Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Being Loyal

When Greg Smith exposed how his company was bolstering profits by giving clients wrong advice, everyone on that conscience-deficient Wall Street immediately denounced him as 'disloyal'.

How would you define loyalty? How important is loyalty on the landscape of life? Sure, it is great to be loyal to your country, but then even the Mafia demands unequivocal loyalty.That quality of being faithful is very restrictive. Loyalty to one entity by definition excludes others. When one chooses one value over another, it is then the mettle if a person shows up. Smith chose honesty. I am not surprised that it is Wall Street that is touting the 'loyalty line'. It takes a rampant kind of moral decrepitude that allows such a distorted versions of values. Loyalty over honesty? Certainly not copacetic.

Loyalty, by itself, may be the least honorable of the noble values. It is self- serving by it's very nature. Loyalty actually says 'me and mine are above you and yours'. And that cannot be acceptable. Loyalty is appropriate as long it does not infringe on an other values . It is an honorable value only if it is in conjunction with other higher ideals like love,honesty, kindness, or justice.

I cannot think of any other quality that engenders groupism as much as loyalty does. White collar groups, corporate executives, the police 'blue wall', feminism... the list goes on. Everyone thinks they are doing the right thing by banding in a  group they belong to. Great, but not at the cost of truth, or even openness. It bothers me when women band together for no other reason than that they have a different chromosome. I do not support Hillary Clinton because she is a woman, I support her because she is brilliant.  I do not cry for victims of acid-throwing because they are women, I cry because of the injustice and pain. And would shed the same tears if it was a man whose face was burnt. Women who add the cause of  feminism to issues like this are negating the horror of the crime itself.

I am sure Iranians are being loyal to their country by calling us the Great Satan but it is both untrue and mean. Dick Cheney was being loyal to his shareholder friends by sending young Americans to an unnecessary war, and that certainly is the opposite of every human ideal we can imagine! I am sure a lot of us have been a loyal friend by supporting or ignoring something wrong the friend is doing. Oppressors all over the world get away with their crimes because of teams of people who are simply being 'loyal' to them.

Being loyal to friends, family, and country is admirable of course, but eventually loyalty to your own moral propriety is all that matters .

Friday, March 2, 2012

The end or the means?

Today Shakespeare really irritated me. 'All is well that ends well'. He picked such an inane platitude as a title for his play. By that yardstick everything in the world is rendered meaningless because everything- and everyone - actually ends! The end should not be an issue at all for it is the path, the journey, the process, and how you go about it that matters. And just as it is the living that is important not the dying, so also it is the means to an end that is the all-in-all, and the aim is quite immaterial.

Ancient wisdom has always guided us to live in the moment and not think of what is to come. This does not mean 'live it up now' and everything else be damned. It simply means that one must live each moment in the best possible way. The Gita says that 'the fruits of work should not be your motive'. The end result should not be our concern, for it is the doing of our duty that defines us. Our duty as friend, spouse, sibling child, fellow human.

If it is the aim to be a doctor, it is a poor, sick choice. If it is the process of healing, the living as a doctor that matters, then you have got it right. If you are going through the grind of college for that degree, seriously, it is not worth it. The 'grind' of education is exactly what should have meaning for you, or there will never be any learning involved.

Finally, and completely, it is only the doing that matters. What and how it is done. Steve Jobs gave us some wonderful iPhones. Great goal, good result of course ( I am an Apple fan). A month before the launch of the first iPhone, he insisted on changing the cover from plastic to something 'unscratchable' . Wonderful idea, most certainly. But waking up scores of young Chinese workers in the middle of night and handing them a cup of coffee and a biscuit for a mandatory 12-hour shift is simply not the right way to go about it. Does it make getting the right product ready at the right time worth it? No one with a head that works will say yes. They say success comes naturally to those who do what they love doing. But that is not enough. I believe what you love doing should also be done right.

It brings me to a related saying 'the ends justify the means'. So, if the end is good, whatever the means are applied to that 'good end' are acceptable? In what kind of perverted universe would that be fair? Can you go about lashing people so that they learn how to behave? Can draconian laws be in place because they offer security? Or you can bribe your way to a public office because you will be doing more good in that position?

Going about things the wrong way, morally, ethically or legally, can never, ever be justified. Period. The world is not worth saving if even one person has be hurt intentionally for it. We have enough pain going about in the world without people starting to use silly phrases likes 'the ends justify the means' to add to it. For any noble end, the means have to be equally noble.

The conservatives in the US want to prevent abortions. Though personally I cannot fathom how anyone has the dimwitted meanness to make a public issue of such a personal decision, even the end of saving a "life" has been made into a disgusting joke because the means they are adopting. Forcing women to undergo invasive unnecessary procedures is just a little less bad than legislating away their right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.

 All is not well just because it ends well; all is only well when all is well- that means from beginning to end.

Why I Write

This blog is an attempt to bring out a new twist on accepted notions of society. It is an attempt to get the reader to take off the tinted glasses and look at the world with fresh eyes. If you agree with the ideas of this blog, and think anew, I would consider myself successful. If you do not agree with the thoughts on this blog and cement your own notions, it still made you think, and my work is done.
Look at the world with a refractive lens. The truth will stand out.


If you like my blog, you might want to check out my book for children-

Enchanting Fables (PublishAmerica)