I was first thinking about handling depressed cases in the IITs and while finding out a way to identify such cases, I just ended up developing this community theory. What does the theory of social communities tell us about depression? Now (after reading the topic IV), we know that every person is associated with many social communities in life. His participation, whether it is active or inactive or moderate, etc., in the intra and inter community operations or communal and non-communal operations in relation with communities can tell us about the "person's mentality, behavior, character and the state or profile of states of his mind". To be more clear, his activity profile can tell us about his current mental state and variation or the change of his mental states with respect to different situations.
If a person is depressed, his activities will decline from the moment he starts experiencing the depression. A person who is depressed will start separating himself from the social communities he has formed. Here, It is assumed that every person is socially active even if he is associated with very less communities. Our concern is to check whether the person is active in the communities that he is associated with or not, but not to see in how many communities the person is active in. So, we can say that, depressed people participate least in the operations with in or outside the social communities he has formed for himself. Converse is also true except some cases where a person is less active in other communities but he is happy with the communities he has formed with family, girlfriend, etc. These exceptional cases can also be argued out and proved as some kind of depression because that particular person does not prefer to be active in the communities he has already formed in the society. If a person is depressed because of the activities in some communities, by avoiding that particular community related operations, the person can avoid depression by creating different communities which can keep him busy and active always or by keeping himself active in the non- depressing communities he already formed (no need to create new communities, in this case).
So, if a person is under performing then it is most likely that he might make his team under perform and so on. Best way to deal with such persons is to create a new community and put that particular person in that community or to increase the girl to boy ration of that particular community or to improve the intra and inter community operations. Similarly, if a community or social group is depressed or performing poor, similar methodology can be followed. The methodology here is to find out the cause of depression and to keep that particular person or community away from the operations or activities (communities in worst case) that cause depression.
Sree..!!!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Topic IV : Social Communities
Like topics II and III, this topic was also initially posted in my previous blog with the name "what's world?". I have had this idea about viewing a world as communities exactly 2 years back. I first wrote it in a notes and then entered it in the blog and now re-editing it again and making it more perfect:P. The theory goes like this....
A child starts understanding the world when he starts listening to his mother’s words, even when he doesn’t speak. The child notes each and every action of his parents and tries to copy and learn. Parents play a very major role in developing a kid to a complete man. Starting from telling him how to perform certain action to how to think or how to solve a day-to-day problem. Parents and kid together, here, form a smaller set of actions or operations, which affect the child’s mind(or behavior) a lot in the beginning. Later, when the child grows up, hey may be subjected to the interaction with the world through any means. So, parents introduce some beliefs, some knowledge and some truths (which they believe in) in to the child's mind, which together constitute the personality of the child. And when the kid starts speaking and walking, he is allowed to play with some kids of his age. His activeness in the activities performed by kids in absence of parents may also change his personality a lot. In other words, every experience he gains, by interacting with others, helps him in understanding the world better and better or helps him clarify his doubts or helps him satisfy his quest for knowledge.
So, the child forms a community here with his parents or family and similarly with the group of children with whom he was playing. Every person in his life is prone to be socially active through playing some role in different communities which are dependent on personal interests, dreams, goals, tastes, principles etc. So, now we can draw a conclusion saying that, when a person looks at the world from his point of view, the ‘world consists of many or sometimes infinite smaller or larger communities’. Communities may not be restricted to human communities. A person can form communities with his lover alone, or with his pets, or with a non-living object, or with himself. For example, Tom Hanks forms a community with Wilson, his pet football toy, in the movie Cast Away.
Now that a person is active in many communities, his role and how well he is active in his role or how effective he is active in inter personal operations like discussions, sharing interests, etc. of the respective communities will change his personality. Operations like working for dreams or goals, finding a better girl friend, having a social status as in buying a car or computer, being successful all the time, etc. make the society participate in the dog race. For example, for a company, the aspect profit making or retaining the market value or share is also some kind of social status or an operation. My Idea here is about the effect of the company's operations on a particular employee. And as we see because a person is active in many communities, the operations performed between the different communities also has an effect on personality. Even if the person is not active a community, the inter community operations still can effect due the trend and drive towards certain social goals of the society.
