Tribes & The diminishing hope for peace and unity

The word tribe or tribal usually brings to our minds images of half naked people covered in seemingly funny body mutilations and drawings living in small groups in the jungle.



But its true meaning goes way beyond the common place understanding of the word.

According to dictionary a tribe is “a division, class, or distinct portion of people, from whatever cause that distinction may have originated”.

It usually helps to understand what words were meant to convey when they were first constructed, rather than what they have come to mean today after decades, if not centuries of misuse.
So coming back to the real meaning of the word tribe we see that any sub group that exists in humanity today constitutes a tribe.
Hence every culture, nation, religion, region, language, color, caste based division that exists in the world today constitutes a tribe of its own.
And each of these groups has its own ideas about everything. They have their unique social norms and practices, religious rituals and beliefs, sense of clothing, taboos, and notions of attractiveness and so on.
And since each of these groups makes a tribe, all people who identify themselves with any of these groups and follow the belief system of their respective group are tribal by the very definition of the word.

For example every patriotic Indian, American, German, or every fervent Muslim, Christian, Hindu is a tribal person.


Till people continue to be a part of these existing tribes, and follow the belief systems that were fed into them by their society they will be tribal.

For instance notions of beauty in our modern world are in a way as tribal as in the Mursi tribe of Africa.
Just like their sense of self-mutilation as an idea of attraction might be based on some irrational concepts or traditions that have been going on for a long time so are our modern ideas of self-mutilations.



Just like their notions of beauty might not appeal to us, ours might seem equally unattractive to them, simply because we hold on to our tribal notions, and they to theirs.



The point being that not only does the concept of self mutilation as a form of self expression seem pointless, and illogical. But also that it has turned into another tribal concept or fad that people blindly follow.

Every body in the modern world wants to get a tattoo or a piercing done because they see people around them do it and because it has been accepted as a sign of beauty, attractiveness and coolness. And who doesn't want to be cooler than the people around them? Everybody does. And the moment you follow a lifestyle blindly, you are tribal.

And while our approach towards self mutilation might seem a little more refined than the people from jungle tribes, we can always find extreme cases of mindless self mutilation even in the urban jungle.



Besides reducing self-expression to mere physical appearance is as shallow as it can get. Self-expression should be about expressing one's true inner self.

But to find one's unique self-identity, individuality one needs to look into him or herself. And since most people have no interest in exploring themselves, they are all more or less the same individuals from within, and try to find their individuality on the surface through external modifications to their shallow selves.

Their individuality is only skin deep.

So if you are a person who blindly follows any norms, rules and ideologies of a society, instead of being an independent thinker who comes to his own intelligent conclusions about life separate from the herd you are tribal.

It must be clear by now, that more than anything else being tribal is a state of mind. It is a way to go about life- an ignorant way, that requires people to be a blind follower of patterns and practices.

While a few tribes might have come into existence simply as remote totally isolated cultures, we see that instead of these cultures coming together and uniting as they are slowly being exposed to one another, they are headed quite in the opposite direction.

Not only do these different tribes of nations, religions and so on rigidly refuse to come together, but these existing tribes themselves are further being divided into more and more subgroups.

Because we see ourselves detached from everything else around us, we as individuals constantly tend to search for our individual identity detached from the over all one, the whole of humanity. And no matter how further we keep dividing humanity into smaller and smaller groups, there will always be a person or more who will still feel the need to detach him/her/ them selves from the existing divisions and create an identity of their own by further dividing humanity.

Our ego creates an image of 'me' and 'my'. And the concept of 'my' can attach itself to anything including ideas and notions. So ego attaches itself to ideas, notions, way of life as 'my', and wants nothing to do with anyone who doesn't agree with these notions. Every single person wants to see other people live according to his/her belief system.
And when other people don't act according to one's belief system, one's ego in order to feel superior to the other people, and their ideologies tries to detach itself from all that doesn't agree with it's ideas by creating a label for itself 'my' separate from the rest that is 'not-my'.
So we see that the existence of divisions is necessary for the ego to satisfy its need to feel superior. For example the divided identity of a group like Hindus needs to exist and persist separate from the Muslims and other religions so that each of these groups can feel superior to one another. That is the reason that these groups never agree to grow beyond these divisions and come together. The need to feel superior surpasses all human intelligence in this case.

This is very visible in the fact that every existing group of humanity believes itself to be superior compared to the rest. Hindus feel superior to other religions, and so do Muslims, Christians, Jews and so on. Every country and it's people feel superior to other countries and their people and so on. This desperate need to feel superior can be observed in every walk of humanity both at individual and collective level.

