Project Freedom

Freedom - this might be one of the most powerful words ever coined. With the help of a few alphabets it represents an indefatigable urge of a living being. I’ve never heard of something that conveys so much passion in so few letters. 

Freedom, almost seems like a magic word to me. There’s nothing that a man can or should value more and there I violated my own principle by imposing my idea on you, or did I ? For you too have a brain and may very well decide that it is love which is the most important value of all, or hard work you might say ( if you live in China). But I too have a freedom to let my own views out and therefore, the onus is upon the receptor to judge my statement and then to accept it or not only after due deliberations.

The fact of the matter is that there are a very few people who actually analyse what is happening to them and are thus even capable of evaluating all the dimensions of freedom and what it really means. What is it and who is stopping whom? Is it then an affirmative right or is it some sort of a restriction on one party to not violate the rights of the other. 

My actions, the one that I supposedly am performing completely free of any influence whatsoever, might in reality be the expression of the social values that have been forced upon me from my childhood. There is a search for a characteristic ‘me’ in the life of every individual and the tid bits of information that comprises this basic question cannot be procured separately from the society that we live in. The whole of our existence is shaped by the lens that we adopt for viewing and filtering all the information that gets to us, is it not therefore implied that a part of us is also the society that we lived in? 

That might be an obvious statement. But, then let us take it further. Are we therefore not defined by the people surrounding us, for it is their thought patterns that we ultimately are going to imbibe and then shape our incoming stimuli through. 

The unlimited expression of any individual is thus a myth, as much of a myth as is the existence of big foot. Apparently every one of us only has had small feet. The fixture on individual right to freedom has been a part of the modern discourse. The label of mad is given to anyone who deviates a certain degree from the norm, even he/she does it for the expression of their true selves. It’s not surprising that it is the people who’s job is to analyse their own emotions that are regarded as the most ‘weird’ or even as mad. Artists, the expression of the bare human soul are not likely to fit with any one size system. 

They are the people who’ve had the courage to dissociate from the popular trends and then to delve into their own minds. Artists have therefore been able to change how people think about themselves by being able to insert their own touch into the general. Acceptance of a particular trait is preceded by ridicule and then a grudged allowance. 

For freedom to be expressed, courage is the foremost requirement. Courage to be yourself is a difficult job, as it robs the people of an easy characterisation matrix that they’ve been using. For knowing an individual, especially a unique one, it requires years and years of interaction and experience. It is here that the heuristics serve their purpose. 

The point that I’m trying to make is that a life not analysed isn’t free, for you are falling for the popularly established forms of perception and judgement making. Not only that, in your daily life, all the decisions that you make are going to be derived from an external framework, which might be that of the religion that you follow, or that imposed by your parents, or that of your peers or whatever. If you don’t analyse the why of your life, your life also remains a big question mark. 

Not that everyone does care. I don’t think most of the people want to care and the others can… but still if I was the only one who could see the chains that the people drag at all times, should I have kept quiet or put some on myself so as to not appear different?

Tender are the words

Where books are burnt and the mind is cowered with fear, 

where the so called doyens of public morality are given a free hand 

where the voice of reason is stifled with wild emotion

where words come out of depth of government rule books

And led into ever narrowing thought and action.

Into that hell of bondage, my father, let my country slumber

--RN Tagore 

Since the censor board, the hooligans, the shrill 'sentimentalists', the government officials are now so afraid of the dissident voices, or even the truth for that matter, wouldn't it be fair to edit the redundant calls of freedom made by past revolutionaries? Preempting that kind of an action, I decided to edit the famous ' Where the mind is without fear' of Tagore. 

I hope I will soon get congratulationary notes by the MHA, by the press networks owned by media barons, by industry lobbyists and by the fanatics belonging to every caste, religion or creed. Truly it may be watershed moment in the annals of our history. Already over the years, the ability to express has been stifled with years of subtle changes to law, with incarcerations and with unwillingness to protect the outspoken critics and so it seems only natural that we leave any hypocrisy of freedom of expression behind. 

Benevolent Shielders

Surely the infantile public that resides in India cannot bear anything that challenges the preset notions, surely it cannot handle anything slanderous, anything that deviates from traditional discourse. The doctors have coined a term for it, Outrage Violenta. It is a deadly disease spread by any sort of enlightening conversation. Recommended precautions are staying an arms length from any such person and gagging them as soon as possible. Culling is done if the other measures don't work. 

