Values – Is it Relative? Part 2

Now let extrapolate this to what I have witnessed in the last few weeks and then you would be proud of the how strong the Indian belief system is, that though we have wrongly defined values, has taken us great steps ahead and will do for a long time till we throw away our values.

So, I guess I can use a traditional North Indian family tradition as an example, which is to touch the feet of elders and take their Ashirwad. Now by doing that, indirectly you have administered to bow down, which means you are not the, be all and end all of life, you tend to respect authority (again in the “right” manner) and are asked to be humble and respect human beings around you. Phew I never thought I can think so much and be so creative – Hahaha. The key value here is respect.

To place this in the UK context and the current generation of the Brits, let me quote my experiences. To begin with, I take a bus to work and everyday in the morning there are a set of students who travel along with me on the same route to reach their school which is a few stops before the one get off. Among these students there are 3 “white” (This is just contextual and not any racial discrimination) girls who probably are in high school, looking at their age, certainly in their teens though. The first day itself I found them to be really loud, laughing, giggling, shouting, talking etc. I gave them their credit purely based on their age and just took it as a one off case where they probably were sharing some joy, but wondered where the British decorum was; as time went by, this was their normal routine, day in and day out and all the travellers were getting disturbed and were showing their dissent through their body language and these girls were not bothered at all about their surroundings. It’s good to be your self as long as you take responsibility for the same. This even continuous till today, but sometime last week, a fellow passenger who travels the same line and walked up to them and asked to respect the others in the Bus and have a check on their noise levels and these girls asked this traveller to basically bugger off. Now this traveller must be in his late thirties and these girls probably early teens and when this incident happened, one elderly women remarked, saying, this is the generation of England which will kill the culture of Old Britain. It’s so true to look at that these girls have absolutely no respect for fellow human beings and even today they were the same. Now this might be trivial, but as you travel, read and watch programmes of the youth across the UK, you would just wonder where all the respect and kindness of the basic lifestyle and behaviour, which is what the English are known for are and have disappeared. What the lady said is very true, with this change of lack of respect and the attitude the younger generation of Brits have, they are going to turn Britain into a violent and aggressive country and the environment is going to change, thanks to the lack of values they perceive.

If we look at the largest working, knowledgeable and English speaking middle class out of India, lots of things have changed. Very few want to join a PSU and retire, ambitions are soaring, the money power is increasing, the lifestyle has changed, but overall the set of beliefs that have been instilled, which create a set of perceived values are what has kept us going and will keep us going. For decades now, the west has come to see our culture, the reason simply is that they don’t have much of it and whatever they have is deteriorating. It is not only pertinent for us as Indians to ensure we continue to live with our values and belief systems but also to ensure we instil the same if not more into the generations to follow for us to be the world capital of culture, values and good belief systems.

Values – Is it Relative?

This blog could lead you to read it as Gyann for sure, but I demand of you to step back and recollect, realise and replenish yourself with how important ‘Values’ are, in this fast paced, materialistic, non-emotional and very selfish world that we live in.

The whole context of me writing this blog is purely based on the different experiences I have been having, or shall we say have been seeing around me in London. I am not going to write about those trivial things which are different and make the normal conservative Indian go à aah, what rubbish or what the absolute unexposed middle classed parents / grandparents hear or see on TV that they think their children should be so well domesticated that they would not cross what they define as values, because it is the lifestyle of the west versus the east, or the westerners versus the Karma Bhoomi, India.

So following from the point above, what is values, is it as what we say ontologically as what you define or declare as values, is actually the values or is it something more intricate, delicate or simply straight forward. Being in the 21st century, my first attempt was to Google it out and my first choice was Wikipedia and the following is the definition.
A personal and/or cultural value is an absolute or relative ethical value, the assumption of which can be the basis for ethical action. A value system is a set of consistent values and measures. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based. Human values are a set of emotional rules people follow to help make the right decisions in life. Good values instill a sense of integrity, honesty, and diligence in people.

