The weirdest and most unlikely thoughts can come to you in the most unimaginable of circumstances. I guess it's something about how our brains are hardwired, and then interlaced with the sub-conscious and conscious dimensions of our beings. When you least expect it, you can can have the most lucid of ideas or thoughts, say a solution to a problem or a change of outlook leading to a change of opinion, leading to a change of attitude leading to a change of personality..... leading to change.
Looks like that's what's probably happening in some parts of India these days. Following the media outcry of one particularly ghastly, heinous and atrocious rape incident in Delhi, the emotions of the country spilled out onto the streets of the capital. Guess the constant rape cases in the news and the millions that went unreported in 2012, and along with the recent spotlight by certain TV talk shows on women's plight in India, and the recent international outcry against India's record in bringing down violence against women, probably all together just choked the country into shame of being the world's largest most populous country of women-bashers, women-isers, women-killers (and in the same breath the country of women worshipers women leaders, women astronaut producers). Finally! It didn't have to come to this, but India is a country where seemingly off late, only shock therapy works (especially for all things that really really matter in life).... and the media's constant shock-reporting of the ugliness of the Indian society's malaises has finally made the country stop and think for a second.
I remember reading a news item many years ago of a baby girl (about 3-4 years old) that was raped (tortured/abused? or maybe assaulted?.... appropriate terminology is lacking here) in the same way as this Delhi paramedic student..... with a metal rod. Thankfully that child died from the incident. I am thankful for the only reason that the little angel would not have to bear another moment of pain or trauma ever again (premise: life after death is bliss). The country was not shocked then. There was not a single repeat or follow-up of that incident in the local news media or the newsprint. This substantiates a bit my theory that the strangest of thoughts can come upon us at the strangest of moments. Let me explain. Why do we act and demonstrate against rape now in this fashion, scale and duration, and not for any such incidents before?
Could it be that the nation as a whole is fed up of so many things collectively that it needed an outlet for this anguish lest we slip into a civil-war type of a situation? The mining scams of Goa and Karnataka, the water-sharing disputes, the naxalism issue, the terrorism issue, the extreme poverty issue, the terrifying draught taking place in Maharastra, the economic slowdown, the FDI issue, the religious fundamentalism issue, the border disputes with China and Pakistan, etc.
What is it about these "strange" thoughts, decisions, changeovers, upheavals that lead to "change" in the common national sense as we are seeing it today? Is it just another of those inexplicable statistically random events that somehow conjures the right set of consequences and chains of cause-effect sequences? Like how some scientists say life came into being on this earth.... by the somehow momentous sequence of chemical reactions and formation of carbon chains, which are some of the most difficult to form naturally (until now, all scientologists and Darwinists implicitly believed in the existence of a sequence of chemical processes that brings together the right elements to form the necessary compounds under the right conditions and then eventually create living cells and induce life into them, but this had never been proved. Talk about faith! Only recently, a likely candidate for one of the early processes was hypothesised based on existing lifeforms living in present-day harsh environments, this then back-extrapolated to possible conditions on early earth millions of years ago when things were still quite hot and acidic suggests a chance at explaining the origin of life on earth - read more here http://download.cell.com/pdf/PIIS0092867412014389.pdf?intermediate=true - Although I am getting hugely sidetracked here from the original theme of this post, it's worth noting that until now a lot of the scientifically illuminated folk out there, who thought that faith/belief was just an escape from reality and science for the simple minds, were themselves blind believers of an non-existing unproven thesis - the proto-chemical processes! And even today, we haven't really found the actual or the complete process, but simply suggested a likely possibility for a given set of conditions. Quite a leap of "faith" even now I'd say! :P).
So needless to say, we can very easily explain away the basis and possible mechanisms of how such a change has come about in our society today. And although it may not be the truth, in the dying unquenchable human urge to rationalise and substantiate anything and eveything, this is indeed possible. The rationalising mind is then happy and content. The observing mind however just observes and take note. In the latter's case drawing a conclusion from a bunch of observations is hardly the aim; it may be a rare comeuppance in the situation where there is nothing more left to observe or understand. Very rare, I'd say, no? But in this case again, conclusions and inferences are deferred for a later date (never). Let's add some observations to our list.
Just before this horror was unraveled by the media, the world was reeling from the shocking news of the gun-wielding youth who shot dead several kids in an elementary school in Connecticut, USA. The shock was really quite overwhelming not just in the US, but even in places like Pakistan. Of course in India too, where anything and everything to do with the USA is coveted and envied upon. Did we snatch away the grief of the shooting incident and direct it to our very own horror incident? Cause really, rapes happen everyday in this country. Details and "degree of brutality or goriness" of the rapes is immaterial. Rape is rape, so period. Shouldn't we be a nation outraged every second a rape happens? (which is pretty often, so that would make us chronically horrified and depressed as a society). Or maybe we notice when others notice, so that we don't stand out; blend in real nice and seem like any other conscientious citizen (rapists included). Just wave and smile buddy, wave and smile.
