I Am A Woman And Not Stupidly Touchy About It by Santosh Jha (books under 200 pages txt) 📖

pre-dating Buddha. In Mahabharta also, which scientists date around 1400-1500 BC; there are vivid details of how ‘unbridled-sexualism’ and ‘irresponsible-liberalism’ had created a society and culture of ‘mad-consumptive-opulence’. In Geeta too, there is a very powerful description of a ‘demographic theory’, where Krishna elaborates to Arjuna about how ‘unbridled-sexualism’ and ‘irresponsible-liberalism’ in the then society had resulted in wider chaos and unnecessary conflicts in society, threatening the very survival of human civilization.

Geeta and Mahabharta must also be accepted as one huge ‘social science’ text. Similarly, Buddha must be accepted as probably the first ‘Cognitive Science/psychology’ genius, who understood human drives, human cognitive conundrum and consciousness conflicts. It is debatable whether he was the first but so many greats of past insisted on this need to see and understand the wired drives of body and mind and then rise above them through a persevered process of self-dialogue and self-actualization. Indian spiritual philosophies of Yoga and Vipasyana are brilliant cognitive texts, detailing the causalities of human drives and milieus, which engender this stupidity of ‘Be Yourself’ viscerality. They also list the way out.

Then again, around in 600-800 AD, India again witnessed the same situation. There was a spiritual-philosophical movement led by Shankra, who advocated a ‘poised-life’ even when there was a contemporary populist philosophy by ‘Charvaks’, which advocated this ‘unbridled-liberalism’, based on ‘visceral-intelligence’ and so-called ‘Be Yourself’ philosophy.

Many believe that this Charvak philosophy was also there in the times of Buddha. In fact, since the inception of human civilization and culture, two streams of life-living philosophy has always existed –

This wing of philosophy believed that life-living and humans have higher goals and they are different than what the innate body-mind mechanism tells us…

The opposite philosophy accepted body as ultimate intelligence. It insisted that there was nothing called ‘higher goals’ of life or higher purpose of life and that is why, the body and mind is genius enough to see and accept that what body-mind tells and seeks is right and good…

Here, we have to see and accept something very critical. There is always this ‘cyclicality’ in time-space domain. That is why history repeats itself. There is also this very well documented history of social sciences evolved between 15-17th century, which have well elaborated how human thoughts create socio-cultural conflicts. The general will, social contract and Epicureanism ideas are there for all to see and understand.

Classical spiritualism has said it way back, social sciences documented it in modern era and now modern contemporary science in new millennium has been telling us that this cyclicality of human society is wired in our brain. That is why it has this cyclicality of repeating itself in time-space continuity. This we need to see, understand and accept –

Humans are born with core drives of 3Ps – Possession, Preservation and Perpetuation. Our drives give us kick of life, as they do to most creatures, being aligned with our bio-chemical system of hormones. Our drives have been installed by evolution to live a life of subconscious indulgence of 3Ps – Possession, Preservation and Perpetuation. The 3Ps shall always advocate ‘unbridled-pursuits’ and any check on these 3Ps make us in fight-mode to secure them. This is visceral intelligence, wired deep in us. However, thousands of years back, humanity chose to live in communities, leaving behind the life of wanderer-gatherer. In fact, evolution has also wired us for ‘tribe-living’ as humans have sustained in community-living since thousands of years. We humans have gregarious genes. Scientists have clearly mentioned of human’s social animal needs. There are now concrete scientific evidences as how individual wellness and excellence is majorly dependent on a balance of tangible factors like money and wealth as well as intangibles like emotional support, family nurturance and love-compassion. That is why, humans need collective wellness and this community or societal living requires some ‘reasonable restrictions’ on our core drives. As a political philosophy says – ‘Individual’s right to stretch his/her hands ends where the nose of other individual begins’. To be human is to have a poise between ‘wants’ of drives and social ‘needs’. Both are visceral and a wired realism for all of us. The two powerful human needs always split all humans. That is why, this conflict and dualism creates a cyclicality in human history. This dualism is wired in our body-mind mechanism and that is why this dualism revisits us cyclically in time-space domains.

In contemporary societies, where life and living has become very complex, it is only natural that humans shall feel the pinch of poise in a hard way. If we see, understand and accept it, we all are wise and our societies are happy. It is primary wisdom…!

Though, it is a long and complicated scientific explanation as how our brains have been designed in long years of evolution; we just have to know and accept that unlike other human organs, human brain is not a single organ. It is rather a cooperative of many parts, evolved during different times of evolution, with each part being an addition to the old one, not a replacement.

Therefore, what we need to accept is that our brain is not doing this favor of intellectual discretion to us. It still has the primitive brain, over which the new parts have piled up. That is why our brain still has the primitive instincts and drives. It also has modern logical parts but brain is not doing any automatic pruning for us. We have to exercise learnt and nurtured intellectual control over our instincts. Both instincts and intellect are part of our brain mechanism but this self-control thing works well only when we have evolved a higher consciousness.

This hypothesis advocates this contemporary wisdom that ‘Be Yourself’ ideology is a qualified wisdom. Just being yourself or blindly following what our instincts leads us to is stupidity. True meaning of ‘Be Yourself’ is seeing, understanding and accepting the drives and instincts through a tough and objective process of ‘self-actualization’ and ‘self-dialogue’ and then install intellectual self-control over all our visceral desires.

