Not worred for the end but excited about the start

As Dec 21 is nearing and so is the possibility of "end". What I truly believe is that this is will be the end of Dark Age not earth that we live in. The 3rd largest population of world saw the evil inside simple man when given Gun. I hope that they realize that "terror" comes not in a white turban saying Jihad but can be anyone with uncontrolled power. The 2nd largest population of world is currently enraged over similar event involving girl. Hope it helps them realize that uncontrolled passion is source of misconduct and again can be anyone. These events have been occurring in the past but I hope they have crossed their limit and will truly cause its own end. I hope that this realization will be truly decentralized and global event ending the shackles of this dark age and usher a new beginning where acceptance is truly global. I am not sad about the end but I am excited for this new beginning as I have always been.

Not worred for the end but excited about the start

Are we ready for a Global World?

In a midst of global tension regarding recent killings of American ambassador over what was globally available in Internet on a very sensitive topic, a question quite important than current issues lies ahead of us. Are our technological products mature enough that we can let them affect ourself? Should our product be based on only one school of thought denying all others just because they disagree with prevalent ones? Isn't the purpose of technological advances in form of global media a common good for all?

World is fast connecting thanks to recent usage of mass media in form of Internet. Though Internet has been around a decade now, its use has been seen global only recently thanks to mobile world that allowed cheaper technology into hands of even poor of underdeveloped nations and also the rise of social media of all interesting forms like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. So for the first time its not hard for anybody in any part of the world to connect to a person from any other part of world. With this, ideas and views tend to get shared in a very rapid sense. It does not takes big marketing agendas to do that. It should have the right combination to attract mass and there you go. There are enormous example of this with Gangnam style being worth to be noted. A Korean song whose lyrics rarely mean anything to a non-korean yet became an instant hit worldwide. It is the first Korean song to top iTunes chart. Do you think a global mass of korean population or biggest marketing propaganda of Psy helped generate that demand? Definitely not. It was a global network of interconnection in form of social bond through facebook, twitter and other social services that helped boost it. All being said on positive side, this blog however deals with possible negative sides of it. Are we ready enough for this global connection? Are our psychological thinking flexible enough that it will allow us to break the age old bondage of traditional thinking that we are used to? Are we democratic enough globally to accept other people feelings equally and yet defend ours in a truly democratic way? Recent events show exactly the opposite.

The so called movie “Innocence of Muslims” whose trailer released in Internet brought about an unexpected effect involving life of few people including an American ambassador. It also added to the pile of Muslim frustration towards USA and Israel in this precarious period where people are already frustrated/petrified by either civil war (Syria) or recent revolution (Egypt, Libya). Lets not discuss about the movie or trailer as it should be known to almost ever creature in this planet now, thanks to the global media. Was this a real movie from some lunatic or just another hoax/rumor for wild publicity or even part of conspiracy made by some nation(like stuxnet), nobody knows for sure. It is not the first time such thing has happened. There were previous episode involving controversial cartoons, movie, documentary, writing, picture, songs, etc. But, long before, the impact was less given lack of penetration of global media. But, given global connection, this can have devastating effects. Technology supports viral media. Its designed in every sense to support sharing whether it be a song, video, blog, tweet, photo or even meme. As a software engineer it gives me immense pleasure to see new power it has given. But, being an ethical engineer its my duty to realize its possible flip part. When I view comments on youtube on one of those videos, I can clearly categorize commentators into broadly two groups. One group supports the idea while other opposes it. Each one group is based on what they have been taught to think as. I call them local knowledge. For example, a person born in US may have democratic and liberal thinking while one from North Korea may have a rather communist thinking where socialism is basis for life. Similarly, a person from country where free speech is practiced right from schools like Scandinavian countries might love to experiment on different ideas and philosophy and attack it trying to find possible flaws in it. But for a person from a country where traditional moral values are held foremost important and entire society is based on conserving it, the behavior might be exactly different. If you clearly study the different groups of commentators in social medias, you can easily understand that everybody derives themselves from one of those group of thought. Some may be corroboration of two or more group of thoughts while rarely you see people who will be neutral to these issues. The problem of global media is thus that it interconnects them without properly educating them about it and expects them to be ready for it and possible problems from it. Due to this, instead of a taking a shape of global feast where everybody learns and enjoys, it rather takes a nasty tug-of-war shape. It may seem to start from comment but its not hard to reach a level of war or atleast some kind of riot.

