on importance of Gurus in a learner's life

My two cents on teachers/gurus:

In the real world, there is no such thing as 0% or 100% or infinity. Everything is in between. The guru is important - yes. But to say that the guru is God and decides the student's fate... is a little on the extreme side. What is the logical conclusion of this? Children who pass through 18-odd years of obeying all orders from one human being will only grow to yet again obey all orders of another. In a system of unquestioning adulation and respect, there is no opportunity for the follower to cross-check on the abilities of his/her leader.

I know nothing about the Gurukul system, but I have been a teacher myself for an year and in an organisation where the importance of the Guru was constantly drilled into our heads, and where my students were the typical helpless slum children that have no one but me to look up to. I've seen that it's all too tempting to assume the powers of a God, to believe that I alone hold the keys to 34 destinies. I've been through that and came out despising myself for the monster I had become in the process. There are some roles and structures that had best be left to the Gods.

After that experience, I have interacted and lived for a considerable time with unschooling children and their parents. What I found was that rather than the absence the all-so-critical guru, these kids had innumerable gurus all around them, and had developed an ability to pick and choose the ones most suited for the circumstances - to follow what was meaningful and discard what wasn't. They learned flash programming from me for an hour and then went on to create some amazing films, without even once having to elevate me or lower themselves. We exchanged skills like equals. And then again, in many aspects they became my Gurus and I learned immeasurably from them.

I would say that we should live in a multiplayer world, filled with multiple paths, players, options and directions.

And just like how the importance of a guru in a child's life is so often touted as critical, it is said with equal gusto by often the same parties that competition is essential to create a good and successful human being. Today there is mounting evidence that this isn't true either. What else in our age-old wisdoms may be debatable?

Further reading: Children Educate Themselves IV: Lessons from Sudbury Valley

Download and distribute Khan Academy hindi/urdu videos

http://www.youtube.com/user/KhanAcademyHindiUrdu

Follow the instructions below, to download these Hindi-language educational videos from youtube (the whole lot!), and then distribute them to learners who are more comfortable in Hindi / Urdu :

1. You should be using Firefox web browser : http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

2. Install this extension: http://msram.github.io/bytubed/dev-versions/1.1.2a2.xpi (save to your computer, then drag and drop it on top of the open Firefox browser.)

3. Install this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/ (download manager)

4. Restart the browser (or close and open again)

5. Go to the Chemistry Humari Boli page: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB45AB2F6BC5D1813

6. Right-click in a blank (non-clicking) space and select "ByTubeD"




7. A selection window pops up. There are 112 videos on this playlist. So select All, then scroll to the bottom of the list and de-select the last few videos by pressing and holding Ctrl key. Set the settings to how you see here: MP4 360p quality, Generate Links. Keep any destination folder for now. And then press Start.



8. Wait for some time. It will process all the videos one by one. In a minute or so a new page will be opened in Firefox with all the videos listed. Here, again in an empty space, right-click and select DownThemAll > DownThemAll




9. Another window pops up. Choose your folder, type ".mp4" under Fast Filtering (this should select all our files), and Start.



10. Now your downloads should start. All the best! Please repeat the same for all such collections...




call me up on +91-966-583-1250 if you have any questions!
Cheers!
Nikhil

Passive consumers Vs Active participants

I have some problems with "Atithi Devo Bhava" >> Guests are God,
or the commonly accepted rules of engagement when guests have come over.

I would like to propose an alternative philosophy : Insaan Hain Hum >> We are People.

Imagine having 10 people coming over to your home for 2 days.
Compare 2 different scenarios:

They are your guests. Atithi Devo Bhava. You are the host. You have to make proper arrangements to cater to their needs. You have to cook food for all of them. You have to go and get the ingredients for the food. You have to pay for all the food consumed by them. You have to make provisions for the sleepover. You have to maintain the toilet and supply the hot water. You have to make sure each guest is properly entertained. You have to ensure nothing in your house gets damaged. You cannot do the chores you had planned and have to attend to your guests. Your normal way of life is disrupted. Work increases and leisure is zapped.

