When philosophies wage war …

I was sent for a workshop on peaceful co-existence by work day before yesterday. I was sent not because I was involved in any project about peaceful co-existence but because my boss had been invited but had to leave early whereas they wanted the participants to be there till the end of the day – so I was the chosen one to provide cover for my boss when she left :p I think I did a pretty good job since I infused my own brand of philosophy in to the discussion and was so in their face, questioning their methods that they probably will specifically ask my boss not to send me there again in the future <vbg> Be that as may be, there were some interesting points of note to the whole experience.

They started the workshop by telling each one of us to write down four words that came to our mind when you said peaceful co-existence. Then they had us get into pairs and combine our two sets of four words and come up with a list of four words that we felt best described peaceful co-existence. The first person I was paired with was a girl who believed that non-threatened (her word) was a better choice than understanding (my word). We had a fairly long discussion on this and in the interests of peace, I agreed to combine non-threatened, understanding and another word which I can’t remember to come up with non-threatened. However, by this time it was dawning on me that this exercise was a better way to discourage peaceful co-existence than to foster it :p Everybody gets hung up on "their" words and it becomes contentious – at least, it was so with all the groups I was involved with … so maybe I was the negative link in all of these but I believed that I was trying to compromise as much as I could – so maybe it’s an aura around me or something :p

Anyway, they had the groups of two then combine into groups of four and again combine the words to come up with four again. This time, the other group had understanding and we were back to the impasse about understanding and non-threatened. Honestly, I felt that understanding describes peaceful co-existence better than non-threatened but to simply trample all over the other person even though there was now a majority of three speaking for understanding, didn’t seem right to me. So I proposed a compromise again where we kept both understanding and non-threatened. They then made up groups of eight to again come up with a list of four words. We were put with my boss’s group this time and she’d noticed that our group took a long time to deliberate over matters and she’d decided to show her leadership skills – or maybe she was just tired of all the arguing. So she just got very bossy, challenged people and basically bullied everybody into agreement quickly <g> But understanding still survived.

Now they combined the four words from three different groups of eight people each to come up with one final four word list. Understanding still was there (why do I keep on repeating that? Because to me understanding is very important for peaceful co-existence but that is something for another day again …) and then we had this huge argument for "tolerance". A lot of people seemed to think that tolerance was alright but I felt that tolerance implied some negativity – that you didn’t really agree with the other person but were willing to tolerate them for the sake of harmony – like I’d done with "non-threatened" <g> and that really is not healthy since you do have some (maybe a very minute amount but yet some) amount of resentment which can over time grow into a problem. We finally agreed to drop tolerance and came up with our list of words – which I now totally forget except for understanding and harmony.

Another exercise that they had us do provoked even stronger emotions from me. They had us divide into ethnic groups and come up with stereotypes for other ethnic groups as well as stereotypes that the other groups had for us. Now I was the only Muslim there and while the following might sound like a cop-out, it wasn’t – I basically did what I believed in :p I’ve always believed that our basic problem here in Sri Lanka is that we cling to our ethnic, racial, religious differences than to embrace the fact that we are all Sri Lankans. I wanted to represent the Sri Lankans and not the Muslims but since I also have this strong urge to follow rules (not the implied ones of society but rather the rules laid out in a classroom situation or basically any rule that is explicitly laid down I guess :p), I decided not to. However, one of the others at the workshop had joined the Muslim group – her name is Veronique and she changed my mind for me. She said that I should do what I was comfortable with and not what was forced upon me and I saw that this was right and so simply wrote down stereotypes about Sri Lankans. It was interesting to note the comments of some of the others at the stage when they didn’t know what I was doing but only saw this long list I had – they would say things like "you are a single person and yet you have such a long list about *our* group?" It was very much evident that group feelings were pretty much at the forefront and I was beginning to dislike this particular exercise very much because it seemed to engender hostilities rather than to foster peace.