But, nobody is to take single blame here. That would be again a wrong conclusion to make. Simply consider episode of Mohammedan cartoons supported by danish media. If you study danish media in isolation to danish environment, it seems perfectly plausible. It is simply criticizing a view. If somebody likes it they can support it. If it offends someone they can turn to court for justice. Now, consider the Islamic world in isolation. The conservative rule that governs not just thinking but also government, strictly restricts any kind of criticism of any respects to religious issues especially related to prophet. Here religion is held more than just idea or view. It is a basis of life. It is something on the par of freedom of speech to a Norwegian or socialism to a communist person. Simply speaking, everybody has some kind of biasness for something based on their background. So, when we move these group from isolation and put them in global scenario things soon taste sour with unexpected results, recent one being just a small one.

How can one have people with opposing ideas in one place and at worst connected to each other without ever affecting themselves? Seems like its not an easy solution. It is something social scientists/psychologists have to figure out first and then implemented by policy bureaucrats and educational entrepreneurs into masses at global level. Should government allowing free speech, revisit the domain of what freedom includes? Should government trying to preserve a conservative thinking revisit rules for possible reactions, should they be violated by a foreign person in an alien country. This already seems quite infeasible to me given bigger problems of world and a greed of nations for more wealth and power. As a technologist, I will prefer limiting technology first before we try to limit ourselves. Its far easy to do that kind of thing than changing nations and at worst humans. Are every technological entrepreneurs concerned about what can be possible effects while they define the domain of their product? I am sure they will look at rules of their nation. But, what about global norms and local thinking of people in it. How will they react? How immune are these global media against hoaxes especially those around sensitive ideas like religion? Again it is dependent on these technological entrepreneurs who develop newer tools for global media to decide and act upon before its too late and we have a world full of hatred rather than a truly humane world.

Are we ready for a Global World?

Today's Relations

Problem with today's relationship is that they fail to take into account the fact that relations are like Mangoes in that they begin with a total sourness but in takes great patience and two sided faith to reach a state of sweetness. Most people simply blame the initial sourness onto their partners not knowing its a state of chaos inherent to every other thing in this universe.

It may first seem to be only romantic relations. In fact, this extends to other type of relations as well. This however may not mean those relations acquired out of birth like one with your parents or siblings. This means all those relations where we have independence of choosing partners with whom to have specific relation. It may mean a friend, a pet animal and even your profession where you are totally independent to choose with whom you want to pursue relationship with.

People successful in their relations all must have had horrific beginnings, a state of utter uncertainty. But, the continued stress for grooming it is all what is needed rather than total neglect or judging at first look.

Today's Relations

Why Money grows on Trees

Money don't grow on trees is a very old saying especially from parents who want to inculcate the habit of savings on their children. I have been listening this for all my life time. As I grew, Like most of words from parents, I observed different thing. Money indeed grew on trees. In good old days, that tree was natural and had natural growth and hence money supply was natural and uncontrolled. But, in current world of mass production that tree was genetically modified using technology. So, that tree now has enormous rate of growth.

So, logical connection between money and tree is simple. Woods grow from tree. Paper are created from Woods. And finally, money is created from paper. These days its not hard for bankers to create money. Recent recession was an example of good excuse for doing that. Printing billions of money is a matter of few greedy people reaching a consensus as to what each one gets and passing a bill. Normal people either don't have an idea about that or they simply don't care.

So, for normal people like my family that saying still holds pretty much true. But, for international bankers this does not. If you have any friends whose parent is an banker, ask what they said to him while s/he was growing. I doubt they said same what my parents did.

Why Money grows on Trees

Mind-Mail: Comparing thought processing Mind with Email

Humans are made for thinking. We think lots of things: past and future and sometimes present. We are thinking machines that never pause expect in deep sleep. We even think when we yawn, “OMG what I am doing, stop it, stop it” but it wont stop. So, are other things in life. We cannot control all things in life yet we waste time thinking about it. Maybe its our default nature. We tend to think too much into past, regretting things we could have done but couldn't do. Also, we think a lot about future that has yet not presented itself. So, our mind is stuck processing two kinds of thoughts that constantly bombard our mind, past and future. Whats more interesting in them is that they generate two possible results. Some make you happy while some make you sad. The ones that make you happy are ones related to your achievement, your loved ones, your belongings, adventures, etc. And the ones that make you unhappy are ones related to lost things (people and money at top), fear for something that may get wrong, etc. So, our mind is constantly tacking various threads of thoughts that enter like stream, result of which are happy or bad mood.

