Category: The Absurdist

 

Pharriages and more as we decide to make the world a peaceful place this New Year. Actually, what we need is simply some World Quiet. We are willing to give up our hope for World Peace in exchange for some quiet. Stop the loudness, the hyperbole, the marketing, the constant spin. Let  the world spin at its own pace, not any faster  or slower. Give me back my slow days and my quiet nights. Lets make a resolution this year to stop the noise. Down with busy-ness. More power to quiet-ness.

 

We make resolutions at the start of every year because that is the time when we want to wipe the slate clean, start afresh. Discard the bad habits of the last year and make a better world for ourselves. However, with each passing New Year we find ourselves in a worse place than we were the year before: climate change, terror, financial crisis, poor leadership, greedy bankers, loud neighbors, intolerance, bigotry, migrants taking my job away, louder TV news channels, costlier tickets, duller movies, more sports doping and betting scandals. Nothing has been spared.

 

So what is special about this year? One of our regular columnists Paul Smith wrote to us:

“This year (2016) numerologically adds up to 9, [2+0+1+6=9], which in the Tarot deck is The Hermit card – the card of exaltation in alchemy. It could imply a more contemplative focus, going within to raise the vibration higher which is something that I think our world could use much more of today. I like the words of the author on alchemy, Mark Stavish, in his The Path of Alchemy, “The son of Hermes is an adept who is in, but not of the world. He is seen but hidden from the eyes of the profane, or those who would seek to abuse the powers of Nature. The Hermit shuts himself off from the world, led by his inner light, relying of the staff of experience to create new and more perfect forms, so that what is seeking expression in material life may be an improvement over what it replaces.”

 

For The Hermit to do his alchemy and magic, peace is required. The challenge was to ensure world peace. How do we go about ensuring world peace this year? It was New Year’s eve and we thought: Why not resolutions?

 

We consulted some experts and gurus. After much analysis and discussion, they informed us that most New Year resolutions are about self-improvement and about personal issues.  However, over the years all these resolutions of self-help and self-improvement has NOT helped our world become a better, peaceful place. Therefore, they decided that this this New Year we cannot just sit back and decide to self-improve. That will not help anyone, including the person who improves himself.

 

What we desperately need is social improvement, not just self-improvement. And more than exercising our biceps, we have to exercise our brains. That does not mean our own brains and biceps necessarily. Because when we exercise our brains, we work smarter, not necessarily harder; and we realize that someone else can a much better job than us. Someone else’s resolution can help us reach world peace faster than our own. Let them make that resolution.

 

The experts clarified by giving an example: New Year resolutions, which if fulfilled, will improve the world considerably, are not necessarily for you to follow. Sometimes a positive change in behavior by a lousy neighbor can help create peace in the neighborhood much more than all your attempts to be a forgiving and kind human being.

 

 

“I will exercise my brain (think) before I open my mouth (to speak).”

                                                                                                                                           Mr. Donald Trump

Democracy, the rule of the people and by the people (and never for the people), is bound to be loud. After all there are more than 7 billion people on the planet; each one wants to exert their voice, and there is the social media. However, the greatest tragedy with democracy today is not loud people, with more interested in expressing opinions than self-rule; it is the group that poses as leaders of the people. Politicians and businessmen, both, have failed their respective systems. Politicians have completely failed democracy and businessmen have completely failed “free-market” capitalism. However, both groups have lined their pockets and amassed huge amounts of personal wealth.

Generally, we would not have brought this up; after all, it is old news. However, this is the year of the Hermit, who needs peace to reflect on the state of the world, and come up with a new, better order. So Mr. Trump becomes a metaphor for that which politicians (and businessmen turned politicians) do today to disturb the peace.

Politicians today are not just happy to plunder their own countries; they also want to pose. They talk a lot of gibberish and nonsense. And they talk endlessly thanks to the amplification of their chatter by the 24/7 media. And all that noise from the raucous debates on  television sets becomes a major disturbance to world peace.

Representing the people: Millionaire politicians

We want peace at any cost this year. Let the politicians cheat, lie, and steal. Let them do it silently. They do not have to appear on TV and prove to us that they are holier than their brothers. We all know that almost all politicians have business interests and most own companies. Reports in Time magazine and The New York Times state: Congress Is Now Mostly a Millionaires’ Club with half of all Congressmen (the representatives of the people)worth at least one million.In 2013, the median net worth for lawmakers in the House and Senate was $1,008,767 — up 4.4 percent. By comparison, the The U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2014 that the US real (or inflation adjusted) median household income was $51,939 in 2013 versus $51,759 in 2012, statistically unchanged. In 2013, real median household income was 8 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the latest recession.

