"People from developing countries think and act mostly from heart while people from developed world think and act from mind", someone commented on my blog. That is the reason India is a developing nation. To change things, we have to use our brain than our emotions. To become a developed nation, India has to think and act on data and facts.

I have been communicating on this line from beginning. In this information age, we must think and act on data not on emotions. It was the medieval period when people had no access to information to act or react. They were invariably advised to take help of their inherent perceptions but today things have changed. We have Google to support us. We have Internet to fetch information. We need to take data seriously. We have to unlearn old way of thinking and acting.

Recently, Infosys mentor N R Narayana Murthy flayed politicians for taking egocentric stand on several critical issues, including the Indo-US nuclear deal, without properly studying the facts. He is correct. Why politicians, I find mostly still taking egocentric approaches to their problems insulting whole wisdom sources.

"When I ask them have you read the 123 agreement, please tell me what areas which you see are bad, very few of them were in a position to give facts. However, they have already taken a position," the Infosys mentor said. We have to get the grasp of the issues or problems before we take a stand. Whether it is a question of higher education, reservation, Gujjars, RTI or regional languages etc, we must analyses data and study facts before take a stand. Blind following old paradigms are not going to make us developed.

Advising the students, he said: "Please avoid taking decisions based on ego, perceptions and emotions and go for an analysis based on data and facts." I personally feel that this is the high time to use the prevalent wisdom sources to take decisions.

He added, "Those of you who become politicians, I request you to have integrity of thought." Integrity of thought is essential for sound character, knowledge and wisdom. In this age when information is flooding our existence, it is important that we keep segregating wisdom sources for our present and future references.

"Quite often, I find that politicians when they are in a government they take a certain stand and when they are in the opposition, they take a totally different stand. When you ask them, what the reason is, what circumstances has changed, they have no answer," Narayana Murthy said.

Most of the people find the change of thought and stand in different situations as their strategic acumen and connect this with their skills but it is not true. It is fatal for wisdom source. Because of this situation, people remain confused. Generally they are unable to create right direction and right approaches to different problems.

Have clarity of thought, study, analyze and then take stand. Enrich and enhance wisdom sources!!

Review by Matheikal at
http://matheikal.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/11/unlearn-before-you-learn.htm

book motivation unlearn

Unlearn Before You Learn
By Kamekish , Promilla & Co Publishers, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 416, Rs 550

Do you think Mallika Sherawat did the right thing by breaking “her relations with her parents to pursue her career” because “her parents never agreed with her ideas”?

Do you think it is right to abandon your relatives and others dear to you if they become a liability on your way towards your personal successes in life?

Do you think that the traditional menu has to be replaced with “burgers, pizzas and so on” and that “chicken-roast, fish-fingers, paneer-tikka, etc have to come on the everyday menu”?

Do you think it’s right to have sex “with your friends, colleagues, seniors or juniors” because sex is fun and ought to be enjoyed to the full?

Do you think the traditional wisdom contained in such sources as the Gita, Koran or Bible or the advice given by elders or sages will keep you “poor and undeveloped”?

If your answer is ‘yes’ to all the above questions, you will love to read this book. If your answer is an emphatic ‘no’, you might want to know what the author has to say about such things? If you are not sure of your answer, the book can confuse you more.

The book is an ambitious endeavour aimed at revolutionising the thinking of the 21st century man. The author is convinced to the core of his heart that the age-old values and systems will not work anymore in the rapidly changing world. If you want to be successful you have to learn to look at the world and life in a new way. The book teaches you the new way.

Unlearning is the innovative concept developed by Kamekish based on his personal researches. The book takes a close look at human life from seven different angles, viz thinking and action, aspirations, sex, God, the negative role played by parents in the development of a child, need for a godfather and creating a wisdom domain. Very practical guidelines are provided in each section with some very interesting real-life or life-like examples. Some of these practical suggestions may shock or scandalise the sensitive or the conservative. One thing, however, is irrefutable: Kamekish is very forthright and earnest about his goals and motives, and is convinced that he can transmit those qualities to the disposed reader.

“Hard decisions have to be taken before you can advance,” says the back cover blurb of the book. Some of the decisions demanded in the book are indeed hard for those who still value traditional wisdom. But I feel Kamekish has captured the spirit of the age, the attitude of the present generation, and is successful in transmuting it into a systematic technique. The present young generation may find it easy to follow the suggestions provided in the book. For the rest, of course, it is a matter of unlearning if they wish to follow the new ‘course’.

