It is time to unarm the peasantry

With a caveat – views have not necessarily been generalised for this article.

As news of the Connecticut town school shootings filtered in, there was shock around the world. As utter disbelief settled into sorrow, we realised that we need to rethink a lot about life as it used to be and why it isn’t so now. We need the silence of our minds, within, to contemplate. My heart goes out to the dead, the little, beautiful souls that had just started out on their journeys on this earth (someone brilliantly described this time as a balance between reality and magic), and to those who were trying to protect them, yet perished.

Amid this, I cannot but discern some odd issues that need to be addressed. I list them, in no particular order, and then proceed to discuss the first two in this article. I reserve the next article for the last two items

• Gun laws in the US.
• Minds, young and old, snapping, the precipitates of trauma that wasnt there when children were expected to be rebuked, at home, sometimes at school.
• The senseless media.
•  The world at large, and its schools.

Let us start with item 1.

I live in India, a country that has had booming growth, till the other day, a country where poverty is endemic, to be modest, a country where there are over 60 billionaires, a country where literacy is pathetic, a country where the spread of primary education can, at best, be termed to be limited at its primary level. It is also a country where terrorism has deep roots, from without and from within (the Maoist guerrillas), and a country where corruption is as widespread as poverty and a country where criminals have a free run on society in general.

Yet, no mindless mass shootings, no horrible school shootings.

Could it be because we don’t have access to guns? 

Indian gun laws are strict, if you wish to remain a law abiding citizen, and getting a licence for one is difficult, unless you have top level connections. Then, when you get a licence, it would probably be for a pistol, meant for small-time self defence. And you surely cannot travel with it, or have it uncovered at any public place (like some US states).

Mahatma Gandhi once said that if we started taking each others’ eyes out in revenge, all the world will soon be blind. The point being, there is sense in self defence, but there is probably more sense in overall unarmed existence. 

The gun laws in the US, dating back to its ‘wild’ days, have run their course. 

It is time to unarm the peasantry (as Kings would, after having used them as forced conscripts in a war), and provide an overall sympathetic atmosphere.

Let us face it – whatever the shooter’s intentions, he could not have shot those kids if he did not have a gun to do the shooting in the first place. One, no-so-bright suggestion was to post armed guards at every school. The question of ‘who pays them?’ apart, you are actually calling for more guns.

I realise that unarming the peasantry is easier said than done. Guns in the US is a right, an issue of pride, and since disharmony has yet to be caused on a major scale by gun owners, it is difficult to realise how incremental easing out of firearms would actually make the US even safer.

I guess citizens of America would point towards India and say that it is because of our strict gun laws that the terrorists have an easy run, and it is because of our strict gun laws that criminalisation has entered politics and general life. I would point to Afghanistan and the north western districts of Pakistan for that matter, where possession of firearms is probably thicker than in the US, and assault rifles and AK 47 and 56s are on open sale in some areas. That has not stopped the terrorist killings in those areas. That has not stopped criminalisation of political life.

Ease the guns out of common hands, even if it takes time.

Coming to point No. 2, this is an issue I have always debated. There was an old saying, one what would be controversial today: Spare the rod and spoil the child.

I am not advocating corporal punishment. But a stiff reprimand and a strong rebuke is what a child needs when he/she does wrong, and is what a child expects. In its absence, the young mind gets used to expecting sweet nothings for sour deeds. 

How many of us, when we were children, grew up with trauma of a school caning? We joke about it today among peers. We refuse to speak ill about our teachers, about our parents, in public.

Reverence is not a thing that comes automatically. It has to be earned. 

Autistic children are especially at risk of providing slant to experiences in life. Disciplined upbringing did not harm to the millions who grew up to so little, were happy with so little, were treated no more specially than the neighbour’s child by the parents.

There is sense in realising the damage excessive care can do to one’s intellectual development. One has to let the mind reach its own potential, and for that it has to itself crack the egg-shell to come out into the open. Allow it that much struggle, provide it a path that it needs to follow, rebuke if necessary. The early guidelines are important. Its not roses all the way in life, even in American lives, I believe.

Hope to file the last two points tomorrow.

Please leave a comment.