 

Democrats had a median net worth of $1.04 million, and republicans of $1 million. The averages in both cases had gone up compared with the previous year, when the numbers were $990,000 and $907,000.The New York Times goes to quote Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, that focuses on income inequity and poverty: “Congress not only seems more responsive to policy desires of the very rich, but increasingly they are the very rich.”.

 

That politicians are selfish and corrupt is almost accepted as a universal truth by most countries today, and these are not just in Africa. Canadians mistrust politicians at about twice the rate at which they mistrust CEOs according to a national survey conducted by the Gandalf Group on behalf of the Ted Rogers Leadership Centre.In the UK, the British public are less likely to trust politicians to tell the truth than estate agents, bankers and journalists according to a poll by Ipsos MORI.

 

However, what seems a bit more difficult to explain is why, in recent times, businessmen have taken to politics.Maybe because, we, of this neoliberal age, including the more liberal Canadians, seem to have more faith in businessmen. Although rich landowners have always dominated the political scene in the oldest country (democracy) in the modern world, many businessmen are leery of getting their hands dirty and conveniently use politicians as middle-men for their deals.

 

Cut out the middle-man 

So why are they openly getting into the political sphere? Is it because now the business class and the super-rich are afraid that their taxes will be used for providing succor to the poor. God forbid if the money made by the billionaires, clearly on the backs of Mother Nature or brother farmer and sister factory worker, be used for their health or nutrition or any welfare. Or maybe the super-rich, thanks to the academics on their payroll, have recognized the Achilles heel of the political class. Howsoever corrupt, a politician still carries the baggage of history on his shoulders. Politicians are keen about what and how history will speak of them, even the fascist demagogue. That is why the first thing fascist leaders do is revise the textbooks and control the expressive arts. And perhaps the political class recognizes that if the super-rich are not taxed more, then the social security net will disappear between 2013 and 2035 in the US. It will clearly expose that the American democracy is not of or for the people at all. There is a fight going on between the elephants – the powerful super-rich businessmen and the group that until today were their hand-maidens – the politicians. Their interests have diverged a little: the super-rich do not want their party to be taxed (it will not end anytime) and the politicians knows that if social security dies then there is a threat to the political system and his own future. This divergence of self-interests is leading to all the noise on television. I just want to shop in peace, leave me alone and out of this, scream the consuming citizen. But we cannot because without an audience, the players in this face called democracy, will not be satisfied.

 

Berlusconi and Donald Trump are two faces of businessmen as politics that we are familiar with because these have been highlighted by the media. Berlusconi owns media, the media wants to own Trump.Because of his strategic use of sensationalism (or maybe that’s truly Trump). No one knows and that’s the danger to democracy.

 

Today, all of us, sadly, conflate having money with intelligence and smartness. And in the real world many of us, even educated people, actually confuse the two and the media helps us along: He is a billionaire, so he must be smart?

 

However, whatever be the amount of money in their banks and their hidden accounts, businessmen and politicians, are essentially sociopaths, some even narcissistic psychopaths, who have no interest in other human beings except their own personal ambition and greed. However, thanks to the media houses, interested in getting eyeballs and increasing advertising revenue rather than revealing the truth, any silly, stupid statement made by these pathological humans are amplified a million times and replayed endlessly on 24/7 television channels. And ordinary folks with little exposure to or experiences with people of different backgrounds, class and colors start believing in these statements as the truth. They base their knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, voting, and spending behaviors on these televised statements emerging from selfishness rather than wisdom. As the quote attributed to Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister during the Nazi regime and virulent anti-Jewish programs goes: Repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth.

 

95,000 words uttered by Donald Trump

Unfortunately for Donald Trump, his words amplified a million times by the media, has made him the representative of this entire species of narcissistic politicians and businessmen. Trump has taken the political craft of creating great divides between “us” and “them” to new heights, rather depths. He has spared no one — from the President in the White House to the migrant worker in the farms – with his allegations, accusations and use of malignant language.

