On studying useless thing

 

Market with active support from religion -as signs of blessing, have nurtured aspects of usefulness for herd to be kept occupied and controlled. Hence whatsoever doesn’t fall into this matrix of usefulness is deemed useless pursuit. Usefulness is clearly about extractive mindset -that market capitalism sustains on; it is quantified by money and power of control over herd. This then is showcased as success for which we are expected to strive for. Primitive religions authenticate these as outcome of specific blessings that is being granted. So, more money, power and godforsaken fame is to be latched with god returning the favor to obedient devotee. Hence the stampede to please and obey. 

It is in this context education is qualified by usefulness. Thus, we have younger herd members prepared to replicate the template of success by carefully regurgitating useful education into money churning enterprise. They compete and waste, and essentially become threat to all that is cherished. Market defines usefulness in education hence create goals to be attained. Religion works to authenticates these as god’s will. The more the young mind is goal oriented more extractive mindset settles in destroying the potential and capacity of the human. They become a cog in the competition to prove their worth in the extractive system. The existential impasse we are in can easily be traced to these devious ways of control. TedCruz is an American embarrassment on humanity. His extractive mind emblemizes the threat. Extractive mind essentially lacks qualities that define human, compassion being one. No one anywhere anyplace in the world should be taking loan to learn. Education must be free, if ever it should be minimally charged. Student in debt is a failure of society. Most importantly education must strive to create self-aware individuals, inquisitive to learn for knowing and using latest advancements to understand. Whether what they find interesting to be pursued or researched further must be decided by individuals and their aptitude. Society is expected to nurture the minds as presences to probe and sense the reality and subtleties. Awareness increases depth to observation. Fields of expertise are just tools. Only an evolved society produces such presences which therefore becomes common place, a norm. In primitive societies such presences are exceptions hence claims of blessedness or great souls. In these presences there are no binaries of usefulness and uselessness. These presences are excitements of life expressing what it means to be alive. It is these presences over the centuries that carried humans from caves to the sophisticated comforts and value systems to explore. Education is being conscious to all that connects lifeforms and systems at work. What is useless in extractive system is useful in life nurturing systems. In nature there is nothing useless. That ofcourse doesn’t mean carbon trapped in likes of TedCruz is in useful state.                

 

British embarrassment is now international embarrassment

 

The world is seeing worst of people churned in by complacent insecure people -lulled by consumption driven market and dehumanizing religions, into the helm of affair when existential threat to human life on earth is becoming increasingly apparent and imminent. As the climate crisis takes hold (as indicated by pandemic, food crisis, energy crisis etc.) nationalism is expected to rise as devious people controlling the systems will arbitrate to please the herd, and very soon as the situation deteriorates richer section will barricade and isolate.  

Colorful dinosaurs

 

Dinosaurs that we have come to understand through popular media, as also serious literature, is that of dull colors of brown and grey. The pleasant surprise here is that dinosaurs were most certainly tetrachromats, meaning, they were able to see vivid colors that humans could not only not see but cannot even conceive. Humans are trichromats which technically means they have three cones in the eye -that is, color spectrum consist of different combinations of basic colors Blue, Green and Red. Dinosaurs, like birds, have four cones and are able to observe further range of light through UltraViolet. Now if trichromats humans could observe non spectral colors like Purple that doesn’t exist in the rainbow, meaning, it needs more than one wavelength of light to form, imagine with extra cone what kind of vivid colors dinosaurs could have seen hence exhibited. Amazing. All this from an interesting book An Immense World (by Ed Young) I am reading. Strongly recommended.    

See, I am dying

See, I am dying 

Do you see the caterpillar wriggling in desperation 

to escape the forest fire?

He will not metamorphize into butterfly.

He will die.

See the carcass of interwoven emaciated giraffes

Etch art of horror

On dried pond.

See the death.

I am dying too. 

Sea turtle skeleton

Choked in plastic

Wash up on beach.

Dead fishes fill the river.

Dead birds fall from the sky.

Dead insects fill the shade.

Earth heats.

Glacier melts.

Ocean warms.

Clouds burst.

Rivers evaporate.

Sometimes I feel the caterpillar inside me

Waiting to metamorphize.

Into all the colors.

All the voices.

My heart beats too

But it loses the rhythm of life.  

