Hope

This is one of quite a few poems I wrote a long time back, I'm going to put these up over a period of a few days while I come up with some new ideas :D

Hope

When you are down
And you try to smile,
But all that comes is a frown.
When the odds are against you
When the thought of failure plagues you,
When all friends have left your side
Then, deep down inside,
A ray of hope comes to life
And within you, ends all strife
Thoughts sort themselves out
And you are rid of all doubt
It gives you the inspiration to fight
Against all odds, against all might

It is not an instrument of the great
It isn't all just fate
It's all in your hands
It stems from the will to succeed
Obstructions in your path, there shall be,
But to those, pay no heed
Cause they shall always be
Draw strength from the will
The path is uphill
But don't lose hope
Because my friend, we shall overcome,
Succeed you will.

-- Me

The Holy Inquisition and Wall street crashes

I was watching this somewhat interesting movie out of boredom, which briefly dwelled on the topic of the inquisitions and how the people of Venice turned from fawning over courtesans to blaming them for all the ills that befell them. And essentially how they were tried and convicted as witches. In case you're wondering, it wasn't a documentary, just something Netflix popped up on my screen. Also, in case you're about to cringe and shy away fearing yet another history lesson, well, don't, I'm not gonna explain what the inquisition was.

One fact I do wish to discuss, is how in history, women have been blamed for a lot of ills that occured. They deserve credit, they've taken the flak for a lot of things which weren't their fault at all. It's quite interesting how we tend to try and find scapegoats for everything. Whenever things are going well, we are happy and adore the people revelling in success. But as soon as things turn bad, we revile the very same people, blaming them for all ills. In history, though we didn't exactly place women on a pedestal, but they were usually the ones blamed whenever any natural calamity struck. Courtesy, religion, and the world being male dominated. The Holy Inquisition is just the worst of the kind that took place. And to look at it, history is littered with similar incidences where a few exploited people's insecurities to label a certain section as responsible for all ills. The most famous of them all is probably Hitler's crusade against the Jews, but it is probably not the bloodiest or the one affecting the most number of people. Essentially, we start becoming a one man justice system, and give them no real chance to defend themselves. That's probably the herd mentality, or simple ignorance. When we suffer by no fault of ours, we often want some scapegoat to blame.

And actually we don't need to go too far back to look for evidence of such acts. The recent Wall street crashes and global economic collapse is a simple example. We were quick to blame the bankers who handle these things. Well, not to say they aren't at all responsible for what's happened, but simply, the majority aren't, and it's this majority that's been hit the worst by this. But then why do we blame them? jealousy. We've watched these people enjoy a lavish existence, by apparently doing no work, while we suffer and slave in our daily lives. Well, it's a little true, it's hard not to feel envious of their existence, and we inherently bide our time to hit back at the ones we feel jealous of, it's simple human nature. And since now it's our time, we blame the entire kind of bankers for all ills, a kind that needs to be purged or controlled to fix things. Similar arguments tend to be used in communal riots, an event that's sadly too common in my own country. Even more so, I've heard many more such arguments in the "war against terror". So why does that deserve quotes? we've so simply put the tag of a terrorist on just about every muslim we see, that it's actually disturbing. The people we vilify as terrorists, do we ever try to find out what plagued their lives. While I still don't condone their actions, I can see why some would take up arms. They are shown such similar arguments against the west, like you are shown against them. They have their own insecurities, some have probably suffered a personal loss as well. But the general fear would probably be sufficient to induce such a condition. Any smart person knows how easy it is to brainwash a scared person, you can simply make them do whatever you want. Manipulation of others is like a primal tool we all have, and use subconciously everyday. Some are better at this than others, and most of these people, become leaders in little time.

What you can take from this? look at someone who the world, or even you despise with an impartial eye. Look at the circumstances that made them do the things they did, what would you do in their situation. And before judging "I'd never do that still!" remember what crazy things your mind can make you do when insecure. And maybe look at that person, and give him a second chance, a benefit of doubt to earn your respect, before you move on. Maybe if we all did that, the world might just be a better place.

The Rise and Fall of empires

I'm guessing I'll be getting a lot of flames after this, so my only request is to keep an open mind. This issue is pretty contentious, and people usually have pretty fixed views on such topics.

