And now, after the sombre mood, time for some humour :) The following clips are from a universally loved movie that was based on a great book, 'The Jungle Book'. So friends, time to pause, take a break and have a dekko again at some innocent light-hearted fun :)

(A short, dark story for those who complain about the lengthiness of my stories :))

She's watching the window intently, as the wind picks up the stormy rain and lashes it against the glass. As though Nature is throwing a huge tantrum and flinging the elements about in fury. It soothes her somehow. The chaos inside her subsides in the face of the turbulence outside. Drops hit the glass with clattering ferocity, break apart and fly back to join the driving wind and the uproarious rain. And the remnants join up with others and slide down the glass in trembling rivulets. As if in response to the increasing calm within her, the wind slowly dies down too, and now there's only a steady beat of rain, that flicks an occasional drop towards the window, and raindrops hang clutching at the glass, defying gravity until they swell enough to slide away.

In the moisture-laden calmness, the air heavy with the secrets that the rain and wind have gathered from far away and dispersed into people's rooms - the sighs of heartbreak and the soft whispers of dreams crumbled in the hearts of strangers - she feels her own heart swell and strain against the steel of her heart walls. Walls she had started putting up a long time ago, when orphaned suddenly, she had gone to live in her aunt's house, the youngest there, the most vulnerable and the most unwanted. Smiling through tears, laughing through rejection, excelling in academics to compensate for her loss everywhere else. Slowly, unknowingly even to herself, she had built her walls, added layers, then bolts and latches, her defence against the pain of loneliness and rejection. Silken and unshakable, she had slowly but surely marked her ascension in the corporate world through one remarkable success after another. Men looked at her with respect, or flattering obeisance, a mask for the envy they felt and sometimes the desire that glimmered momentarily in their eyes. But none had conquered her heart.

All along she had waited for the one man for whom she could unlatch her heart and unbolt her soul. But he had never come. Now, as the rain drums its fingers on asphalt, stone and glass, and moved by the murmurings the wind has left behind, her heart unfolds its wings and flutters, longing to fly free. But habit is a hard taskmaster and fear is a cruel one and the loyal steel clamps down and crushes those tentative wings. Only a sob escapes her lips and clouds her vision. Hastily, as if to ward off these intruders, her hand flies to her mouth, and she shuts tight her eyes.

When she opens her eyes again, to her utter surprise, there is a red drop sitting on the glass, like a perfectly formed drop of blood, taut and turgid. It takes a few moments for her brain to tell her that it could be the reflection of something red falling on the drop of water. But somehow, that tantalising image of the blood-red drop makes her think of Him. Her gaze immediately shifts to her wrist, and she caresses the soft skin with the tips of her fingers. The veins stretch blue against the pale skin, thin tributaries carrying life, and she can see her pulse throbbing. Anticipation makes it throb faster and she feels the beat echo loudly in her chest. Desire courses through her body and she feels a slight chill shiver through her spine. Her breath quickens on the thought of the razor blade, sitting in a drawer nearby, waiting to be picked up and sliced through the paper-thin skin of her wrist, the supple veins and the elastic tendons.

Will He come quickly, she wonders, will His touch be painless or will her body convulse with pain as it does in pleasure? Will she moan in pain as she does with joy? Which part of her will He enter first? How long will it be before she reaches the peak of agony and succumbs to His dark arms, its comforting numbness and its obliterating surrender? Her Dark Knight, before He takes her into the night forever.

I was in between jobs and had decided to take a break. I was driving solo up north in the Lake Taupo region looking for interesting things to see when I saw a sign saying "NZ woodcraft and ceramics".

On an impulse I took the detour and went into the shop. Inside were a great many fine woodturned bowls and other items in kauri and rimu and other types of wood. The grain in the wood had created beautiful patterns so that each one of them was a unique piece, with its own stamp and signature. Whorls and twirls and lines that only nature can create and we can only imitate.

Halfway through I saw a sign that said that Chris was selling his business and tools etc. On the way out I walked over to the man at the counter and asked him, "Are you Chris?"

"Yes"

"Are you selling your business?"

"Yes"

"Why?"

"Because I have been doing it for the past 20 years and now I want to fly planes instead".

Mind you, Chris looked like he was in his fifties, so rather doubtfully I asked "Oh, you want to become a pilot?"

"Yes, I have been training to fly for the last four years."

