Happy Holidays?…. Bah! Humbug!

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Sunanda

Now that the holiday season is over, can we now say, “bah! humbug” without disrupting the self-hugs that many multi-culturalists are giving themselves?

In my previous post I had written about the 3 layers of culture we learn to negotiate. That was actually a very simplistic way of looking at culture. Let us introduce a level of complexity. Imagine that this individual moves to a culture where he is an outsider—perhaps is an immigrant, a globe-trotting professional or just part of the constantly churning global population?

For instance, she is a Hindu ( albeit, a laid back Hindu) in a largely Christian but also substantially mixed racial, religious society. Suppose she claims a participant’s stake in the Christian traditions?

So how many flakey layers of cultures can there be?

Multicultural Poster and Posturing

So here is this multicultural poster that I happened to see a few days ago. It said, “Happy Holidays” and had a whole list of festivals so we could wish everyone a happy holiday season. By the logic of the politically correct multiculturalists either we all celebrate or no one does.

So the poster starts off: Hanukkah(24th Dec), Christmas(25th Dec), Kwanzaa(26th Dec); so far so good. Trying very hard, the poster manages to find Pancha Ganapati ((21-25 Dec) for the Hindus….

On Being Told What to Believe

“Pancha Ganapati? What is this?” I ask myself. I am of the laidback, agnostic, non-ritualistic variety, but nevertheless a born Hindu. So I investigate. I google.…Ooops! It does exist! Here is a link and lots more, if anyone is curious. So apparently someone decided that upset Hindu children should get gifts like other children around Christmas time. Knowing that Hinduism gives you the license to create /invent gods and festivals, I cannot argue. But I am convinced that Pancha Ganapati is actually a retail conspiracy. Expectedly, in the next few years India and Hindus worldwide will switch over to Panch Ganapati of instead of Diwali or Dusherra because that’s right in the middle of the shopping season.

Or, is this some humbug from the militant multiculturalists who want to tell Hindus what they should be celebrating?… Because they need a Hindu festival to fit into the “Holiday season”?

Then, I look at the poster further. For the Buddhists, Bodhi Day(Dec), Yule (Dec 21) for the Pagans, Omisoka for the Japanese, St. Nicolas Day, Chinese New Year, St Lucia Day, Festival of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Three Kings’ Day and for the Muslims, Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

Notice how the multicultural logic is breaking down. If the list is by country or by religion, is the poster not missing a few? If the list by the month of the year, Eid al-Fitr is almost 6 months off.

Paying for Being Included

These sentimental well-intentioned folks have to be told to stop being so belligerent about inclusiveness. Not to be included is better than being included on someone else’s terms. The multiculturalists are taking away my freedom to my beliefs, and trying to give Christians a guilt complex they do not deserve. If I wish someone, “Merry Christmas” and if the person happens to the same to me, I am not offended. I do not become a Christian, I do not celebrate Christmas, but I party.

Does anyone have a problem with that?

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The Three Layers of Culture

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Sunanda

In one of my earlier posts, I had suggested that culture operates at 3 levels. It is the personal, the familial and the communal/national. We shift into anyone of these roles automatically. And this is what I had meant by the term Cultobot. A cultobot is one who has automated certain types of cultural responses Cultobots mechanically negotiate communal and familial cultural responses while fiercely guarding their personal cultures.

Personal culture

For example the teenagers of the previous post, who are as universal (similar) as human beings on earth can be. But this happens only when the teenagers are interacting with their computers. This is their personal culture—shared on an unprecedented scale—the culture of ultra-modern technological beings of a radically globalized planet. When these teenagers become professional, they easily shift to the conventions of global corporate culture and become the LinkedIn professionals.

Family’s culture

It is when people are in their family environments, the culture of their upbringing surfaces—for example a family’s love of music, self-questioning or agnostics, atheists or believers, laid-back or complacent individual of all shades: Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhists and many, many others.

Culture of the community and the nation

And then there is the culture of the community and the nation: extremely dynamic, prone to expansive generalizations, error-prone, dependent on the political flavour of the day. And, yet like the furious water raging in a river, still has stubborn land in its bottom. To each community and country its distinctive culture

So, paradoxically, in a huge crisis of disconnect, 16-year olds cultobots, rediscover the hijab –very often online and alone in chat-rooms and fly off to marry ISIS fighters. They do not at all go to their parents or communities for clarifications.

Or if the virtual world is too much out there, and the real world not quite enough, a 100 people will stand in the middle of crowd of 100, each single person alone and looking down into their phones and tablets.