For years we have heard the discourse of outraged modesty and hurt sentimentality. Any unnatural ideas such as atheism, female rights, sex or for that matter any difficult subject has been banned for it hurts emotions. The definition of the rational man, for determining offence is now modelled on the victim from a Disprin ad. It seems odd that despite having a fundamental right of expression, the only expression allowed is the repetitive bleating of the sheep. Government officials have recommended bleating highly to relieve one self of stress and attain 'Moksha'. 

Learning From the Best

North Korea, or rather the Democratic People's Republic of Korea holds elections and describes itself as a socialist state. There is an elaborate cult of personality around its leaders with it's people believing the leader Kim Jong il to have created the universe and the weather. There are no underground literary critics or dissident writers. Foreign works are mostly limited to fairy tales. It seems that every one is perfectly happy there, gauging by the lack of any opposition to governments policies and ideologies.

The notion of a democratic state, the notion of a constitution, of police all amount to null when they cannot setup a mechanism to protect its citizens, when they cannot create an atmosphere of liberal debate. The expression of 'disturbing peace' has been used so often that it has become the automatic response mechanism in coping with any threatening idea. What is then the difference between us and a fascist state, except the musical chairs played in political circles? 

'Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings' said Christian Johann Heinrich Heine. He was proved right, agonisingly so when the Nazi regime came in power. This is the fundamental nature of ideas. If the right ones aren't allowed, if the wrong ones aren't debated, then hypocrisy rules and the most hypocritical ones get to rule. I desperately hope for a different future for our nation. But for that, we all may have to be a little less sensitive, a little more open, a lot more compassionate and understanding. 

'Going on the other way' is a topic too sensitive for Indian ears to write

Ravi can't be dimmed

In one of the best cinematic performances, Mel Gibson stands as the Scottish hero William Walace in front of his demoralised army and exhorts them to fight for their rights. The lines that he uses have since become immemorial. This is what he says as a response to a soldier who asks him why should he fight when he could run and survive.
“Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live — at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!!!’’

In the fight against tyranny, there are seldom such heroes which can galvanise entire communities and lead them into a fight for the higher cause, there are seldom such men who don’t care about their own well being in the fight for what’s right and what ought to be, rather than compromise and deal with what is. It wouldn’t be wrong to say, that it is only because of handful of these men that our nation stands today.

Mark of Honesty
DK Ravi was one such man. He might not look like Mel Gibson, but his deeds were just as worthy. The mark of an honest IAS officer in our country is sadly not the awards that were bequeathed to him, but the number of transfers that he was awarded with and in this case, the officer was a highly decorated war hero with 28 transfers to his name. He was also currently fighting as a one man army against the land mafia, and winning it too, gauging by the extreme step that had to be taken by them to control him.
The question on everyone’s mind shouldn’t be ‘who killed him?’ but rather, what has happened to us as a society that makes punishing its finest officers the norm rather than the exception. In the past too, officers like Durga Shakti Nagpal and Mr. Khemka have been taken to the books for doing their duty honestly. There’s an implicit understanding prevalent in the civil society that ‘too much’ honesty wouldn’t be tolerated and the price for that would have to be paid ultimately.

Cowered down Nation
That the people have come en masse to protest against the irregularities of this death just goes on to show how fed up the people have become of the corruption in their daily lives. The vicious circle of giving in to corrupt demands and thus further promoting them seems to have entered it’s breaking point. The problem is that we have stopped questioning these practices and we seem to have accepted corruption as inevitable. No one wants to be the hero and stand up for what’s right.

The ideology of ‘chalta hai’ is what makes the problem stick even after so many years of independence. The roots of the problem go down to the core of people’s thinking. Instead of choosing the morally upright candidates, the public goes for the ones who they think can solve their problems by hook or by crook. No one is concerned much about the ramifications of selecting a dishonest politician on broader society, if he can ‘deliver’ on the development front.
The politicians too, having had spent massive amounts on getting elected, want ‘returns’ on their investment. They encourage the corrupt segments of the executives to get their ‘cuts’ and have to bow down to the interests of the businessmen, the mafia who had financed their victory. From the ballot to the highest public office, the entire process is thus mired in darkness.