"And fly commercial flights?"

"No, I am too old for that, but I would like to fly planes that are used for top-dressing"

"What is that?"

"Planes that spray fertiliser on fields"

"Then what about woodturning, are you going to give it up? This is such a major switch, are you going to give up your passion?"

"Yes, it is a major switch, that is why I have been training to fly. But woodturning is not my passion, now it is just a job that has to be done, even though it began as a passion. Now flying is my passion. I took my first flight when I was five and decided then that I would fly someday even though it took me 55 years to fulfill my dream".

I was so impressed and moved by this that I asked to take his photograph in front of the pictures of the planes that he had up put up. He kindly obliged.

It is never too late to realise your dreams, so what if you are only a few steps away from the grave. It is just that you should never let go of them. Meeting Chris was such a valuable lesson for me.

These days, I'm sure Chris is up in the sky somewhere, flying his plane, doing what makes his heart sing and his soul dance.

It is Saturday and Hubby and I are engaged in shopping. We take a break at lunchtime and are eating finger chips sitting on a bench on the beach. Soon we are joined by a lone seagull, orange beak, orange feet and orange lined eyes. Hubby throws bits of chips at him and the gull merrily gorges on junk food. We wonder about the fact that he does not even utter a quack to signal to his gull mates that there is food available. But soon another seagull joins us and then the fun begins. Gull no.1 undergoes a transformation. He starts squawking hoarsely and runs after gull no.2, pointed beak open, trying to run him off the place.

Now No.2 is a smart fellow, he retreats strategically to the back of the bench where he is content with the bits that Hubby throws backwards occasionally. But No.1’s squawks have attracted others of his kind and soon we are a happy crowd of about 5-6 gulls, some of these, we notice have black feet, beak and kohl-lined eyes. Owing to the fact that these black-eyed beauties are hovering on the fringes, and are smaller in size than the more flamboyant orange-eyed fellas, we conclude that these must be the females.

No.1 is now really busy because more gulls are arriving by the minute and he is spending so much time squawking after them and chasing them that he has ceased to notice that bits of food are still being given. In the midst of his squawking and frantic chasing, the newcomers manage to snatch up the food which he has ignored probably with the mistaken belief that he can run all the others off and be the only partaker of the food.

No.2 at the back has also established his territory and is valiantly defending his turf. I cannot help think that this is precisely how humans behave too. We are so busy fighting over land and territory that sometimes the basic needs of our people get forgotten. There are some countries who probably spend more of their GDP in defense expenditure than in providing food and basic amenities to its people. Even though we know that there is enough resouces to feed the whole world, some of us are intent on cornering most of it in a concerted attempt to have more of more so that others can have less of less. When the US went to war in Iraq, they increased their defense budget and guess where the money came from. Some of it came from social welfare, elderly care and basic medical care. They actually cut back spending on these areas.

Sad to think that we are not so highly evolved after all. :(

Slow down for three minutes to read this. It is so worth it. Touching words from the mouths of babes. What does "Love" mean?

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, "What does "love" mean?"

The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. See what you think:

"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn"t bend over and paint her toenails anymore.
So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That"s love."

Rebecca- age 8

"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.
You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."

Billy - age 4

"Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other."

Karl - age 5

"Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs."

Chrissie - age 6

"Love is what makes you smile when you"re tired."

Terri - age 4

"Love is when my mummy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK."

Danny - age 7

"Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more.

My Mummy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss"

Emily - age 8

"Love is what"s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen."

Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)

"If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,"

Nikka - age 6

(we need a few million more Nikka"s on this planet)

"Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday."

Noelle - age 7

"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well."

Tommy - age 6

"During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling.

He was the only one doing that. I wasn"t scared anymore."

Cindy - age 8

"My mummy loves me more than anybody
You don"t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night."

Clare - age 6

"Love is when Mummy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken."

Elaine-age 5

"Love is when Mummy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford."

Chris - age 7

"Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day"

Mary Ann - age 4

"I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones."

Lauren - age 4

"When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you." (what an image)

Karen - age 7

"Love is when Mummy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn"t think it"s gross."

Mark - age 6

"You really shouldn"t say "I love you" unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget."

Jessica - age 8

And the final one -- Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge.

The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman"s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.

