Change

Somebody once asked the question, "When does a species evolve?"
He got the response," Only when it is in the edge of annihilation."

Strange. I thought that human mind evolved when it is pushed into a virtual annihilation.

But why are we forced to change. Rather, why cant we change on our own, but have to wait for a threat to appear? Frankly speaking, I don't know. But most of us change only when we reach such a point.

There may be that one exception who had changed his way on his own, but that seldom happens.
In fact, most of our training is to ensure that we change when we are expected to change.

People say we adapt, under newer conditions. The innate nature is changed, when the new condition came in. The real question, then is to ask whether these changes are revertible.
Can we change back to what we were earlier? The answer theoretically should have been yes. But, practically it rarely happens. Once we change from one state, we rarely go back to the old state. Those who are obsessed with the past, make an attempt to reach that old state, but all they are able to achieve is their perception of the old state. Nothing more, nothing less.

Things always move forward. They never go backwards. The statement appears too strong, but then it so not too far away from the absolute truth. The flow, as can be experienced by our thoughts, rarely repeat. Can they repeat? Yes. Its like random numbers we generate. There will be a set of small numbers that do repeat, but they wont repeat long enough. We may experience a set of experiences that may seem repetitive. But it is never going to be same as past.

Let us bring our focus back to the question,"When do we change?".
We like the way things are. The conservative half of us, wants to see the same things over and over again. We like to go to the same barber, like to eat the same type of food,like to wear the same color of dress. If we are doing the same things, we do not have to change. And change needs work. It needs rewiring of our way of life. It needs to learn new things about what is around. It needs us to solve new problems of day-to-day living. It needs us to do a lot of things, and that's why we don't like to change.

Are we keeping us away from change, because we are lazy then? I wouldn't put it like that. Laziness requires us to be utterly disgusted by the very thought of doing something. The conservative self is not lazy, in the sense that people continue to do what they were doing anyways. They just don't want to change their behavioral patterns. That's where the inertia is coming from. For a river to change course, the banks should change. If a hill is on the path of the river, the river wont try to climb up the hill, and then get down. It will just flow around the river, using its simple policy of "flow from top to bottom". Water simple wont flow uphill. It is not part of its innate nature. So, can we change our habits?

Let us look at the way beliefs change. There are some people who have a fixed set of beliefs. The buffaloes. They never change their set of beliefs. Their belief system is as rigid as rock. Once they believe in something, no matter what happens, no matter how much proof is given to them, they will not reverse their belief. Strange to say, many of the things that they believe are what was told to them. Like, Jesus came back to life after 3 days of death. Or, like earth is flat. Or, God is of the form of a man. The extreme versions of them form what is termed as the fundamentalist bunch. These people truly believe that whatever is being taught to them is the truth, and the only truth; and every other view is false. Then, there is the bunch of fickle-minded set of people. They start believing in one thing. They do truly believe in it for some time. And then they hear a new thing and change their belief system to the new one. At any given point of time were they conflicting themselves? No. They were having the right set of beliefs at each instance of time, they are just incapable of sticking on to one set of beliefs. Then, there are people who have semi-rigid beliefs. It is not that they wont change their belief systems. They just ask for different degrees of proof to state that the new system is the better one with respect to their current belief. Just for theoretical completion, I will also be forced to state a class of people who do not believe in anything. Frankly, if there is really a person who doesn't really believe in anything, then he is in vegetative state.

People with rigid belief set are like ASICs (Application-specific Integrated Chips). They are hard-wired to do a particular task. The only way to change them is to change their hardware.
Those who are fickle minded are like software running in a PC. When a new task is executed, then they will work in the new way. They dont have any thing fixed, and hence are easily changeable. (Is there a truly pliable person? That is going to be a quite debatable question. Let me just put this as the other theoretical limit.) Since there is nothing limiting them to one set of beliefs, the inertia to change is minimum. The third category is like programmable logic circuits (PLC). Once programmed, then till the program is changed, they are going to run exactly the same way. Most of us belong to this intermediate category. We have some set of fixed beliefs. We can change them, if get a proof. It is not that we are unwilling to change, but then we need to be coerced to change our beliefs.

