Americans violating "human rights" in Afghanistan!

I don't understand how peeing on a corpse is a human rights violation while killing a person is not. I am sure that the right to live is a far more primary human right than the right not to be peed on when you are dead. So if the Americans can take away innocent lives, what's so more wrong with peeing on dead people, that Hillary Clinton had to immediately get apologetic?

In fact, the whole episode now seems like a comedy of errors. Firstly, it's ridiculous to pee on a dead body, and then also have someone make a video of you doing that. Forget the dead person - who is not even alive to realize he has some right that's violated, what's wrong with those alive and laughing with their Johnsons out? Have they got no shame? Perhaps they lose it in the Army, with all the ragging they undergo in trainings. Or, let's join the party and put a hackneyed blame on the American Culture!

Secondly, the rest of the world got an excuse to point fingers on the Americans, blaming them of human rights violations. Human rights of dead people? I strongly believe that war is the most stupid thing humans do. Still, if it seems justified to you, I think you cannot talk about human rights violation of people directly involved in a war, coz although a war may have a larger end, the means is always killing enemy soldiers. In fact, as I thought about it now, I find it extremely absurd that we humans maintain large batallions of people exclusively meant for killing and getting killed in a war, such that their killing and they killing such people on enemy's side is totally acceptable to both parties, yet any one of them even causing the slightest scratch on any person other than these bakras will be said to have caused a human rights violation.

Anyway, the world and its ways are terribly screwed. Go ahead and watch this video... the Lady is very cute. She really looks very concerned and worried. But does a very good job of giving the complete picture.

God save America.

Keep it Simple Silly!

These days, Traffic Police seems like the most over-staffed organization in Pune. At each signal I see 4-5 policemen basking in the sun, waiting for someone to break signal, or to spot bikes not from Maharashtra. I play chor-police with them every day, trying to protect my AP bike from their ruthless eyes and I am fed up. I wish we had simple, standard and sensible rules and procedure for allowing vehicles bought in one State to be driven in another. The current process is too complicated, lengthy and unnecessary. I don't want to get into the details of it as I am too sleepy to describe it here right now.

My point is only this - make rules simple, so that people can comply. Not so complicated, illogical, ridiculous and impractical that the police – who have to ensure that rules are followed, and people – who have to follow the rules, both find workarounds and together work out arrangements that are totally outside rule-books, yet perfectly convenient and mutually agreeable, and basically harmless. It’s like both police and public wag their tongues at the rule-makers, who still don’t get it, or probably don’t care, coz they themselves have many such convenient arrangements, at much bigger scales.

god - a terrible mystery

Saw an interview of Imran Khan on Times Now today. It was nice to see such positive views about Terrorism, Indo-Pak relations and Pakistan in general. I am not very well-versed with Pakistani politics and politicians, but Imran Khan today had a style that exuded tremendous confidence. Unlike most politicians in India, he was direct, logical and clear in all his responses. And from what I hear in news about the crowds he is pulling to his rallies in Pakistan, he may very well be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan.

I have always been an untiring advocate of friendly relations between India and Pakistan. I believe Pakistanis are no different from us, and partition was a terrible thing that happened. I recently read in the book Freedom at Midnight, that if the British had known that Jinnah was suffering from Tuberculosis at the time of our Independence and that he wasn't going to survive for long, they would rather have postponed handing over the reins to us, and avoided the bloody split.

A recent quote posted by a friend on facebook said - "A religious war is like children fighting over who has the strongest imaginary friend." Although it perfectly captures the ridiculousness of people fighting over religion, add to it the fact that religion is hereditary and the imaginary friend is the silly imagination of one powerful person - possibly a psycho lunatic, and you find that humans don't look capable of reason and rationale any more. One may argue that the concept of god (with a deliberate small 'g') has to be a choice of belief, and no logic can be applied to it. But I find this a very shallow and incomplete argument. One, it is practically not being chosen in the real sense. And two, for what one does not and arguably cannot know, one can consciously understand that inability, and then take a stand in that light, accepting ignorance, if one were to behave sensibly. And three, with everyone having accepted ignorance, there can't be mutual fight over respective assumptions. But the way we work, is that we have mistaken the assumptions for facts and we don't have the element of ignorance built into the belief systems at all. The result - we are obsessed with our own concepts of god without any basis and find it impossible to see other such concepts thriving, although all of them are imagined for convenience by different parties.

I am gradually inclined to forming a view that humans are made this way, and there is not much of a hope for change. Although it seems like mindsets are changing and a section of people are becoming less and less god-minded, there are sections which are moving to other extremes too. And we keep having religious massacres every now and then. Which tells me that god screws up this world in ways other than natural. But then, why separate man from nature?

I hope we can bring some sense into this whole concept of god and then have the concept of religion dealt with separately. They get mixed inevitably coz we always wanted the fear of god to keep us in the right track and not harm other humans, i.e., to guide our actions and keep them right from social standpoint. When humans across the world, with different beliefs, were not connected much, this system worked reasonably well. But now, with peoples coming in contact more easily and in ways unimaginable before, we no more have closed societies where every person adopts the same concept of god and religion. Although mingling is happening, this globalized world is also more prone to clashes, religious assertiveness and religious power struggles. And these are already happening.

I don't see a possibility of change in the near future. The only way this can be solved is if we discover everything, including god, and end the whole mystery. But we know so little of all there is, and we are such a small part of all that is, and are not even sure that what we come to know is what is and is not what is shown to us by someone who actually is, and whether that which actually is, wants us to know what is, and therefore whether we are even capable of knowing what is. It's a terrible mystery, which will never be solved. So, we'll go on fighting over it until our extinction.

