And both can be diametrically opposite.

Besides, man can use borrowed powers: the powers developed by peaceful intelligent people can be used by destructive, unintelligent people. Creative growth solutions meant for peace and development can be used for destruction, genocide and terror. This combination of delusion and acquired potency brings forth counterfeit leaders and politicians and a hollow or forced governing system.

Every governing system no matter how beneficently conceived eventually tends to exploit the weaker segments of society. History shows us many examples of the worst implementations of benign ideologies. Communism conceived for equality and sanity has been applied by most insane dictators. Equal powers for all is used as all powers for one. Karl Marx and Lenin could never have imagined communism the way it was applied by Stalin.

Albert Einstein considered the theory of relativity that resulted in atom bomb, as his single greatest mistake in life. On the other hand, Harry Truman celebrated the night Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.

Money that was invented as an excellent solution for relative worth has become the root of all evil among humans. A solution designed for active easy flow became an excellent method for passive, concealed hoardings.

Any creative idea comes as a coin: with both positive and negative sides. The owner is free to encash any of its sides. He is free to buy bread or poison from it. Ironically nature has no substitutes for wisdom. And it has no shortcuts to acquiring it either. Hard earned knowledge always carries wisdom within itself whereas book-acquired knowledge doesn’t. A life lived honestly and fearlessly produces knowledgeable and wise men: men with empathy, righteousness and intelligence.

Contrarily, pseudo knowledge earned in degrees, skills and techniques results in egotistical, destructive and rigid men. Men who do not know the worth or effect of power never hesitate to use it for wrong reasons.

It is a paradox that the more knowledgeable a person becomes the less he yearns for power. It seems as if in some warped way, power attracts the corruptible. A wise person will always hesitate to lead masses whereas an immature person will always rush towards it. So much so that he wouldn’t object to crushing others to succeed in his ambitions. Men love to reap where they never sowed.

Acquiring power helps a person ignore or hide his inferiorities or complexes.

But the fact remains that the big shots are only little shots that keep on shooting. Contemporary society which confuses power with greatness, has encouraged this mutation to flourish. Our social system has a tendency to respect the wrong attributes in subtle ways. The human power pyramid is working upside down. Rather than respecting individuals we respect possessions. This is one of the greatest tragedies of life as we know it to be.

Without a doubt….the right power in right hands blended with knowledge, wisdom, love and respect for life is humanity’s most urgent need at this time.

My granny used to have a mango tree on her lawn. One evening strolling around her garden, I saw a chameleon sitting on the mango tree. The chameleon had just jumped from the creeper and its colour was slowly changing from green to brown. Suddenly a thought pumped in my mind, “It is a chameleon,” as my lips curled downwards in disdain.

Grandma was watching me. She walked slowly to me and asked, “Isn’t it amazing how it changes its color?” I looked at her and replied, “But, it’s ugly. It is a chameleon.” Grandma just smiled.

A few days later we walked to the market and grandma accidentally got in the way of a lorry. To avoid hitting her, the lorry driver swerved dangerously close to a scooter that was being driven by a young man. He lost his balance and crashed into a bucket of tomatoes. A bunch of young boys cracked up. Looking around angrily, the scooter driver yelled, “You ugly, old woman, look what you have done!”

Those words pinched my heart. Later that night I asked mom, “Ma is grandma ugly?”

“Who told you that?” Ma asked gently.

“The guy at the market said she was old and ugly.”

“But, she is the most beautiful women I have ever met. That means you have not noticed her properly.” Ma replied.

I went to my Grandma’s room. She was sleeping. I looked at her face. That was the most beautiful face I had ever seen: a face filled with compassion, love and grace.

She was beautiful because I was ready to see the selflessness and depth that had shaped her over the years. I could feel it because I wanted to feel her. Since then I have never seen an ugly thing in this world. Even today I can tell you that old is beautiful and chameleons are fascinating.

See without judgment, hear without prejudice and feel without inhibitions; heaven is here, here is heaven. All is beautiful.