Rawls quotes a similar finding as “everybody shares an invisible contract with others when he is a part of some society or community so as to live a nominal life and to make sure that others also to live the nominal life. But, the fact here is that the absolute liberty is not assured to anyone, but at the same time a minimal liberty is assured. Though the context of Rawls is related to the philosophy of development, my point here is that, because the developmental issues are social they cause social effects like changing the people's mentalities toward viewing at things etc. For example untouchability divides all the people in a village into two different communities. The operations performed between these two communities affect their minds in two different ways; one, making the untouchables feel morally insignificant and limiting their scope of understanding of the world, or restricting themselves towards paying attention to social and economic development due to the slavery they did, or to have pessimistic attitude towards education, etc; two, in making the upper castes feel that they are extremely superior to the poor untouchables, or in making them treat untouchables as least category of human and so on.
This explains the inter-disciplinary nature of life. So the world is a group of infinite smaller communities, which may be common with one another in many cases. And these communities together constitute the visible reality of the world and so do set the minds of the world. The applications will be posted in the next topic :P.
Sree..!!!
A child starts understanding the world when he starts listening to his mother’s words, even when he doesn’t speak. The child notes each and every action of his parents and tries to copy and learn. Parents play a very major role in developing a kid to a complete man. Starting from telling him how to perform certain action to how to think or how to solve a day-to-day problem. Parents and kid together, here, form a smaller set of actions or operations, which affect the child’s mind(or behavior) a lot in the beginning. Later, when the child grows up, hey may be subjected to the interaction with the world through any means. So, parents introduce some beliefs, some knowledge and some truths (which they believe in) in to the child's mind, which together constitute the personality of the child. And when the kid starts speaking and walking, he is allowed to play with some kids of his age. His activeness in the activities performed by kids in absence of parents may also change his personality a lot. In other words, every experience he gains, by interacting with others, helps him in understanding the world better and better or helps him clarify his doubts or helps him satisfy his quest for knowledge.
So, the child forms a community here with his parents or family and similarly with the group of children with whom he was playing. Every person in his life is prone to be socially active through playing some role in different communities which are dependent on personal interests, dreams, goals, tastes, principles etc. So, now we can draw a conclusion saying that, when a person looks at the world from his point of view, the ‘world consists of many or sometimes infinite smaller or larger communities’. Communities may not be restricted to human communities. A person can form communities with his lover alone, or with his pets, or with a non-living object, or with himself. For example, Tom Hanks forms a community with Wilson, his pet football toy, in the movie Cast Away.
Now that a person is active in many communities, his role and how well he is active in his role or how effective he is active in inter personal operations like discussions, sharing interests, etc. of the respective communities will change his personality. Operations like working for dreams or goals, finding a better girl friend, having a social status as in buying a car or computer, being successful all the time, etc. make the society participate in the dog race. For example, for a company, the aspect profit making or retaining the market value or share is also some kind of social status or an operation. My Idea here is about the effect of the company's operations on a particular employee. And as we see because a person is active in many communities, the operations performed between the different communities also has an effect on personality. Even if the person is not active a community, the inter community operations still can effect due the trend and drive towards certain social goals of the society.
Rawls quotes a similar finding as “everybody shares an invisible contract with others when he is a part of some society or community so as to live a nominal life and to make sure that others also to live the nominal life. But, the fact here is that the absolute liberty is not assured to anyone, but at the same time a minimal liberty is assured. Though the context of Rawls is related to the philosophy of development, my point here is that, because the developmental issues are social they cause social effects like changing the people's mentalities toward viewing at things etc. For example untouchability divides all the people in a village into two different communities. The operations performed between these two communities affect their minds in two different ways; one, making the untouchables feel morally insignificant and limiting their scope of understanding of the world, or restricting themselves towards paying attention to social and economic development due to the slavery they did, or to have pessimistic attitude towards education, etc; two, in making the upper castes feel that they are extremely superior to the poor untouchables, or in making them treat untouchables as least category of human and so on.
