Every Friday, e-invitations to parties and gatherings at some or other club, pub or any such place swarm my inbox. I hardly peruse through these invites for the idea of shaking my hips on a week-end does not appeal to me (what? People can hate to be among people!); what mostly occupies me is reading - for it does not necessitate the need of moving one’s butt for several hours; and next to browsing web, it is the easiest act I can pull off with my eyes open. So I never bother to check what they are about, but this weekend, boredom curiosity overtook the better of me and I ended up reading all such invites in my inbox. Now you know what such invites offer but one particular line, which was emboldened, caught my attention: Strictly no Stags; and it ran common in all invites. For a moment I ended up empathizing for a particular class of harmless and shy animals; but logic united consciousness in no time and I realized: it demeans animals and humans alike, words are deceptive – the phrase has a rich and impressive etymological background of porn, animal psychology, and Scotland – and most importantly, it throttled any chances of me making at such events. That one line threatened me that unless I come accompanied with a member of the fairer sex, entry would be denied! I did not sleep during school social-science lectures and I can vouch that it is very unconstitutional (ha! But no pun intended!); and most importantly, it is utterly sexist for it accents the very existence of a man to woman. It is demeaning to assume that a stag single-guy would look towards a gathering of this kind as an opportunity to breed. Being with a woman is anything but exclusive and a single-guy is not a stag that would compete with other males to substantiate his masculinity. But my intellectual musings will be all Greek to those dumb hedonists. Let them promote sexism while I sleep, eat, and sleep this week-end. I may also listen to Nicole Scherzinger’s I don’t need a (wo)man…
Showing posts with label Musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musings. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
“The Travails of Being Twenty-Three”
An Arabic saying goes: Man fears time, time fears the Pyramids. I wish I could emulate Pyramids and fear time not. Time is cruel, time is violent and of course time waits for none. I read all the discourses of Stephen Hawking’s in hope he could provide some optimism to withstand the travails of time in near future. In spite of shredding my most elemental pragmatism, he just sounded good at the most to me. Taming time, if possible, gets difficult with time. Time is a great equalizer. But one with capital resources will still be able to exploit it the most, or have chance to do so at the least. Time lost is opportunities lost. Opportunities are trade-offs and optimization: making the best of the resources. ‘Best’ is debatable and non-uniform. Here you can decide. You can’t have best of both worlds. But once you’ve made your mark in one world, you strive for the other. Time is running fast for me as it is for everyone else. And it does mean not having the option of certain opportunities; or missed opportunities at least. I fail to realize or accept that one cannot cash in all the opportunities. Opportunity A availed is opportunity B missed. And opportunity B missed is sometimes opportunity A missed as well. (This I say from my experiences with B-Schools ;) )
I was eighteen and I thought I’d backpack to Ladakh. It has been five years since then, Ladakh is still uncharted. My wish to document architectural patterns across the country, given the sucker of buildings I am, has not gone beyond perusal plans and buying few books. And my quixotic overland trip from Delhi to Marrakech is on kibosh more for lack of capital than mind-wracking visa-complications. Writing a trilogy on a city I love is yet to take even a shape as well. So all whimsical fancies, I am still fancying. I sometimes envy Marco Polos and Ibn Batuttas, who could explore unknown lands on caprice and be famous and immortal for that as well.
Life is too short to fulfill all your dreams and too long for just dreaming. Here I fear the time. Blessed are those who find meaning in what they do and remain ignoramus to anything else. No enlightenment is better than half enlightenment.
I am twenty-three, a number I dreaded till yesterday (I now have a phobia for the number twenty-four). TRAI has regulated pesky calls and spam SMS-es. The country’s Silent-PM is First-birthday-boy for the day. Bhagat Singh will be remember for a day. Google is finally into its teens, celebrating thirteenth year of its launch (they are overdoing Doodles these days though they deserve one today). Yash Chopra will get more birthday texts than Dev Anand given the number of sycophants he has. Out of the above and others, I cannot imagine a life without Google. All thanks to Larry and Sergey. And I now need to brace myself to equate time and opportunities. Capitalism is a distraction. I hope I find it so too.
© Rakesh 2011
Sunday, 24 July 2011
“Sunday Diaries: Age, T20 and Wackiness”
I don’t see people covering up their age as an attempt to beguile the opposite sex with their “breeding-prowess”. (Although, I do think that Darwin always make sense.) But in modern times, I see it as an ostentatiously attempt to show how much one has achieved at his work, study, and discipline by the time he has reached a certain age-milestone. Give our slothful nature; one can safely assume that most of us fall short of these milestones. (Newton would have rightly blamed the ‘inertial’ nature-of-existence for it.) Even the ‘child-prodigies’ who do get up to the mark, will make sure that they heighten the aura of ‘awe’ around them by further clipping the numbers, thus again intensifying the war of numbers where small is beautiful.
