World Book and Copyright Day 2019

          World Book and Copyright Day

                                  

                                which refers more to  

              World BOOK and READING DAY

Instead of treating these days as mere calendared  rituals with some events, I think we must try to find out whether they hold any significance and if so, what?

Before proceeding to that we need to study in detail the two things for which the Day is celebrated, namely, Reading and Books.

 Reading habit has it really reduced? No.

There are vast volumes of literature available on every subject, so, more the merrier.

When too may thoughts and ideas; too vast records of past experiences are around, it is a matter of ‘embarras de choix’. Then, the most preferable perspective may be to go in for synergy and synthesis because life’s multiple dimensions; dynamics of all those dimensions are all interlinked.

“The information we consume matters just as much as the food we put in our body. It affects our thinking, our behavior, how we understand our place in the world. And how we understand others.” ~Evan Williams

That’s why words and narratives continue to have great impact, sometimes, even masking real action, leading one to think if action speaks louder than words, then, one must be operating a grinding mill.

How any why the written or spoken word and its dissemination play an important role. Documented information by virtue of easy accessibility has greater impact among the major means of knowledge acquisition.

There are three ways of acquiring and assimilating knowledge:-   

      

1,Pratyaksha pramana=Direct experience

2,Anumana=inference or logic

3.Shabda pramana=Verbal testimony or verbal account or verbalizing a fact or imagination or lie or concept or idea or thought or opinion and so on .

Major portion of the knowledge of majority of us are inevitably through Shabda pramana [Verbal testimony].

Most of our belief systems, frames of references to grasp and understand are, therefore, based on Shabda pramana [Verbal testimony] starting from belief in heaven and hell.

It is inevitably so, as everyone cannot have experience of performing a brain surgery or everyone cannot visit moon.

So, we must believe in the versions of those who have done them with ample empirical proof and other evidences and probability of existence of such things or events or personalities etc.

This has its own inherent importance as Isaac Newton has said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”.

Therefore, it would be better in the interest of all life on this planet that those who have the privilege of being in the realm of disseminating facts, information, knowledge ,ideas, opinions etc carefully feed in positive news, and of course, report negative and nauseating facts too, with lesser visibility.

Multitude and variety are inevitable aspects of life with all its contradictions and conflicting factors.

How we narrate and navigate through them will decide the course of human life.

Evolution of civilization as well as sophistication of civilized evolution both depend on adaptation, adjustments, accommodation and assimilation of multiple ways of life and valuing the variety and virtue of variety passed onto us down the ages through various mediums, the first most effective and, perhaps the chief among them being books which recorded the sounds, spoken words, thoughts, ideas and events. Both our individual self and social self are to a large extent shaped by how we relate with others, things and our overall circumstances and how our contexts relate with us. Life is after all not mere chronology of existence but a meaningful topology of relationships. Life is not confined to and carried on within the matrix of mind and matter but it creatively works through communicating the connectivity between these two and how these two relate with everyone and everything.

Actually more number of people read more topics on various platforms starting from print media like newspapers, pamphlets, text books, books of various genres to heavy reading through electronic media in the form of mails, social media messages, E-books etc.

But then, what has to be known really is

What they read?

Why they read?

How they read?

How they use or benefit from what they read?

 How much they read?

The answer to the above questions will provide information that may enable us to know about the interests and intentions; to understand the influence and impact; to grasp the intrinsic importance; to interpret   the importance of intrinsic values; to entertain with imaginations; to indoctrinate through injecting sensational ideas and sensitive and biased judgmental opinions ; gradually to educate everyone to evaluate [with contextual relevance] the utility or futility of all that is being read; to discern  to observe  intelligently; to achieve academic excellence ; to learn  to internalize great ideas and instructions; to expand the  spectrum of our conscious awareness wider  to perceive with philosophical perspective; to peruse everything with proper measurements  and finally to enlighten us to engage in creating in a scholarly, scientific and sane way with a sense of responsibility and sense of balance the sources of synergy through creative and effective communication.

Certain terms have been underlined and rendered in bold letters [almost as a wordle] because they are in fact the preferred and prioritized outcomes of most readings and book centric learning.

We all must humbly accept that we learnt some or all of the above underlined aspects; or still in the process of learning or perfecting or enhancing the quality and quantity of what we have already learnt.