This explains the inter-disciplinary nature of life. So the world is a group of infinite smaller communities, which may be common with one another in many cases. And these communities together constitute the visible reality of the world and so do set the minds of the world. The applications will be posted in the next topic :P.
Sree..!!!
Topic III : The Choice and The Change
Everything starts with a choice. Every situation/happening in our life starts with the choice which we have to make in the given time. The time limit might depend on things like competition, requirement of work to be completed, monetary deals etc. In other words, every situation poses a objective or subjective puzzle which can either have multiple answers or single answer. The choice we have make, sometimes, is so crucial that it can change our life with one incident. So, how do we take this decision of what choice we should make? On what basis we should do the decision making? If we made a choice once, is it correct to make a completely different choice next time?
In every situation, we generally look at the available options; think as deeply as we can to see the future; and then take the decision according that. It's like playing a chess match. For instance, if you have the ability to think 4 moves ahead, while playing chess, you think till all the possible moves ahead(i.e. 4^4 in your case) and decide to make a move. What if your opponent can think 5 moves ahead? It is quite possible that the so far best you have chosen will turn out to be wrong in the 5th move and your opponent has seen it. What happens now? You lost the game! So, if we have better ability we can take better decisions. Some times, even after having the ability to think ahead, we may end up taking not so better decisions due to the situational pressure either through time or money or through people. Now that you have less ability, you always end up taking the wrong(not so better) decisions? If we leave the decisions related to "monetary or any form of deals", then, I think, there is a way to maximize the loss. When it comes to decisions related to life, love, emotions, social relations etc., we can always go back to the same situation and change our decision.
Most of the guys I have seen are so confused that, they don't know what kind of career to take up after graduation. They don't know what they should look for. This is for those confused souls, who don't know what to do in life. If your dreams and goals are clear and if you are visionary and focused enough, you 'll end up taking right decisions. But, what to do in case of confused situation? Make the best possible decision right now and let the effects of the decision go on for a while and then reconsider the situation and edit/change the decision if needed. And keep doing like this, till the accuracy of your decisions converge or till you continuously find happiness because of the decisions you made.
The controversial topic which I want to discuss is "principles". Every man has certain principles in his life. Principles are also the decisions taken once in certain situations. In many cases, people stick to the decisions or principles even the situations are changed. And these principles become the principles of their life or their family or even the clan. The person who sticks to his decisions till the end of his life is going to suffer the most. It doesn’t mean we shouldn't have any principles which eventually control our life and put us in a right path to the wisdom we are wishing for. But these principles should not become a firewall to stop us from changing ourselves. As it is told in the Gita, "Change is the only thing that is constant and it essential for development". When do we realize that these principles are once a philosophical solution to the social developmental issues that once existed? When do we realize that these principles are mere decisions that we or someone else made. Why can't we think rationally and design our own principles/decisions which are more flexible and compatible with the current or contemporary world?
Every one's personality grows or character improves only when he/she thinks of the change. And again this change is not supposed to be expected for the society or from system or so. We are the ones who are supposed to change first before expecting the other things or others to change. Be an example first, and then suggest others to be. As Gandhiji said, "Be the change you want to be".
Sree..!!!
In every situation, we generally look at the available options; think as deeply as we can to see the future; and then take the decision according that. It's like playing a chess match. For instance, if you have the ability to think 4 moves ahead, while playing chess, you think till all the possible moves ahead(i.e. 4^4 in your case) and decide to make a move. What if your opponent can think 5 moves ahead? It is quite possible that the so far best you have chosen will turn out to be wrong in the 5th move and your opponent has seen it. What happens now? You lost the game! So, if we have better ability we can take better decisions. Some times, even after having the ability to think ahead, we may end up taking not so better decisions due to the situational pressure either through time or money or through people. Now that you have less ability, you always end up taking the wrong(not so better) decisions? If we leave the decisions related to "monetary or any form of deals", then, I think, there is a way to maximize the loss. When it comes to decisions related to life, love, emotions, social relations etc., we can always go back to the same situation and change our decision.