Each individual's egoistic need to feel superior to everyone around him/her, keeps people from accepting all the other existing people, their ideas and lifestyles as part of whole of humanity, and trying to unite all of them to attain one improved unified understanding of everything only remains a dream.

Instead our ego keeps us divided from everyone and everything around us. And so instead of coming together as humanity, we are dividing humanity into smaller and smaller groups to find our individuality.
And we will keep distancing and dividing ourselves from others around us, till each one of us is utterly alone, with no other human being in sight for miles.
Hopefully then our ego will find it’s individuality. But with no one else around the whole concept of individuality and the struggle to find it might just lose its meaning.

Human Or Reptile?

Reptiles have survived on earth for a very very long time. And the reason behind their success is simple – Conserve as much energy as possible, and spend just enough of it necessary for basic survival and reproduction.
Thinking about it for a while, the reptilian approach towards life can be described in one word – Lazy.
The snakes are quite happy just surviving. Besides there is not much they can do with life anyway. Nature has given them just enough to survive. They live to live and they die. They are biologically engineered to do just that.
So if you see a snake slithering across the grass in the park. You don’t have to stop and ask it where it is headed and for what. Chances are that either it is headed to find a mate or to find some food so it can tuck it's self back into it’s comfortable burrow.
Also it would be worth keeping in mind that snakes are not very friendly creatures, so it would be advisable to not intrude on a busy snake. Because it’s reptilian brain will most likely see you as a threat and the snake might attack. And we all know that is not a very healthy thing for you.
Rather a jog around the park would be something I’d suggest for good health since you are in the park anyway.
Even though reptiles like snakes, and lizards have been around for millions of years. Their brains did not evolve beyond mere cold blooded survival because they had evolved enough to survive just fine in their paradigm.
But over these millions of years a line of evolution ended up with us humans. So logically enough, since we have evolved from reptiles, our brains have evolved from them too.
And it is a widely known biological fact that our brain can be looked at as consisting of three layers, namely.
1) The innermost and hence at the core we have the reptilian complex
2) Over that we slowly evolved the limbic region as reptiles gave way to early mammals
3) And right on top, we humans have developed the final part of our brain that makes us human to begin with – The Neo-cortex.
And all our actions without any exception are a result of combinations of all these instincts our brain has collected over billions of years of evolution.
But even though our brains our bigger and more capable than that of any other animal on this planet. We don’t seem to be living very differently from the rest of them.
Today the human society is only evolving along the lines of reptilian concept of laziness.
Our technology, and our way of life is only aimed towards making us more lazy and lethargic. Just like the reptiles- We are obsessed with conserving as much energy as possible, and we see it as a good thing too.
Affluence, comfort, social classes, and quality of life are all closely associated with how one can get more lazy and comfortable and get more and more of their work done by other poorer people. Be it driving, washing dishes, cooking food, doing the lawn or taking care of children.
We consider hiring other people to spend time with our own kids as a classy act. A thing for the successful rich and the famous. This will give you a good idea about how lost humanity is.
And everybody in society who is not in a position that fits with these notions of a good quality life is striving to get there. We are constantly chasing materialistic objects for momentary satisfaction.
Doesn't anybody ever wonder how our ancestors would have lived their life before the advent of all the modern technology?
Then people wonder how the ancient people had so much knowledge about the mind and the universe.
Because they spent time on things that mattered.

A humble life is never seen as an option for the so called smart people in the society.
But I resonate more closely with Henry David Thoreau’s idea of an intelligent lifestyle.
He said “Any man intelligent/wise enough would choose a life of poverty over that of affluence.”
As a civilization and a specie at large, our reptilian instincts have dwarfed our newly found intelligence completely.
Looking at the way we live our lives as a global culture, our reptilian instincts stand tall and proud like The Himalayas, while our intelligence is like a feeble individual contemplating the thought of conquering the majestic peaks.

It is not impossible, it has be been achieved in the past.

As Hunter S. Thompson rightly and very gently described a scene from a bar in his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – “I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo, and somebody was giving booze to these goddamn things.”
And reptiles have all the right to live a reptilian existence because that’s what they are capable of.
But what are we going to hide behind? What reason do we have to still be living such decadent, creepy and grossly unintelligent life?
When is the intelligence going to take control of our rampant crazy and out of control reptilian instincts, and pull humanity forward?
When are we going to stop seeing comfort, laziness as ends in themselves? When are we going to open ourselves to the true potential of human life of creativity, love and peace?
As Einstein said in his essay – The Life As I see it

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.”

