The Role of youth in the development of India

Today's children are tomorrow's citizens.

 Jawaharlal Nehru

           

Youths are the power of a nation. They can change the whole structure of a country by their immense power. As we all know that a good seed makes a good crop or a fruit or a tree; in the same way if the youths or the younger generations of a country are good then automatically the nation will be developed. In order to develop the nation youth must be encouraged and supported to participate in all kinds of aspects like politics, education, social service. I think youth should participate in politics because youths with their fresh minds can bring many new and innovative ideas which can change the nation economically and socially. Youth is a spark which does not need any ignition, they just need motivation.

India is a vast country whose population is increasing day by day and it is becoming a burning problem for India and it is been said that after few years India will reach on the top in case of population. Only government can not eradicate this problem, the youth will have to involve in it; they will have to create awareness among the people by holding seminars and awareness programs in different public places. They will have to invoke the terror of increase in population.

Corruption can also prove to be a major deterrent in a country's progress. The policies and plans of the government, the hopes and aspirations of the people can all go to vain of corruption persists. Rampant corruption can also discourage many to opt for any new job or start a new venture realising the inherent embedded corruption. However, the youths can stop the continuation of corruption to occur in the country. They should raise their voice instead of bribing and encouraging it to further take place. They can protest and file petitions to stop it. Social media now a days is also becoming a popular platform where such protests can be carried on. If the youths of India focus on nurturing their own creativity and talent then there will not be a situation where one needs to assort to corruption for his or her carrer.

Not only population and corruption but the youth will have to make India develop in the field of education. Because only proper education can transform India from developing to developed. India is a huge country and every crook and cranny of the country should be developed through education. The youth will have to through the light of education in every bleak corner where people are yet to see a school. Alongwith educating themselves the youth should also educate those who are getting deprived of education from their childhood due to the necessities of the constrictions of poverty and  societal barriers. According to Nelson Mandela, Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. If the youths can inherit this saying of this prominent international figure then definitely they can become the game changers.

   The youth will also have to  work to remove the superstitious old customs which are still overshadowing the whole India even in this era of advanced technological growth. Today in 21st Century also where scientific development is increasing, people still believe that if a snake bites a man then that man will be saved by some tantricks; breaking of a mirror can bring a bad omen; if a black cat croses one's way then he or she will step back or wait for a while considering it as a bad luck or a sign of imminent danger; hanging lemon and chillies infront of shops, in cars or other vehicles; not to sweep the houses after the sunset; cutting nails on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays. Youth of the nation will have to try to remove these superstitions and old age customs by questioning them, by proving them scientifically, by making people aware about the actual reasons behind those beliefs and practices. Youths are like clay which can be moulded. So, if the youths can mould themselves for good things, can direct their interests in creative outputs and positive outlook then definitely our nation will scale laudable heights.

                                                           -Dipak Bora

The Passage to Adulthood: Emotional and behavioral changes in Adolescence

THE ART OF ADULTHOOD IS TO DEVELOP SELF-CONFIDENCE WITHOUT ARROGANCE

-          Andrew Fuller

 Development is a lifelong process which does not stop at any particular stage. The development of an individual does not stop with attaining adulthood. However, adolescence is regarded as the most vulnerable stage when an individual’s undergo most changes. Adolescence is generally defined as the second decade of a child’s development. It is the period of transition from childhood to adulthood which occurs between the age group of 13 to 19.

Challenges occur mainly in the late adolescent period. Considered as emerging adulthood, late adolescence is significant for building the base for developmental changes to occur throughout the life span. Challenges are seen to be in the form of behavioral challenges, cognitive challenges and behavioral challenges. However this article will focus on emotional and behavioral challenges due to its rising seriousness. Before moving on to the challenges, attempt should be made to comprehend the scenario which arouses such situations.