I remarked on this later when we’d read out all our lists of stereotypes and was told that we had to see the differences before we can understand each other. While I subsided at that point, later reflection has shown me that this was wrong. We already *know* the differences, that’s why we have conflict. The point is to let us *understand* the differences and to learn that we are not really that different after all. I really don’t think that the workshop did anything towards that – it was so busy highlighting differences that they forgot that what they had to do was to let people reconcile these differences. In fact, when I spoke in support certain people in another group, I was told that I was to remain silent while that group sorted it out themselves. This to me sounds like segregation and demarcation and that’s basically what brought us to the present crisis! Ah well … even the teachers sometimes need teaching methinks …

Of Life, philosophy, idealism and other asbstracts …

I’ve not been at my computer much the last few days – the day before because it was one of the two festivals of the Muslims – the Haj festival – and I was with my family in Kurunegala and yesterday because I was at a workshop about peaceful co-existence for work. Both days provided me a lot of fodder for thought and obviously, I’ll be sharing some of that here :p

The day before yesterday, quite a bit of our family gathered together for the Haj festival and as is usual we had a group discussion going on various topics ranging from politics to cricket. Eventually of course, the talk turned to the current situation with Iraq and one of my cousins made a comment that set me off <g> He said that the world fears the Muslims and that’s why they are persecuted – incidentally, I should mention that a lot of Muslims believe/fear that they are being persecuted by the rest of the world because of their religion – and I said that the only reason the world fears the Muslims is because we are fanatics and that that is our own fault because some of our people kill others in the name of God when just that act proves that they are not Muslims nor have they understood the teachings of Islam. So the fault lies with us to a great extent – not the rest of the world. Then my cousin said something to the effect "but look at Israel and the Palestine. Israel gets everybody’s support".

Somewhere around this point I had an epiphany – well, maybe not really an epiphany since I think I’ve known this before but it suddenly became crystal clear to me as a fact and has since become part of my philosophy about the world and humanity. My response to my cousin was based on this insight – I said that most of the conflicts in this world are not based on religion but on politics. America does not attack Iraq because they are Muslims – it attacks Iraq for various political reasons, the fact that they have oil not being the least of them. Israel and Palestine are not engaged in a religious struggle – it’s purely political. Man is a political animal and while we would like to put the tag of "religious struggle" on a conflict, it is almost certainly not about religion but about politics. The Islamic fundamentalists who claim to wage a war in the name of God are also not in it because of God but because they want power – again politics.

I’ve been thinking about this after the fact and I realized that we find it easier to talk about religious struggles or to feel as if we are being persecuted due to our religion than to realize that it is all politics – so we turn a blind eye to the facts. We feel comfort in a way in thinking that all insert-racial-or-ethnic-grouping-here are persecuted because then we belong to a group and can feel safe and secure while we think about the persecution we face. It also makes sense from the other side. Would many people support the US government if it simply said, "we need Iraq’s oil. So we are going to war"? Hardly likely. But you say "we are going to war against terror. Support us" – can anybody refuse? Of course, the Muslims perceive this as a direct threat on "their" religion and that sparks a new wave of fundamentalist terrorists and so the business of politics keeps on rolling … sad …

I think I got a little bit carried away there and since the stuff about the peaceful co-existence workshop would probably take just as much space as this, I’ll reserve that for tomorrow 🙂

The future she is a rolling road …

I’ve been continuing to read Gordon R. Dickson’s Childe cycle – or the Dorsai books as they are probably more commonly known. I kind of got stuck on "Soldier, Ask Not" since that was about a character that I didn’t really like – he had great power, the power to affect the affairs and actions of other people around him, but chose to use that power for selfish and harmful ends. This kind of behaviour is antithetical to my way of thinking since I believe in responsible action when you are entrusted/gifted with great power (yes, I know, that probably is a pipe dream because most of us do tend to think of ourselves first … but one can hope ..) Anyway, as I said, I didn’t like the protagonist in "Soldier, Ask Not" – Tam Olyn – much. But in the end he turned out to be one of my favorites and a person about whom I wanted to learn more because he realized the error of his ways and begins working for the good of humanity. It is not cliched as I make it sound here incidentally :p The way it unfolds in the story is interesting and believable.