Most of the guys I have seen are so confused that, they don't know what kind of career to take up after graduation. They don't know what they should look for. This is for those confused souls, who don't know what to do in life. If your dreams and goals are clear and if you are visionary and focused enough, you 'll end up taking right decisions. But, what to do in case of confused situation? Make the best possible decision right now and let the effects of the decision go on for a while and then reconsider the situation and edit/change the decision if needed. And keep doing like this, till the accuracy of your decisions converge or till you continuously find happiness because of the decisions you made.
The controversial topic which I want to discuss is "principles". Every man has certain principles in his life. Principles are also the decisions taken once in certain situations. In many cases, people stick to the decisions or principles even the situations are changed. And these principles become the principles of their life or their family or even the clan. The person who sticks to his decisions till the end of his life is going to suffer the most. It doesn’t mean we shouldn't have any principles which eventually control our life and put us in a right path to the wisdom we are wishing for. But these principles should not become a firewall to stop us from changing ourselves. As it is told in the Gita, "Change is the only thing that is constant and it essential for development". When do we realize that these principles are once a philosophical solution to the social developmental issues that once existed? When do we realize that these principles are mere decisions that we or someone else made. Why can't we think rationally and design our own principles/decisions which are more flexible and compatible with the current or contemporary world?
Every one's personality grows or character improves only when he/she thinks of the change. And again this change is not supposed to be expected for the society or from system or so. We are the ones who are supposed to change first before expecting the other things or others to change. Be an example first, and then suggest others to be. As Gandhiji said, "Be the change you want to be".
Sree..!!!
Monday, January 19, 2009
Topic II : The Perfection and The desires
This is the main topic around which the "main aim of this blogging" lies which is "finding the answers to my questions". Though perfection is the concept on which I build the base to explain desires, the buzz word is "DESIRE". This essay covers the answers to the questions like "what do we desire?", "why" and "how". As, the answer for "how" part of the question is quite laborious and contextual, I would want to stress on why and what parts here. And the most importantly, I would like keep this essay more brief and precise to the point as the going deep would make it boring for reading........
Nobody has a clear notion of what his mentality is and so about life. In fact, there is no perfect or complete understanding of anyone's thoughts or anything. Nobody is perfect. Indeed nothing can be done perfectly. There are no absolute standards for anything and no absolute definitions for anything. That’s because nobody has a clear understanding of perfection, though everybody wants to be perfect. One can only conceive if one is better than the other but never decide that it’s the best.
Everybody wants to communicate perfectly his ideas to others. However the limitations of the language constrain the perfect communication. The meaning of a sentence to a listener is a mere concatenation of all the knowledge he has and the words spoken by the speaker. The words a speaker uses are once again an extraction out of all his knowledge of language and his perception about the subject of interest. For instance, to understand a person X completely, you should be the person XX who is the X in a similar world like the one existing on earth. Perception is the interpretation of the subject (or event) through one’s thoughts. Thus it’s a vicious circle.
So achieving perfection is like numerically trying to interpolate a highly complex non-linear function using the linear methods that are available. We keep trying to get an exact solution or in every iterative step that we take, we keep moving as close as possible to the exact solution but still we can't reach it. So, achieving perfection is like trying to count till infinity. Those initially who count look like a fools to us, but like a perfectionist after achieving it.
So, now that we want to be perfect and drive our actions to achieve this perfection, What exactly are we aiming at through these actions? At any point of time the only question that we raise is “If I do this now, will I be satisfied later?” If the answer is yes, we proceed with the action. The evaluation of satisfaction in future is personal. For some the satisfaction might be short term oriented while for others it may be till the end of their life (the concept of "choice" is introduced later). And the satisfaction is the 'satisfactory feeling that we have done right thing' earlier, if we look back in to our memories.
For instance, If I am working for my dreams, every step I take will affect my future. So, assuming that being happy is the term that defines my satisfaction, to be happy in future I should take my decisions in such a way that every decision in my chain of decisions is helping me maximize my "Satisfaction in future perspective". So, this is the only way I found to be happy both at present and future. :)
I want to thank sudheer for participating in the discussion and pouring his ideas.
Sree..!!!
