Changing 'Values'

A person with a very good handwriting was ‘invaluable’ in offices, a few decades ago. The issue of a University degree had to be postponed, if that ‘expert’ in cursive special style of writing, recruited for this purpose happened to be ‘indisposed’. I don’t know how the ‘handwriting’ experts(both types, at writing, and at ‘matching’) are going to survive in the future? Good face(movie-hero) can be had with plastic surgery, and a good voice is sent behind the screen as a dubbing artist(nothing more)!

So also, totaling wizards in Banks are ‘redundant’ now. In wars, those hefty muscular heroes are replaced by slim, skinny and bony but brainy experts who handle guided hi-tech weapons, from a distance.

A rice cooker decides how much water is needed for the rice to cook, and spits out the rest through the tiny pores into outer container. Earlier, when new stock of raw rice arrives at home, ‘trial-cooking’ was needed, and then a discussion and debate, about the ‘behavior’ of this rice with water right now, and then projected guesses as it ages, was needed to decide the right proportion to cook it without wastage of starch. The cook-and-drain method obviated the bulk of indecisiveness.

What kind of ‘expertise’ is going to keep us afloat in this ever-fast-changing world is perhaps the toughest question! (The crowd behind us does not allow us the time to even feel the pain, when we fall due to a road accident, and starts honking, “asking us to get the hell out of their way”)! The simple change in the ‘version’ of a software makes the end-user-data-feeding-operator to begin “all over again” to get familiarized with the new ‘screen’ to ‘show’ his superior-speed-capability to retain his job! Should we learn a little bit of everything, just in case….? Oh! We are reminded of ‘Jack of all trades, but master of none’. ‘Still water runs deep, but if the bottom is too stuffy, this water becomes stale too soon, and might stink!


All this brings us to one basic question, what to do with these changing values?

A learned professor had given a wonderful talk, the gist of it is still circulating in emails (‘Have breakfast or be the breakfast’). Things and people both get outdated & replaced alike!

Well, like that precious metal Gold, we have to retain the flexibility, adaptability to accept a little of another rigid metal like copper to become a firm ornament, and also be prepared to re-heated, re-melted, re-cast yet again to become a ‘latest’ ornament in the society. It calls for a thorough grasp of that(concept of) abstraction of mathematics called algebra, so that we become a variable of all sorts in ‘simultaneous-equations’! I cannot help wondering at the wisdom of ancient Masters. Long ago they had said, not to be stuck to just the ‘decimal’ system. It is just a base for convenience. Better become adaptable to any base, binary, five-digit etc. They gave us the ‘formula’ too! It is the ‘vinculum’ which converts the decimal numbers into 5 number base, do all the jugglery and reconvert it back to decimal form for easy ‘reading’ of the results. The Sanskrit formula, (“Sutra” - a very deep word for ‘formula’, for this vinculum was ‘Eka adhikena poorvena”, or “one more than the previous one”. Translations are too restrictive to its intrinsic meanings, and consequently arrest its wider applications!). Already one branch of physics is working on expanding the ‘devices’ to work with more than ‘binary’ forms of computing. If this concept of a flexibility of mathematics seems acceptable, then perhaps, there is scope and hope that our mind is prepared to shut down its ‘logical’ workshop for a while, and allow its intuitive aspect to grow a little further, afford the balance of emotions, and let dexterity of handling ‘life’ flourish!

Somebody asked, “Do you think that moral values should change with changing times...as man makes new discoveries? ...to deal with new problems, hitherto unseen? Now, in this Scientific Age of Technology, information is available to all at a Click of Mouse. With new experiences come new thinking...So should Morals adapt too?!?
(http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ai6eMmHBBwd5SXBPG6HfFRyQHQx.;_ylv=3?qid=20100603231240AAsjst5 )

My wild guess was, that it was not about ‘Morals’ or ‘ethics’ like honesty, integrity, etc, but the ‘adaptability-values’ , the concepts that affords our flexibility to get along comfortably with innovations, that was being looked-out for, in the answers. And so, I gave this answer:
There was a sport called 'hunting' to prove 'manliness'. Even 60 years ago, they posed for a photograph, using that popping flash bulb, and slow film with manual shutter control, using a lid cap over the lens. Today, we had to ban hunting, for preserving the animal species.Eating camel meat in a desert was needed for survival. Today, it is not needed, since air-planes can air drop food. And there is the precious oil to sell to bring in greenery in middle east.Even though the religion permits a man to have four wives, people do not exercise this as a right, and find it difficult to support just one wife. May be it is time to re-look at this permission. It was relevant to protect the excess population of women who outnumbered the men once upon a time (men used to get killed in large numbers due to frequent inter-tribe-wars).A clerk with very good handwriting, and accuracy at adding (totaling) was considered great asset, and was given preference for employment and promotion. Today, computers do it flawlessly (including the spell-check/grammar)!Large turbans(many layers of cloth in that head-gear) was needed to preserve the 'head' from getting heated due to climate (sun-stroke). Today, travel is inside an air-conditioned vehicle, so head gear is a wastage of cloth.

Unquote:
(I cannot help looking yet again, at the clarity, when they divided values in the ancient days, calling it ‘Vaideekam’—destined-to-be-natural—and, Loukeekam—worldly, and hence time-specific, or time-relevant)
psn(13th June, 2010)