Life goes on......

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
- Mahatma Gandhi



Woke up to the disheartening news that some innocent people were the victims of a cruel war in which they played no part in…one they didn’t want in the first place….which only exists because of a few greedy individuals who want to hang on to every inch of land they could get. It’s not fair…...for those who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and had to pay the ultimate price…..it’s not fair for their loved ones to have to go through the rest of their lives trying to get over it……

And at the same time, here in another part of the world, a person on morning TV was winging about having to pay an extra dollar for a coffee at the airport ………….!!!&^##!*!

It’s a funny place…this world……..some people are worried about which restaurant they are going to tonight and what they are going to wear…when some others are wondering whether they will be able to find a couple of bucks to feed their children …at least this one meal for the day…………………..
Some people are worried about the new furniture they are hoping to buy and whether it will blend in with the existing interior………..whereas some others are very grateful to have found a canvas shelter in the refugee camp along with hundreds of others………..on the gravel bed…….

But I guess that the world has been like that since the beginning of time…….even in ancient times there were wars, where innocent people were killed for no fault of theirs….…. Empires have risen and empires have fallen….. from the Roman empire to the British.
There will always be wars even in the far future…….people fighting over things that sometimes doesn’t even mean anything! …. like the Jammu-Kashmir border struggle. Both countries have massive land masses but after more than half a century, are still fighting for a small piece of land in the cold mountain tops… that is neither arable nor habitable.

It’s a funny place …this world…..one has to put an effort into keeping oneself sane……. Accepting that getting all worked up with issues that one has to face on a personal level isn’t really the end of the world.

Glorifying Death

I thought of writing this post when I saw this news article in the BBC. Two girls aged 16 in Perth, Australia had killed their friend (aged 15) and buried her. Why?... just to see if they would feel any remorse afterwards. This has taken place almost one year ago, after the court hearing they have now been sentenced to life in prison.

Isn't that shocking?

In a slightly unrelated note recently there has been a lot of talk about a certain 'EMO sub-culture' here. Due to a double suicide of two teenage girls in Melbourne who belonged to that culture, and a murder of another teenage girl in Adelaide.

Emo means something close to over emotional, and are usually unhappy and pessimistic. Self-infliction i.e. cutting or harming oneself with knives or sharp objects are common among them. (I'll write a separate one on this) But generally their view of life is gloomy and they have a way of 'glorifying death and murder'.

I seriously don't know where these people get this attitude from. But I have a feeling (I maybe wrong) that tv programmes contribute to this mentality.

Last night on tv, there were 2 crime scene investigation stories on one channel back to back, another murder story on another and a violent prison break story on another.
The day before I watched half of CSI-NY which is a very popular tv series all over the world. And not forgeting the other CSI Miami and CSI Las Vegas which have become quite popular. Anyone who watch this type of drama know how in agonising detail they present the murder. Every small step taken by the murderer to cover up, and every little clue the investigators pursue to find out the truth. The stories really are captivating and addictive.

However, I personally believe that these put ideas into people, specially young ones. Teen years are quite hard for children, and they can be confused and mislead very easily.

I very well remember when I was little there was a drama on tv in which a person hangs himself and commits suicide. Later on in the week there was a news on the paper (I remember my parents talking about it) A boy had tried out the suicide to see if it really works, and had died. Therearfter there was a roar about what should be broadcasted on tv.

The art of original thinking

Our society tries to define a person's intelligence by the level of his/her formal education. but does it really reflect the person's intelligence? I think not. Personally I'm beginning to think that 'formal' education actually restricts our mind frame, teaching us what some other person found out and telling us to carry on from where that earlier person left...in his path of thinking. Well, it is sort of trying not to re-invent the wheel, but at the same time it also restricts our minds to think along the lines of someone else, and does not encourage 'original thinking'.

Perhaps it's not just the teaching, but maybe the way we are taught. As students we are taught things and not encouraged to ask 'why?' and 'how?', and pretty soon we get used to 'hanging on to every word' the teacher say like in blind faith.

After reading Sir Richard Branson's autobiography I was wondering about this factor. He wasn't an A-grade student, not even close! But he understood that the authoritarian rules in his school were restricting the freedom of students, and wrote down a list of suggestions to the administration of the school at the age of 15. He challenged the ideas of most 'conservative' businessmen, and went on to break a lot of 'defined' rules. Somewhere in his book he mentions about the degrees and educational programmes on "entrepreneurship", well..it shouldn't be about sitting down and studying the subject but throwing away the books and getting down to work!

On the same note I was interested in finding out how Einstein coped with this. So I just finished skimming through a book called "The unexpected Einstein", trying to get some insight into this. Einstein excelled at maths in school, but was terrible in other subjects. But the thing to note is that he wasn't interested in what the teachers taught him, (and so he wasn't a favourite with his teachers at all) but he was interested in the subject and he learned it in his way. He didn't get bogged down with the 'formal teachings'. Once during a chemistry laboratory session, he had thrown away the teachers instructions and tried to do the experiment - his way, which had ended blowing up in his face. And later he dropped out of school by the age of 16.

