EXPLAINING THE UNEXPLAINED – '3 IDIOTS' PHILOSOPHY

Social Psychology supports that, people, a main component of society, are influenced and influence the social environment. The influence occurs through the forces of relationships, culture, customs, social ethics, etc, and leaves substantial impact over every ingredient of our life. Though, social influence is a life-supporting factor and has positive contribution in our life, astoundingly, they are problematic too, if we are just a passive recipient of such social influence. Negative impact becomes obvious overtly, during selection of our professional career, when it is just based on social imposition of parents, relatives, friends, social factors, attractiveness, etc. This fundamental mistake we make at young age, spew out ill-effects that resurface frequently to disturb us rest of the life. This ‘ignorance’ holds the sole responsibility for the talent-crunch that has engulfed the Employment Sector and various others field in India. This lead to human resource with misgivings like: Workforce with mediocre performance, talents and knowledge; people afflicted with stress and life-style diseases; lack of interdependence (relationship problems); drug dependency and abuse; crimes, etc.

The solution to the problem dwells in proper understanding of human nature. Human Psychology edifies our intellect with ‘wisdom’ which subscribes that our career selection shouldn’t be just a social imposition through parents, relatives, friends, social factors, attractiveness, etc, but one that provides us joy, pleasure, satisfaction, and fulfilment. The appreciation of above concept requires understanding the innate nature of human mind. Basically, humans are satisfaction seekers. They have deep inner ‘urges’ or ‘drives’ or ‘desires’ and they interact with environment to satisfy it. Satisfaction of urges gives him a sense of pleasure or happiness or joy. The people strive to gratify their urges by performing various activities in their lifetime. The important feature is that ‘People differ in wide ways in satisfying their urges, and it is based on the difference existing in their Genes.’ For instance, some people enjoy reading and writing books or blogs, some satiate their urge by playing games or hard exercises, some derive pleasure by working on music or singing, some get mesmerised in their research works or engineering, etc. The action which brings us joy is called ‘Source of Satisfaction.’ Thus, every individual has unique characteristics of satisfying their urges and it differs from individual to individual.

Problem occurs when we select our career which is highly incompatible with our ‘Source of Satisfaction.’ The career, which is incompatible with our Source of Satisfaction, will never act as a source of pleasure or joy and thus, we start to allocate limited time in performing it and get ranked as ‘mediocre performers.’ Following this, majority of young people fail to identify their core ‘Source of Satisfaction’ and develop coping mechanism to derive pleasure through mundane habits or physical sensations. This will lead to talent-crunch in the field they could specialise, that is, their Source of Satisfaction activity. Others, small portion of population, fortunate enough to identify their Core Competence (Source of Satisfaction), divert their career into their Pleasure Source and get ranked as ‘super performers.’

The above philosophy forms the core idea of the 3 Idiots film, one of the best films in Indian film industry, released sometime back. Raju Hirani, the director of 3 Idiots, centres the film with the above “Career Philosophy,” which is engraved spectacularly in every component of the movie. The Career Philosophy is: “Never select your career on basis of social or family imposition. Rather, select the one which ‘you’ find the most suitable, matching and enjoyable. This is the secret behind every super-achiever.”

The above truth is validated, when we interact with star performers in various fields. It will be the source of their success. To quote one instance, a friend of Thomas Alva Edison, once asked Edison, “You must have worked hard day and night for making such a historical invention of Electric Lamp!” Edison replied, “You have mistaken my work. Really, I enjoyed day and night before inventing the Electric Lamp. Because, I love researching and working with materials.” Research was the ‘Source of Satisfaction’ for Edison and selecting properly his career begot success in form of 1,093 US Patents, which remains unchallenged by any other inventor.

PERCEPTION - CONTROLLER OF OUR DESTINY

“We are creator or destroyer of our own destiny,” the common phrase found in most books on Self-Development. It views humans as an active agent of his life and capable of constructing his own experiences out of external real-life experiences. Earthly experiences can be considered as an unprocessed sender of data but humans are active, process-abled recipients of the data. It means that world experiences before reaching us may be either positive or negative, but, once it reaches us, we have ultimate ‘decision making power’ to allow the influence to impinge us positively or negatively. Thus, the phrase “we are the creator or destroyer of our own destiny” validates itself.