They are people. Insaan Hain Hum. You are a person like they are. We'll refer to the combine as "we". We will make all arrangements needed. Some of us will opt to cook the food for everyone; you may or may not join. Some of us will opt to fetch the ingredients for the food. We will split all the costs amongst ourselves. We will manage the sleepover and make any adjustments necessary. We will maintain the toilet and take care of the water. We take full responsibility for entertaining ourselves. We take full responsibility for making sure your house suffers no damage due to us. We will take over and complete your chores as much as we can in gratitude for this hospitality. Your normal way of life gets comradeship and extra assistance. Work is reduced and made more fun in company; leisure gets addons.

After they leave, you have to clean everything up.  You might hear complaints later on on what all went wrong when they were over. You will never want to have this many people over at your place for as long as you live.

We will clean everything up before we leave. You will hear talk later on on what a great time everybody had, and fond recollections of all the accidents. You will look forward to having them come over again.

So. Which line of action do you think is the better one?

This is the difference between passive consumers and active participants. Which group do you want coming over?

Online action CAN bring real change

This is in reply to the statement I hear now and then about internet activism, clicking on online petitions, forwarding emails, sharing links, taking pledges etc not making any real, practical change in the world.

I'd like to say here that the statement above is false. Not that I'm saying the opposite is true, but that the statement above is false in the sense that it is incomplete and by lack of being complete, it gives a false message to a reader who may think that it is complete.


By personal experience I have seen that merely an email campaign that includes writing stuff, putting stuff together, and emailing large numbers of people, inviting people to participate simply online, while at the time simply living my normal life and doing my normal things, has had real, practical effects.

And I mean a complete reversal of a bad action, I mean actual money getting deposited in a bank account (ka-chink!), I mean people holding positions of authority having to admit a wrongdoing. Real change has happened. And not in the distant past or in another country: it happened around this time last year, in Pune, India. Just by sending emails to a limited group of people. If you want to dig into the details of this, contact me sometime, or see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2fy7pY3iqc (it's 44min long! and sorry but you'll have to see all of it to understand the matter)

What the complete picture entails, is that the online action can do a job of thawing the ice, heating the pot, of paving the way to on-the-ground action. It can act as a converger of hearts and minds. It can unite people behind a cause. And it DOES make a difference. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not in that particular case. But it does. If not in body then in mind. Because such is the irreversible nature of awareness: once you are aware of something, even if you don't do anything about it, you're very likely to stay aware and not get fooled in that department again. If you've ever done chemistry seriously, you'll know that there is no such thing as 0% or 100% concentration in the real world.

I'd like to invoke an old phrase once more :

Knowledge is power.

And add a line to it :

Awareness makes change possible.

If you're feeling curious, you can go to Avaaz.org or change.org and see examples on their website of petitions that made a difference, that brought about real change on the ground or that set the ball rolling. In scientific circles, it takes only one practically observed event that doesn't follow a theory, to disprove that theory. Let's use that here as well. While all online actions can't be guaranteed to bring real change, it is equally untrue to say that every online action is absolutely hopeless. That is a lie. There is always hope, and it is convergent instead of divergent, meaning at some tipping point, hope WILL convert to action.

Which means that even a failed campaign of today only sets the stage for a successful one tomorrow. In a sense, if you support a cause that you know is right, you can never, ever really fail : that is a practical impossibility.

The change that you want to see in the world does not come from any one ninja master stroke. There will never be one person or one superhero who does all the work for you. There may be one initiator, but it will spread. It's more like drops of water coming together, that form great rivers. The drops will come from many different places. Similarly, actions that bring about change can come from many different places: including your facebook activity.

So, in the case where you CAN and WANT to take part in a physical effort to bring change on-the-ground, DO IT. And in the case where you can't or don't want to do it for whatever reason, don't. Similarly, if you can and want to sign an online petition or share something on your social profile, or forward something to spread awareness about an issue that you care for, then instead of listening to all that "be realistic, yaar" advice,

GO AHEAD AND DO IT

and be the drop that converges into a mighty river.

Stop watching TV

Stop watching TV.

