Love is what triumphs over hatred and fear

Love is what helps you spread joy and good cheer

Love is what brings people together

Love sees you through the tumultous times and stormy weather

Love sees you through trial, tribulations or times that test

Love touches your core, fills your being and brings out the best

Love prevails even when lust fades away

Love gives you warmth even on a wintry day

Love is what gives you trust, belief and the wings to fly high

Love is what tells you never to give up and try

Wealth, money, beauty may fade away or part

Love is but the eternal flame that burns and fills with warmth when it touches a heart..

A dreamer, hopeless romantic is something I’d always be. I thought time would temper this  romanticism with reality..but it just refuses to fade away completely. I guess I am completely smitten with the idea of being in love !!  I am and will always remain an incorrigible, moony soul !! ( Can’t help it !!) 

My inadequacy tells me im not ready,
Since im hiking up the ladder and trying to reach the sky.
At the same time im experiencing the lonely road to success.
But I swear that once im at the top, I ll be the best
The best lover and friend.

Written by: Heath Muchena

© HTMM ,2009 : Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given, and with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

In this first post on the blog (!), I’m going to indulge briefly in one of what will probably be many opportunities to voice a recurrent annoyance of mine, re: what seem to me to be too facile dismissals of Derrida’s work based on basic misunderstandings. “How surprising!” you retort sarcastically, “a Derrida fan who wants to defend his brilliance against all his detractors.” Be that as it may, here are tonight’s two cents:

Derrida is too often accused of repeating some transcendental or idealist move that we’re all supposed to be moving beyond by now, whether it be Kantian, Hegelian, even (strangely enough) Husserlian or Heideggerian – or some combination of these parts with each other or with others. Derrida himself complains from fairly early on that his positions are too often conflated with those he is analyzing, but that’s a different point than the one I want to make.  What’s on my mind now is the claim that the so-called linguistic turn of which Derrida is identified as a late representative automatically amounts, precisely because of its focus on language as an inescapable facet of human experience, to some variety of either idealism or humanism or both. My first response to this would be to point out the serious differences between the treatments of language in Derrida’s early texts and other positions that I think more properly represent what gets called the linguistic turn (e.g., Schlick, Quine, Austin, or on the other hand certain parts of Heidegger). But that’s for another time; my second response, the one that’s on my mind now, would be to emphasize that for Derrida (and of course I’m in agreement here) what is of general applicability in language is actually what exceeds confinement within the human. Thus his focus on textuality rather than language as such. Textuality is found as much in the interactions of subatomic particles or proteins or weather patterns as it is in …well, what we normally call “texts.”

So this is the point I want to stress: there is nothing inherently idealist (or even exactly “transcendental”, despite all the quasi-transcendentals) about deconstruction. While it’s more accurate to say that Derrida’s work aims at a deconstruction of the idealist/materialist dichotomy, it seems to me more closely allied with the second item of this pair (a not-uncommon deconstructive move!). Language is, after all as material as anything else. Our words occur as paper and ink, electricity and light, vibrations in the air, etc.

What has kept all this stuck in my head recently is a developing interest in object-oriented philosophy, especially that of Latour. My (limited) experience with Latour’s work so far makes me think that he and Derrida would be on the same side of many an argument, yet this certainly doesn’t seem to be a widely shared interpretation. Toward the beginning of Harman’s book on Latour, he calls an apparent agreement between Derrida and Latour re: meaning and metaphor “a normally unthinkable alliance” (24). Why should this be so? It seems to me to reflect a fairly uncharitable (though, as I said, fairly common) reading of Derrida.

Catholic historian and author, Fr. Malachi Martin, offers interesting observations concerning the nature of political movements and leaders.  In his book, The Jesuits – The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church, Fr. Martin compares and defines two well-known historical figures.

“[They shared] a clear perception of the only means by which history can be deliberately made, and human destinies can be materially altered.  Gold or pleasure won’t do the trick; not for long, at any rate.., it is not blind economic forces or weight of numbers or even access to power that enables men to make history.  Only an ideal does that.  An ideal by which the wills of individuals can be won.  An ideal for which people are convinced it is worth fighting and sacrificing everything – even life itself.  It is men under the complete control and all-abiding influence of such an ideal accepted without reserve.  Men, in other words, whose ordinary self-interest is transformed by an ideology into an all-absorbing devotion shot through with a high romanticism.“

The two individuals refered to above are V. I. Lenin and Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.

Regardless of how we feel about their respective accomplishments, Fr. Martin gives us an important insight.  Diametrically opposed in goals, both men, nevertheless, keenly understood human motivation and how to exploit it.  Whether motivated by secular humanism or ‘other-worldy’ idealism, the mechanics of political agitation and organization remained the same.  Both employed similar techniques to create and command large numbers of dedicated cadre.

