I Support Net Neutrality. But not this...

Note: Names changed to protect identities :P

The internet must be free to access, at high b/w speeds as it supports the freedom of information which has caused the recent enlightenment in humanity - where knowledge cannot be controlled by the elite and people can make a choice of their own. Hence the hue and cry over net neutrality in the recent times.

There is, however,  one online behaviour which many of us have recently acquired, which is not in congruence with some of the points which we are trying to support, while supporting net neutrality. I want to know whether you think this behaviour is good to go.

In my opinion it isn't. I will elaborate on why i feel so.

Take the example of Wassup. Started as a free service and is still free. Used a simple business strategy - Make people dependent on your services, and then you are the sole player in the market. Beyond this, provide customised services in the name of enhanced privacy and other things, to make money.

Today using the internet, someone is helping us order food and get discounts. Someone is selling vegetables, someone mobile phones, a many others are selling clothes. The internet has become a huge kirana bazaar and thanks to the huge volumes involved, people are being offered amazing discounts. Buying has become a daily habit.

We are also acquiring a habit of buying the the brand new way and shedding the old, inefficient ways of shopping. The side effect here is the players who are helping us do this are also controlling which provider of goods/services flourishes in this growing craze for faster delivery of goods/services to our homes.

Once we all start doing everything online, these portals will become the gatekeepers as to who can operate and who cannot. Give me a fee and go to work, this is the New Age Digital Dadagiri!

Evil Commerce? (source: http://www.kassenzone.de/)

Foozpanja, for example, charges commissions to hotels on successful transactions, for using it as a booking gateway. It offers discounts to consumers, to get them hooked to its services and become habituated to the brand new way of ordering food.

Now you may say that the market will have a number of players who will come an even out the competition, so Foozpanja will not have all the cake to itself. But think about the hotel vendors/service providers - they will have to eventually shell out money on each popular portal to survive, and this is not good. However miniscule it may be, it is as good as hafta vasooli done in Mumbai by the bhai ka chamcha, so that the roadside vendors can carry on with their business. Each online portal will become the bhai ka chamcha and the hotel folks/service providers will have to shell out their hafta.

Now couple this up with what our telecom companies (Telcos) are doing to quash net neutrality and you have this "absolutely mindblasting, economically profitable arrangement" -

1. Hotels pay Foozpanja to reach customers
2. Foozpanja pays Telcos to survive in a restricted internet scenario
3. We pay Telcos for the network service, and Telcos makes us feel we are using the internet for "free"

The actual producers and the actual consumers become slaves of the system - and the middle folks make money. Sounds familiar, doesn't it...;)

Psychedelics - A view

The west has experimented a lot with psychedelics. And given rise to non-confirmist individuals who have grown powerful. India always knew about psychedelics, but it was not necessary for all, as the education and way of life were different - thought processes and priorities were more natural.

Today psychedelics will be employed by escapists, and people who want to explore the inner world, however the number of the latter is always less. The utility as i see today for Indians to explore this stuff lies in the answer to this simple question.

Why do path breaking innovations never happen here in India? - Break this into another question

What is innovation? And what does it involve?

Innovation involves creation. Creation implies something new. Something new cannot be created from knowledge as knowledge is something which is known and hence old. Hence inspiration - the creative flash in the mind, is the progenitor. Things are first conceived in the mind then in the physical plane - we all know this.

Inspiration involves a part of the Whole, acted upon by a super computer which can never be created by human beings - the complete human brain. And let me tell you, there is only one Consciousness throughout Creation, and we are all connected there. Our brains are just caches.

Now how do you transform a population which has been enslaved by dogma and even by foreign powers for hundreds of years - and still enslaved by their definition of life and success, into an innovative one? By wiping off the conditioning, so that the slate of mind becomes as clean as that of a new born child.

The mind has to stop believing that the given way is the only way, so that other ways are thrown open. I do not mean the other ways come from nowhere; they are always there but our limited awareness always keeps them out of our grasp.

Remember the iceberg theory of human consciousness? The conscious mind is the one which deals with what is known, and hence it has can offer us a limited view. The unconscious part deals with reality, and with the dimension we call the "unknown". Now the phenomenon is called the "unknown" because it is unknown to the conscious mind and we always operate in that field.

With psychedelics, we can choose to channel the right chemicals through the brains to break the patterns acquired by conditioning of all sorts, so that we are able to think freely; bring the conscious more in connection with the unconscious.

However i believe that psychedelics should be instruments of change, and not things which should become a part of life. And only the natural ones. You need training wheels only for a limited time. All aspirants should have the urge to break free, and not get caught in the shackles.