ROLE OF MODERN SOCIETY IN POSITING CHALLENGES

The concept of modernity today has become a controversial one embodying both positive and negative implications. Modern society today became highly specialized in economic and social realms that it is recognized as being fragmented by experts. This leads to the lack of interaction between the people or communities together. Modern society, which is the abode of an individual, is obvious to play a crucial role in the development of the child by influencing him or her in varied ways. Some among such significant challenges are discussed below.

1) The Rise in the concept of Individualism: Today, man is the center of the universe. The focus lies on the individual. Therefore, people turned self-centered focusing on individual needs and desires. Individual autonomy , individual rights and individual desires , hopes and dreams gains prime importance leading to a decline in collective or brotherhood feeling. This, in a way affects the teenager who by imitating people surrounding him turns self-centered.

 

2) Development in Science and Technology: Scientific development today reached its peak. People are luxuriating the wonders of sciences which simplify complicated tasks.  However, due to the development in the electronic gadgets and with the coming of computers, smart phones and video games, the teenager gets immersed in it. This leads to the lack to communication among the family members or their closed ones. This in turn affects the behavior of the child turning him to a more introvert kind of an individual due to the lack of interaction.

3) Excessive exposure to media:  Media today plays a significant role in shaping teenage behaviors. A teenager’s body image is being influenced by the media. A teenager’s fashion sense is being shaped by media. Apart from this, the violent content in media which mirrors the violence in the modern society affects

4) Increase in competitiveness: Modern society is characterized by a high degree of competitiveness. With the increase in job opportunities, demands for better intakes too increased. Teenagers are under tremendous pressure to cater to those demands right from their schooling. This might lead the teenager to get frustrated and miss out the real happiness of life. This in turn might result in many behavioral and emotional changes in the teenager.

5) Rise in Materialism: Today’s modern society promotes materialism.  Success and happiness are measured with material goods by the teenagers. A decline in material belongings leads the teenagers to undergo inferiority complex when compared with their peers. The behavior of the teenagers is also thus shaped in that manner.

6) Single parent household: In today’s modern society, joint families are being replaced by the nuclear ones. Pathetic are those where a child grows up with a single parent and miss out on important family values of togetherness. This too adversely affects a child’s growth.

EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL CHALLENGES

From the above discussion it is clear that contemporary society plays a significant role in positing challenges for the teenagers.  Adolescent age is marked by immense turmoil in behavioral and emotional spheres. Teenagers more often are seen to battle with emotional and behavioral challenges. Some of the major emotional challenges are:

1)  Emotional Imbalance:  Teenagers exhibit strong and intense emotions at times. Mood seems unpredictable and the emotional imbalance leads to conflict within them. They turn very sensitive to emotions.

2) Self-consciousness: Teenagers are more self-conscious about their physical appearance and other changes. Their self-esteem is seen to be shaped by this self-consciousness.

3)   Depression and anxiety: The teenagers easily fall prey to depression and anxiety. The modern society too plays a crucial role in his aspect. Unable to recognize their self, the teenagers undergo the dreary experience of depression.

4) Instability of the mind: During this stage, the teenagers fail to achieve a stable state of mind. They are unable to make independent permanent decisions. Instead their decisions and opinions keep changing with the change in trend and thus they fail to build a strong and static personality.

5)     Negative feelings rule: It is during this stage that the teenagers are captured by a feeling of hopelessness. A small rejection they face leads to complete hopelessness and losing of confidence. Feeling of worthlessness, self-balance, guilt and self-criticism rules their mind. Suicidal tendencies and the thought of death to disturb them. Insecurities, irritations and frustrations grab them.

6)  Conflict with the closed ones:  At this stage, we witness the teenagers indulging in conflicts. Difference of opinion is experienced which leads to arguments and conflicts. They feel the need t assert their opinion over others frequently and fail to acknowledge the loopholes in their opinions.

7)  Losing the track of small happiness: Teenagers at their stage gets more inclined towards material pleasure and ultimately lose pleasure in normal activities no matter how small they are. They fail to find happiness in the natural sources.