Although separated by approximately 350 years, both Lenin and Loyola understood that it was an organization with military style discipline, supported and guided by a unifying ideology, that would prove succesful in effecting sociopolitical change.  

As we move forward in our struggle for freedom, however, the organizational challenge to bring down tyranny will be different.  An acknowledgement of past organizing strategies, balanced with thinking embracing a new paradigm of freedom will be called for.   It will call for creativity and originality.  Indeed, the voyage into the new era will be into uncharted waters.  Unity, singleness of purpose, and maintaining an integral ideology, must be reviewed and reinterpreted within a context that excludes group mind-control methods of past political leaders and movements.  Less hype, idealism, and romanticism, and more independent analytical thinking will be the key.

The strategy of a leaderless resistance will be become more practical and effective.  The advanced communications ability of this era will favor independent and spontaneous action.  Regimented orchestration from a central leadership will become less necessary.  The Internet has provided a means for open discussion and non-local coordination of activity.  A unifying ideology will still be available, but with the enhancement of more democratic input with less time to ossify – the gap between theory and practice can lessen with virtual realtime empirical testing.  The roles of leader and cadre can become more fluid to meet the challenge of the multi-tentacled and multidimensional New World Order.

We are such a community oriented society that the poor individual gets lost somewhere !! If you ever dare to put ‘me ” over us people would in all probability label you selfish !! Isnt that strange !! An assertion of individuality in our society is akin to rebellion.. Most of our choices are determined by what will our relatives, kin and others think of it.. What makes us happy is secondary…what people think should make us happy takes precedence over that… We lead double lives…I’ve seen couples who have no love lost between them merely tolerate each other and stay through a facade of a marriage for the sake of children or from fear of social censure…They’d rather be miserable than take a stand which could ruffle a few feathers in their community… Why should our choices be driven by what people will think of them.. Why do we tread with such trepidation when it comes to asserting our individuality.. No wonder I see so many of us youngsters struggle with an innate anger since we aren’t allowed to bloom as individuals..rather we’re treated like cattle ( follow the herd mentality)There is no denying the fact that extended family and relatives can be a source of strength, bonding over festivals and special occasions can be a source of joy.. But their opinions shouldn’t govern the way we live.. a community ideally should help an individual flower and not stifle  or inhibit his growth by instilling in him the fear of what people will think… No wonder we put up our best social phase for people other than our immediate family for whom the only our devilish side is reserved.. If we were not to exert too much pressure on ourselves to meet people’s expectation and just be ourselves..if nothing else we’d end up lighter and happier souls 

During my first semester at Harding University, I had a professor pose the following question:

“Are students at Harding focused on saving the world?”

While the exact meaning of “saving the world” is extremely diverse, I strongly disagreed at the time. I maintained that Harding students are too wrapped up in the concept of saving the world to actually get around to accomplishing anything of world-saving merit. Our group mentality, I said, was too jaded and drowned in apathy. As the end of my time at Harding draws ever nearer, I am more and more convinced of how drastically incorrect my opinion was.

Harding University is not perfect in its focus, yet the school has struck me as an institution attempting to become globally invested. With globalization reaching the uttermost, even Arkansas, Harding seems to be hanging in there. While evangelism has always been at the core of Harding’s mantra, I see an international world-saving focus going even beyond that.

Slowly, Harding is churning out more and more globally aware people. I believe the number of Harding students who could intelligently discuss worldview concepts is far greater than it would have been fifteen years ago. Harding’s students, by and large, seem to be nourishing a kind of care for humanity that looks beyond ethnic or political boundaries. Little makes me prouder of my school than when I see compassion without conditions.

Perhaps the better and broader question to be asked is “are students at Harding learning to engage the world?” I believe the answer is yes. Those around me are picking their battles, decisively becoming greener citizens or more motivated for causes of social justice or taking any number of proactive steps.

Through Harding, I have visited nearly twenty different countries in Europe and Asia, which is an opportunity I should never take for granted. Somewhat ironically, Harding, in all of its traditionalist focus, has helped me open my eyes to the world. Through my travels and studies at Harding, I have become determined to abandon ethnocentrism and mindless chauvinism, hoping to adopt goodness as my primary allegiance.

While I would answer the question of world saving differently today, I recognize that Harding, and America, has quite a ways to go still. There are still the lingering vestiges of racism and overzealous nationalism, which will continue to inhibit understanding and peace in the world as long as they survive. And I still believe that Harding’s students, like anyone else, can often become mired in apathy and disillusionment—but not always.

