7 year itch

Actually Its  8 years since this blog has started! First post was on 19/01/2009.
It was when Obama became president and my heart had leapt with joy.
Incidentally Yesterday it was Trump :-)

Full circle shall we say?

Now TBD is like a dear friend who I come back to ever so often, conversation between the me I was and the me I am.  I am glad I kept this blog. 

Demystifying mindfulness assignment 1

Instructions

Write a short reflection about which of the stereotypes discussed in this module means most to you? Which is most similar to your own opinions, which furthest away? Do you recognise yourself in any of them? Are you a mindfulness ninja? Do you fear becoming a zombie? Do you have a view on whether such stereotypes have use or value? Are they useful for you? Write 250-500 words.

How do you relate to the grand preconceptions?

I find the 4 archetype preconceptions of mindfulness really accurate and relatable, When I tell people I meditate, I am guaranteed to get one of the prejudices listed under one of the archetypes back. The jokes like "Do u levitate?" and "Can you tell me what I am thinking?", The moans like "I cant meditate I cant sit in lotus" , those that offer you a joint!! :)  those that assume that you are going to run away to Himalayas and warn your mother, those who keep their meditation secret to avoid controversy with religious relatives, I seem to have met them all !! 

What about me? What are my prejudices? I have been doing mediation and mindfulness practices for a long time, I think I first came into mediation from the ninja angle. I do believe in super powers and magic and I believe in Yoda from star wars ;) Okay, I don't actually believe it, But I am curious and I want to find out, so What drew me in was the curiosity towards the esoteric and magical. Also the spiritual, the need for calm, the need for more control over emotions and drama, this can relate to the monk and also to the ninja. For me meditation and mindfulness are inseparable from spirituality. I am from India, the birth place of Buddhism and yoga. As I see it, these practices were developed by the yogis and by Buddha to find out about the nature of reality, to find enlightenment, and Not to reduce stress or to make us happy. So may be I am more monk than a ninja at this point in my life. My main driver is curiosity and goal is probably enlightenment. lofty eh ;)

 I find that I do not have any negative preconception about mindfulness at all, I do not fear being mindless or being irresponsible like the hippie at all. I have a lot of respect for knowledge from all cultures, especially Indian and Buddhist, unlike the scientist archetype who views all non European knowledge suspiciously. I am very scientific and I find the cultivation of curiosity and  experimentation with the self a scientific pursuit, Why does the scientist archetype only trust peer reviewed papers and not his own experiences and experiments? He would have been mindful 40 years earlier if he didn't wait for someone to research on it.  
 Being still un-enlightened, I find myself ever so slightly annoyed (:-p) by the people who think mindfulness and detachment will make you a zombie, It is exactly the opposite, we are almost zombie now and we need to be aware! 
I do encounter a lot of hippie archetype people in the mindfulness and meditation circles, my view of hippie is neutral, neither positive nor negative.That being said, I too am looking for self transformation by mindfulness like all the archetypes 

Got a comment that this reads more like a blog than an assignment! very perceptive of that reviewer :-) 

Pushing myself gyan

few tricks to start new practices like exercise meditation etc etc
 Pushing myself is good - It brings about a drastic change. This attitude change happened after running.Last year or so I m being easy on myself...hesitant to push .  I have learnt the benefits of pushing myself beyond myself by that one run. we ran like crazy and I was making weird noises from my mouth while breathing but still ran and that HUGELY increased my stamina! which was just refusing to budge inspite of mild runs from 6 months. so yo! :-) let us push it!

Also taking body and mind into confidence rather than trying to trick them also helps. Ask mind and body for cooperation and help, When body says too tired, legs paining, instead of saying just one more step, say see let us run till home, it will help me feel good and build body stronger.. Is it really the state that we cant take one step forward? Only then lets stop. body didnt stop. Sometimes mind makes excuses like -boring lets stop etc.. then talk to mind also.. see it will make us feel good.. let us do it.or just notice that mind is trying to get out of it... Instead of trying to distract and lie to mind may be taking them both(body and mind) into confidence will improve performance.
( I wonder how sometimes it so much fun that all this is not required ! Ah that state! I wonder how to get their volunterily)
Strategy for any new practice is - to begin with - just do it, goodly/badly doesnot matter, do it half baked what ever.. then once u get slightly comfortable then concentrate on doing it right. once that is done then performance and pushing. Also one more thing I learnt is never to compromise fun for ..for anything. they day I started counting number of laps in the swimming pool - swiming became less fun, it was more about 20/30 laps..  pushing is good, but statistics and numbers are ok as long as they dont stop the fun,

true value

Does anything any inherent value or Is value of something always context sensitive?
If I write the code in India I get paid 1000£  a month and in UK 5000£
If you clean houses you get paid 1£ for an hour in India and 10£ in UK.