The same is true for any sort of change. There are some aspects of us, which are very rigid. Right-handedness, is a simple example. Our nerves have been hard-wired to be like that. Many of the things used for biometric authentication uses these fixed parts of us. Then comes a set of daily routines. They are there for all. Most of us can easily identify with them. There will be some of us, who may have to struggle a bit to identify them correctly. These are not immutable habits. Like, say having bed coffee. We may be having bed coffee as long as we can remember. But it is not that we cant change it. If we got stuck in a place where they dont have coffee, then obviously we have to adapt accordingly. Or, the roads we choose to go to office. We usually follow the same path, but we can always use a new path if there is a circumstance. There are some aspects of us which are very easy to change. Like our dreams. We get new dreams every day.

Those things for which there is no strings attached, we can change overnight. Normally these types of changes are triggered by environmental conditions, and are normally a direct response to some immediate cause. The PLC type aspects of us are not that easy to change. we need to be coerced to change those. It is not that we cant change these aspects. It just needs a strong external impetus that can trigger our inertia to change. The the fixed things in us, that are near to impossible to change. These are primarily things that are soldered with lead in our brains. These cant be changed.

To change a man, may be a few words will suffice. To change a village, more than words are required. To change a nation, the scale changes accordingly, and so too the physical impetus required for the change.Changing a species as a whole species as a whole, lots more is needed. In fact, nothing short of the threat of complete annihilation can coerce the species to change.

Trip to kanyakumari

The trip to kanyakumari gave me this option to take this pic. The statue of thirvalluvar.

The tn govt must be raking a hell of a lot of profit with this island. the boat trip takes first to vivekananda rock and then to this new island.

This is the only island there with snack bar, and lots of ppl were having stuff in the snack bar.

Free flow of f.........

Some body said

"If I am not for others, who will be for me?
And if I am only for myself, then who am I?"

I feel, i completely misunderstood the quote. I thought that the quote tells us to help others.

But then Life has taught me the finest of all lessons.

Helping others is a virtue. The willingness to help others is even a greater virtue.
Helping others, without first helping one is the biggest vice.

To each bird, its own nest. To each man his own work. There is nothing wrong in helping your neighbor in times of need, when you are capable of helping and you have all the resources to help others. But if your nest is not built yet, dont go and help your neighbor repair his nest.

Marrige Quotable Quotes

Accepting with lack of information is suicidal;
Rejecting with lack of information is stupidity.

---- After a long time, a quotable quote by me.

Marriage is one important problem for which you should never give anyone any advice.
Whatever you say will be used against you, when your next turn comes.

In the beginning, God created Adam. He named the class of people like Adam as "single". He lost interest in watching a single person a lot. So he created Eve and betrothed her to Adam, thus creating the second class, viz. "married". Everything was good for sometime. Then he wanted to have some fun. So he created the third class and called it "to be married".

Mumbai blasts

its truly disgusting at the way people are sensationalizing the despair of others.
I have started feeling that the news channels should be banned totally from showing terror strike footage. at least, i feel it is better to suffer without knowing what is happening around you, than to end up in the trap of news channels to boost their earnings.

the TV footage was clearly showing what is visible from outside. Any terrorist could have observed
the TV footage and changed tactics and end up urting more people.

another thing that was observed was that the reporters were showing images of blood and showing suffering among the affected. A terrorist is a sick person, who wants to see people suffering. They enjoy watching such a scene. they crave for seeing that their planned attack is creating suffering to people. Showing scenes like that will only motivate them to go for more blasts, as it had happened in the Indian mujahideen case.



Of course, i shouldnt be just saying negatively alone. there are good journalists too. for ex, the camera man who put down the camera and helped pickup the person lying in the road, and put him in the car. But then one good journalist really doesnt balance the rest of the unruly mass. i did see cameramen who didnt allow the ambulance door to be closed. that is shameful.

