Demonizing the Enemy

One way to maintain strong cohesion within a group is to portray anyone outside the group as evil. Hoffer argued in The True Believer (1951) that radical movements are energized by hatred for their enemies.

What did Eric Hoffer say about belief in "devils" outside the group?

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.

Like an ideal deity, an ideal devil is omnipotent and omnipresent. When Hitler was asked whether he was not attributing rather too much importance to the Jews, he exclaimed: "No, no, no!...It is impossible to exaggerate the formidable quality of the Jew as an enemy." Every difficulty and failure within the movement is the work of the devil, and every success is a triumph over his evil plotting

   

(source)

Free media vs government funded media

Participated in a debate on free media.Following are the arguments

The proponents said:

1) Private media competes for viewer ship .Viewers are looking for truth and so the competition promotes search for truth.

2) Private media is free from the pressure of government and has greater funding than the government run media.

3) Government funded media cannot speak against it and is less likely to speak the truth when it comes to revealing inequities of the government . It is more likely to promote government’s propaganda and facts that go against it.

My arguments for the sake of opposition

1)Although public is in search for truth but it likes drama because it intrigues them. So private T.V channel have sensationalizing and dramatization as their priority. So instead of truth they compete for breaking sensational news, certification is not in their priority. They forget the issue after it has cashed the money and start looking for more entertaining news.Take for example the issue of floods.

Truth needs time and commitment to search which only a fund stable media can afford. BBC is a perfect example. It is funded by government and is considered as a foremost authority in broadcasting.

2) Private media is more profit oriented so although it can say anything but governments can bribe them and also they cannot propagate an agenda that goes against its stakeholders and sponsors. The funding it gets has ropes tied with to it leaving the greater amount with no advantage

3) This argument seems valid if you talk about a country like Pakistan. But in country which is democratic and institutions of the state are firmly established and media is just funded rather than being operated by the state, these things are less likely to happen.

But the truth is:

Freedom is a thing that has no parallel. Truth is always relative to the observer. Killing the private media will kill the diversity and many facets of the truth will remain out of the sight of people. We will have an unchallengeable version of truth. Private media breaks this monopoly. If government is able to terrorize or bribe a few journalists there will be many who will say what they see and feel and will take stand on it.

No matter how just a government is or how powerful the institutions may become, state run media always has potential of being exploited. BBC might be the foremost authority but I have never heard it saying anything against the royal family or actively campaigning against the British government. But this deficiency is fulfilled by the private media of Britain. And its also true that BBC presents one of the best education and research programs.

Both private and government funded media are complementary to each other and fulfil the deficiencies left by each other. It also illustrates the philosophical stance that there is no black and white forms of morality.

 On various occasions examples of responsibilities of Pakistani media were quoted by opposition which I think are inappropriate in th  Pakistan highly normal things have tendencies to go awry.

 Our media has got freedom for which it wasn’t prepared. It is just a reflection of our society, which also couldn’t learn to use the freedom it got in a productive manner.

Psychology from the week

*''One of the things you do find cross-culturally is that children are particularly affected by and easily influenced by the threat of punishment from supernatural agents. This is a behavior regulation device, a control mechanism to prevent children from doing things we don't want them to do when they think we're not watching.

It's an additional mechanism on top of self-control that would prevent them from doing things that would ultimately cause them problems or their parents problems........''

**You might have thought it before doing a thing you considered wrong;'' well after all who can understand better than God''.The writer is explaining some helpful evolutionary inconsistencies in committing a sin 

''When people are basically convinced that God is on their side and God understands why they're doing what they're doing, there are lots of loopholes psychologically that also work alongside reproductive interests.''

(Times)

***I  found these lines from a book of psychology

''Children tend to go to their mothers for emotional comfort and to their fathers for playing''

MY inference:

This fact how some how define roles of parents.A father helps increase the creativity and IQ of the child while EQ of the child is determined by the mother.The stronger the bond is with the mother ,more stable is child emotionally. 