This topic was motivated partly by the goings on at Wall Street and other things, which made some of the dormant things in my head pop up again. To get to it, lets first look at great empires. History, or rather historians offer plenty of examples, be it the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and many more. The Romans are usually held as kind of the template used by future great empires of the region, like the Byzantines, even the erstwhile British empire to a certain extent. Whether calling the British empire a great empires is right or not, but the sheer size of the region under its control is an attestation to its glory. All these, and other civilizations are always remembered for their architecture, how they established large cities where earlier there were none, and the spread of education. You'll find volumes over volumes of books and numerous historians who can tell you explicit details of these civilizations. There is the obvious dark thread as well that ties them together, which is that all of them relied heavily on slave labour for many and most of their great architectural achievements. It was a model perfected by the Romans I believe, and used for aeons to come. One more common thread was that these were military empires, they conquered places and stationed troops to maintain order. That perhaps is the biggest defining characteristic of an empire, the ability to maintain control and order. In the ancient and medieval eras, military domination and controlling trade routes was the only option to keep the empire running. And what almost always brought about the end of an empire was the failure to keep these two conditions satisfied. To keep one part of the world in luxury, some other parts must be overworked, overtaxed, and essentially exploited. Plus, to keep things politically sound, there always needs to be an overarching philosophical justification for the actions of the elite. As it is, exploitation usually breeds revolution, and seeds for the destruction of the empire. I concede my examples are exclusive to european empires, but they are the ones about which we know the most.

Stepping into the modern era, military empires are untenable. Public opinion and the easy dissemination of information have meant that the previous philosophical justifications can no longer hold. Obviously there do exist more sophisticated arguments for other kinds of control and dominance, but fighting wars is very difficult, as the americans have realised. Wars create such a barrage of bad publicity, let alone the terrorist responses, that it's difficult to stem the flow of public outrage from around the world. But the crux of my article is not really military empires, I've discussed them to death earlier as well. In the modern era, philosophical and economic dominance is the a-la-mode (well blogger doesn't allow french accents, or atleast I don't know how to get them) method. If I may, I'll borrow Mr. Ahmadinejad's almost favourite term, the american empire. I obviously don't mean it in the way he does, I only intend it to mean the dominance of the USA over the financial markets of the world. A financial crisis has hobbled the markets around the world. There are obviously those around the world who are gladdened by these developments, I, frankly am not. My reasons primarily centre around the money I have myself lost in my stock portfolio (yes, I do have shares). I'm always amazed by the amount of control USA, through its companies, wields over the financial, so to say, ecosystem. I like to see the source of all major developments in some conflict, and I consider the second World War as the major turning point for USA. It hobbled Great Britain, which frankly was destroyed by war, in addition to losing all its colonies. It was essentially reduced to what someone said, the inconsequential island in the Atlantic. Plus, Britain, and most of europe, owed USA huge amounts for war supplies and reconstruction costs. Plus the huge navy developed helped USA control the largest resource on earth, the seas and oceans. They essentially controlled trade, and with the capitalist model of mass production, they made huge profits and established massive trade surpluses with just about everyone. With that, the dollar became the base currency for the world, a stable currency which is used by everyone to trade in. 50 years on, things started to change. The former Asian and African colonies started to come up. Now, China, and to a much lesser extent, India are starting to wield considerable influence, or so I'd like to believe. India, sad to say, never adopts controversial stances on anything, but the Chinese do. They are fiercely competitive of their interests, and they essentially used the same model the USA used to create their dominance. Mass production, at varying levels of quality, is swamping the world with Chinese goods. I'm really not concerned whether that's a good or bad thing, the Chinese are fiercely proud, and will try their level best that major snafus, like the recent milk adulteration problems, are not repeated. The simple thing is, that Chinese firms are beating the USA at its own game. China now has a substantial dollar reserve, and is on the lookout for takeover. Years of trade deficit at the USA end have led to such an outflux of dollars that it is difficult to prevent the world from amassing them in huge quantities. The problem is that the USA's production edge is gone, almost all commodity level production has been shifted abroad. Their only major control lies in the financial markets. And with the ongoing financial crisis, that major pillar of the American "empire" is threatened. Probably the government realises this at some level. This is where I come back to control, for the survivability of an empire, it must maintain control and order. When it doesn't, a new empire usually takes its place, for how long, it's difficult to predict. In the current scenario, China &, to a somewhat lesser extent, Europe is starting to present a viable alternative to the USA for having a financial centre of world. It's hard to overlook China, when most of the things are made there. The thing is that, if Wall street caves, it'll be the coup-de-grace (pardon the french again :D ) for American dominance in the economic sphere. The military can only do so much in such a scenario. USA cannot dominate negotiations using the power of force alone in today's world. Of course, the collapse of such a magnitude would take years to complete, but the period of chaos that indicates a transition is underway, and if it's not stemmed, one can only imagine the outcome, not for the world, but for the USA.

