Judgmental opinions

  In school, we had a subject called Community Living. It taught us life skills of how to live in a society, being civil and polite to others and to elders. Somehow, in the transition to adulthood, I lost track of when and where this subject has disappeared and with the subject is lost the art of politeness and civility in life as well. Somehow, in the transition to adulthood, I never realized when and how the society itself got flattened where relationships have become less formal and more casual with fewer social norms and a sad loss of civil human behavior. Somewhere along the way, we have lost our basic social values and this has had a very bad effect on our own personal lives and the family infrastructure. Children no longer are respectful to elders, employees are rude to seniors and the public less tolerant of service providers. Civility though costs nothing and buys everything, is a rare commodity in our lives. We have all experienced rude, passive aggressive or ho...

  A few years ago, my daughter and a few of her little friends wrote the script and presented a skit on alice in wonderland called the mad hatters party. Alice and her friends are celebrating a birthday party, but since it is not anyone’s birthday, they greet each other a very happy unbirthday! And the whole script is written by the kids with the prefix “un” so instead of the word “happy”, they used the word “unsad”! The kids were just aged between 7 and 10 and they sat together and wrote the full script for the ten minute skit.   I remembered this as I was reading a post on chatGPT and its wonders to make life easy. I have not used chatGPT and though I am fascinated by the wonders of AI, I am skeptical about using the word “creativity” associated with internet and its byproducts. What comes as output or any form of output from the internet is nothing but what is already poured into it by some human organism. I wouldn’t credit AI to be intelligent to be creative ...

  The era of the mobile phone and the internet has become a lethal combination. Machines were invented to reduce human hardships and make life easier so that more work can be got done in the same time with less effort. They invented those machines and the machines became more efficient by people improvising and fine tuning them. They save us time and they save us money. The washing machine washes our soiled clothes; the dish washer cleans our soiled dishes; the mixer and cooker helps us cook food faster and the vacuum cleaner keeps our homes tidy. That saves us a packet of time and then our inventors forgot to invent stuff that people could use with all the saved time. So people have invented activities that are so addictive that people spend all the time that is at leisure and all the time that is required for what little work they are supposed to do. These activities are in that small five inch screen and we concoct or own activities to supplement the activity done ...

  My take on the happiness index of India and what I feel is the right parameter on which to judge the country. The world’s criteria - Social Support, Income, Health, Freedom, Generosity, and Absence of corruption. The first criteria of social support. Rather than the Government, the true social support comes from the society in which we live in. The supportive neighbours when you are in distress; the joint family system that we live in; in fact if we even have a surviving parent living with us in our own home with, you wouldn’t find a happier home. The western world probably does not know that such a world exists. Many people I know have no regular source of income, yet continue to live a respectable life, cultivating their own food, selling wares and goods, cooking food for others and very contented with that life style. My own grand mother raised seven children in Mumbai just be packing lunch boxes and supplying them to offices in the neighbourhood and this include...

  One of the least known or discussed about afflictions in humans is the Constant Comparison Disorder, not to be confused with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The Constant Comparison Disorder is in fact a disorder generally characterized by an obsession with comparing yourself to others. It is considered a disorder only limited to individuals, but I feel as a society, the whole world suffers from this obsessive comparison disorder. The whole society is obsessed with the disorder and so we are fascinated by the classification of the worlds to 20 rich people, worlds top ten richest nations, the worlds top 20 happiest nations and the worlds top 20 most powerful nations …. The list is endless. I recently came across this world happiness report 2023 in which it is mentioned that Finland is the happiest nation in the world. This report has been vociferously contested because India is ranked 126, ranked below several countries including Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka that have bee...

  As we are growing up, I feel, the glory or excitement associated with a birthday diminishes. For a politician, a birthday might be a tool to gauge his or her own popularity; for a supporter, wishing the politicians on their birthdays may be with the motive of getting a toe-hold for future favours. But for us ordinary mortals, birthdays are just feel-good doses of wishes from friends and acquaintances, and now with social media, from complete strangers as well! I am a bit skeptical with the whole concept of birthday wishes, as I am confused on what basis is the idea of wishing annually on birthdays was derived! I completed 2860 weeks of my birth last Sunday; so why not happy 2860 th birthday? I complete 19000 days of my birthday in another 20 days; so why not happy 19000 th birthday? And so on. Even otherwise, we are congratulating someone for achieving something that just happened – having a birthday! No effort was required to achieve this feat except, perhaps, st...

  There are days when you lose track of time especially when you are so engrossed in some work, that by the time you realize it, you wonder, where did the time go! But for me, today was a bonus day! I lost track of time, completing tasks meant to be completed tomorrow that when I came to office, realized today is yesterday! Somehow, a day seems to have crept into my life and left me with one full extra day: today. And I don’t know what to do with today! I should have been happy. But I am not. Carrying the burden of a full extra day is hard work. Having a full day to do anything I want may sound very ideal with the belief that I am presented with a full day to choose whatever I want to do. This strange phenomenon is explained by a philosopher named Barry Schwartz in a book called The Paradox of Choice. The paradox of choice is a phenomenon where an abundance of options actually counter intuitively leads to less happiness, less satisfaction and greatly hampers the...