Expensive Weaknesses

EXPENSIVE WEAKNESSES

Humans are a bundle of multiple weaknesses. No one can claim to be free of weaknesses. The worst part is some of these weaknesses are self inflicted. The person concerned becomes a victim or moral and social disorder. And we all know how expensive these two outcomes of weakness are. In addition some of these weaknesses may lead to expensive treatment and even death.

1. Innocent weaknesses:

There ares some innocent weaknesses like being emotionally involved in a movie or a TV serial and start shedding tears as the story demands, like weakness for certain types of foods or drinks, like weakness for certain types of people, like weakness for clothing and so on. Thankfully such weaknesses do not cost much in terms of character or social disorder.

2. Greed:

Greed is normally related to have more. Some want more of wealth and will go to any extent to have it. Since it is not easy to amass huge fortunes with honesty, such people do not hesitate to use dishonest means too. Unfortunately such people do not feel any moral guilt nor society debunks them. On the contrary, the higher they go in their greed, the more they are respected and bestowed with power. Some of our politicians and businessmen are living examples. However, I am sure deep down in their hearts they live with the weakness of character that led them to greed.

3. Addiction:

The person concerned wants to get rid of this, makes promises to himself and others but every time fails to keep them. In the end it is the addiction that represents him. He is nicknamed as drug addict, alcoholic and so on. The treatment is costly, moral degradation immeasurable and social deprivation killing.

Addiction is not limited to substance addiction only. There are compulsive shop lifters, not that they need to but they cannot resist to. There are compulsive lairs. They speak lies to get high. People around such addicts come to know of their weaknesses and exploit to the hilt.

The Censorboard Within

THE CENSOR BOARD WITHIN

Perumal Murugan, the Tamil writer was once interviewed by Barkha Dutt, ex-NDTV. I had never heard of him as I have never heard of many other famous writers. He was hounded by some Hundutwa forces for his novel Madhurobhagan which was translated into English as One Part Woman. He stopped writing for some years and now has penned some poems. He recently said that he continues writing and that is all he can do but has imposed self censorship on him -self.

During the course of the interview he indicated that there is one censor sitting inside him that cautions him to select his words and opinion. He is a great writer and thinker. But he too had to keep his mouth shut for a good time and now he is cautious what to write or say and what not.

 

Does not it sound familiar?  Don’t we have this censor within us that forces us not to say something? Can we name it fear or decency or something else?

The question is here in different words. How often you stopped sort of saying something unpleasant but stopped at the nick of hour because the censor inside stopped you? How often you wanted to cry loudly but the censor inside stopped you? How often you wanted to sing at the top of your voice in a running train or bus or plane but the censor stopped you? How often you wanted to say ‘go to hell’ but the censor stopped you? These are and many other pointers lead to find out who this censor is.

Naming it ‘fear’ seems to be most appropriate. We keep our mouth shut for fear of law or for fear of people more powerful than us like the Government or the police or some high ranking official or some moneyed man who can teach us a lesson for our stupidity. The latest debate about nationality is recent case. 

Naming it ‘decency’ also looks fine. We keep our mouth shut for not to annoy someone dear to us or simply for the sake of decency in our behavior. There is no point annoying or hurting the feelings of others so we keep silent or indifferent even though we feel like saying a spade a spade.

What do you say?

PAIN AND CRIME ARE NOT THAT BAD

BODILY PAIN

Let us first talk about bodily pain. Pain should not be confused with emotional pain. Body pain is generally caused by sickness and sickness is not in our control. Pain is age related too and that too is not in our control. Pain can be caused by accidents and that too is not in our control. The only way we can reduce it by ourselves is by living with it and praying God for mercy. Since it is not in our control, society has arranged for people who can control it.

Now we remember God only when we are in pain or some trouble. This proves without doubt that pain is not that bad.

There is however more practical way of looking at it. Pain is the bread giver to many. When in pain we go to a doctor, get some lab tests done as suggested by him, buy some medicines as prescribed by him and get relief. Thus our pain has given livelihood to doctors, nurses, hospital staff, medicines manufacturers and sellers and millions of supporting people. Pain is not that bad, above all. How can it be when millions of people live on and by it?

CRIME.

Crime has lived with us since the very beginning. It is difficult to define crime or say what constitutes crime but in general it is something done against the law like beating some one, theft, rape, murders, extortion, blackmailing and so on and so forth. Again people who commit crimes are considered bad people by those on whom such crimes are committed. Crime is like dust on our sleeves which needs to be dusted out regularly because it cannot be eliminated altogether.

Crime again is not in our control because the criminals are not in our control and we cannot control people becoming bad. In spite of our best educational efforts we could not stop people becoming bad. We gave the best ‘sanskars’ to our kids but that did not stop some of them going bad ways. Since we cannot control the criminals the thereby the crimes the society has arranged for some who are assigned this job by law. Now we first make a law that rape is a crime and provide for punishment for it and then we make another set of procedures to prove that rape was committed or not committed.

This gave birth first to the law makers called differently legislators (some of them have serious criminal cases against them but that is another issue). Then we appointed the enforcers called police (here again we will not talk about the very morality of a policeman). Then came the lawyers both prosecutors and defenders. Then the jails and jail staff.

Now we come to the mute point of how crime has given employment to lakhs of people. Not only the criminals, the legislators, police, lawyers and many other supporting people survive and make their living on crimes.

Crime therefore is not bad at all.

You may call me names but that is the price every truthful man has to pay.