On the wall!

A student walked into my rather cosy office, late evening, yesterday enquiring whether he could get admission to our Executive Management Program. Since the bloke was an engineer and had a work experience of two years, I told him that, it should not be an issue.

However, what he told me next was a bit strange. He said that he had enrolled for a full time MBA but had to leave & return to his home town, as an astrologer had told him that his infant son, would not survive, if his father ( the student ) was in Bangalore!

I've not heard anything this bizarre in the recent past & was a tad shaken. I tried to dissuade the young man from giving up his full time MBA but the attempt was futile & I reluctantly passed him on to my admission team.

To cut to the chase, I was disappointed. I do not like quitters. They make the world seem a lesser place.A class fellow of mine had a similar issue. He would be full of zip, leading up to our examinations, but as we got closer to the D- Day, he would cook up some reason, why he could not take the exam and head home, much to their chagrin of all concerned.He simply chose to quit. Fast forwarding twenty years and the guy is an alcoholic wreck, floating in a sea of deep self disillusionment. He has quit life.When we started, our cadet ship, he came across as the most balanced and intelligent student of our lot.........so the way things turned out is a tragedy.

To make a commitment and stand by it is not everybody cup of tea, in today's world of instant gratification and make believe.The thrill of hanging in there and riding the wave, is no longer appreciated or wanted.Persistence is a forgotten virtue in a world where life is led with a foot on the accelerator.To attribute our actions to external causes seems to be the panacea for short term solutions.
To sit on the wall, is the call of the day!I would be reluctant to have such guys on my team.

The Guru!

A few years ago I had a boss, who was an ardent 'chela' of Swami Nityananda. My boss was, to say the least, a painful man. Obese and suffering from hyper tension he would erupt for all the wrong reasons. It made me wonder, how the Guru would be if the chela behaved like a bandicoot.............

Nityananda stayed on my radar screen,as a passing interest, as I frequently passed his, sprawling estate,at Bidadi, on my way to Mysore & back..................till yesterday, when all hell broke loose. Apparently, the "Guru" was caught ( on camera ) in a rather delicate and 'compromising' position, with an actress ( as yet unidentified )and has since gone into hiding, after vigorously protesting his innocence and godliness.

If true, then we have one more God Man biting the dust.............................I have no love lost for self styled God Men, but what surprises me is the following that these gents have amongst the hoi polli! Why do we head for these folk, in droves, place them on a pedestal & when we find that they are just as human as us, mere mortals, our anger is unbridled ?

My take is as follows:

1. Indian's are very high on the Uncertainty Avoidance Index, which means that anything, which is not certain is anathema to us. This results in us making a beeline to astrologers, Guru's, palmists & so on to secure our future and make it more secure!
2.We are very strong on External attribution................Attribution theory is concerned with how individuals interpret events and how this relates to their thinking and behavior. Attribution theory assumes that people try to determine why people do what they do. A person seeking to understand why another person did something may attribute one or more causes to that behavior.
According to Heider a person can make two attributions 1) internal attribution, the inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character or personality. 2) external attribution, the inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in. Blaming other people and avoiding personal recrimination are very real self-serving attributions. We will also make attributions to defend what we perceive as attacks. We will point to injustice in an unfair world. We will even tend to blame victims (of us and of others) for their fate as we seek to distance ourselves from thoughts of suffering the same plight.Since external attribution is external and situational and so cannot be controlled, we need divine assistance, in this area.
3. A lot of Indian's have an external locus of control ( http://capnagaraj.blogspot.com/2009/11/yesterday-young-lady-boxer-from.html)


Does education make a difference ? Please do let me know what you feel! As for me, I'm heading into a short round of meditation!