Nobody has a clear notion of what his mentality is and so about life. In fact, there is no perfect or complete understanding of anyone's thoughts or anything. Nobody is perfect. Indeed nothing can be done perfectly. There are no absolute standards for anything and no absolute definitions for anything. That’s because nobody has a clear understanding of perfection, though everybody wants to be perfect. One can only conceive if one is better than the other but never decide that it’s the best.
Everybody wants to communicate perfectly his ideas to others. However the limitations of the language constrain the perfect communication. The meaning of a sentence to a listener is a mere concatenation of all the knowledge he has and the words spoken by the speaker. The words a speaker uses are once again an extraction out of all his knowledge of language and his perception about the subject of interest. For instance, to understand a person X completely, you should be the person XX who is the X in a similar world like the one existing on earth. Perception is the interpretation of the subject (or event) through one’s thoughts. Thus it’s a vicious circle.
So achieving perfection is like numerically trying to interpolate a highly complex non-linear function using the linear methods that are available. We keep trying to get an exact solution or in every iterative step that we take, we keep moving as close as possible to the exact solution but still we can't reach it. So, achieving perfection is like trying to count till infinity. Those initially who count look like a fools to us, but like a perfectionist after achieving it.
So, now that we want to be perfect and drive our actions to achieve this perfection, What exactly are we aiming at through these actions? At any point of time the only question that we raise is “If I do this now, will I be satisfied later?” If the answer is yes, we proceed with the action. The evaluation of satisfaction in future is personal. For some the satisfaction might be short term oriented while for others it may be till the end of their life (the concept of "choice" is introduced later). And the satisfaction is the 'satisfactory feeling that we have done right thing' earlier, if we look back in to our memories.
For instance, If I am working for my dreams, every step I take will affect my future. So, assuming that being happy is the term that defines my satisfaction, to be happy in future I should take my decisions in such a way that every decision in my chain of decisions is helping me maximize my "Satisfaction in future perspective". So, this is the only way I found to be happy both at present and future. :)
I want to thank sudheer for participating in the discussion and pouring his ideas.
Sree..!!!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Topic I : Knowledge
"What's knowledge? Who introduced the term knowledge into my life? Who teach me the knowledge?" are the kind of questions I have been trying to answer for quite sometime. After putting so much effort to quench my thirst or quest for knowledge about knowledge, I learned few things. One of those things is the first post of this blog i.e. about knowledge. So, here it goes.....
Knowledge of an incident is an amalgam of our beliefs, perception, cognition and conviction towards/of/about that particular incident. Looks like a very random definition, doesn't it? Let me take you through some examples. Example 1: A child who doesn't know anything about this world, starts learning about the same from ppl like family, his age group etc. So, in general, the beliefs related to ghosts, boochis, etc. are injected into child's mind by family and friends. The child who didn't hear anything about ghosts in childhood doesn't get scared,while walking in dark, because of ghosts. With the given beliefs, a person can perceive the knowledge through his convictions or cognition about the real life incidents he is coming across in a day to day life. So, here the knowledge is developed by that particular mind, based upon his discussions with friends, based on the stories he has read and so on. I am not trying to find out the correctness of the knowledge here, but to know what exactly it is and how it is being developed.
In the example, we can observe two things; one being the non-absoluteness of the knowledge and second being the biased and socially constructed nature of the knowledge. Non-absoluteness refers to the idea that says "no knowledge is perfect" or rather "no one has perfect knowledge about anything". What we generally do is read something and then we assume that we have gained enough knowledge and then start making decisions or start coming to conclusions about others (persons, events and ideas). However, the fact is that the knowledge we learned is not yet complete. I would like to discuss this perfectness in a different topic and want to concentrate here on biased and socially constructed nature of knowledge here.
In this 21st century, 90% of the people in the world are being influenced by media and movies and 99% of the youth get influenced by friends and family either in good or bad way. No one ever say that his parents are bad, even if the child is suffering because of the mistakes made by his parents. (Example 2: If a person, who has had a health problem in childhood, was not treated well nor shown to a doctor because of the ignorance of parents, would have to suffer in his youth and later. Though parents might get attentive after knowing his condition and after the damage is done, child never blames or finds mistakes in his parents. Similar theory can be applied to the love between child and parents). So, the idea here is that, the knowledge of the child is biased.
Now the question is how to make this knowledge more absolute and unbiased. How to attain the so called saturation in satisfaction in quenching the thirst? I have read lot of religious books since my childhood. Almost all these books end up talking about absolute knowledge and absolute satisfaction etc. They term it as the ultimate goal of human life, self realization(Gita), attaining the supreme(Iskcon), finding the answers for your un-answered questions or needs (Buddhism) and blah blah. My intuitional feeling is that, the concept of god has started rising from the thoughts of perfection or having perfect and unbiased knowledge and the element of devotion and worship was added to it later by some societies to ensure the smooth going. Though, the concept of God cannot be explained here in this topic, I just wanted introduce my intuitional thoughts here and so, I did. Now, coming to the perfect knowledge, all these religious books are true in the context of attaining the absoluteness of the knowledge and to make it more and more unbiased. So, what these religious texts stress upon is the socially constructed nature of the reality and the fact that there exists no perfect knowledge and no unbiased knowledge. What we have got to do is, to keep knowing more and more, to think broad, to accept all the ideologies equally and to improve upon them.
Sree..!!!
Knowledge of an incident is an amalgam of our beliefs, perception, cognition and conviction towards/of/about that particular incident. Looks like a very random definition, doesn't it? Let me take you through some examples. Example 1: A child who doesn't know anything about this world, starts learning about the same from ppl like family, his age group etc. So, in general, the beliefs related to ghosts, boochis, etc. are injected into child's mind by family and friends. The child who didn't hear anything about ghosts in childhood doesn't get scared,while walking in dark, because of ghosts. With the given beliefs, a person can perceive the knowledge through his convictions or cognition about the real life incidents he is coming across in a day to day life. So, here the knowledge is developed by that particular mind, based upon his discussions with friends, based on the stories he has read and so on. I am not trying to find out the correctness of the knowledge here, but to know what exactly it is and how it is being developed.
In the example, we can observe two things; one being the non-absoluteness of the knowledge and second being the biased and socially constructed nature of the knowledge. Non-absoluteness refers to the idea that says "no knowledge is perfect" or rather "no one has perfect knowledge about anything". What we generally do is read something and then we assume that we have gained enough knowledge and then start making decisions or start coming to conclusions about others (persons, events and ideas). However, the fact is that the knowledge we learned is not yet complete. I would like to discuss this perfectness in a different topic and want to concentrate here on biased and socially constructed nature of knowledge here.
In this 21st century, 90% of the people in the world are being influenced by media and movies and 99% of the youth get influenced by friends and family either in good or bad way. No one ever say that his parents are bad, even if the child is suffering because of the mistakes made by his parents. (Example 2: If a person, who has had a health problem in childhood, was not treated well nor shown to a doctor because of the ignorance of parents, would have to suffer in his youth and later. Though parents might get attentive after knowing his condition and after the damage is done, child never blames or finds mistakes in his parents. Similar theory can be applied to the love between child and parents). So, the idea here is that, the knowledge of the child is biased.
Now the question is how to make this knowledge more absolute and unbiased. How to attain the so called saturation in satisfaction in quenching the thirst? I have read lot of religious books since my childhood. Almost all these books end up talking about absolute knowledge and absolute satisfaction etc. They term it as the ultimate goal of human life, self realization(Gita), attaining the supreme(Iskcon), finding the answers for your un-answered questions or needs (Buddhism) and blah blah. My intuitional feeling is that, the concept of god has started rising from the thoughts of perfection or having perfect and unbiased knowledge and the element of devotion and worship was added to it later by some societies to ensure the smooth going. Though, the concept of God cannot be explained here in this topic, I just wanted introduce my intuitional thoughts here and so, I did. Now, coming to the perfect knowledge, all these religious books are true in the context of attaining the absoluteness of the knowledge and to make it more and more unbiased. So, what these religious texts stress upon is the socially constructed nature of the reality and the fact that there exists no perfect knowledge and no unbiased knowledge. What we have got to do is, to keep knowing more and more, to think broad, to accept all the ideologies equally and to improve upon them.
Sree..!!!
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