Profanity paradox

Profanity is simply blasphemous or obscene language that is offensive or disrespectful. 

• As children we’re taught that cursing, even when we’re in pain, is inappropriate, betrays a limited vocabulary or is somehow low class. But profanity serves a physiological, emotional and social purpose and it is effective only because it is inappropriate.
• Profanity is a cultural construct that perpetuates itself through time.
• Profane words have a direct line to our emotions. They are a spontaneous reflection of strong emotional states, like anger, fear or passion. They are also unequaled in their capacity to inflict emotional pain and incite violent disagreement. 
• Swearing and cursing are often used interchangeably, but there’s a subtle difference in their origins. A curse implies damning or punishing someone, while a swear word suggests blasphemy. Both words are defined as profanity: vulgar, socially unacceptable language not used in polite conversation.
• Profane words that provoke the most repressive regulatory reactions from the state in the form of censorship and legislation. Bad words are powerful -- emotionally, physiologically, psychologically and socially. The paradox is that profane words are powerful because we make them powerful. 
• Profanity is learned differently. It’s articulated differently. It changes differently over time. Every generation has its own slang, including profanity.
• Cable television and the Internet have created a wild west for words, where the true will of the people has its way. And if social media are any indication, the people want to be able to swear. And to hear swearing. And to read swearing. As the public has become more accustomed to profanity, taboo words have started to make their way more prominently into mainstream science.
• To capitalize on profanity to learn about language, not just as the rational product of deliberate reflection, but as part of the impulsive, emotional, hot cognition that is pervasively human. Cursing is coping, or venting, and it helps deal with stress. Profanity was associated with less lying and deception at the individual level. People who use profanity are more honest. Liars have to use more brain power, require more thinking, remember lies to avoid telling the truth. Truth tellers, on the other hand, get to the point faster, which might mean speaking impulsively and without a filter.
• When profanity targets demographic groups, it can foster prejudices. These words don’t have any intrinsic, mystical power that confers superhuman strength and endurance. It is simply the act of speaking a taboo word that makes it cathartic.

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice 

so mean and low that every person of sense and character 

detests and despises it ... George Washington

Profanity generally indicates the weakness of the person and lack of vocabulary skills. Whatever is said in conjunction with profanity gets lost in the noise and people of character will distance themselves. When profane words are used in forums, the person will get castigated and compelled to withdraw those words and apologize unconditionally. If you want people to think that you are telling the truth, then swearing might be helpful. Profanity is unnecessary and should be censored. If the foul-mouthed among us want to preserve the benefits of cursing, we need these detractors to ensure that profanity stays profane.

Absolute truth doesn't exist

There is no absolute truth and that’s the absolute truth. Truth is surprisingly difficult to define. Truth is defined as the body of real things, events, and facts. Truth is most often used to mean being in accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or standard. Truth may also often be used in modern contexts to refer to an idea of "truth to self," or authenticity. The best-known saying about truth is by Aristotle "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true". It is not the only thing Aristotle said about truth.

• It’s doubtful whether there is any such thing as the truth.
• It is an absolute truth that absolute truth doesn't exist.
• Truth is agreement of thought with its object. 
• Truths are facts. And there are no facts, only interpretations.
• Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
• The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.
• Telling what is not true may result in legal and social penalties. 
• Truths are subjective; absolutism is objective. So, the question is whether something subjective can be objective.
• Anyone who believes in absolute truth is a fanatic or in imminent danger of becoming a fanatic. Absolute truth is the mother of extremism everywhere.
• Truth is in the eyes of the beholder. It may not appear as truth to others. 
• Absolute means completely. Try as you will, there will always be a trace of untruth. Nobody is capable of an absolute truth. Therefore, there is no such thing as absolute truth.
• People tend to have different opinions, which is natural. Because of these differing opinions some might view a certain topic morally right whereas others might see the same issue as completely immoral. 
• Deciding that absolute truth doesn’t exist is much more sensible than believing that they absolutely know everything.
• The idea of something being 100% right can always be challenged.
• In every statement, there is an ounce of bias, and bias is opinion, and opinion cannot be taken as fact.
• Truth comes only from the laws of nature. Nature always demonstrates its laws. Therefore truth is unique and universal.
• Let’s not ask what truth is. Let us ask instead how we can recognize it reliably when it appears. Four factors determine the truthfulness of the explanation: congruence, consistency, coherence, and usefulness.
• Truth is a complex, contradictory process in which error is constantly overcome through the development of knowledge, while truth itself becomes increasingly complete and profound.
• Any truth is objective. Subjective truth is merely an individual's opinion. Its content does not depend on the will, desire, passion or imagination of human beings. 
• We are humans who depend on relationships to survive. When it comes to stating your opinions without being asked, it is likely you shy away from telling a friend, colleague or family member something that you fear could hurt. As adults, we rarely choose to deliberately do something that will hurt people we know. We especially avoid sharing a truth face-to-face that could embarrass, offend or wound someone we like. 
• It’s been said that everybody lies, but the question is when, to whom, and why? And if someone is lying, how can you tell? The detection of deception is big business with big stakes. Children’s lies are ridiculously easy to spot, but as we get older, we get better at disguising the truth. We don’t necessarily get better at spotting it. 

