Holi:A Lession in Ethics

by B Someswar  Rao 

Holi teaches us that a gift or talent should not be misused. A boon  is to be used too save someone and  not to kill.  Prahlada and Hoika are just symbols.                  This lesson is significant today : technology, a gift to humanity,  is being misused.
Most terrorists are highly ‘educated’ people who use their knowledge wrongly as their religion does not teach value of  vasudaivakutunbakam and justifies killing of kafirs’ and destruction other religions’ idols. Fanatics are not alone in using  knowledge of technology wrongly. A computer virus is a wrong program code written by someone with IT knowledge; so are cloning of ATM cards and other cyber crimes. Education today only means degrees and not imbibing of ethicsal values.  Holi is not just smearing colors, abuses or gambling which North India associates with it today. Unfortunately ritualism crept ireasons Hinduism  and we follow only when the colour of religion or custom is  smeared on a practice, ఏచరవచ without understanding. All Hindu festivals have scientific . It is a  distortion of idiom that Northerners believe gambling on Holi day is a MUST. Taking liberties with women and using abusive language are later distortions of the need to shed inhibitions.  Holi is a colourful lesson in ethics.

Selfie Time

While exploring the fair this visitor found this place an interesting one to have a selfie probably for the background.

Selfie Time

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Holi, a Colourful Lesson in Ethics 

by B Someswar  Rao Holi teaches us that a gift or talent should not be misused. A boon  is to be used too save someone and  not to kill.  Prahlada and Hoika are just symbols.                  This lesson is significant today : technology, a gift to humanity,  is being misused.
Most terrorists are highly ‘educated’ people who use their knowledge wrongly as their religion does not teach value of  vasudaivakutunbakam and justifies killing of kafirs’ and destruction other religions’ idols. Fanatics are not alone in using  knowledge of technology wrongly. A computer virus is a wrong program code written by someone with IT knowledge; so are cloning of ATM cards and other cyber crimes. Education today only means degrees and not imbibing of ethicsal values.  Holi is not just smearing colors, abuses or gambling which North India associates with it today. Unfortunately ritualism crept ireasons Hinduism  and we follow only when the colour of religion or custom is  smeared on a practice, ఏచరవచ without understanding. All Hindu festivals have scientific . It is a  distortion of idiom that Northerners believe gambling on Holi day is a MUST. Taking liberties with women and using abusive language are later distortions of the need to shed inhibitions.  Holi is a colourful lesson in ethics.

No Unemployment in India

education

WHENEVER I SAY (and it is quite often) that there is no unemployment in India but most people are “unemployable”, I get angry rebuttals or derisive laughter.

But I still hold it is true. Most school students do not know what they want to be. A very large number of people see employment as just an accident. An extremely large number of people do not enjoy what they are doing. Those who want to be singers or writers or painters end up as doctors or engineers. Being a player or an athlete was, till recently, never an option – all play “is a waste of time; it will not feed you.”

Brilliant could-have-been architects would be poring over accounts and those who could have made excellent doctors would be…. We can go on and on. There are too many square pegs in round holes.
And the main reason for this sorry state of things is our education system.

One of the worst failures of the country, whichever party is in power, is in the field of

education.

Continue reading No Unemployment in India

Stop All New Temples, Mosques, Churches

Ganesh, Jesus, Saibaba together, but men fight. –photo Sai Prakash

A NEWS ITEM headlined “Patidars pledge Rs 150 crore in 3 hours for temple in Ahmedabad” drew scores of comments opposing such lavish spend when there was so much poverty and suffering in the world, especially by a community agitating to get labelled as poor and backward.

True, temples, mosques and churches did contribute to the growth of art, architecture and craftsmanship. But, it appears that their contribution to the growth of higher human values and spiritually is, unfortunately, not proportionate. Building them may contribute to employment, but in the past they were the products more of slavery, exploitation or forced labour.

Human race still faces the problems of wars, killing, extreme cruelty and deliberate deprivation, which would have been eliminated had spiritual and mental growth of human race kept pace with that of science and technology.

Instead, technology led to making of deadlier weapons of mass destruction and greater human suffering. Many terrorists of today have high technical skills and so called ‘education’.

And this when ALL religions preach compassion, benevolence, kindness and other acclaimed virtues so sadly absent now. Only religions believing in proseletisation through crusades or Jehad dominate the world.

Fringe elements of even a religion that sought Vasudhaiva kutumbajam (world as one family) preach violence.

It is time an embargo is imposed on building more temples, mosques and churches. Man should focus more on urgent issues like disarmament, climate change or disease eradication.

As far back as the 1950s, Socialus leader Dr Ram Manohar Lohia wrote (‘Intervel in Politics’) that what Benaras (now Vanarasi) needed was not one more temple (as was being planned then) but a drive to clean the sacred Ganga.