 It was mostly through our reading them in books or listening to and learning from those who have read and passed them on. Learning is a lifelong process.

So, as Dani Johnson says, “Never stop being teachable. If you think you know everything, you will never learn anything.”

Inquisitiveness and inquiry are the eternal springs of human psyche and it is through this stream that flows from the springs that traces of ignorance are washed away one by one, as Phenella writes in “The Unwritten Comedy”.

“To be ignorant of many things is expected
To know you are ignorant of many things is the beginning of wisdom.
To know a category of things of which you are ignorant is the beginning of learning.
To know the details of that category of things of which you are ignorant is to no longer be ignorant.”

Can anyone ever claim comprehensive comprehension with clarity on any issue considering that there are multiple possible factors to be considered with many frames of references, all of which in turn get churned up in the cauldrons of concomitant contextual relevance and the interactions of inherent attributes of the issues, events or things evaluated along with the kirn-staff or churning stick of individual's interpretation based on his or her attitude and perspective.

I sometimes wonder on what basis  mortal human beings use such terms like always ( probably a convenient synonym for in 'most circumstances presumably'); how come a temporary life span and limitations of knowledge talk of ' absolute' ( probably indicating most likely according to the narrator); everything ( probably the range of things one construes to be complete) and so on.

Human intellect can churn, scrutinize, evaluate, criticize and keep on drilling deeper or mentally go on scratching like it does to an itching sensation physically.

But then ultimately humility must accept that whatever the individual human mind or the collection of ideas are all capable of deciphering, discerning and articulating is merely a particular  facet or some facets of the sparkling splendor called life.

Slowly and surely emerging inevitable trends and terms of life may have to necessarily become comprehensive and more inclusive. Besides, certain aspects of all the following domains economics, religions, castes, races, and politics may be required to either totally shed or reduce the degree of intensity with which those aspects are insisted upon or enforced. This is required as an inevitable process of sophistication or progressive civilization enabling happy and peaceful cohabitation of human beings and other species.  While the emphasis is on reading, we must factor in the fact that the maximum reading in done for academic purposes or in the form of reports through newspapers, magazines and many other social networks and besides and beyond these, the charming serious book reading is a very limited percentage. So, it is imperative on the narrators who script the narratives in media to desist from the following:-

Myth making; hero-worship; citing exceptions as examples and make sweeping statements based on that; over generalizing the particular; particularizing the general; over simplifying the complex; complicating the simple; resorting to unloving criticism and uncritical love; projecting poverty and suffering as the important requirements to get god’s grace; evaluating anything or anyone with irrelevant aspects; quoting and questioning things without contextual relevance; proceeding with justifications to bolster up or brush aside facts; paralyzing simple events with unwarranted and perverted analysis; forging for facts to fit into preconceptions; showing intolerance towards dissent; invent intentions when results are good and useful; pandering to populism and political correctness over providing long term prosperity; making desperate attempts to degrade some and deify others; opposing for the sake of opposing; rejecting reasoning; operating with  selective amnesia and collective indifference;  trying to mask present short comings by raking up past glories and gloat with ethnocentric pride; sit on judgment over everything and everyone without trying to know in detail what we are judging ; generously throwing  opinions around even without doing some home work on any issue, diverting attention from intrinsically important issues by projecting emotionally appealing allegations, twisting facts, total indifference to facts etc have all become such a huge carapace covering the present generation that no one can know what is the real character of this generation of media narrators.

However, these media worthies dominate the discourse with their self appropriated label of liberal, intellectual and so on to spread viruses that affect the socio- psychological perceptions.

The prime reason for most of these  ugly trends are because people are overwhelmingly negatively influenced by media houses both in the print and audio visual which churns out heroes out of zeros and in some cases the glamorous reel industry dominates over and sometimes replaces the reality.

These worthies in the media are mostly guided by some petrified ideological fixations which they extrapolate on almost every aspect of life –which are constantly changing and moving as opposed to these petrified ideologies.

These petrified ideologies are  bolstered by some putrefied slogans and outdated statistics coupled with puerile predicaments and sustained by   pelf that pours into their purses,  propelled by pseudo intellectualism and all of these masquerading as meaningful concern for the public. These media worthy pawns are moved around to manipulate, mislead and micro manage remotely all domains by multiple forces.