It is a well-established and proven tool for social control, which gives you completely wrong notions about the world around you, and which makes you behave in ways a normal human being wouldn't. You don't need me to prove it to you... just google it and you'll come across innumerable research, campaigns, etc.

By watching News on TV, many of you (especially the men) may think that you're beating the game, you're not getting trapped into those stupid soaps and reality shows. But you're wrong there. It's even more dangerous than watching entertainment.

Why? Well, with watching entertainment on TV, you know from advance that this is entertainment only and for awareness about what's going on in your world, you'll need to look around.. newspapers, internet, talking with friends and colleagues. But after watching news on TV, you feel like your awareness needs have been met! 

Compare the two scenarios and just say out loud which one actually gives you news aka information, and which one simply feeds one sensational thing after another, repetitively? In which case are you left to decide on your own what is good or bad, and where are you told that this is good, this is bad? In which case are your emotions exploited?

Who owns the TV Stations? Who funds them? Would they stand to benefit more by giving you the hard facts, or by keeping you glued more and more to them?

Keep your wits about you. Stop watching TV.

And this comes from personal experience. Take a look at the articles on this blog. See my recent Facebook posts. Over the past 10 years, if there was one thing that contributed to my thinking and helped me question and understand the world better, it was this. I gradually stopped watching TV, it stopped being part and parcel of my life.

If you're interested, watch these episodes, "How TV ruined your life" : http://www.youtube.com/user/conspirates/videos?query=how+tv+ruined+your+life

Incredibly funny, incredibly correct.

A personal catalog / database to manage movies etc

The last few days I was looking for ways to organize my several documentaries, ted talks, ebooks etc in a convenient, local way using tagging so i can find and manage them better. The problem with putting these guys into folders is that there are videos which may pertain to more than just one category. So there might be one video relevant to unschooling and globalisation and off-grid living; and there would be other videos which are relevant to only unschooling and globalisation. And then there are some nice animations in every segment so I'd want a way to find them too.

I'm sure anyone's who's ever collected something must have had this problem. On the internet, websites solve that issue by putting tags or categories on their articles and one article can have more than one tag or category. I've done that with Jugaadibility and it's been wonderful.

I wanted to bring that convenience, as well as ability to search instantly, as well as the possibility of adding whatever info I want to about the videos, to a personal computer, to a personal collection that I can even take along on a pen drive or hard disk to other computers, without having to install anything, and independent of the OS. And it had to be organic: I should be able to add tags, remove them, add more files etc as I go along.

I couldn't find anything on the net that could help me with this, so this week I went DIY and made it, using a technology called "tiddlywiki" that I've previously used for work, to wreak havoc somewhere, and which I use as a personal journal now. The whole database/catalog is in one single .html file, and has a creation wizard with neat instructions inside itself, so anyone can make their own catalog using this!

As always, I'm sharing it with the world, under Creative Commons, so everyone is free to take it, use it, modify it and share it.

You can get it from here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7z787xi8aqy7u1/tiddlywiki%20database.zip?m

Do share with friends you know who want help with managing their movies/collections!

The true purpose of schooling organizations

Had a great conversation with a former colleague in Teach for India (TFI) and a friend yesterday, and I'd like to share a thought experiment we did.

Given a kid from the slums who goes through all the compulsory factory schooling that TFI wants her to Vs. a kid from the slums who drops out early and learns life living on the streets,

Which one of those kids, following Zinn's train of thoughts, is going to be more obedient to authority when the shit hits the fan?

So if you wanted to make a world that is free of the oppressive structures that are poisoning the world of today, would you rather compulsorily educate (referring to TFI's model) the children of the poor, or leave them be?

Moreover, if you were a big MNC that had everything to lose if the masses ever figured out how you were plundering them and became disobedient, which organizations would you fund as your CSR, to safeguard your continued profits?

The missing child abuse

There's a very helpful graphic being shared these days on what sort of actions are child abuse.

However, I felt that it misses out one of the most widespread forms of child abuse taking place today:

The act of holding human beings in physical confinement against their natural wishes, of ordering them to do what you judge to be best for their future (the judgement being sorely under-researched and prejudiced), and creating elaborate structures to justify that confinement as being good for them while neglecting the consequences that are resulting from it.

