Criticism

Why do people assume that one has to be better than something to criticize it? I mean, everyone criticizes stuff all the time. A cricketer doesn't bat well. Everybody has an opinion. An actor doesn't act well, once again everybody takes his case. That doesn't mean we are better cricketers or actors than them.

But sometimes people think that one has to be better at something to be able to criticize others for not doing it right. This happens almost always when you correct someone's grammar. They get right back at you by pointing out the comma you missed or the trick spelling you spelled incorrectly.

Why are people so touchy when it comes to the english language?

Self-Confidence

This post is in reminesence of a speech I gave when I was in 6th standard. This was my first stage-experience and I still have the initial paras by heart. The topic was self-confidence, ofcourse. :-)

Self confidence is the real driving force which stirrs up our mental faculties and potentialities to give out the best under all climes and conditions. Without self-confidence a man is like a rolling pawn on the chess-board of life.

Self confidence is nothing concrete but its just a realization which is embeded in our entity. From the fields of inventions and discoveries to the battlefield without self-confidence a man is incapable of achieving any success..

.....

Bad Guys

So who are the bad guys? I mean there's fighting everywhere right? And from what we have learnt since the very outset, good guys and bad guys fight. But is that true really? Guys can be classified as good or bad depending on where we stand. Somebody's good guys are bad for others and vice versa. So all "bad" can be actually good if you change your frame of reference. So all "bad" is actually relative.

That drives one to think, if there is no "bad" in this world in absolute terms why is there so much conflict? Are people fighting for their respective points of view? Or do they, knowing fully well that what they are doing is wrong, continue to do it for some selfish ulterior motive. This question holds at all levels.

Consider nation states for example. A powerful nation often "exploits" a weaker one. Case in point, is the continued exploitation of almost all Latin American countries by the sole super power of time. This exploitation can often take horrific forms in which thousands of people are actually killed. What drives the people at helm of a powerful nation to take these decisions? Can just strategic gain be tonic enough for them to feed to their guilty conscience?

But strategic gain, if at all, is for the entire nation state. Why would people in charge( who are in office only for a short term) take such horrific decisions without them benefiting at all.

Here it would be prudent to explore what "benefits" actually imply. Sometimes we identify a community/society/city or even the country so closely with ourselves that a "gain" for the latter is perceived as a gain for oneself. But the ephemeral-ity of all this is far too evident to each one of us, why then people push themselves to extremes often fighting their own conscience to earn some rewards for the entity they associate themselves with?

I must admit that this line of thought suffers from a bias, that it is too individualistic. Established traditions tell us that civilized humans, in a variety of behavior, do not show absolute individualism at all. This is true for a soldier dying for his country or even a sportsperson risking his limbs for his team. But in a lot of cases doing what is "right" and "good" does not lead you to lose a game or a war. In spite of this, people continue to take very hard decisions for slight gains to entities they are only generally related to.

An example would be the Iraq war. The people who authorized it are not even in power any more. They have gone back to leading normal lives like normal people. But when in office they authorized the killing of thousands of innocent people for some geo-political gain to their country.

This is hard to understand. How do people knowingly do wrong(bad) and convince themselves that they are actually right(good)?

Maybe, its all about the money.