Mahatma Gandhi said truth is what the voice within tells you. What may be truth for one may be untruth for another. It is not given to man to know the whole Truth. His duty lies in living up to the truth as he sees it, and in doing so, to resort to the purest means, i.e., to non-violence. God alone knows absolute truth. It follows that man, a finite being, cannot know absolute truth. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything ... Mark Twain

The truth is rarely pure and never simple ... Oscar Wilde 
Half a truth is often a great lie ... Benjamin Franklin

Truth can be stated in many different ways, 
yet each one can be true ... Swami Vivekananda

Modi's lies - what it means to India?

US President Donald Trump had spoken 2,140 lies, or uttered several such inaccuracies in his public life since becoming a Republican contender for the White House. Trump is not a stand-up comic artist jocularly falsifying facts to arouse amusement, or a founder of a fake news website running a political agenda. He is not just only the commander-in-chief of the world’s largest military power, but also has the largest nuclear button in the world at dangerously close proximity.

• If the most powerful leader of the free world cannot be trusted on account of his mental equanimity or is of questionable credibility, we clearly have a lot to worry about. By an uncanny coincidence, the world’s largest democracy, India, has a similar predicament; fake news, post-truth and alternative facts dominate mainstream media.
• Politicians regularly indulge in making outrageous statements and get away with it. Since their brazen lies go unchallenged and social media amplifies that mendacity, they inflict incalculable damage to society due to proliferation of misinformation, calumny and distorted history. 
• We as a nation are far too lazy to contradict the negative torrent of fake news with ulterior motives or delusional in the  false notion that automatically people will segregate the wheat from the chaff in the long-term. Or we under the current dispensation are just too scared? Several have surrendered the fight as they believe it is a Sisyphean exercise. Either way, the consequences can be serious. We are in a quicksand, and sinking.
• From the moment, Modi became the PM in 2014, India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru became the target of an orchestrated BJP campaign of calumny and character assassination. A malevolent media campaign was unleashed to malign Nehru, by insinuating that there was an attempt to cover-up the untimely death of the valiant freedom-fighter and former Congress president Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in an unfortunate air crash. The BJP, using right-wing stooges with literary pretensions, dubious historians, indulgent media editors delighted to be co-conspirators and disgruntled family members of Netaji launched a vicious assault on Nehru’s character. India’s finest statesman was being stigmatised by snake oil salesmen.
• The BJP was clearly relishing the malicious and disingenuous deluge as Modi gave a generous reception to the noble cause of knowing the ultimate truth on Netaji’s death. A member of the Bose family joined the saffron brigade, contested the elections, and lost. The Sangh Parivar went to the extent of creating a fabricated letter wherein Nehru called Bose a "war criminal". It was utter balderdash, but who cared? The fact is we should.
• Modi’s speech in Parliament on February 7, 2018,  he hemorrhaged truth by saying that had Sardar Patel been the first PM, Kashmir would have been totally ours. Sure, if my aunt wore a pyjama she would be my uncle. It was a convenient political twist with no historical foundations, but Modi continues to violate the basic precept of political morality by populating ludicrous charges on all and sundry, especially targeting the Nehru-Gandhi family. We are scraping the bottom of the barrel in our daily discourse.
• Politics was always about perceptions, but in the world of Facebook feeds, YouTube videos, Twitter trolls and WhatsApp forwards, truth itself is subjected to Amazonian proportions of vulnerability. No one is safe. No one has a constant bulletproof against sustained malignant accusations. There are no vanguards.
• It is a disconcerting reality that the process of transparent news dissemination has become carnivalesque and that Netaji indeed died in the plane crash at Taipei on August 18, 1945, was acknowledged by Modi sarkar in an obscure part of a daily newspaper.
• The vituperative anti-Nehru strategy was quickly consigned to the backwaters. Several susceptible minds subjected to the carcinogenic tirade against Nehru, would still be wondering  what is the real truth? That residual doubt that lingers long is exactly what fake news really wishes to accomplish. 
• Remember that the human mind can be extremely fragile to sustained bulldozing. Recollect the Holocaust? That Netaji named one of his infantry brigades in the Indian National Army after Nehru, or that the Nehru wore his barrister robes for the first time to defend the INA army soldiers charged with treason by the British are nonchalantly overlooked.
• Fake news, consciously elliptical, still triumphs. It is like heads I win, tails you lose.
• Another masterly deception is a work-in-progress and it even boasts of a grand edifice, the Statue of Unity, allegedly the tallest such in the world. Modi’s ideological mentors and political strategists is the RSS, without whose support he would not have even become the chief minister of Gujarat. It would seem like political incongruity that Modi is lionising Sardar Patel, the same man who banned the RSS for creating a poisonous environment that led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. 
• Nehru and Patel were brothers-in-arms, each other’s conscience keepers, but Modi and the BJP are burning the midnight oil to tell the country otherwise. It is a cunning project to deceive India. Political hypocrisy has reached epic proportions.
• Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation. Savarkar himself miraculously escaped conviction by the skin of his teeth. Modi has publicly called Savarkar a patriot. The rest is left for public wisdom.