Honouring a Hero
It is in these circumstances that officers like DK Ravi have risen. They have striven to keep clear of the pressures of the politicians in doing their duty and given a big blow to the economic interests of the corrupt. But, what they have really done is more than that, what they have done is to give birth to an idea. An idea that it’s not acceptable to be corrupt any longer, that an officer has to do his duty no matter what the consequence, an idea that true courage requires us to walk on the right path despite all the allurements and dangers of doing so. Public imagination has been caught by this idea, an almost romantic notion of selfless duty. There would be protests, there would be marches, there would be an intense scrutiny on this case. But that is not how we truly honour our heroes. To truly honour them, we need to change our mindset, to stop accepting corruption as a norm, to strive like vigilantes against all the wrongs in the society. This we have to do now and not in our twilight years, when we have more than had our share and we take up the cause of good as a saving grace for our soul.

When it comes to it, dying on our beds, we would happily trade all of the years of cowering under tyranny of the wicked for that one glorious moment of upholding justice like Ravi.

The only real fight

WHY DO WE LIKE WHAT WE DO? 

(poverty- consumerism- finding your true path... last of A.S i speak)

Poverty has immense power in shaping the life of a human. This isn’t merely the power to deprive him of his resources. The power extends beyond that. It extends inwards, more so than it does so outwards. It breaks him. The spirit itself is suppressed, something no statistic can grasp, because all his parts are there, just not the most important one. 

Poverty has been defined variously. The poverty line is a popular method for defining it. Simply, the poverty line is a measure of the minimum amount of nutrients needed for a person to live healthily and a few more necessities, taken from the basket of common goods. It is not uncommon for this basket to be limited to only the essentials and even if we consider the public services available to the poor, in itself this definition isn’t likely to fulfil the conditions for respectable living. 

I have a different belief about poverty.

Poverty cannot be comprehended by merely making it a standalone definition taken out of the latest book of the art of economics. If the criterion of modern consumption was applied to Gandhiji, then no doubt he would have been declared a poverty stricken man. He ate or drank much below what the nutrition line stipulates, his consumption of goods was perhaps almost negligible and his self imposed fasts sound like bouts of starvation. 

And if we consider another case, this time of a  Tribal Chief. This chief resides in the interior jungles of the continent. He has the largest hut in the vicinity, he gets the best land for growing his crops and the pick of the meat whenever a hunt is organised. Of course he has 7 wives, 21 children and a whole array of spears and maces. 

would you call him poor? No way we would say, considering the action that he’s getting. He is also perhaps the most respected member of his proud tribe. 

But, in fact we do call him poor. He has no job to speak of, negligible consumption and the value of the goods he generates isn’t traded plus the social labour from which he benefits cant be measured in dollars.

The problem of the poverty line is that it has been designed keeping in mind the needs of a person living in a modern day (western) society. It also completely neglects the aspirations, needs, cultural differences and a whole lot of other things. It neglects the happiness of the people involved. That should not be the case. 

Poverty at its very core is a measure of the inability of a man to make use of his environmental resources in the best possible manner. That does not necessarily mean the adoption of a peculiar lifestyle. If the tribals of Nyiamgiri are happy in their cultural setting, then we cannot with our biased eyes look down upon them. They have the right to live their lives as they see fit. More often than not the agents of modernism have gone to these prosperous communities and made them miserable just by introducing things that they didn’t need in the first place. 

        THE REAL TROUBLE

The trouble with consumerism in the modern day world is that it makes you feel miserable if you don’t have the range of products that the industry advocates. It is not necessary for you to have those products, but since the industries would go out of business if the products don’t sell, the people are FORCED into a world view that recognises only a single parameter of prosperity. 

It is as if I forced a view of prosperity that depends only on the amount of dried shit that you had stored with you. If you don’t have adequate storage, I offer to provide you shit houses that will take your shit and store it in lockers. Since one type of shit cannot be differentiated from the other, these shithouses can keep on lending shit to their customers and at any given time, a whole lot of shit remains in circulation. 

If shit is replaced by money and shithouses with banks, then you’d see how I elegantly described the global economy. The good thing about this approach is that we know that people don’t need the shit. They don’t know that about money. 

Truly the invention of money was a great game changer in the societal evolution. It drove out the emotional value of a product out of the equation. Also, there was no need to carry your cow all the way to the market every time you needed a dress. 