So, our mind can be looked as your email box. Every thought that enters it is like an Email. That thought can be independent (like thought that comes when you get promotion for first time) or that are recurrent(every time your alarm wakes you from sweet dream on cold morning). The former is like independent mail and latter one is like email thread having same topic. In Email, there are two kinds of possible outcomes of when you open them. One is good one because you get some useful information like you got your promotion. Obviously, it starts a thread of congratulation emails in same thread for you. But, other type are spams that when open can do malicious things to your system and even to your personal life. They can crash your hard drive, or drop in some male-ware that starts sending personal information to remote server which can lead to anything. So, what is difference between both type of emails, nothing. They are just emails with subject, body and possible attachment. Since I developed email client myself at one time, I know there are lot more thing in it apart from obvious things listed. Yet, they look apparently the same in structure.

Fortunately in case of Emails, we have developed many anti-spam system that use various ways to automatically filter good genuine mails from spams. Its like filtering wheat from chaff. So, we have two place in email, one called the inbox where you normally focus your time while checking in email and other called spam where all those spam mails go in. The email server does no bad to spam mails but is generous enough to give it some time (like a month or two) before deleting it forever. You can have look at it if you want during that period and can even turn it back into good mail(move it back into inbox).

Unfortunately, In case of mind, there is no such thought filtering system. We do not filter our thoughts the same way as emails are. They always end up getting processed by mind resulting into various moods. The good thing is that there are indeed two folders inside our brain for every thoughts just like email, inbox and spam. They behave same way as do emails. But, problem is we don't have filter system in place. Every thought that enters ends up into mind 'inbox'. Result is that we end up processing malicious and wrong thoughts that not only depresses us but encourage us into wrong actions. Just like there email counterparts, they are uncertain and take up huge amount of your minds time. They may fill up your life with regret and lead to your down fall. Worse part is that we tend to process them in real time without giving them time to settle i.e. we think while they are still immature meaning their outcome hasn't manifested itself yet.

We could filter every thought that comes by sending the malicious/depressing ones into spam. Once inside spam that thought gets locked up without getting any attention from mind. After some time just as in case of email, that malicious thought disappears forever. Our mind has very powerful weapon for deleting unnecessary thoughts through process called 'forgetting'. Our brain are made of neurons that die and generate all the time unlike silicons. We could just store such malicious thought in one of those dying neurons. After sometime, we may realize that the filtered malicious thought wasn't actually bad (like thought of your recent breakup which later helped you get into better relationship or pursue your lifetime dream). We may now be store it as good one and cherish it for life time. Its like moving mail marked spam back into inbox. Good thing is we have prevented that thought from affecting us while in immature state. We gave it some evaluation time when we detected its malicious behaviour. If it was unable to get into good one (remained sour for long time), we deleted them forever and once that turned good later, we store it back as good memories. Result is that our mind is full of good thoughts that enrich our lives. As Buddha says, thought reflects our action which in turn reflects our life.

So, next time before thinking about any thought, try taking some time out filtering it and deciding whether its worth your precious time. If its not, just ignore it and put it into mind 'spam' folder and let it die its natural death. You should lead a better life in that way.

Mind-Mail: Comparing thought processing Mind with Email

Co-Existing dual nature: Individualism and Humanity

Everybody is born different and unique. Yet in difference there is similarity which software engineers called Abstraction. There is no way to group different people. There are only extremes. The one end is called humanity where everybody is human: no race, no country, no language, no religion, no profession, etc. The other end is called individualism where everybody is special and unique that goes into DNA structure with other feature stored in brain. Every intermediate level is born out of lack of proper understanding of human science. They can be religion, country, language, profession, etc.

Today in Nepal, there is continuous ongoing talk about groupism and representation for it. There simply seems no end to it. The conflict that arises due to that is hampering daily life and overall development of nation. It is affecting lives of simple people who accept themselves as part of common whole. The result is mess which leaves nobody in good position. If we satisfy the condition where a unique group is properly represented with a fixed location in map of world, then that would come down to level of individual (if not now but later when two subgroups in one group realize that they are not same and need further division which goes recursively till we get to individual level). So, 30 million population would need 30 million different divisions. That can be impossible to generate physically because that would leave one area too small to do any basic job for survival.