Any man truly aware of what it means to be human would choose eternal bliss of kindness, beauty, art and truth over the trivial meaningless concepts like luxury, comfort, materialism.

Today human race has still not reached a point in evolution where it truly deserves to be called humanity.
If one were to compare the fundamental aspects of paradigm of dinosaurs with our own. I doubt one would spot any differences.
It was cold blooded unintelligent survival 220 million years ago and it still is the same. Those reptiles mindlessly competed with one another for survival, so are we.

So while the common man without much thought feels that humanity is slowly moving forward. I see something quite the opposite.
If I am to look at the ground reality of things, humanity seems to have not moved one inch out of the jungle. Well! scattered individuals have through out history tapped into the unchanged beauty and truth of the universe.
But as a species not only have we failed, we are in fact headed in completely the opposite direction, if we are moving at all that is.

Today humanity seems to be headed on a one way track to destruction, and hope for any positive change is diminishing by the hour.
And if the human specie does go down, it is not the humanity that will fail.

True humanity never really got a chance.

A look at ourselves through the eyes of our leaders

It all began with your forefathers,
and while you foolish people fight among yourselves
We still give the orders.
And will continue to.

You may ask how?

The same way we have till now.


By feeding on your ignorance and petty arrogance.
While you people debate on whose point of view is more genuine.

By giving you ways to keep yourselves entertained, so that even though the truth is in front of your eyes,
You will not see it because with all this charade we have you hypnotized.

We always controlled your life, and we still do
We can kill you when we want and your loved ones too.

So don't come in our way by doing too much thinking.
Just buy all the nonsense we have been feeding.

Look at your friends and learn a thing or two,
Just remain willfully ignorant or we will come and kill you too.

Just enjoy this materialism we have invented for you and be satisfied,
Why do you waste your time fighting for these people who just care about being proven right?

We have ruled over you for generations, so listen to what we have to say
Nothing will change till your brothers understand the truth you want to convey.
But we are sure that your egos will keep you divided, and yet again we will have it our own way.

And yet again we will have it our own way.

Bollywood and It's Role In Indian Society | Escapism

Usually I am not a TV kind of a person, but these days I am in Uttar Pradesh and I am guilty of being in front of the television more than I would usually like for various reasons.

But yesterday while flipping through channels I came across this movie called Agaaz (starring Sunil Shetty as the lead), and decided to watch a few minutes of what was going on.

The scene was that the protagonist was being stabbed by political rowdies, while his baby sister was being raped by one of the gang members in broad day light while the whole society watched in silence.

And now I think I understand why there are so many repetitive bollywood movies being made and watched for decades.

Also I am not a big fan of Bollywood films because of the very same reason - I feel they are repetitive in the kind of emotions or scenarios they are trying to bring out. Because I personally like to explore as many different emotions as life has to offer.

Most of the bollywood films deal with the same scenarios of love between people of different social statuses, political rowdyism and so on.

But now I understand the reason behind this.

These scenarios are a part of people's daily lives, and while real life usually does not have happy endings. These movies certainly do.

Since people have lost hope of justice in society, they at least like to see truth win over evil in their fantasies by putting themselves in the shoes of the protagonist or any other character.

This is the reason why there are innumerable movies being made and watched over and over again about the same life scenarios.

This is a perfect example of cinema being used as a form of escapism.

And this is in a country who tag line is "Satyameva Jayate" - "Truth always wins"

If this doesn't open your eyes to how hypocritical society is, nothing will. And remember me and you and everyone is part of this society. So don't detach yourself from the term "society" while reading this.

Also these kind of films are still more popular among the rural population of the country as compared to their urban counterparts.

But by that I don't mean there is less injustice in cities. But the urban people don't get to see such injustice out in the open so often because they are much higher up the social/economic ladder.

But these kind of scenarios are still a part of daily lives of the rural folks.

Nobody wants to change the society. While the poor helpless people live their lives with no hope of justice, the rich and influential people who can make a difference don't want to do anything.

They just want to give them ways to escape their miserable existence for a few hours. And there is a reason why the rich and influential who can spend billions of dollars on such cinema don't want to do anything about these hopeless situations.

And the reason is - Because they are already rich and safe. These problems are not a part of their life, and so they sit and do nothing about such hopeless inhumane scenarios. All they do is make a spectacle out of these sad situations in the world so that they can make more money from these hopeless people and get richer and richer.

Such movies will continue to be made and watched till life doesn't become worth living for majority of the population.

Also escapism in cinema is seen as such a normal and obvious thing. To the thoughtless people of course. Think about this for a minute - What good is a life if you constantly need ways to escape it?

