THE NEED FOR A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE FOR REGULATORY AUTHORITIES

We have had a proliferation of enforcement and regulatory agencies in the recent past. These are supposed to exercise autonomous authority over specific areas of human activity.  While the current political structure is in a state of relative flux, these agencies have been given greater policing powers than they have enjoyed in a long time. Yet, as citizens, one wonders how effective they are and how well connected they are to the people, their aspirations and their grievances. 

There is a popular mantra that states that if there is monopoly involvement of an entity in any sector of human activity, then a regular’s role escalates rapidly in importance such as is the case with say, the role of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) in overseeing electricity, petroleum and water which are all monopolies in Sri Lanka. By implication, the role of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRC) is minimal because strong competition in the sector creates the conditions for self-regulation.  Yet the situation is not that simple.

These days, sector players have a habit of banding together for mutual benefit, creating de-facto monopolies in specific activities such as easy-cash for example. 

The issue I want to highlight with the above example is that the public is certainly worried as to the level of internal awareness of a regulator on the activities of their sector. I would like to think they are fully cognizant but if so, then why is there no mention, no discussion, no action on those issues? More to the point, where do they talk to the public on such issues?

The tired mediums of leaflets, posters, “public gatherings”, “selective engagement with civil sector organizations” etc. have been flogged to death and their effectiveness is near zero at present. The issue is worsened by the complete lack of citizen responsibility on the part of Sri Lankans where they will only get serious about “responding” when their comfort zones are violated. 

The key problem I perceive is that regulators have to either deal with single individuals with unique problems who have somehow managed to cut through a mountain of red tape and barriers to obtained knowledge of where to go and what to do to find relief for their grievances or they work with a few specific interest groups. This is so because the average Sri Lankan is clueless about most things that have a direct impact on them and are generally wont to stick their heads in the sand. In most cases, critiquing the social order or the market reality is something alien. As mentioned in a previous post, they hide behind politicians and hope they come good. Not so but they have yet to be given a strong reason to believe otherwise.  Therefore, iIn many cases, problems are never brought to the surface and remain hidden from regulators.  This is tragic because some regulators such as the PUCSL and the CAA are doing excellent work in restrictive arenas while some others simply do not have a strong public engagement strategy that aligns with the type of social human being one has to deal with today. 

In today’s world, near instantaneous stimulus-response requirements have rendered most perennial methods largely ineffectual. They are not completely outdated by standing alone those engagement techniques will fail. No one is really interested in digging through pages and pages of enactments, regulations, rules, guidelines. Most believe that anything that is not in 16 point fonts on a single page is pretty useless. They also do not believe that they should be sent to halfway houses to get their problems addressed meaning that telling them to hit the local DS office or PS office is guaranteed to rise their heckles more than anything else. 

Farsighted thinkers, regulators and civil leaders met recently to thrash out why consumer movements have failed and to
attempt to chisel out a solution to the problem

NO! What the public needs is for the regulators to be able to respond to them very quickly. They do not always need a solution. They mostly need to know that a person in authority has heard them and will respond to them within a reasonable period of time. In short, they need to be active on social media like the Pakistani drug enforcement authority and many others. It requires a mindset shift in how they engage and that requires three things a) no fear b) desire to respond quickly and c) a strong citizen network to work with. Within the current set up of these commissions, authorities, boards and agencies, that is difficult. The reason is not legislative but rather recalcitrance, a complete lack of awareness on the fact that social media has taken the role of convener of masses and the lack of sufficiently enabled staff to respond to the citizen at a high level.

  

Some of the more farsighted regulators such as the CAA and the PUCSL have taken an active lead to create such groups but to engage them, it is not sufficient to have pocket meetings. Institutions such as the one’s mentioned need to get online – and quickly.  If they do so, then I suspect that there will be a domino effect with every other regulator also having a highly interactive online presence and not merely an information dissemination website. The people will certainly be happy, have more faith in grassroots action targeting enforcement and the enforcers themselves more enabled to execute their mandate. 

The key, as Kumi Nesiah, a moderator on the National Consumer Movement FB page says, is to “attract people to the ethos of criticism” and paraphrasing what he says, “the consumers are looking for faith and for the longest period of time, they have been worshipping  at the alters of megabrands, consuming advertisements and thinking they are living high quality lives when in fact, they are driven, like mindless automatons towards mega-acquisition and mega-greed that feeds them debt and feeds the brands money”. The people need to believe and they must be given reasons for a belief either beyond or separate from market-ideologies or economic-spiritualties. The regulators, along with civil groups, academics, media people and politicians have a mega role to play in that and their presence online is mandatory. 

(If you are interested in getting involved, obtaining knowledge, highlighting issues, resolving problems, please send us a membership request on Facebook – National Consumer Network of Sri Lanka.  ) 

STOP BEING VOTERS AND START BEING CITIZENS: THE NEED FOR CREATING A NATIONAL CONSUMER NETWORK

We have been railroaded into living in a consumer society. This is not a good place for the citizens of a nation but it is where we are. Time was when most of what we wanted we produced ourselves or bartered for. We were piecewise content and groupwise satisfied. Then came this folderol about growth and we embarked on a mad journey to tie ourselves to marketplaces, buy beyond our need and live beyond our means. We allowed ourselves to be taught that all of that was a great good, a wholesome and satisfying existence.

Let us said aside the insanity of the “greed is good” slogan. We have something that tops that. It is called “debt is good”. Right? Yeah. Haha! Funny one … that.  

We have just 65 trillion dollars’ worth of useable cash in the word and the global debt right now is 57 trillion dollars and climbing at around 7 million dollars a minute and somewhere in the early part of next year, we, as a human civilization, will literally have borrowed more than we can physically cover with cash. So, it is high time that we stop attempting to hoodwink ourselves that we can “create wealth” out of debt as has been a major component of the mantra of mainstream economic theory.

We have been indoctrinated into believing that nutrients are food! 

The truth of the matter is that the belligerents of this world will have to increase the rate of cannibalization of earth resources to live a little while longer.  In that process, they will use every trick in the book, every manipulation that human negative ingenuity can cough up, every form of threat, every type of pressure to ensure that a select few, at least on paper, are going to pull through and survive past Armageddon despite the fact that “Armageddon” by its definition will wipe out all of us.  

Funny… that. Yet, while truth stares them in the face, they have already decided that they must now consume even the meager resources generally available to the large masses of people. They have decided that they must commandeer and control the food, the land, the water, the air, the medicine, the education, the rare earth metals, the fossil resources, the renewable resources and the governance of nations.

