What's up with the Pope?

When you realize no one is really paying attention to you or commenting on your Facebook status even though you change it more often than you change your underwear then, you act out of desperation and write something really stupid. Don’t tell me you have not seen people writing controversial statements on their Facebook statuses expecting tonnes of comments.

It seems Pope has been using a lot of Facebook these days, with high privacy settings, of course. What should I make of his Facebook status message which says that the use of condoms would make the ailing situation of AIDS in Africa even worse? Of course, he fulfilled his purpose by drawing out thousands of comments. Did he act out of desperation because for Christians, religion was starting to get limited to Sundays? He caused a stir and uproar among the large population. Even many Catholics must have felt really let down and misrepresented. I mean what is his basis? A person with his authority is in no position to make value judgments. It would be stupid to think he had not foreseen that this mass uproar would be created. Pope must have been watching a lot of Britney and must have learnt from her on how to stage a publicity stunt. Well done the Great Pope, you are a quick learner.

Abstinence? Why should anyone abstain from sex? Sex is a physiological need. Humans are unusual in that they have too less sex. I’m not kidding. If you were to look at scientific evidence of primates and compare bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and humans, there is a solid link between the size of testicles and frequency of sex per day. The analysis predicts that on average, humans would have sex at least once a day and that is a natural rate, chimps mate several times a day. Again, these rates are normal and early humans might have followed this trend until this notion of abstinence was imposed by religion. Osho and Freud, all they were proposing were what was in nature. And religion boycotted them. Pope is against contraceptives because it is against natural law of sex for reproduction and advocates abstinence. But how the hell is abstinence any more natural? What hypocrisy? The only reason the Pope is against the use of condoms is because of his reluctance to budge against his dogmatic beliefs. Please correct me. It’s not his. The unwillingness to change and upgrade and keep on using Pentium I even though Pentium IV has arrived in the market has been trademark of all religions; this deep conservatism seems to be the common ground of all religions. It is fine with me, if they don’t want to change, they will be left behind.

A Death in the Family

Lightning didn’t strike me but I know even if it would have, it could not have been worse. I guess I will start rambling on after few sentences so, I am warning you ahead. I received a call from my home and the news delivered was distressing. I do not call home often, usually they call me. I am trying to live in this little isolated world of my own, divorced from all worldly bonds and emotional attachments. Every call from home creates a little hole to peek in my little isolated world. It’s not that I hate my parents or family. They are the only people I love and they mean to me more than anyone else. This is a normal behavior of an adolescent I guess, normal since I am growing amid an American society.

Life and death are the two biggest mysteries that haunt every human minds, even more so thinking, active and intelligent minds. The only death that I have seen closely is the death of my grandfather. It was an unusual death in many ways, ways that I do not intend to mention here. I was only 14 years old then and the concept of death was alien to me even though I knew that being dead means not being able to find that person on this Earth or in this universe. I was very close to my grandfather and I was his favorite among all cousins that I grew up with, in my large family in my village. It has hardly been 6 years since I lost my grandfather and the pain has not healed yet and it seems I am going to lose my grandmother now. It’s unfair.

Can’t they wait? Death should give me sometime so that I can overcome the pain of losing my grandfather and those childhood days that I spent in his arms listening to folklores. It should give my grandmother sometime so that I can finish my college degree and go back home to see her. The tears in her eyes when I left for the United States have stamped an indelible image in my mind. I vividly remember her words, “You are going so far from me. I do not know if I will ever see you again before I die.” Even though she said these words in a serious tone, I knew this was just an intended humor. Her words have turned true, what an irony. I wish they had not.

My father did not hide anything; he explicitly said, “She is in her last stages. She is confined to bed now and cannot move at all. It seems she will not live for long. Do you have any of her photos?” As a grown-up adolescent, I know about this process of life and death, unlike Siddartha Gautam(Lord Buddha). But my incomprehensibility and inability to understand this process or to reason why this is inevitable is no different than Siddartha Gautam. When someone dies in one’s family, all the knowledge, understanding, rationality and pragmatism goes on a holiday trip to Bahamas, all it matters is that the person, whom they loved so much and who loved them so much would be no more in this world. No one can do without shedding tears.