Economy is not real, capitalism is not real, how can the price of something go up because more people want it? price which is governed by demand and supply it is totally wrong.
Or is it?
Anti snake venom is useless to me now, but after I have been bitten by a snake, it is most valuable.
but if I were selling snake venom, would I charge exorbitant rates for people already bitten by snakes and low prices for people who haven't?

Inherent value of an item is the time and effort required to make it/get it.
That also somewhat goes up and down with demand, For example things which are in great demand sometimes are cheaper because it is easy to mass produce ( this is true only after industrial revolution? ) but still remains the same. Should things be priced more like this? price = cost + little bit more for my sustainance. The definition of little bit more may be varies based on the greed( or need? ) of the person.


Another type of economy is need based. Basically venom in priceless. I make anti venom and I give to you for free when u get bitten. in exchange I get food water shelter. somewhat like our body, liver is not asking for money to clean our body and white blood cells are happy with oxygen and nutrition and do the killing for you. Brain gets more blood than most other parts because it needs it, not because it wants it.
Is this economic model better? Healthier? Can this kind of model even work for humans?   Or will Human nature get in the way of this Utopia.

The cells and organs dont get vacations, dont get weekend off even :D who will pay for the weekends and holidays and the fast cars? :D can we have luxury in such an economy? How do u divide the tasks? Some tasks have to be forced on some people. or use robots to do tasks no one wants to do? or  u do it like karma yoga i,e all tasks are equal, Its easy to say but is it practical?
Is it at all possible to get rid of this unfair system we have now?

JalliKattu

 In spirituality (meaning in philosophy, new age, meditation related books/articles/courses etc) They say dont fight with things u want to get rid of, It gives it more power and makes those things more powerful.
For example when you are trying to meditate dont try to fight your toughts
when you are trying to be virtuous dont try to fight your desires
when you are trying to be calm dont fight your anger etc

In prancing healing they say dont fight negative energy, when u oppose it, you energize it. Its like newtons 3rd law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, like walking, you push the earth to move forward, If earth didnt resist we wouldnt move forward. Its like Judo, the opponent can use ur power against you.

So the main trick to learn for spritual advancement is to let go of resistance and the quality of fighting.

JalliKattu reminded me of this, It was probably a dying practice followed in a few small villages in TamilNadu, Dont know about TamilNadu but rest of India or the world surely didn't know or care about it.
PETA went and created a hue and cry about animal cruelty ( they may have a point  ) and they got it banned by the supreme court. See now what has happened, The whole of Tamil nadu is behind JalliKattu, The practice which probably would have disappeared in 10 years by itself ( Dont know if that would have been good or bad, but atleast thats what PETA wants) has become the identity of a Tamilian.
This is one tight slap to by "Rebel" attitude, Isnt this a good example that diplomacy is better than open rebellion?!
 I am not ready to accept that, my heart still hates diplomacy, it is after all treachery. :-P 

What is the solution then? In case of thoughts or desires or negativity, the solution is to observe and understand them, apparently they desolve. There is a difference between doing nothing ( which is denial) and observing and understanding ( which may look like doing nothing, but the effect is different)  instead of fighting or resisting them.
Same goes here, people should look for a common solution, not a solution which involves tricking people into giving up Jallikattu which diplomacy would achieve, but finding a common ground. Save the Indian Cow Breeds, Dont judge the local culture but try to understand why they do what they do.

( Inspite of all this gyan,  I hate Karva Chout , It is sick and anyone who "chooses" to follows it, is still  a stupid ass woman, Same goes to Burka, any one who chooses burqa is  ****** ;-)   :D )

Am I getting Intolerant?

