Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  The last quarter of the 20 th century witnessed the emergence of the systems perspective in contrast to the reductionist approach that was followed earlier.   The reductionist approach viewed phenomena by their parts and treated them as such.   For example, if you have a headache you kill the pain with an Anacin ignoring the harms done to the body by the drug.   In the systems perspective, you look at the whole rather than the parts.   You use available knowledge and technology to find out the root cause of the headache and make the whole system healthy.   Any system such as the human body or a society is not just the sum of its parts.  A system is a complex and inter-related network of interacting components.  Relationships among the components are of vital importance in any system.  India is not just a sum of its states and union territories (Gujarata-Maratha-Dravida-Utkala) or a sum of the various religious communities (Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Isai).  Any nation is much mor

Over half a century ago, behavioural psychologist B F Skinner conducted a study with a group of pigeons in order to understand superstitious behaviour.  He used some simple technique to produce a certain physical response from the pigeons.  It was a response like raising a wing on the application of a stimulus. When the wing was raised, the pigeon’s behaviour was reinforced by giving it food.  The stimulus-response-reinforcement combo was repeated many times.  Finally the bird began to associate the behaviour (raising the wing) with the getting of food.  It thought that it got food because it raised its wing.  A superstition was born. Superstition is a mistaken understanding of the cause-effect relationship.  A few days back I was walking along the road when a cat, a black one at that, crossed the road in front of me.  There was only one other man walking in front of me when the incident took place.  He was rendered motionless as if struck dead by lightning.  He spat out hatefu

Whatever happens to me and is beyond my control is my destiny.  Natural calamities like earthquakes are beyond my control.  If I happen to be in a place where the terrorists have planted a bomb, that’s my destiny.  Accidents, diseases or other chance occurrences can alter my destiny in ways I could not have foreseen.  The stars that shine in the firmament above me are as much part of my destiny as is the darkness that descends ineluctably into the nooks and crannies along the way.     What I am is my destiny.  What I am is not entirely beyond my control, I know.  Except my genes and hormones.  Except the environment that brought me up and certain impacts of that upbringing.  “I am the sum total of everything that went before me...,” as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Child says, “of everything done-to-me.”  I am a product of the history that went before me as much as the one that is unfolding around me.  The martyrdom of two Prime Ministers of my country is part of my destiny as mu

The World Book Fair is the latest entertainment in Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.  The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) (always a handmaiden of the Central Government) has sent out a directive to schools in the National Capital Region (NCR) asking them to take students to the Book Fair with a view to encourage reading habits among the young generation. Ten years ago, I took a group of students to the World Book Fair with the noble intention that CBSE is now envisaging.  The students were ingenious enough to find ways of entertaining themselves in places other than the book stalls.  While returning to school I discovered that barring one student nobody had bought a book.  Most of them had not even entered the Book Fair!  (Credit must be given for their candidness in admitting that.) Today’s students are enslaved by the smartphone and the tablet.  While these gadgets can take one to the world of infinite knowledge, they actually end up as drugs that pander to the narci