 

In a recent article, the New York Times analyzed Donald Trump’s rhetoric by tracking 95,000 words uttered in one week by Trump in speeches, rallies and interviews. What they found was a pattern of Trump using “potent language to connect with, and often stoke, the fears and grievances of Americans.” Trump cleverly used divisive phrases and harsh words while putting forth violent imagery and also used an approachable demeanor and appropriate body language to convey the message: I know you are suffering. And it is all because of “them.” I will save you from them. I will deliver because I am smart. And how do you know I am smart? Because I have made a billion dollars. Trump Tautology.

 

And since Trump wields great power over the public opinion in the United States (as surveys have demonstrated over the past few months), and America wields great power over the rest of the world, we believe Mr. Trump has to own responsibility for his entire species to put things right this year. As Spidey Parker’s uncle said: With great power comes great responsibility. After all, the New Year is a fresh start, a new beginning, even for billionaires and Presidents.

 

May God bless Mr. Trump… with silence. Anything for World Peace.

 

 ******

 

 

“I will use my head and not behead.”

                                                                                                ISIS recruit and suicide-bomb staff

 

 

If anyone knows and appreciates world peace, that should be an adherent of Islam. After all, according to our Internet-age reference book (the 15-year old Wikipedia), Islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, submission, safeness and peace.

 

So if ISIS wants to claim they have an Islamic State, they should be the best practitioners of world peace. What can we really talk to a practitioner of Islam about world peace? Nothing, right. .

 

Let’s face it

But it seems that the most unsafe and un-peaceful places on the planet are now at the center of these Islamic states/territories in Mid-east and northern Africa? The scream of a person getting beheaded will shatter the silence  of any place on the planet, not just pierce the peace of the desert calm.

Not just unsafe for the western or other visitors but also for locals – remember the  whipping, the lashing and now the beheading. All of them lead to moans and screams from those being subjected to it. That does not help the cause of peace.

After the whipping, lashing and stoning came the cutting off – first the ears, then the noses by the Taliban and now the heads by ISIS. What’s up with these Islamist militants? What do they have against the human face? I was okay with then wanting to cover it up – the desert sands whipped up by the windstorms and harsh sun could be some of the natural causes of this cover-up. But why deface it (the face), or try to get rid of it (the head)? Is it because of some “don’t use it, you lose it” kind of logic being implemented by ISIS (Daesh)?

 

So why can’t we talk to ISIS? Hopefully ISIS recruits and staff still have their ears.

We can’t say anything to ISIS because ISIS, for all its protests and claim to uniqueness, is very much like the West.

 

They do not want to listen.

 

God, in any religion, always told us to listen to others. Listening to another is one the easiest ways of expressing kindness, compassion and brotherhood. In fact the entire advancement of human civilization is based on the notion of dialogue – we listen to each other. A husband listens to a wife, a parent to a child, rulers to the ruled. It’s not a hallmark of democracy or western civilization – it’s a humane way to live and the ancient way.

However, before we blame ISIS for not listening to dialogue, let us look at why ISIS may point a finger at our TV new anchors and talk show hosts, who never listen. They keep talking, shouting, screaming. ISIS staffers could claim they are simply mimicking TV shows in the western world. In that, ISIS is closer to the west than they think. Just because they dress different or talk a different language does absolve them.

 

We have had spouses like that too, who never listen. At such times even we have harbored the thought of a talking head without a head. But it’s only a thought – a metaphor for the irritation and annoyance we feel. It’s not real.It is only a wish and as adults we know that not all our wishes come true. Because we believe that God inhabits all creation. We say our salaam and we walk away in peace. We close our ears, we do not cut mouths off.

So, for the sake of world peace, ISIS, please listen?

But ISIS never listens.

Because they do not have time to listen. In this too they are like the west.

 

ISIS staffers seem to be spending a lot of their time  putting out more videos than music-companies and wannabe musicians; more than Youtube can handle.

These Internet and social media channels that claim to promote expression only end up promoting inanity and tripe. We want to cut off these channels, destroy them with the flick of a switch such as Dr. Evil or Dr. Strangelove would do with their missiles pointed at strategic targets of things they didn’t like.

 

But it’s only a thought – a metaphor for the aggravation we feel. It’s not real. In this we are like Walter Mitty. There is something called imagining and everything we imagine cannot be realized.

 

So ISIS, please listen to the please for world peace. But ISIS does not…

 

Because they do not care to listen. They are busy, tapping  new sources of funding – very much like the west.