This is not a human formulated principle. It is innate, natural, universal phenomenon of human science. Ancient Indian Rishis and Gurus have recognized this super-competence of humans and reflected it in their writings. Recently, Psychologists acknowledging the above concept have described the complex phenomenon in terms of “Perception.” They portray Perception process into various stages as step-wise process.

Human Perceptual Experience can be divided into three stages: 1. Sensation Stage, 2. Attention Stage, and 3. Perception Stage. Each stage performs specific functions and the external experience (data) reaches our consciousness after traversing through the three stages in an orderly manner. The data flowing through ‘mental medium’ is considered as a complex mixture of the basic forms like visual images, sounds, taste, feelings, smell, etc. These basic constituents form a complex aggregation called Gestalt in our consciousness, thus creating complete, real world experience. (E.g. Reading – visual images of letters, Success – sound of appreciation and images as our status in ranking list)

External world experiences (i.e. Data) reaches our sense organs in an uncontrolled manner forming the Sensation Stage Process. The basic sensory receivers represent our sense of vision, smell, taste, sound, etc.

The Attention Stage, second stage of processing, can be compared with “Control Valve” in mechanical terms. Even though, we have the ability to control the valve, the control is partial and many times captivating data easily passes through the control valve to reach third stage. In reality, hundreds of data reach our senses every second, but, attention process limit the number of data to flow to next stage.

The third stage of human perception, the Perception Stage is a complex process, and it is a prerogative of individual. It is the most important stage that distinguishes Humans from other animals. The Perception process invoke our intelligence, our memory, our learning, our motivation, our attitude, values, beliefs, etc, stored in our Brain and act on the incoming data to form “well processed information.” This processed information in our conscious mind represents our understanding of our world.

Since, intelligence, memory, learning and motivation differ in quantity and quality across individuals, the interpretation of incoming data varies across individuals in quantity and quality wise. Because of highly subjective perception process, two individual encountering similar life experiences view it differently. For example, a person with pure knowledge, positive attitude, and purified memory, views even a negative experience in a positive manner.

Thus, our memory, our intelligence, our learning, our motivation, our attitudes, our values, etc, has to be enriched with positive principles based on pure knowledge. For this, initially, we have to control the basic elements of sensual inputs i.e. images, sounds, smell, feelings, etc. Later, our brain can be enriched by reading books with positive outlook on life, avoiding captivating images and sounds, meditation (which helps easier control of senses), relationship with noble people and minds, etc.

With this knowledge, we could assert intelligently that “We are the creator or destroyer of our own destiny. Since the prerogative of selection exist in my mind.”

INDIAN CIVIL SERVICES (ICS) – CAREER FOR FUTURE LEADERS OF INDIA

I recently met my friend, who had selected his career in Civil Services like me and the experiences he shared with me was thought-provoking and motivating for young aspirants of Indian Civil Services.

After my friend chose career in Indian Civil Services (ICS), many of his well-wishers criticised the career with several accusations. The allegations they place before him are: “The ICS, specially, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is highly competitive and disturbing career. Where political interferences disturb your career prospects in the Civil Services,” “You won’t have peaceful time after you join IAS. You have to keep stake your family’s safety for your career,” “You have to synchronise your decisions will meaningless political decisions of uneducated leaders, where money-power, muscle-power and corruption are highly rooted. You should be a ‘Yes Man’ to their short-sighted decisions,” etc.

Though, the comments he received are from people who neither had a career in Civil Services nor could be considered as people with highly intellectual ability, their concern seem to driven, basically, from manipulated information gained through biased media, films, etc. Leaving aside their short sighted concern, he gave importance to his intellect and wisdom, and he gave answer to his critics which can be considered to have deep social concern and feeds moral strength to the aspiring civil service aspirant. My friend’s answer was impregnated in a small story as follows,

There was a forest-fire engulfing the complete area of a dense forest. All the animals in the forest were running away from the area to escape the fire. But, a small bird living in the forest alone was trying to douse the fire by collecting water from nearby stream through its small cone-like beak. And, it was doing it persistently and diligently. An elephant which was one of the animals running away from fire, looking at the silly action of the bird and criticised its action in humiliation. The bird replied magnanimously to the elephant with courage and maturity, "I knew my actions are silly and it will not succeed. Yet, it will show a way for my future generation to this burning problem."

