We All Live in Bubbles

Hungry cattle of Wardha waiting to be fed.

"Why are those who are feeding us dying of hunger and committing suicide?" And which role do we play in it?

In May 2013, I joined SRISTI to Wardha, a district in Maharshtra, where most of India‘s farmer suicides were and maybe are still taking place. We walked from village to village for several days because we wanted to meet the people of this region and understand their hardships and their way of living.

One life dominating aspect there is that it is a very hot region, during the day temperatures rise up to 50°C, there‘s not enough water, animals starve and people, i.e. mostly the women and girls walk many hours per day to fetch water for their day to day lives. Walking in that region, in that heat, makes you understand only slightly how difficult life can be, but it was our attempt at showing solidarity.

Another problem of this region, next to the farmer suicides, is the killing of baby girls. Girls, in India, are often seen as plight because when they grow up, they will not provide for the family but traditionally need to be married off, almost every time involving the payment of dowry, which the families cannot afford. Some women we met were involved in hard labour, such as brick making or working on construction sites.

A friend of mine, Purvi Vyas, suggested a documentary called Nero‘s Guests, which can easily be found on YouTube and which shows P Sainath‘s work on documenting, understanding and reporting the situation of rural India and farmer suicides, and I highly recommend watching it to everyone who would like to get a clearer picture of the situation of farmers, on why they are ending their lives, and on the role we, i.e. also the people in Europe, play in it. It's finally a documentary depicting some of the India I saw in those three years of living and working there but am still not able to fully put into words.

When people ask me „How was India?“ I say „Very beautiful and very ugly. It‘s complex. I‘m in love with it and I hate it. How to describe it. The longer I think about it, the more aware I become that I know too less to make any judgments. I cannot describe it, there are at least six, seven, eight different sides to everything I would like to explain. All I know is that there‘s a huge and growing disparity and all of us are living in bubbles. Maybe we need these bubbles to stay sane. Maybe they are the reason we go mad.“

See for yourself, watch this documentary, it‘s worth watching. It is a good depiction of the India and of the world I perceive, which unfortunately leaves me speechless more often than it makes me speak up.

Further Links:

Nero's Guests, documentary film by Deepa Bhatia
P Sainath on twitter
People's Archive of Rural India
Facebook page of Purvi Vyas, organic farmer located in Ahmedabad, India
SRISTI - Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions, Ahmedabad, India
A Dim Flame of Gandhian Legacy - SRISTI Shodh Yatra Report

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YOLO - Genocide in Syria

Image: www.genocideinsyria.org

I wished the children depicted in this image were sleeping and could be woken up to run around and play. But that’s just wishful thinking.

This photograph published by "Genocide In Syria" just popped up on my Facebook wall and though I don’t like to share pictures that depict cruelty and atrocities, I do it this time, and I’m sorry if I intrude your daily activities with this and might overstep anybody’s capability of what s/he can or is willing to take or deal with.

There’s no blood here, no explicit depiction of wounds, no bodies torn apart, just a room full of human beings, one could almost think they were asleep if it wasn’t for something disturbingly cold in the way the bodies are arranged, legs spread widely so they all fit, faces turned to the wall, a white sheet covering some of them.

The picture's caption says these children were killed by chemical weapons, and i don’t hv any proof whether that’s true or might be misleading and aiming at influencing people’s thought processes. Just I know and deeply feel that, whatever the context might be, there’s just everything wrong with a world in which creatures who are responsible for this kind of horror can walk around freely, live a good life and are not being held responsible for their oppressive ideologies, illusionary entitlements, lethal orders, actions and inactions. How fucked up and self-absorbed must one be not to feel any remorse in light of such crimes?

One can just say it’s war and there’s nothing normal about war, but no, this is not just about war anymore, this is a sickness, a rottenness down to the core of this planet’s ruling elite and the accompanying construct we call society or maybe even humanity. And all of us are a part of it. We put a blind eye again and again when it comes to things that are too horrendous to be integrated into our own comfort zones and realities.