Another reason people lie about their number is because everyone does so. So it is a chain reaction. So if a certain Mrs. X is “honestly” stating her age to be ‘N’, we’ll by default equate ‘N’ to ‘N+2’ and because we’ll equate it to ‘N+2’, Mrs. X has no other option but to lie her number by a margin of ‘2’. This age-old problem, given the number of young people our country boasts of, is not surprising. With the advent of T20s (which sounds misnomer to me given that the flamboyant performers are often in their 40s!) the number-theory will continue be the opium of the masses. (RIP Karl Marx)
The reason age and T20 has compelled me to contemplate on this Sunday afternoon when I’d ideally be fulfilling my weekly quota of sleep, is because of a turned-twenty whose enthusiasm for her twentieth birth date saw no trough since the beginning of the month. (In fact, her birth date now is as much surprise to me as ice in Iceland) Contrarily, my twentieth birth-date, a couple of years ago, was full-filled with sadness, nostalgia and melancholy. I wished “old” people were as heroic as they are in Gabriel Marquez’s novels. It was a huge transition for me but not a part of it was visible or discernible. I don’t know about others, but I have weird fascination to age-numbers. I’d love to be 17, 19, 22, 27, 29, 31, 37, 41 or 47. But birth-dates apart from these will inadvertently make me sad. I observe that most of these numbers are primes. The Pythagoreans believed that God lies in numbers. The reason, they said, God created the world in six-days is because 6 is the first perfect number (1+2+3) and not the other way round.
My next birth-date beckons me in around two-month time and given that I am about to lose the fancy number I hold, I wish I could enjoy all my birth-dates as profusely as others do. Given the loony ways my thoughts flow, I don’t know what this birth-date has in store for me. But all my benevolent wishes to a friend, confidante, and an “allayer-of-all-maladies” on her twentieth birth-date. I’ll skip my cynical sarcasm-laced adjectives for you are now impervious to them. But amazing person you are. Enjoy your day.
©Rakesh 2011
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
“Romancing the Metros: Women of the Towns”
My friends will know that women will be the last thing on my mind any day and how I’d gladly skip an eve with my girl over male-bonding and how I'd excuse the company of those males if they exhibit even a remote attention to the fairer sex. I say this not to sound pompous. I have always believed that guys are so much better without women and I am sure it is the other way round too. It annoys me to dead-extent when people relate being single with being a loser. In simple words, they have this theory that no one is single by choice.
Yes women are the most beautiful creations of nature; all you got to do is to know them a bit better. But men and women are two entirely different civilizations co-existing at the same time, same place and the battle of sexes is bound to occur. Yes there are highs and lows when they exist together. I am sure they are worth of some trouble, but what if one loves serenity instead of turbulence; a line parallel to the axis. And hence I often muse over a genderless society the way a Marxist dreams of a classless society. I believe the world was bliss before Eve incited Adam for damnation. If one thinks this way not, one should be allowed to relish in the company of women for that is the most passionate sense datum, but if one thinks this way, kindly allow that poor soul to make things work for him the way he wants to. In spite of all these sexist remarks I’ve made above, I’ve been blessed enough to know some of the most beautiful and intelligent women in this world with somewhat intimacy. Neither am I a pro nor any two women are the same, but I highlight (not necessarily in dating order) the some or no contrasts I observed while being fortunate enough to date women from each of the metros. Also my disclaimer would say that a city maketh a person not but the hues and tints are often visible in streaks and blotches.
Some more disclaimers:
- I am not a sexist or a narcissist confessor.
- Some phases overlapped not sharply but gradually, intermittently and unintentionally.
- I never wanted my blog to be my personal space.
Happy read.
The Girl from Calcutta
Fresh out of high school, through a common friend, I met this incredibly beautiful woman who was pursuing studies in Law. With slight anti-capitalist inclinations, she was the one who introduced me to the color Red and more notably Che Guevara. Now I don’t find Che to be a heroic iconoclast, but still till date I did not find any woman so ardently fascinated by him. Also I realized how food and Tagore are so inextricably entwined in the life of the city. She took extreme pride in her upbringing and the demeanor with which she always carried herself was awe-inspiring. For the year we dated, we so much valued the importance of space and privacy in the relationship. It was next to impossible to make your lie sound credulous to her, not that I love to do that. I had had never met a woman so calm, so composed and so intelligent till that date. Four years since then, I now hear that she’s heading for some modeling assignments.