(photo by Ed Ram)

Lovely pig

Lovely pig 

The little book says pig is filthy 

Another says humans have dominion over all the creatures

Cow the holiest unlike the filthy dark buffalo

I look at the pig and the pig look at me

98% DNA spiral from me to him and him to me

Thymine, Guanine, Cytosine and Adenine flip the 2%

A human from a pig and a pig from a human

Mutational chance initiated 80m years ago

A pig is a pig and a human is a human

When human is no longer human and pig no longer pig

98% 2% seep to filthy pristine matters of world

Innately the chance and molecules weave the magic

The pig is me is the pig

And so the world rearrange to kindle a new life

A pig or a human or   

An attack on words

 

Words are carriers of ideas, possibilities and hope. Words have wings of freedom. They fly into magical land to create a new world. An artist – a writer, with magic of words can conjure a dream into doorsteps of reality. Each reader opens their own door to enter their own wonder. Words articulate meaning to meaninglessness of life. Words bead the voice of experience through space and time.   

Words extend the potential of the world we live in and adds values to our aspirations. Words assist in asserting liberty of each individual. Words are assertion of humanity’s will. Attacking the writer is attacking the word. It is the basic of all assault. It is an attempt at muzzling the voice of humanity. It is an attack on the soul. It is undermining sanctity of life.

What makes a human being attempt at another human being’s life for superiority of their words over others is the most tragic reality of the times we live in. How is this ridiculous, indeed pitiable and deeply disturbing, mindset sustained? What gives these individuals surety of their action at the expense of sanctity of life? What kind of sickness nurtures these appalling transgressions? Clearly, a human being -in a way the pinnacle of nature’s experiment with life, a self-aware individual, a soul conscious to existential realities of life will not commit such an atrocity. It’s a self-recriminating idiocy. It is quite clear that anachronistic nuisance -that was meant to provide solace in the ephemeral nature of life, is throttling humanity in its primitive cannibalistic snare. A system that consistently and persistently devalues human experience as it degrades humans into herds has become an ever-growing toxic reality. It is unacceptable that UN has declared a day ‘against Islamophobia’, it is a grievous mistake and capitulation to sinister forces. Religiophobia must be celebrated. Celebrate Christianphobia, Hinduphobia, Buddhaphobia...Blasphemy must be valued. Religion must have wherewithal to confront questioning and ridicule in a civilized way. If it cannot then it has no place in civilized world. Religion must be stringently scrutinized and ridiculed at every available opportunity. There is absolutely no need to tolerate the intolerant. Hurt ‘sentiments’ is lack of evolving to reality. It’s a juvenile ever growing need of self-worth of immature cloistered insecure minds and must not be patronized nor pandered to -it’s a slippery slope to hell. It is the incapacity to appreciate finer aspects of life reflected in varying thoughts and expressions. It is an attempt at asserting insular worldview over other. It is a crude attempt at controlling others. Anything and anyone that gives credibility to such a system in the garb of faith is a threat to humanity.               

Mycelium miracle

Mycelium miracle 

Billions of years of wisdom to realize the web of life

To learn the language of nature

From first breath to last breath

Resurrecting spirit into death and decay

Rebirth, regeneration and rejuvenation

Moving nutrients at the beginning, at the end

Communicating networks deep into core of life

And plug synapses of conscious

To all that of stars and miracles   

WHY NOW?

 Was it necessary now? The world is facing so many serious, indeed existential, crisis. What was the need of it now? Already the international community has failed Ukraine, and now this. There is a serious food crisis looming, climate is breaking...lord why now? 

                                   

The essence

The essence in moment when time stills

The arrow moves back and forth in an instance

In the Cambrian slush and eternal engulfing Siberian traps

In the birth spell of matter and fading light of extinction

Catch the rhythm of breeze

The spirit will commune the loss and fondness

Wait.

Wait for the generosity of nature

Reveal the breadth and depth of this that you can

Probe the will of all that exists, and will exist

While you are

Embrace the universe

 

There is no providence in the fall of a sparrow

 There is no providence in the fall of a sparrow 

Have you seen life wrest death?

Not unlike the ashen face in Bergman’s Seventh Seal

Waiting patiently for chess to finish

An arrangement to abide the inevitable

Life in its ethereal grit is no game

Hot sky plucks the sparrow in his flight

Blood ooze in the hemorrhage of fall

The heart beats still while death awaits

Eyes open to the deep end of space

A President for The People

 

Planet’s Fight for Life

 Two books that attracted my attention in last few months are Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward Wilson and Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert. These two books, and I am quite sure there many more, elaborates on seriousness of crisis we are in and significant efforts being undertaken to understand the situation, to ameliorate and adapt. The solutions that are being explored is what makes these books important particularly for policy makers and younger generations. People like me read these to increase awareness and improve my understandings of issues that impacts, as also pass the awareness as consolidated thoughts through medium like these. Access to international publications through internet and online purchase has opened minds to amazing thoughts and experiences from across the world. We are no longer stuck to putrefying pits of self-obsessed mediocrities, though must add these are always in the periphery conniving to trap into sh*tholes and then gain for their miserable lives.