Competing Indian Cultures...

India is a land of rich cultural diversity, with some culture always having a higher appeal than the rest in each cultural element, and therefore dominating in that area. It's most visible in popular music, cuisine and clothing of the times. Over the last couple of decades, Punjabi forms have clearly dominated, at least in these three areas; Punjabi has emerged as a clear winner. The western culture has only been able to scratch our surface. I guess it's a healthy process of cultural diffusion and development of a more culturally rich India. Although India has for a millennium been a land of diverse cultures, it never saw movement, mixing and marriage of people of the kind we see now.

Nature Screws

We humans are physically so unequal, that things like the Olympics or World Cups, where all kinds of humans compete with each other in any single game, do not seem to make much sense. Europeans and Americans are so tall and strong, that in most sports, Asians cannot compete with them at all, i.e., have very few who are capable of competing. No wonder that in games like basket ball, football, swimming and athletics, we hardly have any presence. Yet we never respectfully recognize our natural weakness and stop blaming other things for our failure. The same applies to contests of appearance, where some sections of the world are disadvantaged. And in arranged marriage, where bald men and black women have tough time.

Of course with time every section of people would focus on its respective area of comparative advantage, and not bother about the area it's not so capable of. But what really sucks at a micro level (not at macro, coz macro is a zone of emotional neutrality), is not being able to compete in every area one wants to, just coz nature has screwed him/her in some quality and plentily gifted it to people in another gang.

I am convinced that this problem cannot be solved by positive discrimination. Then how can it be solved? Is it really a problem?

More on Corruption...

While expressing his views on my recent post on corruption, my friend Pranav brought up the topic of 'inequality' and many interesting issues related to it. The following were the main points he made:

1. The root cause of corruption is economic inequality - Countries like Sweden which have lower levels of economic inequality seem to be more prosperous and less corrupt. However, I was not totally clear on the directions of causality, if any, between inequality, corruption and prosperity here. One can have views, but I think we need a more detailed study to come to a conclusion. Apparently, it seems economic equality among the masses can be managed to a good extent by smart policy; and at the same time, if economic prosperity of the country as a whole is managed through aggressive economic activity (the tendency for which might lie in social attitudes), the propensity for corrupt actions can be minimized to a great extent.
2. Economic inequality comes naturally and is unavoidable, yet manageable to a certain extent - This point was made independent of the last set of points, and was substantiated by an excellent thought experiment by some great guy, whose name Pranav mentioned by I don't remember now. The thought experiment was to have a world with a group of people, equal in the way humans are (with our unique and different personalities and abilities), and then give them all an equal amount of money (or I would say some equivalent of money in such a world at a kick-start stage). The result of that experiment, according to the thinker of the thought experiment, is that with time, the world will work in such a way that the equality of the distribution of wealth will vanish and eventually a small minority shall hold most of the wealth. Pranav fit in the 80-20 principle there, but I think we see a far higher concentration of wealth in very few hands in the real world. As I see it, wealth is an indicator of a sum of all abilities a person has, through which a person stakes his/her claim for a share of the resources of this world. This is literally a fight for what is there. And since we humans are not at all equal, it is not possible to achieve economic equality either. That is, as long as we stake a claim on the resources of the planet. If we all give it up, and become saints, then perhaps we'll be equal. As long as there is competition, there can't be economic equality. But lack of competition is probably not good for human progress. And so is equality.
3. Tendency towards wrongdoing is directly related to nature and deep rootedness of social value systems - If the social values we imbibe as we grow up are so strongly against doing things that are conventionally wrong, that they can induce a deep sense of guilt even upon slightest slip in behavior, the chance of an average citizen indulging in such activity is highly remote and unlikely. Pranav elaborated this point with three kinds of wrong actions as per the norms of any society in this world - taking bribes, cheating on spouse and murder. I agree with Pranav, and we can clearly see, that this is the intent with which most of our social and religious institutions, stories (mainly mythological), relationships, etc., are designed and developed. And we, as common people, adhere to most of all that just coz we want a safe and comfortable life, and no threats on us because of anybody else, and in return we assure the same to others from our side. But at the same time, on second thoughts, I feel that this adherence is because of a deep-rooted fear - of death, painful life, etc. If somehow this vulnerability goes away for a person, or something can shield him/her from all human threats to life, will he give a damn about the value systems of society? Not to a very great extent, I feel. And that's why they say 'Power Corrupts'.

2012

Happy 2012 to everybody. We're a couple of hours into the new year. Strangely, it has been relatively warm tonight in Pune, as compared to the past few nights. I hope it's not the 2012 effect - the earth getting hotter and stuff underground boiling its way out like they showed in the movie 2012.

I came to know of this end-of-the-world prophecy in 2005, and since then, have always found it fascinating to think about. To choose to believe in the possibility, I have to either believe that all that is and will be is deterministic, or that there are some really scientific observations which probably the Mayans did and based on that knowledge, calculated the date of the end of the world, and for some reason, we are not able to see their point, and have clearly not made any similar observation that leads to the same conclusion. Like in all cases of human belief, I have difficulty in taking a side here as well, without any evidence to justify that side. Nor can I deny the possibility, as I really don't know. Therefore, I will just wait and watch. But I must say that the topic is extremely interesting and exciting.