I cannot but help see connections between
things far apart in space and sometimes
in time.

I saw the following news item barely a month
after the self immolation of a young lawyer in Tamilnadu in protest against the
events in Sri Lanka
.. I had then written a blog on this sad tendency which I observe quite frequently in the state.

Now comes the following news item

Dalit man tries to immolate self, family

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LUCKNOW:
A Dalit man and his wife tried to immolate themselves and their children in
front of the assembly here after they were denied permission

by the administration for constructing
”Ambedkar Park” on their land in Barabanki
district. .

The rationally inclined might take this
viewpoint :How does it really matter to the Tamil youngster as to what happens
in Sri Lanka
? How will his death make any difference to events there ? There are far more
powerful people whose duty it is to worry about such issues. All that any
individual can do is to hold a peaceful protest or send a letter to the newspapers or a memorandum
to the Government.

As for the dalit family my talk to them
might be as follows : How on earth will the setting up of an Ambedkar Park
make any difference to your family ? Have you noticed that so many such parks
have been set up by Mayawati in UP and the
only person to have benefited has been the Behenji herself who last year declared assets of about RS 50
CRORES. These monies were, according to her, your ‘gift’ to her.

Now as luck would have it I saw the
following item in a US
paper

Why We (Continue to) Pay Lavishly

By Simon Y. Feuerman, Psy.D., L.C.S.W. on January 26, 2009 - 11:06am
in My Mother, My Father, My Money

The big news of late is that a few
marquis CEOS of the country’s major banks and corporations have forgone all or
part of their bonuses and pay packages. Robert Rubin of Citigroup and Kenneth
Lewis of Bank of America have admirably declined to take bonus compensation
this past year. The CEO of the construction equipment giant, Caterpillar and
others have also followed suit.

Few people, however, believe that
the American corporate structure has reformed itself. The reality is that many
CEOs are still paid in the tens of millions even as these very same companies
have begged for and received taxpayer-sponsored government bailouts.

The mostly symbolic atonement and
self-deprivation of a few ”star” CEOs is about as comforting as an
alcoholic promising not to drink as much he used to. Why does outsized pay
continue even as it becomes clear that something is seriously askew?

What is the logic behind lavish
pay?

Why won’t these rewards go away
even as they appear to be useless and even counterproductive? What
psychological purpose do they serve?

It is a generally accepted
principle that whenever we over-pay it is a good bet that something is
emotionally amiss. One possibility is that we over-pay as a way to put someone
(unreasonably) above us.

Freud famously theorized that we
elevate people for a host of complex but mostly neurotic reasons. This activity
seems to exist independent of any reality-based purpose. The very act of
elevating a single person or a group of people above us is suspicious, Freud
wrote. What are we up to?

To over-pay may actually be a way
to avoid the deep anxiety and helplessness that we feel, but desperately want
to not feel. We can’t make it rain and we can’t force the sun to shine on our
crops, but how much we want it to. We can’t force someone to place money in our
bank accounts, but how we wish we could. Fear, anxiety and helplessness are to
an extent, the human condition.

Nevertheless, rather than fully
come to grips with these deeply unmooring emotions and convert them into
helpful action, we place others above us. We may irrationally select leaders
and confer magical powers on them. As silly as this may seem it does makes
sense to our unconscious. Way back when our first leaders, our parents, did make
it rain. They did put money in our bank. My son when he was 4 told me that I
put the moon away at the end of the night and bring out the sun for him in the
morning. He ascribed to me great powers.

Part of that stays with us. If I
can’t put money in my bank account, then maybe my leader can. This leader is
allowed to have more than me. He is even encouraged to have more than me. He
can have more women than me, more children than me, and more pleasure than me.
Even if we have lots of money, the temptation is to put someone else in charge
of it and to confer extraordinary privileges and power to him. (Think Bernard
Madoff and the minions who ”trusted” him without verifying.)