Edward Wilson was iconic figure and a charming man (there are many videos available on Youtube) -who died last year, a myrmecologist he extended further into ecology and conservation. He made crucial contributions to our understanding of biodiversity. Collective intelligence of social insects was a significant step of evolution, and has much for human learning. There are exciting fields of study like swarm intelligence and algorithms from deep understanding of nature and scalable patterns. Almost three thousand years back human brain shrank with rise of collective intelligence. Collective have been repository of knowledge that individual lacks. In recent times these have refined and consolidated through researches, insights and applications. We maybe trapped in our individual aspirations or drudgeries but the collective mind is expected to warn us of the suicidal path that humanity is on.  Wilson writes “The central idea is to view the entire planet as an ecosystem, to see Earth as it is and not as we wish it to be”. Here he brings in his thoughts, surely accumulated through close association of a long and meaningful life, that could help us work out solution “Given that stability in the economy and in the environment are closely linked, they both require striving for quality of life through self-understanding as opposed to the conventional accumulation of material wealth, based on the assumption that the wealth can eventually be traded for quality of life”. Technology and awareness will help us move from quantity to quality hence consumptions that are meaningful and add value to life. Half-Earth proposes half of planet’s surface to nature. A global network of inviolable reserves. Many examples are given in the book wherein rich people are investing their money in improving ecosystem. The parks and reserves are to help biodiversity thrive but are also centers of research and education (needs to be pointed out biodiversity rich India still appoints Forest officials on the basis of archaic exams -encouraging manipulating mindset to score in the exam than passion for the job -specifically nature, as job-oriented hierarchy driven mediocre bureaucrats of the mold of colonial needs thriving on transactive and extractive value systems. I have met these, with rare exceptions are mostly wastrels. Primitive society’s valuation of education, intelligence and fate).     

It is becoming amply clear that consolidated intelligence of religions and that of market is of least help and is indeed anti-thesis to crisis that humanity face. It is science that confronts reality with human faculties and enlightened thoughts and reason. Then there are rare humans like Edward Wilson who contribute their understanding to add to the collective thinking. He argues “Despite all our pretenses and fantasies, we always have been and will remain a biological species tied to this biological world. Millions of years of evolution are indelibly encoded in our genes…wildland is our birthplace”. He proposes “Only a major shift in moral reasoning, with greater commitment given to rest of life, can meet this greatest challenge of the century.”              

“If humanity continues its suicidal ways to change the global climate, eliminate ecosystem, and exhaust Earth’s natural resources, our species will very soon find itself forced into making a choice, this time engaging the conscious part of our brain. It is as follows: Shall we be existential conservatives, keeping our genetically based human nature while tapering off the activities inimical to ourselves and the rest of the biosphere? Or shall we use our technology to accommodate the changes important solely to our own species, while letting the rest of life slip away? We have only short time to decide.” The book ends with these perceptive lines “We have come a very long way through the barbaric period in which we still live, and now I believe we’ve learned enough to adopt a transcendent moral percept concerning the rest of life. It is simple and easy to say : Do no further harm to the biosphere." 

The problem seems to be the hope filled assumption that we have come a long way from barbaric period.    

     

Fascinating

As Mr. Spock would have said "Fascinating". 

It really puts ephemeral nature of life in context. An emotional moment 

 

The religion problem

It is becoming quite clear that religion is a threat to humanity. Climate change, pandemic, war, extinction of species, biodiversity loss, ocean degradation, air water soil pollution, land degradation, food insecurity, malnutrition, human wildlife conflict, market capitalism, wanton consumption…the list is long, are all serious and imminent threat to survival of human on earth as also other species. However, all these critical issues are subsided by threat of religion as it makes humans incapable and incapacitated to respond to changing reality. Religion undermines existential threat by offering fantastical fictions as option. It offers otherworldly explanation and god’s will -fatalism, as solution. Now, few centuries back when the awareness of reality was limited, and threat were not global and did not have ramification beyond limited region, these did make sense. It assuaged human insecurities and frailties. It helped in creating some peace through cooperation among its followers hence civilizations to take root. With increase in awareness and knowledge it was expected that the compassionate system coopted these new understandings to help humans grow into better but that didn’t happen. The system was too ossified -a byproduct of darker and simpler age, and concerned with self-perpetuation of controllers. Religion is simply incapable to handle the intricate challenges that onslaught of new ideas and thoughts brought. It has become too glaring in recent times and is woefully, in most case embarrassingly, inconsistent with growing knowledge. It is acceptable when religion creates space for spiritual yearnings in uncertain times and provides in ephemeral nature of life, for common people to share and value their feelings. But the nature of religion doesn’t really allow these benign spaces. It hinges on prescriptions and adherence, working in a context increasingly alien to contemporary world. There are nefarious forces controlling the system that seeks to establish its authority over hapless people trapped in their insecurities and miseries. It is quite saddening the way things have turned out to be. It is deeply disturbing the way religions are severely degrading democratic institutions while narrowing space for humanity to thrive.