DUBAI

I have come down to Dubai for a conference.

its a really marvelous city. I guess our government people should look here and create infrastructure like this.

People have a nice sense of driving.

Overspeeding fine is strictly implemented here. I heard the government earns around 1Mn Dh, i.e, around 1.5 cr Rs. from overspeeding fines, parking fines., etc.

Frankly speaking , dubai is just buildings and shopping malls, and te desert safari.

I had the opportunity to go to 2 desert safaris under 2 different companies.

Ppl who are interested to go to desert safari must really spend time choosing the correct company as well.
Personally, my experience with dubai tours and travels services was decent. they charge @ 160 Dh for a person. I heard of another friend of mine who went to a different tour operator's camp. they were charging 300 Dh.
Depending on howmuch you pay, the quality of the desert safari will increase.

more on dubai later

Back after some time.

Well, better be delayed than never.

The way things are unwinding, I feel it is bad if i also didnt make an entry with regards to the financial crisis.

Lemme see. What is the crisis? for starters, i can say that it is the non-existence of any common sense in the minds of those who are entrusted with the act of creating policies. May be, I should put it simply as "right people in the wrong place". The financial turmoil is the result of people whp act like children, emphatically rejecting that they didn't lose the game.

In effect, greedy people have ensured that even the so called "experts" in the field cant figure out that they have cheated. The real bad part is not how the "experts" concocted strange looking financial derivatives. The real bad part is the actual timing in which the entire problem has surfaced.

Recently I read a news item in "the Hindu" which said that FBI, which is supposed to have arms for dealing with all types of forgery, were simply understaffed for dealing with financial irregularities. In the name of 9/11, which many people believe was orchestrated by some government agencies only, lots of funds and personal were diverted to dealing with a hypothetical "war on terror". A war, which was primarily built up to boost national defense spending in USA, was only intended to give the conservative base some thing to chew so that bush gets elected one more time. But then its effects have finally hit the entire globe.

Earlier, I used to think that the war was only going to affect oil. now it has affected the financial structure. Right now, i feel that Bush has come close to achieving what everyone thought is impossible. He has at last shown how to break USA into pieces. A set of bad policies, directed by a wrong philosophy, and manned by incompetent fools, has at last triggered the fall of the US economic system.

The ensuing recession that is sure to hit USA badly is not only going to affect the US economy badly, but its ripple effect will be felt by almost all nations. Definitely, the current situation will gradually degrade to a scenario where Americans in general will start thinking that "the American dream" is no longer possible. May be, one or two rare exceptional people will come to prove that American dream is still valid.

[This is a old post which I forgot to complete and post]

Meritocracy: A dream or realtiy?

I was just reading through Wikipedia on meritocracy and I suddenly remembered my favorite style of government,(Some thing I want if I get to rule Mars) use people with skill to man important posts for the government. In fact, it is not just pure skill that happens to be around that matters. May be in the first generation or at most second or rulers, we may have to look at merit from an exhaustive set of tets which include not only testing the IQ, EQ and SQ, but also an elaborative personality test to find the true personal feelings of the person. The later people manning all the posts will be trained for the post. In fact, the emphasis shall always be for training the people needed for the post that is needed, wherever possible. Outsource all other acts as much as possible.

The system of meritocracy depends on the elite at the moment to strongly follow the methods that were used to choose them. And this is one of _the_ most dfficult part of this form of government. In general, at one point of time or other, a person may wish his son/daughter to succeed him in the job that he is currently doing. Genetically, we can expect the child to emulate most of his/hers' parent, but it is not universally true. Also, the downfall of most of the other goverment's seems to be the effective turn towards nepotism.

The beauty of any system that must really be built on top of meritocracy must be its inherent affinity towards merit of the person. For ensuring this, the entry conditions has to be strictly followed, and the method ofchoosing any candidate must be both strict and accountable. In fact, the fear promulgating from accountability must form one of the basic protection for the system.
The selection board shall be highly methodical.

