Of Human Suffering, Part I

Through history, man has enslaved his fellow beings in a quest for supremacy, a workforce, or some other equally misdirected reason. If it wasn't the dark ages and you weren't a serf toiling away in order to satisfy the lord's whims and fancies, you were stuck in the plantations of the new world and sold in markets like other common commodities. 

No age in recent history has been free of this scourge - if the 18th and 19th centuries had slavery and its European equivalent - the bonded labour demanded by the industrial revolution - the 20th century was no laggard either, with Communism, slave camps and human trafficking making up but a small part of the suffering that mankind has seen (and perpetrated upon itself).

But how long will these tales of exploitation continue? Will they go on forever, for it is in human nature to subjugate and suppress, just as it is to love and adapt? Or is mankind an essentially decent race that has led itself astray over the course of centuries of flawed moral and social rules?

To answer that, it is pertinent to begin from those ancient Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato and (certainly) Aristotle. Broadly speaking, Aristotle subscribed to the view that the most important property of one's life was - not power, nor fame, nor wealth - but happiness, that elusive and unquantifiable ideal. Without going into philosophy headlong, it is pertinent to ask the question: would people recognize happiness if it announced itself and then appeared? Since when has mankind been able to define its measure of happiness?

Nevertheless, let us move on and consider the hopelessly misdirected rationalizations that people have offered at some point or the other in time for the human abuse detailed above. The Industrial Revolution had the best marketing going for it - the peasants were being given a chance to earn a fair wage, and work at jobs of their liking, and maintain a standard of living, and all that sort of thing. 

However, the enslavement of people across the Atlantic had star power to go with it; the founder of the nation of the free and the brave maintained slaves, whereas the man that wrote passionately about the ideals of freedom and individual freedom saw nothing untoward in availing of the services of enslaved individuals.

The title of most ironic, however, must go to Communism and the subsequent rise of labour camps through the erstwhile Soviet republics (though it must be noted that neither this phenomenon nor the method of dishing out suffering were restricted to that conglomerate of nation-states). Here was a system of governance that people demanded and overthrew governments for, in the belief that all would be equal under the new order. 

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs - how could something with such a wonderful premise go wrong? But as history showed us, it was nothing but a Utopian ideal, a shroud that was used to adorn some of the most high-handed governance we have yet seen. Under the pretext of dissent, sedition and other equally colourful (but imagined) charges thousands (and maybe more) were sent to forced labour camps and often mass-graves.

All these things of the past, you shake your head and say. But are we better off today? Are we able to comment on that, caught as we are in the paradox of being unable to say anything about contemporary happenings until they can be judged through the objective rationality of time? What kind of system or society will it take to make us really happy?

Continues.

Note: This article does not take cognizance of a horror that eclipsed all others in its brutality and sheer inhumanity, and was a blot on the existence of mankind - the Holocaust, and all genocides before and after. These, I am strongly convinced, are driven by an insanity that is not a hallmark of human nature, and as such deserve to be construed as appalling examples of events that our systems of morality and society cannot explain.

Pop goes the Packing

Moving to a new city never had any particular enticements to me as a kid, but one of the few saving graces was the unending supply of bubble wrap that would make itself available for free use. The actual purpose of the material was always to protect the sensitive and expensive household items like the fridge, the television (yes, these were the times of one TV per household, not room), the computer's monitor (if you were one of those privileged kids).

Squeezing the little plastic bubbles until they made that 'pop' noise - there was a unique pleasure one got from the whole exercise. To the lay adult, looking on into a kid's world from the outside, it must have appeared a futile occupation in monotony, but how wrong that is - for bursting those little bubbles is a science unto itself, a field that to this day escapes documentation. Here then is an attempt to demystify the cult of Bubble Wrap ...

Myth # 1: Bubble wrap is an exhaustible resource, and is the primary cause of global warming.

Any kid worth their mischief will tell you that this isn't true, least of all because every appliance you buy, every finely finished piece of furniture that is delivered to your doorstep, comes wrapped in this universal substance. As for global warming - well, stop buying a TV everytime you see it marked down for sale.

Myth # 2: The funnest way to destroy bubble wrap is to place it on an even surface and jump up and down.

Now this one is plain untrue. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of having their thumb and index finger go sore with constant application of opposing pressures will attest to the fact that the most pleasure can be derived from choosing your victim in a carefully thought out way and attending to it with the utmost concentration and the correct compression index.

Myth # 3: You can go to jail for misusing bubble wrap when over the age of 13 in forty seven states.

I used to believe this one until I verified it for myself. Also, "misusing bubble wrap" has wholly other disturbing connotations.