When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbour, the little boy said,

"Nothing, I just helped him cry"

On your way to work this morning, did you notice
the beggar child, eyes filled with tears,
face pinched by hardship?
Or your own beggar-heart
starved for love, for light.

In the din of traffic, did you hear
the lonely call of a solitary bird
perched high on a light-pole?
Or your soul"s desperate plea
To sing its own song?

Juggling deadlines,
did you pause to consider,
that you too have an expiry date?
That, your life is waiting to be taken as a gift
and lived.

Does your smile reach your eyes,
does it reach the other"s heart?
Are the windows of your eyes shut tight
with worry and distraction?
Does suspicion clog your heart-valves?

Is coffee the only thing that lifts you up,
or alcohol?
What about laughing child-eyes
or the lift and sweep of a soaring seagull?
or the joy that comes from within.

Is life passing you by,
while you
play out the various roles in a life not quite yours?
If life comes knocking,
are you busy in another existence?

It"s time to let life in.

Speech given by J.K.Rowling at the 2008 Harvard University Commencement, June 5, 2008.

Copyright of J.K. Rowling, June 2008
June 5, 2008 · President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,

The first thing I would like to say is "thank you." Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I"ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world"s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can"t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the "gay wizard" joke, I"ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called "real life", I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents" car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person"s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone"s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International"s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country"s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people"s minds, imagine themselves into other people"s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people"s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people"s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great
majority of you belong to the world"s only remaining superpower. The
way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you
bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your
borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children"s godparents, the people to whom I"ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I"ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: 

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.


Copyright of J.K. Rowling, June 2008

A long time ago, when I was still a teenager, I was reading a D H Lawrence book ("Sons and lovers", I think it was), in which the author describes a scene where this young man deeply in love with a young woman, serenades her every night by playing the violin and singing under her window. His song is filled with love and longing, because, unfortunately for him, she does not return his affection. Reading it, I somehow couldn"t relate to that emotion, since I had then not yet fallen in love :) I thought about it for many days and then forgot about it, until months later, on Doordarshan (this was before the multitude of channels took away the magic :)) I watched this black-and-white song for the first time. I have not heard a song since that conveyed the feeling of longing with such an intensity that I immediately understood the emotion of the young man in the book. (Of course, the performance by the lead actress helped too, longing written on every line of her face and body.)

Well, now I"m nearly old and much wizened and longing has assailed my heart many times, so I decided to write a post about it :) We long for so many things, the loving to be loved by one person, or many, to be accepted by a group. To be in a certain place, maybe filled with memorable happy memories, or even go back to the innocence of childhood. We long for career fulfillment, meaning in life, freedom from illness, we thirst for more and more knowledge, for adventure. Notice how all of them are experiences.

When one longing is fulfilled we move to the next one, it appears that our lives are spent in the fulfillment of one unfulfilled longing after another. If not anything, we long for freedom from longing. It seems to me that longing is hard-wired into our system. I wonder if all these longings are a mask for the one longing we fail to acknowledge - the longing to be one with our Source. I wonder, if all those other longings are fulfilled, will we still say, like Radha says to Krishna in Geeta Dutt"s haunting voice, "main hoon antar ghat tak pyaasi……"

I dedicate this song to Kush babu, our young erudite friend, only he will understand the reasons …… :)

So here it is, the song that introduced me to longing ……


Click here to view the song

Sarath Chandra and I have been having a dialogue on war, among other things, which you will see started with something else altogether, and with his permission I reproduce our GB conversation so that my other friends can join in and share their viewpoints and that way both Sarath and I can learn from it .
Somewhere along the way I started to think as to why I"m having this discussion at all, since my life has not been affected directly by war. But then I realised that wars are started and carried out by individuals like me and if I can better understand the underlying reasons for the apparent necessity of war, I may better be able to understand myself. And also, there is a lot of new-age teaching out there that tells us that thought has tremendous power, and I figured if sufficient people think peace, we just might be able to phase out war.

