Global Religion --Is That A Possibility in This Era of Globalization?

Global Religion --Is That A Possibility in This Era of Globalization? 

by 

Barnali Saha 

There are certain subjects that we deliberately avoid talking about in public, or at times even in private, and religion is one of them. Of late, mainly due to the victorious punch of globalization, I see the Pandora's Box of religious beliefs opening in public as many newspaper columnists and bloggers are putting forward their in-depth views about the sanctity of their religion; some of them are even suggesting various means to be more religious or to shun religion all together. With all the talks going on in print and net-media about religion, the next big topic of debate is possibly religious conviction. After watching Steven Colbert snapping NY Times columnist Robert Wright for trying to portray the evolution of God in a his book of the same name, it occurred to me that even though we all talk about evolution of ideas or metamorphosis of minds in general, we cannot and do not accept the idea of letting our God be subservient to Gods of another religious order, in other words, we all think our ultimate begetter as greater and in many ways better than Gods of another religion. And even though globalization and interethnic charity may cross the topographical bounds, they can never transcend the bounds of mind. We can never reach at a consentaneous conclusion when religion is concerned and even though a large number of people are coming out with grave and also outlandish evidences about the actual existence and evolution of Gods, we don’t seem too happy either to look at those scientifically modified religious data let alone practicing a globalized religion.  

To discuss this topic further let us first talk about the importance of religion in our lives. To me religion is the source of my strength, the force that helps me to survive and lead a good and fruitful life. Having been born in a deeply religious Brahmin family in India, I have always harbored a special respect for religion and have always let the juggarnautish strength of faith guide me. Several Indian spiritual doctrines portray God as one great force looking over the entire universe, He is our guardian angel, and He is our destiny, He has many faces, yet He is the one and only eternal Supreme Cosmic Spirit. In spiritual levels thus our God is the one and only begetter of the world, the overseer of all our actions (Karma) and the ultimate judge of our mortal lives. Thus, from this spiritual view it can be deduced that even though religious boundaries talk about separating the different religions of the world, spirituality seeks to unite us all under one global umbrella and ultimately foster ethnic tolerance. Spiritual doctrines from all over the world voice the same principles of life, the same lingo of wisdom written in different scripts. From that point of view we can say that indirectly we are all following a common spiritual doctrine.  

In all the different regions of the world we always see one great force guiding the population it may be Jesus to the Christians, Allah to the Muslims, Kali or Krishna to the Hindus, or to the pantheists the omnipotent power of Nature. It is always our basic human quality to glorify our God and cast him in a superhuman light. We cannot help but be awed by the overwhelming powers of our Gods.  Lores, myths and ancient tales have colored our Gods in different ways to such an extent that we don’t have any idea as to how our ancient spiritual leaders really existed. We have accepted such mythological stories and have added our own color to them and even though many of us may secretly question their validity, we dare not question them. So, however much we raise our voice to defend, polish, or solidify the basis of one religion with scientific data, we can never have a proper dissection of a religion. May be the moral liability of religion is too great to even question and such texts as Evolution of God really do not do it justice. It would be fit to say that religion is a sensitive subject, if not the most sensitive subject that can build and destroy nations and all critical affirmations and negations about religion are invalidated as soon as they are uttered.  Leave it or take it religion is a latent force, a force that stays, grows and dies with you. So, under the present circumstances if we try to consolidate the religious beliefs of all the main religious segments of the world, I guess that would create a discombobulated mess, wit people shouting for equal religious rights and more religious exposure.

In apodosis we may say that globalization may be the result of God's will, but global religion sure is not a part of His plan. By means of dutiful repetition the laws of our respective religions have become apodictic, and however much we try to shun the religious boundaries and create a kind of Din-i-ilahi for all, we do not have the workforce to do that. Under the current global circumstance we may regard the internet as the global-e-deity, the pulse of the universe, the modern eye of God, the virtual steeple of our virtual church, bringing the rich and poor, the sky and the earth under one threshold and virtually making the world a better place to live in. Let the internet be our Nuevo deity. Food for thought.

Have a good one.

