How to spell "Genui(o)s"?

Opportunities are dawning on the youth of emerging India like never before.....

But the younger generation, who are getting opportunities (jobs) seems to be so content with landing a job in a BPO or a IT "Big 5", who does mass recruitment....the only pride for these people seems to be "pride" in working for these companies. I once asked a group of these bright kids to spell a word that implies "focussed intelligence and great insight"....they spelled "genious". Then I asked how many people disagree with that spelling, only one girl disagreed. I asked her to give the spelling that she thinks is right, she said "Genius". I again asked the group whether they agree with it. No one agreed. I asked all of them to look into dictionary....lot of them looked puzzled....(probably, they haven't heard of terms like "Dictionary", "Encyclopedia" etc.,) They did anyway (because, I forced).

What I realized is the conviction (rote learning) with which we are trained indicates, how "close" minded we would become! One of the life skills that I realized is "continuous learning". If we are not conditioned for this, we would build a weak nation. For example, it is a common experience that with every monsoon, the roads gets eroded and there will be pot holes....., then right after the monsoon, there will apprently be new layer on the roads ( not new roads). Then, there will be be monsoon, potholes, new layers...the cycle continues...endlesslessly. Do we all agree, this is a healthy cycle? Do we think this cycle can be broken? Why we do not do what we know? One reason I think is due to our "conditioning" of lack of "continous learning" and "continous improvement" mindset. I am not pointing to one set of people, it is across all sections of the social groups.

Hmmm...who worries about all this, we will import "Road laying" technology from Germany(if at all a crisis arise), because we are a super power and we have zillion trillionaires in our country!! After all, our core competency is "software support and maintenance" and all our engineers are doing a fabulous job at it.

Truth transcends emotions

In a world we live in, where there is a lot of social, political and econimic conditioning, propoganda, we often give in to notions and cliche's. Often we consider these notions as "laws". The rules of thumbs would be considered reality.

Some examples of this thinking is :

1. Real Estate prices always increases ( Truth : It is a market and subjected to ups and downs)

2. We have to "work hard" for money (Truth: "work smart" and create value to become rich)

3. Eating Bitter gourd, Fenugreek will reduce diabetes!! ( Does it? Were there any scientific evidence?)

4. "You will die if you eat snake gourd with eggs" ( I must have died several times over!!)

5. India is the greatest country ( the assumption is all other countries are not as good). ( Really?)

and many, many more!

Most of these arise, in my understanding that we are emotionally attached a notion that reinforces our deep rooted "insecurities". But, these could be understood in the context of, "feel good" factor. It often is not necessary to rely "unfounded" facts to "feel good". Even if we can accept the "truth", which again is subjective, we can be happy knowing that we have learned something about ourselves, thus achieving one step closer to knowing our true selves...good, or bad or ugly. Accepting the very "truth" is the first step towards achieving "nirvana".

To glorify ones' legacy need not result in putting down other achievements. Once we have the openness, we would achieve and scale bigger heights as human beings.

Symbiosis in Human interactions

In the very first blog, I have spoken about "collaboration". "Symbiosis" is a related term which means "living together of unlike Organisms". When applied to people, everyone is unique, but we live in communities, sometime asserting "Individuality", sometimes coming together as "brethren".

In management parlance, the relationships between two parties are classified as:

Win/Win : Both Parties win (Mutually beneficial Relationship)
Win/Lose : One party wins, the other loses (Exploitative Relationship)
Lose/Lose : Both are parties lose (Total productivity, Net-Net gain is negative, hence deemed that fatal for the ecosystem )

But, when I recently chanced upon "Symbiosis" while checking out a Biology textbook, I thought another dimension needs to be added to qualify relationships....based on the outcomes. Here they are :
Mutualism : Any relationship between individuals where both individuals derive a benefit.
Commensalism : A relationship between two living organisms where one benefits and the other is not significantly harmed or helped
Parasitism : A relationship is one in which one member of the association benefits while the other is harmed.

Mutualism can be attributed to a Win/Win relationship and Parasitism can be attributed to Win/Lose scenarios. The dimensions that can not be mapped directly are Commensalism and Lose/Lose. In Biology, Lose/Lose is not discussed because, it can not exist, if an ecology needs to survive. Lose/Lose unique to Human relationships ( because of developed intelligence and ego).

Commensalism is also unique to Biological world, if it were to be translated to the human relationship, the benefactor needs to be a Saint or a Philanthropist. In a world where deprivation and "abundance mindset is in short supply, commensalism is a distant thought in general Human relationships.

But, understanding of these two realms also gives us a sense of how we need to evolve in harmony with Nature.