Moderation in food

Theories and real scientific research will throw up newer and newer facts and information generally and mostly for the benefit of human beings as a whole. 

However, in most regions most of the traditional and regionally available food either raw or processed are time tested.

Finally taste and temptation dominate till alarm bells ring ​and ​force one to change to nutritious and healthy stuff.

Most  foods unsuitable or toxic for our body and climate send signals through our body itself through cough, constipation, indigestion, nausea, carminative uneasiness , allergies, rashes etc if we choose to observe.

But for some people even the most toxic food does not harm and for others even the least harmful food causes problems.

Ironically, we all realise very late in life that food is one area where moderation is the vital aspect.

When reality is restricted by identity, then, sobriety is causality and moderation is a mute spectator.

When reality is restricted by identity and rationality is relegated, then, sobriety is causality and moderation is a mute spectator.

Impact matters-a definite yes, in all spheres of activity.

But allowing oneself to get overly impacted or influenced by any particular thought, idea, ideology, philosophy, concept, culture, stream or subject of pursuit , pursuing what one likes innately, what appeals one’s emotions, intellect, what gives pleasure to one’s senses, trying to have a go at what titillates one’s sensitivities, scrupulously subjecting oneself to social expectations of various hues and colors, following certain religious edicts and so on are the many aspects of life of human beings.

What one chooses to carry along with or decides to dump is again interconnected with many of the influences of the above.

Sometimes, when one is grown up mentally or intellectually, the tendency is to evaluate with conscious awareness.

Then, these influences set in as a broad outlines of one’s prejudices, identities, perspectives, attitudes, frames of reference with which one  likely to evaluate and to perceive many things around to choose and decide.

Sometimes, when one is not that grown up mentally or intellectually, then there seeps in subconsciously similar outlines set in.

“All of us have our own inner fears, beliefs, opinions. These inner assumptions rule and govern our lives. A suggestion has no power in and of itself. Its power arises from the fact that you accept it mentally.” - Joseph Murphy, the Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Therefore, the so-called broader outlines, whether subconsciously seeping in or embedded or consciously chosen, are not actually broad, however well ensconced they may be in appealing terminologies or appalling justifications.

The fact is none of them i.e. the outlines are all inclusive or completely pervasive or a please all factor or panacea or Omni-appealing or Omni-acceptable factor for human species as a whole or for every individual or for any group.

So, based on what we have chosen to like or get addicted to or made to follow we end up forming our notions of reality, ultimate truth and many other lofty terminologies.

Some of us make a living in the process; some also use them as crutches to lead a life; a few also have the privilege of or choose to live their life as well either with these so-called broad outlines and lucky enough also by moving between, beyond and besides these outlines.

In this process life swings as a pendulum between many inevitable and inherent polarities.

However, life predominantly deals through many aspects of life and relates with almost all aspects of living with two predominant extremes- which are contradictions and which manifest in vast varieties, different degrees, and innumerable intensities as multiple psychological actions or reactions- namely, Love and Fear.

That’s why whatever be the area of life be it in religion, politics, technology, social sciences, for everything, we come across strong supporters in the form of inspiring initiators, mighty motivators, powerful preachers and powerful protestors in the form of diligent dissenters and aggressive opponents.

Obviously moderation takes a back seat.

However, every human being has also a natural instinct to aspire for a secure, safe, peaceful, calm, happy environment to live.

So, who, what and how is this going to emerge out of the very bases which contribute to make life and living less happy and less peaceful in the first place?

Any operation or process that emanates from the bases cited in the forgoing paragraphs is not going to bring in any moderation.

However, for at least a moderate level of calm or peaceful social life and cohabitation certain amount of moderation or moderating elements must evolve away from the bases- which seem at best a utopia or an outright illusion.

Having said all these, there is also the thing called the natural species’ instinct for survival, more so a better, calm, comfortable and more secure level of survival persists.

Human beings, as a species have evolved certain time tested qualities for a better state of living.

In some people these qualities are natural attributes; in some others they are nurtured as a part of their socio-cultural milieu; and in certain cases they have to be enforced by various rules and regulations.

These qualities are again too many to list out.

However, for the sake of brevity, we may broadly term them as tolerance, forgiveness, non-violence etc.

These qualities by themselves my not contribute to happiness, peace and calm but they will ensure to provide at least a conducive environment to enable happiness, peace and joy to happen.

Balance is all about creating such an atmosphere. 

In short, it would be better that as human beings we may opt for compassion sandwiched between the inevitable passion and dispassion as a moderator of life, [1] but with a rider that at the same time, anyone must have, preferably everyone is made to have complete freedom to explore, experiment and experience everything without any overbearing restrictions, identity barriers, cultural constraints or impositions from any other source.