 

As Putin and Assad claim, ISIS takes funding from oil-producing Middle Eastern countries and also sells oil in the black market. That is a lot of work. By selling more oil to a world choking on oil-pollution; ISIS ends up promoting gas guzzling SUVs that spew out pollutants into the air and only make it difficult for children to breathe. The sound of wheezing of a child with difficulty in breathing does not help the cause of peace. Given the kind of air pollution in Shanghai and New Delhi, the people who live there or visit for work have also thought: Maybe if I behead myself, I will be able to breathe better.

 

But it’s only a thought – a metaphor, a mental relief, a ploy to palliate the pain of wheezing and breathlessness. We do not behead ourselvesin reality. We just want to be able to breathe and to do we need our noses and faces.

 

A wrestling match: The sale of the video game and TV broadcast rights

We all harbor anger. Even the poster boy of non-violence Gandhi did get angry at times, according to his biography. However, we choose to express our anger in different ways. We deface posters, not real ones. We close our eyes, shut our ears. We do not cut off the head of someone we disagree with. If that were the case then there would be no heads of state anywhere on the planet. People are angry at their own leaders. But they do not behead them.The world has moved ahead.

 

It’s fun in a video game. Going around shooting up people and beheading them. How would it play out in a board meeting with many different opinions or or a hostile takeover or a TV news how or in disagreements between husband and wife or a vegetable vendor and a client over the price of bananas.Heads rolling all over the place.

 

ISIS and the western diplomats are more alike than they care to show. We know ISIS has terrorized the west and we know many Western countries have done a great disservice to Africa and Asia. We can always ask them to apologize. Even if no one else does, Bill Clinton surely will. But that is if the western diplomat and ISIS dialog, then the world will have some much needed peace. It will actually give relief to common people on the streets, tone down the rhetoric in much of the West, and give one less excuse to the war mongering countries to make war.

 

Some experts say war is exactly what ISIS wants – it is doing everything specifically to create disgust among people in the West and those who harbor the civilizational values of the West. Apparently, they want the West to rush in where the angels fear to tread. They want war. They want the crusades – all over again. As the western states cobble together all sorts of coalitions to attack them, it is sad that ISIS is helping no one in the Middle East, especially the poor Islamic children dying of famine in Iraq.

 

If ISIS uses its head, it may see that there are lot more ways to serve God and the best way is through peace. We behead our own egos (swollen heads) in front of God, not someone else’s.

In the meantime, ISIS and western leaders can all get together in one World Wrestling Federation Arena, spew venom at each other, and fight it (like WWF veterans do) out on the mat. The ticket collections, the money made from TV rights and the sale of the video game or movie rights will be enough to feed the hungry of the world for another decade or at least until the global average temperature rises above 2 degrees C.

In the interim, may the peace be with you!

 

 

 

————

© The Essayist, 2016

 

 

References:

Half of Congress Members Are Millionaires, Report Says (Jan 2014)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/us/politics/more-than-half-the-members-of-congress-are-millionaires-analysis-finds.html

 

Congress Is Now Mostly A Millionaires’ Club

http://time.com/373/congress-is-now-mostly-a-millionaires-club/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

 

Why Canadians Trust Business Leaders More than Politicians: A new survey finds that CEOs are more trusted than elected officials—but that shouldn’t necessarily be cause to celebrate (Nov 2014)

http://www.profitguide.com/manage-grow/leadership/why-canadians-trust-business-leaders-more-than-politicians-71140

 

Politicians trusted less than estate agents, bankers and journalists (January 2015)

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3504/Politicians-trusted-less-than-estate-agents-bankers-and-journalists.aspx

 

 

95,000 Words, Many of Them Ominous, From Donald Trump’s Tongue

By Patrick Healy and Maggie Haberman. Dec 5, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/us/politics/95000-words-many-of-them-ominous-from-donald-trumps-tongue.html

http://www.thewrap.com/ny-times-unprecedented-dissection-of-donald-trump-words-demagogue-stoking-fear/

http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/beyond-distrust-how-americans-view-their-government/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant#History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISIL_beheading_incidents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ISIL_related_events

http://mondediplo.com/2015/12/01dumbwar

 

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Imagine a young college graduate who has volunteered as a teacher in an extremely poor school in urban Mumbai. She is trying to inspire precocious 10-year olds with stories of leaders from their country’s great history. She decides to teach lessons on Gandhi – the non-violent Mahatma.

 

The children had just come out of their hell-hole houses in the underbelly of Mumbai. They are all malnourished and have various skin ailments because in addition to lack of nutrition they are also deprived of proper sanitation. They live in an area that is better known for its illicit spirit – moonshine or hooch – rather than the so-called undying spirit of Mumbai. In fact the hooch-producers sell the excess liquor to the children every morning.  So many of them are drunk on bad quality alcohol when they walk into their classrooms.  Don’t be shocked or surprised!

