The Reflect: Edition 1, Part I [2020-21]

Inherent in mind, body and soul. The one property not transferred by genes from one generation to another, yet still, it exists. We implore you not to turn a blind eye to her. For she might blind-side you instead. We introduce to you, Prejudice. Although, you’ve known her in some way or the other already.

And Opinion? He’s a keeper. Or so everyone thinks. Much more reasonable. Far more agreeable than the whimsical Prejudice. Strong, rather conventionally masculine in his whole approach.

But both are elements of a larger house. Society.

Seemingly, reality flies straight out of the sheep-like crowd’s opaque windows, creating all the more room for farces and absurd conversations, which pave the way for even more absurd assumptions. The world seems to love craning its neck far up to peer at the misery of others. But the only thing it might love to do more, is talk. It is what it is. People love to talk about things which are ‘different’ to them. To be unique is to be intriguing. But then, intrigue can make the ball roll in darker corners as well.

Come explore those dark corners.

A biased study

Perception. Reflection. Conclusion. A process an average person goes through a billion times over in a lifetime. His conceived reality is a highly complexed cobweb of the threads of his judgements and decisions. Each one of these is a pebble in the pond if his reality, none without a repercusary ripple. The only difference is, these metaphorical ripples of his decisions are not ephemeral but eternal. Each one makes a difference that sticks around forever.

Now what if I tell you that the reality given to you and the reality you receive are not the same? Your system that is behind everything is rigged from the inside. That's absurd, right? No, it makes all the sense. You can call it an illusion, a magic trick our brain has learned to thrive. You perceive however is convenient, something called heuristics in judgement. The bending of facts and reasoning it to fit our own narratives are called biases.

Kahneman, in his exposition of biases that act cognitively, splits the mind into two- systems 1 and 2 , or an elephant and a man. It is the cumulative actions of the two that is behind each decision you make and opinion you form. The elephant works impulsively and automatically on intuitions. The man is thoughtful, calculating, objective and deliberative. Interactions of both of these define how we judge, make decisions and act.

Can you tell me this:

2+2=?

Without any deliberate mental efforts, you can say 4. 17X24=?

Now, this is not as intuitive as the sum of two two's. You'll probably need pen and paper and undivided attention to perform this multiplication. Only after little efforts, you can say 408. The first was a situation that the elephant could very efficiently handle and the second where the man had to be summoned.

As effortful as the work of the man is, he thinks himself to be the hero of the entire narrative. However, he is lazy and reluctant to work unless it is absolutely necessary. Owing to this, the elephant gets to make the call and lead the way often. With the abundance of information that we're constantly being bombarded with, the elephant has to do a lot of legwork in processing all of it. To be more efficient, he has some consultants. They are not objectively reliable but very fast and get the work done. These are what Kahneman calls cognitive biases.

On an average, there are 7 to 15 cognitive biases that drive a person without his realising it. For example the confirmation bias, one that acts most prominently and affects the most basic of our judgements. Why is it that all the evidence in nature seems to be on our side of the table? It is because we perceive

everything from where we stand. We look for evidence to confirm our beliefs more often than we do to negate them. Confirmation bias even affects scientific discoveries. Scientists look for outcomes mostly to support their hypothesis, not to question it. That makes them cling to one hypothesis for years trying to prove it. In confirming a bias, the man in our head lays back and the elephant has free reign. Something that is behind people getting misinformed on social media and large scale debate breaking out on it so often.

Most common of our cognitive biases are shamelessly used by companies to subtly influence your thread of cognition. Some examples could be the Dunning Kruger effect. The less educated overestimate his knowledge and more educated underestimate theirs. Or the Sunk Cost fallacy. The more time and effort you invest in an activity the less likely you are to drop it before any profits. The harder it is to find an item, the more you will pay for it no matter the production cost. Toy companies launch limited edition merchandise with absurd prices and people still buy them.

These are very inherent biases and no one is exempt from these. Not even I. In my personal opinion, old music is better than the new which, as much as I loath to admit, is a biased opinion. When you form your opinions based on a few survivors and ignore the casualties you form what is called a Survivorship bias. Old music is good because all the old music that we listen to has passed the test of time and bad old music has already been forgotten. People citing examples of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg as college dropout millionaires is an example of survivorship bias as well.

Moving ahead with the list, we come to something called the halo effect which works in a queer fashion. As in when introduced to attributes of a person, the ones you hear first, weighs more in your larger opinion of the person. In a study, people preferred Alan who was intelligent, industrious, stubborn and envious over Ben who was envious, stubborn, intelligent and industrious. Alan looked an ideal corporate boy while Ben simply was dangerous. The tactic of putting your best foot forward has been passed down from generation to generation and job counsellors advise people to tweak their CV according to it.

These biases have been around for so long that they have become ingrained in our thinking process. The realisation that a normal human being has several biases is not a novel idea. The terrifying part is that big companies, politicians and news outlets use the fact to skew our biases and perception to their benefits. This tactic has been used for centuries without people realising it. Everyone has seen advertisements like "9 out of 10 doctors recommend this brand of toothpaste". They get away with such advertisements because they are not wrong. The way they conduct these surveys is they send doctors a list of toothpastes and ask them to recommend a few. If the brand is good then doctors might recommend a few of them which might include your brand. What the fact leaves out is that in the same group of doctors, 10 out of 10 might recommend a different toothpaste.

Another way we can form skewed biases is by interchanging Causation and Correlation. Two different things can have some third factor that correlates them but that won't mean one cause the other. Caffeine increases productivity. Does it really? Here, without any scientific proof, the truth is not as apparent as adding 2 and 2.