And then the physical world (of bricks and mortar, snow and sun) around us all becomes a hallucination and a mirage.

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Culture: The Big Excuse for Everything

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Sunanda

Cultural variations have always been a very convenient justification for every type of human behavior. The argument thus far is that a definition of culture, based on history, heritage and religion is still the norm, and it should not be so. This is trying to race a Ferrari or a Lamborghini with the wheels of […]

A Firefly in the Forest

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Sunanda

It has been a long break from this blog and the world is none the worse for it….! But fixing the world anyway is not the agenda here.
In a forest is full of fireflies, does one tiny firefly ask itself, “ What should I do with my tiny lantern? Why should I glow? Am I adding any light?” And then it remembers its name, ‘firefly’.
That little spot of shiny light is its nature.
The agenda in this blog is similarly personal, to light my lantern and leave it out there in the forest. It is possible someday, someone will take away my tiny lantern and return to me a bigger one.

The plan is to post at least twice a month.

More than ever, culture is still our shared concern. There is violence in every culture. Individuals can be violent in every possible ways, and mental imbalances are understandable. But if groups like ISIS resort to something as extreme as beheadings, what is one to make of it? Granted that it is about politics. But then, why do they go back to religion and culture to find its validations and justifications?

Why is culture such a convenient tool?

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WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN TODAY: Summarizing the Issues

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Sunanda

As globalized members of the internet community, we have  lost touch with the bio-rhythms of our unique locations.  We follow global fashions and share global concerns. By implication, we have lost touch with our immediate communities, our neighbourhoods, our streets and lanes.

Our issues may  no longer be immediate and local. We might raise funds for Somalian children—which I cannot argue that it is not a worthy enough cause.  The implication of our de-localized concerns is that we have also lost the sense of shared culture that comes with the feeling of belonging to a particular, specific and a locationally-defined community, which by definition is rooted in tradition, religion and inheritances.

To go back to one of the one of my earlier arguments, now more than ever culture can no longer be defined as a shared inheritance. Culture has moved to the personal sphere.

And, don’t these new practices of culture demand a redefinition of culture, and by implication also of multiculturalism?

Thus, to summarize the argument thus far:

Thesis 1: Humanism is bigger than culturalism

Thesis 2: Technology has redefined our social interactions and our sense of community

Thesis 3: Identity is no longer rooted in culture, community and religion. This is what it means to be a technobot

Thesis 4: Consequently historical issues have lost relevance as also have historical debates about multiculturalism.

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THE CULTURE OF DISTRACTION: THERE IS TOO MUCH, TOO INTERESTING OUT THERE

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Sunanda

The short term, the temporary, the unsustained, the ephemeral and the fad define  the cultures of our times.

It is not our faults—it is the fault of our ages! Things are changing too fast and even 87 year old grandmothers have to learn to facebook. Keeping up with changing technology takes up too much time. Switching on the TV can be a relearning process every few months—unless you are a 5-year old—in that case you are born with a “reboot/update/relearn/” mental button.

To cope up with this, we as a species are responding with short attention spans.

Nothing can interest us for too long. We are no longer capable of reading a long passage. Listen to music or watch –short attention span—it is the immensity of the range of things that can distract us.

Never has the Now been so important as today. Is it surprising that tradition cultures are loosing their role in out lives? How much of our times everyday—10%, 5% or less do we spend on practices/ activities that we have inherited from our ancestors?

Is it surprising that YouTube with its new minutes of videos is the perfect cultural medium for us? Guess how many people have seen Charlie Bit My Finger on YouTube?

Or Psy’s Gangnam style—that supreme example of random popularity based on curiosity about how supremely bad/good is bad style + confidence that comes with total lack of self-evaluation.

I admit it is so bad that it is extremely good—just like Sarah Jessica Parker, that classic example of beauty that is extremely ugly and ugliness that is extremely beautiful.  These are categories all by themselves and a lesson.

A conclusion about the culture of our times:  We cannot handle the constant flow of brilliance, smartness, merit and genius. So, the best way to be really good is to be really bad.

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Resetting the Time Zones and Bio-Clocks: What it means to be Human today

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Sunanda

Once upon a time, people use to rise with the sun.  The night sky was for poets and astronomers. Everyone else would be in bed. Today, I might talk to my best friend who lives on the opposite side of the earth; or my job demands that I match my working hours with a country half way across. Or I could be between 14 years to 24 years if age. I just cannot sleep at night.