Movies and superheroes

I've always been a big fan of comics and superheroes. There is something magical about seeing a crusader standing up for the weak, and triumphing over not just evil people, but evil itself. Someone with the power to change the world, and someone who uses it. A person bigger than life itself.

There's a simple charm to such tales. It's much easier to see black and white separately in such stories rather than the muddled grey we usually see. Yet the people behind the heroes are very human themselves, they're usually shy, honest and truthful. They stand behind curtains looking at the ones they love, the ones they would like to be with, the ones they may never have. It's something I guess every geeky and nerdy guy, and comic fan would relate to. But oddly so, I think others do too. People are inherently nervous, in times where they feel powerless to prevent harm to what they hold dear, they tend to look to higher powers for help and guidance. Ample proof is provided by the thousands of miracle stories just about any recently devout person will tell you, how the lord helped them overcome great misery and problems. I feel that little scared kid never quite dies in anyone, he or she is the core of anyone's persona, and in times of peril, we tend to recede to that very persona. Every scared kid needs someone to hold their hand and tell them it's gonna be ok. Though this might sound like an extremely twisted proof to such a claim, an interesting "research" was published in the media some time back. The reason research is in quotes is that the authors were from the (in)famous Playboy magazine. They simply correlated the centrefolds' vital statistics to the times when people were under duress, for e.g. economic downturns etc. What they found was extremely interesting. Men (well , people is a useless generalization here) chose more curvaceous women in times of economic upturn, or when things were going well. In times of depression, they chose women who looked more liked they could take care of them.

Well you may ask what does this have to do with movies exactly? That's simple, try to find the biggest hits of the past 7 years or so, and they'll mostly be fantasy tales about superheroes and the like. 7 is kind of the pivotal number here, cause I'm making a reference to 9/11 here. It seems a lot of the american public hasn't quite emerged from the shock of that time. They still feel that the wrongdoers have not been punished, and they are still at risk. Movies have also adopted a very politically active role, making snide references here and there to the ongoing events.

One might ask, why do things take so much time to heal as we grow older. Well, a major part of the answer is in the question itself, we grow older, more rigid. Another big part is probably that as an adult you are expected to take care of others, and generally hide your fears. Our problems tend to accumulate inside us and we have no one to turn to for answers. And no one to put our problems in perspective, we're pretty likely to get excessively tense about trivial things.

I sometimes wonder if it would be better if there was someone who had all the answers, or atleast someone who could point us in the right direction. Someone who knew exactly what to say, when we're lost for words. Someone who could prevent bad things from happening and people we care about go away. Someone who could be our very own ... superhero.

There and Back Again, an Indian's tale

I recently arrived in USA for pursuing a Ph.D. . For people who know me and haven't been in touch :P , that might be a shock, but I believe my self from one year back would feel the same way. Anyways, I decided to enjoy some time before joining the course, and am staying for some time with my brother in New Jersey.

USA in general is very different from India, almost diametrically opposite actually. The first time I landed here, the scale of infrastructure is beyond anything ever seen in India. I once heard a slogan, "Everything is bigger in Texas", as compared to India, I feel the statement is fitting for the whole of USA. Everywhere you see, things are bigger, people are bigger ( :P ), and buy in bigger quantities. It really makes me wonder why George Bush thought that India and China are causing food shortages! no one there ever eats on this scale. The effects of having many magnitudes of land more, and a similar fraction smaller population is plainly visible. There's greenery everywhere, and things can be built to a larger scale. There are hundreds of small cities compared to a few huge ones. I feel the biggest difference is that people are, atleast on the surface, more polite and warmer. Strangers greet each other, cars stop for pedestrians, generally stuff that you would never expect in India.