There is just a relation between the being two observed on a very large scale- people drink coffee and they get to work. Thing to note is, correlation does not always mean causation. Do you know, once upon a time people thought lice were good for your health? Lice are susceptible to higher temperatures, so people who have fever don't have lices. Lice do not cause good health, bad health does not cause lice. People still have these kinds of superstitions. "Study shows 2 out of 1000 vaccinated kids have autism". Does that mean vaccines cause autism?

This just goes to show how unreliable data can be and how easy it is to manipulate results to suit your own needs and shape people's biases. A vast majority of people are starting to realise how skewed their judgment might be. That is why nowadays to prove their point, people show numbers and statistics, because what can't think can't lie right?

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics" ~ Mark Twain

Numbers, graphs, percentages and probabilities feel like hard evidence because mathematics is constant. Like looking at a rotating disk from a different perspective changes the way it rotates, presenting a constant in a different way changes how people perceive it. Let's take an example, a university dropout rate was 2% in year1 and 4% in year2. That is a 2% increase in dropout rate. Mathematically speaking, that is also a 100% increase in dropout rate. A single equation in mathematics can be represented in several ways, it's just about finding the right expression.This tactic was used in a newspaper article which stated that a certain birth control pill increases the chance of blood clotting in women by 100%. While the previous pills caused blood clotting in 1 in 70000 women, new pills can cause in 2 in 70000 women. A 0.014% increase. The result of the article? Women shied away from using that popular brand, which lead to increased cases in teen pregnancies in the following years.

Sally Clark's first son died in December 1996 within a few weeks of his birth. Her second son died in similar circumstances in January 1998. A month later, Clark was arrested and tried for both deaths. Her pediatrician used statistics to come to the conclusion that the probability of such a scenario happening is 1 in 73 million. The woman was given a life sentence. 3 years later it was found that certain reports were kept from the court and the woman was indeed innocent. This was a classic case of Prosecutor's Paradox. In layman's terms, the probability of two kids dying of the same cause exactly after 8 months might be 1 in 73 million but it is not true other way around.

To put it in perspective, a woman who lost two kids consecutively, got convicted of child murder, got harrased and spent 3 years in prison, until she died of alcohol poisoning.

To the people who jump to their conclusion when watching TV, all you see is not all that's happening out in the world. This is more true right now during pandemic, when farmers are dying but the media is showing celebrities on drugs. This also changes our perspective of what's going on in the world. In people's survey, consensus was that 50% of the crimes were committed by underage kids and teenagers when in reality it's only 13%. That is because teenager aggressors get more media coverage. 1980s to 1990s, crime rate went down by 10% but media coverage went up by 60% making people think that crime is increasing. This is called Availability Heuristics. It is a mental shortcut people make where they justify their point by specific stories, but because they remember that specific story goes to show how rare these occurrences are. This has become apparent now in

the age of globalisation when every news is readily available at your fingertips and the media decides to forgo one news for the other shifting the world view.

Biases have become such an ingrained part of human psyche that we form them without any external influence. There is no way for a person to remove all of their biases. Neither is safe to do so. Our brain has developed them as a surviving mechanism over the entirety of the existence of our consciousness. What we can do is double check every fact and data before forming our own opinions. Grouping of data can easily be skewed to form a different picture than the whole. Try to find the bigger picture before coming to your conclusion. Next time try not to postpone your beach trip because of a 5 year old shark attack. Next time while comparing old architecture with new, try and realise there are a lot of houses that were destroyed. Try not to form opinions just based on one article and then maybe you might be able to call yourself bias free.

- Pranjal Mishra

Atonement for Melanin

How far is today’s America from the one Martin Luther King Jr. once dreamt of?

George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and many, many more - the list of the ones we have lost to an age-long domination is a very long one. The ones we couldn't save, and many others who continue to live in fear in a country which has enough ammunition to fight wars but not enough morality to build a society where people do not and CANNOT possibly discriminate between one another, have been unsympathetically exposed to oppression, deprivation of basic human rights, discrimination and unjust laws ever since they were born. I wonder how long the list needs to get for it to be able to bring a change in the status quo.

Why were they killed? Oh, because they were ‘suspects’ of offences like using a counterfeit $20 bill. Yes, most of them weren’t even proven guilty. Here, the motive behind one human killing another has been perfectly backed by opportunity which a flawed criminal justice system combined with unfair laws has provided for. The white supremacists blessed themselves with these opportunities in order to fulfill their agenda in an exceedingly methodical and systematized way. This is the very reason why occurrences like the ones the world has witnessed recently keep happening undeterred. Fights are fought, movements are launched, battles are unleashed and a struggle goes on - a struggle that claims the lives of greats like Martin Luther King Jr. and many others who had sought a change.

On May 25th, 2020, a footage showing a ‘white’ police officer kneeling on a ‘black’ man’s neck while he was pinned to the floor outside a shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota was widely circulated on the web. In the footage, after 8 minutes of gasping for breath and begging the officer to free him with cries of “I can’t breathe”, the black man, ‘George Floyd’, gave up to the strong, killing grip of white hegemony.

This incident was followed by protests against police brutality and racism worldwide. The world saw the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement yet again, which was once launched after a Florida man had shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin, back in 2012.

If we go by science, there are no races in the ‘human race’ and we are all part of a single lineage. Nevertheless, certain studies require the classification of humans on the basis of biological features that are considered to be intergenerationally transmitted. The idea of race originates from these classifications.

The demand for such categorization for anthropological and geographical studies is understandable and acceptable until disposition traits and characteristics of behaviour start getting linked to the idea of race, and hierarchical arrangements start creeping in too. Those on top are considered inherently superior to those at the bottom, who are labelled as inferior and are deeply stigmatised. For instance, contact with them is considered polluting; being uneducated is seen not as a socio-economic deprivation but as a sign of inherited low IQ; they are considered to be violent by nature and are believed to become uncontrollable unless kept down by force.