These actions speak of crazed minds broken away from anything human and blindly believing that everyone else’s death would ensure their life. Those “everyone” know better but they are in greater part to blame for their own misery. You see, that collective or the majority “we” have always been sold on the fact that those we elect have our best interests at heart. We believe therefore, that instead of taking a strong, collective stance on who flies and who dies, we will vote someone into power and let that someone figure that out. We figure that in the end, we will, willy-nilly, come out unscathed regarding not the simple stupid fact that we are part of the “everyone” already marked for death by that select few.

We must realize that no one in any kind of leadership position anywhere in the world is going to cut us even the slightest slack. We must stop being voters and start being citizens.

We must forget the various intergovernmental task forces, the leadership summits, the high level forums. As we all know, those have amounted to nothing and will continue to be less than relevant as problem solving tools for us as time goes on.

We have over 550 natural foods but our supermarkets and are small "elavalu kades"
carry just about 50 of them. Time we asked why... 

We, the people, must provide the solutions and the first part of that work is to prevent window-wash, eye-wash, shot-gun “solutions” from being promoted.  Those have political and business convenience at their root and they have failed us in the past. Miserably. We must be ready to drill down into the realities of unfair trade, unfair acquisition, unfair exploitation. We must be ready with alternative research and counters and proofs on the fairytale claims and blatant lies of vendors and manufacturers who routinely exploit people of science with money to “validate” their claims. We must be able to understand what sort of legal and regulatory relief there is. We must be aware of the ways in which we can engage directly with such frameworks and institutions. 

We must be, not simply active consumers which we are anyway, but also, very informed ones that can collectively discuss issues and come to collective agreements on solutions. We must be capable of moving beyond the voters’ mantras of “there is no other solutions”, “this is the only solution”, “it is either my way or the highway” and be clear headed, factually concise, science based, diplomatic, collectively mission driven and capable of understanding that there is, in most cases, more than one way of solving problems. We, the people, determining our own future, must be strong and collected towards third spaces, grassroots action, dialogue after action, engagement of authorities, regulators and politicians not as counters but as collaborators to ensure that we all survive.

As a trigger to action, here are a few questions that you might want to cut your teeth on for starters. Join us on the National Consumer Network of Sri Lanka (NCNSL) community pages on FB to discuss all of this further:

• All prices of most goods and quite a lot of services are “credit card prices”. These are inflated to the tune of 22% of the actual price. Now, if you pay them in cash, most sellers will offer you a 10% discount when actually they should be giving you a 22% discount. Who is taken for a ride? YOU! Why? Because you just don’t know and more importantly, you have been drugged by TV adds that have lied to you through their teeth into believing you are getting a zero interest deal on installments. Who profits? The vendor? Nah. It’s the banks! What is the Central Bank of Sri Lanka doing? Nothing. Do we want them to? Yes. How? Collective lobbying and diplomacy. Who strategizes it? We do.  Let’s discuss it.
• The amount of electronic cash that is being used for  transactions has skyrocketed in the recent past with such instruments as Easy Cash, SMS may-ins etc. They are set to become the preferred method of purchasing goods in the very near future. They are a huge bank. Who regulates it? No one. Who should? The Central Bank. Should we enforce it? Yes. How? Collective lobbying and diplomacy. Who strategizes it? We do.  Let’s discuss it.
• The biggest “growth” sector in the world today (including Sri Lanka) is health.  We have a proliferation of hospitals. Why? Because people are getting sicker now. Why? Because the air we breathe, the food we consume, the water we drink is poisoned. How should be stopping all of this? That’s the entire state machinery right there that needs to step up and do its job. Are they? Well, some of them are trying but are they able to move forwards? Not with the oil mafia, the agrochemical mafia, the gas mafia and the drug mafia. Do we take them on? Yes we do. How? Let’s discuss it.
• 4.    92% of the pediatric beds of urban Sri Lanka are filled with  children with respiratory diseases . Why? Because of the smog. Who should regulate this? The Central Environmental Authority. Are they doing their job? No. How can we get them to do that? We can go to courts, get a writ of mandamus and force them to do their job which they have shirked for years. Who is preventing them from doing it? The political machinery of the country. Do you want to vote for them again? No.  How do we get it through to them that we will no longer tolerate this? Let’s discuss it.
•  We used to have a Cosmetics, Devices and Drugs Regulatory Authority but now we have a National Medical Drug Regulatory Authority. Cosmetics are no longer regulated! Yet, they are the cause of more health issues than medical drugs. Why? Do we need this changed ASAP? YES! Can we do it? Of course – as a collective lobby. Let’s discuss it. 

Learning Music - Part II (Feeling to learn)

Now, no one can be taught to feel. That’s impossible. However, there is a roundabout way of getting there and that is by practicing love. And I don’t mean the crack-cocaine version of love that has spawned the book, film, poetry and quotable quotes industries but the real thing – altruistic love or loving kindness or metta. The Buddha is very specific on this point: “Practice loving kindness oh monks. One becomes clever by doing so”. Of course, he doesn’t use the word “clever”. Instead, he uses the word “Buddhi” stemming from the word “avabuddhi or avabodha” or internalizing or (you got it) - knowing.

Metta leads to feeling leads to knowing.

So, it doesn’t take much to figure out that by engaging everything and everyone with equal, unreflecting love, one acquires deep, insightful sensitization to the subtleties of their existence and from those stem the initial asha or desire to be one, or become one with one’s object of focus at any given point.For the purpose of this piece, those would be musical instruments and how they can be loved and how they can reward that love with the music they make with one and on behalf of one.

Yet, desire is not sufficient although it must form the basis of any instrument you wish to play. You need the discipline, the exercise, the peer engagement. Those are provided by the guru and the choice of the guru is crucial to progress. The Guru can be a) a physical human being, b) a book or c) experience. A person works best, a book is next and experience a poor last (one needs to bump one’s head on the lintel a few dozen times before one realizes that one is an inch taller than the lintel).

Gurus do not happen by chance. They become a student’s guru, because a student feels sufficiency in desire. Many students make the mistake of going for instruction to a great guru (and paying through their parent’s noses for it) believing that excellence is a necessary outcome of surface association. Not so. Teachers might “learn” you an instrument but gurus don’t. Gurus won’t. Gurus can’t. Regardless of what you pay such a one, if a guru sees no sufficiency in desire, she will merely teach you well. Remember therefore that even if you consider such a one your guru, the guru won’t consider you his disciple as Musila found out to his detriment. 

Now, a lot of people, mistaking greed for need, lust for desire, thanha for asha, believe that learning is a process of acquiring something one lacks. Actually, it is the collateral outcome of a tripartite association, an engagement, a fornication if you may - between a student, a teacher and an instrument. In Asian traditions - all the way from what is now knows as the mid-east, through central and south Asia to the far east, students humble themselves and bow before both the teacher and the instrument for without such devotion and humility neither will look their way nor feel for them nor feel with them. Contrasting with the arrogance of the present day “student” and “teacher” where it is all “me” and “you”, all big or small, all hit or miss, the best of students finds the greatest of teachers every time and seek merely to pay homage at their feet. All else that follows is incidental.