All in all, people live very different lives than in India. That's probably why they like people from India, who focus on their work mostly, and pay very little attention to other things. A trip to the Indian dominated part of New Jersey quickly illustrates the difference. Cars suddenly don't stop for pedestrains as easily. A different odor hangs in the air, a smell distinctly indian, but from an unidentified source. The people, obviously look different. You can actually see people from every part of India in one place, something very difficult to see even in India. Once I entered an Indian store outlet and turned my back to the entrance, it was difficult to see that I was not in India. For most of my time, I was smiling and close to laughing, why? dunno, maybe it was that the sight of familiar faces brought back some sense of assurance. More so, it was the understanding that nowhere you go, indians will remain the same. I believe that throughout our childhood we learn to interpret emotions from facial expressions, and a lot more. Moving to another place with different people probably sets this instinct off, you no longer know what's the right custom, what people mean when they say the most common of things (apart from the obvious meanings of course) etc. etc. That probably is the source of culture shock, something that been "right" is not right anymore. You've suddenly been returned to the stage where u were as an infant, plus you don't learn as fast anymore. It's quite easy why it's unsettling for people, and the reason some need help.

The fact that Indians mostly overcome greater problems, fighting for everything against others and the system, is probably the reason why they are successful. They can battle anything, succeed in spite of all odds. That is the difference with China as well, China is an example of how, a system perfectly optmized for attaining certain goals can work. On the other hand, India is more of a game theory playground, how even when everyone selfishly thinks for himself, a country can progress at such a pace. In spite of apathy from the government, other people, the people still have created a wonderful example for success. Usually at this point, people say how if there was a better "system" and "governance", India could so so much more, but what they miss out is that the bad system has made the people this way so that they can tackle anything. It's a simple give and take, adversity shows the best or worst in people, but it always shows the extreme, and optimized response, which ensures the maximum possible results, good or bad.

Political correctness

Today I was reading an article on how the USA's negotiator with Brazil for the upcoming WTO trade negotiations, Susan Schwab was hurt by the Brazilian counterpart's remarks. He had apparently compared the tactics employed by negotiators from developed countries to Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, and Schwab is descendant from Jewish holocaust survivors. His exact statement? as quoted by Yahoo, "Goebbels used to say if you repeat a lie several times it becomes a truth," and "I am reminded of Goebbels", quoting certain parts. Though I know that forming an opinion on the basis of incomplete comments is dangerous, my point is not entirely based on this.

Recently Britain's schools have changed the nursery rhymes taught in schools (see here). Britain, or the United Kingdom to be more correct, has almost been at the forefront of political correctness, replacing black with rainbow, etc. etc. Some of the changes are actually quite hilarious. Before you start raising fingers at me, let me point out that I'm also a "coloured" person. But the simple fact is that when you say baa baa black sheep, I can't see any semblance of racial discrimination. In a contorted way, possibily yes, but then you can see innuendos in just about any statement. Language, any language is an approximate representation of what we wish to express. In algebra, we call this dimensionality reduction. One of the most common ways of doing this is PCA or Principal Component Analysis, which is that you try to gauge the common thread in the data, to put it very crudely. This is done with almost rampant disdain in computer vision to remove noise in data collected from natural sources (:D no offense, I know it's necesary). Which is why it's quite beyond my comprehension, why we haul up someone based on some part of a statement. Isn't it relevant as to what thread was being followed and the context in which the statement was made? I always find that the media, press in particular, tends to highlight such things to gain TRPs, taking out small sections of statements and contorting them. Problem is that these sections are used by a majority of people to form opinions even without knowing the full fact.

While I do accede that little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the press may claim that it is the responsibility of the people to find the truth, but the press are most people's only source for such information. Even more so, we must allow some leeway for people's inherent stupidity. You may not notice it, but everyday you'll make many insensitive comments to a multitude of people. But, being part of everyday occurence, people ignore them, as part of the lost art of common sense. If you feel that you're not part of such a group, try and listen to what you said, you'll be shocked.

Every statement can be taken in atleast 2 ways, so don't try to create a context out of a statement. Like my favourite PCA, gauge the common thread. And though I concede I've never as yet been a victim of discrimination on the basis of colour or the other common things, I still feel some judgement call should be made the statements that are held as discriminatory. Though it's probably a better thing for people not to say stupid things, but that's quite a thing to ask, don't you think? I mean, in India, being a general category male is like a curse. People have a tendancy to blame this category for all evils that plague society. And being part of this category implies that you have to slog for everything a little more than everyone else, meaning people having reservations, even though I myself didn't do anything against them, nor have anything against them. Without digressing, let me just say that reverse discrimination is as prevalent as discrimination.

