Gancy's World

[ Started writing an article on India’s 61^st Independence.  Lost interest half way.   Below is half complete article.  Interested can read at leisure ]

Proceedings of recent time have left me disillusioned.  Uncurbed inflation, cowardice acts of terrorism, violence in J & K, shameful political drama are just one too many more than I can recount have left me perplexed trying to find ‘how long India can exist in politically unity?’  I thought to have become amalgamated into the Indian thinking fabric of defeatism, pessimism and false ego.

At this time of the hour Ambedkar’s word 60 years ago is more true than it was then.

Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment.  It has to be cultivated.  We must realize that our people have yet to learn it.  Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic.

-          B. R. Ambedkar

All my doubts are not without valid reasons.  Are we nation of skeptics?  Until freedom left liberalist wished for British imperialism to continue; since Independence, for 40 years, we hoped in vain for USSR to build India; last 20 years, are we hoping on United States to develop India?

For it to be appropriate, who could write such an article as ‘India @ 61’?  Politician? Journalist? Scholar? Westerner? If alive, Gandhi? Nehru? Is when I realized if such was to be written it must more appropriate by common folk of the nation.  Whence started writing ‘India @ 61’.  What was I to write? Should it be an account of progress and fallback, about strength and weakness, about valor and defeat, about greatness and embarrassment, about culture and religion, about secularism and communalism, about diversity and unity? This would merely reduce it to a historian’s account of India as journalist.  So I deliberated to write from ideological perspective through my mind’s eye.

I was to understand what is India? – ‘India is just a geographical expression .  it is only the British who united it.  We aren’t even one nation – for a nation must have one language, one religion, one race’ – how often have we heard this? So what is real India? - And I found it from Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India’.  It is a five thousand years long continuity of cultural expression that is India.  It is a thousands of years of history of invasion and upheaval, a tradition which was widespread among the masses and powerfully influenced them.  Starting with ‘The Indus civilization’ – which represents a very perfect adjustment of human life to a specific environment that can only have resulted from years of patient effort.  And it has endured; it  is already specifically Indian and forms the basis of modern Indian culture.

Astonishing as it was that any culture or civilization should have this continuity for five or six thousand years or more; and not in a static, unchanging sense, for India was changing and progressing all the time.  These were the men who seemed to know life and understand it, and out of their wisdom they had built a structure which gave India a cultural stability which lasted for thousands of years.  It is the people of this nation are India – no cast, no creed and no religion 

India’s Strength and Weakness – 19^th through mid 20^th century while western world was advancing India fell behind in the matters of technique, and Europe, which had long been backward in many matters, took the lead in technical progress.  Behind this technical progress was the spirit of science and a bubbling life and spirit which displayed itself in many activities and adventures voyages of discovery.  New techniques gave military strength to the countries of western Europe, and it was easy for them to spread out and dominate the East.  That is the story not only of India, but of the whole of Asia.

“WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:  JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;”

Today, does this great nation stand up to the preamble of the constitution devised 59 years ago? Where is the security when terrorists are walking free after crime? Where is the equality when there is still no common civil code?  As a common man of this nation what are we to do to uphold the preamble of our constitution and leave up to it?

“Even if you must go all the way to China,” said the Prophet, “seek knowledge”.  This was the theme of Muslim (Submission) during the golden age lasted for 500 years.  There was split in Muslim, those who believed and followed ‘only way to God is by Revelation’ and those who believed and followed ‘only way to God is by Reason’. 

A famous Caliph of 8^th century C.E established what known as the ‘House of Wisdom’ which seeded the greatest invention, discoveries in all known fields of human knowledge – Physics, Mathematics, Astrology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Architecture, Poetry, Philosophy, Medicine and list goes on.  This golden age at 8tgh century C.E, Baghdad being the center of Islam intellect would one day lay the seeds of European renaissance and enlightenment.   Unfortunately much of the contribution from Islam is lost for every in history.  The foundation laid by Islam intellects and buildings were built by Europeans and later to become as Europe single handedly achieved the wealth of knowledge know to mankind.

Theory of relativity was known to Islam scholars a thousand years before Einstein.  Islamic scholars flew gliders eight hundred years before Wright Brothers.

I am working to compile a long list of Islamic inventions and discoveries and dates vs. the same achieved (or rather used) by European counterparts.

In an era when the relationship between Islam and the West seems fraught with misunderstanding, how many of us realize that Muslim intellectual achievement was once the envy of the world? In magnificent centers of learning, from Damascus to Baghdad and Cairo, mathematicians a thousand years ago developed algebra, algorithms, and trigonometry – the foundations upon which modern technology is built.  Inventors devised the crankshaft and early versions of the torpedo and the parachute.  Physicians’ techniques ranged from orthodontia to asthma care to tracheotomy.  And Muslim astronomers calculated our planet’s diameter and circumference to a remarkable degree of accuracy – at the time when Europeans thought the earth was flat!!!