I finished "Soldier, Ask Not" on Friday evening and began reading "Tactics of Mistake" – the next book in the series – the same day. I read till late and then continued to read through yesterday and finished the book last night :p This was again about the evolution of mankind – about a future where humanity has spread to the stars and has started to splinter – to break up into units made up of like minded people – the warriors, the philosophers, the men of faith and the technocrats. Each of these splinters has one facet of the human persona over-developed .. like a person who has lost a limb having their other limb growing stronger to compensate – only thing is, they haven’t lost any of their other facets of humanity … just that one facet has grown stronger. Normal man, back on Earth, continues to be multi-faceted … the rootstock.

There are many things that Dickson mentions in the books that makes me wonder if he really believed in what he was talking about or had had an inkling of what was to come. I believe in some of what he said about the evolution of humanity – though not in the splinter cultures. I don’t think we should fragment – fragmentation only brings about conflict as it already has on this world of ours. It is actually time for humanity to merge together and to realize that we are one race – not individual nationalities, races or groups. However, I do believe that we are in a constant process of evolution – not just as a race but also as individuals. Each one of us evolves – emotionally, mentally but perhaps not so much physically … but then again, even the physical evolution is there – just not regarded as evolution by most. When we move to a colder climate and "adjust" to the cold, isn’t that evolution? When we adapt to some disability – such as losing a limb – isn’t that evolution? I think it is – at an individual level rather than at a racial level.

There are so many things that the Childe cycle makes me aware of and makes me think about. When I first read the books, I hadn’t considered most of the things that the book talks about – now I’m acutely aware of these things since some of them have become part of my own philosophy about life. I have to wonder – did I evolve this philosophy myself or did my first reading affect my way of thinking subconsciously and instigate this evolution within me? That itself is an interesting thought – at least for me :p

Make love not …

Why is it that we always tell our children "don’t fight", "violence is not the solution", "might is not right" and so on and then go and do just the opposite? Are we out to prove besides the fact that we are spouting hot air, that we are a bunch of liars and that it is also OK to lie? I don’t know … This is how it seems to me from a simplistic point of view. I know that there are times when war is inevitable but we should do all that is humanly possible before we resort to war.

OK now you know I am going to talk about the US :p So let me put in a few disclaimers and set the stage first. I know that there are a lot of people in the US who feel the same way as I do and I also know that most people online are aware of the fact that there is a world outside the US and that the US is not always right – so when I say something about US people generally, it might not mean *you* even if you live in the US :p The second thing is that when I say "the US" most often than not, I mean the US government and not the people of the US itself – not the average Joe on the street. Incidentally, it’s a curious thing but I’ve noticed that quite a few people from the US support any action by the government just because it’s done *by the government*. Now just because it is a government of the people, by the people, for the people does not mean that we should lose sight of one important fact – it is also a government *of* people. I mean it’s a government made up of people – people with emotions, feelings, prejudices; things that may colour their actions and may not make them always objective. I can’t say that I have a wide experience of the world but I don’t see that particular mentality (the idea that it’s OK because your government does it) in other parts of the world – certainly not in Sri Lanka where people always analyze the actions of the president and the government and look at it – if not fairly – at least critically.

There are many things I don’t understand about the US government’s insistence on war with Iraq. How come they want to fight Iraq over nuclear capabilities that have not yet been discovered (but that the US government insists are there) when they are bending over backwards to accommodate North Korea which openly declares that they are going to resume nuclear testing? Wasn’t North Korea part of George Bush’s "axis of terror"? Or is the *real* reason for going to war with Iraq something else altogether? When I hear all this stubborn insistence that Iraq has nuclear capabilities (with no concrete evidence as far as I know) I begin to believe the stories that I hear about the US actually having provided Iraq with nuclear armament by the US twenty years ago during the time of the Iran-Iraq war – how else can the US know with such certainty that Iraq has nuclear capabilities? I wonder …

