Talking about nothing but ultimately everything

Galileo Galilei, the father of modern science, was put under house arrest by the church for stating the fact, which was not conforming to their belief. The fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He paid the price for someone else's ignorance. Since then till now, we have unshackled many beliefs and learned a lot of lessons. The primary of them is - education is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance. As light exposes cracks in the building, education too, in a similar manner, exposes our ignorance. Our shortcomings are presented before us to look into and rectify them. However, sometimes it is the curiosity of knowing things that removes ignorance. It was the curiosity of Dmitri Mendeleev, the Russian chemist, that he sought to find the relation between the chemical elements. He was curious to know how Sodium is similar to Potassium, or how Chlorine is different from Argon. Mendeleev's quest for solving the puzzle led to the first modern Periodic Table of chemi...

On 6th August 1945, the world woke up to the inhuman side of technology. USA dropped nuclear bomb on Hiroshima , Japan, killing thousands of people and marking the beginning of the end of Second World War. But one question has remained since then, if one has such lethal technology, must they use it, regardless of its repercussions ? Sensitivity of human spirit should always be given an upper hand over the technology. Technology is not an end in itself, it is a tool to further human interests and in that sense, technology should be bounded by human rationality. Mahatma Gandhi was not a big supporter of heavy industries based on technology. He, in fact, supported cottage industries because he viewed technology not as something which has to grow to its grandeur divorced from the actual purpose it intends to serve. For Mahatma Gandhi heavy industries cause harm to the environment and increased mechanization would cause higher unemployment and thus, serves very little purpose. Wis...

In a bid to dominate and extract benefits, there is tendency to usurp power. This insatiable desire for power has grown in different fields from environmental affairs to societal interactions, from economic dealings to geopolitical relations. Such love for power is detrimental for peace. Love is a universal value. In contrast to other non-universal value, it is permanent. Love is worth pursuing for every individual and in every period of time. Ashoka, the Mauryan King, applied it in his Dhamma philosophy, so have we done in modern democratic system to bring peace and ensure people welfare. But, at many times in history such noble idea of power of love has been relegated and it continues to be so today also. Its place has been taken up by love for power. Result of which has been World Wars, environmental degradation, poverty, gender injustice, oppressed castes among other things. Such power intoxication is not limited to institutional level. In fact, it starts from a single person wh...