I dont like Abrahamic monotheistic religions because they say their way is the only way. But I am finding myself being more and more inclined towards witnessing presence and vipqssana. I have started feeling like it is the only way. I find myself dismissing meditations on objects,dieties,mantras and mandalas as lower level to vipassana which in my opinion is the ultimate. I found myself looking at a Mahayana buddist book and thinking, this chantings and focusing on objects is creating more patterns in our brain, this is not what buddha taught.
To be fair, I am actually not monotheistic, because i think those other ways may be suitable for others but not for me. May be I have found my path and what suits me best and I acknowledge that others have there own way.
;) All is good here folks, no intolerance afterall. 

bi camerail mind

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

I heard of this in Graham Hancock book.  That people even 3000 years ago experienced life differently. We have mythology and stories of people hearing Akashavaani, words from the sky. basically in key moments in their life, they experienced some voice - which they interpreted as god, telling them what to do or told a prophecy or what ever. This is in Hindu mythology, Greek , Roman and almost every where else.

The theory is that we have evoled from this and even tho hardware of our brain remains the same, our software has changed radically as we dont hear these voiced anymore.

That is an interesting theory, which has been debunked.

But wait, I think the hearing voices is accurate but the interpretation that it doesnot happen any more is wrong.The hardware or software hasn't changed but we are just not using that voice generating part of our brain or atleast not admitting to hearing those voices.

What he is talking about is detaching from the part of our brain we call as self or ego and paying attention to different parts of our brain like intuition. Basically it is possible to detach from the sense of self,  it is possible to exprience different aspects of our subconscious which is hidden in normal people as a completly different person, like Ramanujan experiencing Goddess Kali, who solved Mathematical equations for him. Modern society calls this schezophernia, thats disfunctionally seeeing the inner working of subconscious. Some spritual people even today meet their spritual guides, see fairies get guidence from them, these are all after all aspects of their own brain,but not identified as self by the brain software. They are however not disfunctional but normal functioning people. The other aspects can also be experienced using Hallucinogens like LSD etc which can cause visions and trips. 

An easyish experiment with detaching from ego is doing seance, dowsing etc. you are moving the coin or the stick, but the part that is moving is detached from ego n operated by some other part of the  brain. It feels like some other entity is moving our hand. We dont own that movement. 

Slightly harder is auto writing or auto drawing. Allowing our hand to draw what it wants, You have no idea where it is going or what is going to happen next but ur hand pics up colours an draws. 

its wonderful to experience that your body is very capable of acting without ego.

In fact the book 'drawing with the right side of the brain ' says that it is imperative that u detach from ego to do art, may be not to this extent but you really want the critical and restless judging part of your brain to give up control. 

This not ego/self part of the brain software is also called intution, when you do a lot of meditation and get in touch with your intuition,  you expereince this - someone telling you what to do phenomenon. Its not blatant and dramatic like voice from the sky, its just another thought but it feels slightly different, u feel like someone else is talking to you. You can follow it and have a great adventure. Take this road, take this bus, get off now! ! you have no idea where it is leading you :) 

Yawning and stretching is a bit like that, our discomfort leading us on to an action which is required. Auto movements during meditation is exaggerated version of that. Do you know that yoga was actually invented like that. The body of the rishis went into these poses automatically as they medidated. My auto movements during meditation some times lead to mudras and to accupressure points.
So I am saying that Bi camerial brain may have been a very simplistic theory but it strayed quite close to the truth. 

Ego

I wrote a post about angry yogis and calm buddhists, saying angry yogis have an ego. Question araises, is ego only bad or negative?  No, right?
 Ego is the conditioning of the brain, all the patterns, all the software. Software can be angry or calm, just because some one is calm doesnot mean ego is not working. The goal of sprituality is not to make our ego "good" but to transcend it.
What is good? And bad ? Isnt it the judgement of my ego? Calm is good. angry is bad. only ego makes such distinctions, egoless person would see what is- anger is there, calmness is there, thats it. Its hard for me to comprehend that. How would I choose a path if I didnt make that judgement? It is asking. May be once u are beyond judgement, you have already reached the destination. No need of path :)

I saw someone being needlessly mean to someone else, this made me very angry. I would never do such a thing!! Ego is taking pride in its goodness and others badness. So ego is present, just that my conditioning is different from the other persons. Tricky. This brought up the question, Is calm person egoless? may not be but egoless person is definitely calm. no?
Anyway, This somehow made me sad rather than angry, human nature ... :( 

Between Vipassana and Yoga

I think yoga is great for the body, but for ultimate mind development, Vipassana and Self observation or wittnessing presence is absolute must. 

