One's personality is both a composition and reflection, but if I have to choose one of them, I will choose reflection as the "self" is more important to me than "me". One's composition may change, walking across the cultural landscapes and climbing the social ladder but one's self is tied to one's reflections. The fun part is that reflections are not bound to "Time-Space" barriers ( it is not time-space) and respective mental constructs, which have grown so thick over ages, that they had reduced the image of humans to Sisyphus, rolling different sizes of boulders on hills of different heights.… As the name of this Blog indicates, knols are my perspectives on topics of interests, sweet/bitter experiences or just doodling :)

Saturday, September 8, 2012

They do not mince their words

If it is true that, higher rate of saying words per second increase the Freudian slip (Parapraxis/ slip of the tongue)   then we should expect more Freudian slips from dwellers of larger cities compared to small towns and villages as people of larger cities tend to speak faster than relaxed and sit back towns, where people enjoy detailed chats. I don't have any statistics to either confirm or reject it  but one thing, I can tell with confidence and that is, the drivers in the crowded cities curse more frequently than drivers of less crowded towns. Unlike, the rest of society where it is emphasized to think before saying anything (means to keep a constant check on unconscious mind) drivers in large do not mince their words. Perhaps one of the reasons is that, they meet people of different attitudes on daily basis, deal and talk to them and it makes them more open but opinionated.

If you let water to flow freely or round objects to roll freely, they rest in the lowest area. That is the nature of gravity. The nature of conceptions and beliefs are 180 degree in the opposite. Humans in general tend to have the highest of the concepts/worldviews/beliefs, that is packed in a single word; Truth. Very BIG events, very radical set of concepts and practices that challenge the very basic fundamentals of the world views/beliefs  that have been perceived as truth come as shocks. If you are conditioned by your situations to experience it again and again like drivers do, you will become more open but very opinionated. I call this phenomenon as "driver's condition". Two popular philosophers of the previous century, Ayn Rand and Jean Paul Sartre gave the world very rebellious philosophies after their experiences of their "driver's condition". Frankly, they are driver's condition philosophers. Ayn Rand was born in Russia, had witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution and bitter outcomes of it in the form of confiscation of her father's pharmacy by communists and near starvation periods. Writers have sensitive souls and if they discover the tendency to write very early, that is the indication of the super-sensitive souls. Ayn Rand is said to have decided to become a novelist at age 9. Bolshevik Revolution was her "driver condition" and it made her to become an extreme individualist  thinker and develop her philosophy of "Objectivism" that, if put in one phrase is best expressed as, "Man is an end in itself".

Jean Paul Sartre was born almost at the same time as Ayn Rand but things went smooth for him and he got opportunity to study philosophy at Germany besides his own country, France. His early works were mostly on psychological topics like emotions and imaginations. The bitter experiences of Second World War in general and occupation of his country, France by Nazi Germany particularly became his "driver's condition" with a big change in his thinking. He became obsessed with freedom and wanted to let men free from all kinds of social constructs and that is basically what "Existentialism"; it rejects all sorts of determinism (Existence precedes essence). Freedom and taking responsibility for one's own fate was his core idea, "As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become".

In the current century, confidence on both religious and secular values are deeply shaken. It is shaken because the world have been witnessing again and again, the violations of the very basic Human Rights by secular forces and the violations of the basic Islamic principles by Jihaddists and Salafists. What have become a trend is "winning at all costs" and as it is known popularly ;  "values" are the first victims of war. This is definitely a driver's condition for any thinking mind, that has the ability of thinking and have the courage of expressing them in a coherent manner. It is possible that a Rand might escape from heart of Salafism or Sartre escape from prison of occupation to voice for "neo-objectivism" and "neo-existentialism"...


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