No easy way out

I watched two documentaries over the weekend on terror - Obsessed and TerrorStorm.

The former harps on the familiar "our very civilization, our future, is under attack!" psychosis that has helped the Americans unfalteringly gloat over their self-appointed role of the Savior while at the same time glossing over Hiroshima (A prototype test in a war already-won with yellow men as the mice), the "Soviets are here!" McCarthy lynching, 'Nam, Central America, Afghanistan and Iraq: as long as it happens elsewhere – preferably, places with lots of brown people – it is just collateral damage on the road to goodness.
The latter, Terrorstorm, is about the state perpetrating evil through arousing this very xenophobic-paranoia in the masses through effective use of the state propaganda machinery.

Not difficult to predict where my sympathies lay. (Tho' Obsessed's concern over the extremist stridency in the Arab media and the analogy of the raising of generations over generations on a diet of distorted lies (one of the prime time Egyptian drama had a sub-plot based on the blood libel accusation) and hate with Nazi Germany, is well argued).

Interestingly, both documentaries start with two very famous quotes.

Obsessed, with the famous Burke quote - 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.'

Terrorstorm: A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. - Solzhenitsyn

Also, both draw parallels from the Nazi nightmare - one comparing the strident anti-semitism and world-dominating agenda with the radical Muslim world; the other, comparing Goebbels's dead-on-target propaganda juggernaut with the current state-led Western media machinery.


This is a lesson. A lesson on the dangers of analogies. A lesson on the danger of generalizations.

When Burke talked about good men, he talked about men - not states. States serve men but, as we know, like the Matrix, if let run free, become the biggest criminals. A vicious and faceless 'Big Brother' cycle that feeds on itself, and the men it was built for.
Solzhenitsyn (hope I got that correct) was talking about this exactly - an artificial state of war created by the state to serve its own end; in his case, Stalinist Russia.

The other danger, as I mentioned, is of analogies. The problem with history is that it's not a series of facts laid out in a single direction, like the obedient molecules of a magnetic strip. Instead they contradict themselves. Fathers of The nation turn out to be bad fathers, the redoubtable Ben Franklin – fatherly dignified and benign in portraits – an oversexed old dog in private life, the tragic lives of comedians and the paradox of India. We build definitions on facts and yet facts betray them.

The problem, of course, is that definitions, other than those of non-social sciences, are never set in stone. They overlap – just like the multiple realities of civilizations and people. History, written by the winners, is seldom accurate. There is no accuracy actually. Every actor was a perpetrator, every actor was a puppet; every argument was right, every argument was wrong. In science, a law is a law. A single contradiction, even millions of miles away on the surface of Pluto, is reason enough to reject it. Life is not like that. There are contradictions built on contradictions in everything that touches us: there is no single, steadfast approach to social and personal reality. Truth does not emerge in absolutes; it emerges in degrees.

To quote Rakesh: it’s a vector sum. Millions of vectors in every random direction, cancelling each other, and yet; in the end, a small arrow pointing – somewhere.

We as humans are uncomfortable with uncertainties. We fear them, give them names, make idols of them, and then bow before them. We try to constrain them within books and tell ourselves that all human knowledge, the billions of pages preceding the book and the trillions to succeed it are trash since they again blur the edges of truth set in the pages. We decide to kill anyone who challenges these dogmas (withthe help of technology borrowed from them and beyond our own scripts): fearing that their doubt will again cast us all in an age of uncertainties. Our stories have the clearly shaded white of heroes against the black of villains: the Kauravas against the Pandavas, the Lucifer against the God, the Satyug vs. the Kaliyug. We prefer the simplistic biographies of ‘A beautiful Mind’ (where the hero’s four marriages are reduced to a single one and his gay past completely ignored) to the complex characterizations in Oliver Stone’s ‘Door’s or ‘Alexander’.

Hence, the inherent irrationality in the reality of the world we have defined for ourselves.
We talk about our Indian identity as if it is a single identity. And then it percolates down to other identities – our Kashmir, our motherland, our Hindutva, our Muslim bretheren, aamchi Mumbai. When these identities clash, we decry the irrationality of the opponent and yet fail to see our own.