There is one small catch in a highly strict method of governing. Sometimes, some of the best governers were not actually identified as good enough for managing even themselves, but later turned out to be effective governers of vast kingdoms. So, the selection mechanism should ideally be able to incorporate these possibilities. What I feel is the best method is to actually test people based on the skill sets ideal for the job. Once they show that they have the requisite skill sets, make a pseudo appointment of the said people for the task, and evaluate them on the how they work and then only give the full responsibility to them. In fact, I would prefer that the selection process for the successor for any post should be an ongoing process. This is the only way the best available talent can be used for the correct job.

One of the main reasons why any person may think of nepotism is inherent insecurity that expresses itself in a ruling person. To overcome this, effective couner steps must be evolved so that there wont be a sense of insecurity inherently being developed in the governing people.

Energy as chande of state

It might seam strange, but if we look at most of the processes in the nature, they seem to flow with the sense of innate chaos. For example of water flowing, wind blowing, magma flows, cosmic dust's flow. . . In fact, it even spills over to the virtual workds created by us, like the money flow, or you can say stock market variations. At a glance, they look as if they do have a pattern, but then when we look deeper into them, they simply look unconnected.

In the sense of meditative gabbling , even the electric charges came into the picture. Suddenly the uncertainty principle struck me somewhere. so is there an electron? apart from a sense of abstraction, it is not possible to sense the presence of electrons and protons and their flow over an electric wire. But then, we all can say for sure that just as air exists, so do electrons. Just as tree leaves sway because of the power of air, so do bulbs glow. but then to perceive the electrons are not possible.

Now if it is not perceivable, then it cannot be sensed by the sense organs, and if cannot be sensed by the organs, then the existence of an electron is as questionable, as the inexistence of electrons.

it is more possible to picture the sense of electrons and protons as nothing but the negative and positive instances of harmony. The harmonious one, looses its balance and leads to unharmony, and since the innate is harmonious in nature, unharmony cannot be maintained. hence the unharmony will strive to become harmonious by the flow of air, or the flow of water, or the flow of money or the flow of electrons. As far as the natre is concerned it is not important what constittes it, but in what sense of harmony they are.

Just as water take the form of vessel it is placed in, so do the harmonious mix with one and all in the nature. But the unharmonious cannot mix and merge with anything due to its nature. Hence it needs to seek its compatible other half so that it can become harmonious again. It is in the nature of the unharmonious to seek aggressively for the other. This innate urge itself is the energy that drives the bulb, the force that pushes the leaves, the unforseeable that churns light breezes as well as cyclones.

THus energy is nothing but the unharmony of one part of the object. But what if the object contains more than one sense of unharmony? What if every time one type of harmony is achieved, another always props up? In the sense that, do all the actions resulting for one type of unharmony effective in achieving the goal?

There is struggle in life, because we need to figure out the mechanism for reaching harmony.

The equilibrium need not be passive inanimate as is usually visualized, but it is to be a dynamic attempt to seemingly r=touch the equillibrium without actually touching it.
It may not really make sense, because it will be beyond sense, but not really nonsense. The thin line (as if lines can be thick too.) Loitering around in the verge, just seemlessly interlinked with other side aside. the waves may churn but they dont exist, as the sound may come out from the silence to. The sense of presence that just about touches, but then when actively sought for, never really was there.

it is hard to type, because of the effort needed, but it is not possible to stop, brcause the gush cannot be stopped. it just flows out , innately searching out the garbled keys of the keyboard, yet unaware that the letters typed do add up to something. there are swirls and there are cross swirls. but then wihout all there, there wont be the wave. do words have to have a meaning, but then f they dont have one, wont they cease to be one.

thoughts stop as if they pass, but then it can only mean that they just stopped being percieved. if thoguhts could stop, then wont the mind go to stop, but then having never seen a mind that stopped because of lack of thought, how can it be made sure that the mind will stop.

if there id no effort to conciously make an effort to be active, then will it be termed inactive?? will it have to be like that?

The ravishing is all but state of mind, but then by acknowledging that the states change and so do the resultant energy waves that flow out too. after all energy is nothing but the shift of the state of the innate mind of an object.