Man is born with an inherent capability to distinguish between good and bad. No law can match the reasoning of an evolved being. Each of us has a clear understanding of where we stand, what we do and what should be done. But we all differ in our capacity to accept it, so we keep ignoring it to a much or less extent. These few great men were the ones who had the total capacity and courage to accept and change themselves for the better. And then they dared to ask humanity to do the same!

Jesus, Gandhi and King, were authentic men, as Man was meant to be. They were a yardstick for human existence; a challenge to the baseness of mankind; an Everest to hills. But, they reminded fellow men of their pettiness and shadow energies that hide inside undetected and unprocessed. There is a very ancient saying that if you want to make one stick look small, place a bigger stick adjacent to it.

Executing those like Jesus, Gandhi and King was an effort to re-establish our self-granted “superiority” in some way. But when one brutally murders someone utterly innocent, the collective guilt remains and stains the landscape of humanity forever. It can never be washed away with platitudes and conscience-prompted deification. Calling them “god” or “godlike” is a subtle way to cover up the guilt of all wrongs that we did to them.

It is also an excuse for us to stay the way we are as “ordinary” human beings. Our excuse is that only gods can aspire to greatness. We want to remain at the lowest rung of existence because being base needs no effort. It is an easy path. All good men are made into “gods” and “mahatmas” and all the bad ones remain as mere humans. Adolf Hitler was a human, so was Joseph Stalin and Mao-Tse Tung and every other brutal dictator and murderer who ever walked this earth.

Disturbing little insight into the human psyche isn’t it?

Where on one hand media has been a catalyst to development and awareness, on the other it has given birth to a mad race; a race that leads to nowhere. People run because others are running. More is less here. Consumers are becoming less and less consumers and more and more buyers. Necessity is no more the mother of invention but, promotion and consumer manipulation have become the pastors of need.

An ignorant consumer wouldn’t even realize the effect of repetitive threatening statements made by the advertisers of life insurance policy. LIC cashes on people’s fear. It is one of the most successful business models because it exploits the biggest inherent fear in an individual: The fear of death or of physical incapabilities. Many other advertisers manipulate consumers by displaying certain products as status symbol. Because the followed icon on TV uses a particular commodity, having that commodity gives consumer an inferential link to that celebrity. All that glitters is essentially gold in the new definition.

The human subconscious brain keeps collecting both necessary and unnecessary information for future, irrespective of their utility. When a person comes across a brand ten times in a day it settles in his subconscious mind. Brain works like a thesaurus, automatically suggesting all related events and names in need. So, the next time this person goes to grocery store that brand will automatically pop out.

A collective rut planned to trap common man’s pocket. The other day I read an article that says “imagine the plight of a man who has to drop his son to school every day in the same car” and “imagine the plight of a mother who does not earn much to give for her son to attend a disco party”. These plights are really hard to imagine. Are we so well settled that our plights have become limited to extended luxuries?

Housewives and children being the softest target are easily caught. Maximum commodities are planned to influence women. Recently I saw a research report on the differing behavioral learning capacities of men and monkeys. The results shown were astonishing. Similar set of tasks were given to a group of 10 to 13 year old children and 1-2 year old monkeys. In the first stage a painted box filled with chocolates was given to each of them. To open it, a front seal had to be torn off and then chocolates could be pulled out by using a small scale. This process was shown to monkeys and children and, each one of them was asked to take the chocolates from that box. All repeated the tasks as shown. In the next stage the box was kept open from one side and chocolates could be taken out without taking the seal and using the scale. But this was not shown to any of them. Each child repeated all three steps shown to him earlier whereas none of the monkeys used those unnecessary steps. They simply took those chocolates out. One year old monkey exceeds in reasoning to a 13 year old child.

Following a mob simply gives most people a sense of surety of purpose. A feeling of belonging to the right aim; because so many people are running in one direction, the destination must be correct. Each person is unique here. And each has separate aspirations, visions and need. In such a case only the ones who know their goal while running will achieve it. Following peers without reasoning can certainly leave others astray.