I am convinced that the world can be saved, and I am encouraged by what I see.

Reagan’s success, idealism:

“If you ask me what is the distinguishing mark of the Communist, what it is that Communists most outstandingly have in common, I would not say, as some people might expect, their ability to hate — this is by no means common to them all. I would say that beyond any shadow of doubt it is their idealism, their zeal, dedication, devotion to their cause and willingness to sacrifice.”

– Douglas Hyde (20 year member of the British Communist Party), Dedication and Leadership

“Now man first begins this clarification when he becomes mythologist, and Aristotle has noted the close relationship between myth-making and philosophy. This poetry of representation, depicting an ideal world, is a great cohesive force, binding whole peoples to the acceptance of a design and fusing their imaginative life…the most important goal for one to arrive at is this imaginative picture of what is otherwise a brute empirical fact, the donnee of the world. His rational faculty will then be in the service of a vision which can preserve his sentiment from sentimentality.”

– Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences

The American Ideal — The American Dream:

“God helps those who help themselves.”

– Benjamin Franklin

The Attack on the American Dream:

“It’s called ‘walking-through’…there are those who fight to overthrow the system…then there are those who walk through the system, undermining it, subverting it from within.  Hillary’s always been one to walk through.”

– ex radical on Hillary Clinton, Madame Hillary

“I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.”

– Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, Act 2, 1949

Conclusion:

“The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.”

– Frederick Bastiat, The Law

If one creates knowledge about mind and sense perception styles, then if one creates relation between self-consciousness (self-awareness) and all around existence, then if one tries to imagine reality as existence in its full potential while himself is being just one part of a system; could one then feel nature of reality? Could one then catch the Spirit?

There was a game we used to play
We would hit the town on Friday night
And stay in bed until Sunday
We used to be so free
We were living for the love we had and
Living not for reality

There was a time I used to pray
I have always kept my faith in love
It’s the greatest thing from the man above
The game I used to play
I’ve always put my cards upon the table
Let it never be said that I’d be unstable

Just my imagination
Just my imagination
Just my imagination, it was

-Cranberries; Just My Imagination

Do you remember the days of the garden tables and black boxes? $1 bubble tea, climbing gates and jumping into oceans?

I don’t think I miss these activities much. It’s the person I was then that I miss. Things were light and happy and spirited and friendships and relationships were simple. We had all the time in the world and all the love to give and we didn’t think so much. We just did. We went straight into the mucky sea without a set of extra clothes.

I think I can do that again. I mean, I want to. Since I started working, I’ve met a few older people who seem to feel the need to impart “wisdom” to me. “You’re so young and naïve,” they would say. “Wait a few more years and you’ll change. It’ll all change. You’ll meet people who will do anything to get what they want. And you’ll understand what it means to be jaded.”

Somewhere down this road, I’d like to be able to do aid work. Something that tangibly helps other less fortunate people. But right now, I’m glad I’m where I am. It’s such a learning curve — learning to help in a way that is not tangible. Help brighten up someone’s day, help make someone’s load lighter, help make someone laugh. And it’s equally fulfilling, I think.

So…NEW GOAL! I hope at the end of this life, I will still believe that people are inherently good, that idealism is not naïveté. And then I will tell these people to SUCK IT.

And then I will buy an Airstream and take a roadtrip to anywhere, driving so fast we could fly away.

“Metaphysics is that part of philosophy that examines the composition of the universe, and asks “what is the world — including us — made of?”  “What is the ultimate substance?”

You might assume that this is more interesting to a physicist than a psychologist.  Physics, in fact, gets its name from the Greek word physis, which means “ultimate substance.”  But for psychology, one of the enduring problems is the relationship between the mind and the body.  Is the mind, for example, just the activity of the brain, as many suppose?  Or is it more than that?  This is one of the issues that psychology has inherited from religion as well as philosophy:  We can just as well ask about the separate existence of the soul, and its relationship to mind and body.  Psyche, after all, is the Greek word for soul!

For a variety of reasons, philosophers generally would like it if there were exactly one ultimate substance in the universe — an idea called monism.  Call it a love of simplicity.  But the problem is, of course, which one?  There are two major competitors for the title:

Materialism says that the universe is made entirely of matter.  Matter, for philosophers, includes energy and anything in the physical sense.  Some early Greek philosophers, for example, thought that the whole world (including us) was made of water.  Others thought it was fire.  Others still thought the universe was composed of invisible particles which were neither created nor destroyed called atoms.  Today, physicists (and chemists, and biologists, and most psychologists) have agreed on more complex explanations which, nonetheless, boil down to physical reality.