I concluded this by looking at people who do serious yoga and those who do buddhist practices. People who do buddist practices look more peaceful and calm than those who do yoga.

Instructors in Vipassana course are more peaceful than Yoga instructors. ( yoga instructors in the west are very zen, but then they invariably have mindfulness leanings)

Even mythologically the Rishis of the past are not exactly known for pleasing personalitiesbut mostly for their anger and fiery curses ;)

while buddha and his disciples are known for their love and sweet temper.( except that one monk who went to China, Bodhidharma - but then he looks so much like a Sadhu with his thick bears and knoted eyebrows ) 

Bhakti yoga on the other hand does make people peaceful and compassionate, Hatha yoga is an achievement oriented system so may be ego stays active untill they are very close to enlightenment? 

Erosion of time

Life needs bad experiences or rather experiences to shape us. Without experiences/intense experiences also we grow, but its like sculpting rock with erosion, while intense experiences are sculpting our personality with a pickaxe. May be a rough cut with pickaxe and then smoothened  down softly with errosion of time which works like water and works slowly makes a good personality. 

Accepting Bhakti yoga and Karma yogi.

Why is it such a big deal? What is the problem with accepting Bhakti or Karma yoga? Many urban Indians or westerners may have problem with accepting Bhakti yoga or Karma yoga as a way to enrich their life.
Bhakti yoga is the yoga of faith and devotion and losing ourselves by being one with the object of our devotion. Karma yoga is the yoga of action, In Bhagavad Gita , Krishna says "Do your duty, and dedicate the results to me". It is the yoga of selfless work without any expectation of rewards.
What!! Work without rewards? Am I a slave? How can anyone work without caring about what they will get paid for it? or even with out a salary?
Devotion and faith? Is that even compatible with reason and intellect? and How can I lose myself? What about my self esteem?
These are the thoughts that come to the mind of a modern yogi. Our sense of entitlement and fairness makes it very hard to accept or believe in work without rewards or unconditional devotion.
It also brings to mind abuses of the past, slavery, misuse of power and lowly paid working classes, all this could happen with Karma yoga. Religious  bigotism and religious  wars, women sacrificing their health and food for the sake of family, abuse of ordinary people by priests by misusing their devotion to gather wealth, all this could happen with Bhakti yoga. How could it be a right path for anyone?

May be there is a different way to look at this? Let us try to explore it more deeply.