These emotional challenges also lead to behavioral changes in the teenagers. Rather than the emotional challenges, these behavioral are the outward changes that are visible.

1)   Change in social relationships: Teenagers are more incline towards their friends rather than their family at this stage. Thus they at times experience peer pressure. They social circle changes and friends gain prime importance.

2)  Mood swings: Teenagers often experience mood swings as a result of which they might behave unexpectedly at times. They react immediately to a situation which lands them into trouble.

3) Alcohol and drug abuse: The teenagers during this stage are more prone to alcohol and drug abuse which might also be a result of peer pressure. This in turn hampers their thinking and reasoning capacities                                                   

4)  Increase of interest in the opposite sex: Until the adolescent stage, children are more inclined towards people of their same sex. But, during the teenage period, a change in behavior creeps in. The teenagers seem to be more interested in the opposite sex which results in premature relationships.

5) Unexpected behavior: Teenagers exhibit unexpected behavior due to emotional imbalance and lack of control over the emotions.

6)   Change in eating behaviors: Eating disorders and excessive exercising is experienced in this stage.

7)   Changes in energy levels: More tiredness and overeating characterize this stage.

           Now, an adolescent burdened with these challenges might lose the track of the right doings. They might also be unable to handle these pressures ultimately falling into depression. In such a situation, an elderly person needs to intervene and carefully handle the sensitive situation

Some of the significant measures that can be undertaken to help a teenager battles with the challenges are as follows:

1)   Interaction with the child: Only with interactions, problems can be fixed. The family members as well as the child should interact with the child lending them a scope to share their problems.

2)    Counselling  programs: Counseling programs help a lot when the parents of the victim are unable to spend time with their child due to hectic schedule. In counseling programs, the teenager enjoys the freedom of sharing varied kind of issues ranging from physical to psychological

3)   Focus on the development of good habits: Introducing the teenager with positive habits like book reading, creative arts, creative writing and sports enables their mental growth. Teenage being the most productive stage should be provided with the right kind of impetus required.

4)     Sex education should be provided: Teenagers should be exposed to sex education so that inculcate a positive attitude towards relationships which also prevents them from the danger of getting into problems.

5)      Positive role models: Teenage is the time when role models are formed. Leadership qualities should be fostered. They are completely into “hero worshiping”. Therefore, positive role models should be built so that they can affect the teenager in a healthy manner.

6)  Activity options should be provided to the teens: The teens should be granted the chance to entertain themselves with other activity options which will deviate their attention from the substances of alcohol and drugs.

7)   Friendly relation: Teenage is the period when the child cannot be taught with the use of violence and power. Therefore, parents and teachers should develop a friendly relation with the child so that they feel free to approach them.

 Adolescence should be viewed as a period of opportunity instead of turmoil. The emotional and behavioral challenges can be reduced to a large extent through positive measures. Many positive facets of this stage cannot be covered under the confusion and chaos that it embodies.  Adolescence though is a period of storm or stress is also a period of innovation and development when taken proper care.  Adolescence is a mental concept rather than a concept of numbers. Thus, it has been rightly said that –

“As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown up thoughts”

- David Sedaris

Deconstruction and Mysticism

                         

The epoch making Deconstruction theory of Derrida has deconstructed all accepted religious, philosophical and metaphysical fundamental beliefs. Following the idea of the absence of absolute truth of Hegelian philosophy, Derrida’s deconstruction has abolished all the hypothesis and beliefs which remained as the edifice of spirituality or religious mysticism.

  We in the world of science can today belief and disbelief the logic behind anything good or evil. The more we tend to believe something irrespective of physical science or religious, natural or supernatural, the more we shape our knowledge according to the assumptions that have shaped all the principles. Scientists today claims that Big-Bang is the starting point, we too agree with the same in one point, but we also know that, that is too based on the assumptions and can be hypothetical too. Nobody knows what exactly had happened before the Big Bang. Religion is just a concept, a philosophical concept to make the world better, to make the human more humane for the sake of world, and community (Lord Krishna to Arjuna). There is no difference between the idea of words as signifier and the image as signified and the concept of God and its omnipotence existence. The structure is the same. The concept of spirituality, one’s being spiritual is not physical. Now, if we talk about the link between mysticism or religious spirituality and the idea of Deconstruction, we are actually working on the base of same metaphysics.

