Q: What kind of approach actually brings the intended change the society wants, a gradual introduction of ideas or forceful activistic ways?
Krishna : If I say, neither?
You want social reforms and introduce ideas. Like dowry taking or giving are not good. You bring in legislation. How many people accepted it? Very few.
Activists too tried on this issue but failed. Why?
For centuries women have been asking for equal rights. Laws were made. Activists shout everyday for equality on streets. But still success evades them. Why?
Do you know what type of people really accept change? Genuine critical thinkers
who analysed the situation thoroughly using only genuine facts and really have the courage to go against the tide because of their mental capabilities. How many people belong to that category? Very few!
Many people don’t even know what critical thinking is. And how to develop it and how it works. Many people don’t even know the correct facts to guide their thought process. They blindly believe whatever they come across, what their friends, relatives , colleagues or groups or leaders say. Without giving a second thought, they start reacting instantly. Like it happened in mob lynching cases recently.
Then how can you expect change with traditional methods? Unless radical changes occur at the stage of human thought process, and when this change is brought by changes in the education training, mere introduction of ideas, shouting on the roads, bringing legislation don’t have any effect at all! On the contrary, research has proved that people try to get attached to their beliefs more severely and closely and reject new ideas without even giving them a single thought as cognitive dissonance is highly discomforting.
Q: I got married recently. My husband says I will have to forget my parents and siblings are my family now. What should I do? Does my new family is my only family now? Doesn't my earlier family count now ? Don't my parents and siblings don't come under 'my family' now?
Krishna: Yours' is a medium type.
One of my colleagues once told me as soon as she got married she told her husband that as she spent about 27 years with her parents and siblings and just 27 days with him, her association with her old family counts more than her new family of 27 days! She also added that her husband just laughed and kept quiet.
But not every husband will be like my colleague's husband.
Another girl told me she left her husband because he brought pressure on her not to look after her old parents. ''How can I do that? I am my parents' only child. If I don't look after them, who will?"
This is another extreme.
These are the dilemmas Indian women face soon after their marriage.
But I think even if you get married, you cannot say your old family is not your family now. That thinking denotes patriarchal mind set. Indian customs and traditions say as soon a girl gets married her new family becomes her only family and she has to abandon her old family name, and take a new one. Modern day women are rejecting that mindset.
Your genes you inherited from your old family don't get change after marriage. All that nature gives you doesn't get change. Then why should you think your old family is not yours anymore? It is yours as much as your body and all that it consists are yours. You cannot abandon your old family. It is yours, you're born into it.
A married woman has two families. One - her parents' and the other one - her husband's. Nobody can take away that right from her. She shouldn't forget that she still belongs to her parents' family and still has a responsibility towards it.
Try to convince your husband about it.
Q: One of my uncles is very abusive. He also harasses me very much. I tried my best but couldn't change him. I don't feel like talking to him or dealing with him anymore at all. But my family members say we cannot abandon our relatives just like that. What should I do?
Krishna: If he is still causing you severe distress, and if all your efforts to change him failed, it is better to keep such people away.
Relations can flourish only when both the parties try to work towards its upkeep. If one person misuses it, it cannot be maintained. Just for relations' sake, you cannot forego your peace of mind. You have a life to live, not to cry and spend in distress all the time.
A-B-A-N-D-O-N your uncle, PERIOD!
Q: My boyfriend demands a lot from me. I have to dress according to his whims and fancies. I have to eat what he likes. I have to do only what interests him. I am feeling distressed. What should I do?
Krishna: You get out of this situation and find someone else if that boyfriend of yours is making your life miserable over these things. When you’re young, that answer isn’t as clear—you think you need all these time wasting and emotionally draining people around you. You get emotionally attached to them. You think that is what it’s all about—compromising with every loser that crosses your path even if it is emotionally damaging to you. But when you’re older, you learn that you don’t have time for time wasting, emotionally draining nonsense, you don’t need it or the person causing it, and you kick them out of your life. You have one life. You cannot waste it in distress all the time. People who don't treat you as a human being don't deserve to be in your life.
Q: If the Sun represents the soul, what does a weak Sun indicate with respect to the soul?
Soul?! What is it according to science and scientists?
Whatever connections people make, therefore, are imaginary. While imagining something, you can imagine anything you want and interpret it anyway you want. But it won’t be a fact, just fiction.
Q:When someone starts off with saying "I'm not trying to be negative, but…" and continues with something negative, how do you respond?
Some people think sweet coats can cover the bitter pill they are about to give you. That camouflage can take away the ugliness. I have read some articles which say how to put bad things before people. But I am not convinced about the ways some people proposed. That is underestimating the smartness of people listening/reading. Therefore, I think, putting things exactly as they are is the best way. Even if people get annoyed, sooner or later they will get convinced about your honesty. A constructive criticism is a constructive one. People will get benefited by it, even if it is negative.