Gifted childern

 By far the majority of studies of the gifted and talented have found them to be emotionally stronger than others, with higher productivity, higher motivation and drive, and lower levels of anxiety. Indeed, high level creativity, in particular, requires real strength of character to overcome the forces of conventionality and the sneers of those who do not understand.

How to spot a clever toddler
Here are the important things an adult can do for a bright child. The old physical milestones of when a child first sits up, crawls, stands up, or walks, are no longer seen as firm pointers to future intellectual  potential, but they are excellent indicators. Gifted children are just as different from one another as any other group of children - some may be lively, into everything and very friendly, while others can be shy and prefer to keep to themselves. Here are four strong clues.
Lively minds:
The most noticeable feature of gifted children is the liveliness of their minds. This
comes across in many ways, especially in their delight with words. Even as toddlers
they’re usually very quick to spot tiny differences and catch on to unusual
associations between ideas.

Awareness:
Gifted little ones use their radar brains to seek and absorb information, sometimes
catching your meaning before you’ve reached the end of your sentence. They copy
other people’s behaviour and learn fast from the experience. Sometimes they seem
quite grown-up, but genuine maturity will come later.
Ability to learn:
A keen appetite for learning marks out the gifted, so that when they’re given the
chance they grab it. As they get older, their knowledge often becomes wider and
deeper than that of other children of the same age so they seem to be even more
intelligent. Parents wonder where clever children get all their knowledge from; they
seem to absorb it from everywhere - television, people’s conversations – the air!
Independence:
The clever toddler takes pride in what they can do. Even in their first few days at
proper school, they’re usually outstandingly independent and competent, though some
get a shock when they find all the others working at a very much lower level. Some
develop special interests even at nursery school, though these might change. By the
time they reach primary school, they may be really beginning to know their way
around a subject.
(excerpts from articles of joan freeman ,a psychologist researching on gifted childern)

emotion greater than love:Bandagi

Love is a higher cognitive emotion,its basic emotional component is attraction.In what ever way you define it this basic character would be there.
Like love there is still a higher cognitive emotion for which I cannot find a word in English that truly reflects its  connotations and that is  "Bandagi"(servitude).Its is an extreme form of love in which you give yourself completely to the other being.
You can love many but there is only one person you give your heart to,whose beauty you praise above all,for whom you will change yourself,in whom you forget yourself and give your free will to.You become one and inseparable.
Some people have this emotion for God , some for an other human being,some have it for a particular philosophy or an activity for example  science or service of humanity.
But I think care should be taken before taking such a step because once you are in there is no question of using rationale, you have already given up yourself and that thing is going to change yourself.It will define what you will become : either a blessing or a curse for humanity.

Pakistan's Neoconservatism

 The average Pakistani takes his religion seriously and wishes to see it in the public domain. But, unlike the Taliban, he does not want to make it claustrophobic for other people.
 The average Pakistani thus wants to look progressive in a conservative framework.
He is caught between two competing narratives: the first one, which is primarily grounded in religion and is now championed by militant groups, makes him want to see his religion triumph; the other, usually trotted out by the government and the media, is mostly based on information and rational analysis, making him realize the significance of progressing in the world.
(Radicalization in Pakistan:Understanding the Phenomenon pips)

Similar feelings

Throughout the years, there was discontent among the students. Kinnaird was not popular within Kinnaird, partly because, like most government institutes, the administration was neither interested in improving it nor bothered about people’s opinion. Many of the older staff members still believed Kinnaird to be the best, and lived in oblivion of the modern and private institutes that now perforated in Lahore and attract much of the student cream.

It was however, not as bad as many students thought. Many of these students had started their lines, hoping to become doctors, go abroad or join LUMS but couldn’t. They saw Kinnaird as the outcome of their disappointment and were perpetually depressed or indifferent.