The solution is simple. We as individual only own that small area of land that our body covers. Even that area diminishes once our life looses this body. This could be understood from Alexander the great who realized the futility of world conquer idea during his end days. So, when you think from individualism perspective, the idea is simple. You are responsible for that small area you cover at one moment of time, nothing else. You own it and no body has right to displace you except the mighty nature of whom you are part of and who has every right to punish/reward you. At the same time you have to respect the area that other individual around you cover. From the global perspective, nothing is yours. You are just block of a big wall that forms world. Everybody has its part to play. I am surrounded by fellow Nepalese with whom I have cherished a wonderful life. My school and childhood friends all from India represents all my childhood that are ones who understand me very closely. I also work with American people who help me at every step and have learn a lot. I feel as a block that appears at one point in time, plays his part and later at some other point diminishes. During that period of time, many other block also appear while some other disappear whose subset I deal with. From that perspective, You don't have singular representation but have global representation that you form part of. You remain for small part in time however that global body remains forever. You play your part, other play their part. It however appears as though that global body is acting. That global part for me is humanity and not any country or religion or any profession. We are now entering knowledge world from information world where everything will be represented generically. As I said earlier, everything will be abstracted right from top.

At individual level, We are already given freedom by nature to represent ourself. Nature never interferes with it. At global level, We are connected through technology that helps us understand each other at every possible way. It has helped us solve big problems globally as a team and share our sorrows and happiness making it a global event. The greed for representation and right will never end until everybody has killed every other weak person and world is full of exhausted devils who will have land and resources to enjoy but no friend to share that happiness with. Nepalese politicians desperately need to understand this truth and understand co-existing dual nature of being and stop childish fight for right and land of representation. That is only going to sow seeds of destruction.

It reminds of Words from Gita:

I exist in every being, yet I form a global whole

Co-Existing dual nature: Individualism and Humanity

My Richness

Alone at my flat room, I was playing song 'Chanda hai tu, mera suraj hai tu' when I suddenly realized the biggest richness I have. It wasn't money or even knowledge or health or friends that most people consider so precious in their life. It was something like the Deewar film reply, Mere paas Maa hai. A small idea just grew into a biggest conclusion of my life suddenly in a second. It was like Nuclear Fission. It happened in a flick of second and grew into something I will value for my life. The richness that I have is simple: Mother.

Let me ask you one question. Imagine your mother. You will imagine a female lady depending on your experience with her that will give you various feelings. But, ask me and I will give you a list of never ending personalities each one conflicting yet true. The reason is simple. I have multiple mothers that you may not have. In my life of 24 years, I never realized it. Today I realized it. It wasn't even like Buddha's meditating posture yet the same feeling what Buddha must have obtained during his nirvana. My life had been shaped and influenced by each of these great personalities. Maybe that is why people find difficult to deal with me because my own personality is conflicting which corresponds to that of my mothers.

My biological mother is ofcourse the first and yet the most special one. The sweetness of my relation with her has grown over time. She has been very protective of me as I have been very weak from my start. She represents everything that parallels with the properties of GOD. When I imagine about her I can only feel courage and confidence that I never felt even with my best of friends.

I also have my step-mother with whom I don't have good relation. My family never had good relations with her and thus that relation was inherited to me too. To me, she represents the dark lord. When I imagine her I get cold with fear that I never felt even with worst of my foes.

I never felt grandfather as both my paternal and maternal grandfathers were dead by time I gained natural consciousness. But, I was gifted by grandmothers on both side. Both have been very influential on me. I lost my paternal grandmother during my undergraduate studies. When I think of her, I see myself in mirror. If you know me, I don't need to describe her. My father strongly bears her characteristics and thus I inherited her characteristics through him. My maternal grandmother represents social figure to me. When I imagine her, I can only see smile. The eternal smile that Buddha emitted after defeating evil Mara.

I was born and grew in India, the mother of billions including me. When I think of her, I feel girl talking Marathi in a speedy yet smart accent. I also feel the warmth of water when you hold for drinking which equals to warmth of my biological mother when I hold her tightly when I am scared.

My motherland is Nepal. When I think of her, I feel eternal peace in a lonely planet far away from the regular crowd. Among peace, I feel strong disturbance that suddenly disrupts my stable mind. I have been seeing goodness and badness separate till now. When thinking of Nepal, I feel both entities converging into one. I can feel the darkness of loadshedding and in it see brightness of hope. It somehow represents me. All conflicting things merged into one. Nepal is land formed out Indian Plate colliding with Asia that gave rise to mighty Himalayas. Maybe we share same origins. We both look at each other and smile, internally.

My Richness