Strength , not power; synergy not sensationalism; Nothing is a taboo, know the nuances and calibrate everything to contextual relevance.

Strength , not power; synergy not sensationalism; Nothing is a taboo, know the nuances and calibrate everything to contextual relevance.

From the time the social media empowered everyone, for good, often, most of us share well meaning, excellent sayings, quotations, slogans with good intentions in the morning, which in a way is an additional useful entertainment for old people.  

 

However, whatever we read or see , we must try to go in depth to find out the actual meaning behind and beyond words . Then, we may stumble upon either accidentally or intentionally notice the most important meaning especially, the nuances, that escape our attention.

 

These are accompanied by eye catching nice pictures and they have become, for many of us, a nice verbal and visual treat in the mornings either before or after we opt to read the negative narratives nudged as news in our daily nuisance papers ( predominantly political or calamity news - called as headlines).

 

However, these very slogans and saying, inadvertently, contribute to the predominant malady of modern times i.e., ' failure to reasonably distinguish the 'NUANCES' of words and , more importantly, the immense power of meanings they carry.

 

The greatest short comings in many aspects of our lives are failing to see the ' NUANCES'  and instead, we are getting carried away by the narratives nicely packaged as catchy slogans ( often, they are slow guns) that destroy real understanding of nuances.

 

Economist Don Boudreaux says, " Law's expense is so vast, its nuances so many and rich, and its edges so frequently changing that the popular myth that law is that set of rules designed and enforced by the state becomes increasingly absurd ”.

 

This we will be able to understand, if we read certain great philosophical texts where the philosophers ( those who seek to know and to understand and not to merely convince others- so, being philosophers, they paid greater attention to the meanings than merely sprinklings words around , so automatically, their telesis of terminologies led to convey the intended purpose).

 

Instead of 'power' ( the word power has too many connotations -meanings- and, often, misused and abused because it brings with it positions of unbridled authority ).

 

It would be better to replace it with ' strength' ( strength of self-confidence, self-esteem, self-belief, relevant merit, inner conviction, sense of Dharma- what one is doing is correct in context).

 

Then, courage will evolve automatically, which will guide you not to do things just to please or to convince others, sometimes, not even to obey irrelevant and unimportant rules and regulations ( often they are terms of  euphemisms used to indirectly convey blind following of traditions, beliefs etc and these are promoted further under the garb of discipline to maintain status quo). 

 

But the irrefutable reality is that the world and all life in it and their functions are subject to constant churns and changes.

 

The human minds prefer ( often selectively) status quo in certain things because that helps them to use ready to use templates to monitor and to exercise control. These are against nature. 

 

Nature is like a Virendra Sehwag (whack) or Suryakumar Yadav or B.S. Chandrasekhar ( it will often generate unpredictable impacts- unmindful of the outcomes). 

 

There are certain universal mantras from which no one can veer away humanity’s preference they are, ‘changes and the constantly changing context created by those changes along with their many concomitant characters like comforts, convenience, benefits, utility, profit, happiness, pleasure etc’.

 

All wisdom and value systems must be woven around these universal mantras or at least relevant to these. Otherwise, something else will replace all values, wisdom, principles, practices etc.

 

The most important wisdom is to make the necessary adjustments to emerging changes and contexts.

 

Time and change have become inevitable part of our life because through them, either as measuring tools or as describing our observations, we grasp or try to express and explain the inevitable metamorphosis of life.

 

The only reality is life unfolding itself constantly through various manifestations of metamorphosis.

 

All the rest are ambiences of life [as Jaggi Vasudevji says because there are dimensions of life beyond the logically definable parameters] or accretions that we choose to understand life.

 

First great biologist Darwin, I would prefer to call him the father of evolutionary biological science-who incidentally advocated the theory of natural selection, because he laid the first blueprint for such a specialized study [some of them may be wrong or all of them could be disputed and radically changed], and he had the honesty and humility to declare, “Variation proposes and selection disposes.”