There are many things which don’t make sense to me about this looming war. I don’t understand why human lives (does not matter which race, creed or nationality it belongs to) should be lost for political reasons. I wonder if this is just another instance of "Wag the Dog" – which incidentally is a brilliant piece of political satire as far as I am concerned. I didn’t understand when the US government went to war in Afghanistan saying that they were going to bring back Osama Bin Laden to trial – many human lives have been lost (both Afghan and US) but Bin Laden still roams free. If I could see that Bin Laden couldn’t be captured even then (I said so in my blog at that time …), how is it that the US government with all it’s highly-trained and highly-paid analysts couldn’t? Could it be that it was not about bringing Bin Laden to justice but about making a point? Why do we waste human lives for the sake of such pettiness? Is it because human lives (each of which should be so utterly precious) have lost all meaning and value in the world of today? If so, then maybe we do deserve to be wiped out in one big nuclear conflagration …

Enter the twilight zone …

I know I haven’t written much lately but it’s not because I had nothing to write (in fact, I had tons of stuff going through my mind which would have made good fodder for this blog :p) but because I was too busy to write. SM actually takes a bit more out of me in the way of writing since it is about ideas and thoughts and dreams and philosophies – unlike DC (The Developer’s Corner) where I just talk about development stuff. Here I have to try and be coherent instead of meandering all over the place as I have a habit of doing :p Anyway, enough of the apologies and on to the stuff I wanted to talk about … well, at least some of it :p

I finished reading Gordon R. Dickson’s "Necromancer" a couple of days ago and all I could say was "wow!!" because that book really spoke to me! I could totally identify with the protagonist and the way he thought and looked at the world and I really didn’t think that there were other people who thought that way (and here I am talking about the author – he must at least have seen the world partially like his protagonist to have written that way … at least that’s what I thought). I thought I coined the term "empath" because I believe that while a true telepath would be an impossibility (well, at least a sane one – all the vicious thoughts and secrets that they’d be bombarded with daily would make them go insane is what I think), I think that "empaths" are real and do exist. An empath (in case you are wondering <g>) according to my definition is basically somebody who can feel the emotions of another without actually knowing their thoughts and secrets. But I discovered that Dickson had used the term to describe his protagonist years ago! Plus, his protagonist says that nothing surprises him much because he can see it coming and the same is true of me – the latest example was that I saw the twist in the story coming in "Necromancer" way before it actually arrived – only thing was, that I was never sure that the plot would resolve the way I thought it would and yet, it did in the end!

Now I find myself wondering if I am simply remembering some of this because I’d read the other books in the series (the Dorsai series in case somebody is interested ..) or if I am just hitting the outskirts of the Twilight Zone :p So I decided to go back and re-read the whole series from the beginning since I’d read half the series ages ago (over ten to fifteen years ago if memory serves right) and have not even read the final half of the series yet. I started with the first book – "Dorsai!" – and was again hit with that weird feeling of … I don’t know .. can’t say deja vu since I have read the book before and so deja vu would be appropriate but then again, it’s not since I don’t remember most of this since I wasn’t thinking along those lines when I first read the book. This time the story is about an intuit – a person who intuitively knows the all possible future outcomes and so can take action so that a certain outcome will be possible. While I had never even thought of the concept of an intuit, I do agree again with some of the protagonist’s views. For instance, at the beginning he is described thus: "What seemed so plain, and simple and straightforward to himself, had always struck others as veiled, torturous and involved. Always he had been like a stranger passing through a town, the ways of whose people were different, and who looked on him with a lack of understanding amounting to suspicion. Their language failed on the doorstep of his motives and could not enter the lonely mansion of his mind. They said "enemy" and "friend"; they said "strong" and "weak" – "them" and "us". They set up a thousand arbitrary classifications and distinctions which he could not comprehend, convinced as he was that all people were only people – and there was very little to choose between them. Only, you dealt with them as individuals, one by one, and always remembered them as individuals, one by one; and always remembering to be patient." That is exactly how I feel about people!