The risk of imprisonment in the web of addiction exists, because we have always been imprisoned, and getting imprisoned is hence, natural to us. The current social framework will never let a man stand on his own two feet with his own mind and freedom. It offers a comfortable prison and most of us do not even bother to look up and see if there is anything beyond this. This will repeat in the arena of psychedelics and hence we need to be careful. There should be a preliminary preparation to make the mind healthy so that it doesn't make a habit out of this useful tool.

Why I support the movement againt the movie PK

We live in a democracy, where everyone is entitled to the freedom of expression. So am I. This is a post celebrating this freedom.

This post is also an attempt at expressing my opinions which, I am sure, would not be easy to digest. And that is why it is necessary.

There are many reasons for the recent conflict surrounding the movie. But one strong reason for majority of people on both sides of the argument is one - they are Hindu.

This religion teaches us tolerance. We are sporty enough to joke about our idiosyncracies, apparent ambiquities which exist in our practices.

And we have been doing this all the time. We are aware of the loot which goes on in the name of religion; the fake godmen that exist etc. But mark one thing - this is prevalent everywhere. Not that this justifies it, but it only means that these are the characteristics  of the times that we live in.

One thing however, remains forever true - the wrong doers should be brought to book, whoever they are - irrespective of whether they belong to a religion which has been accorded minority or majority status. But the popular approach to handling this problem is a bit partial in its nature.

Repeatedly, only the fallacies of the majority religion in India are highlighted in the daily media, even when we have reported cases of such issues going on in other religions as well. But the amplification is only reserved for the Hindu religion. And its adherents are either not concerned or have no power to defend their opinions on their issues in our secular Land.

An unequal manipulation power balance, based on religious division exists in this secular State. An imbalance of any kind of power is a dangerous thing, irrespective of whichever side it leans on. If the majority have it, we have a state like Pakistan where minorities are persecuted. If it is on the side of the minorty, we have India in its present state.

This is what the supporters of the boycott/ban think like. I hope you are able to understand their minds now. Now lets try to see why the other side exists among the Hindus.

We Hindus derive sadistic pleasure when someone tells us of the umpteen 'evil' things our religion has. This attitude is begotten from the years of slavery we were living in when we forsook the life of tapas/penance, and became servile to the hope of surviving by pleasing our "masters". Survival became the keyword, even if was at the cost of self respect. We gave up our way of living because our masters would not approve. We moulded ourselves based on the education our masters felt was suitable for us. We felt it would help us go about survival. What did we know that it would make us eternal slaves to their ways of thinking and perpetual enemies of our glorious ancient ways!

Now i am not saying our religion did not degrade. Time rusts out everything and what is needed is a revival. But alas! we are not doing anything in that direction, not even trying to stop the bashing which goes on. We either dont care or constantly quote the greatness of our religion and its in-destructability.

But our tolerance to this bashing damages our culture in ways which all of us are not aware yet. It does not probably affect the faith of the adherents who understand their religion and responsibilities. But it surely affects the outlook of the younger generations, and this aspect is concerning. Adherents of each religion have the personal right to defend their kids from going astray. These kids will consider that what media shows is the whole reality - they are the frogs of the well.

The broadminded adherents of Christianity, and Atheism want us to think like them and are very aggressive about their viewpoints - i do not blame them. But I blame us Hindus for being docile and giving an advantage to anyone who can present a "seemingly better" argument to us. We are not able to argue back, or even defend what we believe in. Why is this so?

This is because we have long given up the spirit of enquiry which our Sages had; the same spirit of enquiry which revealed to them the eternal, secular wisdom of the Vedas. Our scriptures are not the commandments given to some person by God, but contain eternal axioms which are imbibed in each later religion of the World. The Sun has always risen from one direction and that is how true ideas are - they never change and they cannot be contradicted. These ideas are the basis of Hinduism - there is no other reason why this religion and its associated civilization could have survived so long.

My opposition is for one thing - the widespread bashing of religion has to stop - not because we are hypocrites who cannot accept the dark realities of our religion but because

1. Every religion has its dark side, and it is the duty of the adherents alone to fight them.

2. No other religious adherent has the right to poke his/her nose in the matter of other faiths, let alone influence those people to his/her way of thinking.

3. India is a secular country, where religion is a personal concern and the conflicts should be solved by those affected by it; the media should not act as an interpretor.

People say PK is a movie with a message. My question is, is it some new message? We Indians are amused to see the same things from various angles, but will be the last to actionise. Do we not know of the evils of our religion, and do such movies even help actionise us? No they are basically to be seen, discussed, fought over and forgotten. 

A logical statement - might sound illogical!

Yesterday morning, I somehow got this logical statement in my dream state, and i started proving it there.

Thankfully, i was at a transition sleep phase, and felt i should record it. Recorded the same on my phone. Jotted down the ideas..

