Everyone Is a Genius

We live in a world where we are surrounded by beings-over 7 billion of them- that are very much like us.   So much so that the brainy biologists have even gone as far as giving all of us a common name - Homo sapiens (Latin for ‘wise men’) - is what they call us. And this conclusion would seem perfectly logical if you were to go through a few books on human anatomy, they will state quite conclusively that almost all of the 7 billion of us are essentially the same with two eyes, four limbs, a heart and a brain. So nothing wrong in calling us by the same name right?
Well to a certain extent no and from sciences point of view it’s perfectly logical. But then comparing each of us with each other, it becomes quite obvious that we are as much different from each other as we are alike.

We are all independent individuals with likes, dislikes, interests and skills localized to our own individuality. What is a passion for one can be of equal indifference to the other. We are in fact so different from each other that there cannot be a common scale for our judgment. And this brings me to a few wise words from a very wise man.

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” 
  - Albert Einstein.

 Going through these words it becomes quite clear that intelligence or stupidity, talent or a lack of it are all relative. This difference amongst us as individuals is all part of the natural system. It is in fact a fundamental law of nature and what surprises me is that we have never realized this or perhaps we have forgotten all about it in this era of competition and rapid progress. You see in our country right now it’s almost impossible for a large number of us to look beyond two possible career options. All of us either want to be engineers or doctors. Meaning that we are looking at around 400 million Indians wanting to be either one of these two.

It could be possible that our minds have been pre-programmed in a way that makes us great engineers or doctors but the more reasonable conclusion may seem that society and the system has molded our minds in a way that stops us from seeing beyond these preconceived notions of what is pursuable as a career and what is not.  Now there is nothing wrong in being a doctor, it is in fact a very noble profession and engineers are essential for the progress of a nation. But then the problem is not all of us can be good at it. As I have already stated earlier our differences in personalities is what defines us. But then forgetting this basic human ideology and coming up with a narrow minded notion of what is considered talent and what is not is very naïve of us.    

This wonderful world of ours if filled with a lot of opportunities, so many in fact that all of us can find and pursue our own passions. We are all individuals capable of independent thoughts and ideas. What we do for a living must be an expression of our personality, so if science isn’t your thing, don’t sweat just go out there and find something that is!  

A Need to Re-invent

Our world is progressing at such unassailable speeds that life over the past 60 odd years has changed exponentially. So much so that it’s almost impossible to comprehend the kind of atmosphere our grandparents grew up in…..technology back then must have been almost prehistoric compared to what we have now. Getting information (based purely on the winter night stories from grand pa) must have been like starting fire from rocks!!

Everything has changed so much that it’s almost impossible to find any constants between now and say 60 years ago. But looking hard enough I did find the most unexpected ‘constant’……the automobile.

Surprised? So was I when I first pondered upon the thought but then after a lot of googling and a bit of contemplation, the theory seemed almost believable! And now I’m so convinced about it that I am out in front of my laptop trying to force my point trough to you.    

Let’s start by getting a bit of perspective about the magnitude of change we are dealing with.
Back in the 50s all the technology available to most our seniors was a massive transistor radio set that took a major part of their living space and if they where really lucky they perhaps got to own an even bulkier tv set and the contents of these massive contraptions as I’m told was very limited. Limited in the sense of 2 channels showing a few shows weekly!
And now as I look around I realize….heck I get an exponential times the amount of content from my roughly 8 mm thick smartphone. Internet was virtually unheard of back then (except for a few top secret teams in the US working on it) and the closest thing to google must have been the oldest guy in the neighborhood.

But looking at the timeline of cars through the same time period, it becomes quite obvious that even though they’ve come a long way over these years, they have been unable to match the rapid progress of everything else. All the changes over the years done to the automobile have not managed to Re-invent the concept of the automobile rather all that has been achieved is its Re-innovation. Even after a hundred years since the first Model-T rolled out of ford’s factories, nothing radical has happened to the automobile. Their core remains relatively unaltered. They still are things that take in petrol, turn wheels and give out smoke.

Now one thing I’d like to clarify at this point is that I haven’t got anything against cars, on the contrary I’m the biggest petrol head I know. The beauty of form meeting function has an unparalleled appeal to me. And those who know me well enough will attest to this fact. But despite my clear affinity towards anything with an engine and four wheels, I still honestly feel that we could have done much better and could have come much further than we have. We desperately need to alter our perspective towards cars and think about them in terms of the future.  

Alternate energy to power our cars has to be THE way forward because we have already burned more than enough petrol and diesel and we have given out enough toxics to our air. Electric cars have emerged as a viable alternative, the concept of 0 emissions is convincing enough for us to think that electric cars are the way forward.  But then if we look at the bigger picture an obvious flaw in them become apparent. Electric cars run on electricity (yes the same stuff that powers everything from our TVs to a whole nation). But then this wonder source of power is made mostly in power plants having big chimneys which give out a lot of smoke.

Considering a reasonable figure of at least 1/3^rd of the total passenger cars to be electric in the next 10 years, we are still looking at a massive figure of 200 million electric cars (that’s right 200 followed by six zeros) by 2022. And that means we will need a lot more electricity than we do now, which means more plants with bigger chimneys giving out a lot more smoke. So basically the petrol and smoke that we are isolating from cars is only going to be passed on to the power plants.

So unless we don’t come up with a cleaner way to make a lot of electricity, the idea of electric cars is not going to feasible. So what other options do we have?So unless we don’t come up with a cleaner way to make a lot of electricity, the idea of electric cars is not going to feasible. So what other options do we have?


Well they aren’t many. You see alternate sources of energy hasn’t been of much importance on the ‘to do list’ of our auto giants and this lack of innovation means that the automobile world is running way behind its time. To solve this issue, the boffins at Ford and BMW and all other big names in the industry need to go back to the drawing board and come up with something radically different, something that changes the way we look at cars completely.Now folk at Mercedes have come up with one such idea, they call it The Biome and even though its complete fiction it gives us a rough idea of how different car manufacturing can be. Take a look at their brain wave -Mercedes Biome

Education - An increasing Blurr

Education – it is the single most important aspect of human development. It gives us the power to analyze and judge not just the world around us but more importantly the world within us. It is this very ability of self analysis and judgment that makes the educated the crème de la crème of God’s greatest creation.

At this point we might be feeling very proud of our self, we read the papers, we are well informed of what’s going on around us, we’ve been to schools, we hold recognized jobs and healthy bank balances. All this merriness in life leads us to admire the power of our ‘educated minds’.  But how can something as materialistic as a bank balance be a measure of something as deep and profound as the art of education?

Yes we can read and write and yes we try and remain well informed about the world and yes we try and acquire as much knowledge as we possibly can. But sadly education goes way beyond the realm of knowledge. And it is this distinction between knowledge and education that seems to have diminished in modern times. Knowledge is not the objective, knowledge is not education, if anything it is the means to education. Reading through the pages of our books and remembering what they say – that’s gaining knowledge - but to go beyond mere words, to search for and contemplate their true meaning – that’s gaining education.

Education is the development of the mind over the brain. It’s the capability to look beyond the apparent workings of life and uncovering a world of self belief and self righteousness, a world where I, me and mine turn into we, us and ours. Now how many of us have uncovered this world? How many of us put the needs of others above or even alongside our own?

Think again people how many of us are truly educated?