At a personal level, everyone has own problems to overcome. All of us have just one life, and we strive and struggle to live it to the fullest or at least be comfortable and somehow seek fulfillment or happiness, maybe find and follow a passion, found a family, travel the world, whatever it may be. But we are doing it on the back of the lives of these dead children and all those others who will never hv a good life but live in poverty, in war, in slavery, in depreciation, isolation, destruction, torture or are already dead or going to die forcefully and in anxiety and pain in the coming minutes, hours, days, weeks, .... it seems to never come to an end.

I’m clueless how we can still look at ourselves and think we are innocent or that there’s justification for the way we live, consume, exploit and destroy. We all live in denial and we know it and pretend it’s not our fault but the fault of others or of the so called system.

These dead children are one symptom of what’s wrong with humanity. I’m ashamed to be part of this humanity. It depresses me. It makes me angry, sad, mad and oftentimes feel paralyzed and hopeless. Not because I prefer apathy and a mindset of nothing can be done about it. No, I think every tiny action in the right direction counts and helps. I also don’t like to play blaming games. I’m as guilty as everyone else and that’s not a solution.

Just I wished we could somehow manage to find alternative ways of doing things, treating each other, organizing society and building communities based on freedom, tolerance, solidarity, respect and kindness in a way that such words are not any longer just hollow phrases but an integral part of what humanity represents.

So, yes, a picture of a room filled with dead children. That’s very sad and horrible, we think, and then we scroll down and go on with our lives.
What on earth must happen that we finally open our eyes and change?

Further Links:

Website of Genocide in Syria

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Left right left left right left

"Do you ever have trouble telling right from left?" Probably time to check your mental faculties.

The sad irony is that in today's election too many people who feel left behind and unheard voted for a party whose policy openly promotes discrimination, symptom-picking, scape-goating and baiting of those who are underprivileged and/or minorities in our society and who, similar to such voters, would need extra support, ~ instead of voting for a party that aims to address root causes in a humane and progressive manner. 

"It's hardly the end of the world if you take the wrong direction on a journey, but there are many situations where confusing right from left can have devastating consequences.
... As the people at risk often don't think they have a problem, testing of the ability to discriminate against right-left discrimination – for example through online psychometric tests – could be offered to [people] to measure their ability."

Art: MyCyber College

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A Matter of Conscience

Nobody had noticed it. It wasn’t that his name had popped up in the news, because he had decided to let this chalice pass by, so technically, everything had been fine, except that for those few days during which he had not acted, he had felt as if i) he was not important enough for anyone to notice it (but that was only a very marginal sensation, one that was nearly inexistent and he himself had almost not been aware of sensing it; it was simply impossible for his ego to claim so much room for ulterior motives after years of hard work to keep it in check) and, after he had made up his mind and finally had joined the list ii) as if he had cheated. As if he was a fraud. Which was ridiculous, of course.

He hadn’t done anything wrong that could cast a shadow on him or his decision or the ulterior motives behind his decision. It had been an answer to a question of self-respect. He had done exactly what his sense of responsibility had expected him to do. Nevertheless, as a consequence of those subtle feelings, he now felt this suffocation gripping his chest and giving him trouble to breathe. Also, the thoughts coming to his mind kept going in circles. The consequence weren’t incessant sleepless nights yet, but his blood pressure certainly was higher than usual.

It wasn’t that he suddenly had the feeling that it had been completely wrong. It had been a well-considered decision. He had evaluated it back and forth, and to his understanding, in this case nobody in this world had the right to judge his moral stance or assess his ethical responsibilities. It had been completely up to him. In the end, it had been nobody but him who had put in the effort, sweat and hard work, who had gone through endless phases of self-doubt and almost unbearable challenges, which had sometimes left him in states of emotional and physical devastation. It was no one but him, who had experienced those days, on which he didn’t know how to make ends meet, how to pay his rent or food bills, while others somewhere deep down had admired him but also had deemed his endeavours daydreaming and an unrealistic take on life  – just imagine if all of them had ignored their liabilities and pursued their dreams, passions or crazy ideas instead.