It will be wrong to put every religion in the same context. Every religion has gone through tribulation within the context of its functioning. They have all contributed to the growth of humanity in their own way. Every religion had its obscurantist force as also empathy driven enlightening presence. This has been the constant struggle throughout the history. In the contemporary world despite the best efforts, it is really impossible for religion to play positive role. The world has progressed too far from the realities that these religions made sense. World has become a small place with latest technologies and understandings hence religion becomes segregatory, exclusionist, seeding ideas that are increasingly fanciful and dangerous. It therefore becomes easy for charlatans to tap into these systems to further degrade discourse and possibilities of better world. Religions therefore cannot be allowed carte blanche as representing some innate truth or divine intervention. It cannot appropriate sacred space. It will have to face the contemporary world and its challenges. These fantastical fictions cannot be allowed to define identity hence sneak in as diversity. It’s a degradation. This must be understood in clear terms. It is a threat to hard won values of liberty and freedom. It is a persistent threat to all the values that humanity cherish.

I have been watching Star Trek series again after so many decades. I vaguely remember some but what I recall the most is the wonder it created in young mind. They created interesting premise to probe. Now as I watch I have come to appreciate and value the subtle world they created and the attempts they made to evolve human minds through these stories and entertainment. It also shows how much effort it must have been to nurture such minds. The other day was watching wherein humanoid realizes the importance of diversity. The creation values infinite diversity. For which Mr. Spock (iconic character -part human part Vulcan, played by amiable brilliant Leonard Nimoy) replies “…and the way our differences combines to create meaning and beauty”. Diversity is something to be cherished. Nature favors diversity. It creates resilience as also opportunities to evolve to deal with reality optimally. The reason why biodiversity is critical for survival of life. Similarly, diversity of ideas and understanding adds to “meaning and beauty” of life. Religion doesn’t add to any diversity. It’s a degradation, and is usurping the space for diversity. There are some sinister feudal forces who are promoting religion in these benign garbs to play savior.             

Religion is a human created aberration on earth system. It is a virus that converts decent sentient humans into herds incapable to value life or estimate the significance of reality. It must be resisted. As societies evolved and people became aware they start to question the authority of religion. They created space for banter as also derision on this ridiculous faith in fantastical fiction that contradicted directly to easy evaluations and basic logic. This helped religion to evolve too into spiritual spaces shedding its anachronistic narrations. Things though have degraded at an alarming rate in recent times. Cunning conniving herd controllers are competing with each other for control. The failure of education, its immense possibilities confined to narrow ‘use’. Sense of insecurities pervading despite the best of possibilities for humans that could ever be imagined. Market media and capitalism hinged on wanton consumption too have contributed to discontent and apathy. Transactional relations and loneliness added to the disquiet. For unexamined minds the semantics of dealing was already trapped in alphabets of superstition and faith. It was easy for the subconscious to associate with centuries of well-entrenched traps of instincts of religion. It is heart wrenching as humans get entrapped in cesspool that denies their core being.

Life is sacrosanct. There is nothing more precious than life. So, when pernicious religion claims sanctity over human life then sane forces must realize the danger it poses to humanity. A civilized society must nurture space to ridicule religion, it must encourage blasphemy. It must encourage inquisitive minds and free souls. Survival of humanity is hinged on these. Shackles of religion holds everything that is detrimental to human progress. Ridicule is not one way process. It is not a claim that my way is better than yours. My way is very much open to ridicule, and correction. The only thing that matters here is aesthetics. Aesthetics of life that connects to nature.

Putinyoshka Vampire Gobbling Up The World

 

When I am tree

When I am tree 

Molecules will disintegrate

Congregate and integrate the chance

Somewhere in deep earth or hilltop

Or in some rotting matter

It will break out and reach for the sky

I feel the rush of xylems and phloems

Burst into leaves and flowers

Sense the sun, raindrops, and breeze

Pattern the world in my sway

Agnipath scheme is the need of hour

The Defence force of the country is not a charity initiative nor an employment guarantee scheme. Indeed, nor is the government. Ideally the government is elected to frame policy and implement for the betterment of the society. They are expected to provide the wherewithal for education system to nurture young minds, health infrastructure to provide basic health and nutrition and investment in all the avenues for citizens to progress into better people. Which also means having an efficient and effective defence forces to protect the democratic nation. Agnipath scheme is well thought out. It can be reviewed after few years as the need maybe. As of know it is apt.        