And that which is incidental is a factor of a student’s own sufficiency and rises from the three-way associative engagement mentioned above. If you are sufficient, then you would already know what I am about to tell you. You will go to a teacher for six different types of sansarga (copulation/engagement). Drushti or sight tsansarga (this is first and one goes to a teacher merely to be thrilled by the sight of him, the voice of him, the way of him, the perfume of him). Next, Shabdha or sound sansarga (you have graduated to actually hearing what she has to say). Next, Ghanda or iva or olfactory sansarga (you instinctively know what he is going to say before he says it since you are now capable of literally and figuratively smelling him). Next, Kabali or taste sansarga (you go to her to be fed, clothed, sheltered and to bind your rasa to hers). Next, sparsha or touch sansarga (you need to physically copulate at which point the teacher gives of her own blood to the disciple) and finally, chiththa or mental sansarga (the two are physically removed from each other, but the disciple only needs to think of the guru and will instantly obtain the solution to any problem that vexes her).  

Truly, then, you know what you have studied with the guru. Truly you will believe, as Barenboim tells the young Lang Lang, that you can create a crescendo on a single note although in theory that is impossible. Truly you will believe, as Horowitz told the 14 year old Berenboim to believe - in the power of the will of a knowing musician. Truly you will know, not the clinical mastery of speed play nor the beauty of subtle ornamentation nor the technical wizardry of tricking out - and tripping up - the metronome but of the force in you, the sensor, the knower, the seer, to unlock the potency – and the poesy - of a single note. 

Learning music - Part I

We were young then. My friend Nishadh and I. He was a mere esraj visharadha at the time and I was merely a guitar player. Decades before musical fusion became a distasteful fad, the two of us would interleave the sounds of the esraj and the guitar because their tonal qualities and auditory outputs seem to fit well together – especially if the players were soused in alcohol. 

Although both of us were classical exponents, at those times, we would play the lighter pieces together. That night, we were at the tail end of an hours-long session of tunes fueled by booze that in turn was fueled by harmonies when Nishadh played the opening notes of “Muhudu pathula” the famous song from “Muhudu Puththu”.  I promptly plucked out a compliment in C minor. At one point in that exposition, Nishadh reached out to the higher C and did something with that note that I thought was impossible to do with the esraj. He seems to create the illusion of actually playing the C, C sharp and B (C flat - in eastern music there is a universe of difference between B and C flat) all at the same time, magically transforming the entire flavor of the tune. I almost dropped my guitar in shock but still had enough presence of mind to indicate that he should repeat it. As he redid his bit of musical skulduggery I changed the guitar response into a rapid mix of B to C bends and c to C sharp hammer ons on the A5 string interspersed with open E6 staccatos with the effect achieved by stopping it with the chiquito on the 5^th to get the E harmonic to ring out. It was his turn to be astounded. As it ended, I burst, “what you just did machan… that… is the mark of an ustad”. He says, “… and your trick completed it… that… is the mark of a master”.

Afterwards we were quiet for a long time, just cradling our instruments, sipping drinks and looking out into the patch of greenery at the back of my home.  By the by he breaks the silence, almost in  soliloquy, murmuring “we can be taught to play 12 or even 16 notes a second on a string but we can never be taught to believe in the power or the possibilities of a single note. We have both been students. We are trying to be teachers now. We must always remember that we cannot teach someone to do what either of us did today. They must know it for themselves”. I murmured back, “technique can never stand-in for understanding, nor theory for practice, nor lust for love”.  We finished our drinks. The magic was both replete and complete. We put our instruments away and safely walked out of each other’s lives for the next twenty years. Such, then, is the potent energy and magic of a single note of a single song.

 It is a good story that, despite the fact that it is true. It is also a good Segway to discuss the idea of learning music or anything else for that matter. Sure we’ve all learned a thing or two as human beings and flogging this topic seems to be slightly silly because most people know what learning is without anyone having to slice, dice it or define it. Or…do they?

Well, I thought I did until I was taught, quite by chance, that I didn’t know jack about it. I learned of my inadequacy because I did something I rarely did as a teen – look up. Straight at the TV where Amaradeva was saying “to know music, you must have, in that order, asha (desire), siksha (discipline), abhbaysa (exercise), sathsanga (the company of those on the same journey as you) and guru (teacher –either a person, a book or experience). If you fail to acquire even one of those, you may learn things but never know them. If you have them, you never stop knowing and never stop expanding the types of things you gets to know”.

That was a blinding brilliant bolt that sparked into life the very sinews that bound my body together. That day I realized the difference between learning (igenuma) and knowing (danuma or danima). Learning was a clinical, mechanical, hit-some-miss-some effort whereas Knowing as Amaradeva said it required one to feel (danima). I realized that up to that point, be it chess or math or music or speech, I had been feeling nothing and merely learning so, small wonder the only feeling I had was “low” and the only way I knew how to deal with it was to keep my head buried in some novel or other. 

The tough thing is "to feel". Can it be taught? Well, no... and not no neither. :) Part II will explain.

The teaching of music

Back in the day, I would amuse people by telling them that I could teach someone to play the guitar in ten minutes. Since a lot of people mistake skill development as learning and long term oversight, adjustment and direction of coursework as teaching, their amusement is justified. They are, of course, very welcome to their understanding of teaching, and, I might add, their take on it all is a very commonly held opinion. For them, there is a very large music teaching industry that has sprung up with droves of students corralled in tastefully laid out premises choked with instruments, furniture, teachers, managers and administrators. They are welcome to put themselves or their children through years of toil and turmoil within those torture chambers that pass for music schools.

But no. That is not teaching by a long shot. A great teacher understands that there is a fundamental, critical difference between a person who wants to play an instrument and one who wants to merely learn it.

To play an instrument, one needs something more encompassing and proximate than the mere ability to create nice sounds on some weird looking contraption made of strings, keys, tubes, drums, skins or combinations of those elements. One needs to have the desire to consort with one’s instrument. One needs an untrammeled, unbounded, unreflecting joy bordering on reverence at its mere proximity. One must thrill with ecstasy at the mere chance to make some sound  - any sound - come out of it.  One must cease to see it as one’s instrument of choice and understand it as one’s object of adulation and see the potential it holds to make one whole. One must love the idea of the instrument in one’s life and one must be brave enough to think that it can become one’s whole life.