The Ceremony surely had made his parents proud. Especially after they had already given up on him altogether and he had not really cared any longer what they had thought of him, expected or said. Even his father, who – not in an outspoken but in a subliminal manner – had always preferred his brother, had almost shed a tear during the Ceremony, and his mother had looked at him with this gleam in her eyes, the same gleam she had had when he had won that poetry competition centuries ago, which now was completely forgotten and of no importance any longer, but then it had meant the world to her and to him as well. His brother hadn’t shown up on the day of the Award.

Not that he had always been driven by altruistic motives or something like that, he rather had been self-centered and unrelenting in his manners and opinions, which probably was what had made him persistent enough to go through with his shit and endure those years and had earned him the Award in the first place, however, now it seemed that being self-centered, i.e. telling others to fuck off bec. it was none of their business, might harm not only others but also him and his reputation - not that he had ever really cared about what others said or thought of him, but he had the feeling that his steps needed careful consideration.

The list had been growing, every day he had read new names in the news.

Acting out and crossing the street against the light did not always end in painful or life-changing experiences, sometimes it ended in no experience at all, i.e. nothing happened, no car would be crashing into you, no accident would be caused, no old man would pop up out of the blue raising his fist or walking stick, shouting at you, trying to regulate your behaviour: one would just cross the street and walk on, unseen, unnoticed.

A few here and there already raised their voices and claimed that those on the list had been acting out of sheer craving for attention. Some started questioning what they aimed to achieve by opting out apart from creating attention for a list of those, who had opted out. He had never been a fan of bustling and jumping with high waves. Could staying silent and remaining in the background have been the more humble or wiser decision?

One never knew which direction political currents would take and which consequences it could have for the fate of individuals, especially those who had made themselves visible; not that he feared any of it, he was merely aware. Who was going to take a stance for such individuals when it came to matters of life and death? apart from individuals of that group of individuals itself, and as history had shown that often was nothing but a romantic thought either. But for decades, people in his position had taken the lead and churned awareness, spoken out against systems that were foreseeably going to twist the inherent worth of a person’s dignity and human values in such a manner that it seemed to be irrefutably justifiable that people of different race, caste, gender or religion all had the rights, duties and degrees of freedom the ruling class deemed appropriate for them. After all, wasn’t also freedom of speech at stake here?  And wasn’t clinging to decorations equivalent to being materialistic, i.e., to revealing what could be deemed a morally reprehensible characteristic? Especially decorations received for contributions that touched issues reaching into ethical territories, which weren’t given to a person but the cause the person stood for, didn’t leave room for hesitation. Nobody in his position should have hesitated or have had reasons for a minute of doubt.

The decision to return the Award had been nothing but simply a matter of conscience.



Art: Paul Klee

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Creating the right impact and together!

Recently, scholars, especially Andy Hoffman at the Erb Institute - University of Michigan, have started stressing the urgent need for academic scholars and the public to engage and have an informed dialogue on globally pressing topics such as climate change. I agree. If we want to avert predicted and not yet predicted disasters of climate change, we all need to work much closer together. 

Cartoon by Carole Levy

In the Michigan Meeting, a conference on the topic, which was held a few days ago, three of the main questions were:

• What is the role of the academic scholar within the discussions of the global challenges that are relevant to society, such as sustainability, health care, gun control, fiscal policy, international affairs, etc.? 
• How do scholars engage in a world in which knowledge is becoming democratized through social media and the proliferation of knowledge sources (both credible and biased) clouds public debate? 
• What are the social, professional and institutional obstacles to such engagement?