Merely mentioning the skin colour while describing a person’s appearance, as many good authors practice in their works too, is not itself racist. But the reality is that this is also one of the symptoms of racism concealed in the aforementioned beliefs, the anthropological classifications, the societal structure and the legislative laws.

The year 1619 saw the advent of slavery in British America. This is when the seeds of racism were sown into the soils of the United States. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the British kidnapped Africans and forced them into slavery in the American colonies. They were exploited to work as indentured servants in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton. By the mid-19th century, America’s westward expansion and the abolition movement sparked a debate over slavery, which ultimately led to the gory Civil War of 1861. The Civil War had officially abolished slavery and freed the nation’s four million enslaved people, but it didn’t end discrimination against Black people—they continued to endure the calamitous aftereffects of slavery in the shape of racial discrimination, especially in the South.

By the mid-20th century, Black Americans had had enough. They, along with many white Americans, gathered together and began an unprecedented fight for equality in the form of the Civil Rights Movement that spanned over two decades. This struggle for the African-Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s. There were obvious successes, such as the desegregation of public facilities and schools, and equal opportunities at work, but these reforms were not enough as they were unable to bring a change in the mentality of the people. The African-Americans were still being treated badly and were being oppressed in the workplace and in schools. The discrimination that was once openly practised had simply been hidden behind a systematized and legalised structure.

Apart from Abraham Lincoln’s Government which had a clear anti-racism stance, most of the governments that have come and gone in the U.S. have shown little or no interest in working towards the eradication of this issue. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a treaty which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1965 to counter the growing racial discrimination in the 1960s. The United States signed ICERD in 1966 but did not ratify it for nearly three decades—until October 21, 1994. Even the years following the ratification did not witness any effort from America's side in fighting against racism either domestically or globally. Sadly, the country kept on doing the exact opposite of what was expected from it; it made every possible effort to disrespect the treaty by submitting

reservations that invalidate the treaty’s effect, by preventing citizens from bringing claims under ICERD, and by failing to submit timely reports of measures it has taken to address racial discrimination.

Things have only gotten worse since Donald Trump’s regime. His flawed notions of race came under the radar when he challenged Obama’s citizenship, demeaned the Mexicans by labelling them as ‘rapists’ and ‘criminals’, propounded to ban all Muslims from entering the country and argued that immigration was changing the “character” of the United States.

It would be naive to assume that something that has amassed over centuries can be wiped out solely by educating people and making them understand by rational argument. It will help, but probably nothing more than helping to melt the tip of the iceberg. The larger part of it hidden underneath an ocean of a faulty social structure and that of habits, practices and institutions needs us to get into proper action if we truly desire a noticeable change.

What is the solution? A peaceful, sustained movement against racism, with all races as participants, quite like the recent protests after Floyd’s murder, can slowly work towards bringing a change. Governments need to be questioned and held accountable. The law-making bodies need to be pressed to review the laws and change any that either promote racism or can be misused. If the people stand united for a cause, sooner or later, the sun will rise to a better tomorrow and justice will finally be served to the ones we’ve lost.

- Ayushi Agarwal

Crisis Galore

“Mankind does not reflect upon questions of economic and social organisation until compelled to do so by the sharp pressure of some practical emergency.”

Our generation has been an onlooking lot in the history of mankind, if there are glitches in the universal matrix then we are the chosen spectators of many, the fact that we have seen a global pandemic and two major economic tragedies in a span of just twelve years is a testament of this fact.

The economic crisis of 2008 and the one which we are practically going through at the very moment in 2020 has had and will have undeniably profoundly damaging impacts on the global economy and more so on the people directly. On one hand countries such as Greece are still crippled by the financial devastation caused by recession of 2008 whereas the recession of 2020 which is merely a few months old has already brought the growth rate of eight major countries to negative including USA, UK and Japan, evidently the incapacitation of economic superpowers has begun.

The differences however between the great recession of 2008 and the economic crisis of 2020 are obviously very stark. Let’s break this analysis into simplified fragments. Constraint: The great recession of 2008 was a financial crisis. Unsustainable levels of debt had been taken on at a time when there was also a lack of credit quality causing the financial system to collapse. The constraint for 2020 however, is simply the global spread of a virus, COVID-19. Origin: The crisis of 2008 was due to human failure and perhaps greed in handling the procedural cycle of loan, mortgage and investment between four parties, namely, the general public (the innocents, oblivious to the perils involved), the banks (your local, commercial banks), the investment banks (like Lehman Brothers), the investment companies (another largely innocent in the game) and the insurance companies, which quickly led to the wreckage of a complex finance product called the CDO (collateralized debt obligation). On the other hand the origin of the 2020 crisis is not nebulous like the one of 2008 but is rather concrete, it is simply ‘an act of god’ which is the international contagion of COVID-19 and subsequent lockdown reforms which shut down the businesses for months, worldwide!

Pre scenario: The starting position for the 2020 economy was also different and considerably better than 2008’s. This is good news. The imbalances are less pronounced, businesses and families have less debt, and the financial system has more capital and is healthier overall.

In addition to the fragmented differentiation, the crisis of 2020 for the time being, is cyclical in nature, not systemic, and it is causing damage to both supply and demand, severely impacting the production and selling of goods head on. The 2020 crisis started off as a supply-side crisis; factories in China were shut down due to the pandemic and this led to a lack of hardware components for many tech giants in the West. This however, was followed by a second phase. Once the pandemic had spread, a crisis of demand resulted because consumption was adversely impacted by containment measures. This in turn has led to significant unemployment. Total jobs lost? Over a million and counting. Hospitality, tourism, food, travel and aviation sectors have come to a standstill and their recuperation will take years. The crisis of 2008 was immensely tedious to comprehend, it’s epoch was not from things that a layman understands, it was a complex systemic fault, an enigma.

