Personality does not Dictate the Discipline (Profession) they Choose.

There are different people and different personalities in the world. You make a personality concoction in your brain and you will find they are real. Everywhere everyone can be found. In the world there is nothing that is not there. Every kind is everywhere. I mean every personality is everywhere. This world is a perfect chaos. If you extend this a little more, we can say the chaos does not do any bias to any class, color, creed or religion. It has no bias to any region, or culture or geography.

There is a common practice to attribute certain traits to certain disciplines, regions, cultures or whatever way you divide humans into. In reality the personality does not dictate the discipline they chose. There are thousands of professions and none of them demand certain personality trait even though we think they do.

We like to think a politician needs to be a cheat or at least a cunning person, but it is not true. There are every kind of personality in politics and in fact the % of good, bad and ugly remain the same in all professions. There are as many percentage of "bad" politicians as there are percentage of "bad" doctors. Now obviously what does bad mean does not need to be explained as it does not matter. You can put any attribute and the rule still remains the same. There are as many percentage of philosophical thieves as percentage of philosophical religious gurus. You can keep going. There are certain professions we attribute honesty, honor or integrity to - Police, Doctors, Teachers. We like to believe they should have a higher level of attributes, but that is because of the profession being held in higher esteem. The people that enter these professions are just people. Similarly we like to believe underworld dons and people working in underworld business are just bad people but the fact is they are just people working in that profession, they will have similar percentage of good, bad and ugly.

Let's say that you could change anyone's profession, then if you put a thug in place of engineer and an engineer in place of thug the basic personality will turn out to be the same. If creativity is the hallmark of the engineer he will become a creative thug, because that's what he is. Similarly if the thug was a hardworking guy, he will be a hardworking engineer.

So there is no connection between profession and personality. This does on surface look counter intuitive, but if you think about it, it is very logical. If professions defined personality the segregation of human race would be so easy. If you believe in this theory the element of surprise disappears and you are more prepared to accept the world with more equanimity and understanding.

When a religious guru turns out to be a sex offender it becomes news because we attributed wrong traits to the religious guru profession. the percentages are the same, but the thug becoming sex offender is not a story because somehow you believe he is. The religious gurus are comedians, philosophers, sex offenders, highly learned about there profession, cheats, good at their jobs, boring at their jobs, interesting at their jobs in the same percentages as in any other profession.

Depending on your own bias you will only notice the stories you want to notice, if you are an atheist you will corroborate your religion hating theory by giving more prominence to support your theory. If you don't like doctors, you will like the story that tells that doctors did something wrong. If you have your brother in police you will find how angel the police are. But again the fact is - due to the nature of the profession the people in that profession have to do certain things as their daily routine but the personalities in those professions are as varied as the world is and they are microcosm of the world in every facet of human life. When you see a cheap and miser millionaire or a spendthrift beggar, it is not an anomaly, it is part of the percentages as all kinds are found in all professions / way of life. Professions don't define the personality, they are independent entity in the world more or less turning out to be in equal numbers everywhere.

 

In fact this does not just extend to personality traits in fact it extends to emotions. Percentage of happy and sad, spiritual and religious and scientific, passionate and dispassionate, also remains the same across the various boundaries.

The perfect chaos is because - you can go in and go out of the world, it remains the same - a perfect chaos.

Only Rich are in need of Money.

During 1990s, I was watching an old classic Raj Kapoor's 'Awara' on TV. One scene struck me - it was a conversation between the bad guy and his side kick. The bad guy was scheming about the demise of the protagonist and how to add misery to his life. The side kick is confused as asks the bad guy - why would he want to earn more money and inflict more damage to others when he has everything in the world. That's when the magical words come out of the bad guy --

" तुम नहीं समझोगे    सिर्फ अमीर आदमी को ही पैसे की ज़रुरत होती है   गरीब को तो सिर्फ रोटी चाहिए. "("Only the Rich are in need of money, the poor just needs food.")

At that moment, I understood it as a a sarcastic statement. Over the years, it acquired a cult status for me, beautifully put --how rich people are always running after money. Later, when I started working, earning on my own, became rich and met and became friends with a lot of rich people (though remember, no one admits they are rich), I realized this is a true philosophy and not just a sarcastic statement. It is true, as stated in another chapter of this blog - you crave what you want.(Link-Here)

 

The more rich you get, the more you care about money. The poor are satisfied if the basics are provided, but once you start getting something extra, the world of insurance and security opens up. You suddenly want to control everything around you. The ego is unbridled and you are proud of the past and want to control everything in the present and future. The poor live in the now, the rich live in the future. The need to insure my present becomes prime -- insure what I have does not go away. As the fear increases, you see your future as insecure, and the more you want to stow away for the future. The more the mind is free of the present, the more it thinks of what can go wrong. It's an endless cycle. For example, a person begins to obsess about their own future but will soon feel the need to control their kid's future also. If somehow that impossible task is done (and of course, it never is, there is no limit to obsession), then what about your grandkids? it is a never ending project. Money becomes life and life becomes money. The richer you get, the more you need it, and the more people like the sidekick in the film wonder why does he need it? What the sidekick does not realize is, there are people poorer than him who are asking the same questions about his motives.