Related post: The appreciation of the classical musics

The recognition of a future disciple:

A great teacher of music knows how to recognize this desperate desire, this hopeless longing on the part of a student to love and be loved by a guitar, a sitar, a piano, a violin, a basoon, a tabla, an ektar, a flute. Such a teacher seeks that desire in his students…seeks it…seeks it…whether asleep or awake, every single moment of every single day for it is a rare thing indeed.  He hunts for it in the eyes, in the hands, in the hearts, in the minds of those who come to him for instruction.  He desperately hopes, longs, desires to see the desperation, the longing, the hope in a student. If such is found, then the teacher knows he has found a disciple and not just a student. He knows  that his cup is then made fuller by an eighth.

With pleasure and anticipation he will proceed to bring the disciple into his fold and give him shade. He will know, in the first instant of contact with such a one, exactly how he should be taught to woo his instrument. In just ten minutes he will be able to make his disciple cry out in wonder “oh my God. My God. Who would have thought that such beauty could ever fall in love with a guy like me? Who would have thought that such a gorgeous thing would allow me to embrace it and call it my own?”. Ten minutes it all it takes for a teacher to see the entire life of a disciple laid bare before him. 

The great teachers of this world subsume their egos and live only to thrill at the sight of their charges carving out a life for themselves in the company of an instrument that they too loved and married into in a different time, in a different way.

From there to the end of a never ending journey, is the joyful engagement of the teacher and the disciple living and existing for the betterment of the one. The discipline, the exercises, the special little tasks serving merely to tighten an already firm and affirmed love affair between the disciple and the instrument.  

This by no means indicates that a teacher will ignore or marginalize the rest of the students. However, with them, there will be a sort of clinical, twilight relationship. The love of a teacher would not be lesser but that teacher knows only too well the egos, the parental pushes, the peer pressures, the educational goals that drive them to class. Certainly, the teacher will instruct them. She will remove the debilitating agents and conditions be they parental zeal, indiscipline, emotional vapidity or iffy love affairs and make sure that the coursework is completed, the exams sat, the “distinctions” obtained. She will dismissively wave away the thanks with a “you did it, not me”. This is a terrible state of affairs all too common in our time but not actually a great big disaster. 

Great teachers emerge from such skirmishes relatively unscathed but bad ones? Their lot is darker. Forever debilitated by ego overdrives and personality clashes, they must suffer the psycho-emotional backlash of insisting that it has got to be their way or the highway. They must deal with violating their students' minds, hearts and bodies and being mentally and physically shot to death by them – literally and figuratively. 

The recognition of the future teacher:

Now I said that the identification of a disciple will only fill an eighth of a great teacher’s cup because, in my experience, they would be lucky to find four disciples in their lives and even if they do, their cup would only be half full. I have a reason for saying this. Even among disciples there are a rarefied few who can become teachers in their own right. These are a teacher's successors. These are the ones that every great teacher yearns for. The great ones they can never seek or want but can only pray for and wait for.

Those come neither for instruction nor for learning nor for playing. None of that is important to them. In lives past they’ve been there, done that and all of it is the merest technicality, effortlessly remembered, mastered, discarded. Only such a person can be taught to teach and not merely to play. Such a one comes filled to the brim – with emptiness. Such a one is full of the lack of desire and bursting at the seams with lack of ego. Such a one can touch an instrument - any instrument - and see in the sounds, a cocooned sampling of the entire universe. Only such a one can achieve that miraculous ability to teach because she is completely cognizant of the fact that she is empty. And empty, she gets plenty. Continuing to want only empty she can therefore distribute plenty in endless bounty.

Such a one can teach brilliantly and such a one can perform any instrument brilliantly. If by some chance, such a one graces a teacher, the teacher would take her… to feed and nurture with the teacher’s very blood. Over years, the teacher will empty herself into such a one in a way she never could with a disciple whose skill set and mindset are limited to singular relationships. Removed from relationships, there is only the certainty of union. Of such magical connects were the great gurukulas (teacher-teacher bloodlines) born in the east, especially in the centuries long aesthetic traditions of India. Such ties are not easily explained in words. Having been privy to them as a growing child, I truly know that it is impossible to unpack them casually. Those unions are complex and only fully understood by such teachers and such students.

That is why Ustad Allaudin Khan gave his school to Ustad Podiappuhamy the universally accomplished multi-instrumentalist/ singer/dancer/teacher and not to Pandit Ravi Shankar the sitar playing disciple. That is why Ravi Shankar couldn’t really impart universal absolutes to his daughter Anoushka. That is why Barenboim the conductor/pianist/activist/humanist/advocate is a teacher and Barishnikov the dancer never was and never will be. 

The myth of mushti:

This connect is rare. Many a great teacher has died and their spectral knowledge buried with them for a successor never made her existence known. Never into the teacher's orbit wondered the next in the bloodline. He had to be content with teaching disciples to do... not to teach. Of all the tragedies that a teacher must live through – and there are many – that…is the greatest. That... is the most agonizing. 

And yet, to the ego-warped idiot who senses recalcitrance on the part of a teacher to “show his all” this reluctance is seen viciously and disastrously as a “hiding of knowledge” or “mushti”. He little realizes that it is his own inadequacy that is preventing the sharing of something he is not capable of absorbing as happened to Musila in the presence of Guttila. In the modern world, with a dilution of the bloodlines of the greatest teachers of this world, the Musilas are many and the Guttilas few. 

The relevance of the classical music

Music of any sort can make us forget. Or remember. Or grow. They can also make us gag, curse and flee. Which of those kicks in depends on when, where and why a particular music was made and when where and why it was listened to.  

Like all art, music is a reflection of times, places and people. Let us call this the situational triad. So when the triad of the composer and that of the consumer are close together, the reason why a music came into being and why it is heard have a great chance of congruence. This “why” factor then, speaks to the listener in terms of vicinities, proximities and histories. Obviously therefore, closer an individual is to those temporalities, geographies, societies that are mirrored in the music the better the individual will understand it.

These days we rarely hear mention of the two great classical music traditions of our world. These forms that originated in Europe and India and commonly called Western and Hindustani/Karnatic respectively seems to have been substantially removed from the current global musical aesthetic. If they had made like the Dodo and become extinct, there would be no great cause for alarm and no big reason to comment on its passing expect perhaps as a part of world history. To understand why this is so and, by extension, to figure out why they persist if they do at all, one must visit, at a very basic level, what music means to all us in terms of the tune, the beat, the harmony, the symphony, the cacophony.   

The term “music” is simple enough to understand and refers to the various man-made or natural sounds that pleases large groups of people. However “a music" or musics in the plural have a far more spectral and complex meaning. This is because musics pull in not just the tunes, beats and harmonies but also many other social, temporal, emotional, psychological and systemic factors. Combined, they can redefine random notes (or yowls or shrieks, screams or bangs or bursts or thuds) as music (death metal anyone?). 