Given the abrupt halt to worldwide economic activity in recent weeks, economists believe that 2020 could see a deeper recession than 2008, but that it will not descend into a depression. Only time beholds the actuality of what shall happen. There could be no accurate predictions, not even nearly accurate, these are exclusively uncertain times, a lot depends upon the global combating response to the pandemic.

Each economic crisis is different from the other in it’s very essence and also in a mammoth number of ways, but they are all similar in one way; in the impact they cause and the consequences they have. They all lead to mass unemployment, lack of economic growth, rapid devaluation, lack of confidence in the consumer sector, long term structural deficits, and the list goes on. The solutions? There aren’t any. There is no magic elixir, the one solution to this humongous problem. However, there are responses to it, and a good response would be, that it is analogous to how we treat cancer, there isn't any cure but there are treatment techniques which are far from accurate but often capable of saving lives. Also the economic crisis of 2020 does have a solution constraint as well, which is the vaccine for the virus, the quicker it arrives, the faster will be our exit strategy formulation. But it also gives us a time constraint, hence patience here is not a choice but the only option.

Then there are generic responses to income tax cuts, creation of opportunities of employment through infrastructure, cutting interest rates, helicopter money (central bank prints money and gives it to everybody in the economy), government bailout of industries, investing in futuristic sectors so on and so forth.

As Martin Luther King once aptly said, “Our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change”, we as the human race collectively are facing a gigantic economic as well as medical challenge, the baton is in our very hands to face it with patience, constant hard work to keep the economy in motion, it’ll move slower than before, but it’ll move, awareness and courage; because being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.

- Mradushi Shukla

The Broken Balance

What is feminism? What is the difference between feminism and gender equality?

Well many people use either of them as a synonym of the other. However there is a thin line between the two. Both gender equality and feminism talk about empowerment of women in one or the other way. But the two are quite different from each other. Feminism is a set of ideologies, political, and social movements sharing a common goal of defining, creating and achieving equality among different sexes, mostly on the side of women. Gender equality, on the other hand, refers to a state where certain rights, freedoms, and opportunities are not affected by gender.

Now coming back to the first question. What is feminism? Feminism means a million things to a million people. "There is hardly any definition of feminism that every feminist will agree with." Says women's studies chair Tineke M. Willemsen at Tilburg.

Many believe that feminism is a belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. Some claim that feminism is an ideology less concerned with true equality and more concerned with extreme liberalism, and is ultimately not a solution to any inequality between the genders/sexes.

According to another group, Feminism demands an even division among the sexes in every field, which means that people should get hired based purely on their sex rather than their ability and talent. So basically feminists want equity, not equality of opportunity.

Whereas some anti feminists define a feminist as “a male bashing woman who promotes abortion and homosexuality.” They believe that feminists want to control the world and put men down.

And still there are millions of people who don't even support the idea that there should be equal rights and equal opportunities for men and women. They ask questions like "why should women even be promoted?"

Women are an integral part of society. They also play a major role in the economy of a nation. India could add up to more than 18% to its GDP by 2025, simply by giving equal opportunities to women. Studies show that women are ultimately the largest consumers in the market. Any product targeting towards them has more chances to be successful. Giving women equal opportunities in jobs will help in decreasing poverty as a warm female tends to invest all she earns in her family.

Promoting women also means improving gender ratio, which helps in bringing about a much required balance.

One of the frequently asked question about feminism is also- Why the word feminist? Why can you not just say that you are a believer of human rights, or something like that?

Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, a part of human rights in general — but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be, in a way, denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human.

Women's condition has been terrible in India specifically. On an average 91 rapes are reported daily in this country. What do you think is the future of such a country where a 19 year old girl is so brutally gang-raped? Yes, let's talk about the Hathras Gangrape now. The culprits broke her spinal cord, gouged her eyes and cut her tongue off. And the Police did not even arrest one accused in the initial 10 days. They even denied the sexual assault at first. Then the same police burnt her body at midnight alone without any of the family members' presence or their consent. After all this a monetary compensation of Rs 10 lakh is given to the family of the victim. Can this compensate even a fraction of what they were put through?

We may have come a long way but still women in india are a victim of discrimination , domestic violence , sexual assault , dowry deaths , gang rapes and what not. This has to end.

As quoted by Charles Fourier:

“The better the treatment of women, the more civilised the society.”

So to make our India a better and a safer place to live, we will have to support and encourage women in each and every sector. The Constitution grants equality to women. Those should not just remain meaningless words in another book. Not anymore. It is time that we also accept the fact that women deserve to be respected and equally treated.

While inequalities against women are common in India, it is not just women who suffer here. Men also have their own battles to fight. Despite everything, not all men are rapists. A faction that they are all wrong is often created around them. In India, men are also pressurized into early marriage. They have to earn well and save as the burden of raising the family is solely left on their shoulders.

Their destiny is decided on the per annum they bring home. Even if a woman doesn’t work or doesn’t earn in any way, she is eligible to marry a man who does, but it can never be the other way around. In that case he will be considered a failure in our society. Men have also been victims of domestic abuse. They also get molested, but they never speak about it because if they will then they will be considered as weak.

Not all dowry and rape cases filed against men are true. Some women take advantage of laws that were made to protect them. These pseudo feminists exploit in the name of the movement.

Men and women, both have equal roles in building a society.