Jaundice. That is what put her into this situation. This word will become associated with fear and hatred for me throughout my life. I know throughout my college degree and beyond, whenever I will come across this word, I will wage a war against it. I will try to learn everything about it with every opportunity, all its weakness and I will humiliate it. I might not be able to kill it but I will defeat it and will make sure it never invades me or my family in the future. Jaundice is a curable disease if treated properly and in a timely manner, if not, it brings death. Her jaundice was not caused due to contaminated fluid or food; it was due to degeneration of her liver aggravated by her diabetes. Diabetes runs in my family and so does high blood pressure. She was further afflicted by gastrointestinal complications. She moved with a diseased body afflicted by diabetes, high blood pressure and gastrointestinal diseases. Such a lethal combination will bring any mortal down sooner than one can imagine. She battled successfully these years, thanks to her healthy diet and traditional lifestyle in a serene, natural and rural environment.

Living amid strangers, all I can do now is reminisce my childhood days spent with my grandmother and wait for the final call from home. With every trrriinnnnggg now, my heart will skip a beat. The tears have started welling, it’s such a pain I have no one to share my grief with.

Women deserve beatings and rape, survey says

I found this piece so disturbing that I thought you should have a look at it too.

Published as blogs on Timesonline on March 10, 2009
Posted by Jennifer Howze

Women deserve beatings and rape, survey says

The more things change...
So I thought that time was behind us, when a girl could be said to be "asking for it" - "it" being a slap, a beating or rape - because she was wearing a short skirt or talked back. But a new survey conducted for the Home Office shows that one in seven people believe it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit his wife or girlfriend if she is dressed in “sexy or revealing clothes in public”.
A similar number believed that it was all right for a man to slap his wife or girlfriend if she is “nagging or constantly moaning at him”.
It may not surprise you that men and women over age 65 (and who grew up in a different era) believed that a woman should be partly held responsible for being raped or sexually assaulted. The lower social classes tended to agree as well.
There's so much of this story that needs examination: what are we doing about domestic violence, how reliable are these results, how does the way we deal with rape and domestic assault feed into these values, the list goes on....
And when you think about the children in these homes - who grow up believing that a recalcitrant woman just needs a good seeing to, in one way or another - it seems almost inevitable that they will carry on the torch.
But one thing that always occurs to me about domestic violence and rape is how it affords so little power to men. They are incapable of controlling themselves around a V-neck jumper. They can't hold their own in an argument with their partner so they have to roll up their sleeves. How can the people who espouse these ideas think anything other than men are weak, pathetic creatures who are powerless in a world of women? I wonder if that thought occurred to them, if they would condone the behaviour after all.

Remaking of Man

Carrel was one of the man whose visions really impressed me. His book "Remaking of Man" highlights various aspects through which progress of humanity can be accelerated.

Some of the basic ills that Dr. Carrel saw in twentieth century society are: rising proletarianism, the utter ignorance of qualitative aspects in favor of quantitative aspects as science advanced and rising tendency of people to value materialism and money more than human values or feelings.[i] The ignorance of qualitative aspects by science in our society is evident by the fact that humans today know more about their external environment than they do about themselves, in terms of their soul, purpose and origin. An American dream is to own a car, an apartment and ensure financial security, all three of which are materialistic. People are driven more by materialistic greed than the desire for collective action in enhancing human values and feelings. However, the evidence for rising proletarianism is mixed in different parts of the world. While developed countries like Scandinavian nations have fairly succeeded in achieving equality among its people, the number of proletarians is still increasing in many under-developed nations.

Dr. Carrel hoped to build an ideal society consisting of a race of perfect humans who possessed qualities such as high intellects, natural immunity, high physical endurance and sound mental health. He also hoped to define specific gender roles, develop a group of specialists with extra-ordinary abilities and end humans’ crave for materialism. I strongly object Dr. Carrel’s idea of defining specific gender roles since it is an explicit form of male chauvinism. Gender roles are socially constructed rather than being innate. I also oppose Dr. Carrel’s military way of training the entire human race to confer desirable physical endurance and natural immunity. This process mechanizes human body and compromises with humans’ freedom. However, I endorse Dr. Carrel’s goal of selecting a group of extra-ordinary people to pursue his goal because such an organized effort could achieve much more than what has been achieved hitherto through various individual or small-scale efforts.