Employment is not for government to create. Few centuries back people used to find their own job depending on their need, aspirations and skills. That is how it should be. Progressive societies prospered while primitive societies like India suffered hence couldn’t contribute much to humanity despite its vast population. The idea of job is exaggerated by feudal corporates and spread by market influenced education system that churn out herds, ably supported by religion, rabidly panting for money, position and power. Ideally education is expected to create self-aware individuals. Self-awareness increases the connection with reality hence means and intent to respond to the arising need/challenge that one would like to respond to. This then creates skills as it suits. Government therefore must invest in all the avenues to nurture all sort of skills. Internet has created a connected world for knowledge and skills to spread. The idea of education has nothing to do with goals hence marks and examinations doesn’t really make sense. Education is about creating awareness and exploring possibilities through inquisitive mind. Skills creates searing eye to probe but presence is what that gives it value. There is no presence when life is capsulated in goals. It is not about fish’s eye but awareness of fish, the world. A self-aware human will never aim for fish’s eye. Despite high skills his or her presence does not allow skill to be narrowed down to crass. That is aesthetic. Its an indelible mark of humanity.                   

Meanwhile there should be zero tolerance to vandalism. Each and every one who vandalizes the public property must be tracked, identified and face exemplary punishment. Also, it must be thoroughly checked whether the vandalizers were instigated by controllers. Many a times these vandalizing herd are only pawn in the sinister game.  

 

Consolidated Strategic Corp

 

It was while reading about Artificial Intelligence and its future implication on security that there was a realization of need for Consolidated Strategic Corp – cutting edge wing that consolidates all the latest innovations, awareness and challenges, into a systematic system for consolidated strategy that protects democratic nations and their geopolitical interests from external threat as also a means to synergically contribute to international security challenges. With rogue players like Russia, and multilateral organizations like UN undermined by Western powers, as also pernicious rise of authoritarian China, national security has become a matter of grave concern for nations across the world. The blatant reality of crimes on humanity perpetrated in Ukraine while international community are reduced to audience is shocking, the cascading impact on food security is equally grim, meanwhile happenings in SriLanka is a forbidding possible future. The efforts for international association to tackle urgent pan national issues facing humanity is being grievously undermined, hence it looks like climate injustice will be the first impact of climate catastrophe. Hedonist feudal and status quo forces controlling and gaining from the system will be the early perpetrators of the climate crimes on humanity. What is a threat to international community is essentially a threat to national security.      

With AI revealing, in its discreet setting ofcourse (we are indeed quite far from AGI -Artificial General Intelligence), a new dimension of reality and a new understanding of logic it is but incumbent for policy makers dealing with national security to be not only be aware but actively involved. Knowledge was expected to be bring humanity together but AI -functioning within its discreet settings that is going to guide strategic decisions, is creating national interest silos of intelligence controlled and dictated by AI. Defence establishments across the world are expected to ‘blindly’ follow decisions since they are incapable to scrutinize these. Secondly, because of the acute awareness that AI has access to intelligence and pattern logic that humans are incapable to decipher nor anticipate, and lastly, the matter of urgency and reluctance to take human responsibility when facing higher intelligence and stakes of national security. For these very reasons there is a call for international moratorium on AI. Then there are other emerging technological challenges like quantum technology and biotechnology, both these will have serious implication on national security. With quantum computer supremacy classical binary computer encryptions face immediate threat which means all strategic information -that has national security implications, is being compromised. Present strategic data and interest are also threatened by future decryptions -harvest now decrypt later is the clarion call of data pirates. Post quantum cryptography is an immediate challenge to protect public key digital infrastructure since classical computers will have a long run despite quantum computers. Defence establishments must be professional enough to not only be fully aware of these challenges but be equipped to face eventualities. CRISPR Cas9 has completely revolutionized and scaringly democratized biotechnology. It has a direct impact on national security. It is an important tool to face climate change impacted food security and biodiversity conservation by removing chemical fertilizers and pesticides. CRISPR gene drive can change species. Then there is issue of Neurotechnology, Brain Computer Interface (BCI), that set to tap brain data, despite medical benefits malicious intent is much severe with even UN creating framework for Neuro rights as Human rights. Outer space missions is another area with strategic implications.                          

With climate change impacting weather pattern climate vulnerable regions like India needs special attention. At regional level climate crisis is also a serious national security matter. It has potential to severely disrupt society through migration, lack of access to nutrition and shortages of essential supplies. With intensity and frequency of climate events set to increase National Disaster Management will have to eventually include Defence forces or for effectiveness vice versa. Defence establishment needs to be equipped with these new challenges. They will have to be reoriented and train (or be trainer) for climate related unique prevention, rescue and salvage missions through NCC and sainik schools, NDA so on. These will be much crucial in climate vulnerable regions particularly on or near vast international borders. So, clearly, they will need to chart down strategies and operation in consonance with meteorological departments. Have they worked out channels and procedures? Are they aware of immense challenges? Are these being included in the training manuals of future soldiers?         

