If ever you need proof that deep down we are animals ...

The students who make the ultimate mistake of listening to me know how much I emphasize that education, all of it and especially the sciences, challenges the gut-instincts we might have about many aspects of life.  About this planet and elsewhere.  Think about it--our gut instincts will tell us that the sun moves around the earth.  Our gut instinct will lead us to resist the idea that injecting a small dose of a virus in kids will help them develop immunity against diseases that could even kill them.

Education nukes that gut instinct.

But, deep down, we are animals.  And, like other animals, we rely on our instincts.  Right?

Ah well, I am merely channeling an essay by Isaac Asimov that was a part of our curriculum back in the high school years in India.  I remember how I was impressed then, as I am even now, that the progress humans have realized over the centuries has been through a systematic inquiry into those gut instincts and to essentially destroy those ideas.

Yet, science is hard to believe.  Those damn animal instincts just don't die ;)

We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge — from the safety of fluoride and vaccines to the reality of climate change — faces organized and often furious opposition. Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research, doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you’d think a diabolical agency had put something in the water to make people argumentative.

Science is more than learning the periodic table, or mouthing off how humans evolved.

In this bewildering world we have to decide what to believe and how to act on that. In principle, that’s what science is for. “Science is not a body of facts,” says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of Science, the prestigious journal. “Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.”

Our continued reliance on our gut instincts essentially means that we do not choose to believe in the laws of nature.

we subconsciously cling to our intuitions — what researchers call our naive beliefs.

They say "naive beliefs" but I prefer gut- or animal-instincts.

as we become scientifically literate, we repress our naive beliefs but never eliminate them entirely. They nest in our brains, chirping at us as we try to make sense of the world.
Most of us do that by relying on personal experience and anecdotes, on stories rather than statistics.

While our instincts provide us with narratives that absolutely convince us, "science tells us the truth rather than what we’d like the truth to be."

Scientists can be as dogmatic as anyone else — but their dogma is always wilting in the hot glare of new research. In science it’s not a sin to change your mind when the evidence demands it. For some people, the tribe is more important than the truth; for the best scientists, the truth is more important than the tribe.

Aha, now I have one more argument in favor of continuing to operate outside of tribes.  

On my own, if needed. 

In my ashram ;)

Photo of the day: Jatinga, Assam

From The Hindu:

Dimasa girls in their traditional dress taking part in the first International Jatinga Festival in Jatinga. On a moonless night, when the mist and fog bearing south-westerly winds blow over the Jatinga valley, different species of local migratory birds get attracted to strong light sources or “bird trap lights.” Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar

Awesome colors :)

India, like the US, is a country of immigrants

Thus spake India's Supreme Court:

While North America (USA and Canada) has new immigrants who came mainly from Europe over the last four or five centuries, India is a country of old immigrants in which people have been coming in over the last ten thousand years or so. Probably about 92 per cent of the people living in India today are descendants of immigrants, who came mainly from the North-West, and to a lesser extent from the North-East.

This observation comes in its ruling on a horrible case that was an atrocious treatment of a "tribal" woman by upper caste folks

The case related to Nandabai, 25, belonging to the Bhil tribe, a Scheduled Tribe in Maharashtra. She was beaten, kicked and stripped, and then paraded naked on the village road, over an alleged illicit relationship with a man from an upper caste.

The Court underscores the importance here:

it is the duty of all people who love our country to see that no harm is done to the Scheduled Tribes and that they are given all help to bring them up in their economic and social status, since they have been victimised for thousands of years by terrible oppression and atrocities. The mentality of our countrymen towards these tribals must change, and they must be given the respect they deserve as the original inhabitants of India.

And that:

It is time now to undo the historical injustice to them.

Yes.  One of the many troubling aspects of India.  But, by and large everybody seems to accept their respective places in society, even if it is a harshly unequal treatment.

My freshman year roommate in engineering college told me that he was not keen on going home for the break, which puzzled me.  He explained--back in his village, even the kids of upper-caste folks would call his father by name and order his father around.  Calling somebody by their first name is an enormous sign of power in India.

Am reminded of an NPR segment from a few days ago.  If the Indian court referred to the country as a land of immigrants, now it is the land of opportunity as America was/is.  But,

"In India, you're eternally a master and eternally a servant," Giridharadas tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "Servants in many ways have been seen — and [have] been taught to see themselves — as being not someone who is situationally inferior, but someone who is eternally, intrinsically inferior."

It is a country that is very hard to understand.

Violent guerilla group threatens stability across India

For The Register-Guard

Posted to Web: Thursday, Dec 30, 2010 04:38PM
Appeared in print: Thursday, Dec 30, 2010, page A7

India’s Maoist guerillas have held monthlong celebrations in December to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army. Yet another surreal feature of India’s landscape!