This is a beautiful dance of life -- all poor want to be rich, but as you get rich, you move away from living in the present and dissatisfaction of not able to control everything sets in. Then rich are told in expensive seminars and by religious gurus or on facebook posts... that you need to live in the present and basically the way poor live... money can't give you what you look for but obviously can't let go of what you have .... just to be happy. ah.. life is beautiful.

Kill the Messenger Not the Message.

Part of finding freedom is getting rid of natural tendency of associating with famous people. At a very small age we find out that success (Success Definition described in another posting) is everything and if you can't be successful at least you need to associate yourself with the successful. Success or associating yourself with the successful becomes the same thing. This molds itself into celebrity culture, this in turn then affects the issues you chose to support and oppose. If you think about any message or issue you support - Non Violence (Gandhi), Global Warming (Al Gore), Healthcare Reform (Obama), Gun Control (NRA) it automatically gets connected to a celebrity. Unconsciously or sometimes consciously the issue is relegated to the background and celebrity becomes the key issue. So all that message does is promote the celebrity not vice versa. If you need to discredit the message all you need to do is - discredit the celebrity (Kill the messenger). If you want to make a dent in global warming talk find out that Al Gore lives in a big house and has a big carbon footprint and suddenly the supporter of global warming is on the defensive. This you can see on a everyday basis. The politics of the world or discussions in a Birthday Party all follow this pattern - be quick to discredit the celebrity associated with the cause, cause dies on it's own. Find faults in Anna Hazare or his team to kill the Lokpal Bill. This is public display of how to oppose an idea by discrediting the messenger. This awareness makes us more aware of what is going on and keeping idea and advertiser of idea separate. It is like going into a store and saying it does not have good clothes because the mannequin in the store don't look real. 

The second part to this idea of killing the messenger not the message is - internal. To evaluate any idea the first thing you need to do is kill the messenger. Once in your head the messenger is removed you can evaluate so much easily any issue you are presented. If you are dis-passionate about the celebrity then the message generally has not much of a 'bias' or 'drama' left with itself and it is a simple connection you need to make or reject. Even a fun dumb argument like pull shot is more attractive shot than straight drive or not, is a matter of simple choice. But if you now say Ponting played the best pull shot Vs Tendulkar played the best straight drive. Now all the emotions come to the fore and even if you never cared about one shot over the other, now you do!. This is the messenger effect - kill the messenger, not the message. 

Greed of the Crown makes you a Villain.

I was watching the new television series 'Mahabharat' and I came across a beautiful exchange between Kunti and Vrushali (Karn's wife). I have no idea if original Mahabharat has this exchange or this is interpretation of the director. But this exchange does make this philosophy look good.

Karna - में विवश हु, क्युकी अब मैंने अपने मस्तक पे मुकुट धारण कर लिया है. मैं  इस मुकुट के बोझ से विवश हुँ. 

Vrushali - मुकुट धारण करने से तुम इतने विवश हो गए हो की धर्म जानते हुए भी अधर्म के पक्ष में हो.

Kunti - मुकुट पर कलंक मत लगने दो पुत्र कर्ण, मेरे पुत्र भी मुकुट धारण कर चुके हैं, मुकुट नहीं पुत्री मुकुट की लालसा व्यक्ति को बुरे कर्म करने पे विवश कर देती है.  (No it is not the crown that makes you do things that are not right, it is the greed of the crown that makes you do bad things.)

Everyone has a crown on their head, it could be your job, your relationships, your responsibility. These can bog you down from doing the right things or so we think. It is generally assumed that we have to do things because our job demands it. A manager can be rude to the employee because he is asked to. He hides behind the company policy, he  has targets to meet etc. He won't be rude to random guy on street. Parents hide behind parenting. Even social experiments show that regular people can be cajoled into killing others if they are provided the setup where somehow they can mortgage the responsibility of their actions to others. Even Nazi soldiers who were killing babies were not born evil, they were just following orders and duties which is another way of absolving yourself of your own actions. We are no better, at first opportunity we look to absolve ourselves of responsibility we hide behind the 'crown' and do the stuff easily that would have been uneasy.

In general just like Vrushali and Karna we all think that it is not me, it is my crown. We make 2 separate entities within ourselves that division of self creates division in heart and mind leading to unease. The moment we talk about our crown be it - your position at your job, family, society. As an engineer I need to...,, as a Dad / Mom I have to.... as a friend.... as a citizen... as a XYZ....  STOP. that is a trap. Check again, is it because of the crown you are going to do something which the basic you won't allow? Many people look completely different when at work (or when they are acting out one of their crowned responsibility) Vs when they are themselves. 

The position is seeming to make this happen but the fact is the greed or love of that position is making a person do bad things. Greed of staying the Dad, or a Friend, or Manager, or whatever, makes you do worse things than you will allow yourself to do.