What is the Indian collective? Exactly, when do I transform from a UP-wallah in Mumbai, to a general category candidate pitted vs. the SC/STs, to a saffron flag waving zealot? Note: in all these identities, friends and foes shift. An upper caste collective at war with a lower caste collective over reservation today, becomes a collective against the Muslims after a train carnage in an obscure town; which, after taking the good Muslims in, becomes a broader collective against the bad Muslims; and ultimately, the most stupefying collective: the precedence of the Muslims brothers scattered over 58 majority nations and all other minority ones, from Somalians to Indonesians to American, over the Hindu and Christian cousins next door.

The answer is again the same. It is a series of circles overlapping one another, realities over realities over realities. The reality emerges from the plane I am on: the context.

The argument, that started with the amusing observation that the same genocide is being claimed by two rival theories, has lessons for us Indians.

Falling for grossly simplistic arguments - of appeasement, our Muslim brothers, POTA, fake encounters, how can they call the encounters fake when a police wallah died!, maaro salon ko! - is the easy way out. A one size that fits all contexts.

The tougher way is to weigh each context, each reality on its own merit, and not fall into the trap of analogies and generalizations. No single model; instead, a new model everytime based on the understanding of the shifting dunes of human realities.

The onus on us, the intellectual elite, the priviliged, the better educated, to be temperate and responsible with our judgements - given the abundance of facts that we can access, views we can take into account and the processing facility - is much more than our vote-hungry, barely-educated politicians.

Le diner de cons

The forces of democratization that sites like youtube, blogger, wordpress and like have unleashed in content development, giving voice to unheard talents, have a delightful flip side: bringing to fore the presumptuous idiot.

The fury of the crowds

Close on the heels of the death of the Greater Noida CEO about whom I blogged yesterday (a little in bad taste), the Union Labor Minister has warned the (capitalist) management of the country and calls the mob violence a mere omen of "simmering discontent among the workers".

I would request all the ministers, all of them, to step outside the bungalows they refuse to evict at 11 on Friday and stand there without the cover of their Z+++ security. For just half an hour. The few ones that might be pulled still half alive from their burning stakes might then teach Mr. Oscar about how discontent really simmers.

Free market - UP ishtyle

CEO beaten to death in Noida
The chief executive officer of a company was on Monday beaten to death by a group of dismissed employees inside office premises after a meeting, called to resolve dispute between them and management, failed.
L K Chaudhury, CEO of Gradiano in Udyog Vihar of Greater Noida, was killed when the agitating workers turned violent and beat him up, Senior Superintendent of Police (Noida) R K Chaturvedi told PTI.
As the clash erupted, Chaturvedi said, a security guard opened fire in air.
About 20 people were injured in the clashes. Chaudhury was rushed to Kailash hospital where he was declared brought dead.
There were about 200 former employees inside the premises when the incident took place. They were dismissed two months back for some reasons and were since then protesting against it.

What say Vishesh? This qualifies under both the survival-of-the-fittest and the creative-destruction of th market beliefs of yours.
I think this is a whole paradigm of management theory - management through violence.

They don't orkut like they used to before

Two friends' birthdays whizzed by and the number of badde greetings on orkut ere signifiantly less compared to what it used to be.

Two possibilities - they're not as popular as before or people are orkutting less.

I go with the latter explanation.

People are orkutting less coz now that the first wave of euphoria - of reuniting with old friends, checking out their honeymoon snaps and kids - over, what next? Orkut's communities are too trivial: most of the people wear them like badges - I belong to this this and this club; I am this guy's fan; I am into this hobby and this movie - and not for active discussion.

The other reason is the walled garden syndrome that Guy Kawasaki mentions. Since each social networking site is a silo, you do not have a single user interface to manage all your network. Your social profiles in Orkut and Facebook are maintained separately, you have to upload the same snaps from the trp you took last week to Flickr, Orkut/Picasa and Facebook and your LinkedIn account is a separate issue altogether.