Personally, my answers to the questions given at the beginning of this review are an emphatic ‘no’ and remain so even after reading Kamekish’s book. First of all, some of my conservative roots are too strong to cut (and I don’t intend to unlearn them). Secondly, I’m not interested in the kind of success envisaged by Kamekish. The book is an ideal companion for those who seek success at any cost.

Apart from the protests springing from my relatively conservative moorings are the apparent contradictions in the book. The author’s attitude towards god seems to be ambivalent, to say the least. “The people of the developing world in this fast-changing scenario need to be atheists to harvest the growth of civilization, just as a scientist should be an atheist, free from all preconceived notions and speculations imposed by religious beliefs, to experiment with new things,” says the author on page 211. However, the whole chapter is premised on the strong faith that god exists and he “is a very powerful invisible factor in life” (181). Yes, I grant that the author’s advice “to be atheists” is to taken as a metaphor for scientific impartiality. But what use is god without some element of blind faith on our parts? What use is god without an element of mystery that grips our hearts without any logic but with an irresistible charm that refuses to leave us even in the darkest moments of our life? A god who fits neatly into our system of thoughts and plans and schemes will not be a god but an assistant or an accomplice. Kamekish’s god suffers from that severe disability.

More surprisingly, in the chapter on godfather we come across Kamekish suggesting earnestly that horoscope can be “a real dynamic godfather (DGF)”. The argument is that horoscopes have the potential to induce optimism and confidence in us. In the author’s own words, “At times, they give you support, they give you direction, they congratulate you, they warn you, they advise you, they try to give you a future picture, and so on” (274). I think he mixed up between god and horoscopes.

The earnest suggestion given on page 138 under the section, ‘Detach immediately from lower levels,’ is: “Don’t keep thinking that you are responsible to bring up everyone. You have made something of yourself after a lot of struggle and you should remember that the more you move ahead, the better it is for you, your family, society and the nation.” Earlier, while talking about ‘fatal aspirations’, the author exhorted us that “We need to keep changing contacts, friends, relatives and even origin” (126). But later on page 271 one of his “personally generated” and learned-from-life quotations says, “If you like my work, tell others, if you don’t tell me but never ignore me for your betterment.” The contradiction between the quasi-Machiavellian egotism in the former quotes and the unabashed desire for altruistic sentiments in the latter is too glaring to ignore.

In many places in the book, particularly in the chapters dealing with god and parents, the author tries to repudiate as worthless the wisdom of religious texts as well as experienced elders. In many cases he is right, but not always. The purpose of religious texts is not to teach scientific truths. Their teachings belong to the realm of what Karen Armstrong calls ‘mythos’, the inner, spiritual world. Applying religious texts to the outer world of physical or historical reality is dangerous. This is the mistake committed by religious bigots and terrorists. The solution lies not in discarding scriptures altogether but in learning to apply them only where they should be applied. Similar is the case with ‘elders’. Experiences of a life lived in this world are more valuable than all the lessons from any number of books. Otherwise why does the author give us so many of his personal quotations which express the lessons he learnt “in the course of my struggle towards a better life”? (271)

I also think the views expressed in the book on sex are outlandish. The book advocates extreme libertarianism with respect to sex. It can have disastrous consequences on our civilization. Right now, without such open permissiveness we are already grappling with such deadly enemies as the HIV virus and other less deadly sexually transmitted diseases. In Kamekish’s grand vision such diseases may come under human control when proper sex education is provided to children. In reality, things are not so simple. Secondly, what about human relationships? In a permissive society, such as suggested by Kamekish, human relationships will be rendered too hollow for humans to bear.
Notwithstanding such contradictions or limitations, the book remains interesting to read. The earnestness of the author about his vision for the future is all too clear right from the beginning. His keenness to bring cheer into the lives of people is commendable. His style is very lucid, almost conversational and hence eminently readable.

Have you ever taken appointment to meet your mother?

Indians are stuck in their conservative and ruthless value system which has no future. The growing nation with the aspirations to become develop can not afford to preserve their old and ridiculous value system. Young vibrant and dynamic social values based on growth, happiness and enlightenment have to be created.

How many of you who are reading this blog have ever taken appointment to meet with your mother for one hour? What is the meaning and messages of this headline?

An Indian daily writes – I’m a mother first, then a CEO and a wife next: Pepsi Chief Nooyi. Other papers follow similar news article. Are these headings having any future?

