Facing the faceless opponent

There were quite a few thoughts passing through my mind for the past few days, and I was wondering if I want to write about them at all. There has been a lot of Facebook updates, posts, news articles, rants, demands, speculations about the position of women in India, her safety, her existence, her dignity - triggered mainly by the recent rape case in Delhi. (Note that this is not the first or the worst of heinous incidents to have happened in India, yet for whatever reasons if this incident actually manages to kick start and sustain an awakening within the Indian hearts, then I am glad for that.)

Last year, around the same time, I was walking freely on the streets of Delhi by myself. Before I landed there, I remember my parents telling me to take extra care, because it is Delhi, and it is not safe. I myself was mildly scarred by an experience as a child. While travelling in a bus in Delhi, I recall a man standing next to me and trying to push himself onto me, while I was sitting and trying my best to veer away from him. Not a pleasant memory to carry with you at the age of 11 or 12.

However, when I came to Delhi this time round, after many years, and travelled in the metro, I was delighted and did not hesitate twice about moving about freely. And why not, I thought, I travel all over the world on my own. I don't get scared to walk alone on the streets of a foreign country, then why indeed should I feel scared walking on the streets of my own country? But this really shows how detached from reality I am. We tend to take our own life experiences and believe them as the truth. And this also means that we are still lacking in awareness. Many of us (the more privileged section of the society) may never fully understand the gravity of the problems that are lurking on our streets. And this means we are not prepared for a day when we are taken by surprise. And more importantly we are not prepared to fight the battle, which needs to be fought to actually make our society a safe place to live in.

While many people are asking for stricter laws and penalties against crimes like rape and molestation, somehow I can't help feeling that the degree of punishment is not the only way of attacking this problem. According to this news article, it says that out of 635 rape cases reported in Delhi in 2012, only 1 was convicted. And this is considering only the cases which were reported. Because I am sure there were several others which were not. How is giving capital punishment to the 'one' convicted criminal stopping the 634+ others? If this data is anywhere near the true figures, then there is only approximately 1/1000th of a chance of a rapist getting convicted. Is he really going to be scared of what punishment he may get if and when he is caught? I have a feeling most people who behave in this manner are not really thinking about consequences at all. What is it then that drive such behaviour? What is the root cause? And how can we attack the core of this problem?

Some points which come to my mind are:

1. Very low standard of living.
Poverty forces man to take jobs which no one wants to do. Imagine doing an extremely shitty job for 12 hours a day, getting paid like shit, and being treated like shit. How does he cope? He takes to cheap alcohol to get past each day, beats up wife to channel his frustrations onto the one person he believes is weaker than him. Such a person is looking for opportunities to take revenge of his own personal oppression over anyone he deems weaker than himself. How do we fight an opponent who has nothing to lose?
(Note: I cannot at this point ignore the polar opposites, the very rich and powerful people and their sons who  don't think any law and order can get to them at all. These are the people who have so much that they are also not afraid of losing anything!)

2. Age old traditions.
India being a male dominated society, there is always an excuse for discrimination against women. How will you argue with the head priest of a temple and convince him that what his 'god' told him about a woman's place in society is bull shit?? The head priest may not be a rapist himself, but he is encouraging an attitude among people (women included) which slots women into a particular role and makes her the weaker sex. How do we fight an opponent who has god on his side?

3. Bollywood item numbers.
This may or may not be a significant contributor, yet considering that Bollywood has a big influence on average Indian population, I cannot help wondering if somehow our casual attitude towards objectifying women in daily life and entertainment is somehow giving rise to something more evil than what we intended. For the past few years item songs and dances are no longer situational or realistic but more box office revenue generating additions, lapped up by general public. The catchy tunes and vulgar lyrics have made many of our feet tap (mine included), but now I am beginning to wonder if this in-sensitiveness is in fact contrary to what we are striving to achieve in our daily life. How do we fight our own urge to dance to 'Munni', 'Sheila' and 'Chameli' and deny ourselves the cheap pleasure we obtained from these numbers?

I know there are plenty other root causes, and I hope more informed and educated people are involved in studying and making policies against crimes like rape, oppression and abuse. I also hope that we don't all stop at  liking, sharing and updating our social network statuses but take at least one additional step towards recognising the evil we are facing and coming up with a concrete resolution of action in support. As usual I still think that education is the underlying, long term solution but in the short term we are left with many faceless opponents like poverty, traditions, corruption and of course our own personal attitude. We can and should make demands from the Government to take our ideas and concerns seriously but I don't think any external body on its own can come and save us from a mess which has been carelessly caused by each one of us.

And here like always I leave you all to ask your own questions, to make a difference in your own way and above all, as a new year plea (not resolution) I want to ask myself to not get so busy living an empty shell of a life that I forget to look around, feel and care.

Do you believe in logic?

I had taken a bit of a hiatus from this blog, but that does not mean I was not thinking, learning, applying or educating. Maybe the first three actions were more prominent than the last one. But here is my attempt to make it right.

So, I was in conversation with a friend, when he suddenly turned around and told me, what I was saying contradicted what I had said before, and that I was not being very logical. I completely agreed with him and yet heard myself lash out, 'If you want logic, why don't you go out with a machine, why bother with humans?'.
At another instant I recall another friend of mine telling me if he had to follow a religion, it would be that of logical reasoning. And I remember, at so many points I have found him so very very illogical and I have tried proving it to him, but with no success at all.

Scraps of conversations like this made me wonder about this situation. Is logical reasoning really an absolute as we make it out to be? Or is it only a set of rules developed by us humans to build computing machines? We feel, this way of thinking is simple, predictable and repeatable and thus it must make sense. But isn't it because we have created this world, and every rule that we have created is followed strictly within the boundaries of this world that it all appears simple?

Human minds however are not governed by these rules. We don't yet understand completely what our 'rules' are. Maybe we do have sets of rules (even if they are different and more complex) but the fact is we are still a bit of mystery to ourselves. And yet so many times I have found myself and even others (often people with more technical background) trying to fit inside these made up rules of logic and getting annoyed at others because they are not being 'logical'.

Personally I do believe that human minds follow patterns, and that we are a responsive species. But the most I can do is take time out every once in a while and try to truly understand why I did do something or not. (Unfortunately I have also realised it is quite easy to fool the mind to believe in a cause which was not true when the action was performed, but seems like the perfect reason in retrospect. This alteration of our own past happens almost naturally and makes me wonder if there is an unknown variable at work here which I cannot quite see.)

While I always feel there is a cause and effect for everything I think or do, I sometimes defy this by doing something completely random and surprising myself.
But is it really random? I guess I will never know. Not unless I am outside the boundaries of the human system, and I know every rule and every variable there is to know. Until then I guess I will have to make do with my will to learn, my best educated guess and my survival instinct.

Finally let me leave you with this, which I do believe in:

"Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry."

- Charles Sanders Peirce, "First Rule of Logic"



p.s. I know psychologists study the human mind, but I have never studied this subject formally, and honestly most people I meet in life are these so called 'logical' engineers (including myself) and I guess this post is more for people like us. Although I would very much love the perspective of a psychologist and what their views are on the topic of 'logic'.