I have highlighted a few words above to question actually what those words mean. Integrity à my favourite subject, guess I can start writing a book only on it, but what does Integrity actually mean. Majority of us couple Integrity and Honesty and truthfulness or just define all of them with the same example. So to start with, the most common example given to me was about my Mom’s dad or my granddad, who people say lived with loads of integrity. I beg to differ, as what I know of him, he lived a brilliantly Honest life, nothing taken away from him. On saying this, what does integrity really mean?

One school of thought, which I agree to a great degree and if you relate to the corporate world or even your day to day tasks states integrity as à Integrity is all about keeping your promises or commitments or declaring that you will commit or promise to deliver a task at a particular time (or date) and ensuring it is delivered on or before that declared time. In the event of the task not being delivered at the said time, authentically and proactively letting know the promised person on why it did not happen and redeclaring another time for the delivery whilst taking full personal responsibility for not adhering to the first instance. Take any example in your life and visit that instance, when what you promised was delivered and when you promised and when you failed but did not take responsibility. The key value there is taking personal responsibility. Am not sure whether my granddad lived with absolute integrity.

Enough on integrity and lets get back to the subject of the blog, values. I touched upon a key area in the last para, which was personal responsibility and also if we look at the definition of values, it’s about personal and relative choices and worst thing is it is based on emotional rules.

Fantastic à emotional rules, set by people or animals who have a sixth sense which is dominated by a science called emotions and this what we call ‘Values’

Now is the time to step back and think, how we have had ‘Values’ defined to us by our elders, how we define ‘Values’ to our siblings or children or even our peers or our teams. Brilliant !!! isn’t?
What we want to perceive as right or wrong (emotionally or scientifically in some cases) are the values we dictate to others. But what is Right or Wrong? à another totally different argument or discussion, which I can write long on but will stick to Values in this blog.

Lets take an ideal middle class Brahminical example to describe this (not many people might like this example as this might be radical to your beliefs , Hahaha, as this is not your Values) – Dad tells his son not to consume Alcohol as this is against our Values. Good, my question is simple, as it is scientifically proven to have a certain administered portion of alcohol daily as it helps our system and secondly, please show me where this value is written and who defined it. This could be a very strong belief system carried on and passed on from generations together, which am fine with, but it’s not a Value. For me if this person starts to consume alcohol and takes full responsibility of himself and the community around him, it’s good enough but the counter is, that if this person becomes an alcoholic and say, starts to abuse his wife or children, then that man has lost his values in life à my definition, but think for a moment.

Manchester United -- One Dream complete, Many More to go – Old Trafford, a tick in the box -- Cond

The first feeling of the environment as you enter Manchester is truly Asian, dirt, Paan strewn and loads of shops having Muslim names, like shanaz etc. We got down from our bus and hurried into a cab to get us to the stadium. I was all pumped up and as we arrived at the ground, all you could see is a sea of Red. There were more than 76000 people who attended the game and you could see a large portion walking into the grounds. It’s a feeling that just can’t be described to part of one huge family called Manchester United (suddenly became another family to me). You are so drawn into the euphoria that you just get swept into it. We stopped over the stalls to buy some merchandise, like scarf’s (as seen in the Photo), pins etc and had to climb atleast 6 floors to get to our seats. As you get into the stadium its just pure brilliance, the atmosphere, the colour is Red all around, the sense of being a massive club, the energy, the sound, the songs, I can just keep writing on and on. For a few seconds you are literally overawed by the situation and I took a few minutes to realise that I had to find my seat, which I did promptly and took my camera out to snap pictures of the great stadium, the fantastic team and the aura around me called Old Trafford Manchester. As we settled down and allowed the game to begin, the champions started to press from the very first second and the goals were going to come. As they played and completed the first half they were already up by 2 and by the end of the game they were up by 5, thorough thrashing and that’s what champions are made off à isn’t.

The game had to come to an end as all dreams and so did mine, but this one was real and it was fulfilled. A tick in the box for one great dream comprehensively and thoroughly enjoyed à what a day.

As I complete this blog, I urge on the readers to go full throttle to completed your life dreams one by one à just go for it, as life will keep throwing up reasons for you to not be able to complete any, because that’s how life is. My Theatre of Dreams was seen and played out, when will yours be;

Adios till next time.