Now why don't things change? Because everybody is selfish. Anybody who is happy sitting comfortably in their homes and look at these problems of the world while only taking care of their own careers and lives is selfish and is part of the problem and not the solution.

Music & Language

First let us understand the importance of music, and the role it plays in our daily lives without us even realizing may be.

Till 1960s scientists felt that the primary function of Human DNA was protein synthesis. But now they know differently. Scientists now say that only 3% of DNA's function is protein synthesis, the rest 97% of DNA's function is to respond to sound frequencies, and vibrations.

This new revelation might explain the profound over-powering experience music often has on people.

Also many scientists and musicians have collaborated on projects to record the vibrational frequencies of the four base molecules of DNA and convert them into sound frequencies and make music out of these frequencies. So it turns out everybody is like a note of music really.

Now coming to language.

Before well defined spoken language came about,there were only sounds. Just like even today all species of animals have sounds that they use to interact ideas and emotions.

These sounds might not make any sense to us, but they very well get the idea across to the members of their own species.

Obviously enough today these sounds seem inefficient to us humans because we feel there are better ways to express ideas.

But language was born out of nothing but these primitive sounds. Out of our need to communicate more efficiently. But even though the languages used today might be a little superior way of interacting, it's hardly an improvement as far as true communication goes.

Words are dead and inert, and a meaning has been assigned to each one. But they are still sounds, more refined sounds may be. But still sounds that we use to express our ideas.

But how do we know that we actually communicate our ideas using language?

For example the word 'food' might have completely different meanings to different people. To a rich guy it might be symbolic of the food he ate in an expensive restaurant the previous night or all through out his life and might bring about a happy memory.

But the same word might have completely different meaning to a poor man who has only seen his family and himself struggle for food. For him it might be a word he attaches a lot of sadness to.

So we see that language is limited and sometimes true communication, in fact most of the times true communication might take place without any exchange of words.

Now let us examine the role of language in music.

We have seen that language is limited. Hence when you listen to a song with lyrics it produces limited familiar emotions that a language is capable of producing.

Where as, in music without lyrics where you are producing emotions just with music without words, your musical experiences are no more confined by language and its limitations. Hence the listener experiences more pure emotions and is open to unknown and different states of mind.

Also if you can produce emotions in a song without being bound by words, and language it somehow seems like much more pure form of music. It also seems that it takes a lot more out of a musician to bring emotions out without the use of language.

Even the experience for the listener is more pure and limitless.

I am not comparing the two kinds of music as good and bad and I am not discriminating against one kind of music and supporting another with a bias. I listen to any kind of good music. But I am aware of the limitations of different kinds of experiences.
And by putting you through experiences untouched by language and culture which is a product of the past, this kind of language free music might also help you open your mind up to possibilities that language can never bring about.

Hiding from Reality | Symptomatic Approach : It's Origin and Ineffectiveness

Self-survival instinct is at the very core of all the drama of life here on earth.
It is the most fundamental drive in the animal kingdom, common to all living beings but individual to each one, which means that each animal is responsible for his or her own survival.
And when each and every animal is individually driven most strongly by his/her self-survival instinct, it is logical to say that only the fittest survive, because there is a competition and a struggle against one another for survival.

There are two sides to this struggle for survival - on one side animals of any species have to struggle and fight with other members of the same species for life resources, and on the other they have to struggle to keep safe from the predators.

Also to me it seems that any animal that can live freely and independently without risking his/her life will prefer to live freely.
So we see that animals like the cheetah or the eagle who are at the top of their respective food chains and have very few or no predators to fear of, can and do live and hunt independently.
Whereas a lot of other species of animals like deers, monkeys, buffaloes, elephants who are not strong enough individually to survive alone in the wild usually stick around in groups or herds.
But it is important to understand that these animals don't stick around in groups because they want to look out for one another or for the common good of the group.
Rather the fundamental reason behind relatively weak animals staying in groups is that it improves each one's individual chances of survival.

A good example to illustrate this point would be to consider a herd of deer grazing together in a field. Now if a cheetah or a pack of lions were to attack this herd, every deer would run for his/her own life away from the group rather than facing the danger together as a group.
Hence it's clear that these animals stick together in a group as long as it keeps them safe or at least makes them feel safe individually, but the moment this feeling of safety is threatened they leave the safety of the group and run away.
Same is true in case of human beings as well. Say a few people are in a movie theater, and the theater catches fire. Now what do people do? Do they stick around together and try to get the whole group out safely?
No they don't! Everyone runs for their own lives. Forget about sticking around together to save each other, in a hurry to save themselves people don't even care if they kill a few other people in stampede.