I could go on clearing other fallacies and urban legends about bubble wrap, but I have to figure out a plan for my impending move ... and we all know what that means.

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Note: I wrote this one lazy Sunday afternoon for Sarmista, who surprisingly seems to think I can write. Or maybe she just had a pressing deadline (and an accompanying need). Either way, I accept cash, credit or Chipotle.

Fancy Footwear

So Bush had shoes thrown at him. Big deal - at least he wasn't made to feel unwelcome by scores of protestors who showed up on the streets of Iraq the next day in a show of solidarity with the thrower-of-shoes, but who really were just venting their own frustrations over the disconnect between the liberators and the situation on the ground. Heck no - according to W. man, the shoe thrower was no more representative of the popular sentiment on the ground than his former generals were of war strategy.

How right he is - most of Iraq now feels, unlike that famous (but currently incarcerated) QB for the Baghdad Boot-hurlers, that he should have thrown a couple of inches left and had a wee bit of speed added on.

What about the receiver? One can't help but wonder what goes through Bush's mind every morning as he wakes up, each new dawn bringing him one day closer to the end of a way of life that he (and I don't blame him here) has probably got used to.

Does it prey on him that he may be the least popular outgoing president in recent times? That people around the world give him, the gifted wordsmith who famously coined Axis of Evil and other legendary phraseology, the designation of devil incarnate? That his successor in the White House is a Democrat who, even by Republican accounts, is a worthy occupant of that building? That the man he followed into the presidency, not one very given to restraint in life public or private, is now being hailed as a beacon of progress and development in $1000-a-word speeches at the world's wealthiest ballrooms? Or, most cruelly of all, that he'll have to go to Thanksgiving dinners where there will always hang the unsaid stigma of having accomplished less in eight years' time than his old man did in half that time?

By his own accounts, Forty-three seems more than eager to get back to good 'ole Texas and settle back into a slower-paced life, one where he can devote his time to writing memoirs and raising money for his presidential library. But as they say (or if no one does, I do), loneliness is the handmaiden and harbinger of impending sadness by self-introspection.

Hype

In the aftermath of the terror strikes in Mumbai, there have been numerous outpourings of feeling and many insinuations, especially online and largely amongst the youth. A recurring tome in most of these outbursts has been anger and helplessness - anger at people that would perpetrate such a mindless crime, and a defunct system that did nothing to prevent it; helplessness that nothing concrete is being done even now to prevent such an eventuality occurring in the future.

A lot of people I know personally have either sought to justify the position they are in (of being unable to do anything) and deflect blame, or have come out all guns blazing with a solution that will ostensibly wipe terrorism off the face of this earth. Many people have, wisely for the times, advocated restraint and a process of addressing the causes rather than the symptoms.

But let me play the ever-present cynic and ask - why now? What is so new about this instance that everyone is all worked up and in a frenzy? Agreed most of the news media has sensationalized this as "India's 9/11" and labelled it with other such TRP-inducing phrases, but surely other incidents in the past have merited such attention? I'm not willing to take the argument that India's conscience has suddenly awakened to the horror that is terrorism after countless years of suffering. I'm not against the new wave of righteous indignation and the sense that something, somewhere needs to be set right, but is it sustainable?

Until events prove me otherwise, I'm saying no. The true measure of whether things have changed at all came barely a couple of days after the 60-hour live coverage of the events in Mumbai -- a powerful blast on board a train in Assam garnered little attention, whether in the mainstream media or the "alternative" venue of blogs. Violence is no soap or game show, but it has seemingly been reduced to a battle for eyeballs, more's the pity.

Note: Again, I must reiterate, this rant in no way takes away from either the coverage given to the events in Mumbai (entirely warranted), nor the subsequent realizations that seem to have dawned on everyone. If any of that is sustainable, there is none happier than I.

How He Helped

Hari has a somewhat satirical, fictional account of his long drive through eight midwestern states and how his efforts at various junctures may have helped turn some of those states Barack Obama's way decisively, come election day. The piece is titled How I helped Obama win in eight states.

This article is well worth a read, and Hari's blog in general is good to follow for some very nice writing on everyday living in the United States and the very interesting people as well as history that one encounters.

Four

This week, the krak-blog turns four. As usual, this is a time to recollect and revisit; not just for me as the primary contributor, but for all the readers who have followed the content on and off over the years.

Blogging has changed rapidly in these past four years, from the techno-obsessed geek's pastime to a powerful medium that shapes opinion, and oftentimes our view of events, around the globe. On an orthogonal plane, it has also grown as a sharing platform, where minds come together to contribute ideas that range from recipes to remedies, and opinions on issues ranging from poetry to piety.

Blogs are growing, and their medium and message remains as strong as ever.