Cloud Busting : Feeling Of Dominance And Happiness

                                    Cloud Busting by Kate Bush

Yesterday it was a beautiful sunny day. The garden was looking nice with green lawn and vibrant colours in the boarder. I put the lounger under the apple tree and settled there with a book. In Manchester, it is not often that you get a clear blue sky. I put the book down and just looked up at this vast blue canopy. A few small white clouds were wandering around. 

I was suddenly transported back in time. I remembered lying on the roof of our house in Bachari, a small village in India with my cousin brother who was about the same age as me. We selected a small white cloud in the sky and stared at it with all the concentration we could muster at that age. Hey presto! The cloud started to disintegrate and completely disappeared. We felt very powerful and very happy. After we discovered this, anytime we saw a cloud in the sky we would try to banish it. It only worked on the smaller ones but still we felt like superman.

I tried it again on this Manchester cloud. It still worked. I know the clouds form and disappear on their own accord, without any help or hindrance from me but still it made me smile. 

Human desire to dominate and feel powerful is very strong. When it is fulfilled, one feels happy.  Desire to dominate is reminiscent of the greatest evolutionary process of dominance of one species over another. Triggering of happiness switch in the brain when one feels powerful is probably a necessary evolutionary tool.

This on occasions where desire to dominate is too strong and the resultant feeling of happiness is too great, can become a vicious circle.  This is what produces bullies, tyrants and despots.

On the other hand it can be a virtuous circle when feeling of happiness comes from dominating by legitimate means in one’s chosen field of science, arts or sports. This is what makes the Nobel laureate, great artists and sporting legends.

In majority of people including me, it just produces a circle, neither vicious nor virtuous. That explains why I am not a warlord or a Nobel laureate. 

The power to vanish the cloud made me just happy enough to try staring on the next piece of cloud rather than try my power on my better half who was calling me from the kitchen.

                                

SPORTS AND BIG MONEY: AN UNHOLY BUT NECESSARY ALLIANCE?

Yesterday evening, we watched the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic from the comfort of the sofa in our sitting room. It was spectacular, much more than what I was expecting. It depicted the evolution of the country from an idyllic agrarian society to rich but ugly industrial giant and finally to a modern computer savvy, compassionate social democracy. Danny Boyle and his team did this with hilarious comedy of Mr. Bean, punk of the bucket drums and playfulness of Her Majesty the Queen.  Laughter, glamour and controlled chaos.  

 Of course, it was not a lesion in history, or a commentary on the politico-economic status of Britain. It celebrated the achievements of the country without triumphalism and carefully kept off the painful and risqué subjects. It tacitly celebrated the golden jubilee of James Bond Films and the first hit song of the Beetles by giving due spaces to Daniel Craig and Sir Paul.

The lighting of the Olympic cauldron was very impressive with unexpected composition and filled to the brim with symbolisms: one petal for each participating country and passing of the standard to the younger generation. 

Did you notice that the big multinational sponsors were conspicuous by their absence? Probably it was arranged to appear so at the last minute in the face of quite strong adverse public reaction to McDonald's and Coca-Cola sponsoring the Olympics. 

Olympic Games celebrate the excellence of the physical capability of the human species and promote freedom and justice through the code of fair play.  Certainly many multinationals do not actively practice either of these ideals in their single-minded pursuit to increase their wealth. 

No one can justify promoting these companies through Olympic Games but and this is a big but, where else can you get the money to make the Olympics so full of glamour and glitter? We have made the sports so expensive that we cannot pay for them without using our begging bowls to get money to subsidise the tickets. 

I saw a documentary on BBC a few months ago about some East Europeans using their children to beg on the streets of London. They used that money to build big houses and buy new cars back home. I, similar to most of the Britons was very angry and upset. We wanted our government to stop this practice and prosecute these people.

Are we any different while using the unscrupulous money to subsidise our luxuries?   We have probably become so used to our luxuries that we are doomed forever to this unholy alliance of sports and big money.

Moral & Legal Bankruptcy in the Business of Healing

Mr Mann develops pain in his abdomen in the night. He waits till morning. The pain is almost gone but he and his wife remain worried. Now consider the following three scenarios

  Scenario one:  He goes to a surgeon Dr. A.