Now, the classical musics are so named as much for their psycho-emotional, psychosocial situational fix as they are for their systems. These are both, to a greater extent, old. Old, simply because they have not changed. Situationally and systemically they have progressively ceased to mirror the changing world and so, they have gradually violated the fundamental reason for the existence of a music. That which they depict is becoming rapidly forgotten. Those systematic methods of tonal and harmonic commentary on the world that they constructed and solidified over centuries are being overrun by alternative systems that better reflect the urgencies, turmoil, poesies, societies and politics of the day.

Removed then, from the proximate cloud of time that surrounds today, the classical music systems and their times have to be viewed much like a historian would approach the past. They do not come naturally for they have no immediate referral to the present. So, essentially, the appreciation of classical music is an acquired taste if people are not deeply sensitive to histories. That is the case with the majority.

A condition of the modern world is that it forgets easily because it is assailed every day with many things to remember. Yesteryear for us is telescoped into a matter of days and lasts only as long as the next superlative idea or tune or regime that forces itself into our consciousness.

In contrast, classical musics were created in a historical setting that changed slowly. For western music, this change occurred over hundreds of years and for Hindustani/karnatic music over thousands of years. Cooking slowly, they reached incredibly complex and subtle levels of creative expression since the situational triads out of which they grew evolved and changed but slowly, complexly and subtly. Because of this parallel development, the peoples of the past understood those musics without really having to try for they were integral to their living evolution. To understand, contextualize and validate what they were hearing, they brought hundreds or thousands of years of historic remembrances to bear.  Yet, to a world where systems change overnight, where impatience is a virtue and speed of change is a value, such unhurried, millennia spanning complexity and subtlety are irrelevant, boring and unfashionable.

Many, if asked, would say they love Enya’s Gaelic ballads. The same would wonder if you’ve lost a few upstairs if you ask them what they think about the 2^nd movement of Beethoven’s piano concerto number 5. Why do I compare these? Well, simply because  the tunes and the harmonic juxtapositions are similar. The former uses 200 vocal overlays to get an effect that the later uses 200 instruments to create. The overlay trick is familiar, proximate and fully understood by most. The orchestra? Very few get it. Similarly, every Sri Lankan would recognize the basic tune of a Goyam Kaviya but blank when asked about Raag Gara played around the fifth although the tune and lilts are identical.

You see, it is not important to know. This is as it should be. It is really not relevant anymore to most. Therefore, if the classical musics persist, they do so despite of society and not because of it. They are an aberration, an anomaly. Those who enjoy them are not the elites. Rather, they are the misfits. These misfits can place those musics within the climes, times, and peoples from which they sprang. They can tie their own minds and experiences firmly to the “why” of the composer and therefore, much like a historian would, they find in them great quality, great empathy, great reasons to forget, to remember, to grow. To them who take on the arduous task of unpacking an aria, goes the same salute that goes to the majorities who effortlessly move and thrive with the tune of the times. 

For the many that live now who are sick of our times, it would be worth their while to visit those musics… at least to forget this tough, miserable, kickass we call the here-and-now...if not always to grow. 

To the floating voter: You must make sure that you kick both Mahinda and Ranil out of politics

This is a brief missive by my friend Asoka Abeygunawardhane. 

High time that the voter ensures that these two geriatrics spawned by the corruption engines of the post 1977 era are sent out to pasture with as honorable an exit as possible

The Presidential Elections held on 8^th January 2015 was a key political crossroad in the recent history of Sri Lanka. With the ascent of Maithripala Sirisena to the Presidency, the country breathed a collective sigh of relief. Many members of the losing party could hardly believe their eyes at the result. Now, seven months after that even, the General Election is upon us.

If by some miracle before the election…

• Mahinda Rajapakse publically states that he would act within the Maitripala Presidency in the same manner as he did during Chandrika’s reign, or, if he publically states that he would act the same way D.M. Jayaratne acted during his tenure as president, then it would be opportune for you to vote for the UPFA.
• If Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledges the leadership of Maithripala Sirisena, steps down and hands over the leadership of the UNP to the president, then, it would be opportune for you to vote for the UNP.
• If the JVP publically states that it will not sit with the opposition and decide to join a national government, then, it would be opportune for you to vote for the JVP.
• If none of the above seem likely, then, preserve your valuable vote by not using it. Do not go to the polling booth. Or else, spoil go there and spoil it. 

However, none of these have happened.

The first thing that should be clear is that the country’s need is not of ranil Wickremesinghe’s “Aluth Ratak” nor Mahinda Rajapakse’s “Anaagathayata Sahathikaya” nor Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s “Hardhasakshiye Sammuthiya” but rather, Maithripala Sirisena’s “A compassionate maithri governance – a stable country”.

One the one hand, Ranil Wickremesinghe made it eminently clear on the 7^th of last month that he was not interested in building “A compassionate maithri governance – a stable country”. In short, he is not at all interested in making Maithripala Sirisena his leader. All that the UNP wants to do is to make use of him to further their own ends. Their primary goal is to sell Maithripala Siresena in order to win the elections. They wish to then completely ignore and marginalize him and work as they wish to. Therefore, one of the paramount desires of the undecided voter should be to prevent Ranil Wickremesinghe from becoming the prime minister.

On the other hand, who would have thought that the defeated ex-president Mahinda Rajapakse would be contesting the general elections so soon? That is not something that could have occurred in the normal course of events. However, it happened. So, can we hope that he will now deign to work in the shadow of Maithripala Sirisena as his chief disciple? That is farfetched to say the least. Therefore, there is a justifiable fear in the minds of the undecided voter with respect to Mahinda Rajapakse being elected prime minister as well.

Surveys have shown that as things stand no one will get the 113 votes for a simple majority but that the UPFA will come out ahead.

Then, what would happen is the establishment of a national government with the UPFA and the UNP. Its’ prime minister would be a senior of the UPFA other than Mahinda Rajapakse. Whoever that individual is, he would be capable of being Maithripala’s right-hand-man over the next five years in the push for “A compassionate maithri governance – a stable country”. The next leader of the UNP would get a good start by acting as his left hand man.

Fortunately for us, Maithripala has shown us that he cannot be pushed around and has now single handedly taken on the task of governing the country.  As part of his advocacy efforts with Mahinda Rajapakse in the lead up to the elections, he sent a strong letter firmly stating that even if the UPFA obtains 113 seats he should not take the premiership.

• Therefore, we should put our trust in Maithripala Sirisena and fearlessly vote for the Alliance.
• If we are in some doubt about this, then we should assist Maithripala Sirisena by either refrain from voting or by spoiling our vote.