This is not undermining a destructive one. Smart people can differentiate between things. And can realize who is what and why something is being said.
If anybody tries to sweet-coat a bitter pill, and try to hoodwink you about their honesty, hit the ignore button and move on. That is the best response you can give the person.
Q: Is it possible to find out what a person thinks by looking into their eyes?
Krishna: Sometimes you can read a person’s face or eyes if they are very expressive. However, some people can easily camouflage their feelings and thoughts and there is no way of knowing what these ‘good actors’ are really thinking.
In such cases if you carefully observe the words they are using, the way they are using them, you can ‘read’ some of their thoughts. If you can check their body language, it gives more clues.
It is the sum of eye and facial expressions, body language, the way a person speaks, the words he uses, the ‘acting sequences’ of his behaviour that reveals what is going on in a person’s mind. You have to have very good experience to read the mind language without going wrong.
Machines can do a better job. By taking the brain maps of a person while he is thinking, you can exactly say what is going on in his brain or mind.
Mind-Reading Computer Instantly Decodes People's Thoughts
Q: How do you uncover the truth of your own soul?
According to science there is no evidence of soul, in the first place. When something, which is thought to have associated with your physical body, doesn’t exist in this physical world, all that you have is imagination to describe it. When you imagine something, you can creatively describe it in several ways and interpret it in any way you want. That is why so many people describe it in different ways depending on their cultural and religious conditioning of minds and think their’s is the right explanation.
And if anyone tries to question it like science does, they try to keep them out of their world by saying science cannot deal with it. It can. Like this …
Soul?! What is it according to science and scientists?
Now how can you uncover truth of a thing that doesn’t exist? Just imagine something like you imagine soul! And try to connect both!
But it won’t become a fact. Just fiction.
Q: Is Faith just a form of ignorance? What separates the two concepts?
Ignorance, not knowing the real reason for something happening, can cause fear. Then you don’t know how to correct a situation, because you don’t know how and why it happened, make you search for alternative ways to deal with it.
During the earlier times this used to happen very frequently. People saw lives with pains, tragedies, sorrows and several things around them. They wanted some kind of theory which could explain all this. Therefore, they thought about explanations and theories which gradually led into beliefs. These beliefs, which were influenced by the times they lived in i.e., non-scientific reasoning, were products of constant fear of the unknown. Instead of taking on the fear head on and finding permanent solutions, they just escaped into the world of false beliefs that gave them temporary relief. In a world where people clutch at all kinds of straws to make some sense of the madness around them, truth can never be found. Instead of analyzing, examining and understanding why something happens and how it should be handled realisitically, they tried shortcuts by bringing unknown and untested factors to interpret things! These beliefs divided people because each person had a different set of experiences and those in turn influenced their explanations and the resultant beliefs based on their mental makeup and situations and not on one truth. That's how different beliefs - both religious and non-religious - originated.
Science and Spirituality
I read an absorbing research paper on this sometime back and wrote on it too. The study was done on fishermen.
When Trobriand (in South Pacific)Islanders went fishing their behavior changed, depending on where they fished. When they fished close to shore—where the waters were calm, the fishing was consistent, and the risk of disaster was low—superstitious behavior among them was nearly nonexistent. But when the fishermen sailed for open seas—where they were far more vulnerable and their prospects far less certain—their behavior shifted. They became very superstitious, often engaging in elaborate religious rituals to ensure success. In other words, a low sense of control had produced a high need for superstition. One, in effect, substituted for the other.
Science's rules are unyielding, they will not be bent in any way fo...
On the other hand if you have knowledge about something, you use it with confidence and try to solve the problem without external emotional assistance like faith.
Yes, in a way, lack of knowledge and the resultant lack of confidence cause fear, and these in turn make people take emotional external support in the form of faith.
Q:What is the term dharma according to science? Why do we believe in it? If yes, can you give a scientific reason behind it?
Duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and "right way of living" are taught in religious texts.
When it comes to questions of morality and meaning, the way we go about deciding what is right and wrong, and meaningful or not, is not the same as the way we discover what is true and false or facts. Some emotions like kindness and empathy will be involved. Controlling them is highly important to arrive at a good decision. Just because a criminal cries and acts funnily, you cannot support him. Oh yes, his brain could be differently wired! You try to analyze what could make any person behave so differently from others. On the other hand you can empathize with a poor thief when he steals food. But if you are a logical thinker you will try to understand what circumstances made him stole the food and try to correct them. Critical thinking given to us as part of our scientific training helps here.