The word monster

The word monster

Scared of words? The monsters groping in the darkness of our ever morbid gesellschaft world looking for new ways to attack us. The new bete noire in town has to be this word: Eyjafjallajökull. As televison broadcasters and media personalities twist their tongues and wear their heads off trying to pronounce or even write for that matter, this unspeakable word, we readers are left with gaping mandibles. The volcano business that has been going on for God knows how long is surely affecting the mortal millions in deeper emotional ways than initially believed. The continued failed attempts of polished belletrists to show off their fulgent logodaedaly failed miserably at none could pronounce the word as it is supposed to be pronounced, which, by the way, requires you to either be a volcanologist or some sort of PH Nerd to pronounce it right, and ended up spewing a molten lava of disaster on national television. From CNN to Fox news, from national news reports to international news castings people shuddered even at the look of this verbal Voldemort. Like he who must never be never be named, this unpronounceable word soon became a dread for news media. They read and laughed, bent their vocal chords, twisted their mouth, but failed. And each of them came up with pronunciations as outrageous as the name of this Icelandic volcano. The mystery ultimately solved when journalists trotted out Icelandic interpreter to decipher the unspeakable secret code. But the verbal interpretation hardly helped as people having already developed an innate fear for the said sixteen syllables avoided it altogether and replaced the phrase with the speakable word--Volcano. The Icelanders however had the laugh of their lives mocking the entire world for failing to pronounce such an "easy" word. I guess we all need a little mocking to get back to our senses and start searching for valid options to pronounce yet not-pronounce the sixteen syllable monster. People tried different measures to say it like singing, but it is undoubtedly the US military that hit the jackpot; they called it Operation E-15. Clever ha! Wonder how I could name it. A brainstorming might help, and until that time as I come up with an innovative way of pronouncing it, I am abstaining from saying it altogether.

Picture Courtesy: www.boston.com

Have a Chicken-y Happy Easter!

Have you ever wondered how a chicken sleeps? In case you have not, now you do have a chance to enrich your incondite mind with such basic skills as to how to put a chicken to sleep. Many of you might now consider me loony for bringing up such an abaxial topic of discussion in my blog of, well, standard sobriety. But I must tell you that this topic has not been aleatorically selected; that ever since I saw the Martha Stewart video in the Free Range section of The New Yorker (which actually happened this very morning), I couldn’t help but spend the following several hours thinking about the outrageous, and somewhat creepy way that Stewart actually made a healthy sized Araucana in a chicken-filled room fort wink! I wish I had such tricks up my sleeve too, but I guess I am no Martha Stewart, for this lady is downright astonishing when crafting tricks are concerned.

Check out this wonderful video and have a chicken-y Happy Easter!

Taming The Math Monster

The Math Monster

Got any ideas about the mythology of the 'parabola' or a dazzling grasp of the complex arabesque of calculus? If not then probably we are on the same page. Image my consternation when I chanced upon the hideous math monster presented with delectable phrases in the Op-ed section of the New York Times. Don’t believe me? Eh? Look at this: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/power-tools/



The beloved math-geek, Steven Strogatz, makes the breathtakingly ugly mathematical splendors look so easy in his article. Take an X and now take a Y and then do some mumbo jumbo brain tricks and you will know exactly what y = 4 – x2 is. That is exactly how Steven's simple math loving trick sounded to my math-hating ears. I read the whole article with great interest and even though initially I felt like having P.H.Nerd from one of the world's top geekological institute, I lost my interest half way and started yawning. Then, because of my natural urge to delve into the unknown (which in this case refers to the [un] holy world of numbers) I decided to read the article again from start to finish. And lo! Would you believe it, I actually thought that things he was saying made good sense to my un-mathematical brain. I loved the intelligent analogy that Strogatz pointed out between common household tools (hammer, nails, etc.) and intrinsic mathematical problems, especially the one where he says that the number 4 in the equation y = 4 – x2 acts as a nail for hanging a picture on a wall. I love hanging pictures on the wall. Strogatz's words made so much sense that way, but don’t expect me to tell you how they made sense to me, they just did. May be it is the simplicity of his approach that made the highly technical problems seems easy to approach. In a world where people are running after ways of making simple look outrageously difficult and unapproachable, Strogatz's simple, all-for-dummies approach seem to work just the right way. And talking about the right way, what is exactly the right way of knowing things? Learning to understand simpler aspects of nature in an unnaturally difficult way or learning the same thing in a simplified over- the-counter manner? If you ask me I would say that since it is the end that matters the most, we should grab the option of learning difficult things the simpler way. That would not only abate innate fears about a subject or a language, but also make the subject look strikingly attractive. Learning is supposed to be a natural, spontaneous process and the more we make it look difficult and unobtainable, the more the process would seem elusive to you.