Right to free and compulsory education? Bullshit.

No one should be made to do anything compulsorily, no matter what the justification. This is one of the most basic human rights accorded to every human being, including children who are humans first. If this provision is to be bent even a little for realism, it should only happen at the hands of the people who are closest to that child. Outsourcing it to people who have nothing to lose and much to gain from violating this basic human right, is what we today known as schooling.

Sure, it may be everywhere and generally accepted as necessary today. But so was slavery, so was colonialism, so was women's repression, so is reckless consumption of fossil fuels, so are wars, so is bailing out large irresponsible corporations with taxpayers' money. In case you forgot, all those practices were also being done in the name of the greater good. Just because the status quo tells you something, doesn't make it automatically right. It must be held and inspected in its own light, and the devil in the details brought out instead of grandiose rhetoric.

Intellectual frustration Vs Unconditional sharing

A familiar complaint from the "intellectual" facebookers (Yes, I'm one of them!):

You post an article that's in all likelihood more informative than anything you've got to say and most people just ignore it. You post a rant or express an opinion of your own and suddenly everyone's interested. That's actually rather sad....Has anyone else found themselves noticing this pattern regarding their posts on FB? :/

My comment on that:
Common mistake we make: blame people instead of analyzing the surrounding structure. Your reasons for being on FB may differ from those of others. And no one has any authority to judge which are the right reasons and which are the wrong.

Anyways, if you're keen on public sharing then make your post settings to public, that way they're "out there" for someone unknown to catch. (A parent in Nagpur recently contacted me and thanked me for gathering Khan Academy subtitles which I'd done and put out there last year, it helped his daughter in preparing for her 11th exams. I'm high on random gratitude right now!) Also blog in parallel. Be like a tree : give out your ideas and let them be spread wherever, without bothering or monitoring any "success rate"

Here is one who...

An invite to anyone and everyone:

If there was one sentence you'd like to be said about you after you have
passed on from this world (aka died as in dead), what would it be? Fill
in the blanks:

Here is one who ______________________________________________________

So, put yours in the comments below! No need to sum everything up in one
sentence; you can always come back to put in more! And don't try too
hard to be accurate.. nobody's judging or anything. Let's think out of
the box, we'll have more fun that way.

Let me start off:

Here is one who always spoke his mind.

Feedback to wikipedia

Feedback I gave to wikipedia in a survey form that came after its donation page:

Go a little easy on people who are starting to contribute; love,
encourage and forgive them instead of being so critical and punishing.
Create page-tags/templates that can illustrate the fact that it's a
work-in-progress, assign this status by default on new articles so a
newbie isn't expected to already have advanced skills (which is a
stupid, stupid thing wikipedia is doing right now. Adding references and
templates is difficult, period. Don't expect a person with less than 50
edit counts to know or even want to learn about it). When a visitor
comes at a page, maybe an age or number of edits can be displayed at the
top to convey an idea of how mature or immature the article is.

Having permanent-tenure editors is as bad an idea as having permanent
bureaucrats or government leaders: There should be limited terms and
off-periods between them and retirement times; that will be good for the
editing community and will encourage editors to pass the baton on rather
than be in a permanent status contest of entrenchment, edit-counts,
deletions etc that I see at present. I got totally turned off at the
last wikipedia meetup I attended in my city when people started showing
off their edit-counts and were treating them like army medals. Many of
the veteran editors today would never have participated in Wikipedia if
they'd faced the kind of treatment given to newbies today. Obviously,
this is an unsustainable model and headed for collapse when the present
generation of editors dies out. Remove any element of competition; there
is no such thing as healthy competition. There is no need for
wikipedia's editors to have an obsessive compulsive quality control
behaviour : we are NOT competing with peer-reviewed journals or
mainstream publications; we are NOT supposed to be 100% accurate
"no-matter-what". That much is obvious in the disclaimers; we need to
remind the editors lobby about it. Quality is achieved through time,
love, room for experimentation and prolonged attention; not through
rushed editing and deletions. Beware of throwing out the baby with the
bathwater.