Disclaimer : If you"re looking for some light reading, please don"t read further. This is all serious stuff and I wish now I had interjected some light humour, but since I don"t know Sarath very well, I wasn"t too sure J

Sarath, I hope you like green J


JJ - 26th June
Thanks for looking over my posts, Sarath, but you wouldn"t find anything cerebral there :))) I tend to get cerebral only when the need arises. At other times I tend to repose in a contemplative place. I"m think I"m basically a right-brain thinker. I read an interesting article on www.wired.com the other day about how the "Logical Age" is giving way to the "Conceptual Age" because humans are realising that logic and reasoning is something that can be outsourced soon to thinking robots and that now we are feeling the need to explore the hiterto neglected regions of our right-brain. If that happens we might even get to a place where we realise that war and violence is so futile , but on the other hand we might also get creative in our violence and then our robots to churn out weapons by the millions :(

SC – 26^th June

Regarding your comment on my GB,

Once we create "thinking" robots which must include learning, there is no way intelligence will die anymore. I think mankind has long since realized war and violence are futile. The war that is going on in various parts of the world is an economic necessity for the weapon"s manufacturers, defense researchers, armies etc. Once war ends the societies have to support a huge number of people in non-war activities. I don"t think people realize this. This has to be strealined process. Mankind cannot stop warring one fine morning. The poverty caused by that will rival a lot of wars and is longer lasting. We have to increase economic activity and simultaneously reduce wars gradually as we absorb members formerly supported by wars. One can point out so many deaths and suffering due to war and all; but unless we realize this reality that ain"t going anywhere :(

JJ - 26th June
Sarath, nowhere did I imply that with the outsourcing of logical tasks are humans beings going to stop thinking. I only meant that we might shift to more right-brain thinking. It is true that the manufacturers of weapons need to keep war alive. But looking at the deeper issues, it"s the ego of mankind that keeps wars and violence alive. And in any case wars are no going to end in a day, so no worries about the displaced labour force. When computers first came on the scene the same argument provoked a lot of fear, but no widespread hunger or death took place.

SC – 26^th June
Well, Jolly, my sentences are getting disconnected. Sorry about that. When I said "intelligence won"t die after the emergence of thinking robots", I meant even if we (humans) happen to die in a nuclear holocaust or comet impact, intelligence will likely survive in the form of those inorganic machines. That part is just a misunderstanding and I do agree with your first couple of sentences.

Moving on to the war issues, I think, it is erroneous to compare it with the software boom. The emergence of computer led to the fallacious arguments you mentioned. The problem was the issue was examined only on the surface (I may be doing that in the war scenario; but that is a different issue). Computers effectively could replace a lot of manual labor. It decreased labor costs resulting in lower product costs, more time, bigger companies as companies started catering to greater demand; the economic activity a company can handle snowballed

The domino effect of a computer finally providing greater net economic activity cannot be escaped if we follow the law of causality patiently. I never misunderstood this phenomena since the introduction of computers (but this is irrelevant). In short, computers did not destroy an existing economic activity; they just provided a much more economically efficient way to do it. The net economic result is positive.

But when we stop wars, we are destroying an economic activity. These people have to be absorbed in other sectors. It is not like replacing 10 accountants with 1 accountant and a computer. It is like no accounting activity (department) anymore. Besides wars also have the important role of preparing us for possible more dangerous extra terrestrial threats. We would be extinct in the face of the merest challenge, if we don"t know how to face up to an adverse situation or challenge from another species.

This is not a justification of war; but unless we recognize the issue in all aspects we will not find an efficient way to minimize wars while retaining its advantages. It is an open secret that many wars are encouraged because of economic reasons. For example, the Taliban emerged because the Afghans did not know what to do with their weapons after the soviet war. The market was kept alive by continuing their militant activities by spreading to Kashmir, Pakistan, and turning their eye to the US and Europe. My contention is only that if we want to stop the war a lot of thought should also be given to the economic side of it; flashing the images of ravages of war appeal to only the emotional side of us. And most of us have no direct financial stake in these wars. In effect, we are fighting for the funds to be allocated to us civilians, while the armies/other outfits want the funds for themselves.

JJ - 27th June
First of all Sarath, I don"t think the entire war machinery all over the world is going to close down one fine day and millions of workers going to enter the workforce suddenly. If at all such a shift towards no-war happens it"s going to be gradual. And if well managed the economic aftermath can be handled as well. Case in point - Japan. After WW2, when they dismantled their war apparatus their economy didn"t fall over. It survived and prospered. You have to remember that the defence industry eats up a lot of money from govt treasuries on one side as well. And I"m no expert in this matter, but I think war is something we can phase out gradually once mankind realises how futile it is. All it requires is political will. And keeping the arms industry in business is not the ONLY reason that wars take place.