Most unfortunate impact of the manifestation of these attitudes is that  many gullible youths apply most of these indiscriminately across the whole spectrum of human activities like in  political domain, religious activities, social issues, cultural institutions, sports arena, economic development  projects, commercial sector etc. Outside the narrow whirlpools of mass media that unfortunately, forms major part of the reading population, there is a vast store house of literary works covering a wide range of topics. There are literary works that prompt our philosophical inquiry; some that appeal to our emotions; some that soak us in sentimental stuff; some that hold us with suspense; some that unfold wisdom; some that trigger our adrenal; some that make us to contemplate; some provide certain templates to certain issues; some just take us into an island of imagination; some that sink us into the world of intense thinking; some that appeal to our aesthetic senses and cultural sensitivities and so on. But there are certain books that somehow provide combination of all these because such works contain both a semi biographical narration and the biographer’s personal reactions, observations and an unquenchable thirst to find reasons and an urge to find logical meaning for all that happens in life and not an outpouring of hysterical frustrations or decadent desperation especially from someone who cannot afford to perch on the ivory tower of dispassionate indifference and engage in emotion free debates.

Why we need to continue to read because we as well as our rational and scientific intellectual perceptions are still in the process of evolution and therefore we do not know yet either the total scope of their capacity or the extent of their shortcomings to deal with many issues of life in general. This is the very beauty or element of the mystery or part of the unknown, not unknowable, aspects of life that sustain our everlasting processes of search, interest and scientific and philosophical inquiry and expand our understanding of many aspects of life and enhance the evolutionary emancipation of mental faculties.

The beauty of life consists in the unknowns and the unending searches and researches –the unending process of evolutionary trends in everything.

Growing up and growing out of certain things are natural process of evolutionary metamorphosis both biologically and psychologically.

Life is functionally a dynamic energy; visually a multi faceted splendor; in reality a marvelous mystery which unfolds itself through each and every one of us at every moment and so on. Therefore life cannot be either generalized in any manner or simplified into any predefined categories.

Life continues to evolve in its dynamic energy every moment and constantly throws up challenges in varying degrees and intensities, in different dimensions and at unexpected intervals.

So, constant reading of content with good substance to learn about new horizons is imperative and interesting.

Whereas, merely reading through what dishes out may not enlighten us.

MEDIA as an acronym now may be defined as:-

Mask as master of

Everything;

Desultory deception of

Involvement to inform

All about everything.

Marya Mannea has prescribed to media a great message long back,  ”It is not enough to show people how to live better; there is a mandate for any group with enormous powers of communication to show people how to be better ".

Of course, even this can be done only where the people want to become and be better.

For those who want to click on the links

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2017/04/world-book-day-2017.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2017/07/importance-of-books.html

https://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2016/03/word-meaning.html

Art of Writing

I made a Wordle of contents within my previous write ups in blog relating to writing. 

It is an advanced filtering system; still it threw up the following links and they pertain to the following:- 
Articulation, 

Art of writing, 

Word, language and culture, 

The journey of words, 

The temptation of a blank page, 

How people skillfully cover up lack of knowledge in any subject  through a cocktail of terminologies, 

Then the demanding requirement of every language and the commands of puritans and publishers, some justified and others not so justifiable like 

Length of a sentence, 

Punctuation rules, 

Use of prepositions, 

Idioms, 

Dilemma of editors, 

Intentionally manipulative  usage of terms to appropriate certain credits and assign certain labels and so on.

Here are some links all of which may take a long time with many sub links within

My new blog http://wordenjoy.blogspot.in/

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/09/words-and-words-all-way.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/02/il-y-des-milliers-des-moyens-dameliorer_5.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/05/articulation.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2015/11/art-of-writing.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/02/art-of-content-writing.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2015/10/art-of-biography-writing.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2015/09/stories-design-and-development.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/05/wordslanguage-culture.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/02/blank-page-language-writing-and.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/09/success-and-happiness.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/01/cocktail-of-meta-terminologies.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2015/11/length-of-sentence-in-language.html 

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2017/12/punctuation.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2017/02/politics-as-predominant-and-all.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/10/elaborate-explanation-of-brevity.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/05/editors-dilemma.html

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2015/07/terminological-aberrations-and.html

http://www.scribd.com/doc/103216417/Reverse-Dictionary-of-Adjectives