India and the West

White people have gone from savages to civilized and technologically advanced in the last 1000 years and Indians have gone from civilized and spiritually advanced to a subjugated people in the same 1000 years in which white men had a linear progress. How can we explain this ?

In my view the answer lies in the passive and escapist attitude of Indian culture. The idea of running away from this life and trying to find answers beyond this world. Why do we have to quit the temporal world to explore spirituality ? Why did Buddha leave his palace and his duties of a king to explore the nature of human existence. Couldn't he have done the same while still attending his day to day duties. When Gita talks about duty as supreme ? I think that makes sense. You don't have to quit your duties to seek spirituality, to explore the limitations of human existence. Christ was a carpenter and a preacher at the same time. If this world is maya, why are we here. Why did nature destined us to be here. To think that this world is maya is a very fatalistic attitude and makes a person passive and unwilling to live life fully.

Is there a religious Democracy in the West and The Middle East

If you look at the middle east and western countries there is a fundamental issue of the lack of religious democracy in these parts of the world. First, let us define the term religious democracy - it is the ability to worship God in any form one wishes to choose. In India from ancient times we have followed the idea of many forms of God. A devotee chooses the form in which he or she wants to worship the God. Even people who are atheists can be considered to be part of this system. The idea of negation of something is not new. In science we can find it all over the place. In physics, we talk not only of matter, but antimatter too.

There are lot of misguided and ignorant fools in the proselyting religions who think negatively of the above aspect of Hinduism. They think just because of we worship idols we are are ignorant and their so called gods are somehow real. There are many inconsistencies in their logic. If you ask them what was happening to their gods before they conceived it, they will have no answer. The fact that in Hinduism we worship idols is deliberate and not some historically accidental fact. The idols are there to help a practitioner of meditation focus and concentrate on his object of worship. The idols are the representation of God in its many forms as humans conceived. The idols themselves are not literally God. Just as physicists represent an electron on the paper by some symbol, a Hindu represents his object of worship by the idol he chooses. Think of it this way, you can tell a lot about people from the gods they worship. So there is no religion which is objective. People who claim objective truth in their religions and criticize other people's religions are stupid and not spiritually advanced.

Now this spiritual and religious democracy is great for the individuals who practice them. But it is not great for communities and countries as a whole. A people who are divided in their religion have seldom proved to be great conquerors and exploiters of the earth. Christians and Muslim followers in the past had bigger exploits in the world all because of their single minded devotion and unity among their followers in terms of belief systems. As societies grow and people become more capable of independent thought it may indeed be possible that these religions may come crumbling down. But at present there is no way to predict it.

Down

I woke up today in the morning but I was down because of debt fears. Now you may ask me why should I be down because of debt fears ? I have no debt. I am a debt free man. But when you see markets down because of debt fear, a human being can be down too because of debt fears. May be I was down because the world in general has too much debt. I woke up and my mind kept thinking why do we have so much debt in the world. There was a time when living on debt was considered a moral sin. But not anymore, debt is good. Debt is fun. Debt is cool. Take debt, lever yourself. Juice up your return in the stock market, or just live in a huge house on debt, its alright. Its no sin anymore. Debt is the ultimate panacea of today's world. Debt makes the world go round and round. We read about debt markets. We pay credit card debt. We pay home mortgage debt. Debt markets go up and down. I guess today was my turn to go down, even when I woke up, debt markets put me down.

Then I realized why was I down. Oh now I remembered, my portfolio was down 25000 dollars in last two weeks, all because of a small country in southern Europe, Greece. They produced only 2.3 % of US GDP, but they suddenly had become too important. Porno people were making fun of Greece and their unholy love for Greek sex. But that was no consolation to me, I was down. My portfolio was down. All because of this little country somewhere in Europe.

More I tried to understand, more I became confused. Debt was killing me, even though I had no debt. But the world I lived in was awash in debt. As if sub-prime, alt-a, prime debt was not enough, now even sovereign debt had come to haunt me. I started to curse. Why can't people live with no debt. Why should government have to manipulate interest rates. Shouldn't interest rates be determined by free markets. Shouldn't savers of the world be paid for their hard work and frugal ways ?

I started to get depressed. All the things about debt that my culture had taught me, were no longer relevant in the culture I lived in. Here debt was no sin. Debt was good. Short of saying that debt could get you enlightenment, every other thing was possible with debt. You could even demand a legal right to live off debt and riot like the Greeks last week did when that right was not given to you. This was a crazy world. My mind was spinning with confusion and chaos around me. I switched off the TV channel which promised to make me fast money and went to sleep again.