Silence is a rare commodity

Silence is golden, they say. Sometimes all that you needed to do was to do nothing. Precious time can be used to ponder, meander and introspect. These things are necessary to take stock of our performances in our duties as parents, siblings, offspring, employers, employees, pet owners or just as a mere person. Libraries, parks, open spaces, temples of worship and wilderness once were freely available for this purpose.

On the one hand, we say that resting is part of training and that still water runs deep or that only the empty makes the loudest noise. In the same breath, we also say that an idle mind is the devil's workshop, as if our brain must always be doing something at all times.

Perhaps, it was a ploy by the people in power so as not to make his subjects a thinking lot. The modus operandi is to keep their minds occupied only with their almighty bosses' rhetorics - no place for the lowly minions to start using the brains to start a revolution!

Fast forward to the present time, they are at it still. Our minds are constantly bombarded with stimuli, be it visually, auditorily, aurally or by other suggestions. Look at the library. There are computer terminals that have connections to the world wide web. Even in solitude, man is not an island. He is in touch with the rest of the world via his hand-held devices. His daily life is inundated with snippets of jingles and advertisements. 

At no time is Man's grey cells indeed at a standstill. It is consistently being overwhelmed with neuronal transmissions. Even at sleep, with all effort by the subconscious mind to purge off unnecessary information through dreams, there is no actual silence of the brain. 

Silence is not only golden as it prevents embarrassment when we cannot think of the correct answer, but it also paves a platform to look at our position from a third person's perspective. Things always seem crystal clear from the outside. 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Brands, the essence of life?

We have all been told that we are all irrational beings and we do things on impulses, much to regret later on. This is crux upon which the advertising business is based on. Their modus operandi is simple, create an illusion of attaining happiness with their product when the truth of the matter is that nothing like that exists - a painter gets an inspiration after smoking a particular brand of cigarette, an entrepreneur is successful because he drinks a particular liquor and life is so easy when they use a particular brand of mobile device!
What a pity, man is still not happy.
In the running circle, there is forever literature put forward on new studies which revealed such a new product is better than the one before, how everyone had got it wrong all the while and so on...
In the 70s sports footwear underwent major transformation with much science and technology input. After that, everybody pretty agreed on the need for footwear to run. Fast forward 3 decades later, suddenly all these footwear and cushioning have allegedly made our intrinsic muscles of our foot atrophied and redundant. Now we are told to go back to basics, back to the cavemen days when our ancestors were roaming barefoot hunting for their meals.
Then everybody went barefoot or minimalist. Now, this people are saying minimalist is not for them after having aches here and there.
All these while, the lone wolf runner in his mid 50s whom I occasionally meet on the Sundays' long run is and has been quite happy with simple unbranded unfancy shoes and on top of that, he just zooms past us effortlessly putting all of us, younger caps to eat humble pie with our branded spanking new shoes.
At the end of the day, it is only the bad carpenter who complains about his tools! It is the skill, not the tool.

Remember how India was banned from the 1950 World Cup finals because they wanted to play soccer bare-footed! (Don't know whether it is true?)

Ferocious animals, you and I!

The Century of Self (2002)
#1. Happiness machines

"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." —Adam Curtis'

Yet another documentary, in fact, it is his famous one, from the disillusioned Oxford academia who traded his robe and mortarboard for a place behind the camera. This time around, he tackled something quite unique and it is quite mind-boggling, actually.
It shows how the mind of the general public was and is still being manipulated by people in power for their own vested interest.

Irrational suppressed minds

The story starts in the late third of the 20th century in Vienna with Sigmund Freud. He postulated that human beings all have suppressed aggressive and sexual feelings. Civilization in essence, put a lid for them to demonstrate this primitive feelings and law and order prevailed. And that people in power were using this to control people in the name of mass democracy. His profession, of analyzing repressed memory and dreams was not accepted by Viennese high society then.
Over in New York, Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays was instrumental in using this same theory, not for therapy but to manipulate the masses to enrich American businessmen later.

Edward Bernays

In 1914, America joined the Great War. Bernays was employed by Woodrow Wilson as a publicist to spread the nation's intention to join the war of spreading democracy. After the War, he joined in the Paris Treaty. Bernays was impressed with the masses' admiration of the American president. He thought that if people could be manipulated during the course of the war, they could also be moulded in peacetime.
If in war, it was called propaganda, in peacetime Bernays called it 'public relations'. Bernays' public relations office received many clients. Philip Morris was one such client. At a time when smoking amongst women was a taboo, Bernays was approached to increase sales.

