The villager ties the baby elephant's feet with the help of a rope to a tree. The baby elephant is not happy with it and wants to free itself. He tries hard but the rope proves much more strong for its weak body to break. After several tries, the baby elephant give up thinking it is not possible for it to break the rope. Twenty years later, this baby elephant grows to fully grown elephant with massive body size but still when the villager ties it with a rope to tree, it doesn't try to break it, thinking it is not possible for it to break...
This is just an analogy that how culture and installed mindset affect our world perspective as well as our concepts of our potentials and talents. Each one of us may be full grown elephants that are tied to some sorts of ropes that we have long forgotten and even don't recognize any more...
The fact is that we all are in perpetual struggle to use our potentials for growing up to our fullest but as I said there are ropes that work as constraints in our ways. We need to recognize and that may help somewhat to deal with them accordingly. I recognize three constraints,
1. Culture
2. Law
3. Place (Village, Town, City, Cosmopolitan city)
As you can easily notice that if we move from one place to another all these three constraints, Culture, Law and size of opportunities (place) change accordingly. So moving is a way that people try to overcome external constraints. Our age (Globalization) is known for this process as immigration and travels are the highest than any other time in history. These three constraints also change temporally (That is going part of another knol; I am trying to write in pieces and put them together in the last one to conclusion, just to avoid, lengthy and boring reading)...
Why I am focusing on moving here instead of struggles for changing them in the native places? Because, here I wanted to talk about personality and changing these constraints require collective efforts and for an individual developments, moving is a better alternative for a lot of people.
Biologists love to study organisms in terms of traits (a distinguished quality either inherited or environmental that could be measured, like height, shape and size of a body part and so forth). Following Biologists, Psychologists also tried to find set of traits by which they could study human personality and they have found five universal traits that is known as Big Fives... including,
1. Openness
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extroversion
4. Agreeableness
5. Neuroticism
I have posted, BBC documentary in two parts at the end of this knol to illustrate the big fives. You can watch them also on You Tube (Just make green tea and pick a bag of dry fruits to watch them. It takes time to watch them all but worth to watch ;)
These big five traits are universal traits but I want to clarify here though personality makes us in large what we are but human behavior is very plastic. Personality may effect the the levels of our comfort with situations and also our perceptions about others and things but it is also true that an introvert person can become extrovert if it happens that the job or circumstances require so. The same is true about other traits and that is a good news... So, my main point is awareness. As we learn more about ourselves, it becomes more easy to manage ourselves and steer our lives accordingly...
Besides big fives, there are some additional factors that play big roles in making us unique than others and they are including, Identity, Narratives, Life History, Experiences and Values. If I go back to three factors, I mentioned earlier like culture, law and place, you can see these additional factors are tightly tied to them. So, simply by moving we can expand the dimensions of these additional factors greatly, either it is identity, narratives, life history, experiences and values and have more choices to choose better ones for blooming of our potentials.
Day; 1
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Please follow the other 5 parts of Day 1 show on You Tube. I didn't post the rest to avoid making this knol very heavy....
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Day; 2
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Please follow the other 5 parts of Day 2 show on You Tube...
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In this knol, I just tried to tell the importance of moving in personality development. I will try to illustrate, how both personality and moving can be linked to moving vertically across social ladder.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Reading Society
My first cultural shock at time, when even I hadn’t heard of cultural shock was when I saw some boys from a religious minority community of Quetta city had dyed their hairs with medium blond. It was a Reflex Reaction like those of Knee-jerk reaction when one steps in some sharp thing or eye-blinking to sudden exposure of intense light as I hadn’t seen anybody dying hair in blond color. Though it was a cultural shock but it allowed me to understand the layered society that I was growing in. The dyeing of hair was an expression of dissatisfaction of those boys with their appearances and status in the society. In short it was a sign of identity dissatisfaction. Later on, I found this phenomenon is cosmopolitan and people change their appearances as a sign of identity dissatisfaction. Some religious minorities in Quetta were living in walled colonies and were attached largely to specific professions like sweepers in Municipality, Nurses in Hospitals and as Railway Workers. Those were kinds of jobs that others communities generally hesitating to have. It was not only religious minorities who were somewhat involved in those professions but also a sub-tribe by name of “Lodhi” who were largely iron-smith by profession and it was common to see them in Quetta making and repairing iron tools. In fact, it was really offensive to call someone Lodhi (it was meant useless person).
