Knowledge is Power

 This is a quote that is probably the most misunderstood and misused. I did not know the citation for this quote and had to look it up. Seems it was used by Thomas Jefferson and previously attributed to Francis Bacon. My understanding of this quote all these years had been that knowledge interpreted as education or understanding of something is powerful. In the present times, I have let us say been amused by how people use this quote or seem to interpret it. Glad to see that Jefferson did use it pertaining to a state university so it is linked to education and he seemed to think Knowledge is power, happiness and important of all safety. 

Some seem to use it as any form of knowledge is power and especially knowledge of gossip is considered to be a form of power. Though it does help wield a form of manipulative power onto others it is not the kind of knowledge that can bring one safety or happiness. Probably the issue is the usage of the word knowledge and information as synonyms without distinguishing information from misinformation. But then probably knowledge can also be obtained from cherry picked sources to fit one's biases, then it would be miseducation.

So knowledge in its own is supposed to bring power, happiness and safety when it is kept away from miseducation and misinformation is my opinion.

cadence they say

 This will be a very short one I have heard this word cadence often in the last few months,

though cadence can mean different things

Cadence can refer to frequency in certain technical sense 

Cadence is a rhythmic flow of sound and is used in the sense how a group functions

Or Cadence is also used as is the case in public speaking

so once again the same word different interpretation when used in a scenario where all this can apply at the same time 

Back to suffering and thriving

 I had earlier mentioned I do not know if you can thrive and suffer at the same time and that I am looking into it. Found some nice reads online on this topic. Most of them though lead to faith and spirituality as a form of dealing with suffering and what if one is not spiritual in the religious sense. This lead me to look into different forms of spirituality as it can be defined beyond religion (Anbe sivam movie for the tamil movie buffs) https://spiritualitypedia.com/spirituality/beyond-religion-exploring-the-different-types-of-spirituality/).  The humanistic and transpersonal spirituality makes more sense and more so the humanistic spirituality to my own values and identity. And to suffer and to thrive means one is resilient they say but then I have also recently read somewhere that resilience is not always a good thing. I think my understanding is resilience that leads to powering through is not a good thing, resilience that allows you to take breaks when needed is a good thing. so guess calling it a resilience with a small 'r' not a big 'R' . 

Books and what is inside

 I was at a second hand bookstore this morning and landed on a book titled never eat alone. I do not agree with the title ( here we go) , i think everyone needs to eat alone at times to sit with their thoughts and also to seek comfort in doing the most mundane of tasks to eat and still enjoy it. While thinking this in my head, i flipped the pages and the quotes in the book caught my eye and some were well selected. And then i landed on a page in a chapter titled warming the cold call and found an folded sheet of sudoku/garfield comic from gulf news. Got me thinking if the person reading the book marked the page, got distracted or was eating alone maybe :)

Suffering, surviving and thriving..

 I am going back to existentialism again. I realize over the recent times, when people have asked me about suffering or grieving as a process I never really understood what it meant. For me it is a part of life and life does not stop for you to go through these processes. And the pace is not in one's control and nor is life so you let it happen and you learn to live through it or with it. Now this again is very existential in nature as it basically is saying to live is to suffer (from Nietzsche's Twilight of the idols but i found an article mentioning it was rephrased by someone else do not find it now) and to survive is to make sense of the suffering. 

Surviving is mere existence, what one wants to do is to thrive which is not the same thing so can one say to live is to suffer and to thrive is to make sense of the suffering I do not know. But I am looking into it and it seems suffering and thriving can coexist so it is not surviving.

What about change?

 Change is scary and when it is something that one is not used to, it feels comfortable to stay in the same place than to actually move. The problem is that the more stuck you stay , it becomes more difficult to see the issues in the current status quo. One person cannot change a system or a society but it is a continued effort towards an end goal that once again changes with time and people that get involved along the way. One of the reasons why we resist change is sometimes because the path feels daunting as there is none and one needs to create it and figure things out, it is work. But then the path that feels safe has not worked and is not really safe so the question then becomes, what is the choice we need to make. All this rambling based on some discussions and i needed time to think so i did not say much when the discussions happened. Having had time to think..

Now there was a conversation about quitting toxic work places but then people do not realize it is not so simple and sometimes people need that paycheck. Those who think they will find another job may not necessarily and until they line up another job they may not be able to leave. So this arguement is easy to say but it is not always the best solution. I think another angle to this is also that if people constantly believe that they can get away from things or just change the place, there is a possibility that one is low on tolerence and has to work on certain things but is blaming the environment which may not be the case. Then the job hopping happens with never any place to stay and its easy to hide behind the toxicity of the environment (which may be true in some cases but not in all cases). So this attitude of leaving needs more consideration than as a sign of independence and freedom.

Then the discussion on whether it is systemic or is it societal or management issue. I had to think about this one a bit. If some things are illegal and is being followed then it is personal responsibility to not participate and also raise an issue about it in whatever way possible from my perspective even if it does not mean things will change. More people come forward, there will be a discussion atleast around the subject. 

Saying it is societal in the current weather is following the crowd and saying I do as others do but this is only when things are convenient for oneself usually. In other times if things were to turn to oneself then it is not an acceptable option. So this is an excuse not the real reason.