Over 50 years later, that has not been done yet. And more temples, churches and mosques are coming up.

It is a question of priorities.

Time To Shut Up?

WORDPRRSS SHUT ME out of my own blog on laptop asking for a decade-old passwornd. I could not get the ‘title’ page to write on.

I found, however, that the WP app on my smartphone enabled me to keep writing. I could resume the blog; I felt I was really ‘unstoppable’.

It was a miracle of technology and though too old to master it, I clung to it desperately.

Writing on phone in a train or plane with auto-‘correct’ changing correct words into meaningless gibberish, has however added to the problems of failing sight and memory.

Though I found quite a few blogs written in poor language and with mistakes of grammar, too many typos in my posts worried me. After all I lived for the last 60 years on writing.

But along with technology habits also changed. Reading has beome out of fashion and Google the repository of all knowledge. S

o you need not have any background or information. You just Google for it when needed.

It all comes back to the basic issue of old, outdated, worn-out brains still thinking they have some knowledge (from just being alive for too long, which they confuse with experience) to pass on to the new generation.

It is not easy for ‘old foggies’ to accept the truth that it is no virtue in being ‘unstoppale‘ just by being alive just on borrowed time, having ‘outlived their utility‘, an expression one of my ex-editors was fond of (and which, I argued then, meant it was time for them to die).

He was right. And luckily he is dead.

I am not that lucky..

Technology – Enslaving or Our Slave?

On Monday my Op-Ed was published in the Los Angeles Times! In the last several months I have had the pleasure of working with editors at some pretty brag-worthy publications, though with the LA Times I can’t help but devote an entire blog post to my bragging. Shameless, I know. For those who missed it, […]

via I was Published in the L.A. Times — Jamison Writes

I am sharing here a blog post by Jamison Hill on how he lives by his smartphone

WHEN I WROTE TWO BLOG POSTS LAST MONTH ON MY SMARTPHONE, I THOUGHT IT was something unique. I found some write and  many read their blogs on smartphones. Continue reading Technology – Enslaving or Our Slave?

Don’t Cry Over Ransomware Alone

virus.jpg

ALMOST EVERY MONTH BRINGS A NEW SCARE OF COMPUTER VIRUS. AND WITH COMPUTERS BECOMING an essential equipment at every step in every field, these ‘attacks’ cause more scare today than any virulent epidemic.

The recent Ransomware virus attack by the group WannaCry, which demanded payment of ransom in the digital currency Bitcoin in return for not destroying all the data on a computer, was said to be the worst virus attack so far. After the virus ‘Trojan’ caused a havoc a few years ago, every new virus that was released by the ‘cyber terrorists’ was described as the worst ever.

Computer viruses, unlike those that endanger your health, are not natural phenomena but the handiwork of technically qualified criminals who write the harmful software that causes the damage. The attackers say they want to cry (WannaCry) but made thousands cry.

What you should cry about, however is not just Ransomware. What is shocking is that the software was created by the National Security Agency (NSA) of America to destroy enemy computers and had leaked out somehow. It is like germs of a deadly epidemic, kept for research in some medical laboratory, leaking out and killing people. What is of concern is that this leak could be deliberately caused by people like the Islamic terrorists who think they are serving a holy cause by doing so.

It is seen that most of the terrorists using high technology are highly qualified and well versed in technology. Similarly those indulging in violence for the ’cause’ they believe in get highly sophisticated technology and weapons which again involve high resources and influence. So the education which gave them the technology and resources has failed to instil human values in them.

Technology, sophisticated weaponry and high resources can get into the hands of people with perverted mentality who can misuse them. Nuclear trigger may be within the reach of people with ideas which can harm the human race itself. And they can get the access to them even though the democratic process when ‘leaders’ are driven by hatred, wrong notions of nationalism, distorted interpretations of religion and hunger for power. That criminals can get elected needs no proof in India.

The new Ransomware criminals, according to The Economic Times daily, spent only Rs 686 to attack computers across 99 nations! Every organisation with computers issued advisory to all its staff not to click on unsecured links, not to open attachments and stop downloading movies for the next two days. Some ATMs were shut down and people told not to transact online for some time.

For the next few days one should not open any message with an attachment entitled ‘POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK,’regardless of who sent it, as it is sent from the hacked account of someone who frequently sends mails. The virus opens a post card image which ‘burns’ the whole hard disc (local disc C) of the computer.

Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee on Saturday. It was declared there was no repair found yet for Ransomware. It simply destroys the Zero Sector of the hard disc, which stores all vital information.

Thousands of mails were sent out by people, many of them self-professed ‘experts’, warning about the virus. Microsoft blamed it on the use of that pirated Windows software in most computers in India. And today some security companies already claimed they can protect your computer from Ransomware. So the attack turned out to be a business opportunity for some.

Again it boils down to ethics and moral values. Or their distortion.