If the name of the guerilla group sounds oddly familiar, well, it is only one word removed from the name of China’s military force — the People’s Liberation Army.

Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the leaders of China’s Communist revolution, were ardent proponents of guerilla warfare. Mao deemed such violence a necessary component of a revolutionary war, and he described this warfare as “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”

India’s guerillas are keen on following Mao’s preaching, despite the fact that his demise paved the way for the reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping, which have transformed China in rapid fashion into a global economic powerhouse.

According to the Maoists, the base force of about 30,000 guerillas have all been trained in the technical skills needed for making and planting improvised explosive devices — the notorious IEDs that Americans face in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Maoists are not fighting for imaginary reasons. Easily identifiable pockets of poverty and deprivation are home to millions of people in India, including members of tribal groups.

The traditional home of many of India’s tribal groups is also rich in various minerals, such as bauxite and iron ore. The guerillas contend that the disadvantaged tribal groups are being forced to relocate without adequate compensation and then become unskilled contract workers in a new economic system — which further increases their insecurity and severely threatens their traditional ways of life.

For the reborn Maoist guerilla groups in India, also known locally as Naxalites, the Indian government is the principal enemy.

State support for industrial activities then results in the government apparatus and its employees becoming targets for the guerillas.

Even tribal groups are targeted if the guerillas deem that they have worked with the government and businesses.

Maoists are estimated to have a presence in more than half the state of Orissa, where I am attending an academic conference in its capital city.

Recently, the Maoists blew up an abandoned police station using land mines. An IED blasted an ambulance in a remote forest road in the hills, killing five people, including two women and two children.

Over the years, the Indian government has been fighting fire with more fire. There are allegations that the government has even sought, and received, advice and training from Israel because of its experience with fighting terrorists.

In a controversial article earlier this year, noted writer and social activist Arundhati Roy described the government’s response as war.

Roy asked: “When a country that calls itself a democracy openly declares war within its borders, what does that war look like?”

The war, by all accounts, has been bloody. But despite its superiority in numbers and technology, the Indian government is nowhere near a significant victory over the rebels. It is no surprise that the highly focused guerillas are able to outmaneuver the government’s paramilitary forces.

We Americans know this all too well from our lengthy and costly engagement in Afghanistan and the earlier experience in Vietnam, where our military superiority was negated by the opponent’s ability to merge into the local geography.

Perhaps realizing the futility of such a war, the Indian government recently announced an “integrated action plan” through which significant resources will be committed for a “quick resolution of problems concerning health care, drinking water, education and roads” in 60 districts — equivalent to American counties — where the Maoists are a significant presence.

In 2010-11 alone, the 60 districts combined will get the equivalent of $350 million from the Indian government.

The government’s renewed effort to address the economic insecurity of the poor is certainly a move in the right direction. Of course, it is only a proverbial slip between the cup and the lip.

I wish for a quick and peaceful resolution of these problems in India. And I am all the more thankful for my serene life by the Willamette River.

Photo of the day: more on women's work

The photo's description at the source is:

ANYTHING FOR WATER: A group of tribal women fetching water from an agricultural well at Govind Tanda Karepalli Mandal in Khammam Distrcit. Photo: G.N.Rao

Yet again, I am blown away by the physically demanding labor that most poorer women have to do day in and day out, and almost always they seem to do that with a smile on their faces.
In Tanzania, too, it was women carrying water from the community hand-pump to their homes.  There were lots of young and older men alike cycling around, playing football, .... No, I did not take photos--neither of the women carrying water, nor of the men biking or chatting.

In this photo, it appears that one small slip could easily mean a fall into the well and, perhaps, crashing one's head against the rocks.  I am getting a tad dizzy just looking at this photo ... 

Photo of the day .... India?

It might surprise non-Indians (well, maybe a few Indians too!) that this photo is of people in India

The note at the source:

Tribal girls perform a traditional dance during the Garo Wangala festival at Dimapur in Nagaland. 

Looks so colorful, compared to the dull and boring lives here!

A colleague grew up in Nagaland when her parents were stationed there.  No, this colleague is not an "Indian"--is an American now all the way from Wales!  She has been to parts of India that I have only read about.  Years ago, when there were immense internal problems in neighboring Mizoram as well, the husband of my late cousin-sister was posted there--he was a (medical) Major in the Indian army.  I suppose things have calmed down a lot over the years.  An old school friend spent a year in Sikkim, not far away from all these places.


So many places to visit.  So little time.  And no money.  Well, I will go there.  One of these days.  Before Cherrapunji completely dries out :-(