Eurology 101 – Ridding a region of its toxins

A certain Mediterranean nation has taken up top-of-mind awareness of the planet these days with this brouhaha over 323 billion euros worth of indebtedness.  Dissecting the “what now?” is being quite well looked after with social, political and economic experts and analysts all weighing in with thoughts on outcome scenarios of what most now believe is one of the most poisonous deals ever made at one of the most crackbrained and insane economic summits of all time.

It is quite obvious by now that Greece is really not the problem but merely a symptom.  It is obvious that the perceived toxicity of Greece is hiding an underlying political-economic caustic that the Eurozone is either trying its best to dilute with rhetoric on rogue states or react with other equally corrosive elements such as um… bailouts cobbled together in a nuthouse to reach some sort of fission-neutral fiscal equilibrium.  

To figure out why, one must start with fundamental issues related to the difficulties that arise when the attempt at a common fiscal policy for Europe clashes with diverse fiscal traditions within its member states. Some are cavalier in their understanding of individual responsibility to pay taxes while others are straight laced orthodoxy in that department.  Some like to purchase expensive cars on lease without really caring too much about how they are going to pay their monthly installments. Some might want to borrow for infrastructure development whose ROIs are iffy and not well thought through. Whatever the differences, one thing is clear: Bad money management habits that are relatively small but spread across an entire nation’s psyche can do more harm to a country’s economic stability than a few big ticket errors. When Eurozone was created, everyone was looking at the big picture and no one really cared about these teeny tiny things but when a bunch of kids with wildly different ideas of fun and disparate types of sporting equipment try to play together in the same schoolyard, things can get pretty confusing, pretty ugly, pretty nasty - pretty fast.  

One must wonder what sort of lunacy prompted fairly rational human beings to rest the Eurozone on 17 struts that are unequal in size, strength, physical composition, angle of alignment and bearing capacity. Even a person with the intelligence of a nit would tell you that this is engineering insanity. Is it that surprising then that torques, tats and spats will abound? Is it that shocking that people will necessarily have to go 15 rounds on who is shouldering what burden, who is piggy-backing on whose efforts, what  is going to kick a prop out of kilter, who is going to repair the damage and, most importantly, if all of this is worth the few Euro more?

Well at the start, back in 1992, it seemed a jolly good idea to many Europeans. Europe united, if not under one flag, then under one currency. Money becoming less expensive, intra-union trade opportunities increasing, production increasing… the positives was both infinite and stratospheric. For a while, sure, euphoria generated the type of growth surge in member countries that would have been unimaginable before. This was before negativities related to cultural diversity, fiscal regularity, levels of productivity and national priority started to make themselves felt in the world of European economics and money markets. Suddenly, the playing field became uneven with production costs rising well beyond income from production increases for some European nations. Gradually, borrowings started to increase, productivity started to decrease, unemployment started to increase and some of the nations were staring down the barrel of a fiscal machine pistol.

One might think that the Eurozone, being under many flags would have anticipated this sort of thing and put in checks and balances to prevent it from becoming a reality and ensure that debt doesn’t spiral out of control.

They did.

That particular control instrument was called the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and it mandated that national debt should be no greater than 60% of GDP and a government deficit should be no greater than 3% annually. However, the two biggest economies of the Eurozone, France and Germany broke this pact in 2004 and instead of being punished for it, they rewrote the rules. Therefore, for six years starting from 2005, countries such as Greece no longer needed to follow the SGP. This, I call the first great crime of the Eurozone and it was not a sprat sized economy like Greece that was the culprit but its two largest. That politically unpunished, economically suicidal crime single handedly resulted in the misery that was later visited upon the Eurozone culminating in the 2015 summit debacle.

Greece didn’t cause this problem. It was collateral damage of what France and Germany did. The sharks blew it first and the minnows reaped the suffering.  By 2010, Greece was gasping for oxygen and Spain and Portugal were not that far behind. The Eurozone went into panic stations. They had to save their hides whatever the cost. Fearing a domino effect of the Grecian tragedy on other vulnerable members, they pumped the country full of Euros in 2010. That was one of the most selfish of all fiscal moves ever perpetrated by anyone ever. By doing what they did, they were not attempting to save Greece but the Euro and they fed the Greeks to the fiscal sharks to achieve it. The bailout was impossible to sustain and here is the clinch: Eurozone knew! They knew and they sacrificed one of their own family. To save what? Merely the idea of a family which was, even at its tightest, simply a loose network of distant relatives and their friends.

The insanity that is Greece in a nutshell. Schauble is right - Nobody knows. And that is a truly brilliant point to start getting a country back on track to physcal recovery a'la Eurozone. What a joke! 

No surprise that 2015 happened. No surprise that the new bailout package is the brainchild of viciously deranged human beings. This time around, the country that Eurozone was instrumental in mortally wounding back in 2010 is going to be murdered. The way? Cannibalize whatever is left that is of any worth in the country and deal with the human fall out in the same way that the world deals with a country like Chad or Somalia. Germany first and some of the others next mercilessly wish to treat one of their own in the same way they treat everyone else that they perceive as lesser than themselves despite of the fact that they were the direct cause of their downfall. They will treat them with supercilious, two-tongued, sanctimonious, self-righteous brutality. YUCK!

Italy knew this back in 2013. Mediobanca, Italy's second biggest bank in a humungous tome came close to calling for a withdrawal from the EMU and a return to the Lira. In that report, they indicated that Italy would be far better off outside EMU, and the implicit threat was that Italy will have to do so if the Northern creditor powers persist with their destructive regime.  The fact that their heads didn’t screw that easy was why they led a passionate defense of Greece at the meeting of lunes disguised as the Eurozone summit of July 2015.

Speaking about Italy in 2013, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph says “Everything comes down to the national mood in the end. There was a time when the cause of Europe was unquestioned in Italy, but the long slump has taken its toll. An Ipsos poll this week found that a record 74pc of Italians are dissatisfied with the euro. It is a loveless marriage now. One more spat with Berlin and it will turn acrid”.

Well, that spat has already happened with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi wading into Wolfgang German finance minister Schäuble during the Eurozone summit. If I were Eurozone, I would be thinking of what to do when, not if, Italy leaves. Such has been the conduct of its larger economies.

That conduct has been blasted by Nobel Economist Paul Krugman who said recently that the EMU demands are “madness” on every level.  “What we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the Eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line. This has no bearing at all on the underlying economics of austerity. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for”.

Indeed.  At present, the Eurozone and its currency are its greatest poison. It’s greatest waste. Its most dangerous adversary.  If it is to remain at least reasonably credible in the eyes of the world, Europe must rid itself of them both and go on with life as it did before this disastrously failed experiment in common collectives.