Torch of freedom?

With the help of psychoanalysis, he discovered that a cigarette was a phallic symbol, denoting power. So during an Easter Day parade, he paid a few ladies (non-smokers) to light up and join the parade, holding the lit cigarettes. He also summoned newspaper to print the whole fracas in their papers. The tagline was that they were holding the 'Torch of Freedom'. It went down very well with the women folks. After that was America stood for - freedom, liberty and Statue of Liberty. Suddenly women started smoking giving a false sense of freedom and control (of what?).

Torch of freedom?

Hence bred the generation of people who started buying things not because they need it but because they desire it. They think they need it and feel happy about having it. Consumerism had started.
To market the mass-produced things that started during WW1, this technique was taken to a different level. Products placements are done in movies and magazines. Paid celebrities and even psychologists (with biased studies) were used to endorse products. People without means were coaxed to venture into the stock markets, loans courtesy of the banks that Bernays represented!
It was a time when Bernays could do no wrong. Even the uninteresting President Coolidge had his image boosted with his help.
While in Europe, times were bad after WW1. Freud was bankrupt. Bernays marketed his books in the US which created lots of controversies but he capitalized on it and laughed all the way to the bank.
Freud, by this time, was quite disillusioned and pessimistic about mankind. He thought that the unconscious aggressive feeling was more dangerous than he thought. He described Man as a sadistic and ferocious animal that cannot be tamed from he saw in the Russian Revolution.
In the US, Walter Lippmann suggested that democracy was wrong for the unconsciously irrational people. He suggested a new elite to head the unbewildered herd! Bernays took this to stimulate the inner desires and manage them and increase his business. They had created contented individualistic docile happiness machines while the leaders do what they want to do.
On 29.10.1929, markets collapsed. Consumers stopped buying, Bernays fell from grace and violent street fights were the order of the day in the US and Europe.
Freud, stricken with cancer of the jaw, writing from the Alps, wrote that civilization is an expression to control the animal instincts of man. He cannot be allowed to express too freely as it very dangerous and they always need to control!
In fact, Adolf Hitler had this same vision. Democracy, he thought, unleashed dangerous individualism. He let the Nation plan for the people. It bound people together and forged the minds of people for the nation. Like a pack of wolves, they were aggressive to outsiders. This same irrational forces that drew people to products drew people towards Hitler.

Adam Curtis

Back in the USA, after the 1930's collapse, FD Roosevelt used the power of the nation to control the free market to strengthen democracy. In his New Deal policy, he appointed bureaucrats to plan mega projects to stimulate the economy. Roosevelt, unlike Bernays and the corporates, believe that people were rational! He appointed statisticians to obtain approval ratings on his policy. The corporates retaliated by challenging his policies. They lured the public with more emotional attachments. The 1939 World Fair showcased a futuristic view of America with lures of more new products!
1938 came and Annexation of Austria (Anschluss) again showed the irrational behaviour of man and brutal treatment of the enemy of the state.
A displaced Freud, in London, succumbed to his malignancy before witnessing the savages forces of Man at work in the death camps.
The first part of the documentary ends with the gruesome reel of dead bodies of mostly preteens thrown down a slide leading to a mass grave!

I can't get no satisfaction**

After completing two full marathons, looks like there is nothing more to achieve. Everything else seems pale compared to the joy being a finisher in the 42.195km race. Still, life has to go on and the joints have to be spared to last to the dying days - like doing a Fauja Singh at a ripe age.
After the KL Marathon, our group of similar minded running junkies seem to find content in our weekly Sunday Bkt Aman runs followed by the thosai breakfast at Brickfields. To break the monotony, a few runs have been lined up for the future over the next few months. First on the list is 'Adidas King of the Road' on 9.9.2012. 
Predictably, seeing the name Adidas, one can imagine many members of the brand centric Y-generation coming in droves. Sure enough they landed there all geared up with sports paraphernalia up the brim that would put any every warm blooded marathon running Kenyan to shame. You name it, they have it - head sweat band, arm band for I-phone, head phones for music, compression pants and T, and spanking new, hardly worn fluorescent psychedelic hued tick embossed Nike shoes to match!
It is a good thing that they were indulging in a healthy activity on a Sunday morning rather than being slumped in a post Saturday party stupor. It also gives a good feeling to old dogs like us to this dressed to kill newbies panting, jaywalking and holding hands with their loved ones rather than chasing the clock. Guess for them it is one of their social function for them so that they update on their social media so that they can be liked by hundreds of unknown people.
The run itself was boring. The kilometres of tarred road undulating like a waking dragon was less interesting than people watching. The race started from the artificial bourgeois neighbourhood of Sunway to the dirty part of PJ Selatan where low cost flats lined the skyline. The air also became fetid with open burning in progress. The SMEs of the working class - repair shops, cottage industries and smoke belching factories paved either sides of the later of our route.
Still managed to catch up with a secondary school buddy whom have not been so active in the running scene of late. Running and chatting was a breeze until I politely asked him not to wait for me and off he went!