I was wondering that if Constitution of the country in large have given freedom and equal opportunity to all citizen irrespective of their religious and tribal affiliations (though the quota system is a biased law that discriminate among citizen based on their tribal affiliations and locality) and also religion does not permit to discriminate (though extremists don’t see it this way) then why some professions are considered to be the domain of the certain communities or layers in society. When I learnt about caste system in India then it was easy for me to understand that these layering were inherited from Indian society. Here is a documentary to learn in brief about caste system..
Society and its institutions whether it is culture, religion, tribes, communities, government, corporations… all are structured and to read a society we need to learn about the social structures. Though social structures are evolved to keep society in order but the social classes are coming out as their products. Even in very liberal and advanced society like US, the class system is a natural outcome of social structure. Following educational video though it is an old one but still illustrates very well this phenomenon,
The bitter side of social class is that; if you are born in a lower social class or in a minority community in any country (even in a liberal society), you are going to have a very different experience than members of majority group/ higher social class. It seems that class struggle is a perpetual struggle.
In a next part of this knol, I will try to illustrate how psyche of people shifts along classes as we progress and why Carl Marx’s prediction that communist revolution will follow a capitalism crisis didn’t come true after 1920’ great depression (instead fascism rose and lead to WWII) and also it didn’t come true in current crises of capitalism (Is there a new kind of fascism underway as it happened after 1920's great depression?)…
I was wondering that if Constitution of the country in large have given freedom and equal opportunity to all citizen irrespective of their religious and tribal affiliations (though the quota system is a biased law that discriminate among citizen based on their tribal affiliations and locality) and also religion does not permit to discriminate (though extremists don’t see it this way) then why some professions are considered to be the domain of the certain communities or layers in society. When I learnt about caste system in India then it was easy for me to understand that these layering were inherited from Indian society. Here is a documentary to learn in brief about caste system..
Society and its institutions whether it is culture, religion, tribes, communities, government, corporations… all are structured and to read a society we need to learn about the social structures. Though social structures are evolved to keep society in order but the social classes are coming out as their products. Even in very liberal and advanced society like US, the class system is a natural outcome of social structure. Following educational video though it is an old one but still illustrates very well this phenomenon,
The bitter side of social class is that; if you are born in a lower social class or in a minority community in any country (even in a liberal society), you are going to have a very different experience than members of majority group/ higher social class. It seems that class struggle is a perpetual struggle.
In a next part of this knol, I will try to illustrate how psyche of people shifts along classes as we progress and why Carl Marx’s prediction that communist revolution will follow a capitalism crisis didn’t come true after 1920’ great depression (instead fascism rose and lead to WWII) and also it didn’t come true in current crises of capitalism (Is there a new kind of fascism underway as it happened after 1920's great depression?)…
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Who owns internet?
The only thing that corporations do not understand is that web is not their private property. It is something belong to humanity yet they want to claim it as their private property and flaws in the system is there to serve them... The thing to worry is the censorship of internet which will lead to a new kind of class system, those who are born to be privileged by laws and those who are born to be under-privileged by laws... My understanding is that, the efforts to censor internet is to have bigger bites on already thinned capital of common people will only shift the centers of ideas. It is the nature of ideas to seek no boundary and stay only with good hosts... So, let's see....the coming of a new dark age (It is the dawn of dark age as it is going to force people to think according to their pocket sizes and also put more time to worry about ownership than learning or creating something :(
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Mind -Maps
There is a saying that, “whole is more than its parts”. Well, that is true but if one wants to study a scholar, a good practice asks to look for parts than whole, meaning a young Marx/Nietzsche is not the same as a middle aged Marx/Nietzsche. So to understand well, one needs to go in parts rather than in whole. The same is true about all of us, what we are today, weren’t the same a decade ago. What has changed in us? Besides, other biological changes, the main change that has happened is the increasing detailing of our mind-maps.