 

Selling addictive substances to children is standard operating procedure for drug peddlers all over the world. And why drug peddlers, all sorts on unhealthy food, junk food, drinks, and games are sold to children by legitimate blue chip companies and marketing managers with degrees form Ivy-League universities.  Drug peddlers are only following the management textbooks – do not waste, run efficient waste management systems while creating new customers – be it the northern border of Mexico or a slum in Mumbai; countries along the Andes or the Afghan-Pakistan border – or be it cocaine, moonshine, tobacco, junk food, fast food or games.

 

Children are the best customers. They are easy to intoxicate and drug; they pester their parents for more; and they have many more years of consumption left in them. The products make them feel  cool and adult-like. Furthermore, they are young, so they can find work and pay for their addiction. In the worst cases, the children, who cannot pay directly, can help run the illegal organization and pay through their labour if not cash. Doesn’t it seem like the drug peddlers have trained in the best management colleges? They are effective and efficient like the managers at the best run private companies and yet practice equitable (public) distribution of their goods. These drug-peddlers reach the poor and the last mile while our governments and corporations cannot.

 

Many of these boys from that urban slum in Mumbai attended school in an intoxicated state. One of them was once caught saying that it was the only state in which he could tolerate the teachers and the textbooks.

 

Now imagine again – a young teacher-volunteer on a sunny morning caught in the crossfires of poverty, addiction, anomie, hopelessness and a managerially efficient drug-peddling system talking about Gandhi to a congested classroom half-full of intoxicated ten-year old boys.

 

Putting aside the smell of liquor and filth, disregarding the fact that many of the children were sleeping, and the air was dank, hot and humid, the young teacher raves on about Gandhi. She explains his non-violent exploits and his greatness; his Ahimsa and Satyagraha (struggle for and with truth), his law school education in England; his fight against apartheid in Africa and then the return to the homeland – India. How Gandhi was so moved by the poverty he saw that he gave up his western clothes and dressed like the poor in homespun khadi. The young teacher went on about Gandhi’s steadfastness to the principles of non-violence and truth and how for perhaps the only time in the history of the world a non-violent struggle led to the freedom of an entire nation; and how this example inspired Dr. Martin Luther King in the United States. The teacher knew her Gandhi and she could have sung his stories for much more time but the school bell rang to announce the end of the session. The teacher was perspiring at the brows but she looked happy. She seemed to be congratulating herself in her own mind. The boys has been quiet.

 

But being young she did not know when to stop. She did not want to leave the lecture at just that. She wanted her students to continue thinking about Gandhi. So she announced that each of them would write an essay on Gandhi and submit it the next day. She wrote it out on the board: A 500-word essay on Gandhi to be submitted tomorrow.

 

A lone hand went up. The teacher smiled, she thought she had inspired at least one of them. The malnourished boy stood up and asked: “Ma’am, which Gandhi do you want us to write about?”

 

The young teacher was perplexed. Her spirit sank (maybe she could have benefited from a shot of moonshine herself) and she replied: “But, didn’t you hear a word of what I said in the class?” Theatrically, the teacher opened the history textbook and showed a picture of Gandhi from the book.

 

The young boy was not one to give up so easily. He pulled out a crumpled five hundred-rupee (currency) note from his pocket, kept it in the desk and pressed it flat with his hands. He then raised the currency note dramatically and a picture of Gandhi stared at everyone.

 

The boy said:

“Teacher, there are two Gandhis in my world. The Gandhi whose picture you showed in the history book and this Gandhi who is on the currency note. This Gandhi on the currency note elicits very different behaviours from the Gandhi in the book. The Gandhi in the book is all that you said. The 500-rupee note Gandhi brings out the worst in people –  the opposite: people are mean, cruel, uncaring, punishing and extremely violent in their quest to get more of the 500-rupees.”

 

And pointing to the note again continued:

“People kill their own mothers for this one. And this is the Gandhi we see and learn from every day – this one on the currency note.

 

So which Gandhi do you want me to write about?”

 

The other boys, oblivious to the dialogue between teacher and student, had started talking and throwing paper missiles at each other.

 

Before our young, idealistic, volunteer-teacher could ay anything the head-master walked into the classroom and started thrashing some of the boys for disturbing the peace in the school.