I remember in my childhood I had the innate fear about mathematics;I never could do well in that subject because I was always told that math is a guy-friendly subject that is too difficult to grab. My teachers, my parents all forced me to spend hours on this subject and I hated every bit of that ordeal. Therefore, naturally, the kind of natural love that I harbor for English never arose for mathematics. To me it always remained a dull and drab world of obscure numbers that I needed to learn halfheartedly to pass the examinations. I now feel that if I had somebody like Strogatz as my teacher may be I would have done well in math or at least have harbored an amicable feeling for the subject.



Now that I have discernable pattern in front of my eyes as to how to defragment my brain and add some happy-numerical experiences, I would definitely take a chance. I don’t have any teacher to please anymore, so I guess I can now rear some real mathspertice. With power tool at hand I know I can nail down the problem once and for all.

Check out my Salon.com blog page:http://open.salon.com/blog/spectrum_voice

A Little Talk on Heightism

In a world of agelasts, political-ninjas and popinjays here comes another noteworthy species: The heightists. According to the Urban Dictionary a heightist is "Someone who believes that people are superior to or inferior to others on account of their respective heights, or that people of differing heights have different moral qualities and intellectual capabilities." Food for thought, isn’t it, but before reading my ideas on the subject check out this hilariously somber article featured in the Times of India: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Living-with-heightism/articleshow/5739630.cms 

Now, let us discuss this knew known fact (?) that people with good heights are indeed the living ambrosias who are more successful in life than the less tall ones. Is it true that in this new era gazebo people will good physical stature are given the first class tickets? If so, then what would happen to us, the normal ones?  Are short people doomed forever in the world where there soon will be a reservation for tall and really tall people much like the SC and ST reservations we have in educational institutions. The problem may not be that threatening, but it surely has some emotional connotation.  It is indeed true that people with less perfect features suffer from deep distress. That explains why women who think they are fat spend at least one hour in a day before mirrors examining their physical shape or people go to plastic surgeons to get a nose job. The fact is we are never happy the way we are, and often morph into jealous bad girls. Now, I know many of you would thrash my idea and say no, I don’t do this, I am pure at heart, but let's face it we are all humans and we all have complexes. I believe, it is this innate human sense of complexity that brought into light idiosyncratic beliefs that people with good heights are deemed to be more successful than shorter folks.

When I was  in school I sported a height of 5 feet four and a half inches. For an average Bengali girl in her early teens that was an eccentric number; a number which made my mother dubious about my possibilities of finding a groom for myself. At standard nine I was way taller than my girly girlfriends and I was evidently jealous of their small heights. My height was an indelible mark on my name, I known as the tall girl with specs; however intellectually perfect that might sound, I never managed to be the numero uno student in class. And talk about romanticism, all the guys of my age were romantically bent on my shorter friends. At thirteen the worldly truth dawned on me that my height would spell the doom. Later, of course against the better judgment of my acarpous fate, I managed to find my prince charming and I can't tell you how happy I was when I found out that he was a few inches taller than me.  A match made in heaven I thought and tied the connubial knot. Thus, to me my acromegalic features had been a book of bad memories. Many of you may say that a good height comes with great advantages; yes, true, the advantage of towering over a sea of people is great, the advantage of never being ignored when in a conversation is great, but ultimately isn’t all that matters is the quality of conversation that I am into rather than my physical presence in it. Also, shorter people are cuter than their taller counterparts --don’t you find that Amir Khan or Tom Cruise cuter than say, Abhishek Bacchan or Johnny Depp?

A study of the business arena and the global market would definitely show evidences that successful tall people have been at the helm of successful companies, that actors with good heights bag the best film roles or the best looking girlfriends. Such dubious talks would always linger in the society, and even if you and I may ignore their presence, we cannot deny them altogether. The most important thing is probably to feel good and confident the way we are. I believe that positive energy and positive virtue takes a person up the ladder of success. We may encounter a series of quirky looks and quirky questions from quirky people who would be more interested in our physical appeal rather than our intelligence and handwork; such people would always be there, however, we must always strive not to take them seriously. Ultimately, there has never been an instance in history when a person has succeeded in life just because of his grand physical attributes.

 Barnali Saha