So we see that all animals come together in groups because it gives them an improved sense of individual safety, but the moment that feeling of safety is challenged, each one is on his/her own again.

We humans are animals too, animals who are capable of intelligent thought and logic and all that, but looking at what we have done with ourselves and our world, we clearly haven't let our intelligence make us very different from the rest of the animals.

Human ancestors lived in groups as well, alongside all other animals, fighting for survival in the wild.
And they started living in groups for the very same reason as all other animals did- because they were too weak to survive alone in the wild, and living in groups increased their individual chances of survival.
So we see that even the earliest human society began as nothing but a group of animals who stuck around together for their own individual safety.
And when individuals in a group are only concerned about their own well being, there is bound to be a competition for resources and power.

Just like all other groups of animals, the earliest of human groups had leaders too.
Usually the strongest one would more or less self-appoint himself as the leader, just like even in today's world.
So our ancestors lived in the jungle in families under leaders in exchange for a feeling of safety from other animals.

Slowly we came out of the jungle, and started living in relative safety of tribes and villages, under new leaders. Now we didn't have to worry too much about the wild predators. But as individuals we were still insecure about our lives and being too weak to survive alone still wanted to live together in groups.
But as I said the only reason animals/people stick together in a group or a society is due to fear of something.
In the jungles we stuck together because we had fear primarily of predators. Once out of the jungle we needed something else to be afraid of in order to stick together in tribes.
And we found this fear in form of tribes or groups of other people.

This individual insecurity/fear that people have for their own lives has been exploited by our leaders for a very long time. We as animals are always afraid for our lives, and our leaders give us something to be afraid of to keep us together under their leadership.
The leaders understand that to keep people together, they have to be kept in a constant fear of something or the other.
There has to be an enemy image for the society to stick together.
But the leaders alone are not to be blamed, they have merely played on our insecurities.
The people are the ones who want something to be scared of so they can stick together as a society, leaders just happen to want the same, so every now and then they create a new enemy for the society to face.
The current favorite of our leaders seems to be terrorism.
So we see that in a selfish paradigm where each one is merely bothered about his/her individual survival, it is impossible for anyone to live without fear. Because each one sees other people as a potential threat to his/her survival.

Now when as individuals, we feel threatened by other individuals for survival, it's obvious that this insecurity reflects at society level as well. Because if individuals living in different societies feel threatened by each other, then the societies too are going to feel threatened by other societies. A society is nothing but a collection of individuals anyway.
So we fight individually for survival with one another, and we also fight as societies with other societies for the same reason.

Our ancestors fought with one another for survival in the jungle, and we are still fighting with one another for the very same reason - individual survival.
Only thing that has changed is that those fights and skirmishes between early tribes of humans, over the years turned into bloody battles between kingdoms, and today they have turned into wars between countries.
Now we think we have evolved and are better than those lesser evolved animals because we have climbed off the trees, and come out of caves and built ourselves clean cities, and handsome clothes, and expensive cars.
But we haven't really evolved, with all this external glamor we are only trying to cover up the true animal nature that is still the driving force behind our lives.
If we have evolved anything, it is the ways in which we can compete with one another for survival.
While other animals compete with one another for survival based primarily on their physical strengths, we humans have invented a whole array of concepts to compete with one another for survival.
Religions, Castes, social classes, fashion, nationalities are all concepts that show how desperate we are to give ourselves and each other as different identities as possible, so that when we look at one another we only see how different we are from one another and hence a threat to each others individual survival.
As neighbours we fight, as different religious groups we fight, as different castes we fight, as different countries we fight. So we are constantly fighting with one another for our lives.

But now one may ask - what exactly is the problem here? Human beings are animals and they live like animals! So what's wrong with that?

The problem is the fact that we humans can think intelligently, unlike all other species of animals.
So when a powerful lion snatches away food from a weaker lion, and the weaker one goes hungry, the stronger one doesn't think about the plight of the weaker lion, because he can not. He is purely driven by his self-survival instinct and does not have the capacity to think about the consequences of his actions.
But because we humans can think, when relatively powerful human beings compete and snatch away food from weaker human beings, it makes some of us question our actions . And hence the whole debate.
Besides I think when a lion has eaten his stomach full he might leave the rest lying around for other lions to eat.
But we humans want everything for ourselves, even if we are done eating, we had rather hide the remaining food till it rots than give it to other people.

In spite of our ability to think and understand logically and even after thousands of years of technological advancements, the problems facing the human society haven't changed at all.
Thinkers like Plato from ancient civilizations spoke about the same social and moral issues that we face today. Which means that there is a realm in human existence which has remained unchanged over all these years.
This is the psychological realm, or realm of the consciousness.