Again the trip back was hindered by sea of multicoloured singlet donning 10km 'just for fun' runner who were hogging (there is a reason why this particular choice of word) the roads, all three lanes. The 16.8km'ers  had to zigzag their way like a knitting needle through these boyfriend/girlfriend, fiancee, soon-to-be-married, just married, one night standers/ hit and runners, or whether their relationship fits into, who were walking arm in arm or arm to hip!

With the good organisation of the organisers, we breezed through the finish line and collected the post run goodies. The outing would not have complete without our weekly dose of thosai. And so we did. Raj and I (the only valiant soldiers of the group of 4 to grace this outing) had ours and returned home to do our worldly deeds. (unofficial timing: 16.8km - 1h42m34s, 2 minutes off last year's timing)

**I can't get no satisfaction- Even though it is bad English and coming from an English band at that, it is Rolling Stones' all time high ranked song. At the time of release in 1965, it created quite with its unpleasant lyrics.(It starts off fine with bashing of the early creep of commercialization into media. Then Mr Thick Lips goes for girly action but the girl says wait till next week as she is loosing streak (slang for menstruation!) But they try and they got by....

Before the bra burning

When I first started viewing this series after somebody's recommendation, I thought it would be about the people in the dog eat dog world of advertising.
True the setting is in the office of a famous advertising firm in New York City set in the end 50s era. From the office, the series moves into the executives' bedrooms and their private lives. Actually, it takes a nostalgic look at the bygone era when men were kings and the fairer sex were second class citizens. Cigarette smoking was a socially acceptable norm, done by men and women - pregnant or otherwise. Every frame and every room is filled with someone smoking and is hazy with cigarette fumes. The general public is still unconvinced that smoking is detrimental to health and practically everybody is a chain smoker.
Men are held up on a pedestal as the hardworking head of the family who brings the bacon whilst the women finds great joy and self imposed themselves the divine duty of staying pretty at home and cooking fresh food for their weary men. The men have a good time socially with fellow workers of either sex and having affairs while the wives do not have the guts to raise their voice but instead decide not to disturb their tired husbands.
Alcohol is consumed liberally even during office hours and after. The ugly head of stress and the fad of seeing a shrink is slowly creeping into the lives of the bottled-up wives.
The way I look it is like this. The writers came up with this story after reminiscing the good times of the late 50s and 60s when men ruled the world. Probably, they are subconsciously trying to find out where they lost it!
Just finished watching Season 1 of Mad Men, more stories to come later. This series, a period drama, a multiple award winner, is praised for its historical accuracy and ability to bring to live the ambiance and mood of the early swinging 60s. 'Mad Men' is the nickname referred to the Ad Man then - the world was not sure what their job was!.

Don't expect others to do your dirty job!

Now that the dust has settled over yet another racially controversial ad over the telly, soon it will be yet another issue for everyone to ponder.
Actually if you ask me, (nobody will), if you want to fast, fast by all means. Just do not expect everyone else to fast with you. In fact, in my books, the basic tenet in doing penance is to control our inner desires against worldly pleasures all around us and to feel for those who are not lucky enough as us to have all pleasures in front of them. This act itself is supposed to humble mankind and to remind us that we are so fragile and weak as compared to powers of the universe (a.k.a. God).
This recent brouhaha just reminds me of a Tamil song in the late 70s where this guy goes on scolding everyone for hogging the road and blocking his path as he is learning to ride a bicycle! It is nonsensical for him to be so selfish and deny others from using the road for his convenience when it is public property.
Just like that you cannot expect others to change their way of life just to suit your flavour of the month. It is common sense. You cannot demand, people will give it to you when they deem fit, from your actions!
News on the controversial ad over 8TV...

A bit like the Tamil song from a movie in 1979...A little bit country...