Tuesday, January 4, 2011

God, language and life

  Consider if the word god is nonexistent from of our verbiage, would still god be existent? What would be the expression for god? How would we relate to the supreme incorporeal power existent which is considered to be present since eternity? I do not intend to challenge the belief or faith of people or existence of god but would like to hold an enquiry on the subject in the sense how we relate to words. Word such as god has a significant influence on life of people; all the ideas, sense, emotions, pictures related with the word rather then solely depending on individuality of the being also depends on the culture, environment and most importantly the language or the choice of words which a person makes in his life and how he relates to it. In day to day life this comes as a very automatic phenomenon to us; we have created meanings to words and given them some sense which has rather been generated with our past experiences and situations and tracing its origin it rather comes from nothing, life has become dependent on words and rather gets influenced by it. Humans are thus a meaning making machine, our present and future are influenced with what we make up as meaning of the present situation, incidence or environment and how we then relate to the external environment. Our parameters of thoughts and life are rather dependent on words, the language we use.  
           Now consider if we do not have the power of language, imagine the way we would think or communicate? How would the experience of life be like? How different a life of a human being would be from a normal living creature on earth? What would the world occur as to us? Thus in an essence in order to change the experience of life one thing which we can do is examine the language and words which we are using and the manner in which we relate with the situation. Rather language is something which contains and can limit the existence and expressions of even supreme beings such as god. 
         Even when it comes to social existence language is used in form referred as communication. Language can be considered as software governing the human interface by which it performs in the world and a priori it can be seen that as in computing efficient software’s produce better results similarly being’s endowed with better grasp and knowledge of language perform better in life. Language is the space where many explained and unexplained phenomenon exists. It is the place for creativity, art, science, theology, metaphysics and all other fields which have engaged the human mind for centuries. In fact the word mind itself is the manifestation of language. I had used the word god initially just to bring forth that how a word god can bring in so much of faith and belief in human beings and whereas on the other hand some people might even doubt its existence. I would state that both the opinions are valid but would like to draw the attention to the point that how we end up relating strongly with words and rather how they start appearing as reality to us. In day to day life we engage ourselves with goals and desires and in turn we end up relating to them in a manner that starts commanding or rather influencing our life. The context of life ends up becoming the context for goals and achievements. Thus we really need to distinguish between life and what we are creating in our life using language, both the things are distinct.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Changing society with money!


                                       

     I would like all of us to consider a hypothetical situation where all the money transactions take place through a channel and the transactions are recorded, there is no physical cash, money is only available in electronic format. This channel can be a bank. For e.g. Consider a situation where I go out for a shopping and I need to buy 1 kg of onion. I instead of exchanging a 50 Rs. Note instead of normal transaction, this transaction takes place through transfer of money from a card emitting radio signal or may be a mobile phone. This transaction happens in seconds and the amount gets transferred instantaneously. This seemingly easy transaction can solve many problems of present time.

Ø      Tax: The government can keep a tab on incomes and accounts of the people, which can help garnering revenue in form of taxation (direct and indirect both).
Ø      Black Money: Can control the parallel economy since no money can exist outside the banking records.
Ø      Corruption: Can help in controlling corruption.
Ø      Theft and robbery: is not easy anymore i.e. crime can be under control as goods stolen cannot be sold out easily since all the transactions would be recorded and any unaccounted entry can lead to suspicion.
Ø      Effective Planning: Control over liquidity and more precise planning by the government for its expenditure.

Yes with this idea there are many concerns such as amount of data to be handled, devices that are cost effective, servers, records, covering up remote areas. On the flip side it’s like putting all the eggs in one basket. There are few strategic concerns which need to be addressed. For e.g. Failure in banking system can create a chaos; there would be no currency available for circulation. In case of events of emergency like war, the electronic system might not be effective.

     I believe this would be the future which lies ahead. The present constraints which are being a stop can be resolved with use of other systems and technology which can be put in place. But such an order might face resistance from those who are being cause in the problems stated above.