I could probably go on and on with this and make this entry really long and boring but I’ll probably stop here for the moment. But I want to take this up again with another subject that has been on my mind related to people – but this time, to the real world and the situation in the world today … maybe tomorrow 🙂

Of this and that …

It was quite a shock (well, OK maybe not a shock but a surprise but not a pleasant one ..) to learn today that one of the blogs on my regular-visit list is no more. I have no idea when that happened since I haven’t visited this particular blog in about a week or two but then again I’ve realized that I haven’t visited any of my regular blogs in a while now – been too caught up in my own stuff – which really is not a good thing. If we don’t have time for others, I feel that we get caught up in our own things and bend more and more inwards till we finally have no time for anybody at all but ourselves – and our troubles begin to seem more and more important and those of others not so significant. Not good – not good at all … I should make an effort to interact with others more but that seems to be not such an easy task for the next few weeks – or maybe even more for reasons that will be revealed eventually …

I watched a Hindi movie (an Indian movie in one of their languages which happens to be called Hindi) on Sunday and at first we thought it was a remake of "The Usual Suspects" but it turned out to be something else altogether. Unusual for a Hindi movie, the whole story was set in the US and in an American setting – there have been other Hindi movies which are set in the US but the settings were still Indian. This was different. It’s about a group of Indians who get together to rob an American bank. The story and the movie itself aren’t what interested me here however – it was the attitudes that the movie implied about the US and about Americans in general. In the movie, the characters say over and over again that if a crime is committed, it’s the Indians who get pinpointed. One character says that the Italians have their mafia, the Colombians their cartels, the Chinese their triads but the Indians only have police records because they are not organized.

Two things struck me here. One was that the America that I knew wasn’t *that* racist and the other was that we always talk in terms of race – even when we are supposed to be one country or one race. Heck, we *are* one race – the human race! But we always forget that and insist on branding, separating, classifying. I’m afraid that I’m guilty of that too since I will talk of Americans and Indians and Sri Lankans but in a sense, I can’t help but do it because people of specific regions or countries do seem to have their own attitudes. While this can be classified as part and parcel of human nature, you still need some way to identify the group and that brings us again back to classifications and categorizations and segregation. There is more I can say on this subject – actually there is more that I *want to* say on this subject but not now since I’d probably be meandering too much :p So let’s save that for another day …

The world she is a changing …

I watched Cliff Richard’s millennium count-down concert (yeah, I know about two years late :p) last night on TV and he did these songs which counted up the decades from the fifties. Incidentally, he had Hank Marvin on guitar and the guitar-work was beautiful but that’s beside the point. While listening to the songs, I was struck by the fact that they did a lot of songs about peace and harmony and helping other people those days – is it just me or has that become rare today? Maybe I just don’t listen to music enough these days but I just don’t think there are enough artists talking about world peace or better understanding among people. Maybe it’s because of the fact that most of the successful artists today are either very young or subject to the one-hit-wonder phenomenon? They just want to enjoy their fame and fortune while they can and don’t feel like working on world peace? Or am I just not up-to-date? But where is this decade’s Bob Geldof with Live Aid or Quincy Jones, Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson with USA for Africa or even Willie Nelson with Farm Aid? Are people just too blase about such efforts now or is it just that it’s not big news anymore and I don’t hear about it though it still goes on?

Of faith and hope …

I’ve been meaning to write this entry for several days now but never got around to it since I’ve been too busy (in fact, I seem to be sadly neglecting this journal altogether and that is bad – I will try to rectify the situation). I should start off by saying that I believe in "each to his own" and am not trying to refute anybody else (especially since this whole entry is based on something somebody said :p) but just trying to write about how *I* feel about certain things.

