The curious case of examining one's own thoughts and conscience

In any examination of one's own thoughts and conscience, the self is the judge, the prosecutor, as well as the defendant. The self that presides over this 'juridical' process is the same as the self that prosecutes, and the self that is being accused and examined is also not different. This creates a curious kind of empathy among the involved parties. Unless checked by a sincere intention to use the trial to get to the 'truth', this empathy could result in an acquital of the self being examined. A lot of evil has its roots in this lack of critical examination of one's thoughts and conscience. One could even say that more often it is 'ignorance' rather than 'inherent viciousness' that causes evil actions, because self-awareness and sincere critical examination of one'e own thoughts (which significantly shape our actions) would certainly prevent us from doing many things we end up doing because of our ignorance about 'what is right'. So, this self-examination is important for us as individuals and as members of society.

Staying with the 'trial' analogy, what rules should guide such a trial? In my limited experience, if one is somewhat indepedent, this kind of trial may be quite oblivious to 'laws of the land', or even in contradiction to them. The true self-trial of our thoughts is done with rules that we really agree with. These are rules that are developed from our innate sense of right and wrong, as well as conditioning and self-reflection over a period of time. 'Reason' and 'compassion' are important tools in the definition of these ever-evolving rules. In fact, many a times, the act of the trial itself helps redefine these rules. The 'law' as such has limited role here. It is important to nuance this by saying that law is important for upholding the collectively defined sense of justice in a society, and should usually guide our actions. But, our thoughts should be independent, guided by our deep inner rules. Our sense of right and wrong may not match the law's sense of the same. So, if we see glaring gaps between law and reality, and in a manner that seems to be hurting the society, we must try and get the law itself changed, while trying not to break it. We may even need to break the law, but not for selfish interest, but for larger common good, as many have done. It is important to understand the legitimacy of the process by which law is defined. For instance, human freedom should not be made subservient to arbitrariness of a autocratic regime. Law loses its meaning in such a context.

Coming back to the question concerning examination of thoughts and conscience, if faults are found what should be the punishment of these faults? How should we approach this post-discovery phase? The natural empathy for oneself that may sometimes lead to a perverse acquittal of the defendant self is important here. It does help us live with ourselves, see our faces in the mirror everyday. So, the challenge is to try and treat the defendant self with as much objectivity as possible, while continuing a deeper empathy and an intention to understand and help. I think there should primarily be a renewal intentionality in this trial. The self that examines should do so to renew the self that is being examined, to make it better, to improve it. Having found faults, the idea should be to change one's thoughts in a manner that we think in the 'right' way from the next moment onwards, while acknowledging the impermanence of this definition of 'right'. The past is to be left unsaid, the guilt of the past thoughts to be overcome or overwritten by the fresh thoughts and actions. So, in some sense, the examining sense should be like a benevolent judge trying to 'help' the defendant self, more like a friend. The judge and prosecutor will gain if the guilty one improves, because they are it, and it is them.

This empathetic process of improvement still leaves space for repenting and apologising, which should be done, but only to the extent that our thoughts have created actions that have hurt others. Otherwise, just having thought something, which now appears 'bad' or 'wrong', shouldn't lead us to start and keep cursing ourselves. Suffering, in this case, doesn't necessarily lead to betterment. Rather, sincere understanding and acceptance of renewal is of key importance. There is no point in getting into the kind of self-criticism that borders on a destructive kind of masochism. It is more helpful to consciously focus on the evolution of our thoughts and conscience. We need to 'move on'.

spontaneous emotions, considered responses

I am sad. It is that intensely personal, sinking feeling that hurts in unusually deep and lonely ways. It is not a fleeting sensation. I am trying to fully understand the cause(s), and find ways to change the feeling, and be happy (or at least not be sad). I want to deal with the emotion directly, and not suppress it, ignore it, or drown it in liquor. There should be more direct and aware ways. I have come to believe that these ways reveal themselves after long, sincere self-reflection. I am young; recently started discovering some of these more 'mature' ways. Books have been of help but to a very limited extent. Some things don't occur to us till they actually occur with us. Reading Kafka and others at nineteen was interesting, but I understood them better when I went through certain things. The words that I read then have taken new meanings now. Conversations with wiser people are also good, but they can lead us to the pond, but not make us drink the water of wisdom. That choice is ours. Also, there are limitations that accompany being the other.