If you ask one, “Who do think, will quickly solve a math problem, a mathematician or a novelist?” OR “who do you think will draw a closer image of you? An artist or a Physicist?”…he/she will not take time to answer you. He doesn’t need to know results of I.Q scores to pass his judgment. Just knowing that one has put a lot of time in a field is enough to know who is going to do better…
Warren Buffet is known as a most successful investor as well as one of the richest men in the world. In a time that is known as age of computers, there is no computer on his office desk. Instead, he spends most of his time reading. He is also known for not wasting his time in visiting the businesses he buys or sells. How can he be so different than others? One of the main reasons believed he has built the most “detailed mind maps” of the companies in his head by reading a lot about them over years, based on which he invest and sells and earns. You can say, this is one of his many open secrets.
In short, experts have more detailed mind-maps of their subjects than others so their minds can navigate easily, can think and understand better than others in their fields. Making oneself to familiarize with a field is essential for clear thinking in that field. Partial information or partial knowledge is more likely to end in misjudgments and misunderstanding.
If you look to ancient map, a medieval age map and Google earth image of city of Rome, one thing stands out very clear that by passage of time and compilation of knowledge on geography; the maps are more informative and easier to navigate despite of enormous growth of the city over time.
I chose this image just randomly from Google image to illustrate how mind-maps helps in visual organizations of our internal mind-maps...
Knowing that our minds build a map when think hard about a topic, teachers encourage students, when they begin to write essays or stories. Mind mapping as an external visual tool helps in organizing better our thinking patterns. Of course, what is in mind comes out on the paper. Simply, accumulating knowledge helps detailing the mind map and makes it easy to have choices for stronger and better points besides flexibility in organizing it.
You may say, “Well, I know all these things so why to repeat them?”…. The main reason for elaborating mind map from different angles was a few conclusions that I wanted to draw and to use them for my next knol,
- Culture is a kind of template for “general mind map”. Let me explain a little bit,
The cultural products like, books, articles, music, movies, games, etc are the end products of the mind maps. When we consume these cultural products, consciously or unconsciously our mind-maps (thinking patterns) are reshaped. As cultures are changing rapidly so are our mind-maps…
- While computers and networks are providing both information and mind-mapping soft-wares and tools yet we need other individuals to challenge, excite and inspire us.
- The love of something is a pre-condition for a having better mind-maps as it requires time and hard works to collect information and detail the mind-map on specific field.
- There is less truth in big gaps in intelligence but rather there are gaps in love of the fields that make difference….
If you ask one, “Who do think, will quickly solve a math problem, a mathematician or a novelist?” OR “who do you think will draw a closer image of you? An artist or a Physicist?”…he/she will not take time to answer you. He doesn’t need to know results of I.Q scores to pass his judgment. Just knowing that one has put a lot of time in a field is enough to know who is going to do better…
Warren Buffet is known as a most successful investor as well as one of the richest men in the world. In a time that is known as age of computers, there is no computer on his office desk. Instead, he spends most of his time reading. He is also known for not wasting his time in visiting the businesses he buys or sells. How can he be so different than others? One of the main reasons believed he has built the most “detailed mind maps” of the companies in his head by reading a lot about them over years, based on which he invest and sells and earns. You can say, this is one of his many open secrets.