In response to my last entry, Mike remarked that he’d had a good life and that he’d never prayed in his life and that prayer simply made you feel good. To me, that sounds very similar to a man who has never been sick in his life saying that medicine is just coloured water 🙂 To me prayer is about faith – faith that God exists, that he’s listening to us and that even though we might be unworthy of his attention, that he is most gracious and all merciful and will grant us what we pray for – especially if we pray for others. Of course, I also believe that prayer alone will not suffice – that if we can do something to make our prayers come true, we should do it – that God helps those who help themselves.

To me faith and hope are twin sisters and mankind needs both to get through life. I often remember the story about Pandora’s box and how after she opened the box and let all the evil loose on the world, she closed the box quickly and heard a little voice saying "let me out, let me out". She asked "Who are you?" and the voice replied "I am hope. You’ve let sickness, aging, death, plague, poverty and so many other evils loose in the world and I am the only thing that can let mankind get through it all. So let me out!" Pandora opened the box once more and let hope go free and so there was hope in the world, even through the greatest suffering, we have hope. To have faith in the face of adversity – faith in God and know that things will be OK as long as you live a good life – and to have hope for a better day is probably the main reason that I get through life day to day. Faith and hope – hope and faith …
Just an addendum posted later :p I started out wanting to basically write about the fact that faith and hope are two things intrinsic to the human condition – whether it be faith in God or faith in yourself or faith in something and we *do* always hope, whether we acknowledge it or not. But I got sidetracked talking about how *I* look at things and so it became another one of my personal meanders. Sorry about that :p

Meeting of minds and clashing of souls

Yes, I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated this page but my only excuse is that I’ve been fairly busy with so many other things – but that really is no excuse since this is supposed to be a reflection of my thoughts and I shouldn’t put my thoughts on hold <g> Anyway, I’ve been busy and then I was in Kurunegala and now I am finally back. Even though it’s a Saturday, I went to work since dial-up costs are prohibitive here (you have to pay for even local calls) and Net access is cheap at work since it’s free and I was missing Jen since I’d been at home for the last couple of days with very brief forays online to talk to her. So I rushed to work so that I could talk to Jen and catch up on all that had been happening in her life.

While I was talking to her however, I heard some great news from another friend of mine. Since it is something personal about somebody else, I will not go into details here but suffice it to say that I have been vouchsafed the power of prayer once again 🙂 I have always known that God is listening if you pray to him but sometimes it is nevertheless surprising when you receive a response so quickly – does that mean you have no faith or just that you don’t expect God to respond quickly? I don’t know … But I just know that God is listening.

Jen and I talked through the day while I worked on a variety of things – including installing SP1 on my notebook machine which I took to work with me. How well do we know anybody around us? Sometimes we think we know everything about somebody and then a casual remark opens up a whole new area of their lives that we never knew about and we find ourselves pleasantly surprised (or shocked/horrified etc. but this particular instance was a pleasant surprise – nothing negative at all :p) to find that there is a meeting of minds between yourself and the other person on a subject that you thought they wouldn’t be interested in at all. I treasure such moments of discovery about any of my friends. Maybe it’s because it’s just another cementing of the bond between them and me or maybe because it reaffirms that I am not alone in this world in the way I think or look at things – then again, it might simply be because I’ve found something else to talk about with them. Whatever the case maybe, I do cherish such moments and now that I look back at this entry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this :p

Open book life

I’ve said before that my life is an open book and that I would write about almost anything here – however, there are certain qualifications to that statement :p While my life is pretty much open, I do hesitate to talk about anything which also involves somebody else because while I might not care about my privacy, I can’t make the same assumption for other people’s privacy. So sometimes I would talk to a friend online and I would want to write about what we discussed here (of course it’s perfectly innocuous stuff – not anything private) but then I’d wonder if they wanted me to talk about anything they said and since I don’t know for certain, I usually don’t write about any of it.

Of course the other thing that I don’t like to discuss here are things dealing with personal life, relationships etc. Especially if they are about stuff that is best left private – I believe that washing dirty laundry in public does no one any good and so don’t talk about certain things here. So while I do say my life is an open book, I guess that is not strictly true. Maybe I should start calling it a half-open book life? :p