Even though there is no evidence, the surgeon tells him that he has got appendicitis and if he does not get operated right now, he would die. The surgeon does an urgent operation under general anaesthesia for a very fat fee. He removes the appendix which is of course completely normal. Mr Mann stays in nursing home for a week and after the stiches are out he is allowed to go home after paying a large bill to the nursing home.

    Scenario two: He goes to another surgeon Dr B.

DR.B again does not find any evidence of any serious disease but tells the patient more or less the same things and arranges for an urgent surgery. When the patient is asleep under anaesthesia the surgeon just makes a shallow cut in the skin and then stitches  the skin back. He charges about the same amount of fee. Patient goes home same day.

    Scenario three: The wife is a devotee of a well-known Baba swami. She insisted on consulting him first.

The Baba is very busy but he agrees to see them in the evening. By the time he sees them the patient is fine but Baba plays on the couple’s worry and arranges to remove his appendix by spiritual surgery.  In a room with strong smell of burning incense and in total darkness with chanting of some mantras Baba Swami pretends to remove the burst appendix. In the morning a disciple of Baba advises the couple that before going home they should pay their respect to Baba Swami by donating a kilo of gold in his benefit fund.  

Legally Dr. A can defend himself well. He made an error of judgement but he did what he said will do and got his fee.

Dr. B and Baba Swami both played on the couple’s fear and gullibility. They did not remove his appendix. They did not do what they said would do. Legally they do not have a leg to stand. However some societies do believe in spiritual surgery and Baba Swami will never be called to the court.

As for value for money the patient got worst deal from surgeon A. He did a quite invasive surgery on the patient. Patient had more pain, loss of more working days from his treatment than the other two treatments. He could have got serious complications from his unnecessary surgery and in future he might get further problems.

Dr B. certainly did not do much harm, made only a scar in tummy. But in future this may prove very dangerous for Mr. Mann if he really develops appendicitis. The doctors will not consider appendicitis if he has a history of appendix operation in past with a scar in the right place.

It seems Baba Swami has done least harm to Mr. Mann. Or has he? In future if Mr. Mann or any of his family members really develops a serious medical problem, he may prefer to go to Baba rather than seek medical help. But again with doctors like A & B, Baba Swami may be a better option!

Morally all three are despicable. But if Baba Swami really and insanely believes that he could remove the appendix by spiritual surgery then he is only guilty of greed. Moreover if he denies any knowledge or has not given implicit consent to his disciple’s demand, he can be exonerated of even greed. That is the plea most of the Baba-swamis of this world make and get away both legally and morally. 

After considering these scenarios can you decide who among these three lowlifes is the lowest? 

Live In Present: Ramblings on its cogency

 “Live in present” is the message we are bombarded with all the time.  It sounds rational. Past is already gone, you cannot change it. Who has seen the future? Anything could happen, not under your control at all.

But I wonder, what is present? It is normally conceived almost as a real and tangible period between the past and the future. But how long it is: an hour, a day, a year?  A nanosecond before is past and a nanosecond in front is future.   As Einstein put it “People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion".

I think no one can live in present or past. We are fabricated to live in future. Whether it is a blessing or a curse depends on our viewpoint. We are always thinking/planning what to do next. It may be the next second or the next year but all our waking time we are going to do something. I am writing this piece now but is it in present? Before I type the word on the keyboard the brain/mind has to think ahead as to what I would be doing next. Take another example cooking a dinner. One is always planning what to do next, cut the vegetables, put the cooker on , pour the oil in the pan and so on. Not just these mundane chores but even building a nation or executing a war is done on what next basis. What we call present is actually immediate future. People then quantify the length of future time that is assigned as present according to their own preconceptions. And now it becomes even more interesting because preconception is nothing but past. So past determines the bit of future which we call present.

Does it mean then that future and present both are predetermined? No, it does not have to be because luckily, past itself is not certain in our universe even though it has already passed. This seems completely bonkers but such is the world of quantum physics.

At the moment the best rational explanation of the intricacies of our universe is by the model which incorporates quantum theory. Although I have serious problem in understanding it, I have to take the words of Professor Stephen W. Hawking: “Quantum physics --------------- leads us to accept a new form of determinism: Given the state of a system at some time, the laws of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts rather than determining the future and past with certainty” (Grand Design, 2010).

Present Time by Antony Gormley
1986 - 1989

As the past is not fixed we are free to try to make our future and hence our present as best as we can. And this is I think what represents “live in present”.

What a tortuous way to appreciate the obvious!