But why have we failed to eradicate these issues for thousands of years?

To me this seems to be due to lack of our sincerity towards addressing these problems.
But why have we shown lack of sincerity towards these serious social issues?

When people get cancer, do they go to the doctor and ask him to just remove enough cancer cells to eliminate physical symptoms to allow them to go about their daily life or do they ask him to remove the god damned thing from the root itself as soon as possible?

They obviously ask him to remove it from the root as soon as possible, so we see that there is sincerity when an individual's life is at stake. But even though society has been suffering from these ailments for thousands of years, we have failed to face the root causes and get rid of them.

And our failure to show same sincerity towards these social cancers shows that just like all other animals,even humans are still driven purely and only by their self-survival instincts, and welfare of the entire group is of little or no importance.
There seems to be no trace of wise use of intelligence in the design of our social paradigm.
What we have done instead is that we have used our intelligence along the lines of primitive animal instincts like competition, self-survival, possessiveness, crude violence and so on. And this way, what we have created are more ways to effectively compete with one another for survival, or in other words more effective ways to destroy each other.
Remember that we humans came together and began staying in societies only because living in society made us feel more secure as individuals and not for the betterment of humanity. That is why in our society we see that everyone is competing with one another for everything- There is competition to get into school, then to get into college, then a job, and so on. So we see that we are merely living together and competing with one another for our individual survival, rather than coming together and thinking about the common good of the society.

Now when society is nothing but a group of people who are pretending to be together and looking out for one another, but at heart only care about their own life and needs, there are bound to be conflicting situations, and homeless, poor, hungry, and abused people in the society.

The reason we have failed to eradicate these social issues for thousands of years is because we have failed to understand the root cause of all these social issues. Unaware of the underlying root cause, we have only been trying to cure the symptoms that show up on the surface. But since the fundamental problem is still not understood, these symptoms like poverty, homelessness, crimes, wars keep coming back.

Of course there is no denying that a lot of people out there genuinely want to do something about these poor, hungry, homeless people.
But rather than trying to drill down to the root cause behind these problems, they go out there and try to fight these symptoms as if they were independently existing problems. Which is a very shallow approach.

In our current society, NGOs and other social welfare organizations are also committing the same mistake by trying to solve social issues like child labor, women abuse, poverty as individual independently existing problems. But this kind of approach will never work,because these problems are mere symptoms of the fundamental problem with our society- which is our selfish paradigm.
We see that these problems have been there since the inception of human society, and they are still around because we have been trying to cure the symptoms of the fundamental problem, rather than trying to understand the fundamental problem itself.

When I think about the possible reasons behind our failure to understand the fundamental issue behind all these problems - two possibilities come to my mind.

One could be that we have been so deeply conditioned psychologically over millions of years that as individuals we feel that fighting with one another for survival is the natural and the only way to live, and to us this selfish lifestyle doesn't seem to be the cause of these problems, instead we feel that these problems are independently existing unique social issues, and need to be dealt with like individual problems.

The other possibility could be that in society people who are in a position to make a difference are the ones who are well-off, the underprivileged themselves cannot do anything about their situation. And the people who are well-off including most of us and our leaders don't want anything to change because we have successfully competed against the weaker to secure a safer environment for ourselves.

I feel that the true reason behind our failure to understand the root cause behind social problems is a combination of both of these two possibilities. While on one hand as masses and individuals we have failed to evolve beyond our individual insecurities for life, on the other our leaders have deliberately kept us fighting for survival with one another so that they can continue to rule our society.

And in this human civilization of ours, which is already paralyzed by our selfish nature, invention of a concept like God has only further paralyzed humanity.
Religions of the world make people feel that everything that the world is, is a part of God's design, and so when they see problems in the society, they take it to be a part of God's plan and completely give up the idea that they might have something to do with these problems. Since people hold God responsible for everything, the whole concept of god takes away the responsibility of our actions away from us.

For such religious people here is a mental exercise - Let us for a moment agree that God is looking after everything, now think about the world as it is now - with humans and all their human problems.
Now for a moment imagine the world without human beings. Eventhough God is still looking after the world and other living beings, don't all social issues disappear with humans as well?
Now put humans back in the picture and we see all problems coming back all over again.
I think this simple thought experiment is enough to show that human beings themselves are the cause of their problems.

