Better Than Ever

There are a lot of things about the way people go about their lives. There are certain givens - assumptions – which are incorporated into our thinking and attitudes, the way we deal with our worlds, which have their influence in most of our decisions and indecisions. Sometimes one of these assumptions act as pillars for what a person is. Many people go through their entire lives without addressing what these assumptions are and what they stand for. The one such belief which is most addressed is religion. People choose to specifically accept it or reject it. But many other axioms go unnoticed. Passively accepted or rejected but never addressed.

One such feel, a certain hypothesis that doesn’t get analyzed enough: Life as a whole right now isn’t as good as it used to be in the old times. Old times can be a person’s childhood or teenage or their grandparents times depending on whether the person is question is a teenager or middle aged man or a loser. I can’t say that majority of people feel this way but a significant bunch do. And majority of us feel this way with lesser consistency.

For instance, how many times have I heard - Yesterdays songs are gold. Today’s, just too ripe. Yesteryears lifestyle (with barriers and scarecrows) was too good. Today’s lifestyle (With Independence) is messed up. It is kind of a curse to have a drunk around you unless you are drunken enough yourself to ignore him coz this is the stuff that inevitably pops up with drunkards. Too much philosophy with too much bias. As if philosophy of any kind is good at all.

Yet, let’s philosophize. It can be fun if I you know how to take it.

We need to go deeper into the concepts of Music and Independence the drunkards talk of, as they define a lot of who we are in general. Also, because this space isn’t about stuff that matters.

Music is subjective. It is dependent much on the quality of the musicians as the genre. And on the person listening. So when we say old time music was good. Mostly it was the melodious music of 70s/80s/90s (which was the only kind then) which is good. Wait, 90s was shit. It was the transition of everything (at least that is how I feel as I grew up then) where they were just learning to use guitars in places of veenas. The music currently seems messed up because there is too much to take from too many musicians. But if you choose with ears, the music today was not even conceivable 20/30 years back. In types of music available, whether classic Bollywood hits or western albums on charts, history is being made every week with music so beautiful than ever before. This goes for many things apart from music. You can always say there is nothing as soothing as Kishore Kumars Tere Bina Zindagi.. But Kishore Kumar may have done much more today, and better! 

You know what else was not conceivable 20/30 years back? Technology. Just by the presence of all that is available to us, we of today are superior to ourselves of yesterday. And technology takes everything with it. To some extent, mindsets. Independence is such a victim. People take it, play with it, misuse it. When it backfires, they say that its evil. It’s like writing ‘the bike was drunk’ on an insurance claim paper.  Fact is, our education, especially at home, doesn’t take into account the freedom a man gets after he turns 16 or so. 

When there were restrictions on how to live. People asked for freedom. In fact it was fought for and rightly earned. But, when their loved kids get spoiled because they were not taught how to deal with all the options freedom gives, the confusion the options create and the threat pushing the wrong button poses. When the naïve click the bad habits button which is colorful and gives immediate returns. When a kid suddenly turns stops showing respect. People confuse their failure as failure of independence. The failure of ‘today’s generation’. Fact is, yesterdays generation must have been knowing what’s coming and prepare for it. Too bad our that dads didn’t. We can safely say today’s generation will be equally screwed when the tide turns and the next generation shows up. Planning is for losers anyways.

As a sub note, it must be said that not everything is getting good and creamy. I Look at the IT engineers out there who don’t know as much about SQL as me (I don’t know shit) and think, where are we anyways! Population just stinks. This has to be the major negative today. Children everywhere. I am getting allergenic to kids (and people in general). Maybe a huge cleaning program takes away one-third the whole population and there will be smaller Qs in petrol bunks and Theaters. Fingers crossed. 

Foolishly hopeful, wandering mind, mine.. Anyways, what was the bottom-line again? Evolution says that we learn from our shortcomings and learn do things better without/despite those shortcomings. 

Another thing that is degrading, other than population, is the quality of articles I could think of for this page. Wait, this one looks fine.

PS: confused whether the above constitutes philosophy.