If a relatively small economy such as Greece can cause this much trauma to a fiscal structure, then one must recognize that the structure is resting on a tiny cushion of very thin air. If it is to come to terms with its vulnerability, it should take a time out, take a reality check and get back on terra firma. At present, it still believes in its bullheaded madness that it can somehow weather this storm, bulldoze democracy with political thuggery and force a nation to renege on the outcome of its own referendum and accept the financial knife with which to commit national hara-kiri.  

A reality check won’t happen any time soon because Germany won’t want that. The Germans should be sweating pigs and peeing frogs but they are not. They can’t. As recent events show, they seem to have cauterized their toxin flushing organs in high handed blindness to facts. In their madness it seems as if they really don’t mind Europe going into collective renal failure or in this case, fiscal failure.

So, if things move in accordance with what stupidity can set in motion, this would be the third time in a hundred years that they have allowed their superiority complex to destroy Europe. This time would not be much different from the others. In their insanity, they will not only crash the rest of Europe but also pull their own house down upon their heads in the process. Tragic. 

A nation on its knees. Sovereignty lost. Riots on the streets. Democracy at its best at its birth place. Take a bow Eurozone. 

The state has withered away...

Here are a few things that should cost people nothing:

To be thrilled by someone else's gain, when they have terminally lost. 

To be thrilled by someone else's health, when they are terminally ill. 

To be thrilled by someone else's wealth, when they are terminally poor. 

To be thrilled by someone else's fame and praise, when they are terminally shamed and blamed. 

To be thrilled by someone else's pleasure, when they are terminally suffering.
To be thrilled by someone else's friends, when they are terminally alone. 

To be thrilled by that which someone achieves effortlessly, when they have had to battle to achieve even a microscopic part of it.  

This ecstasy only costs people their ego. Knowing the world for what it is, I suppose many people consider that loss not worth this joy. In heat, in hate, in horny hyper hopelessness, most have lost the ability to lose their egos. Holding onto it for dear life, they inherit from it, dear death. They must therefore rest in turmoil for peace is not theirs regardless of how much they speak about it, discuss it, analyze, infer it, deduce it, write about it, advocate for it, lobby for it or fight for it. Regardless of how they long for it. Regardless of how they crave it. Regardless of how they miss it. By choosing their right to ego, they have revoked their right to peace.  

In its stead, their ego buys them a mental living space of tumultuous spikes, sparks, dips and darks for they are thrilled by someone else's debilitation be that debilitation a loss, a disease, paucity, shame, blame, pain or mediocrity for it allow them to empathize and vindicates their relative non-weakness even though it is not tantamount to strength.

This perhaps, is why there is so little acknowledgement of infinite strength. Why so few are relieved by flawless decision making. Why naturally powerful personalities bring people out in spots.Why people  by default wish to crucify effortless leadership. Why universal respect for a person is called the adulation of the weak. Why unreflecting love is considered a value only by the weak where such weakness is there to be exploited.

Healthy, wealthy and wise people are blanked. They are treated much the same way as the missing parts of a leper or the lesions of an AIDS sufferer. With the same protest, the same revulsion, the same hope that if one ignores them long enough they will disappear from sight and mind and leave the normals, the mundanes, the muggles to mumble and bumble their way through life, cheering the story telling of Dheepan at Cannes, exploring the doubt of a game of thrones, shocking up the horror of a dead Robin a'la William. Protesting, encouraging and arguing over that war tactic, this climate change, that money market, this food shortage, that political manipulation, this resource exploitation.

The have-it-alls without wanting it all are to be reviled. Wiped off the face of the earth if possible. Their very presence is an invalidation of the premise that nothing is worth having if it didn't have to be paid for in blood, sweat, tears, battle, anger, jealousy or some other negative human effort or emotion.

So, armed with this dynamic, people joust with others engaged in the same game and call the resultant clashes, clouds, cacophonies and confusions...um...life? Giving and taking the short lived thrills and spills of a twilight flit and lilt between living and dying similar to the circuit breaking that occurs between dream states, wake states and sleep states in the REM phases of the night and calling it um... fulfillment?

Oh my god in heaven.

Small wonder the world is full of people for whom the human state has withered away for they have chosen, actively, to betray it at every turn while earnestly professing to uphold its highest ideal. 

Stepping on each other’s toes: Calhoun revisited

I feel like having me a whale of a time story telling. Indulge me folks.

As a teen, when we were scaring each other with horror stories, I used to be fond of telling the tale of over-crowded mouse enclosures where everything was aplenty but space at a premium. For me, it was the scientific bogey story to beat all bogey stories. Alas, my friends didn't seem to think so. They didn't remain my friends for much longer either. You see, there were no ghosts or zombies or aliens in my story and I was merely a morbid, pessimistic, storm crow.  When asked where I had heard the story, I carelessly said I had read it somewhere but couldn't remember. Their conclusion was obvious. I was a serious case of “nutjob”. I was to be left well alone, or, if touching was required, then, carefully, clad in a virus resistant coverall, with a ten foot long barge pole with a condom on it.  And, in Sri Lanka, in days when the number of humans was not that big and there was no internet for instant affirmation, my claims that rats and humans were interchangeable in the social ordering of exploding populations were deemed the stuff of a very seriously sickened imagination. 

 The story (for it does read that way) was one of the most famous social experiments of all time. It was designed and conducted by Dr. John B. Calhoun, the American ethologist and behavioral researcher and became famously known as the “behavioral sink”.  He started his work in 1947 and published his findings in the Scientific American in 1962. His paper became known as one of the 40 studies that changed psychology and went on to be quoted upward of a 150 times a year.

Here is a summary: 

Calhoun with his rodents

In 1947, John B. Calhoun built a quarter acre rat pen, or, what he called a “rat city,” which he seeded with five pregnant females. He calculated that the habitat was sufficient to accommodate as many as 5000 rats. Instead, the population levelled off at 150, and throughout the two years Calhoun kept watch, never exceeded 200. That the predicated maximum was never reached ought to come as no surprise: 5000 rats would be tight indeed. A quarter acre is little over 1000 square meters, meaning each rat would have to itself an area of only about 2000 square centimeters, roughly the size of an individual laboratory cage. Be that as it may, a population of only 150 seemed surprisingly low. What had happened?

He repeated the experiment in in 1954 at the Laboratory of Psychology of the National Institute of Mental Health where his “rodent universes” were populated using a variety of strains of rats and mice that were provided with food, bedding, and shelter. With no predators and with exposure to disease kept at a minimum, Calhoun described his experimental universe as “rat utopia,” or “mouse paradise.” With all their visible needs met, the animals bred rapidly. The only restriction Calhoun imposed on his population was of space – and as the population grew, this became increasingly problematic. As the pens heaved with animals, one of his assistants described rodent “utopia” as having become “hell” (Marsden 1972).