(Please note that “materialism” does not refer here to the love of material things!)

Idealism is the other competitor for the title.  Idealism says that the universe is made of the spiritual or the mental, which they refer to as idea or the ideal.  Early Greeks also had a variety of ideas regarding what particular brand of ideal constituted the universe.  Some would say the entire world was nothing more than God’s dream (like some Hindu philosophers would argue).  Others saw it as a sort of life force. Others still saw it as the perfection behind the flawed world we perceive. Modern idealist philosophers talk in terms of a world of persons, or a world of qualities.

(Again a note:  “Idealism” does not here refer to living by high ideals!)

Although it may seem to you that materialism is the obviously better answer, that is more a matter of culture than philosophy.  The majority of philosophers have been idealists, because idealism is a bit more reasonable than materialism!  Consider: Have you ever seen “matter?”  If you look at a chair, for example, you see its shape, its colors.  If you touch it, you feel resistance, warmth or coolness.  You can tap it and hear sounds, smell it or lick it (if you really want to), and so on.  You experience many mental events, but never, all by its lonesome, matter!  But ideas — all you have to do is have a thought, and you experience it as self-evident!

(We’ll come back to some more kinds of monism in a bit.)

The usual alternative to monism is called — logically enough — dualism.  It is simply a matter of saying that there are, in fact, two different substances in this universe:  material and ideal.  For psychology, this would be the idea that the mind (or spirit) and the body are both equally real, and that neither can be reduced to the other.

Now, this sounds like the obvious solution to the dilemma.  But there is a serious philosophical problem:  If there are two different substances in the universe, how could they possibly interact?  How does the soul, which is presumed to be without mass or extension, cause the body to act?  And how do the things that happen to the body somehow change from physical activities into a mental thing?

Think about it for a minute.  It is easy to say that, when we see a red apple, the light waves cause chemical reactions in the retina, which cause sensory neurons to fire, which causes neurotransmitters to sail across synapses, which send the neural signals deeper and deeper into the brain, the activity of which is the thing we call “seeing the red apple.”  But no matter how much detail you provide, at no point do you convert all this physical activity into the experience of an apple!

Likewise, if I have a thought that says “I’m going to throw the apple at you,” there’s no question that there will be neural activity, translated into muscular activity, translated into the flight of the apple.  But when, where, and how did that thought become a neural activity?  Some refer to this problem as the mind-body problem.  Others call it the ghost in the machine.

Descartes, in addition to be the father of modern philosophy, also took time out to promote the idea of the reflex.  In his day, hydraulic devices were all the rage — fountains with moving characters.  Descartes simply suggested that living creatures are similar mechanisms (no different than we do today when we suggest that the brain is just a wet computer.)

But Descartes was also a devout Catholic who believed we had an immortal soul.  How that soul influenced the body or the body the soul remained a mystery.  Descartes thought that perhaps the pineal gland (a few inches behind your eyes) was a conduit that let in the “animal spirits” from our souls, which traveled through the nerves and made our muscles move.  A bad guess.

Descartes’ type of dualism is called interactionism:  There are two substances, they interact, I don’t know how.  That, of course, is less than satisfactory.  So other philosophers put in their two cents.  A French priest named Nicholas Malebranche suggested that God intervenes, and makes us experience things when stuff happens to our bodies, and makes our bodies move when we will it.  Since these interactions occur in all of us every day, a million times a day, God must be very busy.  But God is, well, God… so it is clearly a possibility.  This type of dualism is called occasionalism.

Another explanation was given by the German genius Leibniz.  He suggested that, rather than have God intercede a gazillion times a day, He could have simply set the entire universe going in two coordinated paths, one material, one spiritual.  Like I can set two clocks — one an antique pendulum clock and one an electric digital — to keep the same time, even though they are completely different mechanisms and have no contact with each other, so God could have done the same with the body and the mind.  This is called parallelism.  Again, not a bad explanation.

But philosophers (and psychologists) desire more certain knowledge than faith.  So the search for an answer went on.  Perhaps the most impressive of the enlightenment answers came from the lens-grinder Benedict Spinoza.  His theory is called double-aspectism.  It is a monism that looks like a dualism:  The mind and the body, he said, are two sides of one “coin,” which is the true ultimate substance of the universe.

So, if a brick hits you on the forehead, the physical things happening inside your head have another side to them, which is the pain you experience.  And the thought you have to raise your hand to touch the bruise has another side to it, which is the physical act of doing so.  Problem solved!

