosophy and Visual communication (I will explain why later). After nearly breaking down in my 1st year and nearly leaving to get myself a BPO job I somehow stuck on and actually had various enriching experiences in my second year. And here I am receiving my degree my life still meandering like a river on steroids and growing rapidly and in monstrous proportions like India's population. No condom will stop this explosion (pardon me).
And I would like to trace and put into a Blog my aggressive expansion in the fields of psychology, philosophy and sheer intellect. I will be painfully honest and will use many disgusting metaphors to describe my exploits and what I learnt from them. Some might be obvious and irritating. For instance I had this Eureka moment when I realised I could lust after a woman without loving her and such a luminous moment occurred in my high school days. Back then I thought I had graduated to the level of the great philosophers like Plato and Nietzsche, but was later shocked when I realise everyone including girls knew of the fact. Damn it. But I read somewhere that 'the author is dead' and so I realised I could say and write what ever I want, add the spices of my experiences throw, in a few condiments of philosophical mumbo jumbo and then call my work- Truly Original.
Education, sex, parenting, culture, organizations (included NGO's), International conflicts (Yes I will solve the problems in the Middle East) and other such thought provoking and mairu(meaning hair in Tamil) raising topics.
Volume 1 is just the intro. In volume 2 I will discuss how the Indian education system has ruined me and transformed my life into a mere cog that fits in a combine. I will also discuss how I escaped the matrix. Watch this space (for your own good, I guarantee enlightenment)
And I would like to trace and put into a Blog my aggressive expansion in the fields of psychology, philosophy and sheer intellect. I will be painfully honest and will use many disgusting metaphors to describe my exploits and what I learnt from them. Some might be obvious and irritating. For instance I had this Eureka moment when I realised I could lust after a woman without loving her and such a luminous moment occurred in my high school days. Back then I thought I had graduated to the level of the great philosophers like Plato and Nietzsche, but was later shocked when I realise everyone including girls knew of the fact. Damn it. But I read somewhere that 'the author is dead' and so I realised I could say and write what ever I want, add the spices of my experiences throw, in a few condiments of philosophical mumbo jumbo and then call my work- Truly Original.
Education, sex, parenting, culture, organizations (included NGO's), International conflicts (Yes I will solve the problems in the Middle East) and other such thought provoking and mairu(meaning hair in Tamil) raising topics.
Volume 1 is just the intro. In volume 2 I will discuss how the Indian education system has ruined me and transformed my life into a mere cog that fits in a combine. I will also discuss how I escaped the matrix. Watch this space (for your own good, I guarantee enlightenment)
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