Consolidated Strategic Corp need to have an Active Research Wing that works on real time collecting and consolidating data, looking for pattern, for strategic attention. Meanwhile human exposure to dangerous terrain and risky actions must be minimized and automated. Human as data collector and response unit -which is what a soldier essentially is, must be replaced by deep learning robots. Primitive conceptions of army corps (as feudal patriarchy domain) and references herein (caste/religion based racist colonial manipulations consolidated by caste cannibals) must be replaced with thinking soldiers. Modernization of Defence forces must strive for a thinking soldier who is an asset to society, and not a representation of patriarchal primitive feudal ways (as is mostly seen in India, or much grievous in Pakistan that is a serious threat to democracy, nor psycho-social liabilities as in USA or a robot following order of mass murdering maniac like Putin). It should not be reflection of conceptions of medieval times. Defence establishment must synergically associate with challenges of our times.

Consolidated Strategic Corp need be center for keeping abreast with latest innovations in fast changing world, analyzing patterns, unique aberrations, and its implications on national security. It must therefore act on these inputs for preparedness and variable responses. External threat is becoming quite fluid hence the response must too be context driven with complete awareness using all the modern insights and repercussions. Human life is precious, so is biodiversity and other species, and importantly ideals of democratic society. Nation’s defence force must be prepared for emerging challenges.      

All that matters

All that matters

 

When home is washed away 

Trees uprooted

Streets silted

Living ends

Survival begins

Dearly hold on to memories of the land

Say final goodbye to flameback's rattling calls

Measure your steps with care as you leave

For it retrace hominin hope and anguish 

Sacrificial rituals of fatal flaw

 

Democracy is the most evolved form of governance despite shortcomings. It offers voice and space for individuals to associate, explore and grow. It provides the lynchpin for liberty and equality. It makes egalitarian society possible and provides individuals wherewithal to pursue their life in freedom and care. It gives choices and potential to grow and explore. It is a vibrant value of inquisitive logical association that synergize with evolved ideals hence humanity. It provides space for contrarian ideologies and ideas against stagnant thoughts and regressive majoritarian values. Democracy is independence with meaningful restriction when threatens life and liberty of others.

US is an evolved democracy on many parameters but is also deeply flawed thus offers valuable lessons. Much of progressive thoughts, scientific insights, technological progress, individual brilliances and pinnacle of associations can be traced to US. It has attracted best of minds from all across the world over the decades.  The flaw of US is the fragility of democracy, it will become fatal if citizens are not vigilant. It collapses when citizens can no longer associate as humans. Democracy is dependent of responsible citizens. Citizens make democracy. A better human makes a better citizen. Systems that dehumanize human being into unthinking entities, isolating them from their existential realities, capitalizing on their insecurities to offer a better world is a constant threat. Systems that insidiously hunt on spiritual yearnings of human beings by offering secure fraternal associations based on miracle books, regressive practices and values, segregation and exceptionalism adds to problems of democracy making it weak and vulnerable for charlatans to work on opportunities. Religion everywhere is a threat to humanity. Democratic societies therefore must rigorously scrutinize religion, providing no place for it to nurture. Systems like capitalism driven market have perniciously entered human minds through digital media. These dopamine based algorithms keep them excited as they increasingly loose their faculties to comprehend, analyze and think hence associate with lowest denominator of comfort. Market exaggerates and trap humans as consumers and data source. Democracy is reduced to shows that seeks to ensnare humans into voters, consumers and followers connecting the basest and crudest expressions. It is as if humanity has been stalled and wrenched to its primitive references. Charlatans with expertise to tap basest instincts use strategies of market to manipulate narrations of exceptionalism. They present grander world using the semantics and opportunistic concerns of religion -easily tapping into centuries of subconscious memories of control. Critical issues are turned into binaries of religion using ruse of market. Every human concern is reduced to show, scripted to excite and evaluated on scale of entertainment. US has become a TV show gone rogue. It's riveting but tragic. People are kept entertained until they get killed. All progressive values -achieved through centuries of struggle and consolidation, and evolved thoughts and means are reduced to sideshow.        