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The importance of legacy media

In today’s world of information overload, it is estimated in 2016 that every second approximately 6,000 tweets were put out, more than 40,000 Google queries were searched, and more than two million emails were sent. In this deluge, how do we navigate through the minefields of lies, spins, and partial truths?

• There are principles such as first-hand knowledge, verification, bearing witness, and accountability that govern the flow of news. The term ‘fake news’ legitimises outright lies and and partial truths and cannot be linked with the word ‘news’ allowing the debate to be framed as a textual problem, while it is an ethical and social one. 
• The exponential growth in polarised websites and social media activism aimed at ruthless propaganda before elections and trying to invoke Article 19 to defend this act of criminality undermines democracy itself.
• In the complexity of information disorder, the words ‘fake’ or ‘news’ is woefully inadequate to capture this polluted information ecosystem.
• There is a discernible movement away from the constant blur of breaking news on television screens and social media platforms.
• In this environment, legacy media* is regaining its place as a credible information provider. Majority readers have started valuing the process of stringent gate-keeping that forms the bedrock of journalism. *Media such as radio, television, and especially newspapers are considered as legacy media where the receiver does not contribute or interact with the content and remains totally passive.
• The importance of slow journalism is that it takes time to do things properly with the values of journalism — context, analysis and expert opinion. They cut through the noise by not following modern news production methods that are filled to the brim with reprinted press releases, knee-jerk punditry, advertorial nonsense, and churnalism. Instead, they prefer slow journalism as an antidote to menace: Intelligent, curated, non-partisan news coverage designed to inspire and inform.

Being one of the last to break news can inform readers in a way that the constant stream of 24x7 news updates cannot. One of the best things about a print edition is the virtue of finite space. They don't fall into 24/7 news traps: the speculation, conjecture and hot air. It is up to the readers to support journalism and not fleeting social media trends.

We systematically overestimate the change that will occur in two years, 

while underestimating the change that will come in the next ten years ... Bill Gates

Why politicians lie?

