We have not inherited the earth from our forefathers but have borrowed it from our grandchildren

Now thats something we ought to always keep in mind!!

Thought for the day

Holding onto anger is like grasping hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." – Issac Newton

Newton did not come up with ideas from a complete void. He and many others have been inspired and have drawn on ideas from many other great works before their time.

For Innovation and new ideas to thrive, previous innovations and ideas should be freely available and shared. In a world where Copyright and intellectual property laws are becoming more stringent, we seem to be moving in the exact opposite direction.

I would presume Copyright laws originally intended to maintain the sanctity of information. Constitutions and courts have repeatedly interpreted Copyright as a means of encouraging the production of creative works for public benefit.

What are we achieving by restricting the audience to a piece of information?

Yes, there are associated monetary benefits to which the owner does have a right. But unlike olden days when copyright was owned by individuals who took it with them to their graves, and had little or no benefit in extending the copyright, today most copyrights are owned by organizations which are formed on the presumption that they will exist forever. The idea of continuing to reap the monetary benefits of an asset for as long as possible is indeed a tempting proposition.

Even Walt Disney classics like “Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs”, which are protected by copyright have been derived from previous great works whose copyright had expired.

Are we gradually moving towards a void in innovation?

A Buffalo herd moves only as fast as the slowest buffalo…

..and when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that arekilled first.

This sentence has to be judged not by what it says literally but by the wealth of knowledge that it camouflages.

The intended audience for this sentence was certainly not a herd of buffaloes, I hope.

It is applicable to each and every one of us and everything we do in our daily life.

When it comes to nature, it consistently follows the principle of Survival of the fittest, automatically eliminating the slowest/least fit in the herd. This is good news for the herd because the general health and speed of the heard is maintained and at times improved.

Much the same way, our performance is restricted to the average capability of our peer group. You can see it happen in all walks of life. An average student performing averagely in an average school, when put in a very competitive school either manages to rise to the occasion or loses out badly to the competition.

The best example I could take is the performance of the Indian Cricket team. How could a team that has lost to a young inexperienced team like Bangladesh beat teams like Pakistan and Australia in their home grounds?
When we play against a superior team like Australia we automatically raise the level of our game.

It happens to each and every one of us. We restrict our performance to just what is required of us at that particular point in time.

It is important for each and every one of us to realize that we are capable of a lot more and must constantly yearn to consistently extract that level of performance from ourselves.

Here is to a world of continuous improvement, where, as I see it, there is no limit to improving ourselves. Here is to an extremely competitive human race…

Is the mind held captive by knowledge?

It is when I read a blog recently, which spoke about the mind and its struggles with its own ego, that set me thinking on whether indeed we could define tangible boundaries to the minds capabilities.

Later on in the week while discussing topics for a debate competition, we hit upon an argument on whether a topic could favour someone who has an idea about the topic. Yes, it could in terms of facts and figures, but what about abstract thought flows, ideas, logic and reasoning? Are these affected? That brought me right back to the question on being able to define a clear boundary for the mind’s capability.

Encouraging a parallel line of thought, I arrived at the next question : Do we need education? Is it a barrier to free thinking? Does it keep the mind captive within its realm?

Cogitating over this left me rather confounded. The very process of thinking about the mind, if I go by the questions raised above, would be limited by my knowledge and the ability of my own mind to think beyond the boundaries of its knowledge. But at the same time the very knowledge that ‘knowledge could be a barrier to the way my mind functions’, could empower me to think beyond what knowledge would permit me to otherwise.

So then, knowledge certainly does not restrict us but only acts as a guiding light. For most a guiding light can prove very useful. It takes an exceptional mind, an Einstein or a Newton, to find its way in darkness.

What knowledge also provides is a template to discipline the mind. We are all aware of the vagaries of the mind and for most it is a constant struggle, consciously or unconsciously, to bring it back on track. Whether it is a simple task like reading a book or writing this article, the mind is relentless in its efforts to attain freedom. As the Gita put it very simply, the mind is like a monkey. That one statement says it all. Doesn’t it?

Without education the mind is like a blindfolded monkey on a very tight leash. It jumps around having no clue what its treading on, but is limited by the area it can tread on.

Education takes the blindfold off and provides a longer leash. Now the monkey can not only see what its jumping on, but is also able to toy around with many more things.

What happens in most cases is that people end up getting tight ‘inelastic’ leashes for their minds. Thus limiting themselves to only the length of the leash provided by knowledge.

So people make sure you get yourselves ‘highly elastic’ leashes . So you can stretch it way beyond where knowledge could take you.

Hmmm!! This is getting recursive. The mind thinking about the mind.....

You’ve Got Mail

With such tremendous improvements in technology, we should be completing our work faster. Shouldn’t we? But how many of us do? Why is it that people these days tend ‘to work’ longer hours, finishing exactly the same amount of work? Or should I be saying why is it that people these days tend ‘to stay in office’ for longer hours, finishing the same amount of work?

So what is it that people do in office? How do companies manage to keep their people busy?

By getting them to check their mails of course.

Everybody sends out mails to everybody else. The xyz department has to prove that its doing its bit, so it sends out a bunch of emails to everyone, the abc division of course does not want to be left behind, nor do the various other departments that exist in organizations. The managers of course have to keep their team motivated and focused, what better way could there be to communicate to them than to send frequent mails.

Thanks to mailing groups, you don’t even have to type in all the mail addresses, just type away and enter the group mailing id and you have just sent a mail to a thousand people.

So the top management keeps itself busy sending emails to everyone. The various departments compete with each other sending mails to everyone else proving how active they are in the organization and what a wonderful job they are doing. The managers motivate their respective teams by sending out mails to them and inform the rest of the world how well their teams are doing by sending out mails again.

The remaining people have just about enough time to read all their mails and realize how much work everyone else seems to be doing.

So who does all the work?

My guess is it gets done after office hours, when you are not expected to be in office. Which of course also implies that you are not expected to send any mails.

We are so used to being ‘connected’ all the time, through either email or chat clients or cell phones or landlines, that we are always expecting to be contacted by someone all the time. This has become such a constant distraction that it has had a huge impact on our productivity levels.

I bet you read at least 15 mails before you completed reading this. Gotcha!! Didn’t I? Anyways, its about time I check my inbox….

Shanka hara Acharya ???

The arrest of the Kanchi Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati has come as a huge jolt to the entire nation.

Like they say, everything is open to interpretations.
Shankhara – is supposed to mean one who clears or kills all doubts.
But it could just be a combination of words with no meaning at all. Or you could interpret each word separately and arrive at your own conclusion.

Very simply put, these are the questions millions of people had an answer to just a few days back and may be left stuttering when confronted today. Only time will probably give us the correct answer. For now, we can just hope that this was all a mistake.

Welcome to the dark murky world of religion and politics, where power play has become the order of the day. Religion and politics have become so intertwined that it is becoming extremely difficult to distinguish one from the other.

Millions of people who have believed in certain values and lived by them are left stranded with no ends to grope. At the end of the day one has only one’s conscience to cling on to.

But where it hits hardest is the youth, the new generation, the future. When such a blow can weaken strong foundations of faith built over many years, once can only imagine its impact on the younger generation.

It is the responsibility of the media, the politicians and all other public entities, while attempting to achieve their ambitions, to also keep in mind the impact such sensitive issues can have. The law will take its own course. Meanwhile, it is very important that the media, the politicians, religious leaders et al refrain from unnecessary speculation.