To conclude, I just want to say, that it's been more than 50 years since the Nazi's were overthrown. Give them germans and others a break. Referring to a person of that group doesn't mean that you condone their actions, you're simply using them as an example. They did terrible things, and it can cause a lot of hurt to be reminded of them, but they're still the past. A new generation has now emerged who don't grasp the brutalities of the actions done in the past century, as well as people of the developing world who didn't have anything to do with it. These people are already paying some price or another for what happened, even though they were direct or indirect victims, and not the perpetrators. Political correctness can seriously stifle free communication, and lead to more problems that it can solve. In my opinion, though people should be educated to be more careful about what they say, they should also be educated to be more tolerant. Being all prickly and quick to get insulted is probably not the best way to go about things. In that spirit, I apologize to anyone who finds this article insulting in any way.

Art, depressed artists and nervous exam takers

I'm one of those people who, when looking at some piece of modern art, do seriously wonder what people see in them. Mind you, some pieces are seriously good, but some actually look like someone's baby puked on them. I once took a philosophy course in college, called art and technology (though I never quite saw the tech part :D ). It was interesting, to say the least. Though my limited philosophical skills saw me scrape throught the course, I did pick up some interesting insights into what is art, and how do people perceive it.

As part of my class presentation, I picked up music as the art subject of interest, and tried to go about thinking, how and why do we actually like music?? or even hate it, or worst of all, go from hating to liking it!. Trust me, songs do have this way of growing on you. And I saw these 2 concepts, "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", and the obvious one, that beautiful things, are beautiful cause they have something in them. Which actually contradict each other, so u can't pick both.

You know, there was something taught in school which I never quite figured out a purpose for, resonance. It's quite wonderful in essence, and it says that everything, i mean everything has a certain resonant frequency. Which means that if u send waves of a certain frequency into the object, it'll vibrate like hell, much more than any other frequency. Still don't get it? remember that cool gadget Bond used to shatter glass? that's it. In school we actually had this experiment to determine the resonant frequency of something, don't remember what. In fact, there's this story that while walking on bridges, armies march out of step so as not to accidently make the bridge collapse, cause supposedly it's happened.

So you may ask why does resonance come into the picture?? well the answer's half already there. Forget the physics of it, and just focus on the concept, everything responds more to a certain input than any other. For more clarity, try and remember any memory in your head, and apart from that vivid image in your head, notice that you'll remember how you felt then. Sometimes those emotions might not even make sense to you, most people just ignore them. But the fact that your brain records them in the same detail as any sensory input gives an important clue to the importance your brain gives to emotions. Before I finally state my claim, consider this fact, you'll always like certain songs when you're in certain moods. It may differ for different people, but there are certain clear trends, like mopey songs when you're sad etc. etc. Well, that's it, isn't it, resonance. Your brain responds to certain types of songs when facing certain emotions. It's like your radio receives signals (resonance again :P) you tune it to a particular frequency, and voila music. Similarly, I believe, emotions tune your brain to accept certain input better, or look at things in a different way.

Still don't believe me? try playing different songs when in different moods, they'll seem seriously different. For me, when I'm pensive, like when writing this blog, I like songs more like Friday, by Goldspot, when i'm depressed or trying to drive myself to work, Linkin Park or other heavy metal style music is more like it. Forgive me, if my music classification is off, never got around to figuring it out. I especially give an example of music, because more people experience this form of art than any other.

With this done, you should be wondering, why does this resonance happen? well your brain gives you clues. It'll faintly reminisce about the past. I believe your brain keeps recalling memories, it's its way of understanding stuff, fitting current experiences to past ones. Which is why, if the song brings back memories whose dominant emotion matches your current state, you'll like it. But you'll still have stronger reactions to sad emotions, that's something I never quite understand. Which brings me to art in general, its appreciation requires that you have experiences some of those emotions expressed by its creation. And creation of art is even more problematic.

Most of you would have noticed, how many artists die of depression related stuff like suicides, drug overdoses etc. And as I said, people have stronger recalls of adverse emotions. Even more personal experiences, I feel that creating art requires a certain amount of depression, sadness. When seems plausible, when you're happy, why would you go through the whole process? why wouldn't you rather enjoy. This probably requires more thought, and so I'd rather leave it for another post considering how long this one has become.

My last topic for this post, nervous exam takers :D, well I'm one too. This too does have some relation to all of this, cause, as I said recall brings back emotions as well. So if u were not too confident while studying, in addition to having low confidence, you run the risk of having those emotions come back during your exam. Try thinking about it sometime.

Well, that about does it, that should clarify some things about art, but u're always welcome to use my opinions about some work of art when I don't like it, a baby could've done it!