It is almost the end of another year. I think I have just enough time to squeeze in another post. I ended my last post wishing for a crystal ball and a cheat sheet to decipher the ways of our world. Santa did get me that crystal ball and I have been busy peering into it. If only. But I have used 2010 to good purpose to think up some more questions and confusions. Here are some :
I have finally concluded this year that I don’t understand the business of religion. I don’t understand how human beings who are otherwise have exactly the same physical characteristics, who more or less go about their lives in similar ways follow different religions. More importantly in a world where we have lots of choices and increasingly fickle preferences we somehow stick to the same religion and we don’t innovate between religions. We hardly ever seem to change religions, we don’t combine them to form new ones and somehow we find existing religions sacrosanct. We constantly berate people who order us to do stuff, we disagree with our parents, elders, old people all the time and yet we seem to accept something that has been written or said many centuries ago as sacrosanct. Why is religion above everything else ? And why are religions different even though we inherently seem to be one human race ?
Everytime I want to disgust myself, I go to the Iraq body count website. the news recently said that, the deaths in 2010 have been less than in 2009 and that was being presented as a sign of progress. From the website, it seems to me that more than a 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the invasion. I don’t understand how is that allowable in our world. Everytime a US or a NATO soldier dies there is an elaborate mourning and a lot of soul-searching if there is any need for the military mission to continue. And yet all these Iraqis have died almost unmourned and supposedly it is them who were going to be saved from their evil democratically elected leader. They don’t seem to have any voice in the powers that rule their country militarily as those powers are only answerable to their voting public. So while the Iraqis live in the mercy of these democratic powers who are there to promote democracy and rule of law in their country, they are kept outside the democratic process of their rulers. The only process they have access to, that too belatedly, is of their own country which really doesn’t have a leg to stand up to Western powers. So until Iraq gets its act together the civilians are really going to have to fend for themselves and if some of them die then some obscure website tracks them in the hope that someone will take attention.
I have been fascinated with the rise of the e-book readers, although I am petrified about the thought of not being able to hold a book to read or not being able to see any available table space piled with books. But as I have aspirations to be a world leader, I don’t like to talk about my personal distress. So the world saving bit is – why is it that no one has thought about linking different books together. Why is it that so much of knowledge remains locked in books and is inaccessible to the average punter on the internet and while all the crap on the internet is very accessible. Why is it that if I am reading a book with references, I am unable to look up those references or to go to other books that may talk about similar stuff, but on the internet I am able to click on every inane unrelated advertisement that google decides to show me. Why is it that Wikipedia is so widely available while the information of all the books is locked down and inaccessible ?
I end with a wish. May 2011 bring even more questions and fewer answers so I can look forward to 2012. Happy new year.