 

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

 Mahatma Gandhi

 

Absurd, isn’t it?

© The Absurdist @ The Essayist

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Albert Camus once remarked:

“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but consequences and rules of action drawn from it.”

 

A previous issue of  The Essayist presented the Absurd-ism school of thought in sociology, literature, drama, architecture and triggered a column called The Absurdist.

 

Children Say the Absurd-est Things…

 

Children, probably more than adults, intuitively recognize the absurdity of life although they may not be able to articulate it. However, just because one cannot articulate something does not mean one does not understand it.

 

Writers and analysts of children’s books have discussed what makes children laugh: falling down, tumbling down, pretending to be something else, misnaming things, playing with sound of words, calling things opposite of what they are, using nonsense words, distorting features of objects, the grotesque , funny voices, making funny faces, and almost everything absurd.

 

What must strike them as most absurd or absurd-est of all are the frantic attempts by adults to make sense of an inherently absurd world and then pretend to have control over it. Instead of seeing the humour in an uncontrollable life, adults perceive obstacles, feel frustration and fight enemies that perhaps cannot be fought,and can be only embraced with some grace.

 

In this issue we present scenes from schools that show how children see life and also see through the absurdity of life.

 

The Setting:

 

Imagine a Grade 1 classroom in a low-income school in Mumbai crammed with children between the ages of 5 and 7 years. Now imagine them going through the loud motions of a special English language learning session where they repeat every word and phrase they hear. Now imagine their context and life situation…

 

These children live in the over-crowded slums of Mumbai where people live on top of each other. The so-called shanties have more than 2 floors piled up on top of each other with asbestos roofing covered with a layer of blue plastic sheet to prevent the rainwater from seeping in and some are concrete with no windows or skylights. The dimensions of each room are 10 feet by 10 feet with height of each floor not more than 8 feet. Because there is no more space in the city to expand sideways, even the slum-dwellers are reaching upwards for space. Everyone in Mumbai aspires to reach and touch the skies. The residents of slums and shanties make up more than 60% of Mumbai’s population. Many academics and social workers think using the word slum is degrading. They most probably have not lived in one.

 

The parents of these children work as maids and drivers for upper-level executives who have benefited from India’s connection with the neoliberal, global economy. Maids and drivers in India have jobs but can barely afford a balanced, nutritious meal. Studies have shown that the amount of money spent on food per day per person in Mumbai’s urban slums is actually half of the amount required to buy nutritious balanced meals for each day from a local food-store. Food is available on the shelves of its many stories, but the majority of the people in Mumbai cannot purchase it. As Amartya Sen’s thesis on the Bengal famine of 1943 pointed out – starvation can be an entitlement issue. Each person has an economic “entitlement” – a range of different goods that can be acquired with an individual’s resources. According to Sen, people starve when their entitlement is not enough to procure the food required to survive.

 

Most families in Mumbai’s slums persevere and work for 12 to 13 hours a day doing more than one job or working more than one shift in the hope that if they work hard enough, they will get to buy the food and various attractive items they can visibly see on the shelves. In fact a politician in India has been (unofficially) quoted: “As long as there are packaged foods and other food items on the shelves of shops in India there will be no revolution because people will always blame themselves for not being able to afford it. They see others around them acquire these things; then they look at each other and blame themselves for not working hard enough or not making it into the gravy train of consumerism. This has become the best mechanism of social control. No police or military required; just stock the shelves and keep them filled with goodies.”

 

Although these poor families have not benefited financially from the first round of globalization, their aspirations and dreams are of global proportions. They want their children to get out of poverty and their solution is to teach their children English. It seems that the language that was resisted during the period of forced colonization by the British has in this era of globalization become the language of liberation (from poverty).

 

This was one such classroom in one school in a slum of Mumbai.

 

High aspirations, unhygienic conditions, and forty little humans crammed into a classroom that can barely hold ten.That actually is a snapshot of the city of Mumbai …

 

The Scene:

 

The teacher, a young, recent college graduate, has volunteered as an English language instructor in one such school serving children from low-income families in urban Mumbai. Her reasons for volunteering are many: maybe she wants to get work-experience and community-based organizations have no criteria for screening volunteers (they will take anyone and everyone as a volunteer as if anyone and everyone can help the poor – especially in education) OR maybe this young woman who is obviously from the upper-class sees the high inequality in her country and wants to exorcise her demons before she joins a multinational corporation, gets a high-flying job and employs one of these parents as a maid and the other as her driver.