But the trouble began when people began to have so much of money, that if they ever brought goods with that amount, they wouldn’t be able to even have a look at each article even if they spend a lifetime at it. The rich man of ancient world was the one who had 50 cows. Mukesh Ambani can buy 50,000,000 cows if he wants to. That money in his shares and bonds and whatnot represents the collective valuation given to the pieces of paper. It is the value determined more by trust  that the other person would similarly value that thing, than by its actual value. 

The things that sit in the shops, the goods in short are the ultimate representation of the use lessens of the entire cycle. We don’t need most of the things sitting pretty in the shops. Because we want to buy them, we endlessly spend our health, mental energy and time on generating another value less thing. Then finally we get paid, we give our banks trust in form of credit cards and then take our object of desire. The object of desire gives us a dopamine rush that comes out of getting something new, but soon it dies out and then the cycle starts again.

We have been made addicts, slaves of the products we consume. Respect and love come for that price of abstract bank numbers going up on one side and decreasing on the other side. It is as if our society is collectively drifting away from reality, into the virtual world, into the fake relations, forced interactions… and what not. 

WHAT MATTERS… AT LEAST FOR ME !!

The most real of all things are perhaps the emotions that we feel, the surge of hormones, the incomprehensible intuitions, the feelings of spirituality, of trust and of love. These have been ricocheted off the steel of our hardened minds. Plus this overconsumption is heating up the earth too, and we like the frogs in slowly boiling water are never going to find that out. 

Poverty thus becomes a matter of perception. The poor doesn’t have the things valued by a vast majority of the society, or not in a quantity that a vast statistically uniform majority would approve. A poor man is subjected to the social disapproval, implicit belief that he’s an inferior being who cannot improve his condition. And the tragedy is that the poor guy believes that shit. He stops working for making a decent living, because he has been told so many times that he cannot do it. 

The other tragedy is that the image of “making it big” is inevitably taken from a western perspective. The rich white man driving his Buggati on endless highways, with a starving supermodel and what not. If we all believe that is what is valuable, then it becomes valuable, the experience of that car, of being with that girl, of drinking vile drinks, of whatever the society can come up with being valuable. And the poor man works stupidly towards that, not realising what he needs. 

In a way, all of us are prisoners of the modern life. I type on this computer and tomorrow I’d need a new one, for which I will have to help in producing a shitty thing to slave for another computer. What I really need is appreciation, love, nourishment, company. This can be given without these material goods, but since not everyone values my line of thoughts, I’d be considered mad for leaving everything and living in jungles. 

We have to fight a system that degrades humanity. Our value isn’t because of the printed notes of paper or the things that they buy. Only companies can benefit from this mentality. 

Create your intrinsic value. Shatter the mould of peer pressure, of media, of everything that rebels against the human tendency to CREATE IT’S OWN ORGANISMIC INTRINSIC VALUE. 

If you traverse on this road, it is necessary to consume less, less goods, less media and instead meditate on your own thoughts. Perhaps even think more, read more and experience a whole lot more. One has to trust himself and carve out the way, everyone’s own way.

I know this looks hard, but come this is the way. `-Rumi

I am in a quandary. How can I justify switching on a light bulb?

This isn't the question that the philosophers in the past had had to face. But before you can ponder upon it, let's just consider what all goes into lighting the bulb. The task itself doesn't consume many calories or rattle brains.

The process of reaching out and pressing a button produces a reaction wherin electrons are hurtled headlong into the filament of the bulb, where they get excited and climb up an energy shell in their atomic structure. These electrons are being pushed by another reaction taking further off in a generation unit somewhere where coal is burnt and the heat used to drive a turbine which excites a magnet which propels these electrons.

Further back, the coal is taken out of mines by digging out earth and the vegetation that lay above it. The process of turning on the bulb represents just the last stage in the process which spans from the absorption of energy by the organism that was turned into coal and the eventual liberation of it through our light bulb.

By turning on the light, we are taking part in the process wherein the forests are cleared, earth is dug up and the smoke released. If we can't see it happening in front of our eyes, we don't see the process as it is. We see only the part of it which we accept.

The chicken that you eat, ultimately comes from the bird that once lived. You can't deny that. You don't care about the feelings of the bird, it's dreams, aspirations and happiness. You don't because all you've ever seen is the animated bird that wants you to eat it. The advertisement, who's role is to remove the guilt of the wrong being done in the process and give to you the final product as a gift, which you are made to think you deserve.