One of the most beautiful spiritual and religious movement, Sufism, The songs and poems which were written 100s of years ago by Rumi and Kabir still touch our hearts, It is the most tolerant form of Islam, It is Bhakti Yoga. The Krishna temple of Udupi has the idol facing backwards. It is said that one Bhakta of Krishna, Kanaka Daasa was not allowed into the temple as he was low caste. He went behind the temple and prayed, God was so moved by his prayer that the idol turned around and the temple walls crumbled, to give Darshan to Kanaka daasa. Bhakti yoga was a very powerful movement which gave power to oppressed castes in this way. Historically it was possibly the only way available to women and lower castes/classes to God realisation. Many rebellious personalities who stood against society were Bhakts, Meera Bai who dared break all the shackles put on women in her devotion to Krishna, Kabir and Sai baba who broke religious barriers between Hindus and Muslims are all part of Bhakti movement. One of the most loving men on earth Jesus, his teachings are all about love and Bhakti. Buddhist metta meditation is also Bhakti feeling.  
Bhakti can also be towards nature, Shinto is a religion in Japan, which worships streams, mountain, forests and animals and they see life or sprits in all things nature, Such a gentle and loving and respectful attitude towards nature all over the world would have never led to the damage and destruction that is happening on earth today. What is it but Bhakti yoga or devotion to nature? Native American people see themselves not as separate from nature but as part of the forest. Bhakti yoga is most common type of religious sentiment found across the world. It only goes sour when people forget the unconditional love in their heart and let their sense of self become rigid and small.
Let us look at our sense of self, What is Myself? my sense of self limits to my body, I am as far as my body extends what ever is outside that is the other. That is how humans perceive it. Can it be any other way?
Surprisingly yes.  Some studies on Killer Whales have found that, Their brains are wired in such a way that their sense of self extends to the whole pod. They may be different bodies who feel pain and sensations separately but they see themselves as one! Loss of one whale in the pod, probably feels like loss of arm or leg to them.
How would humans live, If their sense of self extended beyond themselves to the whole community or to the whole world?
Karma yoga makes us expand our sense of self and work for the sake of the other, this other can slowly be expanded to include the whole world.
Karma yoga is a very profound concept which makes us live in the present moment. The only moment which is ever real is the current moment, the past is in our memory and future in our imagination. The rewards which we seek for our work are always in the future and is thus not real. It is of utmost importance that we value our actions for their own sake in the present moment.
The work is the reward in itself. it is like enjoying the journey as much as the destination. artists are familiar with this concept, They make art for the joy it gives them not for the price it brings, but in karma yoga you dont choose a job that brings you joy, but you bring joy into what ever work that needs to be done.
Karma yoga does not make us subjugated to others but makes us one with others, Karma yogi will not take abuse but will fight against for the sake of greater good, As Arjuna was advised to do by Krishna.
 Modern day problems like care of older people, expensive health care will all vanish if everyone participated in Karma yoga.
Lastly, There is very interesting initiative called Ugly indians, who have taken up cleaning up garbage and dirty public toilets voluntarily in big cities in India as a cleanliness drive. Surprisingly the number of people who attend such events are huge and they pay money to do the dirty work, without thinking that its not their job, and without thinking that those people who are supposed to clean it are not doing it. That is the power of karma yoga.
Hope this essay will help modern yogi see Karma and Bhakti yoga from a different perspective and help them accept it.

science blindness

It was Karva chaut again and as it happens I was having an argument about why it is sexist, The counter arguments were many, but interestingly some were "scientific"

I have also noticed lot of forwards and memes with lot of "scientific" explanations. Like
Go mata di Jai
  If cow-ghee and rice are cooked together, two powerful gases called ethylene-oxide, propylene-oxide are released. Propylene-oxide is the best gas used for creating artificial rain.
Sindhoooor ;-)
 It is interesting to note that that the application of sindoor by married women carries a physiological significance. This is so because Sindoor is prepared by mixing turmeric-lime and the metal mercury. Due to its intrinsic properties, mercury, besides controlling blood pressure also activates sexual drive. This also explains why Sindoor is prohibited for the widows. For best results, Sindoor should be applied right upto the pituitary gland where all our feelings are centered. Mercury is also known for removing stress and strain.
 
The people who write these things? Are they rolling on the floor laughing or are they just some dumb f***s? >-) About the swearing, I hate these buggers.

 (ok wait for it, there is an insight in here, not just ridicule and  ranting :-p)

I am always shocked that people forward such things, Dont they read what they are sending??

I am more than shocked when I realise some people thought all that was true, until I rubbished it. How can people not realise that such obvious shit is NOT some scientific gold? 

are they like THAT stupid?

Clues to this on My friends 40th Birthday, I joked that he is only 28 years old in hex, 0X28 you know, like hexa decimal numbers. Most people didnt get it.
What do you mean hex?
You know Binary numbers, Octal, Hexa demimal ?
Ummm What?
 Oh God! you are  a Geek! 
 I realised bankers, architects, CAs, soldiers, basically 99 % of the people outside the geek circle dont know hexadecimal numbers!!

Second clue, My friends husband had convinced my arts educated friend into believing that she has to leave the window open when switching on the electric heater, or she would run out of oxygen in the room! 😂  WTF????

Gives you a glimpse into non geeky minds,Science is not universal in all minds!! Shocking! but true.

They are intelligent, very well functioning people. BUT THEY DONT KNOW BINARY NUMBERS!!!! They dont know that burning consumes oxygen not just anything hot!!  They dont know things which I think is basic knowledge.  They didnt study science may be?? some have studied science, even Master of Science! They are SCIENCE BLIND! Knowing the scientific reason for something is probably  very low priority for them.