      

  When Derrida says there is nothing except word he merely doesn’t mean the presence of letters, along with the words there come meanings, concepts and many iterating images. The words like dharma, the Lord Shiva, the Lord Vishnu or the Lord Brahma, bring many heavens and hell, numbers of deaths as a result of sin and the Hindu’s concept of re-birth in case the individual is truly religious. All these are the lessons, first orally transmitted through generations and later collected by the kings and communities for different purposes. Those which have been through oral transmission and have remained only as concepts are far away from physical or concrete reality. It is no wonder that the idea which is based on assumptions and hypothesis always lead us towards mysticism and nihilism. 

 Now let’s take a Biblical account. The sole dependency of Christian myth on the spirit which is from God is not only equivocal but also trapped in controversies and incomplete in itself. ‘The first thing in the world was the word and the word was God’ and we might understand the things freely given to us by God and interestingly we bestow that knowledge and wisdom which is not taught by any physical being but taught by the spirit, the spiritual truths. The all religious doctrines of all ages around the world are not out of natural phenomena and the personification of gods and goddesses with various attributes are nothing but the representation of different natural energy (spirit), where the human being can’t make any change of it. The fundamental principles of accepting mystic attitudes of all the representative agencies of nature as God or supernatural spirit are same as the fundamentals on which the entire binary of signifier and sign are believed and formed by the structuralists.

  

 The mystical questions regarding God, time, universe; whether they had a beginning in time and whether it is limited in space or not and many other things have been through extensive examination by the philosophers throughout the ages. 

This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked:

“What did God do before he created the universe?” Augustine didn’t reply: “He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions.” Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe. (The Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking) So, when we believe in a spirit or spirits, the god as omnipotence creator, the concept of heaven and hell and the question of whether or not all these concepts exist are really questions of metaphysics or theology.
  Derrida’s arguments regarding religious mysticism and deconstruction revolve around some of his concepts like, justice, hope, messianism and messianicty, determinants (loose or strong).  

       Derrida says that what gives deconstruction its movement is "constantly to suspect, to criticize the given determinations of culture, of institutions, of legal systems, not in order to destroy them or simply to cancel them, but to be just with justice, to respect this relation to the other as justice." Justice has always been the ethical drive behind deconstruction. It is what deconstruction affirms. To understand deconstruction, we need to know what deconstruction is not. Derrida is no nihilist "every deconstructive analysis is undertaken in the name of something, something affirmatively un-deconstructible." He tells us that while religion, like law, is deconstructible, faith, like justice, is "something that is presupposed by the most radical deconstructive gesture. You cannot address the other; speak to the other, without an act of faith, without testimony." In other words, to speak to another is to ask the other to "believe in me" or "trust me." Such faith, says Derrida, is "absolutely universal." And this universal structure of faith is an un-deconstructible that Derrida calls the messianic structure or messianicity. This messianic structure, or messianicity has everything to do with faith. Indeed, Derrida confesses that "there is no society without faith, without trust in the other." But messianicity is no more to be confused with messianisms than is justice to be confused with law. Like law, (which is the identification of the structure of the justice), messianisms are an identification in time and history of the messianic structure. Messianisms say that the Messiah has appeared at this time, in this tradition, in this person, with this name.