The idea my friend tries to imply: The forest fire in the story implies problems the Indian Bureaucracy faces at present and we, the young citizens of India, as the small bird in the story, should be torch bearers and beacons to show a way to current flaring problem in our Indian society. This requires young leaders ready to sacrifice ourselves for the welfare of society. For this, we have to utilise our knowledge, character, creativity, initiative, etc, to develop into leaders to lead future generations towards bright future for our nation.

The implication of his answer is that we currently face a “Leadership Crisis” in Indian Governance. At present, there are millions of followers ready to follow a leader but we lack a single leader to lead them (leaving aside some great souls in other fields). In current India, there is an existence of “scarcity of leadership” like scarcity of water, proper air, food, etc. This scarcity can be resolved only through young people getting prepared at present to be future leaders of tomorrow. So, career in Civil Services is the one way towards enriching India with “Stalwart Leadership.”

GLOBAL FINANCIAL DOWNTURN – OPPORTUNITY IN DIFFICULTY

Global Financial crisis has crippled literally every sectors of the world ranging from Manufacturing to Media. It is considered as one of the severest economic crisis in the world in past 70 years after the Great Depression in 1929. The financial horror has its roots in the deregulation of United States financial system in 1970s with focus on achieving wild growth rate. Because of Globalization, the US financial downturn has spread over most of the major economies of the world. But, our prudent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) with its remarkable, regulated, centralised financial system has well insulated our Indian economy from the vicissitudes of the world economy. We took pride in stating about the less influence of the crisis on our growth. But, multilateral sectors like trade and export, automobile manufacturing, tourism have faced the slump. For instance, World Bank predicts that world trade is expected to decelerate to 2.9 percent in 2009. Also, Our Indian economy gross domestic product (GDP) fell to 6.7 percent compared to previous year’s achievement of 9 percent. These tremors further leave influence in other sectors too. Though, US Government had announced bailout package of $700 billion to replenish US economy from recession, the responsibility of India to recover from its downturn is vested on us. Yet, we don’t hold the responsibility of causing it.
The great theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein says, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” With optimistic and growth-centred attitude, we can see economic crisis as an opportune time for India to recreate a perfect platform to bring its “Super-Power” dream into reality. With a dream of empowered India, we discuss various pivotal sectors which require special focus by striking it economically, technically, strategically and inclusively:

AGRICULTURE:
Agriculture and Agri-allied activities are life-line for most of the citizens of India. Nearly 65 - 70 percent of Indians depended on agriculture and related activities for their livelihood, but, it just contribute only 22 percent of GDP. India stands high in the parameters of irrigated land, but, its yield per hectare is at sub-standard level. To solve, the achievements of our Green Revolution during 1960s and 1970s have to be revived and we require another Green Revolution during current century to compete globally and to achieve the objectives of National Food Security Mission – to provide 25 kilograms of Rice or Wheat at Rs. 3 per kilogram for Below Poverty Line (BPL) citizens. We should make our Agriculturists and Researchers to learn the incredible achievements of Israel and Japan in farming industry. We have to show intense effort to introduce following measures in farming like SRI (System of Rice Intensification) technology, promotion of precision farming, micro-irrigation, restoration of soil health, supply of quality seeds to farmers, distribution of farm machineries, etc. for the betterment of farmers.

INDUSTRY:
Under current economical downturn situation, the industry has been affected the most, because of droop in trade and exports. Stimulus packages introduced by government should promote long-term investments along with the focus on short term goals. Long term activities include those like infrastructure development, training skilled workers, research and development, etc. Our investments in industry should strive to produce products which cause less strain on environment, biological friendly, recyclable etc. This has dual benefits: One, it helps in achievement of objectives placed by India before Copenhagen. Second, Eco-friendly products will enjoy less customs taxes in importing nations. Thus, it is helping in the blooming of trade and export of Indian state. Further, our government should follow special policies while importing bulk products from Industrial superpowers. Our import policy should insist the exporting foreign companies to procure at least 30 percent of their product’s components from native Indian companies. Such policies provide multinational partnership for lagging Indian industry sector and guides towards the birth of indigenous Indian technology.