And yet I do not remember what the night sky looks like. Not only because all our electricity lights up the sky, but also because time zones have become blurred with the life that has shifted over from the physical to the virtual. Night is the time when I live, work, entertain, interact and socialize.

Larks are evolving into owls. And evolution being what it is, sometimes it slows down. In this case, it has taken is less than 25 years for this very fundamental change in our habits and cultural practices.

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN TODAY: Passive Beings of Virtual Communities

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Sunanda

If the first element in our redefinition is that we are technological beings, then the next characteristic is that we have become virtual. We live not where we are physically, but on the internet.

The other day I received a question from Facebook, “Do you know Eshani Mongia?”  “Well, yes!” I wanted to retort, “I should. My daughter lives in the same home as me!”

I gave it some good thought and decided I should not publish my ignominy. Facebook’s faceless technology was telling me that I would no longer have friends and family if I was not on it.  Our community and the games we play are now on the web and not our unknown, unnamable neighbors. Our communities too are virtual.

We do not need to think, the web thinks for us.  It has all the answers, all that could possibly be thought of is already on the internet. The music we could have composed, the songs we could have sung, the paintings, the poetry all is done by someone or the other. Before you think of it, it is on Youtube. Gone are the days of lonely geniuses polishing their skills and occasionally dying undiscovered. Today, they are discovered before they become geniuses and most likely it is a 12-year old.  For here is another key quality of contemporary human beings:

Since 99% of us have become such passive receivers of anything and everything from the internet, we are reactors, not creators.  Except the 1% prodigies so driven that they have to create by the time they are 12, burning out by 17 and getting totally lost by 21.

The individual’s culture is of reception, not of creation; not of time-tested inheritance; but of imitation. Our cultural concerns of the day are now doodled on Google.  It is easy to notice Google’s topics: historical figures who are relevant today, scientists, rebels, thinkers—not saints, religious holidays or such traditional stuff.

All indications say that Culture has lost its root in religion, and by implication in the past. If Christmas is doodled, it is for having shifted to the supra-religious sphere where it merges with the global party that celebrates the coming of the new year.

In this new global culture we are developing, we are loosing not only a lot of deadwood—which is always a good thing—but also the rich nuances of localized culture.

The paradox of our virtual lives is that we are never more lonely nor more connected.

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WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN TODAY

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Sunanda

There has to be something different and unique about human beings in the 21st century.  I am answering the question I asked some time ago: Is redefinition possible?

It is not only possible, it is necessary.

I believe we have become technological beings in a unique way. A hundred plus years ago, the growth of technology led futurists to imagine a synergy of technology with the physical body—it has come true in unpredictable ways. Mechanical hearts, and organs and children grown in petri-dishes and there is no limit to what can be imagined and executed. Another way of thinking led to how technology intervenes in our consciousness—the Matrix series of movies is just one example. Mostly it was about esoteric adepts who have played the Glass Bead Game. Today, it impacts the thinking of each one of us ordinary being.

So when does evolution cross a threshold—when change occurs in a few special individuals or large-scale in a whole race? For there is no doubt, we human beings are changing in a fundamental way. And it is not about our bodies. It is about our minds.

And that means that our culture, relationships, beliefs and attitudes—everything is changing.

Since we were always more dramatically creatures of the mind—this means that we are at the cusp of a massive change.

Is Shaw’s Superman finally coming to birth….Maybe, maybe not….!

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Google is the new God of the TechnoBots

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Sunanda

The other day, a church tried to lure in believers by putting up on its notice board the statement, “Google does not have all the answers.” It got me thinking, God or Google, who answers questions better?

Ask Google something, and the search field never comes up empty. The answer might be as intelligent or ridiculous as the question is, but that is beside the point. If Google says the Answer to the Ultimate Question is not 42(as we found in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe) but 24, or 0, who is to argue with any finality? Is it not enough that there is always an answer in Google?

Ask God a question and all we have silence.  And since we are in desperate need for answers, and loosing patience we “look” back into our “souls”, look at intermediaries, signs and symbols, pundits and popes, and hit upon an answer. More likely they merely fulfill our emotional needs.

Considering that both Google and God give us the answers in our own images—as the question so the answer—do we need to quibble?

Can we just go ahead and declare, that today, as throughout human history, we are inventing a new god and are busily building a new religion around it? Google is the new god of the humanals and internet our new religion.

The best thing about this new god and religion is that we no longer to fight wars to prove that this one is better than any other religion.  After all, the whole world is an ardent believer of Google.

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