August 14, 2005 – 11:09 pm
I’m falling in love with blogging. I’ve never kept a personal diary, but always wanted to. The opportunity to share my thoughts (even if the line of thinking isn’t always ‘complete’ i.e., there’s no clean resolution at the end of each thought) and have others comment, provide feedback, and tell me theirs is invaluable. I can’t help but believe that over time, in aggregate, I will find more answers than I would have on my own. Certainly, I have already found a different kind of community.
So back to the theme of this one. I see information and opportunity as two of the key (if not the key) drivers of a lot of what I observe around me.
First, information: control of information is critical in most Indian families – information is power, and those in power limit access to information for those they want to keep less powerful than themselves. This could be husbands keeping wives less informed than themselves (a common occurance), the arab rich keeping information out of the hands of the common arab, the chinese government controlling information access to the common chinese…the list goes on. What we’re seeing globally is the loss of control over information. The media are key to this loss of control..the internet, print media, satellites, globalization etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m waiting to see what happens as the billions of Indians, Chinese, Africans and Latin Americans who do not have open access to information get it more and more over the coming decades.
Second, opportunity: I think the root cause of a lot of the ‘violence’ we see in the world is lack of opportunity. And I specifically mean economic opportunity – the opportunity to rid yourself of hunger, thirst, disease and other basic human needs. A person without opportunity has no hope. This is where faith steps in. Because religions brings back some form of hope (the hope of salvation, nirvana, etc). Lack of opportunity combined with lack of information leads to billions of people following the words of those who control them. Typically, this is religious and political leaders who promise some form of ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ if those listening do what they are told.
So how do we spread opportunity to those that don’t have it? And what role can an individual play in this?
Opportunity, to me, is the key to America’s dominant global position right now. I came here for it. So did almost everyone I know who wan’t born here.
I will be writing more on this topic over time as I think a lot of the public policy and foreign policy ‘answers’ lie in laws/policies/rules that in some way impact opportunity for the common man.
August 7, 2005 – 11:12 pm
Sometimes at work, we talk of ‘parent pleasers’. This is the category of kids who adore parental and societal adulation, and do what they can to act and succeed in the way that their families and communities love. Parent pleasers happen to make great employees. Until about 5 years ago, I was one.
Then I realized that although I was pretty well loved by others, there was something missing for me. It certainly seemed that I didn’t know myself well emotionally. Perhaps this was because the ‘parent pleaser’ in me was focused more on the outside than on the inside.
5 years ago, I decided I would say what I really felt was right – and act only in a way I believed supported my personal beliefs. I also decided it was all right to change my mind. In fact, it was good to do so. After all, I can hardly claim to know everything. Quite the contrary, I have what we call a strong 80-20 approach to life. Which means I form opinions (also known as hypotheses by those close to me) based on my instincts, experiences and what little I know. And I feel free to change these opinions or hypotheses based on what I learn.
The question that bothers me, especially coming from a relatively traditional Sikh Indian family is: what is the role of compromise in my life? I often tell myself that as long as I live in a way that would leave me satisfied on my death bed, I was doing all right. But is this really the case? Or will I have regrets that I didn’t compromise more? What role does compromise play in your life?
Education as a topic is of immense interest to me. I have seen what it has done for India i.e., created an educated populace that was primed for the opening of the capitalist pump in 1991, and positioned to harness economic opportunity to create immense economic growth and social value for India and Indians (e.g., great accumulation of wealth in American Indians, increased living standards, more jobs, hopefully an eventual reduction in poverty).
But as I go about my day to day life and interact with people both at work and socially, I can’t help but protest at the missing link in education worldwide: the lack of education on personal financial management and communication skills.
I feel the average individual I meet is relatively unequipped in both these skill sets which I believe have a disproportionate correlation with personal financial and professional success. Shouldn’t we be lobbying hard to get these courses included in both at the high school and college level?
We just saw an episode of 30 days in which a white american practising christian goes and lives for 30 days in Dearborn MI with a muslim family on the condition that he must live like them and answer the call to prayer 5 times a day.
The program was really eye-opening. First, I learned that Islam, Judaism and Christianity come from the same religious lineage. I think I knew this somewhere deep in my brain, but it was nowhere near top of mind so wasn’t a part of my daily ruminations. But the real debate this program raised in my mind is this: What should the 1.4 billion muslims in the world be doing about the actions of terrorist’s who are taking innocent people’s lives in the name of their god?
Should they feel somehow responsible? Do they have a special duty to severaly condemn the terrorist’s actions? Or are they the victims themselves? How must they feel now that their very core beliefs and their beloved religion of Islam is now being thought of as a breeding ground for fundamentalism and terror? Even open minded, liberal folks today are drawing the conclusion that Islam must be part of the problem here. After all, it can’t be mere coincidence that a huge proportion of the ever-increasing number of terrorist incidents are planned and executed by muslims.
What do you think?
November 9, 2008 Addendum
I really think this issue and question applies to all religions. I have seen a huge rise in religious fundamentalism (really across many/all religions) in my life, and in many religions violence is “justified” in the name of god. What should other more peaceful followers of the same religions do? How do they separate themselves from the fundamentalist minority (yes, it is typically a minority) who taint the image of others in their religion through their actions?