Logical Statement -

I have erred

My mind tells I haven't erred

Hence I have not erred

Prove whether this is true or false

Proof:-

Based on the root of the statement I have erred based on some universal idea. This itself is a proof unto itself.

But people basically do things dictated by their mind every time, hence the following will also need consideration;

Case 1 - Mind and conscience say different things

My mind tells me i havent erred. But my conscience being the moral compass will definitely tell me i have (since it is already proved by the previous statement). Hence i have erred.

Case 2 - The conscience is silent

Now it could be a case when my conscience hasn't said anything around this situation. This is more a proven case that i have erred because right or wrong is decided by conscience and if the conscience hasn't said anything, it is absent or has been successfully silenced. Such a human being has no compass for right or wrong.

For the mind, the definition of right and wrong is personal and situational.

Hence, i have erred. 

Ps. It's about keeping the universal law above the personal law. And I declare i have written all of this when i was in my senses. Now try to make sense of all of this...:P

Double standards

Feels great, doesn't it

Knowing you can elicit smiles from a pretty face

And if a not so pretty one tries to talk

You say, 'shes trying to catch my attention!!'

When men try to make some girl smile, the basic fundamental is they feel the female is attractive. The more attractive she is, the more attention she gets. Probably she is naive to think that she is great coz of her looks. Little does she know, or for that matter, the men realise that the efforts are basically for satisfaction of the their own ego selves.  A man feels that if he is capable of making such a female blush and smile, he is worthy enough.

And when a not so attractive female, as per the man's estimate, tries to even talk to him - the reaction is different. Firstly, men don't try to make such species laugh. And that is because having judged someone as not attractive, you are already creating a mental impression that you are better than that person (in whatever sense it is) and hence you have no interest of any sort there. And in such instances, instead, the mental picture is that the not so attractive female is trying to impress you or catch your attention.

What a case of double standards our society has created, by attaching too much importance to how people look and dress...:)

Guilty of this crime,

Yours truly

Absolute Nonsense - Push or Pull

{Series of posts churned out from the depths of my creativity, and impulses of madness}

Women generally push a door, which indicates that it should be pulled, and they say its part of being a woman. Observed one such woman today and thought of an imaginary conversation between us.


I: Ma'am, you just pushed a door, which is indicated to be pulled.

Lady(L): See, the door moved, so there should be no problem!

I: Ohh! There is a problem ma'am - why do you think they indicate how a door needs to be moved? 

You see when you enter a premise, you will push the door, because you can see who is in front of you. If you pull at this point, there are chances that someone behind you may be injured. (they do damp this with a carpet these days)

When you leave a premise, you will always pull the door, to keep the door moving in the same direction as before. This way the door hinges can stay fine for long.

I know its complicated, but no need to think so much. Just see whats written near the door handle and follow.. (so simple...:P)

L: Excuse me, if you mean to say that we can push only when we enter a premise, then think that I am entering 'outside' and your problem will be solved!

I: Ahh, good one there madam! But there is a clause you fail to understand - the door belongs to the shop! Hence even though you are entering 'outside', it is not the premise to which the said door belongs to. Hence you should follow the rules, based on the premise to whom the door belongs...

L: Arghh!



Ps. Dedicated to all the ladies who care to read this...:P

One World, One Culture Series - Erhu and Ravanhattha

I started my analysis of Indian musical traditions 2 years ago. Raagas being combinations of notes rendered in a particular format, it will not be difficult to digest that we will find songs based on Indian raagas, in musical traditions of other countries like China, Arabia etc. This is where i started sensing a Cultural Unity which exists but has not been investigated or established properly. My attempt in the forthcoming posts will be to try and document and share all the ideas i have around this topic.

I happened to hear this lovely Chinese song, played on a two stringed instrument called the Erhu. I love the sound...:)

Taking a look at it, and having investigated quite on Indian musical instruments, i was startled to see that this instrument looks a lot like Ravanhattha, played by street musicians in Rajasthan. The instrument is also a two stringed simple instrument, and its creator is said to be the mighty Dashaanana Ravana himself.

Erhu

Ravanhattha

A performance by a street musician in Rajasthan. Note that eventually the tune starts sounding Chinese...:)

The whole point of similarity here is Chinese music is primarily pentatonic (5 note scales), and we can find songs based on Indian raagas like Malkauns/Hindolam, Bhoopal/Mohanam in Chinese music.

This, I believe, is a significant discovery for me as it hints at the fact that culture spreads gradually, and does not respect the discrete nature of geographical boundaries. Thousands of years of cultural interchange has created an amalgamation, which we can easily enjoy and connect in today's Internet connected age.

We should utilize the unique advantage we have to establish our Cultural Unity...:)