But perhaps not quite.  If you say that the entire universe has two sides to it, you have to include not only mind and brain.  Spinoza believed that God is what we call the mental side of the universe, and nature is what we call the physical side.  God is the mind of nature, and nature is God’s body!  This is called pantheism.  In Spinoza’s day, it was called atheism, and was grounds in most countries for a bonfire, with you as the guest of honor.

Even if you kind of like the idea of pantheism, keep in mind that it also implies panpsychism — everything has to have its mental side.  So animals and plants have souls and rocks have thoughts (albeit slow and simple ones!).  On the other hand, there can be no soul in heaven that is not attached to some body.  These ideas are a little harder to take.

Much later, William James, “the father of American psychology,” and our best philosopher in his spare time, came up with neutral monism.  He suggested that Spinoza was nearly right, but not quite.  The physical is the one ultimate substance as seen from one perspective, and the mental or spiritual is that substance seen from another perspective.  The ultimate substance is something else, something neutral.  This means that it is quite alright to say that some things can only be seen as physical, others only as mental, and some as both.

The problem that remains is the question we started out with:  What then is the ultimate substance?  One recent suggestion is information.  This doesn’t stray too far from materialism and is popular with the artificial intelligence movement and cognitivists in psychology.  Another suggestion is more idealist, and offers quality as the ultimate substance, quality sometimes having physical characteristics, sometimes mental ones.

William James also came up with another idea called pluralism.  Strictly speaking, of course, dualism is a pluralism.  But he suggested that the were many more than two “ultimate substances.”  There is matter, of course, and mind.  But there is also math and logic — are they physical or are they mental, or are they something else?  And there’s space and time — what are they?  Even the material can be divided into matter, energy, gravity, and so on.  And the mental includes thoughts, perceptions, imagery, feelings, will, choice, etc.  Some of these things may interact (matter and energy, for example, via e = mc2).  Others may not interact with anything else.  The problem?  Now instead of having two ultimate substances we need to reconcile, we have hundreds.

Perhaps the most popular metaphysics among researchers in psychology is called epiphenomenalism.  This approach suggests that, while materialism is clearly the way to go in the sciences, it is also undeniable that there is something real about our inner, psychological life.  So, say the epiphenomenalists, let’s allow that there is something called mind which we have yet to pin down, but let’s also say that the mind is nothing more than a by-product of brain!  Sort of like heat is a by-product of an engine’s operation:  If we could design a perfect engine, all energy would translate into motion instead of heat!  So, if we completely understood the brain, we would no longer need the concept mind.  This is just a form of materialism, although a more humble form.

So the problem remains.  “How does all this relate to ordinary psychology?” you might ask.  Well, think about anything having to do with psychology — love, anger, perception, mental illness, psychopharmacology….  What is depression?  Is it a perceptual or emotional problem?  Or is it a matter of serotonin availability?  Should we use drugs to alter people with problems such as these, or is it a matter of helping them to change their perspectives on life?  If it’s a combination of the two, how do we know how much of the problem is one or the other?  Is it the same for everyone?  The mind-body problem does indeed remain, right at the very heart of psychology.”

The History Of Psychology, Part 2: The Rebirth

Dr. C. George Boeree

© Copyright 1999 C. George Boeree

Ali.♥

“George Berkeley was born March 12, 1685 at Dysert Castle in Ireland.  He went to Trinity College in Dublin, where, among other things, he studied John Locke.

In 1709, he wrote An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision.  He asked, if a man, born blind, recovered his sight, what would he see?  Berkeley reasoned he would see a meaningless array of qualities, which he would interpret as in his mind, and certainly not extended further than his eyes.  Only repeated connection between the sights he sees and those same objects touched would lead him to learn shapes, distances, and so on. Later operations actually restoring people’s sight supported his theory.

Space (extension), therefore, is a mental construct, a matter of coordinating the relationships between what we see and what we experience through touch. We will see this idea of space as a mental thing again in Kant’s theory.

In 1710, he wrote The Principles of Human Knowledge.  If, as Locke said, all knowledge comes through the senses, then we can know nothing that does not come through the senses.  Extension in space, the shapes of things, their resistance to touch, their colors, tastes, smells,… all these do in fact come through the senses.  But when does matter come through the senses?  When do you see matter, or feel it, or taste it?  All you ever experience through the senses are qualities, never a substance!

Matter is therefore a theory without evidence.  Since the atheism of Berkeley’s day relied a great deal on materialism, he felt he had laid a knock-out punch!

Of course, it’s not just atheists who believe in matter — nearly everyone does.  It’s “common sense.”  Dr. Johnson thought he gave the perfect rebuttal to Berkeley’s idea when he kicked a rock as hard as he could:  The pain that rock caused him could hardly be denied!  But Berkeley would (and did) note that all anyone could know about the rock was its shape, location, color, i.e. information of the senses, including the sense of pain if you are stupid enough to kick it.