 

She is trying to teach 5- and 6-year old children to classify words and things in the English language. Now classification of things is culturally determined and Michel Foucault reminds us in the preface to his 1970 book The Order of Things (see quote at bottom of article). However, every generation also has its own culture. Thus within the same country and society it is almost like every generation creates its own new culture in some ways.

 

The young teacher uses a game called“odd-man out” to teach children how to classify words, things, adjectives and so on. She presents a set of 4 words and obviously one does not quite fit into the category of the other three.

 

Example 1: Lion, Tiger, Dog, Car. Which is the odd one out?

 

Some children are confused. The teacher shows pictures of these animals; the children are still quiet or maybe confused. So the teacher explains: The car. Why? Because all the other three are animals and the car is a machine. Animals are living things and machines are not.

 

One child asks: What is living (in the local language)?

 

The young English teacher is lost for words. She somehow manages to escape this difficult question by saying that animals can walk. They can make noises – lions and tigers roar. One child says: Dogs bark, Bow Bow.

 

The teacher smiles at that child: Very Good! Animals make sounds but the car cannot. Very Good! The child is beaming because he has just heard the magic words twice from the same teacher.

 

Another child says: “But cars make sounds too. They honk.” By now the young teacher is very uncomfortable and is sweating around the forehead.

 

One child seems to have woken up just now and answers loudly:  Teacher, the car is the odd one out. The teacher asks: Why? The child says: Because the car is not an animal.

 

The teacher is pleased. The slower one has helped her out of her dilemma.

 

Without addressing the issue that cars make noises too or answering the meaning of: What is living? our modern day, college graduated, non-Socratic teacher moves on to the next set of items in the game of Odd-One Out.

 

Example 2: Red, Yellow, Green and Biscuit (cookies are also called biscuits in India). Which is the odd one out?

 

She repeats the set of words; this time emphasizing the word “biscuit” and enunciating it slower than the other words.

 

The answer is obviously Cookie or Biscuit because the rest of the three are colors. The teacher looks around expectantly hoping that one of the children has caught on to her verbal clue.

 

But a little child at the end of the classroom stands up and says: Red, Yellow and Biscuit (Cookie).

 

The teacher is aghast. Obviously her attempts at teaching order and classification or categorization in English is NOT working with these kids. A thousand doubts cross the mind of the neophyte teacher. Is it me? Is my teaching that bad? Or are these kids just not smart enough? Maybe it is their families and the manner in which they are raised; do their parents ever teach them anything?

 

The teacher is about to give the correct answer to the errant child when the supervisor who has been observing the “volunteer” interjects: Let us ask the child, why he chose these three in a category?

 

The child mentions the name of a popular brand of biscuit (cookie) whose packet is colored red and yellow and green. That is how this little child identifies it on the shelves of stores; and every time he opens the colorful packet, he finds his favorite cookie inside.

 

The stocked shelves of the stores have taught this kid a different order of things.

 

Absurd, right?

 

© The Absurdist @ The Essayist

 

 

Order of Things (Preface)

 

“This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.”

 

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Pantheon, 1970) xv.

 

 

References:

Albert Camus Quote: Review of Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, published in the newspaperAlgerRépublicain (20 October 1938), p. 5; as quoted in Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (2002) by AviSagi, p. 43. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

 

Entitlement: From Famine at http://www.diet.com/g/famine

 

Images Reference

Parle G Biscuit: http://defence.pk/threads/parle-g-worlds-no-1-selling-biscuit-nielsen.96214/

Patco Glucose: http://www.patcofood.co.in/confectionery-biscuits.html

Biscuit Brands: http://www.bakerybazar.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

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Let them eat Yuan instead (Qu’ils mangent de la Yuan)

 

BBC, Reuters and other news agencies reported on June 11 that 400,000 Yuan stored in a wooden drawer in a woman’s house in Guangdong, China were eaten by termites. The report also claimed that the termites found the Yuan very tasty.

 

Now this is not good news, especially if you are that woman or if you have stored your money in wooden drawers. The first reaction from seasoned journalists was that these were not termites; they were financial policy-makers because they habitually eat into the savings of old men and women.

 

However, unnamed, yet reliable, sources tell The Absurdist that this was a phase one clinical trial experiment with termites and yuan. The sources are absurdly certain that the experiment was conducted by well-meaning, reputed scientists who prefer to remain un-named. The experiment was stimulated by the urgent need to find a solution to the global hunger problem.