And surprisingly this ‘mother first’ was given not to inform truth but given due emphasis to lure Indian ignorant readers. Indian dailies and intelligentsia are very busy in searching words and sentences to fool common people on the street. I doubt if many of you can even visualize these intellectual bankruptcy which is keeping the people in dark. I find them wide in open naked. Only nakedness has no value. We need to be cautious about its impact on our mind.

There can be many reasons for such reporting or writings going on in this country. But one reason could be the shortsightedness of people but other reason could be the sever lack of wisdom and knowledge at very high level in society. This lack of knowledge is the biggest handicap to achieve innovations and changes.

The paper reports directly from New York. I am aware about the other research related with parents conducted recently. Parents are also a selfish sole. They feel about children till the time they have hope. Parenst are a living being.

Due to my curiosity in such statements of Nooyi which are totally false, I read further. The gradients for achieving success and growth remain hidden. Nooyi named fifth most powerful women in the world by Forbes during a discussion on ‘Women and Global Leaderships’ organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Yale club tends to speak very general statements. She finds difficult at times essaying what she calls her most important role that of a mother.

“The other day, my 14-year old daughter sent me an e-mail asking for an hour’s appointment with me. The confusion and the worries over whether I am doing justice, make me tear my head. You want to be mother at the same time you have to take care of your career also,” she said.

Why could not Indian dailies give heading depicting some truth like as follows?

Mother meets with appointment with 14-year old daughter.

14-year old daughter needs appointment to meet mother.

CEO is confused and worried about her role as mother.

Woman wants to be mother.

CEO keeps career on top priority. And so on.

Nooyi said a woman has to play many different roles like that of wife and mother while all along keeping one’s career intact. What is so great in this statement of a CEO? Everybody has to deal with many roles. Even male CEO has to be husband, father, boyfriend, colleagues and senior or mentors for many and keep his job and profession intact. The role has to be many for any individuals. If women CEO have to do it is nothing great.

The reporting needs to be done based on more ground realities rather than on old conservatives feeling. The new trends need to be spread for the benefit of the people at large.

The fact is Nooyi remained in US for last more than four decades without even looking back home. Her aspiration was clearer than many. Her priorities were clearer than many CEOs. She could maintain her status by unlearning her ugly past with sever and brutal disconnection. She did it to succeed but that need to be known to people.

To be innovative is the biggest craze of the people of 21st century. Everybody wants to be innovative. The educated, well placed and good earning individuals are searching and devoting valuable time for innovation. But very few have knowledge of its internal ingredients. But the secret lies somewhere else. I firmly believe that there is an urgent need to unlearn past to become innovative.

I get surprise when people enter in domain of innovation through historically irrelevant characters and stories. The things which have been researched heavily, written extensively and propagated mercilessly have no innovation left in it. We need to look into more dynamic domain for innovation.

Unlearning past is tricky like learning must been just three generations back. Today we might feel comfortable to decide about learning needs but remain puzzled to find unlearning needs. But without framing unlearning needs, you can never dream to be creative or innovative.

Deepak Chopra rightly says that to create something new, the old has to die. When we are constantly recreating ourselves at material, intellectual and personal levels, what stops us to unlearn those irrelevant characters of history?

To create is to bring into being or existence. And to create something new, we have to die to what is. Something has to dies for something new to emerge.

“Every death is an opportunity for a quantum leap of creativity. Through death, we recreate ourselves at every level; the material level of the body-mind, the intellect, the personality. All of these have to die in order to recreate ourselves.” says Deepak Chopra.

Deepak says that with every death we store the wisdom of our experiences since the beginning of time and take quantum leaps of creativity so that we can look at ourselves again as if for the first time. I disagree with him. The things which are available today in 21st century were never there in the history of human kind. How can we store wisdom? Which wisdom is he talking about? The old wisdom which are stored have to be unlearned to be creative. And that is the challenge of innovation.

Deepak says many beautiful stances for unlearning needs but he remains quite away from reality. In biology there is a term called apoptosis, which means programmed cellular death, in the absence of apoptosis, cells forget to die and this condition is called cancer. Cancer cells don’t know how to die and in their quest for immortality, they kill the host body upon which they are dependent for their life.

Lack of unlearning is like developing cancers. Individuals, societies or nation which do not unlearn basically develop cancer and will die in the time to come. UPA governments under Sonia with phobia of Gandhi, Karat with socialism or BJP with nobleness are like a cancer for India. The cancer is going to kill India. Gandhi and communism are like cancer to the growing society. These cancerous ideas have to die from Indian minds to be innovative. These cancerous elements have to die for India to survive and grow.

