Every child is special. This was the message of the movie Taare Zameen Par. It got me wondering if this was true for every adult too. Is every adult special? Thought about it for 5 seconds and immediately I found myself thinking of my gym caretaker I call motu (behind his back) and for me the question was all taken care of then and there. Every adult was not special. I shared this thought process with a friend of mine from gym and he said that on the contrary, motu is very special… he is so unique… there has never been a bigger idiot. So I thought “is being unique equal to being special?” I checked dictionary.com and found that a couple of meanings for the word special are “distinguished or different from what is ordinary or usual” and “being such in an exceptional degree”. I hate to admit it…. Going by these definitions, Motu is special….
Hence, the question still remains unanswered. Is every adult special? They say every person is unique. By the above definitions, that would make every person/adult special. But aren’t there people that you wouldn’t want to call or think of as special no matter what? I want to attack this argument but I don’t know how to. Maybe I should attack the premise that every person is unique… There are so many people in this world. Is every person really unique? I know that even similar people have different traits, howsoever minute they are… but that way even two handsets of the same model must be different. They all must be having different speeds of processing when it comes down to nanoseconds and we don’t call every handset of nokia special…
I am not convinced with the explanation though. So if anyone has a different approach or anything different to say or even if you agree with the “every adult is special” thought, please leave a comment.
10 comments:
You (as in your thoughts) are just too maggied.. !!
I do want to comment.. but agggain.. you have muddled it up all..!
Nokia?? A sudden switch to objects when talking of people? How did you even draw that parallel ??! [ the handset might be special to the person who owns it.. be it any model.. ]
Not wanting to think of certain people as 'special' is an individual's prerogative.. and differs from person to person.. you might not be special for the one you don't rate as special.. and on that basis, you (or the other person) cannot be ousted from the 'special' category altogether!
The meaning of special that you seem to point at is general.. all rosy and positive.. which isn't the case always and that can be seen in those definitions that you cited.
If you still want to generalise, I'd say, yes, every adult and child is special (and the ones who aren't there anymore were special as well)
The rating discretion is entirely yours..
back to.. seriously, what WAS this ??
anyway.. looks like my comment is almost as long as the post itself! But there's no fear lurking in my mind of Gilani ma'am giving me negative marks! :D
yaar, I agree with you and hold similar views myself.... What i was looking for (and that's why i left it open-ended) was for someone to share a completely different or unheard of approach... I kinda expected varun to do it.. thats why i put it like that and left it open like that.
While writing, i wasn't interested in the belief system of people, i was more interested in the arguments that could be given as the devil's advocate or more importantly, arguments that one could think of when trying to defend the case. Even my argument was one of the possible ones that one could think of if one was forced to defend the case at gunpoint maybe.. The post wasn't serious in any way. If it looked serious, then I probably wrote it badly.
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING COMMENT IS TOO LONG AND MIGHT SEEM USELESS TO A FEW, ANYONE DISAGREEING TO THIS SHOULD KNOW THAT THERE IS NOTHING TO DISAGREE ABOUT.
first of all you did write it badly..
and honestly You saying that u expected me to use a different approach or, as you put it, an unheard approach puts a lot of pressure on me... its a compliment nonetheless(atleast i think so)
hmmm anyways so the problem at hand is that is every adult special..
yes they are and no they're not...two faces of the same coin.. thats one approach and u took it.. I call this the easier approach(without undermining ur effort ofcourse).. according to it a person can be special for someone and can be not-so-special for someone else... its easier because u r shifting the frame of reference again and again...
Tuhina said handset might be special for ONE WHO OWNS IT..point is u changed the frame of reference..
now the second unheard approach... it'll give the same answer though. HOW?? we'll see...
now in this approach i don't see whether a person is special for someone or not.. i see whether THERE IS SOMETHING SPECIAL IN HIM OR NOT??? this approach gets tougher because this doesn't leave anything for others to decide and thats the beauty of this approach...
eg. a thief is not special to me but he might be special to his loved ones. In the 2nd approach i don't care about his loved ones..all i check is whether i find him special or not..
going by this approach the responsibilty of finding whether someone is special or not falls onto our own shoulders. this is where the positive outlook comes into picture.
For me that thief is special cause he is a thief. Not eveyone is a thief(to some extent we all are but this one is a bigger thief) so this person is special for me, even though i don't know anything about him except that he is supposed to be a bad guy.