The Girl from Chennai
She’s not exactly from Chennai, but currently resides in the city. So I’d take the liberty to call her The Girl from Chennai as the last time I was in Chennai was as an eight year old when my dating skills were still a fledgling. Since then I didn’t find any women from Chennai who found me anything but weird. We went to the same high school but started dating only a year and a half after. It was gradual but so pervasive. Also I had this woman classmate of my previous school who later happened to be her classmate at her previous school which made her believe that signs so much mean it to be. She was the only women whom I ever wrote for. She is the most feminine woman I ever met. Be it her countenance or her school of thoughts. She made some of the most profound changes in my life and gave me the immeasurable moments to remember. It is only because of her that any tinge of nostalgia scares and alerts me to the next breakdown. Her inane logic skills would often make me go frustrated and all smiles at the same time. Most of the times, her talks would not make much sense and sometimes they’d be so much dense in content that I’d get them not. Furious when you’d want her to be calm and stupid when you’d so much want her to be serious; that’s my girl from Chennai. We have had been in an on-off-on and now off relationship for close to four years but I see her each day when I close my eyes to sleep. She now is pursuing her corporate stint.
The Girl from Bombay
Now I did not exactly date this woman for I never met her. Neither would I ever date her and nor will she so she says. But as I need to complete my metro quadrangle and also that I know her well for more than two years now after I accidentally met her online. (without any serious intentions I mean, for I never stalk strangers) You can at the most call us text-buddies. She is one of the smartest women I have known. With a confidence which often rubs shoulders with arrogance she’s very mature, intelligent and cosmopolite for her age. Sometimes she can well be a drama queen but it is so much better to know a woman whom you aren’t attracted to, I realized. And her ‘No’ always means a ‘No’. Like everyone brought up in the city, she’s a Bombay-chauvinist and have some very sophisticated friends in her life. I hope to meet her sometime soon. She has now embarked into final year of her college.
The Girl from Delhi
I met this girl from Delhi University during my (or our) IIFT interview; a b-school I wasn’t much keen to join. After some casual and very awkward-for-me talks, we exchanged our numbers. That excluded, we have met a couple of times since then. Very sophisticated and not as feminist as I feared, I finally had someone to talk about my passion for English. With very peculiar ‘I-think-fake’ accent she gave up her initial attempts to make me pronounce the words the way she did. I didn’t analyze how and where things are going, I’d rather just prefer to be in the phase.
©Rakesh 2011
©Rakesh 2011
Sunday, 15 May 2011
“Why I am Not an Indian”
Firstly, all apologies to Bertrand Russell for I half plagiarized the title-style of one of his many iconoclastic works. And with that, chances are manifold that you may have already labeled me a traitor, a nonstarter or at least a generally frustrated sadist. I respect your choice of adjectives or expletives -if any- according to your understanding, opinions and schools of thought. But I for one pity those who are patriotic, not by choice, but due to their inability to question the norms and systems and seek answers by contemplation and observations. I pity those not who always can substantiate their beliefs and find reason in them. Religion and patriotism are probably the only two attributes which are non-natural in nature but are often hereditary. Aristotle chose to go off-the-wall here for he considered himself to be a citizen of the world and not of Athens or Greece. The very notion of patriotism is a primitive animal instinct which we didn’t yet cast-off in our quest of civilization and cerebral-development. Patriotism makes me prejudiced and parochial and blocks my thoughts beyond jingoism. Like Aristotle, I’d prefer to let the world be my playground.
Nature gave us different physiognomies and resources which enabled us to survive and grow as an entity against the vagaries of life. The ones which looked like us became ‘us’ and the rest ‘they’. When survival became secondary, we chose to extend our territories. This in course of time became an imprimatur of several futile and useless characteristics; bravery and patriotism among them. Patriotism by all reasons isn’t nature’s own child.
Patriotism and History are close kins. Both provide soil to each other for growth. History will make one feel proud of ‘our’ roots and contemptible for sufferings given by ‘them’. History is never absolute and if often altered by the State to suit its objectives, often to rule its populace.