And then there's the mainstream bias flaw. If wikipedia were around in
the decade before WW2, then going by its guidelines its content would
have been more and more encouraging of the Nazis, as its references are
mostly mainstream and well-entrenched institutions. And owing to the
influence it exerts, it would have helped the powers-that-be. That
situation hasn't changed today either: wikipedia is not being neutral
but rather helping the predominant world powers by according more
credibility to richer, bigger and well-entrenched media institutions who
reflect the wishes of the status quo. If by now we know that New York
Times, Fox News, Time, Wall Street Journal etc were so encouraging of
the Iraq invasion and by now it's obvious, with detailed factual
evidence to prove it, that they did shoddy reporting and acted as
mouthpieces of the then US administration, then why the hell are ANY
articles published by these organisations being quoted as references in
wikipedia articles? Instead of credibility, we are giving more weightage
to clout. And there's no way for anyone to really judge which
organisations are credible and which aren't. A personal blog entry might
have more truth than a front-page news article -- as it was before the
Iraqi invasion. If wikipedia is truly neutral then ALL viewpoints ought
to be given the chance to present themselves, instead of deleting some
references and keeping others. Heck, for the goal of neutrality it would
be advisable to make it mandatory to mention to readers that so-and-so
paragraph is based on what mainstream media is saying, so please tread
with caution. I like wikipedia, but 20 years from now, people may look
back at it as a liar and a mouthpiece of the status quo. We need
policies to fix the mainstream bias and be more tolerant of citizen
reporting, in references.

I don't want to get used to stupidity

A snippet from a post that addresses the ongoing conflict between functionality and smoooothness of user interfaces

"there's the sentence, you can get used to it. Yes, I can. People can get used to all sorts of things, like labor in Siberia or prison camps in Laos, that does not mean you should be doing that if you don't have to. I don't want to get used to stupidity."

from http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gnome-3-6.html

I echo with this. Just how in communications we've (actually, you've) been losing honest communication in the name of more and more courtesy and manners, so too in this matter, of computing, we're losing useful.. usefullness (!) in the blind pursuit of making everything super-smooth and minimal.

To deal with this, one thing we need to do is take off the unidirectional assumption of time in software. It is possible for an earlier version to be better than the latest version. There should be an acceptance for refusing to stay up-to-date all the damn time.

Especially regarding the new main interface that has come in Ubuntu, after ubuntu 10 :
   _   _
  (^!^)
 ~\O/~
 

Data visualization help

Wanted : programming help

I'm looking for a software tool, hopefully web-able, that can take data like a budget distribution and visualize it in the way the "Disk Usage Analyzer" works in Ubuntu/Linux.


The important part is the input: Rather than being top-down, it should be able to add things bottom-up the same way the DiskUsageAnalyzer weighs all the individual files and builds up the distribution to give us the final picture.

The trick: Instead of taking a file's SIZE, it can take a number stored inside the file (it could be a simple text file or .ini file)

This software example leaves out the last step of listing/visualizing the actual files. Naturally my software would cover that too.

Why I want this: It's not just budget allocation... it can be any application where we can use bottom-up adding up and infinite, non-linear breakdowns. One sector may have 3 elements and it may stop there; another sector may have 2 of those elements breaking down further. And over time, one black-box-like section may open up to reveal its components. I'd like it to be as flexible as putting a simple file in the folder.

This could also have a feature of "missing departments". Example: Education dept gets 20 crores. Broken down into its various programs, the programs might add up to 15 cores. 5 crores unaccounted : this could be programmed to show up in this interface.

So.. anybody up for the challenge?
Contact me on nikhil [dot] js [at] gmail.com
Phone : +91-966-583-1250

short video on factory Vs democratic education

Video: Make Your Voice Heard: Discover Democratic Education (2:35 mins)

My comment there:
thanks for sharing this!
Factory schooling and the teacher-centric paradigm are based on an underlying assumption that the average person is stupid and cannot be trusted to act in the best interests; that we need "experts" to guide and "educate" everyone.
The trouble, of course, starts when the experts inevitably put their own interests first.
Democratic learning counters that assumption. The most ordinary people, when given the freedom, will make better choices than experts.