As I said earlier that except humans all other animals have only their self-survival instincts to live by, and there is nothing wrong with their selfish paradigm because that's the only way for them to survive.
But we humans can think, and yet we have not used a trace of our intelligence in trying to understand life better.
Continuing to live in this selfish social paradigm and then trying to cure the social problems which arise because of the very selfish nature of the society is naive and ignorant and is not the solution.
The only way to get rid of these social issues if we are at all serious about it, is for us to try as individuals and as societies to evolve beyond our selfish insecurities and understand that it is possible for us to live beside one another without having to fight for survival.
And once we understand that every person and every living being has the right to and wants to live as much as anyone of us, hopefully then we can come together as improved conscious human beings and create a society for the welfare of one and all.

Censorship! Another word for Hypocrisy?

Downfall of humanity has been it's closed mindedness, and a concept like censorship is one of our many self destructive methods to make sure that nobody interfers with this free fall of ours till we hit rock bottom and smash ourselves out of existence.

We wouldn't want anyone showing us the right way for humanity to take, that would be too intelligent for us foolish & petty animals.

Even though censorship interfers with artist's work to different degrees in different countries, the basic underlying reason behind it is our failure to accept another man's point of view, and also to stick to one of the most fundamental of human rights, which we like to talk about a lot, but seldom practice, freedom of expression.

Well if you are expressing an opinion that at least a billion people share in common with you then you have all the freedom of expression that you could ask for. But! if you are thinking about expressing a radical,unique, and an original point of view, you better be doing it from behind a bullet proof glass.

According to the dictionary censorship means "Counterintelligence achieved by banning or deleting any information of value to the enemy".
And looking at the way censor board has functioned in the past, it is clear that anyone who doesn't conform to the views put forth by the government, and wants to express his/her own, is an enemy.

It's also important to point out that censor board is actually controlled by the "Ministry" of Information and Broadcasting. So don't for one minute think that it's not political.

This is our way of isolating, rejecting, and undermining the ones who wander away from the herd mentality to find their own path, just like a herd of sheep does.
Friedrich Nietzsche very aptly pointed out that
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently".

In fact what is the use of 6 billion people walking around with almost identical point of views? It's a complete waste of human energy and time. We could just assign one person to have a point of view in every field, and we could all just follow that, couldn't we? Why do all the thinking ourselves?!

Oh! But hey, that's exactly what we are doing. Isn't it? We have one institution for every field which tells the rest of us what to believe and what not believe and what to think about and what not think about, be it religion, politics, or economics.

We are often told that censorship is necessary for a safe and peaceful society. But is it really so?

I am not sure about the safety and peace, but I do know that censorship is definitely necessary for the politicians and businessmen to make sure that we don't see or read anything that they don't want us to see or read. They very well know that ignorant public is easily manipulated and led.

Censor boards and other political/religious bodies usually have a problem with artistic work dealing with either

1) Real incidents of the past like genocides, riots, wars, political policies and so on,or,

2) Sexual content/abusive language, or,

3) Against current religious norms.

Let us explore these three points and see if the censor board and the whole concept of rejecting unpopular ideas is doing any good to the society.

According to the Supreme Court of India:
“Film censorship becomes necessary because a film motivates thought and action and assures a high degree of attention and retention as compared to the printed word. The combination of act and speech, sight and sound in semi darkness of the theatre with elimination of all distracting ideas will have a strong impact on the minds of the viewers and can affect emotions. Therefore, it has as much potential for evil as it has for good and has an equal potential to instill or cultivate violent or good behaviour. It cannot be equated with other modes of communication. Censorship by prior restraint is, therefore, not only desirable but also necessary."

First of all, most of the movies and books that face trouble with the censor boards and political-religious bodies usually deal with the reality of the state of affairs in the society, or with an incident from the past i.e., war,riot etc.
I haven't seen a single movie or read a single book which for no reason urges people to be violent, and I don't think there are too many of such works out there anyway.
And let's say for the sake of argument that there are such movies and books out there that instigate people to be violent, but what do people have their brains for? If I came across such a work, I would with an open mind see what it's about and if it seems illogical to me, I will move right on. Besides if someone is stupid enough to be influenced by a movie or a book to kill other people, then isn't it possible that the problem is the person himself and not the book or the movie?
Chances are good that he was thinking of killing a whole bunch of people for a very long time, may be he even bought a gun much before he read that book or watched that movie.
So why should the rest of the sane people be refused to indulge in free flow of art and information because of a few morons?
And even if there are propaganda movies and books out there that wrongfully instigate violence, isn't there a clear difference between such movies/books and the ones which are plain artistic representation of the reality of affairs in society?
Why do always the latter kind of books/movies face trouble?

