Information Avalanche

What has Internet done to our generation? We are being surrounded by so much of overwhelming information that we are not able to keep up with the deluge of data being provided to us. Even if a person spends 24 hours of the day in learning things on the Internet, giving up his sleep, food and other activities, still he will be left with a feeling that he couldn't explore all of the available information satisfactorily. If a person is too ambitious of improving his knowledge using the Internet, I would caution him about this fact that he might be left discontent at the end of the whole effort. We need to be absolutely sure of what we're looking for when we venture into learning something these days.

I fear that so much of distraction will not allow the person to connect with his family and people around, this has been shown by various studies across the world. More importantly, the person will forget to connect with oneself, always living in this realm of information and knowledge, never understanding the true form of the self. The Information Super Highway is taking us far away from ourlseves!

Effective Philanthropy

Philanthropy has been one of the good virtues followed by people of the middle and higher rungs of the society since long ages. Broadly speaking, the act of contributing to the welfare of others from one's own pocket, either in cash, kind or in deeds, can be regarded as philanthropy. The most commonly understood meaning of philanthropy is the monetary help provided by people to the institutions and organizations working for the welfare of society.

The beneficiaries of such philanthropy include Educational Instituations, Religious organizations, Non Government organizations (NGOs), Government bodies working in a specific field of upliftment of the society etc. Although there is a lot of funding allocated from the Government's budget for these welfare activities in every country, but in most cases, the alloted budget would suffice only a fraction of the underpreviliged factions of the society. There is still a large majority of needy people who have to be catered to, this is where the donations from selfless individuals of the society come into help.

There are variegated driving forces behind people involving themselves in philanthropy. We have to appreciate the willingness of people to contribute money out of their pockets to help the poor and destitutes and to save them from starving and making sure that they get good food, shelter and education. However there are other reasons to for people donating money to these organizations.
A study conducted by the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University shows that in United States, a major chunk of donations go to the religious organizations. The next big share goes to the Eduction, Health and Science, followed by Human services, Arts, cultures, social welfare etc. But the point which stands out in this study is that the amount of money that goes into running the religious organizations and institutions is remarkably high considering the whole pie of money involved in all activities of Philanthropy.

What does this show? It proves that the human beings, out of their fear and insecurity and in a hope of being happy at the cost of keeping God happy, donate a major share of their donations to the religious institutions. Thinking of it, I realise that this defeats the very purpose of philanthropy! It is also proved in the remaining parts of the study mentioned above, that the redistribution of wealth is not effective in case of religious institutions as compared to the other areas like the Human welfare organizations and the Education, Health and Science fields.

One more aspect of this whole Philanthropy has been discovered in the same paper. With an illustration, they have demonstrated the donations given out by people is actually a serious cost to the Government. This is because any amount given out in charity is directly deductible from the total amount that is taxable for that individual. If a person had donated $1000, the actual cost to him would be $650 out his pocket, since he saved the 35% tax that he/she would have otherwise paid to the Government, which amounts to $350. This means that the $1000 donation by an individual costed the Government a $350. In the same lines, the total donations by a group of people of $1 million, will make the Government lose out $350,000 of the tax money. This is true with America only because of its lenient tax system in the purview of charitable contributions. Moreover, a practical study also showed that such a deduction of tax amount benefits only the upper class of the society who are aware of these tax tricks, leaving the lower and middle class at a disadvantage due to their lack of awareness, thus deepening the divide between the rich and the poor.

Every individual has to think and donate judiciously to the various avenues of social welfare. It is our responsibility to make sure that the money that we donate is directly helping somebody in thier basic needs, thus making our contribution worthwhile. We have to weigh the importance of each of the above mentioned benefeciaries and divide our contributions appropriately, rather than blindly pushing all the money into a religious institution with the ignorant hope that God will save me from all my misdeeds. I am not condemning the actions of the religious institutions. But I am against the overspending done by the religious institutions in builing more and more extravagant temples and churches, and still keeping a large group of people fighting for their fundamental requirements. I understand that a lot of spiritual organizations are doing splendid work in educating people thus enabling them to lead a happy and peaceful lives. Truly these organizations deserve great contributions.

The religious organizations have to realise that religion and spirituality have great potential in gathering and redistributing wealth for the needy and the poor. These organizations should leverage this potential and contribute more effectively to the society. Also every educated individual should recongnise the need of the society and donate intelligently ensuring its application in the needed field with swift actions.

Domestic Spying, an infringement of personal space?

Year 2001 has gone into the books of history as one of the most dreadful year due to the fact that the morale of United States was hit by the attack on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, by a group of terrorists, trying to show US that they are on the offensive mode, and to caution US to reduce its presence in the middle east. It was truly a tragic day, Sep 11 of 2001, it was an utter deplorable incident, where thousands of people lost their lives for no fault of theirs, the great city of NewYork, which shelters people from so many ethnicities, a true cosmopolitan, lost two important structures from its face, thus remaining defaced even today, with the scar evidently visible on the face of NY, the skyline.

A lot of counteraction has been seen after this tragic event, US attacked Afghanistan with the intention of 'smoking out' Bin Laden and having him surrendered, which has not been possible yet. Reportedly, there have been many more attempts to attack US, but the security measures taken by the US Govt are keeping these attacks from happening. In such a grave national situation, the US Govt got into an aberration, trying to tap the conversations of the millions of foreign nationals staying and working in US, but it did not spare the Americans either and has brought the American population, with even a remote possibility of connections with any of this terror activities.

I often wonder why the 'Privacy' is such a big issue in US, it is understandable that no person would like his personal affairs to be monitored by anybody else for whatever reasons, but when the possibility of the event in question is so grave, that the security of a nation, that too the most powerful nation is at stake, then why is there a brouhaha about the people's phones being intercepted or their activity on the Internet is monitored. It makes sense to me why the Government wants to monitor the activity , their principle is "prevention is better than cure". People are worried about their privacy, but they don't think that if the people themselves are not left, where is the question of privacy then? Privacy would help if a person is alive, else there is neither privacy nor can there be any infringement of it.

The other aspect of this whole episode is the fact that the US Govt is doing this domestic spying without seeking the order or approval of the court, thus defying a law that was being followed by all the previous Presidents of America. Now I am not really knowledgeable on this front, as to how critical it is to by pass the court for the security of the nation, but probably due to some other untoward actions of the Govt in the past, like the attack on Iraq despite all the protest, are showing their influence in this issue of Patriot act too.

A group of people, who have some wrong ideals due to whatever reason, be it wrong interpretation of religious doctrines, or resentment against some happenings in their personal lives, are causing distress and destroying peace all over the world. This is making life for people in other countries, like US, more and more difficult and annoying.

I wish that our next generation comes to realise that all human beings are from the same original descent, and that any mutual fight is only the ignorance and foolishness of the generation and misinterpretations of their spiritual leader, who , I am sure would not have preached killing of people in order to establish a particular 'religious' path for the people. It is utterly inhuman and anybody who preaches that or follows such things , will at the end, be infinitely shameful of their acts!