Kawasaki suggests the evolution of the meta-SNSes. A large social networking site could become a large repository of a number of relationships with smaller sites looking at it to specialize across horizontal uses (for example, creating a site focused on dating or job search) or vertical ones (for example, a site focused on information exchange between subject matter experts within one particular domain).

Le Diner the cons - with the Chopras

Seems like FilmFest Hamburg is having a private idiot party this winter. This will be hilarious!

De-networked

http://www.livemint.com/2008/03/21002013/IIT8217s-new-social-network.html
This is a very interesting article on how IITians in Bombay are being curfewed back to a more wholsesome collegiate experience.
Having wasted almost the whole of my last semester on Quake, I know exactly what these students are rediscovering.

A splendid op-POTA-rtunity

in the aftermath of the bombings, two remedies proposed are

1. Kill 'em all; let God sort them out - unrestricted POTA regime
2. Nip it in the bud - Better intelligence

The first argument assumes that 'it will never be me'. History has shown that POTA-like acts quickly degenerate into brutal oppression of dissent: whatever form it may take, whichever quarters it may come from. Martial laws are effective only in the most extreme of emergencies and, if not repealed thereafter, result in juntas and fascist regimes. Hence, POTA is only a short-term solution if it is to be considered.

The second argument is for better intelligence. Easier said than done. First of all, what does it mean. For me, a civilain, that translates into autonomy and more efficacy.

Terrorism can sometimes be an expression of the broader will repressed by the state. Or it can be the violent fanaticism of the few.

In the case of latter, intelligence, with roots spreading far and wide, will be able to preempt most acts because the terrorists, lacking popular support, will be exposed regularly. Preparing and planting bombs does take an awful amount of co-ordination, time and effort; enough to raise suspicion in the ghettoes where they fester.

In the case of former, if it is the will of the people, the only long-term solution is dialogue. Force has never worked - not in Ireland, not in Jaffna, not in Vietnam.

The terrorism of Saturday is without any popular base. The overwhelming majority of any community in India wants its peace and fundamental rights.

Let's not give in to the stridency of the hour: let's rejig the system. For once, our blood-sucking beureaucrats and politicians are under fire: let's take intelligence away from their polluting influence and build something along the line of FBI.

Giving absolute power to the absolutely corrupt is stupid.

The unbearable stupidity of today

There is something so intrinsically beautiful in a pithy aphorism, in the cacophonous stream of relentless sound-bytes, that you sometimes accept them as the truth, the complete truth, without a thought.
An article I stumbled on counters the claim of an English professor, in his book titled - 'The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)", by stating that
A. intelligence is not just knowledge of facts (esp. those presecribed by elders)
B. Don't blame the 'idiots', blame the context. The apathy argument.
And then it states the line that almost won me over - Alienation is not dumbness.

Beautiful, huh? Alas, it is only a word play.

The incidental facts that the elders espouse sometimes define the politics of tomorrow. The article states Santayana's 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it' argument but is very cavalier about its impication. Much of terrorism today is a lashback of the alienation of societies and nations at the fringes over this very apathy. The spate of anti-Muslim mails, some even hinting at mass-deportation and genocides, that followed the bombings yesterday are testimony to an all-round stupidity that we as a nation have stoned ourselves to - with generous help from a political system that thrives on rhetoric and emotional melodrama than issues and, in recent years, a dangerously illiterate tabloid-media.

Another apology for the apathy is that we, the elders, are not working hard enough.

"If you don't know which rights are protected in the First Amendment, how can you think critically about rights in the U.S.?" Fair enough... it reflects not stupidity but a failure of the school system and of society (which is run by grown-ups) to require them to know it."

This is plain bullshit. Come here you over-indulged Americans and see what school systems look like in the rest of the world. Anyone beyond 12 (I don't buy the 18 argument) who is not curious about the world he/she lives in, esp. when he has the means, is a disaster waiting to be unleashed.