The mobiles in our hands in this manner constitutes several trees that stood over the land that must have been dug to pull the minerals that are essential in its hardware, the earth that must've been violated, the animals that must've been driven out and the insects that must've been killed. If we had the perspective to see all of this simaltaneously,we wouldn't have been able to carry on with our lives for very long.

The point is we don't even consider the norms that have been set in the society. It's a slavery that we have accepted.

                                                                 Freedom

The concept of freedom is a complex one. It isn't the mere freedom from the overt controls of others. A person might be in chains for a revolutionary cause and yet be more free than any of the 'free' men slaving under an oppressive regime.

The mind, determines how free you get to be. The modern man has submitted his mind. Literally bowed without being able to realise that it has done so. The cleverness underlying the consumerist culture is making the consumer think that he is the king, while in reality the tiny threads of enslavement emanate from every and each one of the product that he uses.

THE SIMPLE TRUTH

What did I just Blabber in the paragraph above? The simple truth.

Imagine the phone. We were alright without the smart phone. Infact the marginal productivity that it does add is decimated by the amount of time wasted by us on its several distractionary features. We continally have to spend time updating, recharging, searching for apps and n other things. We are on a lookout for newer models, for newest features, fawning over every new stripe of metal added to the plasticky screen.

EVEN if you were a slave bought by a 17th century english baron, you wouldn't have spent this much of time and attention for your master. True, we do it out of our own self will. But then, how much of our self will is our own?

The action of a DRUG ADDICT who conciously makes a decision to consume a drug isn't an action of free will. He cannot, EVEN if he wants to, get clear of his habit. The habit drives him to not only consume more of the drug, but also to find new ways to finance his 'habit'. The habit has extended its tentacle into every sphere of his life, moulding him, his actions and ultimately him in the apparent process of serving him. Clever.

CLEVERER still is how we fall prey to advertisements subtle messages in films and the peer pressures of social media. We emulate others, without analysing how or why we do it. IF the hero on the screen smokes, we automatically integrate the action as being cool in our inner self.

NO one has to tell us that the sleek puffing of the cig is a cool thing to do. Since we too want to do the cool thing, we too buy the cig and get hooked. The society has absorbed many such assumptions. These are passed on and adapted. Its like PASSING on the chains on our individual thought process and extending it to the entire humanity. Every one is forced to think along the same lines.

THE globalised world has set its standards of happiness, deteremined by products. You cannot be happy if you don't have a certain product. That is happiness in so many advertisements, movies, shows and what not..... and finally you start to beleive. Happiness is using old spice deodrant, happiness is using apple computer, riding lamborghini..... what not.

Each of these products represent a part of the mother earth cut out brutally out of her breasts. The cars that we ride in with the petrol extracted from polluting drills, built with the iron which had been lying in the pristine jungles, with the coal who's extraction destroyed an entire ecosystem.

LIVES

EVERY PRODUCT that you use has cost some lives. It would squirt blood if the metaphor could be translated into reality. It would also squirt the chains with which it has enslaved your mind into accepting that product as the barometer of your success and happiness.

HUMAN mind cherishes and values object with the social criterion over all else. We like gold because everyone wants it. A tulip mania occurred breifly in Netherland in 17th century. Everyone wanted a tulip, because everyone wanted it.

OUR present mania has gone on for a long long time. Industrialisation created the inevitable need for a way to sell the overproduced products without regard to needs. Terms like Nationalism, patriotism, duty were used to force people to accept the order. Workers had to leave pristine natural setting and work in dirty factories because their "NATION" required it.

ALL of the nations used the same SLOGAN, the incessant chorus of enimity with other nation. We had to work for that imaginary idea of nation, to preserve it, to help it grow. Every dissent was crushed by a machinery of law. Armies sprouted to ensure that the "NATION" functioned.

What is this "NATION"? A naiton is a society united by a delusion abou tits ancestory and a common hatred of its neighbours. It is an idea exploited by the powerful classes to maintain its control. It is a perverse exploitation of the majority of the people, in which the people themselves let themselves being raped by the industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats and what not.

WHAT CAN we do.... ?

Take the red pill (previous post).

What the f**k are we doing? Destroying everything for the things we don't need. Hypnotised by the ads... we are killing the animals, environment.. and our own souls......