The very notion of ‘one-nation’ becomes flawed if different races co-exist and if we say India is an exception then we fool not anyone but us. One falls short not of examples where minor races suffer the grudges of those in majority everywhere around the world. If people do not share a common past, chances are that they won’t be ‘sharing’ a common future as well. The cycle is vicious and gives birth to racism. Modern day sports are nothing but a mean to flare those basic instincts. Cricket, for example, in the subcontinent often provides a reason for racial expression only if we play against ‘them’ else intra-nation matches hardly garb any attention.
Proud of my roots and nation but for I see people and not borders, I am not just an Indian.
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
“Books, Musings et cetera: Confessions of a Catholic Bibliophile”
Long live the gentleman who was divine enough to remark that ignorance is bliss. At all the times I visit a public library, I have this strange intuitive feeling that I’ll die ignoramus, without understanding the world as it was meant to be. Bookstores never make me contemplate so, reason of which I don’t know of. Maybe because I peruse copies of either writers who I read again and again or the ones I’ve read impressive reviews of. Award-winners grab my attention as well, but again I believe that art, you should muse over only to never pass judgments for your eyes, your cognition and your understanding may differ from that of the creator. Art has as many faces as the pair of eyes looking at it. For me, reading is an art not devoid of its complexities. From being a mechanical reader looking for just the narrative details to the one trying to appreciate styles, subtleties and nuances, genres in every literary or non-literary movement, I now am scared to lose my own innate cognition by getting knocked down by the zillions of thoughts accumulated over the years. I try often not to let my mind be some other’s playground, but shades of influence do find neurons.
The crisis I undergo while re-reading a book are more depressing. Each time I do so, my mind, as if by intention, will indeed find the interpretations and shades which I missed previously as if to make me feel hapless, naïve and prone to pessimism. Now I feel scared to even look at books I read long back. I fear that I no longer possess the same state of mind to interpret them the way I did before. New revelations and new subsequent thought processes will follow and previous readings will seem futile. I started writing for the fear of forgetting and losing my thoughts which are often intermittent in nature that I dread that I’ll not encounter them again. And thus, I started taking notes of them to muse around in times of solitude. Reading them in future will help me make comparisons with the thoughts of then. After all thoughts, opinions and views change faces with time, places, experiences and situations in our lives that we attribute that we cannot understand ourselves, let alone others.
The second most odious situation I face is making selections from the various genres. While reading Shakespeare in continuum, I realize that I am lagging on Dickens and Tolstoy. While I relish Marquez’s magical realism, I invite Wilde’s and Twain’s wrath. In the midst of Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus often beckons. Indian scriptures, Greek and Latin classics, Victorian works, European potpourris, Eastern mysticisms; the list never ends. The amount of thoughts accumulated in probably billions of works never ceases to intimidate you. I often bump upon books which stress on the need and art of skipping, but if skipping is an art, than I am a mental-handicap at it. I am unable to accept the fact that I in my lifetime cannot enjoy the luxury of reading one and all. I’ll indeed miss most of the art in literature. I’ll be devoid of the musings those intellects went through while authoring them
But I often dream of having a study of my own with unending shelves filled with hard-covers from all the world’s literature and thinking-movements(I doubt of any such classification though). But having born in an era of Capitalism, I am scared of devoting so much time to something which provides no monetary benefit. I get envious of the Greeks who seem to had had all the time in this world to contemplate and debate over literally everything in this world. I am at times even advised to read books pertaining to my occupation for they may actually ‘help’. No wonder we find bookstore-selves filled with guides on self-help, career, stock-market, money-management et cetera. Maybe this explains why bookstores don’t fascinate me as much as public libraries where I find books as uncared for as the gray-cells in our minds; books which remind me that the world is a complex place and no matter how many times you look at it, it appears all different at every look. Then I think: Ignorance is a bliss indeed.
©Rakesh 2011
©Rakesh 2011
Sunday, 24 April 2011
“The Curious Case of GOD, Talent & Perseverance”
Few days ago I was going through a video on youtube in which Harsha Bhogle philosophically went on to describe how talent is one of the most ‘useless’ of all things to possess at higher echelons of corporate. He substantiated his enlightening disclosure by drawing comparisons between Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli, two childhood pals who strived to make it big in cricket, a sport Bhogle is paid to talk about. While the latter, although much talked of his ethereal hard-hitting skills, vanished from the stage after a series of ephemeral and intermittent success, the former attained the status of God in the sport considered as a religion in a country of a billion people. Bhogle attributed HIS success to the work-ethics HE has for the game. Now maybe HIS work-ethics, HIS love for game, HIS adaptability somewhere down the line overshadowed HIS talent, but one can reasonably argue that Kambli was talented as well, if not as much as Sachin, (though he was touted as the next generation superstar ahead of Sachin in their early days) then certainly more than most of the contemporary cricketers he played with by safe assumption. (Though, I fear that talent can never be quantized and scaled precisely). But still Kambli remained a mortal and Sachin went on to become the most worshipped sport-star ever, if one goes by sheer number of followers. Somewhere, Sachin’s perseverance and work-ethics made up for the lag in talent of his, if any. Louis Pasteur once affirmed that his success solely lied in his tenacity. Einstein declared that the only reason he could come up with the solutions to the mysteries of quantum physics was that he spent more time with the problems.