In short, experts have more detailed mind-maps of their subjects than others so their minds can navigate easily, can think and understand better than others in their fields. Making oneself to familiarize with a field is essential for clear thinking in that field. Partial information or partial knowledge is more likely to end in misjudgments and misunderstanding.
If you look to ancient map, a medieval age map and Google earth image of city of Rome, one thing stands out very clear that by passage of time and compilation of knowledge on geography; the maps are more informative and easier to navigate despite of enormous growth of the city over time.
Knowing that our minds build a map when think hard about a topic, teachers encourage students, when they begin to write essays or stories. Mind mapping as an external visual tool helps in organizing better our thinking patterns. Of course, what is in mind comes out on the paper. Simply, accumulating knowledge helps detailing the mind map and makes it easy to have choices for stronger and better points besides flexibility in organizing it.
You may say, “Well, I know all these things so why to repeat them?”…. The main reason for elaborating mind map from different angles was a few conclusions that I wanted to draw and to use them for my next knol,
- Culture is a kind of template for “general mind map”. Let me explain a little bit,
The cultural products like, books, articles, music, movies, games, etc are the end products of the mind maps. When we consume these cultural products, consciously or unconsciously our mind-maps (thinking patterns) are reshaped. As cultures are changing rapidly so are our mind-maps…
- While computers and networks are providing both information and mind-mapping soft-wares and tools yet we need other individuals to challenge, excite and inspire us.
- The love of something is a pre-condition for a having better mind-maps as it requires time and hard works to collect information and detail the mind-map on specific field.
- There is less truth in big gaps in intelligence but rather there are gaps in love of the fields that make difference….
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Crime, Law, values and peace
Introduction
Though, the love of peace is an eternal desire of every human but there is also satisfaction paralleling with peace. Power, wealth, knowledge, fame, etc put men into conflicts with each other because these are social characteristics and men share them with each other. Everyone struggles for a bigger share and hence it put men into conflicts. It is why Machiavelli defined politics as a “perpetual conflict”. Surely, the satisfactions are momentarily as by achievements men grow for a desire of bigger achievements. When one grows, he expands his rights for bigger share because he sees himself capable of getting bigger shares. And why should he stop himself of getting more share while he can do? Surely! Everyone has some capability to grow and hence the power to effect others. The capability of everyone to effect each other forced men to create codes of interactions, exchanges and socializations that collectively, we know as laws.
Peace: Laws are social adaptations in order to achieve peace. Laws are also adapted to achieve order in a human population living together. Hence laws are evolutionary products that evolved men to evolve societies, cities, countries and civilizations and in today’s world a global village. If we look from perspective of law, peace and order is synonym. Hence we can define in social terms as, “Peace is a social order”.
Now when we have defined peace as well as we have known the nature of peace, so studying and discussing peace is a not a difficult task for us. As laws are men’s products as they depend on human experience, knowledge and intellect. As men’s intellect, experience, and knowledge grow so the laws are also grow. Based on these conclusions it is easy to deduce that every society has its own levels of orders relative to their experiences and knowledge. Similarly, we can deduce that every society has its own level of peace.
Peace is not just absence of violence but it is level of order. How much a society has peace depends on its level of order. As there are levels of order so there is levels of conflicts. Before going to discuss more elaborately the relations between laws, crime culture and peace, I would like to pose a radical question here. As Machiavelli defined politics as perpetual conflicts, so is there possible that there is perpetual peace also. My answer is certainly, yes. As peace is social order, so it was existed as men getting to know about them. There were always order to some degree in terms of family, tribe, nation, organizations and etc.
Laws: “Law is the minimum requirement of a human’s society to live in. Laws are made and approved by consensus.” ” If one breaks the laws or fails to comply with laws then it is understood that he is not fit with orders of society or he is dangerous for peace of society. Hence he is declared criminal. The laws are there to make criminals back to order and for this different kinds of disciplinary actions or punishments are devised. However, laws are the source of excellence. Those who abide laws are not considered as special as it is expected from all members of society to abide laws of that society. In other words it is the responsibility of every citizen to abide laws.