I don't know what the right way is.
But this isn't it.
We are digging our own graves with the kind of society we have.

We have to pause and look at the branch beneath us that we are senselessly chopping off with an ever evolving technology.

Do you know the way? Because I am in a quandary, if you get what I am saying....................

Red Pill

THE most important thing in your life.

What does this sentence mean for you? Does it conjure the image of a car, a bike, your expensive mobile perhaps. It might be a relative, a friend, a mission, an idealogy or even a memory.

Increasingly, the sentence just refers to the quest of achieving more money, power or even a status. The funny thing about it is that all of it makes sense, but only as long as you are in the process of acheiving these. When you have a hope of making it big in your life, these words mean everything. When you have an education, support and opportunity, then it would be ludicrous for you to risk it all for something stupid. That is how a law abiding citizen is made.

IF..... we wonder about the grass on the other side of the fence, not the other side really, but further off into the unkept lawns of the people who really don't have grass, but really a few patch of brown mould that they pretend is grass. That grass is definitely not greener. What I am referring to in an inarticulate manner are the millions upon millions of people who have been left out of the dream.

THEY don't retaliate, can't fight. They work in the lowest levels. Forever filled with self hate and pity, they roam the dirtiest parts of the world, beleiving everything that the rich have to say about them. THEY are more than you can realise. THEY are invisible. THEY are not part of the dream.

The dream of the modern life encompasses the quintessential house, car, corporate job, shopping and as many products as there are almost a part of the identity of the successful person. We don't consider it wrong to live such a life. There is nothing immoral in buying unnessary things that pile up in our house, that line our garages, that drain our credits and yeah..... also destroy the environment.

If I am not the part of the dream life and cannot even pretend to be somewhere near that, then what does that make me? I am definitely not the model citizen that the corporates want. I cannot afford to spend on an overpriced cup of coffee in a decked up environment, just because I need to feel good. I need food more than I need to satisfy my artificially bloated ego.... hehe... that sounds mean. But i didn't mean that. I was actually talking about the artificially deflated ego, that can only be brought to bear the pressure of modern life if enough money is pumped in keeping it running.

Blah.. Blah.. What is the solution to the problem you point out.


GOOD question, if you asked it. GOOD enough if you read it with an avid interest.

This so called problem has been around for as long as we began to communicate in broken sounds that seemed like a language. The solution has been quite a simple affair as well. Untill we lived the life of a nomad, consumerism was limited to extraction of required resources and that too sustainably so that you can take that resource again next time.

Living like a nomad is a bit impractical I understand. So what we need to do is to first to know our own minds. It is akin to realising the source of our inner conflicts, complexes, desires. You need to know your enemy before you develop a strategy to take on your enemy, (not that your mind is your enemy). But surely the adverts, social media, songs and the digital world takes advantage of our weak control on our own selves to modify our behaviour for their own interest.

SHITT...

I know its nothing new. You probably know that it's happening. Billions of dollar on behaviour of consumers and means and methods of controlling their behaviour are not spent on merely creating banners.

HOW TO KNOW YOUR MIND

So far, meditation has served as the most effective tool for this. Staying without any stimulation allows your innermost thoughts to softly float to the surface.

Religion does allow the same thing, when you converse with God in prayers. That process is like talking to your subconcious self, but using a round about method. The danger here is that you fall under the influence of the so called leaders of your religion and forget about your own mind, thougts, rationality.

Talking, well really talking..... a heart to heart conversation with someone who understands you can perhaps help too. But then, that is what has been the biggest victim of our hectic lives, the ability to be able to really bond with others. TV being the most important member of the family (or mobile, Xbox, PC, Music player) makes the intimacy of family a pipedream.

George Orwell wrote about this in his seminal work 1984, where government spies on its citizens through TV and controls their thoughts through a thought police. Reality proved stranger and perhaps more advanced than his fiction. We are controlled by private multinationals through media, to buy buy buy buy buy buy and die and leave descendents who buy buy buy buy.