Their contribution to modern knowledge are almost beyond counting.  How many of us know the names of ibn al-Haytham, ibn Sina, al-Tusi, al-Khwarizmi, Omar Khayyam? These very men paved the way for Newton, Copernicus, Einstein, and many others

[MS dictionary does not know them.  Newton, Einstein are valid words in English Dictionary where as ibn al-Haytham, ibn Sina are underlined RED]

The Lost History – A book from National Geographic 

In the British-Indian battler at the fortress of Srirangapatanam in Mysore, in 1979, at this point India is succumbing to the invading British, but under Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan, India is still fighting.  One tactic, put in place by the sultan’s father Hyder Ali, is a formidable rocket force.  Each Indian battalion had 200 rocketeers in place, armed with ample supplies of rockets capable of traveling a thousand yards and tipped with lethal warheads, including gunpowder charges, pointed tips, and even a kind of whirling blade that shreds everything on point of impact like a meat grinder.  Though by then Europe had rockets, none of them had the range and lethality of these rockets.

During the battle, thousands of Indian missiles slam into the British forces, considerably slowing their advance.  Finally, when the fortress falls, the British capture several hundred loaded rockets and rocket launchers and thousands of unarmed ones.  Some of these are packed and shipped back to Britain for study.  They come to the attention of one William Congreve, an armaments expert in the service of the king.  He swiftly sets about incorporating the Indian design into the British forces.

And then, only 14 years later, when the infant United States is under attack from the same British Empire, the so-called Congreve rockets fashioned after the Indian rockets are fired at the uncooperative Americans, in particular from ships in the Chesapeake Bay against one Fort McHenry, protecting the American city of Baltimore.

An American prisoner of the British will watch throughout the night as his captors launch volley upon volley of Congreve rockets at the American fortification.  The next morning, when he sees the tattered American flag still flying above the fort, he will be inspired to write a patriotic song called the ‘Start Spangled Banner’!!!

Most Americans know about Francis Scott Key and their national anthem.  But because of lost history, they do not know that those rockets inspiring the song were born in faraway China, brought west by the Mongols for events like the attack on Baghdad, then transformed by the Muslims into more versatile weapon of war, and shot into the European mind through the Crusades, through the re-conquest of Spain, through the Turkish attack on the gates of Vienna, and through the final Muslim-Indian resistance against British.

Nor do they know that one day, distant descendants of those rockets and rocketeers will animate renewed bloodlettings in the 21^st century in the so-called clash of civilizations, tiresomely like the battles of lost history, and in many of the same places: Baghdad, Israel, Afghanistan.

It is one irony of lost history that its blade cuts both ways!!!

Courtesy: The Lost History – Michael Hamilton Morgan for National Geographic 

Anyone can become angry – that is easy.  But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – this is not easy – ARISTOTOLE.

Often one finds the words faith, hope and love with adjective prefixes as ‘unconditional’ faith or ‘infallible’ hope or ‘blind’ love and so forth.  Use of these adjectives suggests that they are unexplainable by reason.  Why unconditional? Why infallible? Why blind? Often actions/reactions made purely based on faith, hope and love could be of disastrous consequences.

Parent making a desperate effort in the moment of crisis to ensure their child’s survival… we all live and work today with the hope that we will live tomorrow… or a faith in god, we put our entire burden. 

After all what are these words faith, hope and love signify?  They are human emotions.  Why are they central to human kind?  Why do we need these emotions?  What is the purpose and significance of them?  Why emotions or passions overwhelm reason?  In this context, the term Homo sapiens - the thinking species - becomes misnomer.  There are both scientific answers as well as philosophical explanations to these questions.   

In this essay, l shall dwell into science to find the answers for these questions.

Various branch of science that deals with human brain/mind… Psychology, Neurology, partly anthropology and likes…

Parent’s desperate efforts to save their children without concern for their life, automatic reactions of this sort have become etched in our nervous system, because for a long and crucial period in human prehistory they made the difference between survival and death.  Even more important, they mattered for the main task of evolution: being able to bear progeny who would carry on these very genetic predispositions.

These given of human nature arise from the basic architecture of mental life.  In terms of biological design for the basic neural circuitry of emotion, what we are born with is what worked best for the last 50,000 human generations, not the last 500 generations.  The slow deliberate forces of evolution that have shaped our emotions have done their work over the course of a million years; the last 10,000 years – despite having witnessed the rapid rise of human civilization and the explosion of the human population – have left littler imprint on our biological templates for emotional life.

All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us.  The very root of emotion is “to move”, plus the “e-“ to connote “move away”, suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion.  Every emotion (anger, fear, love, hope, faith) has distinctive pre-configured reactions.  Emotions are also shaped by our culture.  Hence, responses to some of these emotions may vary between different cultures.