And that we need weaponry to shield off aliens is being over-confident of our own devices. If those aliens are capable of inter-galactic travel, it stands to reason that their weaponry will be far more advanced than ours. But these are all skimming the surface issues, I still think that it is the human ego that keeps wars (on micro and macro level) and violence alive. Looking for economic and security reasons to keep the war fires burning is like treating the symptoms rather than the cause.

SC – 28^th June
Jolly, this is what I could come up with J A bit jumbled, but couldn"t do better with the presentation. Sorry.

Jolly, I hope you understand I am not supporting wars. I only think whenever we want something it is not sufficient to look at it from one point of view and declare if everybody does what we think should be done, then the world will be perfect. The problem is everybody else thinks the same way as we do.

"Political will" is a word. The question is what does the word contain? Imagine being a head of a state with the political will to stop the war and decide what you would do with that word? How would you phase out war? Imagine being Indian head of state and solving India"s problems on the North eastern border, Northern border, and western border with that will. What is the road map?

Anyway, I personally don"t think any problem can be solved without understanding all aspects that run it clearly. A war has two major driving forces; the dispute and the economy of weapons and personnel. All of us know only the dispute and we say "Why are they fighting? Can"t they solve it peacefully?" You can say fighting is not an answer; they can sit quietly and think about it. What if one party sits quietly and the other overpowers them? How would you, the advice giver ensure justice is done in this case? Another war or ask for maintaining status quo like the UN did in case of Kashmir and dragging the problem along? The other force is the strong flow of money that drives it. It can be your personal view that we have no chance against an intergalactic race; but not many around the earth would appreciate we giving in without a fight in case of external threats;

Why? what would be Indians" general reaction if we neglect our defence readiness and get attacked by a superior army like Russia or some European army? Say we don"t have a chance and die?

An example is playing right in front of our eyes in the form of Tibet as to what might happen to a society that neglects its defence. It depends on the "sympathy" of international community for whatever little demands it has. And every country in the world knows there is little in the form of gain or loss by taking a stand keeping Tibet in mind. It is virtually irrelevant. They make their stand vis-a-vis their relationship with China. War has a role in societies; it is certainly irrelevant at many places; it has a very strong economic angle to it; it is virtually impossible to dissolve armies around the world; defense research is not exclusive from many other socially relevant research or scientific research; they are by products of the same research.

Just saying everybody should stop it will not get it done. We have to convince all parties concerned of our reasoning. Unless we understand all parties (disputing parties and economic wings), I don"t think we have any hope, of developing such a reasoning. Stopping wars (or having the political will for it) is a goal; not a process. A prospective solution is developing the process towards that goal; not stating the goal.

JJ - 29th June
Sarath, I agree entirely that one must understand all aspects of war. But what I am advocating is that we look a bit deeper than that war is caused by dispute / economic reasons. It is said that the first war took place when Cain killed Abel (envy, or wanting to possess what the other person had). On another note, it’s said that war started when the first fence was put up (claiming land that belonged to nature as one’s own). So, it appears as if war is almost as old as humankind itself. To paraphrase it my way :))) war is caused by ego (dispute) or greed (economic reasons). So I believe it’s going to be around for a long time, unless we take the shorter route and nuke ourselves or take the longer route and rise above our ego and greed. I think it will take an event very close to the annihilation of the human race for humans to finally wake up and realise the futility of war.

Since you’ve brought up the issue of Tibet and countries in states of non-preparedness, why is it that China is not attacking Japan? Wouldn’t it stand to gain more? Why is no one coming to Tibet’s rescue? Why did the US come to Kuwait’s rescue when Iraq attacked it? Political will is not enough, even a world governing body like the UN cannot stop wars let alone eradicate it. Sorry, my thoughts are a bit jumbled today :) must be Sunday indolence :)))

SC – 29^th June
Am enjoying the war discussion. Jumbled or not, you make some pertinent points. Anyway, I will ignore your second GB entry; ; those are questions on diplomacy, foreign policies based on self-interest. The first one, though a very interesting analysis, I disagree with. War is not as old as mankind; it is as old as life itself. When facing limited resources, all species settled their disputes by physical combats. The (physically) stronger (or agile etc) always prevailed. Any analysis of how a species settles disagreements will show man right on top; we use force much less frequently is settling disputes than any species that was ever here on earth (to our knowledge). Of course, it is a different matter that some species may never had to fight as they never faced a situation of limited resources