2nd approach will make u find out whats special in a person, point is use whatever approach u like a person is always special... all that matters is the way u look at it..
long comment eh ;)
@tuhina
wats maggied?? does it refer to MAGGIE TWO MINUTE NOODLES in anyways..
PS: I LOVE MAGGIE :D
@ varun
... Nice!
@ siddy
ooohh.. so did you didn't want us lesser mortals to comment?? you should've mentioned that only Varun was required to post his thoughts..!
btw.. it was nothing BUT serious!
@ varun
maggied : one thought superimposing the other, jumbled or mixed up..
(derived from maggie noodles!)
PS: all sane people of this generation LOVE maggie! ;)
your approach is in no-way different from the ones already cited! It's still the case of beauty lies in the eyes of beholder after all!
hmmm itni lambi post maari maine... isliye nhi ki ye sunna pade..
there is a difference in the way i am looking at things..
I m not leaving for others to decide whether a person is special or not. I m trying to find that out myself.. in first approach BEHOLDER changes.. in 2nd it remains the same..
Hope Einstein doesn't read ur comment. IS IN NO WAY DIFFERENT THAN ONE ALREADY CITED. He'll kill himself again.
@ varun
LOL !! :D :D
Einstein surely wouldn't be checking out this blog and whatever stuff is there on it!!
and I didn't quite know what you wanted to read as a reply to your lambi post.. , so I simply put down what I thought of it!
@ siddy
It took a not so well written post to generate such response! you get to have the last laugh.. :D
PS: maggied wasn't in any way derogatory if you thought it was.
Anyway.
hehe..U really think a lot. Par Sidharth, just think this way... If every child is special. When he grows up, and becomes an adult, won't he remain special anymore? :)
hmmm.....scratch scratch scratch...
haan to mai kya keh raha tha!
first we have to get the definition of "special" clarified, since the whole debate hinges on that. but even before that, the author seems to have assumed that children are as a rule special, but it is the specialness of adults he puts in question. now (dramatic pause jaise class mein maths ke sir dete the) if these two presumptions are considered togather (that children are special and that adults might not be) the obvious question is - when did these adults who are not special stop being special since they were special as kids! (since all adults were once kids, and it is not as if adults appeared out of nowhere, or were born adults [imagine that!])
coming back to the original debate...should tendulkar reti..oh sorry vo to doosra debate tha.
haan to.
what does special mean in the human context? does it have an absolute meaning in the structure of the universe (like hard or soft, laws of physics) or not? is there a well defined set of characteristics which if present in an individual gives him claim to "specialness". obviously not. it is a human concept and is inexorably mired in human subjectivity. so the "subject" becomes extremely important when passing the judgment of specialness. as already pointed out, special to one set of people might not be special to another. in any case, everybody (or most) are special to their close ones (family, friends, spouse, children, parents) simply by virtue of being who they are (a unique unit of themness). and inarguably, everybody is "special" to their own self.
but apart from a state of being, "special" also has another connotation, i.e., as having a special set of capabilities, or as a religious person might put it - everyone has limitless potential. this concept rather than being a statement of fact, is more pragmatic (as in pragmatism, where every belief is to be judged by its effects [check out william james]). in fact, this belief forms the basis of a democracy - that every individual is equal, and hence has equal rights in front of the law/system. (Facistic systems assert that different sets of people are unequal, and hence deserve different rights).
this belief can trace its beginnings back to religious philosophy (the sole purpose of which according to some is to make life more bearable) (each human is a mirror of the divine, or has an element of the divine in him). although these remain unprovable assertations, since the Divine remains unprovable, they still hold tremendous sway on human thought and society (even concepts of good and evil, morality, virtue, can be traced back to religious philosophy). there are other ways in which such beliefs can be approached - that they were an outcome of the evolution of society, where humans discovered more was to be gained by collaborating, and beliefs emerged which reinforced such collective living, or the "social fabric"). a third approach is that such beliefs (justice, equality, morality) emerge from something which is part of the "essential human nature" (loosely the conscience), which although hard to pin down, exists nonetheless.
in fact, the greatest movement in recent history - that of Humanism (that every human has inalianable rights and dignity) doesnt itself have any "factual" basis. it is more an expression of the kind of world we would like to see. this can also be approached from the point of view of existentialist philosophy - that since every argument dealing with human matters invariably leads to absurdity, it is best to act according to the kind of future we would like to see. humanity and humans define themselves in "action". there is no inherent state of beingness. "i am noble" in itself does not have any meaning, unless it reveals itself in acts of nobility.
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