And the argument between feminism and gender equality rests upon the assumption that both men and women benefit from this approach. So if you believe in equality for all, take a brave stand for it. Don't stand by when another 19 year old gets her eyes gauged and don't dehumanise all men either.

- Dashmeet Kaur

Maladies of the mind

“You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they're acting retarded.”-Michael Scott (The Office)

Yes, Michael Scott never fails to tickle our funny bone but we often lose sight of the fact that we are not supposed to follow in his footsteps. The realization that most of what he does is really immature and should not be followed, is what makes the show such a success. That said, do you know why exactly shouldn’t we be using terms like dyslexic, bipolar, autistic, etc. as insults?

To get the obvious out of the way, it is offensive! It is offensive to compare mere meticulous, introverted or simply shy people with people living with OCD, autism, dyslexia, or any other neurological disorder because these conditions are pretty serious and the imprudent usage of such terms is derogatory to the people actually facing the real deal. It is basically being insensitive to the efforts of those actually making it through life with such disorders.

It doesn’t just end there, using these terms as insults can spread inaccurate perceptions of what they really are, says Steven Meyers, PhD, professor of psychology at Roosevelt University. For example, people may use the word schizophrenic to describe how someone can alternate between two personalities, while the actual symptoms of schizophrenia involve poor reality perception, hallucinations, and confused thinking. Schizophrenia is not a split from your own personality, but a split from reality. People living with multiple personalities are living with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Thirdly, it promotes insensitivity thereby fueling stereotypes only to make their life a living nightmare. Stereotypes such as having a neurological disorder is synonymous to being crazy or being caught up by a spirit.

A study shows that about 75% of employees have struggled with an issue that affected their mental health yet 8 out of 10 workers with a mental health condition are prevented from seeking help by shame and stigma.

The prevailing biases against people with disorders result in a hostile work environment thereby significantly decreasing their productivity and they often even lose their job owing to the stigma. Not only that, but it is also really important to help people get over their self-stigma. People diagnosed with a disorder do not reach out to make friends or go out and look for a job and the like as they discriminate themselves due to the prevailing stereotypes and low self worth. For example, someone who grew up to associate a certain disorder with violence, now, after being diagnosed with the same disorder, self-isolates feeling to be a threat to society. While in reality, with proper help and education, most people with schizophrenia, autism, cerebral palsy, dyslexia, and the like, grow up to lead a pretty good life.

Also, usage of serious psychiatric terms as everyday insults renders the terms so commonplace that psychologists have to discard them altogether. If we won’t stop now with the terms currently in use, it will just get more difficult and confusing for the mental health facilities, which is the last thing we need right now given its condition in India, especially! For example, the words idiot, imbecile, and moron, not so long ago were scientific terms in the psychological classification system, assigned to a fairly specific range of abilities.

Idiots: Those so defective that the mental development never exceeds that of a normal child of about two years.

Imbeciles: Those whose development is higher than that of an idiot, but whose intelligence does not exceed that of a normal child of about seven years.

Morons: Those whose mental development is above that of an imbecile, but does not exceed that of a normal child of about twelve years.

— Edmund Burke Huey, Backward and Feeble-Minded Children, 1912

(So now, you can educate someone if they call you an idiot when you actually fall under the category of morons, you know?)

People with an IQ range of 26–50 were referred to as “idiots”, those between 35-49 were classified under the category of “imbecile” and “morons” were said to have an IQ between 51–70. So yes, it was pretty scientific and no, they were not synonymous to “fools” and we really need to stop using current terminologies as insults before they feel the need to replace them again. And finally, even if we are referring to someone living with a disorder, we should be mindful to not confine the person mere to that disorder. That is to say, the person should not be referred to as the disease. That is not all that the person is, was or will be.

Imagine you had cancer. Despite the excruciatingly painful treatment, you pull through life and eventually find a place in society for yourself. Now you wouldn’t like to be reduced to “cancer-ic”, would you? Your disease shouldn’t be confused with who you are. All the work, commitment and dedication it took you to establish yourself was overshadowed by a disease. It is always a person with/having a disorder/symptom and not the disorder/disease like bipolar, autistic, dyslexic, etc. itself. There is so much more to their personality than meets the eye. But what should one aware person do in a sea of ignorant innocents? The answer is simple: educate. The prevailing misconceptions in the society can only be removed by educating people and education comes in every form. From schools and colleges to day-to-day conversations and even memes can be used to create awareness about social stigma.

The most powerful tools one can use to bring about a change, include literature and media, and with movies like My Name is Khan, Margarita with a Straw, Taree Zameen Par, Black, Barfi, and the like, our Hindi Film Industry is already leading the way to a more destigmatized society.

We are aware that “something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the planet”; imagine what power your words bear.

Let’s strive to make this a safer place for everyone because neurological disorder is not a choice but being kind surely is!

“Little by little I can come to consider madness as being an illness like any other.”

-Vincent van Gogh (Died in 1890 as an upshot of stigmatization) - Somya Agarwal

Nobels Never Awarded

Is the Nobel Peace Prize Losing Its Credibility?

What is the Nobel Peace Prize?

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established in the name of Swedish industrialist and manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Literature. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded yearly to an individual, or an association which does the best work in maintaining peace between nations and causes the reduction of standing armies while maintaining fraternity between nations.

Nomination and Selection

Annually, the Norwegian Nobel Committee specifically invites qualified people to submit nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. For nomination, the entry barrier is low: all nominations from heads of state or politicians serving at a national level are accepted. The nominations require no invitation. As long as they are entered before the 1st of February of the qualifying year, they will be accepted. Nominations are considered by the Nobel Committee at a meeting where a shortlist of candidates for further review is created. This list is then considered by permanent advisers to the Nobel institute, which consists of the Institute's Director and the Research Director and a small number of Norwegian academics with expertise in subject areas relating to the prize. But it has always been a matter of criticism that the committee is influenced by the political views and awards for immediate cause rather than long term serving and more deserving candidates.