Esse est percipi, Berkeley said:  To be is to be perceived.

So what happens to things when we are not looking at them, touching them, or kicking them?  Do they vanish every time we turn around?  Berkeley said of course not!  Things — as collections of qualities — always remain, but in God’s mind, which encompasses everything.

When a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound?  Berkeley would say it does, because God hears it.  This is perhaps the purest, and most eloquent, version of idealism ever.  Only the Mahayana (northern) Buddhists have a similar idea in their “mind-only” philosophy.  In their case, they refer not to God but to Buddha-mind.

Berkeley went on to spend some time in Rhode Island, waiting for a grant to start up a college in Bermuda, which never arrived.  Berkeley in California was named for him.  He became (Anglican) Bishop of Cloyne in 1734, and died at Oxford in 1753 at the age of 68.”

The History Of Psychology, Part 2: The Rebirth

Dr. C. George Boeree

© Copyright 2000 C. George Boeree

Ali.♥

Exercising excessive escapism
Struggling to kick the habit
Believing realism would be the exorcism
Ironically opting to masturbate.

Written By : Heath Muchena

© HTMM ,2009 : Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given, and with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Hope tell you there is light at the end of the tunnel which is dark..

Hope is what keeps you going like the soothing song of a lark

Hope is what should be trusted not your fears.

A smile is what you ought to face life with not just tears…

Hope helps you triumph and move ahead in life

hope is what helps you sale through conflict and strife

Hope helps you overcome the pain..

Despite a tumultuous storm, hope keeps you sane.

To hope against hope , people say is all in vain..

But to keep the flame of hope burning despite the odds is the biggest gain…

Yet another session of notes to myself.. I feel I am becoming too much a of a cynicist…so thought I’d remind myself of the undeniable power that faith, hope and optimism bring to one’s life.. It is good to be in sync with reality, but one should never stop looking at the glass of life as “half full”

Heart’s content.

We have all used it or have heard it used. We use that term daily, mindlessly. We can certainly thank Shakespeare for opening up our minds to this idealism or rather, our hearts.

Content; feeling or showing satisfaction with one’s possessions, status, or situation , (Mirriam Webster)

However, when we use the term, we use it in conjunction with doing something to excess. Or until CONTENTMENT. Not necessarily to ‘satisfaction’.  So are we confusing excess with contentment?

Recently, my dear friend said that she wanted me to drive to an event, so she could drink to [her] heart’s content. Someone else said they would eat to their heart’s content. Why is it we are all trying to console our hearts with things? Some dance to their heart’s content. Some sing to their heart’s content.

My question is….does doing those ‘things’ in ‘excess’ really remove all wounds so the heart can be/feel ‘content’? In asking that, is the heart ever really, truly content?  We seem somehow lead by the idealism in contentment of our hearts. Is it our hearts indeed that need consoling or is it in fact our spirits instead? Do we mistake that for a feeling of euphoria that we believe we can control our own fate….by controlling our hearts state of contentment? In asking that, is a heart contented than a happy heart?

If so, is a happy heart a truly happy host?

This is the title of Journalist Pinki Virani’s latest book.. Her erstwhile books Bitter Chocolate ( on Child Sexual Abuse in middle class and rich families) and Aruna’s Story ( the real life story of a nurse who vegetated in coma after being raped by a ward boy)  were hard-hitting works of non fiction. In this latest novel she makes a debut in fiction, she blends sociopolitical events in modern India with the story of six different women as seen through the eyes of Saraswati, the sutradhar of the story. The book is a comment on our times, how we Indians don the facade of modernity and still refuse to let go of caste, tradition and down right cruel practices like female foeticide. Kudos to the author was interweaving fiction with reality in a subtle yet effective manner. She’s managed to weave in a lot be it Shiv Sena’s hooliganism and atrocities in Mumbai, the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Bollywood’s eccentricities and egos,bhopal gas tragedy… She succeeds in giving us an unbiased picture of the conflicts and contradictions that shape modern-day India and differentiate it from all that was “Bharat” . A rather interesting read for it combines the best of fiction and non fiction genre…