If something causes pain or emotional distress to a person, as a person of science, I can understand that in terms of nerves, brain connections. Anyone who knows how a nervous system works during pain processing can do no physical harm to any living being. And anyone who knows how the brain really works at the emotional level will never try to harass another living being. Any person who has seen how the scientific rules are followed universally in a given set of conditions, and understood its beauty can never think in local terms and can never come under the influence of artificially created races, castes, groups, communities or citizenships. He sees all the living beings as his own images - following universal rules of life and as citizens of this universe.
Unlike what several people think, science deals with moral ( derived from reasoning related to...empirical evidence) issues too and can be a good guide to life's journey through the checkerboard of blacks and whites!
That ‘s all it is there in the relationship between dharma and science.
You believe in dharma because you believe in your religion and what it preaches. However, science doesn’t endorse blind beliefs.
Science and Spirituality
Q: Why do so many people want to believe in an afterlife?
But that one is just avoiding reality. Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man - Friedrich Nietzsche
Some people try to create illusionary situations by telling false stories. No doubt, they give temporary solace to the people who want to get comforted during tragedies. But that is living in a fake world. That is not the truth and reality which can take you to peace and tranquility permanently. Why? Read this article …
Science tries to strengthen our minds permanently by making us real...
Q:How can an individual genuinely and effectively care for people through follow-up and building rapport, if the individual is the opposite of a social butterfly and tends to avoid people?
But do you know thousands of people follow me and try to interact with me because I help them in my own way? My heart beats for every living being on this planet. And my mind tells me you have knowledge, share it with people who need it to better their lives with its help. I do care about people who need me. I do interact with people on a regular basis - by imparting my knowledge through education. I never try to meet people in person but still meet them daily through my verbal or on line interaction.
Not by eating with them or dancing with them or partying with them or going out with them.
Hearts and minds understand a genuine intention, rapport and feelings even if they are not expressed face to face.
There are thousands who vouch for my genuine intentions. I don’t care about the opinions of rest of the people.
Q: When all individuals have the same type of brain, why do people differ in their thoughts?
Krishna: Chemical and electrical circuits and the way they interact and form connections decide our thought process. These in turn are controlled by our genes, childhood experiences, adult experiences, conditioning of minds, various biases, feelings that already made connections and stored in various areas of our brain.
You can overcome all these things if you want like I did if you develop critical thinking .
Q: Can a leader possibly make his own luck?
What others call luck, true scientists call chance of finding something while searching for it vigorously and whole-heartedly using all your capabilities, keen observation and knowledge and grabbing the chance when the opportunity presents itself to you.
"Luck? What is it?" It just is your perception about the situation you are in!
What is 'luck' according to science
Q: Can intelligent people be happy?
Krishna: Intellectualism is the ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in true forms of reasoning, and to overcome obstacles by taking thought.
Wisdom teaches you what is true happiness and how to get it. I won't call it intelligence but intellectualism really makes you realize reality as it is. You will not have extra expectations and imaginative negativity. That brings you peace of mind.
Satisfaction comes from autonomy, personal growth, positive relationships you get from helping people around, self-acceptance, mastery, and purpose and meaning in life. Intellectualism also brings greater well-being by enabling one to acquire the financial and educational means necessary to live a better life. You will also have better health because of higher knowledge.
However, intellectuals prefer people who have knowledge as good as theirs. That makes them prefer isolation if they don't get their type of people. Will they therefore be unhappy? No! If they learn how to utilize this isolation in a better way, they will be again very happy.
Higher mind-mattered people cannot go beyond a certain stage to accommodate emotional intelligence but they can still manipulate situations to make people around comfortable and play things according their rules. The capacity to manage one's emotions toward optimal personal goal attainment-- is a form of intelligence that can help people live a more fulfilled life regardless of their economic circumstances.
Those with higher intellectualism tend to score higher in a number of facets of openness to experience, including intellectual engagement, intellectual creativity, introspection, ingenuity, intellectual depth, and imagination. This tendency for deeper cognitive processing is critical for dealing with a lot of life's up and downs. While trauma is inevitable in life, research shows that we can grow from our traumas if we have a healthy form of rumination in which we reflect on the deeper meaning of the event and can use that cognitive processing to perceive greater opportunities for ourselves and others. Therefore, intellectuals can deal with tragedies more efficiently.
Yes, intellectuals can be very happy in their own way! :)
Q: How can I deal with people who try to degrade me, harass me, torture me mentally and try to make me follow their rules?
Krishna: If I were you, I would keep such toxic people away from me. The kind you described should not have any place in your life. You have just one life. You have every right to live it in the way you want. If people don't recognize that right, throw them away from your life if you want peace of mind and happiness.
Find people who recognize your rights as a human being. And stick with them.
Q: What is so good about red?
Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on