I am finding ways, but the search may never end. It would probably be an unending journey, ending with life itself. The idea is to keep going, and keep looking, while building on what has been found. This has to be done with the realisation that what I found yesterday may deserve discarding today. Though deeply unsettling, I feel this realisation, this creative destruction of sorts, is crucial if we want to gain wisdom.

An emotion is a deeply personal, subjective phenomenon, but its existence is universal. I feel what I feel, but many others have felt something similar at some point. That's what makes us all humans, sharing the very nature of our existence. Most of us find it difficult to deal with emotions, particularly when they come in a rapid gush. While dealing with them, it is important to see that there may be nothing inherently 'bad' in an emotion, because even the so-called 'negative' emotions help us identify and move away from hurtful states, or nuance our understanding of these states we are destined to be in, at least once in while. But some emotions can leave scars if they lead to destructive expressions, or if they affect us too much, destroying the harmony and balance in our lives. Also, for all emotions there are causes and consequences. Often, if we are not aware and careful, the consequences of emotions like anger can be disproportionate to their causes. To maintain balance and harmony in life, this sense of proportions should be maintained. How should we deal with these emotions?

I have found it useful to realise that no emotion stays in its original form for long. It transforms into other emotions and into emotional expressions. Depending on circumstances and how we deal with them, unrequited love often turns into sadness, which can transform into anger, which can motivate violent expression (towards oneself or others), leading to remorse and guilt, and it goes on. Emotions are like the magical entities that can take many forms. Understanding this non-rigid character of emotions gives us an opportunity to do something. I feel that it helps to acknowledge the emotion, understand its nature and cause, reflect on it in a considered manner, and find ways that help us not just to regain our inner peace and well-being, but also to gain new wisdom and fresh insights into life. I have tried some things.

Introducing humor to sadness and letting them be friends for a while. I have been surprised by finding how often they can get along well, if only for some time.

Suspending anger to give way to calm reflection, and then giving a measured response or if possible, forgiving and forgetting, and then enjoying the calm pleasures of restored inner peace.

Turning jealousy to thoughtful reflections on the nature of my expectations, the gaps in their fulfillment, the constructive ways to realise the expectations, the role of fate in what we and the others have and lack, the universality of human suffering, the ever-present possibility of pain hiding behind smiles, and also the right of others to live 'different' lives.

Responding to disappointment, frustration, and irritation by thinking about my place in a world with a billions stars, the workings of forces completely indifferent to my desires, the great potential and (still) the helplessness of human flesh, the location of my existence and my enterprise in the larger scheme of things, limitations of my plans and hopes, the need to discern between the co-existing meaningful and meaningless in life, and the nice and interesting joke this existence is.

Fears and anxieties have lately engendered a desire to discover their true causes and to become more aware of my past and more conscious of my present, to acknowledge and understand my desires, aspirations and concerns, so that I can carefully and permanently overcome some of my fears. Also, acknowledging that my fears, in their own ways, help reaffirm my humanity, and prevent me from going down the dangerous path of arrogant certitude.

Trying to resolve confusions by looking for deeper and wider knowledge and understanding of issues of concern with the hope that, with much labor and some luck, I will get clarity, while also acknowledging that I may not get all the answers, because some things may not be resolvable (or even knowable) due the inadequacy of my mind or the divergent nature of the answers, or both.

Letting the feeling of disgust or sense of outrage force me to take considered action to mitigate its causes.

In many of these, I haven't had much success in terms of bringing about a desired transformation in the emotion, but I am learning all the time, because I am aware and keen. I find new, more fruitful and direct ways of dealing with my emotions, and I learn more about myself. Each time I discover, to my disappointment, how little I really knew about myself. This disappointment is soon overwhelmed by the joy of enhanced self-awareness. Then my mind feels like dancing with abandon.