Most people when they forward those thing , they dont even know that all this "scientific" reasons they are forwarding are any different from the other real science they see. They genuinely cannot differentiate between the lies and truth, they are science blind!!!!!

I know! Its true. 

test it.

Pro life

Are they environmental conservationists? No, they dont a shit about environment.

They are vegan or vegetarian then? Caring for animal life! Lol! No! On the contrary they support recreational hunting!

This is US, they must be the guys who want to ban guns. No!!! They are fighting against gun control.

They must be against wars? Nope! 

Against black peoples deaths in police shootings? 

Against death penalty? 

Then how the fuck are they pro life??? Morons. ( when you derive your morals from a book ... thats a topic for another post)

Anti abortionists calling themselves pro-life, cant they be sued under unfair advertising act or something?

zindagi gulzar hai

I think the draw of the Pak serial is more to observe the culture than the story for me. I am very curious to know how similar and how different they are. In search of Shiva in Pakistan was the book which made be really curious about the country and its past. How deeply etched the shared Sikh Muslim culture was to Pakisthan, such a pity partition happened. It made me realise that our assuption that countries keep getting more liberal with time and that urban areas are liberal than rural may not be universally true. Also made me realise how deeply etched history is in the present and how culture is accumulated history. 

I have always been an advocate of throwing away old for the new, My new was mostly western, I now realise, Dont be hasty in throwing away, because We may be swayed by the wrong "new" like Pakistan's "new", for example is unfortunately Saudi Wahabi culture, where as their old is more tolerant mix of sufi, shia culture which imbibed/retained the Hindu/Sikh culture. 

How people dont give away old traditions but just fit them under new religion was interesting,When you think about it Brazils carnival does not exactly fit in with Vatican Christianity, does it? 

In Spite of trying to break away from India and Hindu past with a vengence, I was thrilled to hear references to Sita and Blessings like sada suhagan raho!! (of all the things) in the serial. 

Cultural remix

Watch 2-3 Korean dramas, completely immerse yourself in them and then suddenly watch a Pakistan drama. Thats it. Add to that western culture all around me and on TV and  80s Indian culture in my head!
That was enough to get a good brain freeze and a real messed up head :D

I cant believe how confused I got and how I got a real headache by doing this, my brain was so confused, it was ridiculous. Real headache I got 😀 This is what is called a culture shock? :-)

K Drama super cute and innocent romance, which I love,  then the Super conservative Pak romance where the word Mohobat. was uttered once only in episode 15 :) and then Mix it up with moronic teenagers smooching disgustingly in the tube station. culture engine in my brain couldn't take it, It burnt out!

It took me 3-4 episodes to realise that this guy and this girl are actually girl friend and boy friend in the Pak drama. Ha ha! Takes me right back to high school days when I thought romance was fictional, happened only in movies :) See this is exactly how 80s India was :)

Actually another confusion was that this was a Pak drama has some substance , I realised most of the stuff we watch these days Korean or hollywood - No substance, only entertainment. hmmmm!

I want to be buried and not cremated, and I want to be buried without a coffin. cozy in the soil, being eaten away by earth worms becoming compost,  one with earth, not in a cold coffin shrivelling! I am an earth person not a fire one.

What a weird thought!

 This is what happens when you plant(bury) 200 tulip bulbs, you start thinking you are one bulb yourself! I must be one nut! ground nut! he he! 

If this world is a game of chess

who are the pawns and who are the players? 

In life? I am spectator or player or pawn? play different roles at different times?

Are we going to run out of raw material to sustain life on earth?

Does it sound crazy?
When you talk about Reincarnation. People ask this question, how does the population of the world increase? If each person has a soul and the soul is recycled , the number of people alive should be same, isnt it? How are all the extra people being born?
I said they are being born like waves out of a sea, a sea has waves but it has enough raw material to make infinitely more number of waves than those at the surface, sometimes less waves sometimes more waves.

Then I thought why go for such a vague example? Just like earth actually - how is earth making more and more people ? Its the same earth but there are so many more people than there were before.  Earth does not get any more matter than it already has ( Earth gets energy from the Sun, but  Sun also does not get any more energy than it already has ) Its the same amount of raw material all along.
Shocking realisation - Earth is finite!!