Newsweek – an appeal

There rises a degree of discomfort while thinking and re-thinking the imminent discontinuation of Newsweek, the respected world events periodical, as a printed magazine, and its re-emergence as a paid online event. However sad the decision on this, of the chiefs at The Daily Beast, may be, the business aspect of this transition is understandable. 

However, even while trying to digest this ‘news’, I was watching two TED lectures a day later, and I realised what the discomfiture really rose from. And that can be surmised in three possible words: Demise of Data.

Demise, probably is a strong word in this context, but if I were to stress the point, it needs to be used.

When I wrote on the changing world media scenario in my chapter in the book: Cyberspaces and Global Affairs (Ashgate) – Picket Fences Until the End – (http://books.google.co.in/books?id=_okZblPPj9cC&pg=PR13&lpg=PR13&dq=sujit+bhar&source=bl&ots=WtyO4dbq5a&sig=ts6Rdlznq02FeBeUVQmq-RDXIWQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2w5aUNL-E8bKrAfP1oGoDA&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=sujit%20bhar&f=false  ) I was advocating the cause of print as a tangible, stable, digestible, credible and accessible media form that needs to stay afloat, even as online media made its presence felt. I was advocating a position of duality and realised that this could be a difficult business proposition, but a good social cause nevertheless. Newsweek has breached my trust, and has decided to give up its print ghost, so to say, but that’s not what is making me wonder.

Before I go any further, let us look at the traditional media marketing man’s/woman’s argument in fetching advertisement for the print media. Newspapers are sort of ‘in the face’ instruments, that presents the ‘Big Picture’ in a rather ‘Big” manner. Periodicals, such as the Newsweek, may have a less eyeball count in the first-transaction person (one who purchases it), but even as it lies around the house or a waiting hall, its eyeball count can multiply quite in numbers that a daily newspaper cannot afford. This is as good for the advertiser, as it is good for the reporter whose article is read and re-read. In short, this later stage of the periodical, presents data that is freely available, yet pertinent to a point, and draws reaction from a much larger readership than its subscription. 

When the Newsweek goes online, becoming a paid magazine, its database will be accessible to far fewer and for far shorter a period before it climbs down the Google search ladder. Which, in turn, would mean: data lost in transit from print to online.

Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, argues in his TED talk that data should be freely available to be interlinked for greater human benefit. I cannot agree more. It is not necessary here to enumerate examples, but the case in point is Newsweek and its transition. As I have said, this data would not be available till its owners one day decide to share it. Logically, if you have paid a handsome amount for it, you would also want to use it to your own purposes. But those droplets of proprietary information will not more add to the sea of knowledge that the web itself shows.

Which leads me to two things: It does not mean that a print media journal should essentially be of a charitable nature, freely distributing information that their reporters worked so hard on; nor does it mean that the advancement of world knowledge would stop in its tracks just because the Newsweek’s knowledge bank would suddenly now be available to fewer, luckier individuals [in India, where Internet penetration is (arguably) yet to reach double figures, this would be a problem for sure]. But would it not be preferable to maintain both its avatars in tandem, and enrich the database for future use?

Also, watching Margaret Heffernan, the stress on conflict-inference, or that a different view can also be a deferential view of a subject, was clear. Let us disagree, and you shall be richer in the process.

My plea is to continue Newsweek in its print format even after December 31, even as its paid avatar prospers. Try to crowd-source marketing strategy for once.

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Let us decide our goals for the next decade

TED watch

http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_drummond_how_to_set_goals_for_the_world.html

Jaime Drummond’s idea of crowd-sourcing our future goals is, simply, awesome. 

Watching this, I got the feeling, finally, that New Media isn’t all about expressing trivial thoughts. As the Arab Spring has proved already, there is so much we can use it for, so much integrity that can come from the masses (300 million, says Drummond, at 5 percent of response). 

I am sure a comprehensive web mechanism will come forth quickly from the bright minds all around, but meanwhile, let us be ready with our own ideas, our own imaginations and hopes that we can leave to our next generation a world that is, yet again,  worth living in and worth fighting for.

I hope this escalates into a discussion. I would like to put forth my ideas on this blog soon.