The first 100 days, Calhoun described as the "strive phase" where nests were built and territories marked. In the next 250 days, the population exploded, doubling every 60 days. This was described by Calhoun as the "exploitation phase". As the population increased, most associated eating and drinking with  - and in - the presence of others. Yet, use of resources became unequal although each living area was identical in structure and opportunity.

However, in the next period consisting of about 300 days, Calhoun found the population levelled off in what he called the “equilibrium phase”. He noticed that new generations of young were inhibited since most spaces were already socially defined. Unusual behavior was noticed. Violence became prevalent. Dominant males became aggressive, some moving in groups, attacking females and the young. Mating behaviors were disrupted. Excess males tried for acceptance and were rejected, withdrew and fought among themselves. Some became exclusively homosexual. Others became pansexual and hypersexual, attempting to mount any rat they encountered. The effects of violence became increasingly visible with some individuals targeted for repeated attacks. Other young growing into adults showed an even stranger behavior at this stage with new generations devoting themselves to grooming, eating and sleeping. They never engaged with others, nor did they fight nor did they have sex. Calhoun called them the beautiful ones. They were wonderful specimen of the species, with keen eyes and healthy, well- kept bodies. These however, were unable to cope with external stimuli and although they seemed alert and inquisitive they were in fact very stupid. 

Calhoun calls the last phase the "die phase" leading the population to extinction.  Mothers neglected their infants, first failing to construct proper nests, and then carelessly abandoning and even attacking their pups. In certain sections of the pens, infant mortality rose as high as 96%, the dead cannibalized by adults. Subordinate animals withdrew psychologically, surviving in a physical sense but at an immense psychological cost. They were the majority in the later part of the “die phase”, existing as a vacant, huddled mass in the center of the pens. In the shift from the equilibrium phase to the die phase, each animal became less aware of its associates despite all the animals being pushed closer together. Calhoun thought this was because the animals could not deal with repeated contact with many others. Unable to breed, the population plummeted and did not recover. The crowded rodents had lost the ability to co-exist harmoniously, even after the population numbers once again fell to low levels. At a certain density, they had ceased to act like rats and mice, and the change was permanent.

Like Pavlov’s dogs or Skinner’s pigeons, Calhoun’s rats came to assume a near-iconic status as emblematic animals, exemplary of the ways in which behavioral experimentation at once marks and violates the human-animal distinction. The macabre spectacle of crowded psychopathological rats and the available comparisons with human life in the densely-packed inner cities ensured the experiments were quickly adopted as scientific evidence of social decay (Ramsden and Adams (2009)).

Arrite! ‘nuff science. 

The parallels to modern human behavioral trends are quite obvious. While I have sufficient metaphysical evidence to be anthropocentric, in this case, I stand down on that stance. No one needs metaphysics or density studies to figure this one out.

The reason why each of us needs more space than our physical bodies inhabit is because of something zoologists call the “flight distance” (The minimal distance from another animal or human at which point it decides to flee). Beyond that point, any encroachment of space, or, "minimal point of territorial integrity", moves the animal closer to “fight distance” at which point the animal decides that it cannot flee but can only fight. 

With 7,125,000,000 people, 148,326,000 sq.km of total land mass and 29,242,234 sq.km (just 19%) of habitable land mass, each of us has approximately 4,104 sq. meters to live on. Let us try to apply the rat-universe parallel of a maximum of 200 rats per 1000 sq.m to human habitation. Taking that 400 rat bodies would approximately fit in to a single human body, add an alpha factor of 3.0 - 4.0 for the larger brain and we have already two-fold exceeded our peak point population vis-à-vis overcrowding. Two fold! When one takes into account that not all habitable land is actually occupied, we have a very large number of people living in many high density pockets (metros, cities, towns etc.) where the flight-distance is already invaded and in many cases, even the fight-distance has been compromised. 49 wars at present across the planet folks. FORTY NINE I tells ya... 49! Most of them group driven, ethnoreligious, genocidal, brutally extravagant in the type and form of murder and the direct and indirect body count. You want an example of Human Calhoun rats in stage 4? 2 million people murdered of which 50000 were children in the so-called war on terror in Iraq. 

Too many rats... ahem... people! 

So, while continuing our commitment to excess and waste, while continuing our desire to fornicate like rabbits and breed like rats, can we resolve conflict? No. Can we curb roaming gangs of politicians and thugs attacking anything and everything? No. Can we curb galloping same-sex relationships? No. Can we curb this preoccupation with manicures, haute couture, haute cuisine, haute gyms and umbrellas? No. Can we curb the explosion of shrinks and couches? No.

Yeah, who is not fighting these days? Who is not competing? Who is not highly opinionated? Who is not self-centered? Who is not angry? Who is not complaining? Who is not jealous? Who is not wounded? Who is not scarred? Who doesn't have eating disorders? Who isn't spending inordinate amounts of time in the salon? Who doesn't need a shrink?

We are beyond striving, exploiting and equilibrium now. We are, truly, in the last phase. We have cast the die and the die reads "die". 

Well then, what on earth are we doing here, going round and round the mulberry bush like rats in a trap, trying this democracy or that dictatorship, this rule or that law? Not a lot that bears mentioning.

Instead, what we have are psychopathological humans huddled over mobile devices, running away from social engagement, slamming themselves repeatedly into waves of information explosions comparable only to population explosions, running screaming away from that into vacant staring or equally vacant copulation, terrified of committing to anything, scared witless of breeding and feeding and caring, rationalizing every irrational behavior, throwing kids at daycares, killing teachers, raping mothers, humping anything that moves, bouncing from twenty-minute uppers to twenty-day downers, desanitizing bodies with every kind of drug imaginable, searching…searching…searching… uselessly for an escape from this overpopulated prison we call earth. 

   

Next time you have the urge to FaceBook, NightClub, WhatsApp, DrugNight, ScrewBinge, TVDinner, ChatFeed, SpouseCheat, MathMull, StratPlan, CutSlack, GrowBeard, DyeHair, FaceLift know this: #YouCannotEscape. You are the #Doomsday. You are the #StormCrow. 

You are the chaos point. You are the morbidity metric. You are the nectromantic vacant.

You? ...are the hell.

(I was describing this experiment to Srilal Perera a fellow member of the Mind On Matters (MoM) group on facebook at a recent meet and Naren Bartlett, with half-an-ear on the conversation thought it would be good to post this on the group so I wrote it up in some detail. Thanks for the motivation Naren and Srilal!)