Global Service Jam 1-3 March 2013

There's an event called Global Service Jam happening in several cities across the world and in India on March 1 2003.

The tagline: You have 48 hours to change the world.

My friend Rohny attended it in Mumbai last year and had amazing reviews of it.

Here's a description:
On 1 March 2013, people who are interested in service and using a design-based approach to problem solving and creativity will meet all over the globe. In a spirit of experimentation, co-operation and friendly competition, teams will have 48 hours to develop brand new services inspired by a shared theme. On Sunday at 3pm, they publish them to the world.

So it's cutting across sectors, is open to all including kids, and has lots of on-your-feet thinking and brainstorming together, spread across 3 days. The theme will be given when the event begins.

Check out the website http://www.globalservicejam.org

Imagination over experience

A week back, in a conversation with an amazing person I've recently gotten to know, she remarked about why is she seeing so many dead peoples' quotes in poster-images being shared over facebook - she'd rather know about what the living have to say.

While I myself really enjoy seeing some very wise words being shared, I understood her point : What are we, the currently living generation, saying and believing? Why don't we exchange, as often, our ideas and thoughts? Why do we need great (and dead) people -- the elites, to monopolize wisdom? After all, even their famed wisdom has been inherited from the wisdom of the crowds. Every person is capable of displaying exemplary wisdom, foresight, understanding of any situation.

So I've started off with this:

And it's shared in an album in my facebook profile over here.

Climate reality: Don't mix cause and effect

It's not about debunking conspiracies just for the sake of debunking conspiracies. It's about analysing the chain of facts and events and figuring out what's REALLY going on.

Came across this shared by a Page that I otherwise get quite useful posts from:

"Global Warming: 420,000 years of data proves that contrary to current belief today, the Vostok data shows us that CO2 increases lag behind temperature increases by about 800 years. This means that CO2 is not the cause of the increased temperatures, and global warming is not caused by man."
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/02/08/420000-years-of-data-proves-global-warming-is-not-man-made/

So,...
<Head smack> omg where's your logic gone off to? for 420,000 years CO2 increase happened AFTER temperature rise, and THAT warming of course wasn't caused by humans. Now for the first time in recordable planetary history, CO2 increases are happening BEFORE temperature rise. And then the natural systems will pick up from that and release MORE CO2 from the oceans and permafrost. This is the very core of the runaway global warming explanation.
Oh, and please tell us whether ANY of the CO2 increases of the past 420,000 years have ever reached the heights (390+ ppm latest) or acceleration rate of today's CO2 levels, in the ABSENCE of any major volcanic eruption or similar natural cataclysm?



from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

You know your soul's been touched when..

Wonderfully put by Bob Marley:

"Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can
completely turn your world around.

You tell them things that you've never shared with another soul and they
absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share
hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were
never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When
something wonderful happens, you can't wait to tell them about it,
knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to
cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool
of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you
are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the
things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful.

Place humanity above any religion

Shared on facebook by a friend:

A user on CNN (US): All religions have had periods in which they were not perfect. I think its fair to say that currently, the way Islam is practiced, women are repressed and mistreated. Yes, yes America over sexualized women and its not good for women, or society. But, this is Islam's time to fix its own injustices. Good Muslims, of which there are many, need to protest Sharia and tribal practices which are barbaric and not even in the scripture. All religions/societies have flaws. this is Islam's time. (Context: Saudi Arab Child murder case)

I wish to go deeper.

Many womens' rights activists I have met in the past months have categorically told me that all issues of womens' rights are at their very root, issues of human rights -- issues of women not being treated as human beings.

How about asking human beings (there we have a common ground) across the world to give basic human rights and liberties their rightful place : a veto over any philosophy or religion or management system whose this or that component may be in conflict with human rights?