  

  It is not that easy to get the proper and established definition of mysticism in general term. The very idea of mysticism is itself a composite unified whole of various spiritual and sublime experiences in one hand and some enlightening state of mind, which is more abstract and not concrete. The application of deconstruction on these experiences can only be a creation of void to fulfill the realized whole. Again, here we use the power of negativity to say what deconstructed mysticism is by saying what it is not.  We must consider the fact that each and every instance whether physical or metaphysical is not the subject beyond image or concept (the concept of that particular image.) When we look into the heart or introspect to feel the enlightenment or nirvana or moksha, we cannot visualize the state of being enlightened without the very idea or image of the nirvana itself. The problem lies here is this that Buddha always talks about how to attain nirvana without saying what nirvana is. The same thing is applied in case of Hindus ‘moksha-prapti’ and all. Though, it is simply not possible to deconstruct the nirvana without deconstructing the process of attaining it. The very absence of something which is not nirvana or moksha allows us to be in nirvana state of mind. Suppose, if we long meditate to feel the absence of everything within us, and thus by allowing our body and soul (as Hindus and Buddhist philosophy defines it separately) to be isolated from all worldly being, all kinds of pleasure and sins; this absolute realization of these absence leads one individual towards fulfillment of moksha or nirvana. The word nirvana itself is not determinate and cannot be deconstructed. The deconstruction is nirvana, the process or a state of mind created by the absence of nirvana itself, for which the individual meditates or waits.  One thing we must consider that there is the difference between nirvana or mokhsa and attainment of it. In fact, the word ‘nirvana’ remains outside of the whole process. 

  So far we have acknowledged that the Derridean idea of deconstruction is principally structured on the belief of deciphering the present meaning with the help of absence. Mysticism has its wide application in Romantics also. One of the most prolific philosophers and political orators Edmund Burke, who actually lived in the Age of Reason, but has provided a foundation for Immanuel Kant and the later Romantics through his empiricism and Romantic writings. Burke has given a beautiful interpretation of sublime and beautiful in his book A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of Sublime and Beautiful (1757). According to Burke the sublime experience is universal and varies in degrees on the basis of one’s individual ability of aesthetic judgment. When he talks about the experience of sublime through the absence of actual terror supported by beautiful at the end is near to the Derridean concept of Deconstruction to create the presence through absence. According to Burke, the sublimity is not terror or actual danger, but a mystic possible danger, and because of its untrue possibility, it is also followed by a beautiful state of mind. Now, what we find the similarity in the mystical state of individual through a short time sublime experience and the evoke of this experience only by the absence of actual danger; the danger (or the possible danger), which is the root of sublime, itself is nothing but the whole of iterating experiences. The same experience is deconstructed as it varies from individual to individual and can also reverse if the perceiver fails to grasp the ideal experience. Means it is very much possible that the deconstruction of this sublime feeling can lead to a feeling of blunt experience and can also lead the person to a never returning shock. In that case the individual will also not feel the post experience i.e. beautiful.     

 These are some of the possible instances and examples where we can establish a close link between the theory of Deconstruction and the prevailed notions of mysticism in religious doctrines and romantics. The more we tend to feel the actual experience, the more we are apt to away from it to experience it actually. It seems more nihilistic and impasse in relating it to our general life experience, but our inner experience is always hidden from the visible surface, so as with the truth.
                                              Dipak Bora

Who we have become?

Hey sickening buddies, wake up!

Do not let the hearts die like the rotten minds,

Do not be a contributor to the collapsing humanity.

Disgustful, disturbing scenes are snatching and robbing the sleep away, 

Haziness and artificiality in love towards their look alikes, towards nature.

Decaying minds are carried away by the global waves, 

Engagements are uncontrollable with the non-livings.

   

 Have you stopped talking and listening?

Manifestations of artificial desires are floating everywhere,

Lives are ending in smokes, hopes are ending in dreams!

   

Wait! when did you last dream?

Flowers wither from your ignorance, and the trees are all alone.

Congratulations! A wall is made… between men and its teacher.

We are falling like the leaves,

Our thoughts engulfed by lies, counterfeits and originality diminish;

We are distanced from ourselves

Bewildered humanity is heading towards uncertainty.

                                 -Dipak Bora.