Someone just phoned into the local radio station and delivered one of the most hideously rose-tinted patriotic, tourism-saturated motivational/scolding speech to all of us ‘pessimistic’ people who need to understand just what a wonderful country we live in. I don’t normally fire off rant posts, but motherfucker. Speaking as someone who is just as eager as any other average citizen of any country, to appreciate and enjoy the country of my birth, and as someone who recently burst into tears of frustration watching another Julius Dilemma story on Carte Blanche, this kind of tripe may not have gloomy weight of extreme pessismism, but nonetheless does a fantastic job in making most of the people in this country sitting ducks, with it’s ‘but what about Table Mountain?!’ mentality.
FYI, living on the same piece of earth with natural wonders and being a tourist destination and hosting the fucking Soccer World Cup does not cancel out our problems. Dwelling on them is as daft and counterproductive as dwelling on the problems themselves, but ten times more frustrating because the sunshine spouters are usually the same people completely and utterly ignorant of the gravity of the politics in this country, or completely unaware that this is actually not how everyone in the world lives. Worst of all, ignorance shows that you’ve bought into the national marketing scheme. Pick n Pay is ‘Inspired By You’. Desmond Tutu is halele-ing on the top of a mountain. The Proudly South African stamp is on every bottle of pickle made in every person’s backyard.

I love my country because it’s the place I live, and not the other way around. I love it because it is necessary to care about my own surroundings, because I care about the society in which I live. Because I live in it. I do not love this country because I am a South African. I no sooner picked South Africa to be born in, as I picked the colour of my skin. This is just where I am, and as such, to put it bluntly, one does not **** on one’s own doorstep. I don’t love this country because we are a ‘melting pot of cultures’ – that is incidental, historical, and considering the context, hysterical. I love this country because I should. Because if everyone got tired of the status quo and left, there would be no-one left worth having around to change it. So I feel distressed when I find myself considering leaving this country in relief, should the chance arise. It’s new, and it’s how I know that something’s wrong.

I’m not suffering from too-much-pessimism. I just can’t avoid reality. Suggesting that our crime rate ‘makes us better travelers’ because we are ‘more aware of where we should and shouldn’t be’ is stunningly ludicrous. Pick any country in the world and it’s common sense not to walk down a dark alleyway, but in most countries worrying about being hijacked outside your front gate isn’t something people generally experience, so it makes sense that when they have to come here, they get a little worried about everything they’ve heard.
The whole issue started with the story about how German sports officials have warned German soccer players that while in S.A. for the World Cup, they should not leave their hotel rooms without being fitted with a bullet-proof vest. While I agree that this is a tad over the usual paranoia levels for even a born-and-bred ‘pessimistic’ South African, it is definitely not an indication of Germany, or any other country’s ‘ignorance of self-safety’. It is the indication of a life-experience very different from the one many of us in this country are used to, one in which crime exists, but is a vastly different creature than the ugly monster it is in this country.
Our president sings a song with the words ‘Bring me my machine gun’ in it, the leader of the ANCYL (who the president recently described as a ‘future leader’ of the country) talks about how they are ‘willing to kill’ for the president, last weekend a 3 year old child was shot and killed by police because they mistook the piece of pipe he was holding for a gun (Even if it was a gun – how significant is a 3 year old child as a shooting threat, that he could not be dealt with in a different way?) and the youth league representative of the Free State has declared that racists (as they define them, which really has very little to do with actual prejudice, and rather depends on whether you agree with their ideas or not) are as good as criminals, and should be shot to death.

Though it is always disgusting, horrifying and devastating to hear of the rape of an infant, it is no longer a new horror. It is frustrating to hear politicians and spokespeople speak like this, and it is horribly difficult to maintain the same ‘Alive With Possibility’ outlook we all launched into happily, six or seven years ago, in the face of it all. Especially when things are only getting worse.

We should be concerned, when people who are thinkers before they are consumers, switch from a positive outlook to a negative one. We should be on alert. The political environment of a country has a huge impact on the stress levels of it’s citizens, and there’s is no better indicator of a country’s state than the outlook of it’s moderate population – that is, those who are generally neither extremely pessimistic or extremely optimistic. This is precisely where I would have positioned myself for the last ten years or so – but today, it’s a different story.

“What can we take on trust in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness, pride – nothing is secure, nothing keeps. “ Since Euripides said that some two and a half millennia ago, much water has run under the bridge! I wonder which way would Euripides tweak it had he lived long enough to witness the Dark Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution , the age of Colonialism and nuclear bombs, the www boom and the current Recession !Poor guy would be left with such a sense of exaggeration. Really, too much change has happened to this world in too less time. But the question that looms large is, Is this change for free? Or does it come with its own price? If it does, who is paying for it?