So, by all means everyone is encouraged to listen to, to read and to learn from every source, every view without any restraint.

“Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true.” - Ram Dass.

"Existence consists in the interplay of a plurality of elements whose true nature is indescribable and whose source is unknown. Combinations of these elements instantaneously flash into existence and instantaneously disappear, to be succeeded by new combinations of elements appearing in a strict causality." - Earle Ernst, The Kabuki Theatre

"To make progress in understanding all this, we probably need to begin with simplified (oversimplified?) models and ignore the critics' tirade that the real world is more complex. The real world is always more complex, which has the advantage that we shan't run out of work."- John Ball, 1984, Memes as Replicators, Ethology and Sociobiology, Vol. 5

After all life is a constant process of learning and adjustment wherein we can neither deny nor defy the importance of anything or anyone.

We need to adopt an attitude to gather knowledge from as many sources as possible-like a butterfly that hops from flower to flower, from all the extreme points of a spectrum ranging from what are considered as most important, vital, exalted to what are deemed as the least worthy and wasteful stuff.

In every field, the story of human evolution is nothing but the history of impacts, either positive or negative, made by people who refused to take the beaten track and no wonder that George Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. All progress depends upon the unreasonable man”.

Individual human life, after all, is a very short journey in the ocean of totality of LIFE but endowed with at least certain advantages over other species inhabiting this planet and chief among them is to a very great extent the ability to choose and to decide to create conducive conditions to lead a calm and compatible life with other human beings, other species and the whole environment.

We can observe and learn that evolution takes care of almost everything in its stride but as human beings we also have the option to learn to carefully evolve in our stride.

We must learn to make existence the essence and concepts perhaps the shell and not vice versa and allow both to grow and glow freely together as a part of evolutionary splendor.

Here in I am reminded of what Sherlock Holmes declares, “From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So, all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a link of it.”

Life’s journey is made up of evolving through multitude of passing phases of romance as links and not remorse of the past or reveries of remote future.

The series of romances knitted together: - romances of the senses, of sensible living, of sensitivity to everything and everyone around us, of joy of learning, of helping and of giving hope for all and everything to become better, enjoy whatever one prefers to enjoy without harming or injuring others and also explore possibilities of synthesis and synergy in all relationship that one has with oneself, with others, with nature, with machines, with different cultures and traditions etc.

It is only human gullibility that both the ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ brigade in any issue may be or prone to become wrong as they tend to take extreme positions.

Very often we tend to proceed from the presumptions that tastes, trends, traditions all over the world may be either similar or homogenous and worse still, sometimes presumed to be same or uniform and based on such foolish presumptions attempts are made to homogenize or over simplify or over generalize.

 William James says, “In the end nothing less than the whole of everything can be the truth of anything at all”.

But even what is whole is difficult to define.

Identities of all hues while they enable creating social groups at the same time enfeeble options for universal acceptance.

I have very often held that identity, though inevitable, excessive and exclusive veneration is at the heart of many problems be it in the realm of religion, region, language, tradition, culture, nationhood and so on.

"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live." - Mortimer Adler

"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better." - Albert Camus

Growth and freedom involve the broad mindedness to accept different views, perhaps all views.

'It is better to know something about everything then everything about something' - Blase Pascal

"When we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men"-Sartre

Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself- Sartre

Life is an unmapped atlas consisting of unexplored territories and a jig saw puzzle without even all pieces available in the box.

That’s why it is better to go with the tide of the inevitable evolutionary churning process of life in all spheres of life and preferably immerse any topic or subject matter, primarily and basically with all their  intrinsic elements/components/aspects/attributes intact, into a cauldron which has a mixture of all these- knowledge based analysis; limited perception- based on frames of reference and scales of observation; skepticism; criticism; intellectual scrutiny; compassionate emotionalism; humane socialism; rational thinking- as rational approaches refine what is otherwise viewed as contrasts that divide into variations that seek synergy; contextual relevance based prioritizing [ which includes too many components] , traditions, practical viability, psychological comforts, aesthetic sensitivity, scientific scrutiny and so on, and churn the cauldron without clinging on to any particular restrictive social, cultural or political or religious identity or ideological constraint.

This process inevitably may bring out lot of outputs.

We can exercise our freedom and sometimes select and choose some of the outputs.

Sometimes the outputs will draw us.

Sometimes away from all or any of our intended searches and seeking, outside the circle of these known paradigms, almost tangentially serendipity will drag us to an oasis of serene clarity.

