How educated politicians can make a difference in our country

Have you ever thought why most of the development in India has happened ‘despite’ the government rather than ‘because’ of the government?

In India, the top career choices of students (or their parents) have been medicine and engineering since independence. Politics as a career is not a chosen profession other than for those who parents were senior politicians. Our current crop of politicians are those who failed to get into the choice professions or those who lacked the necessary discipline to complete any good course of education. Most of them, if they have some education, have that only in paper and would have passed their examinations by luck or through other means.  These guys, when they eventually get elected, cannot be expected to do anything good for the people or the country. First of all, they lack the intellectual capability to make decisions that are best for the people and the country. Secondly, they lack the discipline and self control required when they get power – as they say, ‘Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely’. This lack of self control makes them do things that do not lend any support to the wellbeing of the population or the country. Unfortunately, poor learning skills and poor self control have a high degree of overlap and this compounds the problem.

Compare our situation to that in some of the developed countries. The first one that comes to mind is the US. Educationally, US presidents, senators and representatives have been good if not exceptional. Obama had his undergraduate degree from Columbia and law degree from Harvard. Bill Clinton had his law degree from Yale. Think of Britain now.  David Cameron had his education from Eton and Oxford. David Miliband, the ex-Labour leader studied at Oxford and then MIT. Tony Blair is an Oxford alumnus. In Germany, Angela Merkel has a PhD in Quantum Chemistry and has numerous publications to her credit. In France, Francois Hollande also had a great education before starting his political career. If we go further down the pecking order, and look at the educational achievements of senators in the US, most of them are qualified attorneys (JD degree) and please note here that the law degree in the US should not be compared to the equivalent in India. In the US, there is a highly selective entry process for the law degree. Similarly if you do some quick research on the educational background of the MPs in Britain, you will realize that they all have a great foundation in the liberal arts or science or judiciary. Further, many of the legislators in the developed world had a distinguished career in the armed forces.

If you now compare this to the situation in Kerala, it does not take long for one to realize that we are being governed by a set of legislators who do not have the intellectual ability to make a decision on behalf of the population. Would you want to be treated by a doctor who does not have the required credentials? Here, these uneducated buffoons are not treating just individuals; they are setting the trajectory for a huge population.

Of course not all politicians and leaders need to have formal education. Education can be had from life experiences, reading and pure intellectual curiosity. If at least half of the politicians in our country had good education, then the intellectually challenged politicians would have found it impossible to move to senior positions within the political parties, while others who may be talented but do not have formal education would still make it through to the top.

What we need is a mind bend at this point, a shift in preferred career choices. We should encourage smart kids to consider a career in politics. We can change what politics means in our country over the next decade if we do this. A political career may not fetch the same monetary rewards as a career in some of the other realms, but the responsibility and the power that come with an elected office will more than make up for that. We need to change if we do not want our children to have to dance to the tunes set by those who do not know what is best for our country. The only other option would be to migrate which is never as good as being able to live in ones own country.

Tech based gun control is the solution

Let's face it! The President does not wish to alienate the NRA. But there is an easy way to enforce gun control without controversy. Establish Gun Free Zones, just like smoke free zones. Make this mandatory by forcing gun manufacturers to add electromechanical triggers that are activated by GPS and fingerprint scans. Set it up in such a way that as long as the gun's GPS recognizes that it is in a Gun Free Zone, it does not activate the trigger even if pressed. The fingerprint scan system will ensure that only the person who purchased the gun can activate the trigger. The government can schedule a target timeline for gun manufacturers such that by 2017, all guns manufactured or imported into the US have this system incorporated. Another tech option would be to include a triggering avoidance system (like the collision avoidance system currently available on most airplanes) - gun free zones will have this system in place and all guns sold in the US can be mandated to have this included based on a timeline. Any organization or location can install this system, whether it is public or privately owned. That way, the NRA can eventually exist within the private homes of its members and everyone else in the US can send their children to school safe.