Or maybe it was a more abstract phenomenon, like national or regional consciousness invoking the same string of emotion of general outrage that very easily shifted from random discrete disconnected emotions to form one single responsive emotion of an outraged nation, like a bunch of waves of different frequencies that synch-ed in all at once by constructively interfering (here I'm alluding to the Global Consciouness Project which tries to measure statistical indications of global phenomena based on human behaviour/response. You can read more about it at http://noosphere.princeton.edu/).
Or could it be the butterfly effect? You know, simplistically put, a butterfly flapping its wings in Bangalore's rose gardens could cause a hurricane on the east coast of the USA. Theory of chaos describes such processes that are non-linear and depending on various initial conditions and process parameters, the end result can be quite outrageous. Hence the hurricane. And hence the national outrage, and demonstrations (which are surprisingly restricted to Delhi, and occasionally elsewhere). Observations are abounding! The rationalist is quick to strike off many observations very easily for reasons of "experience", trends, circumstantial evidence, noise, non-linear effects, and what-nots. The rationalist wants to explain a phenomenon very clearly, and is ready to ascribe a non-singular but single explanation for the phenomenon like sheer magic and explain it away by the wave of hands (and words). But I prefer observing still. I think the thought-process needs to mature even more and the discourse (in the media and polity) needs to evolve still farther. I'll end with those thoughts, and I'll ask you to hold on to yours...... And see you in a few months, with more observations; we can compare notes then ;)
P.S. I was terrified at the thought of not having blogged for a few months and had to blog this right away before the world came to an end. Oops... yea, that didn't happen; I meant before the year came to an end :P. Happy 2013 folks!
Looks like that's what's probably happening in some parts of India these days. Following the media outcry of one particularly ghastly, heinous and atrocious rape incident in Delhi, the emotions of the country spilled out onto the streets of the capital. Guess the constant rape cases in the news and the millions that went unreported in 2012, and along with the recent spotlight by certain TV talk shows on women's plight in India, and the recent international outcry against India's record in bringing down violence against women, probably all together just choked the country into shame of being the world's largest most populous country of women-bashers, women-isers, women-killers (and in the same breath the country of women worshipers women leaders, women astronaut producers). Finally! It didn't have to come to this, but India is a country where seemingly off late, only shock therapy works (especially for all things that really really matter in life).... and the media's constant shock-reporting of the ugliness of the Indian society's malaises has finally made the country stop and think for a second.
I remember reading a news item many years ago of a baby girl (about 3-4 years old) that was raped (tortured/abused? or maybe assaulted?.... appropriate terminology is lacking here) in the same way as this Delhi paramedic student..... with a metal rod. Thankfully that child died from the incident. I am thankful for the only reason that the little angel would not have to bear another moment of pain or trauma ever again (premise: life after death is bliss). The country was not shocked then. There was not a single repeat or follow-up of that incident in the local news media or the newsprint. This substantiates a bit my theory that the strangest of thoughts can come upon us at the strangest of moments. Let me explain. Why do we act and demonstrate against rape now in this fashion, scale and duration, and not for any such incidents before?
Could it be that the nation as a whole is fed up of so many things collectively that it needed an outlet for this anguish lest we slip into a civil-war type of a situation? The mining scams of Goa and Karnataka, the water-sharing disputes, the naxalism issue, the terrorism issue, the extreme poverty issue, the terrifying draught taking place in Maharastra, the economic slowdown, the FDI issue, the religious fundamentalism issue, the border disputes with China and Pakistan, etc.
What is it about these "strange" thoughts, decisions, changeovers, upheavals that lead to "change" in the common national sense as we are seeing it today? Is it just another of those inexplicable statistically random events that somehow conjures the right set of consequences and chains of cause-effect sequences? Like how some scientists say life came into being on this earth.... by the somehow momentous sequence of chemical reactions and formation of carbon chains, which are some of the most difficult to form naturally (until now, all scientologists and Darwinists implicitly believed in the existence of a sequence of chemical processes that brings together the right elements to form the necessary compounds under the right conditions and then eventually create living cells and induce life into them, but this had never been proved. Talk about faith! Only recently, a likely candidate for one of the early processes was hypothesised based on existing lifeforms living in present-day harsh environments, this then back-extrapolated to possible conditions on early earth millions of years ago when things were still quite hot and acidic suggests a chance at explaining the origin of life on earth - read more here http://download.cell.com/pdf/PIIS0092867412014389.pdf?intermediate=true - Although I am getting hugely sidetracked here from the original theme of this post, it's worth noting that until now a lot of the scientifically illuminated folk out there, who thought that faith/belief was just an escape from reality and science for the simple minds, were themselves blind believers of an non-existing unproven thesis - the proto-chemical processes! And even today, we haven't really found the actual or the complete process, but simply suggested a likely possibility for a given set of conditions. Quite a leap of "faith" even now I'd say! :P).
