Monday, July 31, 2017
Friday, July 28, 2017
The New Optimists!
According to "The New Optimists", it seems we live in the best of the times. With life made so easy and comfortable, perhaps I must agree with it. Humanity must be living in the best of its times, but the cost of that comfort is being borne big time by something other than humanity...is what I sincerely feel!
Thursday, July 27, 2017
Seeking!
"What you seek is seeking you!" as per Rumi. So, if you actually believe in it, also start believing in its inverse, "What you stop seeking, stops seeking you!" As simple as that!
-- Dedicated to all those who are in limbo and seeking closure.
-- Dedicated to all those who are in limbo and seeking closure.
Monday, July 24, 2017
Saturday, July 22, 2017
Created in the image of God!
"The God of the Bible is a God that says that the world can be based on love, that it can be based on caring–love your neighbor and love the stranger–that the world can go in that direction, that that can happen. And not because of some transcendence of all that is but because the fundamental spiritual reality of the universe is that it is pervaded with love and goodness. And if you are a realized human being or moving in that direction, then your test is to be a witness to that possibility, to be a partner with God in the healing and transformation of the world. This is what it means to say that human beings are created in the image of God: We are meant to be partners, and our task is to actualize more of the goodness and love in the universe and to recognize the world as potentially transformable."
-- Rabbi Michael Lerner, in an interview with Michael Cohen.
June Raymond, a sister of Notre Dame, explaining why she remains a Christian despite the negative and limiting things about the system, says: “It obviously is not because I love the institution. On the whole I don’t, but the rest of it as well as its shadow is part of me and in this strange mystery of Christ I find my deepest being and a way back to the truths that transform and offer meaning and hope.”
-- Rabbi Michael Lerner, in an interview with Michael Cohen.
June Raymond, a sister of Notre Dame, explaining why she remains a Christian despite the negative and limiting things about the system, says: “It obviously is not because I love the institution. On the whole I don’t, but the rest of it as well as its shadow is part of me and in this strange mystery of Christ I find my deepest being and a way back to the truths that transform and offer meaning and hope.”
The fortune and the psychic!
If you allow it to, love can make people go crazy! Here is one such instance. I doubted the authenticity of the story, but upon further more browsing, I HAD to believe...that it happened for real!
Friday, July 14, 2017
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Anthropocentricity!
“It is amazing that we should be so sensitive to suicide, homicide, and genocide and have absolutely no moral principles for dealing with biocide or geocide. Over-concerned with the well-being of the human, we feel it is better that everything is destroyed than that humans suffer to any degree.”
Thomas Berry
Thomas Berry
Monday, July 10, 2017
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Look outside!
I guess, we are often being given this advice of "Look within" at the current juncture when we are increasingly becoming empty within. That is the paradox of today. While change has to start from within, that change is often not sufficient for most of the real world problems today. Mind you, I'm NOT saying internal management is not needed. I'm saying, while that change IS needed, that change is often NOT sufficient.
When the problem is created due to external circumstances, managing oneself internally forever not only amounts to adapting oneself to change but sometimes also to changing oneself to fit into an inappropriate system or environment. It's not just changing, but derailing from one's ideal or optimum self.
So while I appreciate self-help advice such as these where help comes from assessing internal factors, I wonder why there is not enough focus these days on assessing the external factors. True, there might not be enough control or power to change the external environment one is in. But sometimes one needs to realize that it is NOT always possible to change oneself beyond a certain limit! The next alternative then is to shift to a different environment.
It will be wrong if the capacity of a fish is assessed based on how high it can fly or if the capacity of a bird is assessed based on how far it can swim. Neither of them can do the other's job. They are best in their own environments. These are examples that starkly bring out the incapacity of the beings in inappropriate environments. Unfortunately, the real world scenarios are NOT this direct and we are often lost adapting ourselves to systems we NEED NOT fit into! We would rather do better elsewhere!
And it need NOT always be shifting to a different environment. Sometimes our assertiveness in NOT adapting to a system also brings the essential change in a system which remained stagnant for long, just because the actors operating within it did not care to feed it back honest responses.
I can go on and on, but I hope you are getting my point. I would have loved to depict it through a picture, but I'm absolutely in no mood to put those efforts to create one! But for the technically inclined, I can go ahead and explain it through more text in technical terms. Let's say a couple of components, say X, Y and Z are interacting faultily in a system. And let's say you are responsible for "managing" one component A. Now, let's say the owners of components X, Y and Z are complaining that component A is sending incorrect responses all the while. Would you try and fix component A to send the responses X, Y and Z "want" or would you check that maybe A is sending responses as it should, but the fault could actually be with other components' expectations? Or sometimes, the fault could be on both the sides and all the components might have to be altered.
While we might be intelligent enough to think properly when it comes to such problems in the technological world , in real world we are being forced to incline more towards "internal management" and that always might not be the complete solution. I'm sure you got my point by this time... So go ahead and look outside so that you give somebody else a chance to do their "internal management" instead of you banging your head at it, doing it alone and aloof all the time...so that you do NOT foster a system that is tough on most of the people...a system that most of the people are unhappy with! Because systemic changes are waiting!
When the problem is created due to external circumstances, managing oneself internally forever not only amounts to adapting oneself to change but sometimes also to changing oneself to fit into an inappropriate system or environment. It's not just changing, but derailing from one's ideal or optimum self.
So while I appreciate self-help advice such as these where help comes from assessing internal factors, I wonder why there is not enough focus these days on assessing the external factors. True, there might not be enough control or power to change the external environment one is in. But sometimes one needs to realize that it is NOT always possible to change oneself beyond a certain limit! The next alternative then is to shift to a different environment.
It will be wrong if the capacity of a fish is assessed based on how high it can fly or if the capacity of a bird is assessed based on how far it can swim. Neither of them can do the other's job. They are best in their own environments. These are examples that starkly bring out the incapacity of the beings in inappropriate environments. Unfortunately, the real world scenarios are NOT this direct and we are often lost adapting ourselves to systems we NEED NOT fit into! We would rather do better elsewhere!
And it need NOT always be shifting to a different environment. Sometimes our assertiveness in NOT adapting to a system also brings the essential change in a system which remained stagnant for long, just because the actors operating within it did not care to feed it back honest responses.
I can go on and on, but I hope you are getting my point. I would have loved to depict it through a picture, but I'm absolutely in no mood to put those efforts to create one! But for the technically inclined, I can go ahead and explain it through more text in technical terms. Let's say a couple of components, say X, Y and Z are interacting faultily in a system. And let's say you are responsible for "managing" one component A. Now, let's say the owners of components X, Y and Z are complaining that component A is sending incorrect responses all the while. Would you try and fix component A to send the responses X, Y and Z "want" or would you check that maybe A is sending responses as it should, but the fault could actually be with other components' expectations? Or sometimes, the fault could be on both the sides and all the components might have to be altered.
While we might be intelligent enough to think properly when it comes to such problems in the technological world , in real world we are being forced to incline more towards "internal management" and that always might not be the complete solution. I'm sure you got my point by this time... So go ahead and look outside so that you give somebody else a chance to do their "internal management" instead of you banging your head at it, doing it alone and aloof all the time...so that you do NOT foster a system that is tough on most of the people...a system that most of the people are unhappy with! Because systemic changes are waiting!
Friday, July 7, 2017
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Saturday, July 1, 2017
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