• Politicians lie, or don’t tell the whole truth, because they have to. It is a global phenomenon.
• We all know that politicians tell lies. We expect them to stop once they hold office. No longer. In campaigns, and in office, politicians and their aides or supporters deliberately lie about matters of importance. 
• At one time, citizens could count on their officials and candidates to either tell the truth or say nothing. Not any more. 
• In order to brush away the delusion and confusion that hides the truth from us, we need the truth, because only an accurate description of the facts will allow us to make sound, sane, and sensible decisions.
• It is amazing how often politicians lie with ease and then, their unwillingness to admit that they lied. Politicians’ words were distorted, misrepresented, twisted, exaggerated, or taken out of context. They overstated, understated, or misstated. But, of course, politicians never lie, at least that’s what they say.
• Politicians have a personality that allows them to be evasive, to live with lies and keep a straight face. Not all people can do that. That is why many people are not willing to serve in a political role. They detest the process they will have to follow, a process an inevitable byproduct of the political system we chose to have.
• Politicians know their followers will believe them, even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Politicians and their adherents live in an echo chamber in which everyone watches the same news channel, listens to the same talk radio, reads the same newspapers and web sites, and hangs out with the same like-minded people. There exists an impermeable membrane that prevents conflicting information from entering.
• In elections, what was fascinating was that the more a candidate lied, the higher they went in the polls. The person who lied the most won. With no real arbiters of the truth, there were no penalties for lying.
• The public ignorance makes lying an effective political strategy. Politicians lie because the cost/benefit ratio for lying is in their favor. Politicians run this calculation when they create or shift a damaging narrative, attack an opponent, or respond to indefensible claims against them. Most politicians know when they are lying. So, politicians lie when they believe that dishonesty is the best policy for getting elected.
• People don’t want to hear the truth. Truth hurts and no one wants to hear things that threaten their existence, their beliefs, or that will make them uncomfortable. It is decidedly better for politicians to tell people what makes them feel comfortable. Why should politicians be the purveyors of bad news when they can tell fairy tales with happy endings and come out the victor.
• The more democratic the system, the more lying there will be. In a democracy a leader has to make difficult maneuvers in a politically competitive environment. That is what democracy is about.
• CEOs of very large companies, leaders of major conglomerates and of countries exhibit very similar leadership styles. They are evasive, play their cards very close to the vest and do not share information if they can help it. They use big words to obscure their real intentions. They often lie, skirt the truth, too.
• The higher you ascend up the hierarchy, the more political the environment becomes. There is a struggle between the interests. As a leader you have to maneuver between all these pressure groups and powerful individuals, and survive the maneuvering.
• Being truthful is like a military leader making his battle plans known to the enemy during a war. Up there in the organizational hierarchy, whether of a country or a corporation, it is a war.
• Lying by political leaders is what we expect from totalitarians. Free societies require truth and honesty.
• The problem is inherent in objective journalism. In objective journalism, with an unfortunate amount of truth in it, there is no objective reality, there are only sources and they are rated by their credibility, and credibility is an attribute of status.
• There are only competing sources and competing spin and the journalists either don't know it or don't know what to do about it, journalists no longer own reality.
• People have not lost trust in journalism because they're liberal or biased or opinionated, but because they are not aggressive enough.

I offered my opponents a deal: if they stop telling lies about me, 
I will stop telling the truth about them  ... Adlai Stevenson, 
US Presidential Democratic candidate said in his 1952 campaign speech

While lies are impressive, truth is unpalatable. Lies travel much faster than truth. Probably that might be reason for people resorting to lies very often more so by politicians, corporate CEO's, journalists and so on. Public memory is short and also there are no penalties for lying. In the recent Gujarat elections Rahul Gandhi spoke truths but could impress less where as PM Modi resorted to wholesale lying which reverberated across media and the country and he ended up winning the election which otherwise would have been lost. Nehru was the first and the last Prime Minister who spoke truths fearlessly not bothering for consequences.

Once a cheater, always a cheater

Who can you trust? That’s the gamble, and when it comes to choosing a partner, fidelity is a core aspect most of us require. You can trust everyone–to be who they already are. Take a clear-eyed view of your partner; accept that you aren’t going to change them; weigh the available evidence; and get honest about your own comfort level. 

• The old adage ‘once a cheater, always a cheater’ has the ability to brutally tarnish your reputation in future relationships. Yet the adage isn’t always true. 
• When people get caught cheating, they often promise never to cheat again. Making such a promise, however, doesn’t predict what will happen next. 
• Cheating is caused by a host of factors.
• If you don’t (or can’t) change the underlying reasons of cheating in the first place, it will most likely happen again. 
• One bad decision can have a knock-on effect for future relationships.
• People who have been unfaithful in the past are far more likely to do it again & again.
• If a cheater feels guilty about lying the first time, they are much less likely to experience the same level of regret the next time.
• Those who had cheated in their first relationship were three times more likely to do the same in their next relationship.
• Serial cheaters initially felt bad about cheating, but have cheated so much they've adapted to their ways and simply don't feel bad about cheating any more.
• People who suspected their first relationship partners of cheating were four times more likely to report suspicion in later relationships.
• Admitting you were unfaithful in past relationships is a gamble. 
• Telling small lies desensitizes our brains to the associated negative emotions, which may encourage us to tell bigger lies in the future.
• In other words, those little white lies we tell all the time might build up into bigger, more serious untruths.
• Change is possible, but difficult. It requires a lot of insight and effort. Without some type of counseling and a strong commitment to change, people often make the same mistake again.
• A drunk driver knows on an intellectual level that drinking and driving is potentially fatal to themselves or others on the road but until they spend the night in jail, lose their license and pay fines they don’t recognize the extent of the consequences.