One can reasonably rationalize that not everyone can be Sachin, Pasteur or Einstein. So does talent help? Before we explore the solution, let’s try to define what talent exactly is. Talent is the innate ability of an individual to perform a task in some field or activity with much more adeptness than most of the populace. So if you can solve a mighty quant problem in the classroom faster than your peers with the same level of preparation and attention received by your mentor with some creative bent of mind, it has got to do with the talent. Now does talent exist? Does nature really discriminate between her children? I’d say talent is not just a state of mind. It exists. Not sure if it is any form of discrimination or not but the aphorism: “We all are born originals but most of us die copies.” can help us explain it better. Nature does not like to make clones. Nor are forces of nature aligned in such a manner that every sibling of her receives same kind of nutrition and organic environment. So, each one of us is indeed endowed with some or other skill-sets which make us naturally adept in certain arenas. We are not always fortunate enough to figure out the arena we are bestowed in. Even if we do, we rarely dare enough to exploit it in the midst of so many systems we are shackled in. Capitalism further creates complications as certain talents get more monetary attention. So we try to ‘create’ talent in ourselves. Can talent be ever created? I’d say no and yes. No matter how hard mankind tries, it can’t emulate nature in terms of excellence. But perseverance pays. Working harder than those naturally-gifted people can give you dividends. It may not ‘create’ talent but certainly builds what we call aptitude.
Now coming to the first question, does talent help? We’d go by the assumption that Kambli was more talented than Sachin as iterated by their guru Ramakanth Achrekar and others. Now Bhogle pointed out that Kambli played his last Test Match at the age of twenty-two. (maybe at 24 or 25, let’s say in his early twenties) He was perplexed by Courtney Walsh and didn’t know what to do because till then talent had opened all doors for him. So did talent prove out to be bane for him? I am too much limited by my knowledge to assume that Kambli’s initial success made him bedazzled by the glamour and attention he received and the subsequent arrogance of his swayed him from doing what he was best at doing. But his talent did not take him far. In stark contrast, Sachin didn’t enjoy much success in his first tour.( To exaggerate, one can visualize Sachin with the bleeding nose.) Also, though the world knew they were watching someone special, he had to wait 69(or maybe 70?) matches for his first one day century. Since then Sachin has enjoyed enviable success in all formats of games but his best have has always come after setbacks, whether it were injuries or plunge in form. Unlike Kambli, he never forgot his work-ethics and stayed as calm as a monk in search of sublime enlightenment. Which champion will not break down by getting booed and plastic-bottles thrown at him by his own home-crowd? (Remember Wankhede when he was going through the most slump-phase of his career?). But amid several dropped-jaws of his fans and criticisms from every corner, Sachin maintained a Zen like calmness and enlivened his craft that would give even the Phoenix a run for his ability to reinvigorate himself. So I assume that talent didn’t help Kambli go places because he didn’t remain a student of the game like Sachin did. Talent made him too rigid and dependent while Sachin adapted the way things changed. You don’t need to be a Darwinist to know how important adaptation is for success. Now I am too illiterate of cricketing terms, but I am told that he completely stopped playing some signature stroke of his after his career-threatening tennis-elbow injury. Can talent let us enjoy such luxury? If you love say Number Theory, can it be easy for you make life out of teaching Shakespeare? Yes it can, but for that you got to be Sachin Tendulkar, or at least possess his single-mindedness and tenacity. Talent will make your life easy initially and will make you lax. It won’t give you the taste of failure and hence when you reach higher echelons, you won’t possess the ex factor which Sachin possesses: the ability to bounce back.
©Rakesh 2011
Saturday, 16 April 2011
“You are Right, I am Right”
Now I come from the school of thinking which believes that everything in this world can be justified. If it has been done, it can be justified. Otherwise, why was it done at the first place. The greatest misery in this world is that different people look at the same thing with different perceptions. Also these perceptions vary with time. Right and wrong can never be absolute. In fact, if you find anything in this world to be absolute, please enlighten me.
