What does it mean when you lack conviction?
Conviction is the kind of determination that comes from having a personal belief. It could be any belief: a belief in oneself, a belief that hard work pays off, a belief that a challenge is worth undertaking. So someone who doesn't have conviction is probably very unsure about a given situation and doesn't have enough understanding or motivation to try to control certain events. He or she would probably just sit back and watch what happens without getting up and trying to make something happen. I hope I explained it okay!
Do you think that Indian politicians lack in education?
A politician may be well qualified with global knowledge. And maybe many more good qualities which may make him successful individual.But to built a successful nation, one needs a quality called "Will" Will to make the nation a success. Which is above all the qualifications.Because if you see the past and the current leaders there were and there are political leaders with high intelligence, qualifications, and master brains. But still they failed to build a developed India.For example:One political leader converted the railway's 16 years long losses into a profitable one while he had the railway portfolio.And that was a case study at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmadabad on how he scripted the success story of the country's loss-making Railways. So he had a skill but he lacked the will and did this.The same politician is convicted in the fodder scam and then there are a spate of allegations against family members. His son and deputy chief minister is alleged to hold heavy stakes in a company promoting Bihar’s biggest mall in the state capital worth Rs 750 crore; another son is alleged to hold big tracts of land and a petrol pump (cancelled but stayed by the court); and daughters have been accused of being directors in many shell companies. In all of this, the charge is that his position in power was misused to amass assets.Few others Scams:Illegal miningCWG scam2G ScamUttar Pradesh food grain scamVyapam scamSo don't you think doing a scam needs skill and knowledge, it does and actually more skills and knowledge. So the long list of scams shows our political leaders do have the skills and knowledge, but what they lack is the will to make India a developed nation.Sources:Suresh Kalmadi, accused in CWG scam, appointed Life President of Indian Olympic Association.http://www.hindustantimes.com/in...Lalu Prasad Yadav brings profits for Indian RailwaysList of scandals in India - WikipediaThank You!!
Seriously, how many times do we see Indian politicians going to jail?
It all depends on the corruption they do,most of them are damn corrupted for sure In my view, both the public and political leaders are responsible for spread of corruption in India. Because in election time even the educated youth are also taking money from Parties because we are least bothered.Mindset of people is like what will happen if we take money as they are offering. Unknowingly they are also indulging in corruption. Most of the people are very much used to it and trying to make handsome money without any truthful effort. Corruption starts from home and we all are unable to find the dead end. Corruption is the only thing which destroys the development of our country. How can we expect a corrupt free India?Our responsibility: We have to be more responsible to elect a right candidate and should give a chance to fresh youth blood because they can bring the change instead of the older ones.Responsibility of Government: Govt should take a strict policies in the face of corruption and it should not be tolerated under any circumstances.As long as everyone is sincere to their own hearts we cannot drain away corruption from this country.
Do you sometimes catch yourself having too much conviction to the point where you replace rational thought?
I can appreciate that this happens to a lot of people. I can forgive a zealous phase. I've had more than my fair share of zealous phases. It's part of caring about the issues, and feeling the force of your convictions. I only frown on people who never scrutinize their own positions - the permanent zealots and the completely indifferent.
Is it wrong to label very conservative Republicans as bigots?
Yes. Is it wrong to call all blacks criminals? Yes. Is it wrong to say all Hispanics are illegal? Yes. Does this stop people from judging others because of it? No. Is it wrong to to focus on one tiny fraction of a persons personality to define who is or is not your friend? That is for you to decide.I have friends across the political spectrum and we often don't see eye to eye within the public arena. But I LOVE them for it. I do not seek to be coddled and surrounded with people that only hold my same beliefs. I find unchallenged thoughts to be boring and for people who can't handle diversity, or those who are uneducated/lack conviction in their opinions. This isn't limited to any party by the way - this is a personal choice of the individual. For those friends of mine where political discussions are too passionate, I just avoid the topic and seek those things we enjoy and share in common. My life is much more rich for it. And for the friends that enjoy the political slug fest, I duck and weave with them in the ring any day - because I value their opinion and accept that no common ground will ever be found without communication along with give and take.
Why do many people believe scientific facts are conspiracies?
Easy, everyone has an agenda and although we praise rationality we are largely governed by the irrational. Humans are tribal for which cohesion and loyalty to leaders and commonly accepted cultural norms of “truth” have served the larger purpose of survival for most of human existence.Ignorance and vulnerability of and to the natural world allowed fantasies and conjecture about the physical nature of natural phenomena to permeate the attempts to understand the environment in which humans had a compelling need to understand if they were to survive. These early attempts resulted in the powerful creation of religion which supplanted obviously flawed human leaders with god or gods so powerful and conveniently removed from human failings that everything could be explained away without knowledge or facts getting in the way.Once the scientific method began to be adopted producing a factual and reproducible framework for explaining how the physical laws of the universe work the factual products of the scientific method often contradicted the “infallible” dogmas of religious beliefs.The achilles heel of religious belief systems is largely the inability to move beyond irrational beliefs when confronted by scientific evidence for rationally derived facts for how everything works. Religious belief is not constructed nor is tolerant to changing the ignorance that spawned such beliefs whereas scientific facts are cumulative to an ever growing body of reliable information to explain and aid us in survival.The clash of tribal identity, often wedded to religio/political beliefs, running contrary to scientific facts that fail to fit support a given tribe’s beliefs and purpose can result in attempts to challenge the evidence and conclusions of science. While science relishes and benefits from the debate on the facts as they may or may not fit a hypothesis the stakes for acceptance of some science facts as applied to such theories are a threat to either business interests e.g. big tobacco & fossil fuel companies or religious convictions.One way to try and discredit the efforts of the scientific community is to find corrupt scientists and weave motives of greed into conspiracy theories. Fake science and bad scientists do exist and eventually are self corrected by the scientific community itself. This is a strength that the religio/political community lacks in substantial number.
Are all rational people in the center of the political spectrum?
No. Often the opposite is true.Don't get me wrong: when it comes to politics, I generally consider myself a centrist (maybe with a rightward lean on cultural, economic, and security issues). I tend to find well-informed centrists more reasonable, with a more sophisticated grasp on the nuances of policymaking than very ideological types. But it's not at all true that the average centrist is more rational than ideologues are; generally, most centrists are apathetic, not rational, and are in the middle of the spectrum because they lack convictions, not because they've actively committed to ideas that favor centrism. This may be due to an inherent sense of equanimity among them, but it may also be due to a lack of the type of intelligence that would allow them to explore political questions with any depth or complexity. That is not a sign of rationality, but of ignorance.On the other hand, people who have taken the time to genuinely stake out an extreme political ideology for themselves fall into one of two camps: they either tend to be very emotional, irrational people who have swallowed a party line because it gives them license to act on their baser desires, or they are intellectuals who have made fundamental critiques of society's methods of organizing itself at their roots, and have come to an answer that leads them outside the Overton window (yes, I recognize that in practice, both causes affect a person's ideological position, this is meant to simplify both motives for the sake of explanation). The former type, while definitely more prone to being unreasonable than the average centrist, is probably also better informed; at least, when it comes to the issues which touch on their ideological leanings. The latter tend to have a superabundance of rationality that they've used to come to comprehensive answers about the society they live in, and tend to ask deep questions that most centrists don't. The difference between those people and the more intellectual centrists is more one of which questions are seen as relevant, which are deemphasized, and what, if anything, ought to be done about them, not one of overall intellect.