Wake up ... HERE is the red PILL

- Have principles in life, carefully thought values which constitute your inner ethical code
- Be true, if not to anyone else then atleast to your own self. Absolutely, unbiasedly true.
- Take time alone without any tentacle of digital world and then meditate upon your thoughts.
- READ READ READ... books, thoughts, blogs. Read the meaningful, the thought provoking, the insane and then you can place a framework of what constitutes reality, the constructed world or the real one
- Reduce the space for things, energies attatched to longings for things and spend time developing the most important resource that there can be...... Your own self.
- Be Critical of any advice, command or subtle message given to you. Think about it, even about the sentence you are reading now. What could have been my purpose in writing these lines? Why should you listen to me... Should you?

Take the Pill Neo. BUT think before that.


PS> NEXT blog deals with the subtle ways in which we allow our mind to be enslaved. 

Why did the muslim men attack the french magazine ?

It seems strange. Not that strange well if one were to consider all the attacks that have been going on anyways around the world by radicalised Jihadis, that another one would eventually take place.

What is strange however is that these attacks were undertaken by men who were raised in France and received its bountiful public assistance and were infact the citizens of a country that is perhaps the most disinterested in religion! ( At least officially) 

They were not mutilated as children, their homes weren't destroyed by conquering forces and neither did they witness a pogrom against their community. Then why in the world would they go on a killing spree?

The answer is befuddling. Their was no reason on the surface. But perhaps, if we were to look a bit deeper into the lake of muddles... we would our own face. 

SOCIETY

This society is based on consumerism and globalisation. Twin arms that emanated out of the business houses after the Second world war ended and some way had to be found to keep on selling goods to people. 

Edward Bernays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays) was the nephew of Freud, the very same Psycho analyst who inserted sex into everything. Bernays however did learn something very useful from him. He learnt that people were driven by unconcious desires and that this unconcious can be played with to acheive any result. 

The result that he looked for was the selling of products. It was a simple game after he made people think that the product would make the person more desirable, less hated or simply more happy. 

What was different in this from the previous advertisements that there was no need to show the usefulness of the products being advertised. Feeling Good  became the sole utility of shopping. 

Sadly, those who couldn't buy were potrayed as loosers. The values, ideas and skills of a person fell flat before money. The cultural ideal was the rich white man who kept on buying and buying and buying. Nazis  used the same idea for a very different reason and were successful in their holocaust. But consumerism was better, it was sneakier. Playing with the mass psychology was done in such a subtle and powerful form that no one could gather what was happeneing to them, while the attitudes of the people changed for the industry desired one. 

BUT.....what has this to do with the Radicalised, modern, Rational muslims shooting down people in centre of France. What it has to do with them is that they couldn't fit into this culture. They despised the extreme unhappiness that it caused them and they also despised the fact that the entire process is hollow and draining. 

Living for the sake of products and working for creating the products to earn money for buying more of products. That seems like a receipie for a spiritual and religious collapse. Another thing, religion doesn't always happen to be a delusion. It is a legitimate force of biology as much as sex drive is and would express itself in one form or the other if the people aren't allowed to practise it. 

(http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/psychology/biological-psychology/neuroscience-religious-experience)

What happens in France like society is that a vacuous hole  is left in the individuals where the benign teachings of a sane religion should have been. The frustation of living in a nazi inspired culture and not having the proper avenues to gather the love, understanding, compassion aspects of their religon, they were ensnared by the hideous form of quasi religion that was set up by vested interests. I am talking about the Jihadis ofcourse. 

                                                              The final solution

No, it's not in obiliteration of any community. The final solution is in realising the fact that we are living a strange life. We are consuming in plates made half way across the world by virtual slave labourers because we are too lazy to do our dishes. 

We have been hypnotised by the advertisements that can now set the social norm. This norm incidentally also doesn't allow us to reach our maximum potential of creativity that we could have. We can't think. As a society, our thinking prowess has been limited to the 10 seconds of the advertisement that is displayed on the TV screens.... for an animal almost, consumara defecta the latest evolution of the homo sapien. 

The solution is to shun the life of excess and start connecting on a real level with the people around us. People spend 150 billion each year on booze and cigarettes in EU and US alone. That despite the fact that both of these aren't good for health.10 Billion is what is needed to give clean water and sanitation to everyone aroudn the world. (BTW US citizens spend 17 billion on pet food).

Isn't it almost like the scene in Matrix, where you are Neo and I am Morpheus offering you the red and the blue capsule? If you are really happy living in the carefully crafted virtual world, then bbye. 

IF you want the red capsule, if you want to wake up, then read on!

How can we wake up ?

(next blog)