I personally hate using numbers but when they tell you a story, I prefer putting my ears onto the ground for a moment. I came across this beautiful video some time back called The Miniature Earth. It has a unique point to make. It says, if we could turn the population of the earth into a small village of 100 people, keeping the same proportions we have today, it would look something like this…there are 50 men, 50 women,.. 9 are disabled,…43 live without basic sanitation,18 live without an improved water source,6 people own 59% of the entire wealth of the community,13 are hungry or malnourished,14 cant read, only 7 are educated in the secondary level, only 12 have a computer, only 3 have an internet connection, If you keep your food in a refrigerator, your clothes in your closet, if you have a bed to sleep in, and a roof over your head, you are richer than 75% of the entire population,…If you have a bank account, you are one of the 30 wealthiest people in the world,..and so on. And the thought that they leave you with is, Appreciate what you have and do your best for a better world.

Some days just go into your personal history. That same day, I had watched the movie” The Motorcycle Diaries” and was seething with an urge to make my own world with my own rules. And this video happened. It served me as something more than just an amusing data interpretation exercise. On reflection , I found a great connection between the Great Wall of China and poverty, between the Pyramids and educational inequity, and it is that, all of them are man made. And yes, to make it sound a little truer, this “man” is made of you and I !And we made it.Period. But if theres something to look up to, its this.. if all these injustices, inequities are made made, wouldn’t its mitigation just be a case of another concerted human effort? It looked like a quasi inspirational moment . So if I am the reason why 1 in 3 children who begin primary school will drop out before reaching 5th grade, if more than half of us would lull our kids to sleep with just hungry stomachs , I are sure kidding myself with all the advertisement of an Incredible India or that the world is flat. I realised something needs to be done.

But What?

And then one day, good luck struck noble intentions.I came across this advertisement in the Times of India about a certain movement which is to start in India by the name , Teach for India. Drawing its inspiration from the hugely successful program Teach for America in the US, which was started by a 21 year old Princeton graduate called Wendy Kopp some 20 years back, Teach for India promised to put India’s most outstanding college grads and young professionals as leaders and change makers in the low income and governmental schools and in the communites there in with the vision that, one day every child will have an excellent education. That one square foot of advertisement looked like a lot of what I was always wanting , a space for idealism fuelled by a paradigm of service and that one magic chance to change the world. It doesn’t need any explaining that the little extra between the ordinary and the extra ordinary is one’s education. I cant imagine my childhood without books, fairies, summer vacations, my loving teachers, and those letters from hostel to Ma. And I cant imagine that for any child. With the fond view of a world where every child could get back his childhood, where every child is an owner of his dreams, where every child has a sentimental convocation photo on his dashboard, where every child feels that he/she is born to make manifest the glory of God in each one of them, I joined Teach for India. One step closer towards a really flattened world.

You be an engineer or a doctor, a travel guide or a businessman, a mathematician or a musician , if you think of each and every profession in the paradigm of service, as a thankful way of giving back to the part we owe to our existence in this world, we would be a better place. With around 600 million young people waiting for change to happen in India today, what more beautiful a concept can there be, than to fillip this completely renewable and assumingly inexhaustible source of youthful energy to create millions of nodes of changes in every
gully, nukkad and crossroad of India.Just imagine. One Gandhi, multiplied six hundred million times. Crazy mathematics. That, is the power of “Be”ing the change. And that is the space where wonderful organisations like Teach for India aspire to work.

And lastly, I would leave you with a thought to reflect on. Someone once said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves – who am I to be brilliant, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world…”

For change to happen, you either wait to see, or you choose to Be! Take your pick.

(It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story. Join the movement. Be the voice.For applying for the two year, full-time paid fellowship program with Teach For India log on tohttp://www.teachforindia.org/applynow.php )

Surya Pratap Deka,

Teach for India Fellow 2009.–
People make fortunes. I make a difference.

Why are we all running the proverbial rat race ?? Why would we rather be busy round the clock  than have sometime to pause and think about what is it that we really want.. We’re perpetually on the move it gives us an excuse ( a rather brilliant one at that) to not face our fears, our anxieties or even face our own selves.. For if we were ever to pause it would give us time to think,contemplate or even reflect.. which is something we’d rather procrastinate over… We don our masks and keep running.. to earn moolah,success, get famous,find love or chase some ephemeral dream or the other.. We bend backwards over to please people in the workplace ,it’s another matter in the process we end up hurting those who really matter to us…we take our loved ones for granted, they are at the receiving end of all our raving and ranting..we trample over feelings and yet keep running…we lose our sleep,our peace of mind and sometimes even the core of our existence…yet we keep running… What is it that we are chasing ? Why don’t we ever have the courage to introspect and do some soul-searching ? That would mean asking some hard questions to oneself and those around us…Who wants to do that ? Sometimes I feel we’re not running to chase something rather we’re running away from ourselves  to avoid facing how we feel..