What may be most important to
consider is that feeding the neurotic need for daddy and mommy, for adults, can
become extremely expensive. To bestow magical abilities and unreasonably great
privilege on people is unproductive, possibly hostile and almost certainly, a
resistance to emotional maturity and economic growth.

I suspect something similar is at work in the sort of
instances cited by me above .Many people in our country [ and elsewhere ]are so
desperate that they seek some person, some idea, some movement , some organization that seems
larger than life that seems to give meaning , confers an identity, lends purpose
to life.

This explains why film stars, politicians,
social leaders , organizations and even
terrorist movements have such a following. People in such a mental place can be
easily motivated to commit acts of horror, terror and suicide .

I make two submissions to end this piece.

[1] I have said on many platforms that India does not lack resources or
ideas to become a prosperous country. We lack only one thing—the right
attitudes to kick start progress .What I have stated above is one aspect of
this attitudinal deficit.

[2] Hindus must stop their practice of
falling at or touching the feet of or
venerating ANY PERSON HOWEVER GREAT OR SAINTLY
as if he or she were God .This is where I am in total agreement with
Islamic beliefs.

It is fine to admire success but our attitude
in such cases ought to be—what lessons can I draw from this person’s success ?

NO MAN CAN BECOME GOD !

I recall an incident that took place when a
young girl not just admired but venerated the bollywood superstar of that era
..One day she was told that the star had been hospitalised for –of all things – surgery
to remove piles ! This information shocked the young teenager. She had been
under the impression that superstars were biologically different from ‘
ordinary’ people ! The girl went on to marry the superstar . No prizes for
guessing who they were .

Great people are also human beings. Nothing
more . .

K.R.RAVI

One of the wonders of the world is that
obviously intelligent people make elementary but serious errors in thinking..

I happened to meet a friend of mine, a
successful banker in California who had
migrated from India
to the U.S more than a decade ago. He
was talking about violence in India
and gave that as one reason for his disappointment with his home country.

Let
me use this argument as a starting point of a simple insight into thinking skills.

One of the first lessons in thinking skills is as follows:

–ask for reason

–ask for logic

–ask for credible evidence

-remember anecdotes do not constitute
evidence

Take murders .

I looked up possible sources of evidence regarding incidence of murders in various countries in the world. I came across THE MURDER MAP which shows
graphically the incidence of that crime in most countries . What did I find ?

India’s record is more or less the same as that of the
USA
!

I am
not saying that we can be smug about our
record. All that I am, saying is that
once you respect and base your thinking on evidence, figures and logic you will become a better
thinker.

In looking at figures there are two other points to be remembered:

-when given a figure always ask ‘Is this big or small, significant or not?’

-this figure has to be analysed in relation
to what denominator ?

Let us take a common
lament –How is it that a country of one billion cannot produce a Wimbledon champion ?

Let’s look at this statement in the light of
the above guidelines.

This lack of tennis champions is sad but is
a billion the appropriate denominator ?

–What is the base , the bucket , of the
number of families that have access to tennis courts ?

Is the denominator , the figure of one
billion or the number of kids who have tennis playing facilities within access
? If you feel as I do that very few
families can access such facilities and this ought to be the denominator , it
is indeed creditable that we produce
some very good players of the likes of Sania Mirza.

A Bihar based friend of mine boasted about five years ago that the Bhojpuri film industry was the fastest growing film industry in India . To which I replied that in
the case of Bhojpuri films ANY
GROWTH WILL SEEM ASTRONOMICAL !The
reason why I said this ? The same old little matter of the denominator-in this
case zero base .

When I moved
to the city of Washington D.C
three years ago I was looking at various places to rent an apartment in. I knew
that every city in the U.S [maybe all over the world ] has parts that are
unsafe .I looked at the figures for crimes in each part of the city and made an
informed decision to move into the locality where I now stay .

Often we tend to go by hearsay .In most cases we
tend to form opinions on the basis of subjective judgements. These tend to be
prejudiced .

I have evidence to prove this !

