Capitalism, as we see today

The recent stock market crash, housing bust and the never ending credit crunch have put capitalism in a whole new paradigm. To echo Micheal Moore's words "The capitalism, as we knew of, which didn't care about the world or it's people has finally ended". I would take a step back and say it's finally going to end. What started as a disaster in the financial industry is trickling down to every facet of human society, from autos to even technology industries - that were thought to weather this storm.

In my opinion, the fundamentals of the capitalistic business models have been put to test during the past few months. What could have been a major one time disaster has instead trickled down slowly, in spite of major attempts by the industry to avoid this mishap. The impact of the past few months has it's roots in several key decisions that were taken way back - when we may never know. This impact is definitely not because of a 'few lame' decisions or 'tactics'. I'd be hard pressed to believe that all of the best and the brightest minds in the industry succumbed to these decisions or tactics.

The very fact that the industry is standing in front of the government with folded hands begging for help - has no doubt questioned the premise of capitalism and it's success so far. Whether the government bails out the industries or not, I'm left to wonder - are we truly evolving ? I civilization such as the Mayan civilization lasted thousands of years, and here we are struggling with just 200 years of "modern capitalism".

My culture, my language

This thought hit me as I was conversing with a few 'Indian' kids here in Folsom. Incidentally we, I mean the kids and I spoke the same language, Kannada. It was during the interaction that it occurred to me that these kids could only understand the language but not speak the same. That hit me and hit me hard. I cannot imagine knowing a language and not being able to speak it. Sanskrit is one such language that I can relate to. I can understand the script but I can neither converse nor make out other conversations.

What hit me was the realization that I was no better than those kids. Growing up in a foreign land they were unable to speak Kannada but I who had spent all my growing years in Karnataka was unable to write one full sentence in Kannada without using any English words. I was shell shocked at my failure. The language I grew up speaking, writing and conversing had lost me or to stop the naivete, I can say I had failed Kannada, my language.

I started looking into the history of Kannada and that's when I realized I had lost the culture too. A language and it's culture are so intertwined it would be foolish to claim the language knowledge without that of it's culture. Am not talking about superficial knowledge here. By knowledge I mean, understanding the semantics of the language, not just the syntax. It did hurt me to feel that I had lost something which until this conversation with the kids, I had not even realized were mine.

I was of the opinion that communication is what matters and language was just a means of communication ( visual means being the other ). How wrong was I. Language is much more than means of communication - what is that 'more' is not quantifiable ( at least not by me ) but there is an emotion in Kannada that I feel for. The same emotion echoes in my culture as well.

Ever since I realized this 'loss', I'm making an attempt to regain at least some of what I have lost and I hope I'll be successful.