Apple released a lot of goodies at its annual jamboree in San Francisco today. The two, I want the most is iPod Shuffle and Mac mini. If only they released this iPod a month ago, I would have bought this flash based player. A month ago, I bought an el-cheapo flash based player for my running purposes. I was almost tempted to buy it this morning as soon they opened the gates, thanks to the battered Apple server, I lost my patience and I didn’t buy it. Now, the initial urge spent up, reason has taken control and I am happy with my old mp3 payer.


iPod Shuffle
copyright Apple


“When is enough is enough?” I have tough time answering the question. This question has been on the menu of philosophers for centuries in both East and West for centuries. Early philosophers both East and West realized that there is no end to these materialistic comforts and preached that the comfort should be taken spiritually and not materialistically. During last 10 centuries or so, some western philosophers started preaching that life is short to be spent about thinking about eternity and started prorogating materialism, live life to it’s fullest was their battle cry. Industrialization and renaissance are the result. West just took off in the pursuit of wealth health and wisdom as they say.
We Easterners were still stuck in the spiritual world, we spnent our time gazing at the sky and looking down upon anyone making money as if they committed a sin akin to murder. It was bound to happen. Westerners came and kicked our asses, enslaved us, took whatever wealth we had, took our women and left us with this complex of hating ourselves.
Hating ourselves? What I am talking about? How many of us Indians hate out dark skin? How we look up to people with fairer skin? How we buy ‘Fair and Lovely’ in dozens so that we turn into ‘Fair and Lovely’ oneday? No, I am not accusing our philosophers for all our ills. What I am saying is we don’t realize what a mess we are in.
We still believe that our culture is the best, our way of living the most pious and our languages the sweetest. May be, but did we ask ourselves a question why is that the lower class people are being shooed away from the relief camps in Tamil Nadu? Why is the relief being diverted and sold to the victims whom it should have reached at the first place?
I understand we can’t change overnight, but we can at least start by question what went wrong, where and how?