Ken Wilber in his work ‘ No Boundary: Eastern and Western  Approaches to Personal Growth’ like these two small pieces, “ Even to say ‘reality is no-boundary awareness’ is still to create a distinction between boundaries and no-boundary! So we have to keep in mind the great difficulty involved with dualistic language. That "reality is no-boundary" is true enough, provided we remember that no-boundary awareness is a direct, immediate, and nonverbal awareness, and not a mere philosophical theory. It is for these reasons that the mystic-sages stress that reality lies beyond names and forms, words and thoughts, divisions and boundaries. Beyond all boundaries lies the real world of Suchness, the Void, the Dharmakaya, Tao, Brahman, the Godhead. And in the world of suchness, there is neither good nor bad, saint nor sinner, birth nor death, for in the world of suchness there are no boundaries.”  And  "The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare to state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the Universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of Reality, but of the way we map and edit Reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two."

On a lighter vein is Reality the jigsaw puzzle involving these things: Nothing, Everything, Anything, Something.

Even as  Jarod Kintz  says, “ Nothing, Everything, Anything, Something: If you have nothing, then you have everything, because you have the freedom to do anything, without the fear of losing something.” 

We must not hesitate to analyze anything and everything in depth from as many angles as possible but also ultimately find out the points of or areas or domains of synthesis/synergy leading to harmony and unity with all variety and/or differences in tact. This is will be the automatic progression of life experience and life itself.

What is DIVISION after all, if we unwrap it in acronym as follows;-

Differences are

Inevitable;

Variety is

Inherent and

Synergy is

Indispensable to

Operationalize

Nicely certain commonalities among all and everything in life…

We started with impact and here is an impactful speech

http://blog.fawny.org/2015/05/31/johnwatersrisd/

1] In ThinkEdu16 conference in concluding session Sri Sri Ravishankar answered spontaneously very well to VC of a university in very simple terms how to avoid irrational depressions due to high expectations and corresponding disappointment.

He used just three very effective words. He said you definitely need 'Passion' to perform effectively but 'Dispassion' to carry on with shortcomings and failures. He said when you succeed in Passion you enjoy, when you have this 'Dispassion' then you do not 'hate yourself' between these two if you have 'Compassion' then you do not hate or blame others. So he said you need Passion, Dispassion and Compassion -all the three.

I think this simple mantra can contribute enough moderation and sense of balance which is the ultimate test of a matured person.

No one starts and must not start or cannot start all aspects of life in moderation.

Aggression, passion, influence, impact, intensity are the things that spice up the adventure of life but then everyone must grow out of these experiences into a matured balanced person acting with moderation.

From http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/03/lifes-socio-political-churning-process.html

Self conscious generation of balance, self restraint and synergy are the needs of the hour.

Self conscious generation of balance, self restraint and synergy are the needs of the hour.

A retired judge also has sent this to me [1] but I did not have time nor bother to read it.

So, Mahesh thanks a lot for reminding me so that I did not miss this excellent piece.

It is indeed a nice piece of wonderfully articulated instruction manual for many in most of the situations.

It is very apt and timely.

The biggest problem in this country is most of us have lot of great principles but we tend to prioritize the principle of expediency; prioritize justification over reason; prioritize ritualistic observations over contextual relevance; prioritize out-dated traditions over humanism; prioritize sanctity over social welfare and thereby allow self proclaimed liberals therefore to inject or extrapolate irrelevant social justice norms to demolish the inherent meaning, attributes, logic, beauty of many things.

All these follow a contorted logic of breaking the behavior of bondage with unbridled anarchy.

Somewhere a balance must be brought in and moderation must be made mandatory.

Unless we attend to this, the scourge of Identity and Extremism will haunt us for generations [2].

We live in a society which is hunting with telescopes for controversies, stethoscopes to auscultate [to listen] to sensitive statements and microscopes to mine out scandals and project all issues with great hype with profound superficiality of the main subject of discussion.

Free expression has become the preserve of a few and the rest will have to use diplomatically filtered nuanced terminologies cautiously and carefully slip them like a chef slipping a baby corn or chilli bhajji into a pan of boiling oil.

Inadvertent mistakes due to ignorance or gullibility or vulnerability or due to impressionable age without enough experience and then sometimes providence inflicted one may also occur, besides these intentional mistakes, errors, frauds are also committed by many or perhaps all in varying degrees with varying intensities either as inevitable aspect of compromises required to please societal pressures or what in modern day we call it as contextual convenience like no time to take care of the old, no time to spend with the child or entertain relations etc.

