Tuesday, October 20, 2009

value education

I dont know if it is supposed to be called comedy or tragedy but imagine being stuck between four walls and learning “values”. Values themselves are conditions that tell us what is supposed to be good or bad and it tries to tame the natural human instinct. This human who is claiming to have an interactive session about values has left his senses at home and is trying to teach values to people who have gone beyond rules, beyond values or even beyond civilization. What this person is doing here is meta-value education, teaching conditions within closed conditional doors. He is asking us “Who are you?” and we are supposed to try and find out an answer and the answer is something unique in the individual. My question is “Who is he?” To teach about values you have to move away from it, just like we understand the presence of something by its absence. The person seems so obsessed that he probably breathes values. Being and orator and giving juvenile activities to adults who can think for themselves is not enough knowledge to talk about the much hyped values. This person says “In order to be a good human being you should have these values...you can copy down” I felt like i was undergoing torture where something was being forced down my throat even though I did not like it. Who is he to define a good human being? This itself shows that values are criteria that one has to satisfy in order to be called good. Does just values make up a human being? I guess this person probably needs a lecture on how to let people grow and have them develop a personality of their own. More derogatory (as i consider it) was “Are you from science, because science girls do not talk”. Really? Please somebody teach him some essential skills to understand that if somebody does not interact, it could indicate “Will you please shut up because we are not listening”. His eyes are clouded and the person cannot see for himself and is trying to cloud our eyes, make us all a “bakra” (like my friend termed it) so we look at life in a better way. Paradox or what?

“greatest inspiration comes from biographies of great men” this person said. I think the greatest inspiration can be from oneself. The reason why we do not have enough biographies or people reading it is because we keep looking outside for inspiration and not within oneself. The inspiration for this tyrannical rant (as my brother would call it) is when I disagreed with everything he spoke and looked within myself as to why I did not agree...if I had not done what I did then I would have probably been writing notes.

“you should join satsang, have a guru and not leave the path of karma”. Interpreting this in kannada, “sat” means the dead, “sang” is association and “karma” means pain in the ass. This man here has been in the association of wrong people, has become brain dead and he cant think for himself and he is a big karma for his listeners.

All that values do is curtail individuality and the one who propagates it wants everybody else to be “good human beings” like themselves.

God bless the needy and not the greedy!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Re-envisioning HCI

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.