The reason for not picking up workload when someone is away or interest in contributing to other peoples tasks this again is a management issue. If one gets incentives for said behavior they would participate in it. I have seen cases where it is in their job profile to support other team members but they are busy supporting external teams than internal team members. now this in my opinion is leaving your own team sinking and running to others hence, should be penalized that is a management issue in that case. And in jobs such as customer service roles, the roles are assigned by shift and there is someone who covers if the shift person is not around, this is defined by the manager. 

Somehow it seems we operate these days in this idea of it is not my problem it is someone elses and pass the buck. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 The last couple of days, I have been recollecting this book of Ngozi Adichie that I read a long time ago. It is called Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017). Before talking about the book, it reminded me of 2  ted talks by the author where she goes over some of her own experiences as a woman and how certain things were expected of her or not because of her gender (We should all be feminists do also check the danger of a single story not related to feminism ). For example, paying for parking , it would be expected the man would be the one with the money. Somethings I could relate to and this book is her attempt to explain to her friend on what she thinks would be to raise a feminist daughter. I enjoyed the book i recollect though cannot recollect the details. It is funny though how raising fierce independent daughters still strikes a chord in certain people as then they cannot be controlled is it not. Somehow the word fierce takes a negative connotation and independent becomes too arrogant while it just means someone who can stand her ground. 

Romanticism and Existentialism

 I recently happened to participate in a session which talked about complementary areas or domains that combine especially in steampunk art. During this talk someone brought up the idea that romanticism  believed in the idea of complementary domains. It got me thinking as honestly, i did not know what romanticism was.  I looked it up and seems to be a literary and artisitic movement from the 18th century and some of the poets from that period thought to me seemed to be existentialist (once again history is not my strong suite and I am going by my feeling of the poetry than the period that defines romanticism or existentialism). This led me to try and look up what the overlap is between romanticism and existentialism. I do not know yet I am just trying to dig for fun when I find time.

Certainity/Uncertainity

 This one will be short. A couple of JW missionaries chatted away yesterday while I was tending to a few weeds on the garden wall. I am an agnost and think God is an imaginary construct. I also think lot of other things such as gender are a societal construct and this in itself would be a post. I need to find time to write that, one day some day. Coming back to this, they still left me their card and told me I could take a look at their website and the section on bible and science. I said probably I will not but ya I could just for curiosity. Today out of that curiosity I opened their page and landed on a section on a few scientists explaining their faith. One thing in common in my opinion seems to be the need for certainity or to explain certain things that cannot be explained. Got me wondering, why is there this need to know. A recurrent theme seems to be nature and biology are complex , to explain these concepts that are unknown the idea of a grand creator seems to provide comfort. I understand that which is why it is a subjective faith and not applicable to everyone. The poet in me wonders, why we cannot let things just be. For now we do not know, one day we might or we may not but they are there and we can still look at them with awe?. I see where this is coming from.

Slambooks

I was finishing high school to move to university. These were times when slambooks were a thing. For those of you who do not know what a Slambook is, it used to be these notebooks of sort, with a few questions that allows your friends to write about you and about them with respect to you.  The questions were cheesy and the idea of it all was to have a means to stay in touch or just have some memory of the people close to you. Though in reality the book would get passed around to everybody and usually one would have a generic response for people you barely knew though you were in the same class. So slambooks were like facebook post of yesteryears where one asks you to leave some memory of them in the comments for example.

Now, to give you some context, there was a friend of mine who was friends with  another person, who would bully her. This friend would not stand up for herself but put up with her. I would tolerate this bully in common circle of friends and she was not specifically nice to me but i was non-existant for her. This person decided to give me her slambook  to write in as if it were a peace offering of sorts now that we were leaving school. The slambook had a section what is the one thing that you would want me to change and there, I wrote, you would be a much better person if only you were not a spit fire.. Ain't proud of myself there but it was what it was. 

And I remember her coming upto me and not being happy about that comment. She asked me to change it to  which I said no I would not. But she could fill my slambook with whatever she wanted, which she did not want to do.  

And guess what, I was iced out by my friend and she still wanted to be in good terms with this person. Well, people and their choices. My friend and I, moved to different universities and still went on to have some semblance of a friendship over the years, till it completely fell apart. Looking back, I would probably not write that comment in a slambook (or probably I would still) but other than that I would not change a thing.

Some of the recent incidents brought this incident to my mind.

Mending walls on my mind

 Since a week or so, the poem of Robert Frost's has been stuck in my head. The mending wall... Brain worm as always and somehow, some conversations with a few people i do not even know, made me realize the most probable why.

Good fences make good neighbors and it is not so much about the fence or the wall but what we fence in or out.

And sometimes in the very attempts at protecting certain things, we let people in who take it as a permission to trample onto whatever you have fenced in, but then you, redefine your fence, and recalibrate and move along. Wall feels rigid a fence feels more flexible but then its subjective ;)

16 years (5 years from the last post)

The last post made me smile and to continue, who would have imagined this country called France would grow onto me and I would be calling it home...

Let me see if I can manage to resurrect this blog , as always optimistic and ambitious, 

Hello before PhD version and the grown up after PhD, PostDoc and run over by life but still standing version of me...