Cocktail of capitalism driven market and religion are creating havoc on earth. It is apparent through degradation of democratic institutions and promotion of wanton consumerism -that is least concerned about life sustaining nature and biodiversity. Self-perpetuating systems controlled by few that care about itself than any human welfare or greater good. This is quite apparent in US. Leaders are controlled by the systems. They are incapacitated while people are executed wantonly with desultorily ease that even question the idea of a nation state. These sacrificial rituals of fatal flaws should shudder human conscience. Flaws that facilitate innocent children and ordinary people -especially marginalized and racially discriminated, to be massacred. Most grievously it has incapacitated sane people to respond to their innate humanity or even react to their basic instinct and primal know. Flawed US that is spiraling into abyss is a lesson for humanity. Its a pity, it had so much potential.        

   

Biodiversity Day

The gracious heart of hummingbird

Stills itself to measure

Life on its thread feet  

There are instances when soul is sheared

And exposed to elements

Opens to deep space of galaxies

Frozen time as if on an apogee

Of momentary stillness on a swing before it slips

Glimpse of all that vastness

As if life is time itself

Churning all the moments 

Hell on track

 

Few days back I was travelling in train along Tamil Nadu -the temperature was hovering at +40degrees. The pantry car in the train was preparing lunch and the temperature could be easily 50degrees as the metal coaches chugged through heat wave. The contrast was acute as I moved from ac coach to pantry, and felt quite dizzy as the temperate rocketed by 30odd degrees in an instant. That human beings are exposed to these miserable conditions is beyond me. It is also quite unhygienic (I don’t blame these half naked men stirring the boiling pot, they are trying their best in the limited sweaty space with limited resources, and to prepare decent food for hundreds of people in running train is no mean task. I quite admire them).

What is the need to prepare food in running train? Why cannot they do like Shatabdi trains and get food delivered from railway stations -they can even order from grassroot level organizations like Kudumbashree (women run community kitchen-hotels, an initiative started by Communist govt in Kerala 25years back, a success story in empowering women so much so they are being elected into democratic institutions. A Grassroot level empowerment that needs to be studied and emulated). It’s amazing that when human beings are put into horrendous situation, and are displayed in hundreds of trains crisscrossing through hot terrain as the temperature skyrockets, nobody seems to be bothered. What will it take them to realize that something is seriously amiss and that there are human beings who are facing hell like situation. Or is it a lesson on fate and blessing?    

Between the chaos

Between the chaos 

Strands from unknown cosmos 

Strands from unknowable realities of quantum

Knit the improbable rise of billions of atoms

Jumping protons and uncertain electrons

Spinning and jiggling into shapes

Ethereal waves of photons orchestrate a symphony

The murmuration of matter

Prodding the potential of reality

Synapses collectively sense all at once 

The consciousness

Cradled preciously in Space Time hammock.   

 

Noise of the matter

 Common people shouldn’t be bothered by snarling Castetva cannibals and Hindutva hooligans nor the angst of monster mullah. These are posturing for gravy, the cosmic itch to play savior as ordained by otherworldly connections. They must go by the issue at hand and whether unfolding events helping them live a better life. These fake binaries are created by manipulative controllers for their ease and signs of proprietorship over common people.

The attempts to remove loudspeakers from religious spaces is a much welcomed step that is long overdue. SC guidelines are outdated, new laws must be framed and strictly applied. All loudspeakers from public places must be removed. Loudspeakers can only be allowed in closed enclosures, auditoriums so on that doesn’t create problem for people and shouldn’t exceed 50db. Loud noise, particularly in congested densely populated places, are serious source of misery. It also harms other species too. Already there is too much noise from vehicular traffic and various celebrations of inconsiderate primitives. CPCB report points that many cities in India have more than 80db noise level (Moradabad in UP is the second most noisiest city in the world according to UNEP 2022 report with a noise pollution level of whooping 114db). Entitled inbred mediocre elite ensconced in squatter’s value system cannot really understand, indeed not really bothered -since this is another fertile source to showcase matters of blessing and fate. Lutyen’s delhi nor posh colonies across the country face noise problems hence they weren’t really bothered for decades as noise reached levels that harmed and gradually take lives of people only a few kilometers from where these saviors squat. As expected, there are no data on how many millions die due to noise induced illness. Meanwhile they claimed largesse of mind and posed as empathy driven souls tolerant to anything as long as it doesn't directly affect them. While depraved marketeers try to capitalize. They made louder shriller gadgets (even claiming through a white man in an advertisement that Indians are noisy lot hence deserve the loudest! Such temerity of louts). Even now conniving caste cannibal controlled media playing liberal reports how temple in some place switched off their loudspeakers for mosque loudspeaker during festival. This we are informed -in their entitled role as castetva herd controllers, as how secularism and syncretic culture works that Hindutva needs to learn. How these loud noises affect common people is not their concern and can never be. When you assume proprietorship control common people are always disposable for bigger narration.