So needless to say, we can very easily explain away the basis and possible mechanisms of how such a change has come about in our society today. And although it may not be the truth, in the dying unquenchable human urge to rationalise and substantiate anything and eveything, this is indeed possible. The rationalising mind is then happy and content. The observing mind however just observes and take note. In the latter's case drawing a conclusion from a bunch of observations is hardly the aim; it may be a rare comeuppance in the situation where there is nothing more left to observe or understand. Very rare, I'd say, no? But in this case again, conclusions and inferences are deferred for a later date (never). Let's add some observations to our list.
Just before this horror was unraveled by the media, the world was reeling from the shocking news of the gun-wielding youth who shot dead several kids in an elementary school in Connecticut, USA. The shock was really quite overwhelming not just in the US, but even in places like Pakistan. Of course in India too, where anything and everything to do with the USA is coveted and envied upon. Did we snatch away the grief of the shooting incident and direct it to our very own horror incident? Cause really, rapes happen everyday in this country. Details and "degree of brutality or goriness" of the rapes is immaterial. Rape is rape, so period. Shouldn't we be a nation outraged every second a rape happens? (which is pretty often, so that would make us chronically horrified and depressed as a society). Or maybe we notice when others notice, so that we don't stand out; blend in real nice and seem like any other conscientious citizen (rapists included). Just wave and smile buddy, wave and smile.
Or maybe it was a more abstract phenomenon, like national or regional consciousness invoking the same string of emotion of general outrage that very easily shifted from random discrete disconnected emotions to form one single responsive emotion of an outraged nation, like a bunch of waves of different frequencies that synch-ed in all at once by constructively interfering (here I'm alluding to the Global Consciouness Project which tries to measure statistical indications of global phenomena based on human behaviour/response. You can read more about it at http://noosphere.princeton.edu/).
Or could it be the butterfly effect? You know, simplistically put, a butterfly flapping its wings in Bangalore's rose gardens could cause a hurricane on the east coast of the USA. Theory of chaos describes such processes that are non-linear and depending on various initial conditions and process parameters, the end result can be quite outrageous. Hence the hurricane. And hence the national outrage, and demonstrations (which are surprisingly restricted to Delhi, and occasionally elsewhere). Observations are abounding! The rationalist is quick to strike off many observations very easily for reasons of "experience", trends, circumstantial evidence, noise, non-linear effects, and what-nots. The rationalist wants to explain a phenomenon very clearly, and is ready to ascribe a non-singular but single explanation for the phenomenon like sheer magic and explain it away by the wave of hands (and words). But I prefer observing still. I think the thought-process needs to mature even more and the discourse (in the media and polity) needs to evolve still farther. I'll end with those thoughts, and I'll ask you to hold on to yours...... And see you in a few months, with more observations; we can compare notes then ;)
P.S. I was terrified at the thought of not having blogged for a few months and had to blog this right away before the world came to an end. Oops... yea, that didn't happen; I meant before the year came to an end :P. Happy 2013 folks!
5 comments:
looks like you tried to eat a lot f different stuff, hence the complicated potty! :)
the situation is simple. just think of it as a vessel kept on a flame. the stuff inside is cold (normal life some years back, when everyone was happy with their lives) as time went by and the flame increased, the contents came to a boil, spilling over sometimes (protests). Now when the flame is reduced, the contents will continue to remain on boil inside the vessel. It only takes some event, which increases the flame, to cause the contents to boil over everytime. the trigger could be just anything at this point... people are fed up of keeping their head down and going on with life.
We have a rationalist! :))
Yes, the "being fed up" of the issue is indeed one of the observations. But it happened so unpredictably, now, and never before for rape related cases. Still somewhat random....
And needless to say, it's good the country has noticed and stopped. Let's see how it goes in the weeks to come.
It is the media and the rise of the middle class..but I am not sure how far... I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the coming few weeks. Good observation, william.
Ouilliam have you taken to smoking ?!
kahan se kahan ja raha hai bhai... was clearing my inbox when I took the momentous decision to stop by this, will be interesting to see how this would affect my decision making today (butterfly effect :p)
(on way to lucknow, project site visit)
Andy... hope you've stopped smoking at least by now!!! :P All is fine and in it's right place... and I hope you continue thinking about all this....yeh bohot bohot zaruri hai!!! Hope Lucknow was eventful..... skype soon! OK?!?!?
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