SOCIAL SECTOR:
These are public goods to improve quality of life. The key social sector programmes needs to be concentrated are education, employment, urban poverty alleviation programme, rural health etc. Nearly 77% of Indian population are still vulnerable and deprived and our Human Development Indices are one of the lowest in the world. To eliminate poverty and satisfy vast social requirements, we require a sustained growth of at least 9 percent for next 25 years. If not dealt with urgency, the financial crisis turned economic crisis might lead to food crisis and cumulatively into security crisis. So, to recover and accomplish, we require shrewd planning of new policies in this humane sector which require vast investments, centralised control, accountability, and inclusiveness. Government over-conscious rural poverty elimination programme has failed to concentrate on urban poverty. The rise in urban poverty is fuelled by economic crisis compared to declining rural poverty. To rectify efficiently, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) requires new amendments to make it inclusive for urban region also, while retaining its success in rural areas.
Our policy towards education should be revamped with Dr. Abdul Kalam’s educational attitude which strives for transforming less-competent students into super technocrats, imbibe character to uplift Below Poverty Line (BPL) people, and realign their religious thoughts into a spiritual one to achieve social harmony.
National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) which provides health insurance to all families Below Poverty Line (BPL) can be implemented in a fast manner. Thus, Primary Health Centres (PHC) can get advanced medical facilities without financial disparities through public-private partnership (PPP). We should provide better sanitary conditions and an improved microenvironment in the habitat and workplace.
In an environment of slowdown, we should initiate our action through public spending on development of basic infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power, ports and airports for urban and rural development which also revive the construction and allied industries. This will help to achieve 12 Million new work opportunities per annum and to manage growing unemployment in India side by side.

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them," says Henry David Thoreau. Though, India’s past accomplishments may be without perfect foundations, but, we can utilise this opportunity to perfectly lay foundations below constructions as Thoreau says. Our current growth rate of 6.7 percent during 2008 – 09 has placed our economy at top notch in world ranking. While world super powers are crippling under crisis, India is rising against crisis. Our successes are being recognized, our accomplishments are being appreciated, our growth rate is viewed remarkable and world has created a gap to fill ourselves as super power India. To end, we imbibe in our thoughts and actions following words, “Strength of nation is in strength of people and strength of people breeds in his strength of mind. Bring the minds in unison to conquer the world with empowered India.”

EYE FLOATERS - PSYCHOLOGICAL REMEDY

Eye floaters are specific physico-psychological problem, caused by the occurrence of slender, cell-like images in our vision. They are usually dead tissues floating in vitreous humor of eye ball. The vision being our important ingredient for our world interaction, the repeated occurrence of floaters hampers the eye’s efficiency. The frequent appearance of floaters and lack of proper medical treatments for eye floaters, make people psychologically and physiologically sick and lead a life which will be filled with tragedy and isolation. To find a solution to such problem, below is a story which inspires with following knowledge: “How mind can be propelled for the psychological treatment of eye-floaters.”

Born from an opulent family, he hasn’t lagged from anything in his life. But, after recurrent stomach ache, he was diagnosed for intestinal cancer at the age of middle forties. But, he had a deep desire for life, so, he tried every sphere to get back his health. But, he wasn’t able to find any improvement. Vexed about his failure, he moved to Buddhist monasteries in high mountains of Himalayas for final experimentation. Shivering with pain and expecting guidance, he spoke thus to a Buddhist monk, who was performing penance, “My life should not end short. I reached you to find solution to my problem. I want long life. Help me! I am eager to live long.” The monk emphatic about his condition, replied, “Son, your problem is simple and I have provided treatment to such sickness many times to my disciples.” Thus saying, he plucked leaves from specific vegetation and purified it by his prayers. The monk replied, “Eat them and I promise you, your health will reach its normalcy. Have a complete faith on it.” The man followed the recommendations strictly.

After some days, his doctors were astonished to find improvements in his health patterns. The doctors decided to understand the science behind the treatment. Reaching the abode of monk, the doctors expressed their appreciation for the treatment and enquired about the process of treatment. The monks laughed and replied, “His desire was deep and I actuated his desire by faith. And, that is the secret for his health.”

The Buddhist scriptures insist “mind to body” action rather than present medical world insist “body to mind” action. Thus, when desire is deep and intense it promote mind to control our body in right direction.

Disclosure: The content is sponsored by "EYE FLOATERS" website