Dr. Carrel assumed that humans are strictly either male or female and that each sex has an innate and distinct nature. He assumed that women have a natural aptitude towards nurturing and caring. But, women have proved their capability in various fields that were reserved exclusively for men such as military. I disagree that women are destined for nurturing roles. In addition, humans are not distinctly male or female as evident by the reiteration of gays that they deviate from the society’s bi-gender system not because of their choice but because of their nature. His second assumption is that human qualities such as intelligence and leadership are hereditary, and are independent of external influences such as social environment. I disagree with his assumption since the link between intelligence and heredity is a highly debated issue devoid of concrete scientific evidence.[ii] Neither Einstein’s son nor Einstein’s father was as intelligent as Einstein. In fact, Einstein’s family except for Einstein was hardly known for its intelligence. Carrel also assumed that the quality of tissues is hereditary while it has been proved that diet and environment are significantly important in determining such characteristics.

Dr. Carrel strongly favored eugenics to produce ‘valuable’ off-springs with desirable characteristics.[iii] He suggested that strengthening of the strong instead of supporting the poor is the key to progress. He hoped to build his new society through the efforts of extra-ordinary individuals committed to pursuing his dream. He also wanted to assign specific gender roles, check divorces and eliminate criminality either by capital punishment or modification of the brain of criminals.[iv]

His suggested means of conducting compatibility tests before marriage devalues and mechanizes the process of marriage by rendering it solely for the purpose of producing desirable off-springs. Also, people with extra-ordinary talents might be forced to work for his vision. Moreover, assigning gender roles and checking divorces compromises human freedom. However, I think capital and corporal punishment for criminals are justified because a criminal dead is a criminal less. Since many of his suggested means compromise human freedom and are unethical and unfair, his goal of building an ideal society seems impracticable.

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[i] . Alexis Carrel, Man, The Unknown (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1935), 1.

[ii] . David Wilson and Roger Keil, "The real creative class," Social & Cultural Geography 9 (2008): 841.

[iii] . John White, “Eugenics, Race and Intelligence in Education- By Clyde Chittym,” British Journal of Educational Studies 56 (2008): 228.

[iv] . Diane Romm, "Wretched Sisters: Examining Gender and Capital Punishment," International Sociology 23 (2008): 747.

Bibliography

Carrel, Alexis. Man, The Unknown. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1935.

Wilson, David, and Keil Roger. "The real creative class." Social & Cultural Geography 9 (2008): 839-841.

White, John. “Eugenics, Race and Intelligence in Education- By Clyde Chittym.” British Journal of Educational Studies 56 (2008): 226-228.

Romm, Diane. "Wretched Sisters: Examining Gender and Capital Punishment." International Sociology 23 (2008): 747-754.

Leopold, David. "Socialism and (the rejection of) utopia." Journal of Political Ideologies 12 (2007): 219-237.

Giesecke, Annette Lucia. "Homer's Eutopolis: Epic Journeys and the Search for an Ideal Society." Utopian Studies 14 (2003): 23-40.

Bain, Read. "Asylum/Man the Unknown/Why Keep Them Alive…." American Sociological Review 1 (1936): 814-817.

Rose, Hilary. "Eugenics and Genetics: The Conjoint Twins?." New Formations (2007): 13-26.

Waller, John. "Evolution's inside man." New Scientist 187 (2005): 42-44.

Godin, Benoît. "From Eugenics to Scientometrics: Galton, Cattell, and Men of Science." Social Studies of Science 37 (2007): 691-728.

Constructing Identity through the Internet

The task of defining identity is as complex as the concept of identity itself. Angela Thomas summarizes Butler’s notion of identity as “a performance of fantasy and desire- a pursuit of being and becoming the image of this desire. (Thomas 2007)” Identity is the perception and awareness of how an individual wants others to perceive her against how she is perceived. The internet has added a powerful tool in shaping’s one’s identity. As the popularity of the internet continues to swell, concerns about the impact of the internet on influencing an individual’s identity have been raised. This issue was highlighted when a guy changed his real name as ‘The internet guy’ after gaining popularity with this psuedonym on the internet.  Thomas Erickson, an interaction designer and researcher asserts, “Personal home pages and the World Wide Web are not being used to ‘publish information’; they are being used to construct identity—useful information is just a side effect. (Erickson 1996)” The internet has the most significant impact on shaping an individual’s identity because it provides an ideal platform to identify, construct, express and maturate an individual’s identity.