As ancient spiritual traditions as well modern science has been telling us – ‘What we seek is what we want and all that we want is not what we need.’ There is this fine-line between what we ‘want’ and what we actually ‘need’. This is the prudence of evolving and maturing as a human being. Our visceral self shall always lead us to our primary drives of 3Ps – Possession, Preservation and Perpetuation. These drives are wired intelligence, so that we all survive and excel. However, our drives are value-neutral and very localized. In collective modern living, we cannot solely rely on our drives and justify it by professing to Be Yourself viscerality. We need to apply intellectual self-control to prune our old and obsolete vestiges of drives.

There was an interesting survey in USA, where a group of people were asked whether they would accept $100 right then or forego it to get $500 after six months. Study found that overwhelming majority of people accepted only $100, not bothering to wait for six months in anticipation of better gains. This is some viscerality, which we need to unlearn. Be Yourself drives and instincts can be good, but not always and not in all situations. Our drives were created when humans lived in precarious life-living milieus. We now live in reasonably settled and structured milieus. That is why, we cannot and should not rely blindly on such old and obsolete drives, which have lost their utility and worth in modern milieus.

Instinctive behaviors are auto-mode, intellectual initiatives are not. Therefore, the intellectual self-control needs to be inculcated and persevered through conscious practice. This presupposes quality time with self. Contemporary life-living of constant drift and flux drowns us in auto-mode reactive decision-making, conditioned by our raw viscerality. This we all need to unlearn. This unlearning is the true empowerment and it has nothing to do with gender question. Both men and women need the same empowerment.

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CHAPTER 4

Empowerment is everyone’s conscious as well as subconscious desire. Since childhood, this idea of ‘empowerment’ is ingrained in our thought-process. It is also something, all battles are fought for! Especially the most original and primeval battle of gender...!

To be strong, powerful and rootedly endowed is something which most women feel so emphatically about; more than men as since ages, it is being made out that women are not getting and offered the ‘rightful’ quantum of empowerment, which they deserve. However, this is not a question of gender. Everyone, be it a man or woman, should experience and live-up empowerment! Moreover, as man and woman have evolved to be complementary to each other and live in symbiosis for preservation and perpetuation of human race, each have to ensure the empowerment of other as it shall finally benefit both.

Somehow, like most good qualities about life-living experiences, empowerment too has become a very abstract idealism and therefore has become associated with such stupid and impractical external elements, which make such a cherished idea of ‘empowerment’ the most precariously ‘over-celebrated’ idealism with least substance and out-of-place externalities.

It seems, this is happening more to women as ‘empowerment’ is something, being ‘marketed and supplied’ to women in the garb of many masqueraded matters, sans the idealism. Naturally, when the ‘customer’ is not well-informed, uncertain and even zealously and reactionarily into a ‘buying-spree’; spurious and ‘mimicked’ utilities and worths tend to flood the market place. Then, even an informed customer has trouble buying the ‘genuine’ product...!

So, what is ‘empowerment’? Especially, from the perspective of women! Let us list the elements, which most experts believe constitute empowerment for women –

Fitness/Health – Globally, all empowerment of any kind is first associated with body-mind fitness. Healthy and poised body-mind is primary empowerment. Women need to invest most and hugely on fitness, health and poise. Exercise, enough sleep and leisure, positivity, de-stressing and most importantly, a receptive and in-ward looking consciousness, which facilitates constant ‘self-dialogue’, without falling prey to populist exhortations. Sadly, in most women, even in modern well-off women, across all cultures, this empowerment is the most neglected!

Self-Defence/Self-Security – Being women is a package deal! A woman has best of endowments but a poor protective mechanism. The best way for a woman to feel empowered is to have deep confident feeling that she can, without the help of men in their lives (dad/brother/friend/husband) defend and secure herself. Self-defence skill development and safety-training are primary empowerment need for all women, especially young. Not only that, security and safety is essentially a mindset which needs to be ingrained deeply in the subconscious, so that women feel at their confident best in any milieu they move in. Global surveys however show that massive majority of women do very little for their self-defence and are hugely crippled by their ‘security/safety’ concerns. They also at many times, casually drop their natural guard against troubles in their daily lives.

Think Positive/Drop Negation/Embrace Neutrality – Women all over the world are considered a ‘complaining tribe’, infested with the syndrome of negativity and negation. No doubt, things are very tough for women in all milieus and cultures. Negativity is more in the milieu than in women’s collective psyche. Still, when it comes to empowerment, a woman has to nurture and inculcate the consciousness of positivity and poise. The idea is – Accept that as nobody else may stand as your support, you are your own best cheerleader! Empowerment is in celebrating positivity and neutralizing negativity and negation. Globally, it is a primary accusation on modern women that most of their life-living priorities are energized by reactionary and negative priorities. Empowerment is all within, comes with consciousness, not what we accept externally. Positivity facilitates the journey of consciousness within...

Self-Respect/Self-Acceptance/Self-Worth – There are populist cultural benchmarks for women about beauty, looks, body, dressing, attitudes, etc. A woman’s vacillations, conflicts, confusion and dualism are very crippling propositions for true empowerment. Empowerment means standing tall and strong to yourself and your own pluses and minuses. Nobody is born perfect but rigidity and over-insistence about perfection itself is negativity. Empowerment means acceptance of