From this position, we can actually tackle both the kinds repressions in the western and arab worlds (and of course, my own country has no reprieve) with the same stroke and prevent the core issue from getting side-tracked by cross-accusations.

our planet is a delicate flower

"This planet is not terra firma. It is a delicate flower and it must be cared for. It's lonely. It's small. It's isolated, and there is no resupply. And we are mistreating it. Clearly, the highest loyalty we should have is not to our own country or our own religion or our hometown or even to ourselves. It should be to, number two, the family of man, and number one, the planet at large. This is our home, and this is all we've got."

— Scott Carpenter, Mecury 7 astronaut, speech at Millersville University, Pennslyvania. 15 October 1992.

http://www.spacequotations.com/earth.html

Idealist Champion (ENFP) - Myers Briggs (MBTI) personality type indicators

I tried out a Myers-Briggs (MBTI) personality test at a friend's suggestion sometime last year, and this is what I got of it : ENFP.
Disclaimer: I don't want to make any indication that this is any accurate. Just sharing here, and I felt like I could relate with what I got.

http://www.keirsey.com/4temps/champion.asp

Like the other Idealists, Champions are rather rare, say three or four percent of the population, but even more than the others they consider intense emotional experiences as being vital to a full life. Champions have a wide range and variety of emotions, and a great passion for novelty. They see life as an exciting drama, pregnant with possibilities for both good and evil, and they want to experience all the meaningful events and fascinating people in the world. The most outgoing of the Idealists, Champions often can't wait to tell others of their extraordinary experiences. Champions can be tireless in talking with others, like fountains that bubble and splash, spilling over their own words to get it all out. And usually this is not simple storytelling; Champions often speak (or write) in the hope of revealing some truth about human experience, or of motivating others with their powerful convictions. Their strong drive to speak out on issues and events, along with their boundless enthusiasm and natural talent with language, makes them the most vivacious and inspiring of all the types.

How 2012 was for me

2012 : The year when I did and spoke exactly what I wanted to;

the year when I declared war (or rather, peace) on my fears;

the year when I took a stand and changed some things forever;

the year when I took the plunge down the rabbit hole and turned
everything I knew upside down and inside out;

the year when I saw everything coming together and fit in like an
immense jigsaw puzzle;

the year when I rekindledmy human connections and made more new ones
than I had in all my life earlier;

the year when my life transformed from a frightened race up a ladder to
a wide open field where I can go in any direction and get things going.

As a friend put it yesterday, the world, as I knew it earlier, has ended
and will never be the same again. Onward!
(this I'd posted on facebook and emailed to my close ones on 1st Jan)

Warning about civillization by Thomas Paine, 1795

Agrarian Justice
by Thomas Paine
1795

To preserve the benefits of what is called civilized life, and to
remedy at the same time the evil which it has produced, ought to
considered as one of the first objects of reformed legislation.

Whether that state that is proudly, perhaps erroneously, called
civilization, has most promoted or most injured the general happiness
of man is a question that may be strongly contested. On one side, the
spectator is dazzled by splendid appearances; on the other, he is
shocked by extremes of wretchedness; both of which it has erected. The
most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found
in the countries that are called civilized.

To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary
to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as
it is at this day among the Indians of North America. There is not, in
that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and
want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe.

Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called
civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. On the other hand,
the natural state is without those advantages which flow from
agriculture, arts, science and manufactures.

India loves Pakistan

This is an initiative to build a people-to-people bridge of peace and love between traditionally rival nations, through posters with messages of peace. It started between Israel-Iran and has since spread elsewhere. There was an inspiring talk about this posted on TED.com, you can see it here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/israel_and_iran_a_love_story.html

Check out the Israel Loves Iran facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/israellovesiran

I'm attaching the 2 posters I created, so you can get a feel of this.