An instinct for self-preservation is primal in all life. Still, mankind evolved a way to settle a major portion of its disputes without using force and relegated war to a section of society. This is the reason for mankind"s success as a species, in my opinion. And this came about, because mankind defined private property rights, and the concepts of rights and freedom. As you said, it may look like ego and greed are the driving forces of war. But from another point of view, all war is over inadequately defined property rights. It is mostly over properties over which no single person has the right to take any decision. The only way I foresee the end of wars is to wait for the end of nation-states (which is already underway due to globalization and internet). Once national boundaries dissolve and become irrelevant, and properties on boundaries are privatized, we evolve as a single global community. Then we just have to find a way to train ourselves against external threats :)

BTW, please let me know if you really want to talk about your second entry on my GB. I have some ideas and information, and we can follow up and educate each other as we discuss (or if you know everything :)) you can just tell me) :)

JJ - 30th June
Sarath, one only need to watch a few episodes of Nat Geo / Discovery to find out that animals are warring on a daily basis, for them it is a matter of survival. We are the superior species, aren"t we? Endowed with intelligence of a higher order. So it stands to reason that we will settle our disputes more amicably. If globalisation and the blurring of boundaries will eliminate war, what could be better for mankind. But, I think, in the 20th century itself, more people were killed in wars and related events than many centuries put together. Look at the Indian subcontinent, India got split into three different countries and their differences are getting more entrenched by the day. And living in the US, would you not agree, that the Americans are getting more neurotic about security, national boundaries and foreigners (esp of a certain faith) after 9/11? With the arrival of terrorism, war has taken a more insidious form, war now no longer means war between countries.

It is true that wars sometimes happen as the result of fighting over scarce resources, but it is also said that if all countries would disarm and release their defence budgets, it would end global hunger. So resources are not exactly scarce, it"s just that it is in the greed of some parties to corner most of the resources and keep the scarcity alive. That is more to do with power than mere basic survival. Humans unlike animals, are not satisfied with what we"ve got, we must constantly be increasing our sphere of influence. With a mindset like that I don’t have much hope in wars being eliminated just by regulating property rights. On the other hand, I think if all the world will reach a common level of economic prosperity (like Europe has :)) then eliminating war would be more probable. But like I said before, it is in the best interests to keep others poor, weak and vulnerable. Hence, war continues.

SC – 30^th June

Now here goes another treatise :))

Superior? Endowed? - I"d say we evolved and are evolving. We used to do the same as what the animals are doing now. We chose to learn and are still learning. No animal can stop fighting suddenly. Not long ago (on geological time scales) we had no chance against most wild animals and could have been extinct (like the Neanderthals were). I"ll give mankind a lot of credit for being resilient enough to find a way to survive and flourish against overwhelming odds where we reached a point that we have to take care of the same species that even now would not hesitate to eat us alive if possible. Besides, just because somebody is intelligent, disputes won"t be resolved amicably. The intelligence should result in a method, and that method, which separated mankind from the animal kingdom, is private property rights.

On more people being killed in 20th century than many centuries put together - Basically wars have always been part of human history. Accurate statistics are recorded now. It wasn"t so even 3-4 centuries ago. If we take the proportion of people participating in war, it has decreased drastically in the last 2 centuries. Besides, now even a single man can kill 100s with strategically placed bombs while earlier even the man with cruellest intentions can kill only one at a time and only when physically proximate. If 10 out of a total population of 100 in a village are poor in 2000, and the same village evolved to 100000 in 2010, but now we have 20 poor; saying the number of poor has doubled in 10 years maybe accurate, but a mightily misleading picture. In the background of exponentially increased global population and the firepower we have in a single individual, it is easy to see that mankind has actually improved (and this is a gross understatement) in time.

On neurosis about "a certain faith" - I"d prefer that to more bomb blasts. In fact I wrote a couple of articles on Islam (I have an index - 2nd from bottom on my current page); I think it is the last major challenge of mankind. This is not to say I am against muslims; but as long as Islam does not separate itself from governance like all other "faiths" did, I am fighting it. In fact, I don"t think it can be qualified as "faith" or "religion" in the background of death sentences for criticising Quran/Muhammad in a dozen countries (and extensively used to frame laws in a lot of the remaining 40 Islamic majority countries).