When Men started living in society, certain acts came to be regarded as Right for the ease of large. These lumps of righteous acts later became morality and morality gave birth to obligations. This is how pillars of society came into existence. To protect the interests of the general, freedom of all was curbed to some or more extent. Those who did not abide were termed as outlaws and extirpated from society in general. The justice system adopted later in the civilized world, heavily borrowed from these general accepted norms of a society. Hence ‘Right’ was defined. This was necessary for the smooth functioning of the society. Right was often the child of our interests. What worked out for us, we called it Right and what didn’t, wrong. Now people started having rigid notion of Right. The notion that everything can be justified from both the ends and Right may not be Right for all became blurred. Right became absolute and proper and seldom prone to arguments and debates. The reason in wrong got overshadowed by the might of Right.
So does this notion of Right work? Yes, most of the time, at societal hierarchy at least. Contrary to popular perception, we are not free people. We started living in society to protect our properties and we often pay the price for the same. So the trade-off is working well. The problem becomes perceivable at personal level. Misunderstandings between individuals are often due to rigid notion of Right.
We mold this Right more or less all the time for our good. Morality, which differs at cultural hierarchies, does its best to complicate things. So we dislike certain kinds of people who do certain kinds of acts. We become biased and prejudiced. At higher hierarchical levels, this makes us racists. If we understand the fact that Right is not something which is absolute but which is defaced, raped, forged and shaped as per the needs of individual and society, by religion and culture and in modern times by media and politics, may be this will help us understand the miseries of this world and the people we live with, in a more profound manner.
Friday, 15 April 2011
“On Darwinism: How Darwinism Opposed the Advent of Darwinism”
When Charles Darwin propounded his work in the path breaking “The Origin of Species” in the year 1859, most and Clergy understandably, could not relate to the musings he underwent on his trip around the globe on HMS Beagle. I blame them not, for our interpretation of truth and right is limited by our understandings and the cognition we build unknowingly by the culture and societal background we come from. We often tend to resist anything which is novel and alien. It has got to do more with the nature. As Newton would’ve said to it: A body in rest or motion will continue to be so and will always resist the application of external force on it. Our blood cells will always resist and assail anything which is foreign. We are often so much brainwashed since our childhood by the nearby agents that any doctrine which says no to conventions and mundaneness is resisted as vehemently as possible by our cognition. Change, in fact, needs continuous application to become accepted. Hence we always require efforts to get out of our comfort zones. Also, a sufficient amount of time is required before this change becomes mundane. When Galileo came up with his heliocentric theory, he was again so much chided by the Church that he had to revert back to his statement to escape what we now call the capital punishment. Today it sounds very obvious because this is what has been seeded into our cognition since childhood.
To put it simply, change of any form, although is inevitable, is always opposed and require a certain timeline to get accepted. The magnitude of this timeline is directly proportional to the intensity of change. Now if the timeline is small, the change will create devastation with certitude. This is what happened to the giant reptiles called dinosaurs which ruled our planet in the Mesozoic era. If everything is in sync, this change brings another greater change which Darwin mentioned as ‘adaptation’. Adaptation will then be observed in forthcoming generations and will slowly penetrate into a greater scale. The survival of species depends a lot on its ability to adapt. The ability to adapt to various external factors and to get in the groove of change by casting off our inherent dogmas and sometimes our physical and biological attributes will define with how much success will one survive in the Capitalist era of today. Laws of nature stand the test of time. Darwin brought forward which was very much in the essence of nature but unobserved. The flaws in the theory just point out to the observations we haven’t made yet.
Now try applying Darwin’s theory to the proposition of the theory itself. At prima facie, it was resisted as intensely as possible by the cognition of the common and more intensely by the cognition of the clergy (their cognition was/is less susceptible to change ) because it was trying to make changes which were at radical level and which were cent per cent contrary and opposite. Also the timescale of change was very minute. As the timescale has extended to over fifty and a hundred years, the resistance of our cognition has diminished and the theory is being mused over by a large scale of intelligentsia and with a lot less scepticism. To textbook educated populace, it will appear as obvious as the heliocentric theory. Change we always resist, may be that is why, Men love history and cling to dogmas and cultural aspects of the past. This is why exactly we hate iconoclasts and revolutionists. Both bring change. Darwin brought change.
©Rakesh 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)