So, IF you're interested, here's something you can do:
1. Send me a pic of yours, or a group pic (taking permission of everyone who's in it), and I can make a poster of it similar to the ones I've attached and send it back to you.
2. Upload it on facebook
3. Share it with me (https://www.facebook.com/nikjs - add me!) OR post it on https://www.facebook.com/IndiaLovePakistan (But note, I'm not managing that page)
4. If you're feeling nervous about putting your own pic, you could share a non-personal pic (like the handshake one I've put)

Apart from this, you can spread the love by sharing the posters I've posted on facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151435096111934.552341.703751933&type=3

The idea is to spread love and peace among the citizens of our countries. The common citizens : the boys, girls, men, women, grandparents... they are not evil; we all want to live a happy life and don't have any desire to kill or hurt anyone. We can skip over all our politicians, extremist elements and love each other, people to people. And if enough of us do that, then maybe one day we can end hostilities and have peace and friendship!

Additional: In case you're still feeling vary about "the evil enemy", see this short and brilliant blog article by a friend of mine who recently visited Pakistan :
http://ruchi2cents.blogspot.in/2013/01/journey-to-pakistan-whats-pakistan-like.html

Additional: Make your own poster! Download the ppts of these at http://www.4shared.com/dir/JolD5QKK/india_loves_pakistan.html and put your photos in, play around!

Eklavya 2.0

After hearing in depth the Eklavya story, nowadays I get pissed off when people bring up the ostensibly honorable Dronacharya-Eklavya teacher-student, guru-shishya relationship. In my view, the story demonstrates the merits of self-designed learning and acts as a stern reminder of the perils of giving too much credence to experts. But whenever it's narrated, I feel like there's this subconscious message being delivered that "caste reigns supreme" or "everyone has their place in society". This story needs a rewriting.

So, ladies and gentlemen, here's

Eklavya 2.0

---- Part 1 : Rejection Nation ----

Eklavya was a bright and talented little boy who was fascinated by archery and really wanted to master it. He found out that there's an ace archery teacher located quite nearby, went by the name of Dronacharya, was famous for mentoring the Pandavas.

enviro-education PJ

Completely irrelevant and illogical and phaltu joke (PJ) which connects the global education swindle with the ultimate macro-consequences of putting products of said education system in positions of influence and authority:

With so many people blindly chasing after degrees,
It's no wonder we're having global warming!

What are we, originally?

Please read some or all of the pages at http://peacefulsocieties.org/ and then come back here...

Over the last few months, I've been meeting people from different corners of the world who are narrating the same insights from their visits to indigenous lands. The same characteristics are cropping up from every continent, from tribes who have absolutely no connections to each other.

No competitiveness right from childhood,
sharing of resources,
community ownership,
absence of hierarchy,
frank and honest communication,
importance on happiness,
nonviolent behavior,
absence of greed,
and more.

In science, when we see the same characteristic showing up from multiple independent samples of a specimen, our diagnosis usually is that we've found an inherent characteristic of the specimen : something that arises out of its basic nature, not externally gained. So go figure :

What are the inherent characteristics of human beings in the natural state?

What are we, originally?

Opinion-o-phobia

You have to have the guts to form an opinion, to express it, to hold it, and to change it whenever you deem necessary.

The problem with conventional structures is that you fear you will be looked down upon if you change your opinions.

Because of the fear of being looked down upon, we find people taking the safer option of not really holding any opinion on issues that may involve a bit of uncertainty. This attitude then gets labeled as more "objective" or "professional" or "unbiased". We conveniently forget that we have to actually take decisions one way or the other and that the decision can only be made if any opinion is formed at all.

Let's raise our kids the way these peaceful societies do it

We have much to learn from the way these cultures raise their children, which ultimately leads to a society free from violence and abuse. One major factor I'm noticing: The absence of any sort of competitive behavior or competitive games.

http://peacefulsocieties.org/Society/Jadar.html

Think twice before blaming freedom of speech

When I shared my last article on the factors that lead to acceptance of eve teasing, I got a comment: "freedom of speech! the two-edged sword"

So I want to tackle this thought. Here's my reply:

wrong. satellite TV has been purposefully pushed because it is the best way for the state to homogenize the country. wired cable networks, given time, would have evolved to make their own local channels and have regional oriented content and discussions delivered - people to people. They couldn't be monitored by the govt. That's the real reason why they were closed. Now any content to be aired has to go thru the govt-industrial complex that controls the satellite broadcasts. They cut off voices from the communities which would have tackled these issues at a local level.