Values: Yes! Every society has its own systems of excellence. These systems of excellence which are commonly known as values make individuals according to them special. An individual is valued according to his values.
Argument: Laws are developed as historical developments and social adaptations of men to attain order and peace. Laws are neither the source of excellence nor abiding them people special but they are responsibility of every citizens and members of society as they are the assurance of safety of specialties, achievements, progress and weak that can’t defend an survive by themselves. It doesn’t mean that societies are devoid of any means of excellence. Every society has developed their own systems of excellence for everyone equally and these are known as values. There are organizations and institutions in every society for helping its members achieving and evolving in these values.
More important than this is the fact that laws are mechanism for peace. Because peace is neither satisfaction nor it is the end of conflicts. Conflicts are perpetual and satisfactions are momentarily, so peace is real sense is order. Peace was existed there forever living side by side of conflicts. I accept that conflicts never end and will always be on work as a "hub of evolution" but I also believe that, "conflicts are also evolving" and this evolution would distinguish us from the "perpetual conflicts of beasts". What I mean by peace is not end of conflicts but evolution of conflicts from beastly competition to human competitions. The competitions which ensure "freedoms of human consciousness" that lead us to human excellence". What men have constructed are "civilizations" and what men compete each other for in conflicts are also for construction and development of civilizations. The sources of conflicts are the differences between visions of "civilizations". It is inhuman to destroy a civilization. It is just expression of shallowness in level of evolution or more clearly, "expression of beastly conflicts".
There are several reasons for differences between visions of civilizations. The main reason is ignorance. Ignorance, about other civilizations and ignorance in understanding them and both types of ignorance exist in today’s world of information technology. The main reasons for lack of understanding are lack of interest or a threat to interest and misinformation that benefit some individuals.
These individuals are the sources of consensus which make laws. Surely every system has flaws which make powerful and wealthy individuals in ranks of decision making. The consensus between these powerful and wealthy individuals does not always represent the consensus and desire of people they represent. These laws and policies that these individuals make are the sources of international conflicts. Misinformation and ignorance about other civilization suit the positions and interests of them so they try to keep them molded in their own benefits. Awareness and empowerment of common people by new technologies are one of hope to reduce ignorance and make people more able to decide about themselves and about the relations with fellow men. The empowerment of masses may also help in making laws that assure justice and sustainable peace by evolving beastly conflicts into humanly conflicts.
Conclusion: Men can achieve perpetual peace from the smallest unit that is individual to global level by evolving laws. For evolution of laws it is necessary to evolve the consensus through which laws come. If the laws are made out of consensus of powerful and neglected the weak, beastly conflicts will not evolve to human conflicts.
Though, the love of peace is an eternal desire of every human but there is also satisfaction paralleling with peace. Power, wealth, knowledge, fame, etc put men into conflicts with each other because these are social characteristics and men share them with each other. Everyone struggles for a bigger share and hence it put men into conflicts. It is why Machiavelli defined politics as a “perpetual conflict”. Surely, the satisfactions are momentarily as by achievements men grow for a desire of bigger achievements. When one grows, he expands his rights for bigger share because he sees himself capable of getting bigger shares. And why should he stop himself of getting more share while he can do? Surely! Everyone has some capability to grow and hence the power to effect others. The capability of everyone to effect each other forced men to create codes of interactions, exchanges and socializations that collectively, we know as laws.
Peace: Laws are social adaptations in order to achieve peace. Laws are also adapted to achieve order in a human population living together. Hence laws are evolutionary products that evolved men to evolve societies, cities, countries and civilizations and in today’s world a global village. If we look from perspective of law, peace and order is synonym. Hence we can define in social terms as, “Peace is a social order”.