Another example Martin Wickramasinghe, one of the most prolific writers of all time in Sri Lanka, dropped out of school early. But in my opinion Sri Lanka has't been able to produce a better author at handling the Sinhala language since. It's not just the language but his insight into the society and the people is simply amazing. In one of his books 'Yuganthaya' if I'm not mistaken he writes about how this character, a surgeon carries out a delicate and complex surgery on a patient. You can't stop but wonder at the intricate details of the human anatomy and the medical procedures he goes on to explain. How the hell did he get such a knowledge? (There weren't any Internet or the Discovery channel in his time!)

I remember our music maestro Premasiri Kemadasa once saying (by the way that's another example) "when you play music in a class room and ask the children to clap to the rhythm, if there's one child who doesn't seem to be clapping to the correct beat, take interest! he might be seeing something that all the others don't".

All in all it's difficult to define and mould a person's intellectual capacity and original thinking. But the guideline "not to believe in anything anybody says without giving it proper consideration" as preached by Lord Buddha in the Kalama sutra seems to be absolutely correct!
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"Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, ..... when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them."

Sounds like Greek?!

The common phrase "sounds like Greek" is usually used when something doesn't make any sense or when something is totally incomprehensible. Ironically a lot of words and parts of words we use in day to day life has been derived from actual Greek And most of which we do understand! Considering the fact that studies and knowledge in the western world had its origins in the Greek civilization, almost all fields of studies stem from Greek words, including the technical terms used within that subject area.

Philosophy: (philosophía), compounded from (phílos: friend, or lover) and (sophía: wisdom)
Biology: (Βìο) meaning life and (logia) meaning the study of
Anthtropology: (Anthro) meaning man or person + the study of
Archeology: (Arche) ancient, foundation + study of
Mathematics : (máthēma), which means learning, study, science
Physics: (phúsis) nature and knowledge of nature
Astronomy: (astron) stars and (nomos) law
History: (historía) meaning a learning or knowing by inquiry,
Zoology: (Zoon) animal + study of
Optic : appearance or look
Thus anything associated with Optic is something to do with eye/vision

So if you put two and two together you will understand how "Pilanthropy", "Opthalmology", "Optimeterist", "Architecture" came about


A few more examples

Geo: meaning earth
Geography, geology, geo-based

Democracy: demos, "people," and kratos, "rule"

Micro: small
micro meter, microscope

Mono: single
monotony, monomer, monogamous

Tele: far
tele-vision, tele-scope

And the list goes on.......

Heroes are born in times of turmoil

An item on the front page of Wikipedia reminded me that on the 30th of January (same day as today) but in 1948...... that's just days before Sri Lanka regained independence from the British Empire, In New Delhi, India, a man (not worth remembering his name) wished Mahatma Gandhi well, and then shot him to death.

That was the sad end of a great man, who introduced the concepts of "satyagraha", "passive resistance" and " non-corporation" to the world. It's not easy to describe him, so I won't go into that.

But, I've been reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography "Long walk to freedom", and the discrimination Gandhi faced while in South Africa is confirmed by the incidents Mandela describe there.

Both men were thrown out of a train (on different occasions obviously!). Gandhi because he refused to move out of the first class compartment since he had a valid ticket. And Mandela simply because he was black.

Both were sent to prison, and endured severe discrimination. (Apartheid was not in place till 1948, so Gandhi escaped that, which was designed to legally discriminate the blacks and the coloureds from the whites. Yeah.. there were separate legal acts that deprived them of their rights.)

And the ironic thing is that both of them were lawyers, who were very backwards at early ages (in his autobiography Gandhi recalls his first court case, when it was his chance to speak up as lawyer, he got up slowly, found out he couldn't utter a word, and sat back down again) And both men were pushed into the political world due to their experiences in South Africa.

Finally India gained independence in 1947 (Gandhi refused to become president) and in 1994 Mandela became the first black president of South Africa.

Happy ending....

But, the struggle is far from over, even today it's sad that racial discrimination is still a part of our society.

Imagination is more important than Knowledge

It's Monday again. Had a relaxing weekend reading "Crime & Punishment" by Dostoyevsky. Still some more to go. Went swimming on Saturday but was mostly at home.

But now back to work. Forget the relaxing times, it's time to bury your head in the books, or does it have to be that way?

The funny thing is that some of the greatest discoveries in science were actually made "out of the field", either by accident or when the person was not really thinking about his work. The concept of gravitation hit the mind of Newton when he was relaxing under an apple tree. Rontgen bought some rock material and wrapped it up in a photosensitive plate, and later found some weird patterns in the film, and not knowing what, he named them as X-rays. Alexander Fleming discovered Penicilline while doing some other experiment (which was not successful).
The structure of Benzene which baffled scientists for years was resolved after a Stradonitz had a bizzare dream. Maxwell first thought about electromagnetism when he was up in a mountain, and a lightning strike caused his compass to run wild. and the list goes on.

However, I guess that it doesn't mean that you should just sit around until something strikes you. If someone else encountered what Newton did under an apple tree, what might have probably crossed his mind would have been to eat the apple, but Newton had an inquisitive mind, and he went far beyond what was visible. And so did Maxwell and many others. So, to come up with bright ideas and new discoveries you still have to do the ground work while keeping an open mind. And as Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge".