The age of too much information

It is often said that this is the age of information. You may be sitting in a remote village, without running water, electricity or decent road system, in India, but you could be connecting to internet through a mobile phone and knowing what is happening in Kenya or Argentina. Now it is a different matter that most of the time, unless it is a nuclear catastrophe, you really have no real need to know what is happening in Argentina, if you are in a continent 10000 miles away from it.

Our forefathers lived in a age of information vacuum. They did not even have newspapers, let alone Internet. But it is quite possible they were more happy individuals than people of today who are constantly being fed with information from ever increasing news media.

On the other hand it is possible that if they had access to information, they would have known in real time all the threats developing to their way of living in any part of the world. They might have known that some desert religions are forming somewhere with over zealousness and they will try to spread themselves to our part of the world. And as a consequence they might have been better prepared for such future attacks on our culture.

So to conclude: Is having too much information always good ? May be not. But having a choice of getting information is always better than having no choice.

Fantasy: A silent killer

Bhagavat Gita says karmayogi is the best person. I used to study Gita in my teenage years but having a lack of experience in those early days, I did not make much sense of it. Now I do not read any spiritual historical documents, though I like to think that I am a very spritual person. I belive in the right of the individual to find and seek their own version of God or finding their own path to spirituality. Vivekananda said like all rivers lead to the ocean, different forms of worship eventually lead to one God.

Anyways let me come back to the main theme of this essay which is fantasy. My main thesis is that fantasy is a bad thing. It diverts your attention from reality. It makes you inward looking and egotistic. People who fantasize a lot also tend to be egotistic. A parent can see outside signs of good behaviour in a child, but they can not see if his or her mind is healthy. For a healthy mind is the one that is devoid of fantasies. Healthy mind sees reality and tries to make the best of it. Fantasizing mind tries to escape to fantasies and miss reality. That is why I think we need to focus and bring to attention the destructive nature of fantasizing. When you fantasize or brood, you are becoming the Arjuna of Gita who thinks too much before doing his duty. Krishna's chief message to him is that he should stop thinking and start acting.

France has spine

Even though I have come across few rude french people in France, I also met some helping French people in Paris. But anyways point here is not what kind of people French are but that I do think that France as a country has spine. Recent ruling by a French court to deny a muslim woman citizenship on the basis that her lifestyle is in contrast with secularists traditions of France, highlights the fact that France would do whatever it takes to maintain its secularist traditions. Contrast this with Indian attitude that emphasizes getting along at the cost of truth. Gandhi's book, "My experiments with truth" might as well have been renamed "My experiments with lies" as Gandhi totally failed to come to terms with muslim problem in India. He could never understand that Islam is a exclusivist religion and it denounces all other forms of worship. To let Muslims continue to live in India is to invite another partition of India on the basis of religion.

Please read the French court ruling here:
France denies citizenship to a muslim woman.