It took several decades for newspaper, radio and television to attract 100 million followers after its advent, but it took less than 5 years for Facebook, a social networking website to attract 175 million active users (Facebook 2009). Socializing network provides a platform for users to expose themselves to the virtual world through personalized pages containing detailed and intimate profile information, images and videos. Many personalized pages even have comment sections where the visitors can leave their feedbacks, allowing the user to cross-check the notion of how she is being perceived against how she wants to be perceived. These feedbacks, if appropriate appeal to the user and end up being a cornerstone in shaping her identity. Facebook reported that at least 15 million users updated their statuses at least once a day; some of whom even changed their statuses more often than their underwear (Facebook 2009). These statuses are a popular form of expressing one’s identity in the form of views as diverse as, ‘The user thinks Israel used excessive force in Gaza…’ to ‘*** wants Obama to pass the economic stimulus plan’.

Through personalized profiles, users get a platform to construct and express their identity. Bloggers admit that through blogging, they discover their views and standpoints on the issues that they were previously unaware of. In Chandler’s study, Tristan confesses, “It [My personal homepage] helps to define who I am. Before I start to look at/write about something then I’m often not sure what my feelings are, but after having done so, I can at least have more of an idea. (Chandler 1998)” It is true that even though certain ideas and notions about an issue are embedded in humans, usually they unaware of such ideas unless they pause to reflect and think about the issue. The internet attempts to make humans assess these embedded notions, a process of identification of one’s identity. The liberty to modify and update their profiles and opinions, allows users to experiment with their identity that is under construction and continuous modification. Chandler suggests, “The rewriting of identities in homepages wipes out those formulations which preceded it. (Chandler 1998)”

With the exponential explosion in the blogosphere and a blog being created for every three babies born on the Earth, the impact of blogs on constructing an individual’s identity cannot be ignored. Blogs, like personalized pages and profiles provide personal space for individuals to express themselves to the rapidly growing online community. In blogosphere, an individual can be himself or herself without any fear of being ridiculed, humiliated or assaulted physically. It is thus no wonder that expression of one’s identity through blogs have proved to be popular among minorities as it allows them to maintain their anonymity at the same time. Minorities such as gays often suppress their identity in the real world due to its biased and unaccepting nature. “David, a gay man in Chandler’s study, reports that his homepage allows him ‘to give a complete definition of how [he] see[s] the gay scene and [his] place in it’…” (Slevin 2000). Such marginalized people find it easier to express their true identity through the internet. The search for ‘The diary of a gay’ is pretty popular with the search giant, Google. The sympathy and suggestions received by marginalized people through the internet add to the maturation and confidence while expressing their identity in the real world.

The role of the internet in maturating identities of people is significant. When people are trying to create an identity, the fear of being alone often scares them and makes them either ambivalent or less vocal of their identity. For instance, the democracy advocates in communist China suppressed their democrat identity in the fear of being alone or executed. The internet provided a platform to these democracy and freedom lovers and china saw an explosion in the number of Chinese bloggers advocating democracy. Many Chinese who had been feigning to be staunch supporters of communists joined in to express their true identity while other Chinese youths were exposed to this alien concept of democracy in communist China. The internet proved to be vital to Chinese democrats in expressing their identity; they no more had to fake their views. Chinese youths resorted to the internet to learn more to shape their identity in contrast to state censored media.  One’s identity is maturated further when one meets people with similar identities who share similar beliefs and opinions. The internet provides the best and an unparalleled platform to meet people with similar interests ranging from Lakers to Harry Potter fans and ‘I am a Mac’s to pet lovers.