A primitive society will find difficulty to accommodate latest technology since these didn’t develop organically into the society. These were byproduct of much open and enquiry driven spaces, an outcome of critical thinking that were nurtured. These are thresholds of society that had creative liberal values spread all across the spectrum. Overwhelming number of people across the world are still cave dwellers piggyback riding best of humanity. Social media is only accentuating what is innate. These are having debilitating impact on the world. BigTechs will have to take the responsibility, their primal urge to accrue money and power must be contained. Platform Accountability and Transparency Act is valiant attempt by US government. Algorithm must be opened for scrutiny by experts to trace manipulation so as to initiate stringent action. Meanwhile education system will have to focus on critical thinking and values of understanding, and strive to create more evaluation free zones to nurture free minds. Grading children and gauging education as means to multiply money leads to narrow limited views of life, it favors pecking order mindset (the reason why hierarchy driven primitive societies fails miserably to contribute to humanity except as status quoist money multipliers) that easily falls for authoritarian mindsets.           

Face the heat

 

Climate vulnerable Indian subcontinent that is home to millions of extremely poor and exploited people is facing the heat wave. It’s acute in big cities where millions live in congested concrete dwellings that faces the brunt of heat island effect and pollution. These are spaces that have been stripped clear of trees and vegetations while water bodies converted to disease spreading sewage for development. Very soon climate change will have to be declared as health emergency. Migration, exposed to extreme weather, malnutrition…will have devastating effect. There is a need for climate emergency cell to coordinate relief measures. Any concerned society would be investing on climate adaptive measures to save lives and salvage nature.

Earlier this month I was in Nagpur. Temperature crossed 42 degrees centigrade. Nagpur faces extreme heat but it rarely happens so early in the summer, elderly shopkeeper I was interacting with concurred and was sensing changes that he couldn’t comprehend. Even on morning walk I felt the sun as if it was scorching midnoon. You don’t see too many people on streets, mostly airconditioned cars whizzing past. Its like you are in some desert. I saw this man (pic herein) much earlier in the morning vigorously trying to wind up his chores before the heat picks up. He swept the dust off the concrete fragments of what was supposed to be a footpath. A meaningless task that he carried with Sisyphean enthusiasm. Why would you clean dust while contributing to particulate matter in the process making matter worse? I have seen these kinds of “cleanliness” in cities that defeats any logical reasoning. It’s an extension of value system of a society that obsessively delves in stupidities of purity lacking even basic understanding of hygiene. It’s the confluence of racist victorian tidiness and caste cannibals limited intellect that is exhibited into public space as revered ritual. Meanwhile mostly corrupt and mediocre decision makers are busy showcasing their blessing and lessons on fate for common people to emulate into painful absurdities denying life. The only cleanliness that matters is picking up and collecting plastics for recycle. Let the fallen dry leaves be. Let the dust be. Please do not give lessons on existentialism as fate. Ridiculous ironies will excite fattened fluffs in West to settle cozily into the narration of exotic Indian's otherworldly mystical mirth hence value their patronizing potential. Plastic pollution is a serious matter.                       

Threat to democracy

 

Democracy is the best form of arbitration. It hinges on evolved human beings for progressive society that values liberal ideas and expressions to associate and explore. For human beings to evolve education -that emphasis on critical thinking and logical analysis while nurturing creative minds spiritually involved with nature and life as a part of living system, becomes the lynchpin. A society that invests on these will naturally attune to better world.        

Anything that infringe on humanity is a threat to democracy. Anything that prevents assertion of being a human is a threat to free world. Religion therefore becomes a threat to democracy and all the evolved values and possibilities herein. The reason why some societies fail to nurture democratic values and ideals and are incapable to value individual liberty and equality is due to pernicious presence of feudal norms, patriarchy mindset and an incapacity to optimally use wondrous faculties of brain and senses. It is clear that religion creates frameworks that impede into progressive ideas. There is a valiant attempt to pose better version of religion to contrast the worst version in an attempt to wrest narration of religion into progressive space. Though noble it’s a futile attempt. It may help to control the herd into lull than fractious mob but its short term. Life has to be alive to thrive. Anachronistic religions have become serious threat to humanity hold ever minuscule chance of redemption. It’s a decaying premise. It’s an assault on human mind and demeaning billions of years of evolution of life to accept the ridiculous premise of religion and pose as progressive. It makes the best of intention hypocritical, and threatening.    

Butchery of Bucha

 There is enough evidence of crime against humanity, and nature. That this wanton massacre is happening in 2022 to a democratic and non aggressive nation shows gravity of human predicament. Meanwhile climate collapse and incapacitated greedy ego driven humans are scripting catastrophe.  

Support SriLanka

 

 We must make every effort to support SriLanka. The corrupt incompetent elite have created such a situation. This country was recovering from decades of mayhem. If Indian government creates fund for SriLanka we would like to contribute.