Credibility Questioning Selections and Nominations

Whether in history or in current scenarios there were various controversies regarding the Nobel Peace Prize recipients. In history many dictators and tyrannical rulers were nominated for the Prize, for example Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, etc.

The first of these men to earn this privilege was Benito Mussolini. The Italian Fascist dictator was nominated in 1935, which was the same year he invaded Ethiopia. The nomination also came after he had placed three-quarters of all Italian businesses under state control. So, his nomination was quite controversial as none of his deeds seemed worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

Barack Obama, former President of the United States of America, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people”. But on the other hand, it was during his leadership that the Government of US launched a war against Syria. The long years of struggle between USA and Syria has led a large-scale instability in Middle East which fueled the fire of terrorism, giving all the more reason for people to join organisations like Alkaida and ISIS. This was quite contradictory to the whole concept of the Nobel Peace Prize

Major Blunders

When one looks at the recipients of the Nobel Prize, the person most deserving of the Peace Prize was never awarded with it. It was none other than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or Mahatma Gandhi. The work he did for peace and fraternity is exemplary and has inspired generations of non-violence supporters. He brought the fight to the largest, most powerful empire in the world at that time and was able to bring down the whole empire through non-violent resistance. Even leaders like Martin Luther King were influenced by his philosophy and considered it as “the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in the struggle for freedom”.

There can be no doubt that there was no one more deserving of such an honour than Mahatma Gandhi, but the committee would never go against the British Empire, owing to its worldwide domination. Even after the Britishers' presence drastically reduced from all power-greedy positions, Gandhi was never awarded the Peace Prize.

Recent Events

There have been recent events which re-ignited this argument that questions the credibility of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was the nomination of Donald Trump, current President of the United States of America, that heated this debate. Donald Trump, at the end of his calamitous term, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize [2021]. It has been his orthodox views and unorthodox decisions that made his term one of the most questionable terms in the history of the USA. Especially his views on the Muslim community, which do not by any means propose communal harmony. Still, his role in brokering a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is worthy of appreciation, for which he has been nominated.

Conclusion

There were many decisions made by the committee that put the prestige of the Prize at stake and many of those decisions were influenced by politics. The Nobel prize, as a whole hasn't lost its credibility but rather, I’d say the committee made mistakes while awarding it, that too, several times and in the recent past those mistakes are quite noticeable. Credibility and the passion are things which must not be overlooked. However, history and millions of devoted followers are witness to the averse.

- Shivansh Shukla

Not a struggle story

“History despite its wrenching pain can’t be unlived. But faced with courage, need not to be lived again.”

-Maya Angelou

Women have come a long way ever since the existence of several civilizations that have prevailed upon this very Earth. They have marked their presence in so many different domains, still they have a long journey ahead of them . But today, let’s not talk about their struggles but turn a page and look back upon the history of how actually women ended up here today .

We argue that since the dawn of time, women have always been suppressed by their male counterparts. But, to our surprise this wasn’t true always. Anthropologist Mark Dyble led the study at University College London which infers that our prehistoric, uncivilized and savage ancestors were actually enlightened with egalitarian principles. The study suggests that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, both women and men had an equal say on the collective group decisions. It is believed that it is with the ‘emergence of agriculture’ when people started accumulating resources that led to the birth of inequality. Women themselves were seen as mere resources now and were limited to being just wives (sometimes one among many) and caretakers.

Yet this didn’t mark the end of the power of women. Equality was no more a norm. It wasn’t served on the platter anymore, but some women were fierce enough to snatch their fair share themselves. Mary Queen of Scots, Empress Tzu-his of China, Rani Laxmi Bai are some of the names that showed how women around the world were still rising to power. But, it wasn’t a bed of roses for them either. Maintaining power was far more herculean than rising to it. Often male ministers of the court or male relatives found the sight of a woman on a throne repulsive. Courtiers took it as an insult to their masculinity and wanted to dethrone them by hook or crook. Razia Sultan , an abled queen of the Delhi Sultanate was removed from the throne in 1240 CE, because the men thought that a queen is unfit to rule .Even the ministers who initially supported her ascension later conspired against her as soon as she started showing assertiveness and cleared that she wasn’t just a ‘figurehead’ .

The way how women leaders are perceived these days also has a lot to do with the interpretation of history. Either queens were portrayed as too violent and ruthless (Mary I of England popularly called ‘Bloody Mary’) often sacrificing their femininity or those whose administration and diplomatic skills were overshadowed by their beauty (Cleopatra of Egypt). This is also prevalent in politics at the global level these days too.

Even in the field of science, women had to undergo a lot of scrutiny to pursue their interests. Women who studied science secretly were even deemed as ‘witches’ and were punished (at times sentenced to death as well). Antoinette Brown Blackwell challenged the renounced biologist ‘Charles Darwin’ for his sexist thesis , brazenly saying that a female is inferior to a man intellectually. Thanks to scientists like Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Lise Meitner who have proved how meaningless this theory is. Today in 2020, when we say that we are so called progressive and modern, women like Alexandria O. Cortez are still subjected to vulgar and sexist remarks just for doing their jobs and being outspoken. Every joke, stereotype, meme that we take so casually actually has a deep- rooted sense of sexism which should be addressed. It is relieving to see so many men coming together to stand up against every injustice done to their fellow women. The world will only run properly when there is a proper balance between yin and yang, considering women superior will also do no good as it again ruins the whole idea of equality. Remember, it’s the abilities that make anyone superior or inferior, it has got nothing to do with gender. So, lets hope to see a world where we’re seen as human beings first, and women and men far later.

