Back from my India trip
Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well.
Well, I am getting back to my rochester life....it was hectic but trip to India was very nice - enjoyed good food (without adding any extra weight), visited few new places - I am sure it will make few very jealous :)
I also read couple of good books - one of them was Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence". It's well written and presented a good economic thinking framework. In my words if we want "basic human values" to sustain in our social value system then only way to achieve is we all should have only one identity i.e. we all should be known as human being nothing else. We are not muslims, hindus or christians - we should not be known as white, black or brown - our identity should not be Asian, African or Americans - we all are human being and all of us bear the responsibility to nuture the basic human values - should encompass all the other identities underneath this very human identity. It's really sad that we, as people work so hard to divide while we claim the rhetoric of equality.
From Washinton Post:
"Over this discursive little book lies the shadow of Sen's formidable Harvard colleague, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, with his celebrated theory of the "clash of civilizations." Sen has assigned himself the role of the anti-Huntington: Sen sees Huntington's thesis of cultural conflict yielding a one-dimensional approach to human identity -- and leading to the "civilizational and religious partitioning of the world," which can only occasion greater global disorder.
Here, in contrast, is Sen celebrating the complexity of human identity: "The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theater lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician," etc. One's civilizational identity is not one's destiny, Sen observes, and civilizational "partitioning" -- seeing the planet culture by culture -- does not capture the messiness of the world. This Earth of ours, he says, is made more "flammable" by warring definitions of human identity, rather than an embrace of the many different facets that make us human."
As a different note, here is another article that some of you might find interesting:
http://ia.rediff.com/money/2006/sep/14bspec.htm
Enjoy the reading and have a wonderful weekend :)
Cheers!
Well, I am getting back to my rochester life....it was hectic but trip to India was very nice - enjoyed good food (without adding any extra weight), visited few new places - I am sure it will make few very jealous :)
I also read couple of good books - one of them was Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence". It's well written and presented a good economic thinking framework. In my words if we want "basic human values" to sustain in our social value system then only way to achieve is we all should have only one identity i.e. we all should be known as human being nothing else. We are not muslims, hindus or christians - we should not be known as white, black or brown - our identity should not be Asian, African or Americans - we all are human being and all of us bear the responsibility to nuture the basic human values - should encompass all the other identities underneath this very human identity. It's really sad that we, as people work so hard to divide while we claim the rhetoric of equality.
From Washinton Post:
"Over this discursive little book lies the shadow of Sen's formidable Harvard colleague, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, with his celebrated theory of the "clash of civilizations." Sen has assigned himself the role of the anti-Huntington: Sen sees Huntington's thesis of cultural conflict yielding a one-dimensional approach to human identity -- and leading to the "civilizational and religious partitioning of the world," which can only occasion greater global disorder.
Here, in contrast, is Sen celebrating the complexity of human identity: "The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theater lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician," etc. One's civilizational identity is not one's destiny, Sen observes, and civilizational "partitioning" -- seeing the planet culture by culture -- does not capture the messiness of the world. This Earth of ours, he says, is made more "flammable" by warring definitions of human identity, rather than an embrace of the many different facets that make us human."
As a different note, here is another article that some of you might find interesting:
http://ia.rediff.com/money/2006/sep/14bspec.htm
Enjoy the reading and have a wonderful weekend :)
Cheers!
Comments