K.R.RAVI

Based on an experiment that was carried out
in the U. S I tried this with my trainees, relatives and friends –all Indians .

Here is the experiment

FIND OUT THE ODD ONE OUT IN THE FOLLOWING

A COW,
A STACK OF HAY AND A PIG

Most people point out that the PIG is the
odd one .

Westerners tend to point out the stack of
hay instead .Why this difference ?

Americans tend to be analytical and seek to
fit things into slots and classifications. Thus the cow and the pig are animals while the
hay is not. Hence the hay is the odd one out .

Indians as well as other Asians tend to seek to see relationships and then find a
relationship between the cow and the hay which it eats .Hence the pig is the
odd one .

In
another experiment it was found that when shown a picture westerners tend to
focus on the item that is prominently
seen while Asians tend to see much more of the background .

Thus it may be said with some exaggeration that Asians tend to see
holistically .

However these need to be further researched.

I
have observed that Indians are not really thinking contextually especially in
matters that involve some degree of emotion or where there is some ignorance or arrogance
..In such instances I notice that many of us proceed to think
as follows—what I do not know may not be important. Alternately what I see is
the whole situation. Also what is good for me ought to be good for others.

Take for example the annual India International Film
Awards .Notice that this seeks to acknowledge INDIAN films This event has been
held for some years now in various locales all over the world .Amitabh Bachchan
is the Brand Ambassador .

I have written letters in the media pointing
out one serious error in these awards .NOT
ONCE IN ALL THESE YEARS HAS CINEMA OTHER THAN BOLLYWOOD BEEN EVEN CONSIDERED FOR
RECOGNITION .

This is an instance of what I do not know[-cinema other than
Bollywood ] is not worth knowing .This is arrogance and insensitivity .Surely
we need to either call it the Bollywood International Film awards or acknowledge the other cinemas
in India .

Contextual thinking is an art that needs to
be deliberately cultivated. This calls for empathy that is somewhat rare .

I
help trainees to try and see any event, phenomenon, behaviour in CONTEXT
..This yields rich perspectives.

On one occasion a friend remarked that he found
it silly and absurd that some
communities in south India
actually seem to celebrate with dance and song the death of a loved one . This
he felt is ‘contrary to the norm ‘,

I challenged
him to try and seek a paradigm shift in thinking –this after all was the
hallmark of creative thinking.

Let us see how we can not only challenge our
own thinking but can also try contextual
thinking .

The caste groups that ‘ celebrate’ death are
among the poorest of the poor in India –scavengers and those who
carry night soil for example . For such people death is in fact a deliverance
from a horrifying life—hence a celebration is called for. This is contextual
thinking .

Secondly who are we to lay down norms and call
any other behaviour as contrary ?
I remember a scene in the film
MADHUMATI in which the hero Dilip Kumar is shown walking past a tree in a
forest when he notices Johnny Walker hanging upside down from a tree. When
asked why he was upside down Johnny Walker
remarks ‘As far as I am concerned you
are upside down’.

Thus it is we who feel that one ‘ought’ to
grieve when someone dies. The castes referred to may well reply as Johnny
Walker did ‘ How is it that you guys cry
when someone dies ?”

My friend Jean found it strange that Hindus
wear white apparel when in mourning . She suggested that white dress was the ‘right’ colour for a wedding—this being the practice in her community of Catholics. Surely
being normative has its hazards—you may put off people.

I believe the time has come for all of us to
try and understand ‘others’, their
thinking, lifestyles, their beliefs and their world view in the light of contextual thinking.

Perspectives can vary enormously. My
friend Kavita narrates an interesting experience
she had in Oakland in California . Kavita happened to befriend a
girl—an Afghan– who was working in a small shop. They got
talking . At one stage Kavita asked her
Afghan friend how she found life in Oakland
The reply almost shocked Kavita.

‘Oh, Oakland is a happening place—like Lahore
and some cities in Afghanistan
!’

TAUBA TAUBA !

K.R.RAVI