On Ego

Have a check built in to your thinking process so that the second you think you are smarter than anyone else, a red flag shoots up. The moment you realise that whatever you think you achieved over anyone else was just a random occurrence because of infinite other things that fell in to place starting from or even before the Big Bang and that your current situation is so fragile that just one wrong cell division out of about 4.2 million that occur a second that goes unnoticed by the body's immune system could mean the end of you, all ego should vaporise.

Self Control

Self control is one of the key variables that drives success in life, however you may define it. And now self control has been linked to glucose levels in your blood! That means, what you eat and when you eat has a role in your success or not in life. Lower glucose levels have been tied to poorer self control in studies recently. You need a steady blood glucose level to get through the temptations in life! Complex carbohydrates are the way to go. Of course physical activity is linked to your level of self control as well. Exercise helps you avoid thoughtless decisions and actions, which means you need to put more thought and action into getting a workout whenever possible without falling to the temptation of avoiding it. Apparently recharging yourself with a good night's sleep is also essential if you are to have sufficient self control in a world full of distractions. Healthy food, exercise and sleep are thus key to your future! These were available aplenty historically - so were our grandparents better at self-control? Tough to decide though since distractions and options were much fewer for them as well. If you have ideas on this, please put them down and keep this thread moving.

Why fruits of your labor should be recycled

Don’t hold on to anything. You came into this world with nothing and you will leave it with nothing……sure you can keep your ashes in orbit until singularity happens again probably if you keep hold of enough money and make necessary arrangements in advance. Those ashes don’t help anyone and leave a carbon footprint as well! What you can leave for posterity is a copy of your genes and that doesn’t cost you much including kitting them out to succeed in life. Beyond that, use whatever you have to help your fellow travellers in this journey. Gates and Buffet are doing that and a whole set of folks who they could convince to do the same are doing that too. Life is commerce in essence. But the spoils of commerce, once you have managed to usurp as much as you can – through crook or fluke, which are both random, should be spent to help those who got the short end of the stick in their own random walks.

If you keep holding on to those spoils, one of the following is bound to happen:
1) The beneficiaries of your will would first get pissed off at why they did not get a lot more than you gave them and then forget you within 12 months
2) Your half genetic copies will not have the motivation to succeed since they can wallow in the luxuries you have given them without so much as moving their backs - and a chunk of the spoils will end up with government as inheritance tax
3) If you do not have half copies of your genes, the fruits of your labor will end up with the government

Isn't it better to just spend whatever's left on your fellow beings before Mr. Grim Reaper comes looking for you?

Living in the present and not letting the past or future bother you

Live in the present. There’s no such thing as ‘I shouldn’t have done that’. Whatever you have done has happened already. There is nothing much you can do about it unless you fancy travelling in time or something. All that has happened in the past is experience for you, life experience. If you don’t do much, then you don’t get much experience either. With experience comes the ability to rebound and resurrect. Everything that happens is random. There is no such thing as good luck or bad luck. Living is just taking chances every moment. And there is no way you can decide to take the right path since no path is right until hindsight. Even if in hindsight you feel and others feel that you took the right path, everything that happens from that point on is still random. So what looked right in hindsight at T can look wrong in hindsight at T+1 or T+2. To hell with hindsight then. The best path forward is what your gut tells you is the best path forward. Don’t trust any guru or any consultant or anyone beyond your gut feeling. Don’t spend too much time pondering about anything either. There is nothing that is worth thinking too much about in life really, only because there is so much in life to ponder about and you won’t get time for that if you get stuck on one thing. There is no such thing as following a plan in life then. Take life as it comes and follow whichever path your gut tells you is right.

3 study tips that I have found helpful

If you want something you read to stick in your memory, please read sections of it and write down as much of it as you can remember immediately after. If you keep doing this for each section, you are likely to remember more than if you had just read the material a few times. Even writing down just the relevant points immediately after reading wouldn’t help as much.

If you can’t concentrate when you are trying to read, the best medicine is to take 5 deep breaths. You should start by exhaling fully – count to 10 slowly – and then inhale deeply and exhale fully counting to 10 slowly. Do this 5 times and you will be ready to read and absorb anything in your memory.

Whatever you are trying to learn, please always try to apply it to a real life situation, whether it be math or physics or chemistry or business studies. That way you will understand the concept and will not forget what you learned that easily.