The number of personal homepages has spawned astonishingly too. Homepages are personalized spaces that echo the user’s identity. Thomas Erikson comments, “A personal page is a carefully constructed portrayal of a person. (Erickson 1996)” Personal pages are like little holes in one’s wall to let others into one’s world. It is a place to present oneself the way one wants others to perceive oneself, the core base of an individual’s identity. Identity is all about how one wants others to perceive her, validated by the popular saying, ‘you are not the one you think, you are the one others think’. Brown asserts projection of one’s identity through ‘posters, postcards, snapshots [and] sports insignia’  in one’s bedroom has transformed to textual and pictorial representations on personal homepages and profiles on networking sites, blogs or discussion forums (Brown et al. 1994). Many people have highly personalized profiles, akin to one’s bio-data that mirror their identity. These profiles are edited and updated regularly, an insinuation that their identity is being transformed using the tools on the internet. Personalized homepages are indeed the projections of individuals’ identity.

The uses of pseudonyms in discussion forums or in chat-rooms are also a popular form of identity expression. Often, the identity of the individual is implicit in their pseudonyms. Several such names could be located on the internet, some of which are hot_guy, iamprolife, littleprincess, depressedgay and hunk_punk that explicitly reflectt their characteristics. The use of such pseudonyms on the internet provides confidence to express the same in the real world. These pseudonyms are often catchy and appealing, thus they impress, amuse and influence other people very easily. The biggest advantage of the internet in shaping an individual’s identity is that the individual can assess the reaction of others towards their projected identity without any serious repercussions. Socializing networks such as Facebook also exposes an individual to the virtual market containing millions of identities to shop and experiment from without bearing any real cost. It allows an individual to experiment with similar identities and adopt a customized identity that is accepted and appreciated widely. This convenient and inexpensive method to experiment with one’s identity is provided exclusively by the internet.

The content on the internet is contributing significantly to carve youths and teens’ identity. This is attributed to their profuse use of the internet, while they are still in the vulnerable process of forming an identity. With the newspapers’ waning popularity and audience among youths, the role of the internet in influencing youths are becoming more significant. The exposure and breadth of perspectives on the internet regarding various issues help youths to weigh both sides, develop their own perspective and construct their identity accordingly. Angela Thomas asserts that, “For children, there is no such dichotomy of online and offline, or virtual and real - the digital is so much intertwined into their lives and psyche that the one is entirely enmeshed with the other. (Thomas 2007)” Through the ingenuity of online business companies, the internet is becoming increasingly pervasive in peoples’ lives. Teens are spending more hours on the internet, in a virtual community than with their parents or relatives. Teens are constantly being bombarded with views, opinions and beliefs about myriad of topics some of which are embraced and adopted by them due to their appeal. Thomas further asserts that, “…moreover through the virtual, children are simultaneously engaging in acts of self-reflection, self-fashioning and identity formation. (Thomas 2007)”

The internet is affecting young people the most, and extrapolating the current trend, it is clear that the internet will have a defining role in various spheres of our lives in the future. Even though currently the internet is not universally accessible, the cutting-edge research and technology will soon make it affordable and accessible to even the poor. Its superiority will become unparalleled. Therefore, the impact of the internet on an individual has to be assessed carefully before it becomes too pervasive in everyone’s lives. Studies that have been conducted show mixed results; some warn people to be watchful and rational by minimizing the internet’s use until proved to be harmless while others show that the increased use of the internet contributes to loneliness and withdrawal from the family and real world relationships and values. However studies concur that the internet has a significant role in construction of users’ identity. The internet has to be used wisely and rationally by people if they are to benefit from the privilege of constructing their identity, using a matrix of extremely diverse and rich wealth of information. 

Works Cited

 

Brown, J, C R Dykers, J R Steele & A B White. “Teenage Room Culture: Where Media and Identities Intersect.” Communication Research 21.6 (1994): 813-27.

Chandler, Daniel. “Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web.” 1998. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/webident.html.

Erickson, Thomas. “The World Wide Web as Social Hypertext.” 1996. <http://www.pliant.org/personal/Tom_Erickson/SocialHypertext.html>.

“General Growth.” Facebook Press Room. 2009. 28 February 2009. <http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics>.

Slevin, James. The Internet and Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2000.

Thomas, Angela. Youth Online: Identity and Literacy in the Digital Age. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.

“User Engagement.” Facebook Press Room. 2009. 28 February 2009. <http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics>.