The second question (though obviously interrelated with the other two) is especially interesting. It says that knowledge is becoming more democratised through social media and the proliferation of knowledge sources. I think, to a certain extent that is true. But to a large extent this is merely an assumption:

One element that hinders the public and academic scholars to engage more, is how academic work is published and promoted. It takes months if not years till research has gone through a journal's reviewing process and then, when it is finally published, it is at the terms of the publisher, which means most of the time, accessibility of the publication is restricted to a paying, limited audience, which mainly are institutions and libraries and their members. Those who are not members and who cannot afford to pay (the price for one scientific article is so high that no average citizen could pay for it!) are not able to read. 

That's not how we can promote collaboration!

Academic publication and review processes need to become more dynamic, democratic and decentralised.

How to go ahead
This can happen, for instance, through open source, open access publishing and reviewing platforms. Such platforms would speed up the publication process and results could be openly reviewed and commented on by the scientific community and also the public.

Real-time publication on open access platforms can make research not only more dynamic, but also geographically dispersed researchers could collaborate in a better way or at least build upon each others' knowledge and findings in a more efficient manner.

Maybe publication would then also not be so much about getting good citations but about creating impact through collaboration with communities and individuals, finding synergies and communicating research results to a much wider audience. 

What could such a platform look like? There is a platform for poetry, which lists all kinds of poets, poems, categories, one can comment on poems, share sections, ... Something similar could be possible for academia and academic work. There could be researchers' profiles, their areas of interest, their work and recent projects and publications all on one platform under different categories, labels, tags. Maybe one could start with a group of researchers, who are close to the topic of climate change and sustainability and who are willing to make their papers openly accessible. 

Public and Academia will not be able to engage sufficiently as long as research results remain in the hands of publishers. Researchers need no longer wait for journals and publishing houses to make the required steps to become more open. They need to take things into their own hands and push the creation of open platforms. Only then, engagement between Academia & Academia and between Academia & Public can become more dynamic and collaborative and maybe also support mitigation of climate change and other pressing issues on a community as well as individual level.


Further links:

• Andy Hoffman on twitter
• Andy's article "Isolated Scholars: Making Bricks not Shaping Policy" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 February 2015
• Academic Engagement on twitter #AcadEng
• Cartoon by Carole Levy
• Michigan Meeting on "Academic Engagement in Public and Political Discourse", held 13-15 May, 2015 at Michigan University
• Online platform of the Poetry Foundation 
• Virginia Barbour's article "Publisher pushback puts open access in peril" at THE CONVERSATION, 21 May, 2015

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What if I got rid of every thing?

I started reading this article on things, on doorknobs, on spoons, on dust, why stop there, everything can be objectified, become a fetish, we are drowning in a world of things.

Even if I had not given away all my things, I would still have a vague idea that they keep accumulating: As fast as one gives them out they seem to come back, one needs to continuously clean after them, like a layer of dust they keep entering one’s house, one’s room, one’s very personal space, even one’s pores, one’s very own body. If I don’t watch out, I have tiny beads rubbing the dirt off my skin, only to leave the house like a sick person’s discharge, to spread in rivers and oceans.

Giving away every thing without buying any thing new seems to be no solution. It keeps coming. I feel like an island that wants to be without ocean.

But what if I really made it, if I really got rid of all those things, if I really got rid of the ocean?

Don’t I like some of my things?

Don’t I like the window that I can shut, the book that I can read, the machine that does my laundry, the pen that keeps me writing?

Don’t some of those things make me a different, a better person? The book that questions my thinking? The machine that gives me time to study or to paint? The window, that teaches me how to clean thoroughly, that lets me watch and observe the birds in my garden, that reminds me that I should go outside because light and shadow are not the same inside my room?

Life seems to have become not only a matter of things within life but also a matter of life within things. Some things are my friends. They are my advisers. They are part of my thinking. A part of me seems to live within those things.

I can detach as I have done many times before. But I value their opinion. I would surely be a different person. But do I want to be that person? Detached and sleek, gliding through complexity, island without ocean? What kind of island would that be?

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Thinking is an art too

The Spirit of Our Time by Raoul Hausmann

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