But right now, I am sad.

The Ways of Power

Power is something we have to deal with on a regular basis, in almost all our interactions. When we work in organisations, the awareness of power is very real, strong and intense. I have had to deal with it and in it in many ways, both as a subject and an object. The idea of Power is of great interest and relevance to the understanding of the human condition and social systems. Power manifests at the level of the broad social systems and is exercised more locally and regularly between people. What is the nature of the power relationships and strategies that most people try to play out and implement all the time? How, or through what mechanisms, does 'power' shape the ongoing relationships among us? How are the sources and expressions of power changing?

A key aspect of power is the way it is exerted. Power is exerted implicitly by the way in which our conversation (or discourse) is formed (Foucault's analysis), and it is often exerted by denying its own truth, or by myths that misrepresent the source of power by pointing to the so-called 'systemic' or 'natural' sources which are actually less powerful in that context. Power thrives on pretension of non-existence or innocence, continuously pointing at or deriving legitimacy from the larger forces or the ways of the world, always hiding its own implicit choice, its will to control. It always sets up systems and processes that facilitate its manifestations, while making itself invisible. There is power that depends heavily on certain exclusive, elitist symbols and spaces, like the illusions, which for centuries were staged by the royal entourage, the emperor's clothes, crown, and jewels; his mystical significance. Though some people still keep the illusions in place, and even approve of them, the overall trend is changing.

Now there are more of the sneaky forms of power that avoid special symbols or spaces, to stay consistent with today's so-called 'liberated', democratic', ideals that put a premium on being 'one of us' or 'with us'. Even the monarchs can't display their hubris in the same way as they did once upon a time. The same holds true for others in power, the executives, the teachers, the husbands, the political leaders, and all of us. Pretending to be powerless helps the agenda of power, again by making it less visible, by creating and spreading myths of the 'equal', the 'similar', or the 'friendly' power. The staging of power is undergoing a change. The 'divine' connection doesn't help now as much as it helped the Pharaohs and other such 'God-incarnates', and it is difficult to convince people of it, thanks to the ascent of science, which might not have completely defeated religion, but has almost decidedly de-linked the human from the almighty, forever reducing the possibility of a human getting away with the claim to divinity. Behavioral symbols are becoming more important. Fear as a source of power continues to hold sway, but fading continuously. The smiling candidate is better than a brooding one. A CEO who eats with the employees is more acceptable. This imagery thrives on the indifference of the masses to the details of the manifestations of power. Even in earlier times, a friendly, generous monarch was more popular, but didn't necessarily derive his/her powers from this attribute. These attributes didn't shift the power away from or to someone, because the source of power was elsewhere.

The chameleon-like change in the symbols is enabled by knowledge. Power is strengthened by knowledge of how people react and how their behavior can be affected. This knowledge helps Power thrive by providing favors or helping the objects of power, or making them feel powerful by allowing limited or fake participation (co-opting). These mechanisms (or presentations) of power help sustain it. The understanding of how people react and behave also enables power to create obligations that are relayed through so many different points and become so deeply ingrained in us, that we no longer perceive them as the effect of a power that constrains us, but instead it seems to us that these obligations were always lodged in our most secret nature, only to surface.

Power is also fueled by some resistance and without resistance, all power fades or collapses under its own weight, because it usually exists against something. Still, the resistance cannot be allowed to overrun power, and power tries to diffuse resistance if it becomes too threatening, again by trying to hide, usually behind the cloak of 'reason'. The sources of tense resistance are eliminated or sidelined by citing reasons that relate to the entity's behavior or competence, presenting them as threats to efficiency, effectiveness or even existence of the system or order that the power is presumably protecting, and never talking about their posture against power itself. This is another change in staging. You (and the spectators) may be told you are being destroyed for being a threat to world peace, while all you would have done is speak truth to power. Though, power still makes 'examples' of its opponents, it does so with less pomp, show, and noise, since the sustainability of this approach is becoming more and more difficult. It attempts to explain its actions by playing to people's fears and hopes. Thus, naked, raw, visible power is increasingly getting replaced by a clothed, sophisticated, almost invisible one, but we need to examine if there has been any fundamental shift in the nature of power itself, or in the way it affects and corrupts individuals. That's another question and analysis.