 

According to a UNAIDS report in 2010, hunger is number one on the list of the world’s top 10 health risks. Hunger killed more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. The World Food Program stated that 66 million primary school-age children attended classes hungry across the developing world.

 

At the time that this team of scientists were grappling with the hunger problem in an un-named country in the world, one of them took an issue of ‘The Economist’  to the toilet; and experienced one of those Eureka moments. “It was like some big thing just popped out and dropped onto my lap,” said the unnamed scientist.

 

The Economist article was about the increasing gap in wealth and income between the rich and the poor across the world; and pointed to the Mathew Effect: the rich were getting richer, hoarding excess wealth, and the poor were getting poorer.  “What I essentially read was that while some rich people were accumulating a lot of money (paper currency) there were many others who did not have food to eat,” said the scientist.

 

The scientist then rushed to the library and found a recent UNICEF paper which reported that in our world the richest population quintile has 83% of global income with just 1% for those in the poorest quintile; and estimated that it would take more than 800 years for the bottom billion to achieve 10% of global income under the current rate of change. “I thought if I can take this excess money that some people have and feed it to the poor, it might be the most sustainable invention for addressing world hunger,” said the excited scientist.

 

The scientific team was also excited about the possibility of this unique innovation. They decided that one resource that was available globally and in abundance was the excess currency in rich people’s homes; and the best part is that if the world ran out of it, then more paper currency could always be printed as easily. The team then mentally and socially framed “inequality” in a different way. The team leader said: “We essentially looked at inequality as a resource. After all, it is everywhere. It is not only global; it is omnipresent and omnipotent.”

 

The team had to conduct a phase one clinical trial to test the biological possibility of eating paper money, and thus was born the experiment in Guangdong with termites.

 

With the success of phase one, the experiment will be replicated in the two largest democracies in the world – India and USA where some elected (democratically of course) leaders  tend to pile wads of cash while others go hungry.

 

Scientists have decided to apply to Bill Gates for funding and have asked Bono to serve as a subject for phase two of the trial – to demonstrate that money can indeed serve as a viable food source. Scientists are praying that the “bitcoin” does not become popular all of a sudden among the rich and famous and lead them to give up paper currency altogether.

 

The Association of Corrupt Indian Politicians have reassured the rich and famous in their collective statement that they will spare no efforts in adulterating any new currency bring printed in Indian mints. So people who eat money will always remain under-nourished in India.

 

Australian Master-Chef has agreed to run a special TV series in which three out-of-work chefs will anoint the new, seasonal master-chef by making all others eat humble-pie; rather – humble-yuan.

 

If the poor do not have bread or rice, they can always eat yuan (and very soon, their local currency).

 

And because that’s where most Chinese things end up anyway, China has started tinkering with the Yuan to make it more digestible for Americans.

 

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References:

NTD TV Network 11 June 2013 – Banknotes Worth 65,240 Dollars Destroyed by Termites in China. News Video. http://ntdtv.org/en/news/world/asia/2013-06-11/banknotes-worth-65-240-dollars-destroyed-by-termites-in-china.html

http://uk.reuters.com/video/2013/06/11/hungry-termites-eat-65000-dollar-meal?videoId=243279664&videoChannel=77

FAO (2012). The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Retrieved from: http://www.fao.org/infographics/pdf/FAO-infographic-SOFI-2012-en.pdf

World Food Programme (2012). Two minutes to learn about: School Meals.

http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp220221.pdf

UNAIDS (2010). Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic. Retrieved from: http://www.unaids.org/globalreport/Global_report.htm

The Economist (June 2013a). Towards the end of poverty. Retrieved from: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim

The Economist (June 2013b). Aid agencies of the future: Poverty, geography and the double dilemma. Retrieved from: http://www.economist.com/blogs/feastandfamine/2013/06/aid-agencies-future

Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins (2011) GLOBAL INEQUALITY: BEYOND THE BOTTOM BILLION -A Rapid Review of Income Distribution in 141 Countries. UNICEF. Retrieved from: http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Global_Inequality.pdf

 

Open Access Article to be cited as follows:

© The Absurdist. Let them eat yuan instead. July 2013.  http://www.the-essayist.org/2013/07/eat-yuan/

 

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly cited. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 

Footnote: According to a branch of the People’s Bank of China in Guangdong Province, some of the notes were salvaged and the woman’s loss may be around 60,000 Yuan.

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