- Shreya Singh

Playtime by God’s watch

An involuntary habit of us is to associate ourselves with the things we enjoy the most. That increases our interest and develops connectivity with it. People enjoy watching varied genres of web series.

I pondered why I admire the supernatural genre when all have the same plot. Sabrina wanted to be a part of both of the worlds but was forced to follow the path of the night. Merlin throughout his journey had to hide his true identity. The supernaturals were condemned to hide forever. Nimueh desires to walk freely among the humans without being discriminated against. Scott, Lydia, Derek all being on the listed targets in the teen wolf just because they were different. All of them are connected through the same fate of suffering from being different. They were condemned to such fate because of the mistakes of their ancestors or because once they were strong minorities and were in power and at some point being unjust. Through the course of time, the power from their hands slipped back to the one who was in the majority.

To the common people, 'differences' don't matter. What matters to them is happiness, life of them and their close ones. It's the power-hungry potentates that do transform these 'differences' into grounds of discrimination making one fear and hate the other. The lives and happiness of their people don't concern them in their way of gaining power as they make people believe that they are in a war, and since everything is fair in love and war, are they wrong? With time, these differences further increase and the understanding of those who once lived happily to no future ahead.

These power-crazy men find this a susceptible strategy to continue their reign over the others through fear.

The fears in the concerned eyes of the parents when their naive child wants to wander freely and see the world, I not only see it on the screen but in reality, daily

when I wish to walk around. I believe that they were wrong, wanting to prove to them that all people are like my friends who don't judge me by my name but by my character. But, the truth hurts more than the boundaries fixed by my parents.

Being children, we don't make friends based on their religions, it was more about who comes to help us and play, then how these things crept into our hearts when we grow and become older? Instead of our own wisdom, the words coming from the mouth of others make more sense?

If justice and fairness were the reason people bring up the cause of hatred, how is it just to treat them with injustice? But they must be punished for what their ancestors did, shouldn't they?

However you can't clap with one hand, can you? Some people among the minorities believe that

they can relive the past and want those long lost previous glories without giving a single thought about others. Those are another mob of megalomaniacs warming their seats safeguarded from any harm.

In reality, they just make it worse for the rest and a reason and motive for the others to distinguish even more.

Because of the action of some, an entire community is categorized as a felon and a traitor in the eyes of the state. That just helps those who desire power in their purpose.

However with the interesting turns over the course of their journey the scriptwriters somehow manage to achieve the common goal in each plot, walk freely, not 'among' the common people but 'as' common people. I realized that maybe to live that freedom, I enjoy watching them.

- Adnan Saleem

The Mockingbirds we Killed

Looking into the eyes of the murderer, I know she does not feel any guilt for her crimes. Her victim is not here anymore and she barely realises it. In place of the starry-eyed youngster she once had, stands a tall, awkward creature of nine who slouches and shuffles shyly because her mother has her convinced that with her rail-thin body and large glasses, she is simply not a person children want to be friends with. It is clear,the mockingbird is no longer here.

No, here the darling bird we are concerned with doesn’t belong to our beloved Harper Lee. It is, however, similar in essence to her mockingbirds. Our bird is an innocent little child. Not one in particular, but any child. My eight year old cousin who does not like to pose with flowers or own anything pink. That kid who thinks herself good for nothing because she can not wrap her head around classical Newtonian physics. The young boy at the signal selling newspapers no one wants to buy. Your niece in second grade who can not make sense of a weird thing a strange man did to her. You and me, before we grew up into tired adults. We are all mockingbirds. Although, the matter at hand is, we have committed the very sin Lee warned us against. Our mockingbirds are dead.

In this curious case of several murders, no knife was involved, no blood was shed, no necks wringed and no fires shot. All the little ones that I refered to as Mockingbirds are, with god’s grace, in perfect health. Yet there was death.

Who died then? And how did they die?

Without mystifying you any further, I will get straight to the point, but in a minute. First, I want you, if you will, to recollect a song. It is one of my favourites in the whole world. With A R Rahman’s music to Prasoon Joshi’s lyrics, this one is as perfect as they are made. Remember Taare Zameen Par, the soundtrack?

In this song, Prasoon Joshi subtextually says that regardless of the number of metaphors you use to portray children, it is never enough and however long you talk about them, your heart always has room for more. Fresh dew drops. Warm sun rays in freezing cold winters. Capricious rivers. A kin’s shoulder in a crowd. The smell of raw mangoes in orchids. Beautiful is not enough of a word for the metaphors he has used for children. Each one more apt than the last!

Now, as promised, I’ll come to the point. This lyricist’s metaphors, each one of them, are what we stand accused of murdering. We killed all the metaphors and with that our mockingbirds. That is to say, all that a child is about is smothered with our bare hands. Look around yourself. There are not any dew drops anymore. We are a mere conglomeration of the prejudices we were not born with, lessons we did not want to learn, fate we did not ask for, scars we did not draw on ourselves and living in a world we did not choose. We were once blank canvases and so full of possibilities, as well. Then time played its turn. The world unravelled before us and while we were busy learning its ways, something inside us was taken away. Killed.

How it was done is not a twisted tale so full of climaxes and cruxes. In one sentence: the deed is done during the very same process in which children are raised.