Life and Stories

Recalling to tell is an exercise in excerpting at two levels, one due to memory's limited ability to reveal details of the past voluntarily, and the other due to the limitations of language and the tendency to tell things in a manner that they sound linear and clear, almost like those stories we read in books, preferably presenting ourselves as heroes. This violence of excerpting leaves the recounting significantly removed from the 'reality'. Actually in life things don't happen in a story-like manner. Things and people come in and go out. It continues as time flows like a river that carries many moments, while drowning some. There are no beginnings. Time goes on without any specific pattern or reason, an interminable iteration. There are bends and falls, but at a deeper level, there is monotony (which gives a certain stability to being). In this flow, from time to time, we take stock, we say: I've been traveling and working for three years, I've been in Chennai for six months. Neither is there any end: you never leave a person or place in one go. They live, they persist in the minds. Even the dead live, coexisting with the living in the depths of our minds. This absence of neat separateness and linearity in life's ways creates differences between what was and what is remembered and told. Everything changes when we think and tell about life.

Trying to go back to the time and space that were, our memory reveals bits and pieces, with many elements and details left out due to time's constant effect on memory's resources, and some blocked out by the subconscious, perhaps due to some emotional links or other reasons. Our present perspectives also shape what we recall from the past, with an inherent value judgment. We all have occasions when we have looked back and things appeared different from how we perceived them originally. The recalled bits and pieces have to be narrated in words that are limited by our language and the practice of structuring the 'story', situated in the context of the present, and our current 'construction' of our self. The self that was is not the self that is. Even the self that recalls is not the self that tells, since recalling is a personal exercise, while telling is essentially extra-personal. Things happen in one way, we recall in another way, we tell them in another way. To illustrate, let me undertake such an exercise.

I am going back to a time my memory vaguely allows me to reconstruct, and a place that was nothing like this one. This is a big, grey city, a concrete congregation inhabited by humans on the move. That was a small, green town, and within it a large, sparsely populated settlement belonging to people who shared one common identity - the main bread winner (usually a male) working for a large enterprise. Mostly middle and upper middle class, the inhabitants of this place were kind of isolated from the world around. The place they were living in was like a reclusive monarch's expansive estate, but in this situation there were hundreds of kings, queens, princes and princesses enjoying the pleasure and privileges of the estate, and also the accompanying sense of non-belonging to the outside world. I was a child then, all of ten years old. I was the little prince, who in company of other princes, toured around his father's fort, in all the pride and glory, and fun. I had many friends, but three of them were my 'best' friends. We did everything together, and I mean everything.............

My recall has certain elements like 'isolation and detachment', 'friendship', 'fun and privileges of childhood'. Though important, were these the only key elements of that life and time? Perhaps, some of them might not have appeared important when I was in that reality. Also, memory has helped me construct a picture consisting of pieces that represent the time and space in a manner that is, to put it vaguely, 'romanticised', a tendency that often (but not always) accompanies a thought of the past. The entire 'good old times' construct has its roots here. The practice of language and structuring of the 'story' further affect the 'quality' of the picture. We can recall some elements, and of course the telling or the description is such that the 'other' can't smell it.

This is important because we look at our today in the light of our yesterday, and vice versa. Ours is a constant struggle for self-betterment and improvement over the past, to take 'care' of ourselves. So, it helps to know the nature of the link between the time now and the past, the quality of a weigh-scale we use. It influences our perspective of life, our view about change, our comfort with the present self. Also, in our social interactions, the way the past is discussed and described is important. There is perhaps a possibility of being deliberate with memory and language, but only to a limited extent. Then there are boundaries, at least those inherent in the language.