We need to pay attention to our romantic pasts
in order to make better choices for our future relationships.

An university's social survey found that 21% of married men and around 15% of married women have cheated on their spouses. If the betrayer takes responsibility for what happened, without blaming others, they tend to stay faithful. More than that, they need to acknowledge what caused the breakdown within their relationship and understand what factors pushed them to cheat. If they blame their partner or lack insight into their actions, chances are, they’ll do it again. If recovery is going to happen, the betrayed spouse has to be willing to forgive. If both partners approach the problem with an open mind, it’s possible for a couple to heal and move past infidelity. Through revitalized commitment and effort the couple can move on and experience a stronger relationship than ever before.

It is human propensity to cheat first time with great care, with less care second time and recklessly third time on wards and if caught, deny it shamelessly. Very rarely people realize their wrongdoings, apologize and return to normal path of honesty. Human beings rarely change. In the company of bad people, good people turn bad. But in the company of good people, bad people never turn good. It is better for good people to avoid bad people. 

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right 

and part with him when he goes wrong ... Abraham Lincoln

Modi, the greatest liar

• Modi's claim of 56 lakh new IT payers is not necessarily the result of demonetization and more over 90% of new IT payers are in the  income range of Rs.2.50-Rs.2.70 lakhs/annum yielding revenue of just over Rs.100 crores. Where as demonetization costed the nation over Rs.150,000 crores, at the least.
• Modi announced Rs.80,000 crore Kashmir package in Nov 2015 and so far nothing has been spent in Kashmir except on army expenses. The voter response dwindling from 64% in 2014 elections to less than 7% in recent Srinagar bye poll (and 2% in re-poll in some parts) speaks volumes about Modi's failure in Kashmir so far.
• Modi must realize that Kashmir problem is not just law & order problem which can be solved by army nor an economic package will buy peace there. But the solution lies in removing the alienation of people in Kashmir through political engagement and deliberation.
• The fact that LS & RS with combined strength of 790 and 14.23% Muslim population their representation should have been 112. The present strength is just 23 (under 3%). 
• As on date, BJP Muslim MP's in LS are NIL and in RS are just 2.
• The appearance of schoolgirls on the streets joining the teenage boys throwing stones at the security forces shows that the familial and social norms have broke down.
• Even after SC ended armed forces immunity under AFSP Act in 2016, to day in Kashmir in every 8th household an able bodied youth is missing (presumed killed by security forces in fake encounters) and in every 5th household a woman is raped by security forces (mostly unreported due to social pressures) and not a single case has been filed against the security personnel and expecting people of Kashmir trust our law enforcers is height of insanity. 
• Today half of our military totaling 7.50 lakhs is enagaged in Kashmir with a population of under 10 million (96% Muslims) and reported number foreign militants are less than 150.
• Without initiating establishment of 'rule of law' and engaging people politically how Modi will resolve Kashmir issue and make it a 'paradise once again' is shallow and his speech a blatant lie. 
• If nothing is done to resolve Kashmir's burning problem except application of brute military might which will not solve the problem and in due course of time we may end up loosing Kashmir forever.

Power is domination, control, and therefore any selective form of truth is a lie.
పామరజనొచితమగు ఫ్రల్లదనములు పలుకుటకు ప్రాఘ్నులంగీకరింపరు.

Modi with his oratory skills, rhetoric, hammering out selective truths and publicizing failures as successes is virtually destroying India economically & politically. First two years he spent time touring the world delivering mesmerizing speeches. In third year he unleashed war on people by quack advised demonetization which hurt the poor most and resulted in destruction of agriculture, construction and informal sector while stated objectives eluded. Then he found GST which would project him as bold financial reformer and rolling it out hurriedly in mangled form without sufficient preparation had impacted small businesses greatly. GST, a novel reform, is expected to impact economy for about two years and there after benefits starts accruing. Both these must have costed nation about Rs.300,000 crores, the exact figures will never be known. All his independence day speech contents are selective truths and blatant lies. Among all politicians, at least Prime Minister should be truthful to nation. All his Red Fort speeches are either selective truths or blatant lies. India belongs to all Indians not just majority Indians.