Instead of focusing our mind, time and energy on irrelevant histories and characters, we need to let them die for recreating a new India. Innovation will emerge then. A new India with confident outlook will appear then.

Ignoring excellence is in Indian’s blood. It has been injected through a systematic and planned way. It’s going on since centuries. It is deep down in our blood. Unless we pledge to unlearn these, India will remain deprive of excellence. I request you all to sit for a while in quite environment and think over it. You will be able to reconnect.

We have to unlearn our habits of ignoring excellence at every level to catch and groom excellence in future.

Ignoring excellence starts from childhood. We ignore our child’s excellence at home. We ignore our family members. We ignore our females. We ignore our subordinates in office. We ignore excellence in our country. We ignore our capable leaders. As a nation, India is ignoring excellence even in twenty first century. We ignore excellence at every level.

Ignorance of excellence has cost us our brand. Since last sixty years of independence, we have been unable to produce excellent leaders, scientists, educator and entrepreneur. India has been unable to win Olympic gold medal, unable to contest for Nobel prizes, unable to contest for Oscars and so on. We lack excellence at every level.

We are unable to create world class products, world Class Company, world class scientists, world class research and researchers; we are unable to produce excellence.

Recently there was news in paper. “Indian scholars predated Newton find by 250 years.”

I do not know how our intelligentsia is generally taking this news and spreading the feelings of revenge and animosity but when I have to analyze this news, I shall analyze differently. There is no point of taking this news outwardly rather I prefer and suggest to take this inwardly.

First I will analyze the news then I shall give my opinion.

The news writes, “A little known school of scholars in south India discovered one of the founding principles of modern mathematics hundreds of years before Sir Isaac Newton, to whom the finding is currently attributed, according to new research.”

Dr George Gheverghese Joseph from University of Manchester says the ‘Kerala school’ identified the ‘infinite series’ – one of the basic components of calculus – in about 1350.

“The beginnings of modern math’s is usually seen as a European achievement but the discoveries in medieval India between the 14th and 16th centuries have been ignored or forgotten”, says Dr George G Josheph, University of Manchester.

Joseph made the revelations while trawling through obscure Indians papers for a yet to be published third edition of his best selling book The Crest of the Peacock: the Non-European Roots of Mathematics, the report said.

Because this is 21st century and we are from transforming India, I conclude two outcomes out of this news appearing in paper.

1. Western world understand the importance of India today much more than ever in the history so little what credit they want to share. The importance of India can not be ignored in today’s world’s politics so dig the history to credit Indians. They have money, resources and time to dig the depth in the history; we are still deprived of it.
2. As Indians we have been ignoring excellence even in 14th century. We have never encouraged our researchers or researches. We have given more credit to foreigners than our own. These are going on even today. Indians are busy in making some or other foreigners, their products, their brand famous.

We might have been told to celebrate 60 years of independence with more vigor but we are unable to give due respect to excellence even for our own growth and achievements. We miss success and contentment in the bargain.

This trend of ignoring excellence is going on badly since independence. Our history books in schools are filled with the glory of only few people ignoring the sacrifices of many because of many political reasons. We have chosen Prime Ministers mostly from one family ignoring the talents at large. We have chosen President like we are choosing our maid servants. We have never felt ashamed in selecting Jahil Singh as President to ensure the continuance of supremacy of some mediocre people. Till today, India is unable to find a big political figure to match our vastness. And in all these choices, the biggest sufferers have been the excellence.

This trend exists in almost all the area of Indian activities. The ignorance of excellence is celebrated joyfully in almost every field. We are still ignoring Infosys, Tata, Reliance Fresh, Narayana Murthy, Mashelkar or Sam Pitroda. We are so hesitant to accept new technology. We are hesitant to listen about innovation. We are forced to remain contented with the mediocre choice, trivial ideas and substandard products. In spite of the facts of availability of excellence, we have been unable to pick up and groom excellence.

A growing India needs to be conscious about these ground hindrances to achieve developed status. There is no point running behind irrelevant issues and waste our efforts, time and resources. No body will be able to make India proud with trivialize. India will have to come out of these trends to give due respect to excellence. You all will have to think over and extend your effort in search of excellence.

Unlearn Ignoring Excellences!!!!!!