What we consumed as animals or as primitive men was minuscule, everything is recycled by earth by decay and death, so the raw material for making life/making more humans/animals looked  like it is infinite so far but  Now??
Look at the materials we have now and how much! look at the garbage dumps. We are locking up the raw material into things which cannot be used to make life for a really really long time. Is our uncontrolled materialism and consumption going to snuff us out? Are we threatening the capacity of earth to make life?  Are the signs like global warming and major disruption of climate a sign of this?
We cut away forests, killed and ate animals to extinction but we were so few it didnt matter ( or may be it did even then, 10,000 years ago lot of animals went extinct, it may have been because of humans ) but Today? We are consuming like crazy - Plastics, Chemicals which were never present on earth before. Just look at the western world, how we buy, how we consume. It is giving me chills.
I saw a skip full of thrown away furniture yesterday and it gave me the chills. Is this the biggest evil which we are refusing to see?

the world as we know it may not be so for long ( Or the shit is going to hit the fan? )

I am really worried
We have had a generally stable 70 odd years ( for the urban Indians and westerners,  not if you are in Africa or middle east or for that matter anywhere outside my bubble :-( ) Our parents and us have seen a world in which things have steadily got better, technology got better, more money, prosperity, society got better, less crime more law n order( in spite of !what is the world coming to these days! laments) more freedom especially for women, more education etc etc

I am getting this bad nagging feeling that this is going to change n the next few years.
The chaos on this world is steadily increasing
The stupidities of the past 100 odd years are bearing fruit
The progress of the past years is demanding its price.
In fact much of the progress is not looking like progress at all.

The instability causing things
refugee crisis in Europe
Brexit
Race relation ships in the US grow worse
person like Donald Trump is a potential presidential candidate for the most powerful country on earth
Russia Ukrain Turkey
Steady growth of Isis
Radical Islam keeps getting a stronger grip in the wider world.
Left wingers going so far left as to give rise to right wingers.
Such things and much worse  have been happening all over the world last 60 years, then why are things in Europe/US more important. Frankly they are. So called World war does not mean it involves the world, it means the powerful Europe and America are part of it.

Mindless/heartless science
What was Sci-fi is becoming a reality.
Robots -  robot was used to kill a  guy by US police, albeit it was remote controlled robot
we all have our heads so much in virtual reality, everything is online and hackers are getting closer and closer
GMO - I love the idea of resurrecting dinosaurs but I dont like insect resistant potatoes or non seeding hybrids or humans who can live for ever X-(
GMO for food to prevent world hunger(??) why we waste away 1000 of kilos of food because it is ugly
Reality of the food /farming industry - Treating animals like objects, literally without imagining that there is life in them
Designer babies - gene selected babies, GMO people, rich people will have better genes than poor people, people will live for ever and not die?
Reality of the advertising industry - how much we have been fooled, from soap to mouth wash to eating cereals and avoiding fats to Teflon. Everything you know so far is probably a lie, told by advertisers in 1950s
Short-sighted science/ aimless science - we are spending more researching how to grow hair on bald heads than on curing Ebola.
World spending pattern, how blind we are. we spend so much on make-up and sports and movies. We dont give a shit about world hunger, we are only going to make GM wheat which will slim you down or something .
Difference in economic status between countries..

Most of it was always there in the world, world suffering is probably less now, in-spite of all these things but we never had the power to destroy ourselves and earth along with us before.
Population bomb - population of  of 7.4 billion, Nuclear bombs, Genetic engineering are scariest but thats not the most dangerous, , plain old meddling is good enough, hunt away animals to extinction just for food, cut away forests for food, consume like crazy. more than anything else.
Consumption is scaring me, for this long in the history of earth last 3 billions years or so, earth had enough raw material to sustain life. Are we doing to run out of basic raw material to sustain life? ( this is for another post.

Earth will survive, life will survive, I am genuinely scared about the fate of human race. 

Take that AXE and Dove are both Uniliver brands

AXE - treat women like objects
Dove - see inner beauty of women
What exactly is the value of Uniliver? - Sell more stuff.