The very basis of human civilization was leisure ... spare time in which to indulge curiosity and experiment.
-Edmond Hamilton in "The Ephemerae" (1938)
The recent Mumbai attacks bring this back with full force in more than one way. If you look at the lower life forms, much of their time and energy is spent in surviving, not leaving them much time to experiment or to build higher structures. As Terry Pratchett said in "Equal Rites" (1987): Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.
With us humans of course it is different. We farm, build walls, build hierarchical structures, and above all divide types of labors so that we can all get some time to try out different things, and generally relax. A clear move away from mere biological evolution.
The trouble is that we tend to take these things for granted and forget that it has been but a handful of centuries during which we have been trying to perfect this art. We are becoming civilized, but are far from being it. There are pockets of dissenters who would, without realizing that that is what it amounts to, pull us back towards barbarianism. We should of course resist that. What that means is that while this firefighting is done, we have to reduce our leisurely preoccupations, and give that time - call it an investment - to ensure that the structures we need in place are strong and secure and reliable. This includes a strong political will, an able law enforcement system, and, above all, law-abiding, non-stab-in-the-back'ing, non-shortsighted world citizens. In a welcome move many top business leaders in India have started saying that they need to take more interest in all the processes concerning the democracy.
If we value our time and wish our values to stay intact, we need to invest a fraction more of our time in examining and helping strengthen the basics.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Borg and Maharashtrians
The Borg: Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile. We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours.
-Michael Piller, "The Best of Both Worlds" Part I, episode of Star Trek: the
Next Generation (1990)
I have always been fascinated by the Borg. Though they are the enemies of starship, and of my heroes aboard the Earth spaceships, there is something about them that I find agreeable. It certainly isn't their ruthlessness. Very likely it is their will to assimilate knowledge in other species. And their mechanisms. The will to expand not just physically, but in those dimensions that
are not easily fathomable. The hive like structure was another fascinating aspect. We see it among bees and ants but not in what we term as higher beings. One possible reason is that as entities get more complex, passing on information back and forth, and sharing it with far strung quarters becomes time and
energy consuming. So distributedness is in fact a more sustainable model. (That is what makes a "controlling" God a difficult thing to digest - but that is for another day).
Back to the Borg. I find a curious thing happening in Maharashtra. People are turning away from assimilating other cultures, alien knowledge, alien influences in the name of retaining an authenticity of their own. At least the vocal ones are. They are forgetting that nothing can be authentic. Everything
is ephemeral and hence borrowed. You just have to dig deeper to realize that.
The backers of Marathi often forget that English rules mainly because it assimilated influences from other languages more easily (besides the fact that English speakers boldly went forth rather than drawing artificial boundaries around themselves). A language is only as flowery or terse as your understanding of it. To two lovers a wink on an eye means the universe. It doesn't even need words.
The starship crew generally defeated the Borg by springing a surprise. Something that the Borg did not expect. A uniqueness of humanity that the Borg had not assimilated from anywhere else. Maharashtrians need to do exactly that if they feel their culture is being threatened. Identify what is unique about Marathi or Maharashtrians. Not just items that others have under different names or variations, but truly unique.
On a related note, the civil system needs to be strengthened to see that justice is meted to everyone alike, that there is opportunity available for the fittest and the most industrious of people. Dissolve boundaries, make the world your own. To unite, does it have to be against something or someone?
Show of strength is futile. A show of will will go farther and be more effective.
-Michael Piller, "The Best of Both Worlds" Part I, episode of Star Trek: the
Next Generation (1990)
I have always been fascinated by the Borg. Though they are the enemies of starship, and of my heroes aboard the Earth spaceships, there is something about them that I find agreeable. It certainly isn't their ruthlessness. Very likely it is their will to assimilate knowledge in other species. And their mechanisms. The will to expand not just physically, but in those dimensions that
are not easily fathomable. The hive like structure was another fascinating aspect. We see it among bees and ants but not in what we term as higher beings. One possible reason is that as entities get more complex, passing on information back and forth, and sharing it with far strung quarters becomes time and
energy consuming. So distributedness is in fact a more sustainable model. (That is what makes a "controlling" God a difficult thing to digest - but that is for another day).
Back to the Borg. I find a curious thing happening in Maharashtra. People are turning away from assimilating other cultures, alien knowledge, alien influences in the name of retaining an authenticity of their own. At least the vocal ones are. They are forgetting that nothing can be authentic. Everything
is ephemeral and hence borrowed. You just have to dig deeper to realize that.
The backers of Marathi often forget that English rules mainly because it assimilated influences from other languages more easily (besides the fact that English speakers boldly went forth rather than drawing artificial boundaries around themselves). A language is only as flowery or terse as your understanding of it. To two lovers a wink on an eye means the universe. It doesn't even need words.
The starship crew generally defeated the Borg by springing a surprise. Something that the Borg did not expect. A uniqueness of humanity that the Borg had not assimilated from anywhere else. Maharashtrians need to do exactly that if they feel their culture is being threatened. Identify what is unique about Marathi or Maharashtrians. Not just items that others have under different names or variations, but truly unique.
On a related note, the civil system needs to be strengthened to see that justice is meted to everyone alike, that there is opportunity available for the fittest and the most industrious of people. Dissolve boundaries, make the world your own. To unite, does it have to be against something or someone?
Show of strength is futile. A show of will will go farther and be more effective.
on valuable contributions
Thou shalt leave valuable contributions for future generations.
- 5th commandment of the Ethical atheist fromhttp://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/ten_commandments.html
I bumped in to this interesting website recently and the 5th commandment in particular caught my eye. What they mean is that your facts are based on facts discovered by others (just like a dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees more than the giant). You should make a note of those and leave a legacy behind so that generations that follow may be able to make use of them. That is all very well and very positive advice to provide and is indeed worth emulating.
However, the reason it caught my eye was the very quirky interpretation it launched somewhere deep within me that made me inwardly smile. Having seen so many claims from people at all levels about how all knowledge future and past is contained within religious sacred books (e.g. vedas, bible etc.) I was immediately convinced that what the author meant was that do not be oversmart and do all the work yourself, but leave some contributions for future generations. What point is there if you do all the fun stuff and leave the others to have no "aha" moments of their own?
All work and no play make Jack rather dull even if Jack be the master of all trades.
- 5th commandment of the Ethical atheist fromhttp://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/ten_commandments.html
I bumped in to this interesting website recently and the 5th commandment in particular caught my eye. What they mean is that your facts are based on facts discovered by others (just like a dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees more than the giant). You should make a note of those and leave a legacy behind so that generations that follow may be able to make use of them. That is all very well and very positive advice to provide and is indeed worth emulating.
However, the reason it caught my eye was the very quirky interpretation it launched somewhere deep within me that made me inwardly smile. Having seen so many claims from people at all levels about how all knowledge future and past is contained within religious sacred books (e.g. vedas, bible etc.) I was immediately convinced that what the author meant was that do not be oversmart and do all the work yourself, but leave some contributions for future generations. What point is there if you do all the fun stuff and leave the others to have no "aha" moments of their own?
All work and no play make Jack rather dull even if Jack be the master of all trades.
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