What is on your mind?  – FB

Whether to put out my Narcissus or Procrustus best

Can Asians Think? Asks Kishore Mahbubani since 1998

Is there an Indian Way of Thinking? Asked AK Ramanujan in 1990

Do we – humans- think?

We think we think

We don’t – as a species ! There is no ‘ us ‘ thinking. There may be U.S / American thinking !

The question is important since we are what we think we are!

I am tempted to provoke you.  Most of us do not know how to think

And the Powers that be do not want us to think!

What is to think?

That we think is beyond dispute. The quality of our thinking needs to be judged on the outcome of our thinking

If one thinks and thinks and reaches the conclusion that kicking the bucket is the best option that too is thinking. On the other hand, one thinks, connects and improves her and the tribe’s wellness we have thinking as it ought to be.

Asians do not think as one as the Chinese think that they are one, or the Singaporeans do. Indians do not think as one nation. In fact we are the most confused as to what is to be an Indian or even what is to be a Hindu, perhaps because of our heightened levels of complexity !

To be an Indian and to think in the deeper sense of the term has significant strategic implications.   If we subscribe to the view of “vasudhaiva kudumbakam”  we need to indianise the global community –  Indianisation is globalization as against the current paradigm of Westernization as globalization

When we understand the Indian way of Thinking we have a strategic advantage which enhances global community and offers us opportunities as a Global Solution Provider.

The Indian way of thinking vs the western

Read them as, more and less rather than either or

a little crude way of putting it for the more sophisticated

Fusion vs Fission

Analytic vs Integral

Wholeness vs Divisiveness

Process vs event oriented

Unification vs Fragmentation

Moderation vs Extremist

Tolerance vs Aggression

Realisation vs Actualisation

Renunciation vs Achievement

Inclusive vs Exclusionary

Neg-entropic- Entropic

Organic – Mechanistic

We can go on ad infinitum. One need not be an expert to see the obvious unless one prefers to pretend blindness.

Sanskrit, processed, India was the only culture which had a language for process and dialogue, the hallmark of culture. .We are not argumentative as some would say. We would pretend that we don’t know rather than pick up an argument which is counterproductive. This is not to say that Sanskrit is the way out but to reiterate that the product is in the process. Thinking is a process and the process need to be judged against the outcomes. If our outcomes are less than what we expected at start, we need to go back and improve the process.

Asia has been the source of all religions, the failed science of the past. As the Asian begins to think and the levelling happens we will be compelled to rethink  the science we thought scientific.

To conclude:

Most of our problems have roots in the way we think, which also includes our personal health. If we think we are machines, that machine has to break down however sophisticated it is.

“Nothing can be more important than being able to choose the way we think.”- Eknath Eswaran (1910–1999)