 

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/oct/09/evolutionary-psychology-an-exchange/

 

Evolution goes about its jobs unmindful of whatever we do or do not do, that decides and determines everything including our birth and death as biochemical organisms which are bound to decay or to die or to reorganize or to reborn or to recreate into something else eventually.

 

While innards and inherent qualities are inevitable and beyond our choice, at least, our utilization of strengths /reactions to shortcomings can be sane and more sensible, that is what must be the attempt of any subject be it philosophy, spiritual science, or pure science. 

 

These require strength of conviction not power.

 

Again, talking about evolution, a very interesting and vast subject by its very meaning indicates the innards of all species with inevitable strengths as well as short comings, rather the multiple embedded contradictions. 

 

The best we can do with all our brains and technological advancements available at our disposal is to minimize/compensate for our weaknesses like starting from using basic tools to using spectacles to implanting stunts and pacemakers for heart problems to name a few.

 

As Guy Murchie declares, “Evolution itself is an open ended and indeterminate process”… “Given the remarkable progress in our understanding of biochemistry, molecular biology, and evolution as a whole … we have failed to develop concepts, ideas, even a language that could capture the dance of this life”. 

 

Here is a list of very worthy articles available fortunately free on the 

net

 

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/ [ incidentally I have all his works along with all the works of other evolutionary biologist like Richard Dawkins and the great Guy Murchie’s ‘ the Seven Mysteries of Life ‘.

 

I wish for a more comprehensive understanding one must also read the following works:-

 

Kathleen Taylor’s ‘The Brain Supremacy’,

Walter Gratzer’s ‘Giant molecules’,

Frank Close’s ‘The Infinity Puzzle’ and most importantly

Tirumoolar’s Tirumanthiram,

Vilayanur S. RAMACHANDRAN and for a more sane philosophical and rational non-religious outlook also read

Neale Donald Walsch,

JK,

Osho,

Bertrand Russell etc.

 

That's why  Keats wrote, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter: therefore, .......".                                                                            

 

" Society is always engaged in a vast conspiracy to preserve itself - at the expense of the new demands of each new generation.”  ~John Haynes Holmes

 

Sascha Vongher mentions in ‘Science as Rationalization And Ultimate Religion by 

 “Every adaptive system has what can be called a perception apparatus and information processing structures and so forth. Science is part of the perception/thinking of social systems. All perception has its “blind spot”. Perception is ignorant of everything except for a tiny slice that it evolved to select and focus attention on. Thinking is there to interpret in a certain evolved way. Humans, being parts as well as environment of social systems, cannot grasp the perceived world of social systems, let alone map out their blind spots. Scientists are especially suspect when it comes to judging the blind spots of science.” 

 

Self-imprisonment works in these ways without even our realizing it.

“Everything changes as you move through three stages of awareness:

first, that beliefs are the result of conditions.

second, that beliefs are the cause of conditions.

and third, that beliefs are themselves conditions.”― Eric Micha'el Leventhal.

 

George Bernard Shaw  wrote, " The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

 

We must remember that we owe to so many ( who were not luddites) who have made our  evolution to enhance from Kuru disease generating cannibals  [this disease happens because of cannibalism] to cyber–Guru Venerators.

 

Worth listening talk  Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong | Video on TED.com  www.ted.com

 

In fact, I remember reading a book some 40 years back by A.E.M. JOAD titled "That There is no such thing as Morality" and along with that BERTRAND RUSSEL'S "IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS" and this is precisely the reason why the works of

John Brockman books become interesting reading namely, his books ( imbued with facts and fantastic interpretations) like 'THIS IDEA MUST DIE',

'WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA', 

'This Idea Is Brilliant' ( Lost, Overlooked, and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should Know),

Pierre Lecomte du Noüy's ' HUMAN DESTINY', 

James Trefil's, ' 101 Things You Don't Know about Science and No One Else Does Either’ . It must be 1001 now.

 

Ideally the best book of slogans and sayings must be titled "Nothing is a Taboo", with chapters on  "know the nuances",  "calibrate everything to contextual relevance" etc. 

 

I feel there is lot of wisdom in the following piece which 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.”