Why would my eight year old cousin not pose with flowers or own pink stuff? “It is girly”, is what I get on putting this question up to him. Maybe, you adults have a better explanation for this - why does he not know that each flower in the orchid belongs to everyone and that we do not get colors assigned to genders anymore because each one of us gets to claim the whole rainbow? The reason is that, at that tender age, their opinions are not what they form but what we hand down to them. That opinion is something the kids are incapable of evaluating rationally and it ends up becoming the pillar of absolute truth that they support the rest of their ideology around. The kid who yells, “I will burn China down” does not understand that he is talking about burning 1.4 million human beings alive. All he knows is that he is supposed to hate China because he heard it on television. This kid will now grow up to hate an entire country and will be found looking for more logical reasons to justify himself.

We kill creativity in our children by forcing the same subjects on everyone and measuring their intelligence against those same subjects. Our mortal world’s morbidity is crushing these angelic spirits with the legacy we hand down to them. Gender roles, political biases, societal prejudices- a child was not born with those. Being afraid, settling for less, bottling up, acting out and hating irrationally are not skills they learned inside the womb. All of these are things we give them in return for being warm sun rays on freezing cold winter mornings of our lives. If you argue, ‘How else would they survive in this world if they are not exposed to its cruelty and versed in its ways?’ then, I will agree, survival is necessary. But this world and its ways are rotten. How shall we expect them to change it if we shape our children in the same worn out moulds?

Put a kid’s bright eyes against a man’s dull, baggy ones with dark circles underneath and probably you’ll understand how we are failing our children. I’ll like to end this here with an apology. One, that I believe we all owe to Harper Lee and Prasoon Joshi. We disappointed them. As stated over and over in the course of this piece, we killed all the mockingbirds and we lost all our bright stars on land.

- Shreya Shukla

Contributors

You've read our work and it's about time you got acquainted with the flints that made the fire. This publication could not possibly have been completed without the combined efforts of the Excelsior team. Take a look.

Vishrut Tripathi

Vishrut Tripathi finds himself amused with literature, history, the Godfather, philosophy and banters. He can solve the hardest math problem you throw at him, but can't tell you why is the sunset sky beautiful.

Piyush Singh

Piyush's identity? Typical Awadhi. Madly in love with his awadhi, songs, movies, Lucknow and childhood, he continues to live in nostalgia. On several occasions, you will find him bombarding the social media with his posts.

Aditya Shaurya

When Aditya is not running Marathon with his memes and music, he finds love on the tracks and fields. 'Cause he loves to go an extra mile when it comes to pages of books and athletics.' Aditya wonders what Tesla and Marx have in common.

Shadan Amir

Shadan is a slightly hard working nocturnal. His weird hair compliments his love for weird things. He judges a book by its cover.

Mansi Maurya

Mansi finds love in the pages of novels or colors between her brushes. 'Cause somedays she paints the canvas with bright colors and other days she paints them with bold strokes of words.

Tanisha Vats

An engineering student before exams who turns to reading and writing for the much needed sanity and spice in life. Always looking for adventures- physically and virtually.

Shriya Tripathi

Shriya is a sports enthusiast, specializing in athletics and hockey who is fond of art beyond words! She never fails to adore the beauty of nature and playing keyboard is her source of bliss.

Shivansh Shukla

Shivansh is an optimistic fellow, who considers sketching and writing as an expression of his inner feelings.

Dashmeet Kaur

Dashmeet is just a funny, lazy and creative girl who loves literature , graphic designing and animals more than anything else.

Pranjal Mishra

"Once upon a time in a land far far away, there lived an average man named Pranjal Mishra. He liked to play guitar and dreamily read books on quantum physics under an apple tree. This story might or might not be written by him"

Ayushi Agarwal

Ayushi’s random musings and her art form an indispensable part of her life. On certain days, she identifies as a cat; on other days, she reads, writes and draws.

Deeksha Shukla

Still trying to describe herself in words,Deeksha cannot do much but continue upon the torrid path of finding herself, during which she may occasionally pick up a pen to write random stuff. She’s most certainly not narcissistic.

Shreya Shukla

Cheerfully whimsical, Shreya is one of your usual customers at the “ Books Galore” Store. A reader,a writer, an artist, but most of all : a very amused human being.

Navya Srivastava

A normal person who loves melodrama and is always ready for a war of wits.

Saumya

Saumya is determined and creative. She loves to paint each page of her life with her vibrant colours of numerous talents. Hard work doesn't bother her. She actually likes it!

Vidhi Chaturvedi

Composing poetry, narrating poetry and analyzing poetry are huge interests of Vidhi. She enjoys playing the Piano and putting together fine arts too.

Shreya Singh

Just an ordinary girl who loves to imagine eccentric scenarios in her mind. Shreya is feisty and enjoys reading about conspiracy theories and loves to notice the unnoticed.

Somya Agarwal

Somya Agarwal is a work in progress who loves counting stars and is looking for blessings that aren't in disguise.

Unnati Singh

Unnati has fallen deeply in love with curiosity and enjoys reading and writing. She spends her spare time hunting down theories about cosmos.Though she can be direct , she never intends to injure with words.

Mradushi Shukla

Mradushi arbitrarily stands atop of her desk to remind herself that we must constantly look at things in a different way. In juxtaposition with science and belief she considers herself made up of effervescent ideas , musty aroma of libraries , perpetual wonder and caffé latte instead of stardust.

Ankit Chaubey

Ankit is just a man who is filled with aggressiveness and enthusiasm.Not very cute but always present for those who need help. A simple person with a fiery heart and a peaceful mind.

Adnan Saleem

Like everyone else, Adnan has his own charms. Expressing art in words or colours is one among many of those charms.

Sarthak Sharma

Sarthak is a prudent and judicious observer. He enchants his ravishing thoughts with enthusiasm. He loves studying historical and economical aspects of things. He is simple but plucky.