Now when we have defined peace as well as we have known the nature of peace, so studying and discussing peace is a not a difficult task for us. As laws are men’s products as they depend on human experience, knowledge and intellect. As men’s intellect, experience, and knowledge grow so the laws are also grow. Based on these conclusions it is easy to deduce that every society has its own levels of orders relative to their experiences and knowledge. Similarly, we can deduce that every society has its own level of peace.
Peace is not just absence of violence but it is level of order. How much a society has peace depends on its level of order. As there are levels of order so there is levels of conflicts. Before going to discuss more elaborately the relations between laws, crime culture and peace, I would like to pose a radical question here. As Machiavelli defined politics as perpetual conflicts, so is there possible that there is perpetual peace also. My answer is certainly, yes. As peace is social order, so it was existed as men getting to know about them. There were always order to some degree in terms of family, tribe, nation, organizations and etc.
Laws: “Law is the minimum requirement of a human’s society to live in. Laws are made and approved by consensus.” ” If one breaks the laws or fails to comply with laws then it is understood that he is not fit with orders of society or he is dangerous for peace of society. Hence he is declared criminal. The laws are there to make criminals back to order and for this different kinds of disciplinary actions or punishments are devised. However, laws are the source of excellence. Those who abide laws are not considered as special as it is expected from all members of society to abide laws of that society. In other words it is the responsibility of every citizen to abide laws.
Values: Yes! Every society has its own systems of excellence. These systems of excellence which are commonly known as values make individuals according to them special. An individual is valued according to his values.
Argument: Laws are developed as historical developments and social adaptations of men to attain order and peace. Laws are neither the source of excellence nor abiding them people special but they are responsibility of every citizens and members of society as they are the assurance of safety of specialties, achievements, progress and weak that can’t defend an survive by themselves. It doesn’t mean that societies are devoid of any means of excellence. Every society has developed their own systems of excellence for everyone equally and these are known as values. There are organizations and institutions in every society for helping its members achieving and evolving in these values.
More important than this is the fact that laws are mechanism for peace. Because peace is neither satisfaction nor it is the end of conflicts. Conflicts are perpetual and satisfactions are momentarily, so peace is real sense is order. Peace was existed there forever living side by side of conflicts. I accept that conflicts never end and will always be on work as a "hub of evolution" but I also believe that, "conflicts are also evolving" and this evolution would distinguish us from the "perpetual conflicts of beasts". What I mean by peace is not end of conflicts but evolution of conflicts from beastly competition to human competitions. The competitions which ensure "freedoms of human consciousness" that lead us to human excellence". What men have constructed are "civilizations" and what men compete each other for in conflicts are also for construction and development of civilizations. The sources of conflicts are the differences between visions of "civilizations". It is inhuman to destroy a civilization. It is just expression of shallowness in level of evolution or more clearly, "expression of beastly conflicts".
There are several reasons for differences between visions of civilizations. The main reason is ignorance. Ignorance, about other civilizations and ignorance in understanding them and both types of ignorance exist in today’s world of information technology. The main reasons for lack of understanding are lack of interest or a threat to interest and misinformation that benefit some individuals.
These individuals are the sources of consensus which make laws. Surely every system has flaws which make powerful and wealthy individuals in ranks of decision making. The consensus between these powerful and wealthy individuals does not always represent the consensus and desire of people they represent. These laws and policies that these individuals make are the sources of international conflicts. Misinformation and ignorance about other civilization suit the positions and interests of them so they try to keep them molded in their own benefits. Awareness and empowerment of common people by new technologies are one of hope to reduce ignorance and make people more able to decide about themselves and about the relations with fellow men. The empowerment of masses may also help in making laws that assure justice and sustainable peace by evolving beastly conflicts into humanly conflicts.
Conclusion: Men can achieve perpetual peace from the smallest unit that is individual to global level by evolving laws. For evolution of laws it is necessary to evolve the consensus through which laws come. If the laws are made out of consensus of powerful and neglected the weak, beastly conflicts will not evolve to human conflicts.
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