Our mental life is fundamentally constructed of two minds.  One, the rational mind, is the mode of comprehension we are typically conscious of: more prominent in awareness, thoughtful, able to ponder and reflect.  But alongside there is another system of knowing: impulsive and powerful, some times illogical – the emotional mind.  Aka thinking brain and feeling brain (the heart!!).

How do these minds interact? Why some emotional impulses hi-jack rational mind? What there do always two minds both want to do two different things? To answer these questions we need to understand how the brain grew.  Over the millions of years of evolution our brain grew bottom up, with its higher centers developing as elaborations of lower, more ancient parts.

the brain stem - The most primitive part of the brain is the brain stem surrounding the top of spinal cord.  This root brain regulates like breathing and the metabolism of the body’s other organs, as well as controlling stereotyped reactions and movements.  This primitive brain cannot said to be think or learn; rather it is a set of preprogrammed regulators that keep the body running as it should and reacting in a way that ensures survival.  [This brain reigned supreme in the Age of Reptiles: Picture a snake hissing to signal the threat of an attack]

the limbic brain – from the most primitive root, the brain stem, began to evolve, eventually growing large enough to encircle the top of the brainstem.  In early stages it was composed of little more than a thin layer of neurons gathered for analyzing smell.  One layer of cells took in what was smelled and sorted it out into the relevent categories: edible or toxic, sexually available, enemy or meal.  A second layer of cells sent reflexive messages throughout the nervous system telling the body what to do: bite, spit, approach, flee chase.

With the arrival of higher order animals as mammals came new, key layers of the emotional brain.  These, surrounding the brainstem, look roughly like a bagel with a bite taken out at the bottom where the brainstem nestles into them.  Because this part of the brain rings and borders the brainstem, it was called the “limbic” system.  This neural territory added emotions proper to the brain’s repertoire.  When we are in the grip of craving or fury, head-over-heels in love or recoiling in dread, it is the limbic system that has us in its grip.

the neocortex -  As the limbic system evolved, it refined two powerful tools: learning and memory.  These evolutionary advanced allowed an animal to be much smarter in its choices for survival, and to find-tune its responses to adapt to changing demands rather than having invariable and automatic reactions.  If food led to sickness, it could be avoided next time.  Over 100 million year brain in mammals took a great spurt.  Piled on top of the two-layered limbic cortex – the regions that plan, comprehend what sensed, co-ordinate movement – several new layers of brain cells were added to form the neocortex – the thinking brain.  It is the part of the brain responsible for higher order activities as abstractions, reason, logic, and feeling about ideas, feeling about feeling, art, symbols, language and so forth.  Due to such a complex higher brain, human kind has various responses to same emotions.  [Lack of higher brain – neocortex – in reptiles, which only have limbic system, is the reason for cannibalism.  That is the reason reptile hatchlings run to cover from being cannibalized from their own mother.]

Conclusion - The fact that thinking brain grew from the more primitive emotional brain (the limbic) reveals much about the relationship of thought to feeling; there was an emotional brain long before there was a rational one.  Because of this architecture emotional brain plays crucial role in human life.  As the root from which newer neocortex brain grew, the emotional areas are intertwined via myriad connecting circuits to all parts of the neocortex.  This gives the emotional center immense power to influence the functioning of the rest of brain – including the centers for thoughts, reason, abstractions and logics.

Anatomically emotional system can act independently of the thinking brain.  Some emotional reactions and emotional memories can be formed without any conscious, cognitive participation at all.  Such is emotion of Faith, Hope and Love.  In an emotional emergency, primitive limbic brain is the first to receive signals [visual, sound, smell] from external world before they are sent for processing in higher neocortex brain. 

Even before neocortex could process and figure out the thought full response to the confronted emergency, limbic brain kicks into action hiring the rest of the brain including the thinking neocortex for action.  Limbic brain being the ancient brain has an ancient response to the confronted situation and reacts according to stored response.  If anger is triggered, blood rushes into hands to help hold a weapon and puts whole but at the edge ready for confrontation or if it is fear, blood rushes to legs for fleeing.  This is called as emotional hi-jacking.  Neocortex or thinking brain has no chance of calculating thoughtful reactions to the confronted situation.  Once the anger is gone; one feels remorse, regret and this is caused by the thinking brain which is responsible for higher mental faculties as consciousness and moral.  It is the moral which tells what is right and what is wrong.

This is why it becomes imperative to learn to manage emotional brain, to learn to have thoughtful response to the reactions of faith, hope and love.  Managing and controlling emotions gives enough time for higher brain to compile thoughtful responses and to decide write or wrong before acting.

A violent reaction to loss of love by a university student results in killing of 37 fellow students.  Unconditional love, blind faith, anger and avenge by fundamentalists resulted in loss of thousands of life in word trade center disaster.  These could have been avoided only if we let the age of reason to take over and allow the emotions to work with reason for greater future.

Life is comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel – HORAGE WALPOLE.

References:

Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman

The Descent of Man – Charles Darwin

Self Introspection