I have said in an earlier blog that stupidity is a decision - beyond an age. We choose to remain stupid because knowledge involves effort and effort is, well, tiring. It's easier to voice whatever the media is ranting about than develop arguments of your own, treat everything like it happened without any history than read into it, have sloppy-sentimental notions of goodness in this world than stare at the stark problem of inequalities in the world and understand the institutional mechanics behind, it is easier to watch television that read and use your imagination, watch the escapist Bollywood fare than jar the depth of your intelligence and soul in world cinema.

We are stupid because we can afford to be.

Stupidity is the biggest problem facing the world today. It was always - but the contrast between the means at a person's disposal to enlighten himself and the actual intelligence has never been so glaring. Terrorism persists because of the stupidity of the masses that support the two-faced, self-serving states whose policies the terrorists usually fight against (Ask yourself honestly: how do you fight states other than by terrorism? Do you expect people to form a private army and then march to Kurukshetra and then be bombed out with a couple of minutes?)
Maybe the terrorists are stupid (after all, most terrorist outfits are bolstered by even greater stupidity of their misled support groups), but two worngs might not make a right, but two stupidities surely make a disaster.

Aren't we in such a mess because of the over-the-years cultivated and arogant stupidity of the most powerful nation of the world?

'Either you're with us, or against us!' Remember? Only the really stupid see the world in binaries, in black and white.

Are we being just to Sanjeev Nanda?

Justice delayed is justice denied. So the adage goes; the party denied presumably the aggrieved party. But what about the criminal? Esp. in a case of culpable homicide.

Sanjeev Nanda is the same age as me. Nine years ago, when he was driving the BMW, I was riding my first bike - a second hand Yamaha RX100. My only mishap that year happenned when I raced into a U-turning rickshaw, that suddenly decided that the way opposite was the way for him, somewhere in the city:but that was entirely to my disadvantage.

I remember reading about that night in the next morning's paper. Sabby was still my room-mate, Itawa and chirag were in the room opposite, Chiklu lived across our hostel, and I was in correspondence with Prachi. Ages ago.

There was a curious feeling of vindication at the overdue desserts of a coeval who was born with the world in his locker and the privilige of a life of no struggles -fast cars, babes, good looks - and flaunting it. That his family allegedly watered the festering, bulbuous corruption in defence deals and undermined the nation's security, of course, added to the thrill.

Over the years, the Nandas, allegedly, bought witnesses and ran the judiciary system, groaning under the rotting weight of its colonial convolutions, as smoothly and confidentally as a Formula1 driver. Now, it seems, like the host of celebrated and long-drawn cases recently, their luck has finally run out.

But what is the basis of the justice system?

1. punishment?

2. reformation?

3. containment?

Punishment, if not coupled with the objective of reformation, is not the concern of the state or any rational institution. The criminal might be asked to financially compensate the aggrieved party for the damage done. But incarceration/death for the sake of only feeding the desire of revenge, is neither rational nor the hallmark of any civilized state.

Hence, the objectives narrow down to reformation or containment.

Containment applies to criminals that might repeat their actions and, hence, be a threat to the security of the public. The act might either come with intent or, as in the case of culpable homicide, negligence. The objective is to contain the person till, in the first case, the criminal changes his intent or, in the other, he becomes more careful; both till a level that he is no longer a threat.

My argument is based on this understanding of modern-day justice systems.

Now, forget the mockery that the Nandas might have made of the legal system and the weeping widows; just like you might have conveniently forgotten that if the Nandas did play the system for their son, so, in all probability, would have you. (The only constraint would have been the power you wield and the bank balance you own.)

Try and think rationally (a tough request in these days of strident media-led kangaroo courts). Try to be a part of the panch parmeshwar.

Who are we trying to reform here? A 30 year old for something he did when he was 21? For what purpose? If I had killed that rickshaw driver that day nine years ago, would now be time to try and reform me?

The answer is clear - REVENGE; for thinking that they can play with the lives of the poor; for eating off the fat of the land; for this, that and everything.

They might be corrupt, arrogant, smug; in short, evil!

But is this the royal darbaar of Akbar the merciful or a modern legal institution?

Is this justice?

There is only one criminal here - the people who have made legal system thus. Of the murder of justice - eitherways - with intent. Purposeful negligence.