And Why should the movies and the books be considered dangerous and unfit for the society? The movies and books are not violent, the society is. The movies and books only bring out what already is.
If the society can handle and live with the reality itself, i am sure it can handle a movie or a book about it.
And by the way it's the people of the society that brought about all the wars, riots, killings, girl infanticides, and child marriages in the first place.
So why are we trying to stop artists from talking about these facts, rather than stopping these horrible acts themselves? Doesn't it seem a little un-intelligent for us "Intelligent beings", we are so proud of saying that.

All we are doing is censoring any work that talks about the reality of social/political/religious affairs, under the pretext of safety and peace of the society. Nothing more.
What we fail to understand is that banning a book or a movie is not going to make a society peaceful.
Violence has been there since the beginning of time. Other animals are violent too, but they don't have any violent books and movies. They are violent because it's in their nature, it's their instinct to be violent for survival, they don't know any other way, neither do we.

We are violent for the same reason, we are semi-conscious beasts ourselves. It's in our nature. We are far from understanding the meaning of peace as a society. At least a few light years away, and banning books and movies, and shutting people up is not going to help.

Secondly, different modes of art appeal differently to different individuals, and I don't think it is right for an institution like supreme court to make a generalized staement that movies have more impact on people, because to some people books are more engaging than a movie, and to some others music might be.

Now talking about censoring sexual content:

There are currently 4.2 million porn websites (12% of the total) and growing. The pornographic industry of the entire world is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and Earthlink.
Daily, 65 million pornographic search engine requests are made (25% of total)and 2.5 billion porn emails are sent.
42.7% of internet users view porn.
That will give you an idea how hungry people are for sex. Yet as a society we have failed to accept sex openly.
You'd think that the total sexual urge of any society would be the collective total of the individual sexual urges of the people. But even though as individuals we all want as crazy a sex life as possible, as a society we act like it's a shameful act?

As individual people we walk around with hard-ons but our society is like a 75 year old man with a limp dick.
Isn't something wrong here? I sense double standards.
Sex is alright in the bedroom, but in the living room we don't like to talk about it.
None of us would be here if it wasn't for sex, so why act like it's such a bad thing?

A lot of people blame pornography and prostitution for having a bad influence on the society, but neither are bad of and by themselves. They are demand driven markets. When people don't get sex they either go to a porn website, or to a brothel. You can't blame them for that.
Reproduction is the second most fundamental obligation of any living thing after survival. So anybody whose got his dinner sorted out is going to want to fuck, and there is not a god damn thing in the world that can stop them.

People also like to use children as an excuse against sexual content. But where is the sense in, at one hand trying to convince children that sex is an imaginary and evil thing, and on the other forcing them to believe that santa claus is real? Why is everything so upside down?
We are so weak and scared of dealing with the simple facts of life that we are forced to use our children and culture as our shield.
Besides your children are going to find out about sex anyway, either through self exploration or with the help of the uncle next door. So why not talk to them about it yourself, they will definitely appreciate that more.

And let's face it, the root cause of all sexual crimes is not prostitution or porn, it's the lack of sexual awareness and our failure to accept sex openly for what it is.

By mindlessly censoring sexual content censor board is only allowing the society to continue to elude the issue of sex, and hence is not doing a thing to help the society positively.


Last but not the least censoring of independent ideas about God, and religion:

I don't want to delve into the details of how hollow, illogical, archaic and insecure all the religions of the world are. All I want to say is that- if millions of hindus, muslims, christians have the right to proudly talk about their beliefs and gods and build their temples and churches, why can't the people who don't want anything to do with religion of any sort be proud about their beliefs?

What happened to all men being equal and all?

If a hindu has a right to be a proud hindu, and a muslim to be a proud muslim then what is wrong with me being a proud non believer and talking about it?

Why do a few non believers make billions of believers so insecure? If the religious people have so much faith in their god and religion and if they are so sure that god exists, then what can a few men's opinion do?
Why can't these self-righteous people just ignore the non believers?
I will tell you why - Because they are insecure about their own belief systems, and they don't want anyone reminding them of that.

In conclusion my question boils down to this - Where is the sense in trying to fix the society by banning books and movies?
Even if our movies are censored and our books are screened to protect the easily influenced people and children, who is going to protect them from the stinking garbage that society itself is.
All the artistic works that a censor board has a problem with come from the people of the society, and are usually about the society anyway.
So even if all the movies and books disappeared, people would find reason to be violent in the society itself.
Hence we see that censorship doesn't help the society positively in anyway and the justification for censorship being a neccessity is pure political jargon meant to serve the purpose of the establishment and not of the people.