On Money - I"ll be typing a lot of what I said elsewhere if I go in detail. Can you please read "Understand Money, Poverty, and prosperity" on my page before going further? In the background of that, a 100 dollars in the center of Manhattan is not of the same value as in Africa or the tropical forests. The 100 dollars are pieces of paper; they have no intrinsic value; nobody can eat them or live in them. The value is proportional to the amount of output a society has. Stopping all war activities and pumping out all that money into the poor regions will not eliminate hunger. It will only increase inflation. If money were to solve all problems all a country has to do is print out more notes and distribute among the poor.

These "solutions" that say the rich should "share" their wealth with the poor and the rich countries exploited the poor countries to become rich come from a basic lack of understand of money (especially currency, which we started thinking of as having intrinsic value). And of course, it feels good to blame somebody else for all the problems an individual is facing and with the number of poor being what it is, one would get the numbers to support. In short, poverty is a result of lack of economic activity, not a lack of some pieces of paper. And each country has itself to blame for not being able to device efficient trading systems, if poor. In fact, the world over, the richest are not those with the greatest natural resources, but with the most efficient trading systems.

And if humans were satisfied with what they"ve got, they would not have separated (or even survived) themselves from animals in the first place. We came from animals and we have eliminated a lot of intra-species force; saying going back to being like animals (as against a desire for more; greed if used negatively, ambition if used positively) will eliminate war, I don"t think, cuts much ice.

JJ - 2nd July
That we have managed to avoid being wiped out at the jaws of wild animals and have flourished is in itself a sign of our superior mental prowess. But the point I’m trying to make is that humans and animals war for different reasons. They war for basic survival, but we do on account of our ego and greed (or for the survival of these). Oh, I’m beginning to be repetitive now :( Just because we are intelligent doesn’t mean that disputes will be solved amicably. But because we are intelligent we can find out the causes of war, eliminate them and therefore learn to live in peace. :)

I don’t know the exact numbers that were killed in the 20th century alone in wars, but I was also speaking in relative terms not in absolutes. Look at all the wars waged in the 20th century and the numbers killed and affected. Mind boggling !!! The argument that less people are now participating in wars now is of little comfort, considering the fact that weapons nowadays can wipe out entire cities and affect populations for generations (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). While in the past a single soldier could only cause limited damage in face-face combat and that too only to the others fighting in the war, in present times weapons can cause not only death but undocumented suffering and hardship to living civilians (eg, sanctions against Iraq). So let’s not go into ratios :)

Sarath, I wasn’t suggesting that the entire war-machinery be dismantled and the proceeds distributed among the poor nations. That’s too simplistic a way of looking at things, and is never going to work anyway.

The line between greed and ambition is thin in any case. And a lot of people try to disguise their greed by calling it ambition. To do your best, to give your best, to realise your full potential, to stretch your boundaries, that is ambition, and that is what makes us stand out from the animals. To do the same but by usurping what is not yours, and to do so willfully and to the detriment of the other person, is greed and that is what is leading to wars.

Please add your own thoughts, folks J

"It takes more courage to die than to live", he thinks woefully as he squats beside the tracks, blinking to keep out the already hot, late morning sunlight. He had failed again in his third attempt at flinging himself in front of a train. The first time his courage had abandoned him completely and he had moved away to safety just as the mammoth was upon him. He had to wait for about half-an-hour before the next train came thundering down the tracks, but he was better prepared this time. He had inured himself against the shock by closing his eyes, but the train had given such a sudden and loud toot that he had jumped out of the way in plain fright.

"What a coward I am" he had berated himself as he waited through the advancing morning for the next train, which took even longer to arrive. No more false starts this time, he said to himself as he wedged his feet into the tracks on both sides and stood squarely staring at the brown engine. But he was not prepared for the look of total terror on the driver"s face. The poor man was standing up in his cubicle, leaning forward, looking horror-stricken and it seemed that it was him facing death, not the man on the tracks. In that last second that separated him from death, some impulse of kindness or perhaps compassion had moved him to hurtle his body out of the way. And so, here he was, sitting beside the tracks alive, his mind dazed by defeat, his heart gone numb and his body assailed by hunger and thirst. "If only there was a third choice" he thinks wearily, "I do not want to go back to my life and it seems I cannot die".

He had got out of bed early