Worst part is committing frauds with impunity and sometimes as a matter of entitlement, privilege and prestige is all the more rampant at present.

Unless the correction comes from within the individual or system, the counter to these could become counterproductive or chaotic as in the case of BCCI.

It is only a question of how much is too much or how far is too far or how bad is too dangerous.

Human beings are tuned to take pleasure in gambling, guessing, predicting, exploring multiple options/possibilities and experiment all and then through experience get educated or enlightened.

So, everywhere human beings like to use as a strategy of circumventing the norms, manipulating, looking for short cuts and loop holes, and seeking multiple interpretations out of context of even great scriptures and so on.

But then, wherever possible for a just and preferably less problematic and more peaceful cohabitation of human beings as a species we also require framing, forming and following certain set of rules.

Besides these human beings also inherently have the tendency to command, control and dominate for which often these very rules cross the limit and try to treat the whole human species as a homogenous or uniform group to be governed and controlled.

Homogenization leading to hegemony as in the case of  Roman empire, Nazism, Spanish inquisition and so on.

Human ingenuity to create avenues is not centered on anything but tangential in its path.

It is myriads of melodies, multiple mutations which unfortunately need to be harmonized with synergy and syncretism to survive smoothly as a species.     

There is no species known as 100% perfect, satisfied, content, capable, happy, peaceful human being;

It is because some parts or pieces try to dominate our thoughts, ideas, activities and our whole being;

If we use only excess of heart and be too emotional and cry when someone is suffering from accident with broken leg and dripping blood on the road no use. We must use our brain and take him to a hospital;

If we use only excess of brain and dry intellect and philosophize without emotion like when our parent dies if we stand and say ‘anyway everyone born must die one day’ we lack the heart and we do not acknowledge our emotional and sentimental attachment to them;

If we use only excess of material comforts and think only about it then we become a well equipped robots without heart, brain or life;

If we use only excess of pursuit of spiritual enlightenment and neglect our physical well being then we not only misuse the human body and also become a burden to others;

These are predispositions or conditions which exist in varying degrees in every individual.

So, balance is required and there cannot be any single template for balance for all for all times because at different contexts or situations different faculties must predominate to create optimum utility.

Single individual also cannot be or may not be capable of manifesting this balance spontaneously in every situation or context because his or her predominant feature or characteristic or disposition will block the person from doing it effectively.

This is where team work is important with clear cut roles and responsibilities to be carried with professionalism and synergy towards desired goal.

This applies in all domains.

[1] http://www.indialegallive.com/news-of-the-day/legal/a-few-disquieting-thoughts-by-justice-amitava-roy-of-supreme-court-20076

[2] http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2016/11/the-scourge-of-identity-and-extremism.html

Life's socio- political churning process seems to get struck in identities of various hues and colors

      First facts in JNU case

1. https://www.facebook.com/hitesh.tiwary/videos/959510627473785/

2. Unfortunately, in the whole world Life's socio- political churning process instead of becoming and being more rational, scientific and humane, seems to get struck in identities of various hues and colors indicating a mindset worse than that of the sixteenth century.

3. Identity crisis is becoming one of the greatest curses of this century

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2015/08/identity-entire-gamut-of- identitys.html

4. In ThinkEdu16 conference in concluding session Sri Sri Ravishankar answered spontaneously very well to VC of a university in very simple terms how to avoid irrational depressions due to high expectations and corresponding disappointment.

5. He used just three very effective words. He said you definitely need 'Passion' to perform effectively but 'Dispassion' to carry on with shortcomings and failures. He said when you succeed in Passion you enjoy, when you have this 'Dispassion' then you do not 'hate yourself' between these two if you have 'Compassion' then you do not hate or blame others. So he said you need Passion, Dispassion and Compassion -all the three.

6. I think this simple mantra can contribute enough moderation and sense of balance which is the ultimate test of a matured person.

7. No one starts and must not start or cannot start all aspects of life in moderation.

8. Aggression, passion, influence, impact, intensity are the things that spice up the adventure of life but then everyone must grow out of these experiences into a matured balanced person acting with moderation.

9. http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2015/09/composed-mind-is-all-about-balance.html

10. But it is also high time that all individuals and institutions which feel responsible for youth, future generations, and posterity of humanity must emphasis and consciously promote  virtues of moderation, tolerance, forgiveness, compassion, accepting facts, happiness, contextual relevance of whatever is done  etc as most important tenets of emancipated human beings practicing a universal religion.

Positives of JNU protests IB can prevent terrorist attacks/funding by strictly monitoring JNU, AAP, LEFT, ISI, MSM nexus