The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Thursday 2 February 2012

THE PIRATE IN US, THE INFORMATION FLOW AND MR. PAULO COELHO

Samba rambles.

When the Samba drum blows to the curves, it cannot be set into some set pattern of moving eyelashes. Paulo Coelho is fluid; ‘The Alchemist’ has proved it beyond doubt. And he is the Brazilian to the core when it comes to flow to blow the zing.

SOPA, PIPA, ‘Occupy’ occupiers, India’s web regulation controversy, China’s web-spirit assassination – folks, PIRACY is the most trending words these days.

And when our Brazilian explorer of internal vibes contextualized the word ‘piracy’, he was just not promoting his works in his unique way but was also indicating that ‘anarchy, too, sometime, can lead to atavistic outcomes, the blessings in disguise.

Something that we have known always but are never clear on ‘how and when’ to realize it!

Directly or indirectly, the Captain Jack Sparrow, the adorable tainted teeth, personified in Mr. Coelho’s words-in-context here, somehow, sanctify the nodal context point, the information emancipation.

So the crusader of the ‘simple yet powerful path of your inner voice’ when chooses to speak his mind, through his works and social media presence, words glow many a time.

Thesis has no relevance until there is anti-thesis. And this game is always context oriented. We are living in amazing times. It has power to create and destroy in momentum of moments given the high level of technological drill. Exclusivity has a changed definition now. A version that flows the most, weathering the every manipulative tool of the channels, is the contemporary exclusive of the moment. This is the way information forms today. Claiming is no more game.

Let the information flow freely. Let it go through the channels to establish its ‘version authenticity’. And that can only be done by an ever-increasing chunk that actively participates in the information consumption. Once done so, the endorsed information goes viral inhabiting the different communication platforms in the ‘Convergence’ times.

Coelho said, "The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever. First, because all anyone ever does is recycle the same four themes: a love story between two people, a love triangle, the struggle for power, and the story of a journey. Second, because all writers want what they write to be read, whether in a newspaper, blog, pamphlet, or on a wall," he said. "The more often we hear a song on the radio, the keener we are to buy the CD. It's the same with literature. The more people 'pirate' a book, the better."

The more often we hear a song, the keener we are to buy the CD – statistics tells us the marketer in Coelho has been successful while using ‘anarchy’ to set his thoughts on explosion by increasing demand of his works manifold. A pirated Russian copy of ‘The Alchemist’ in 1999, easily available on the web, created a huge demand and the sales figures are over 12 million copies in Russia as of now.

Initiation leads to loyal brand affinity further on the growth curve of the brand line. If a work emancipates a needy section of population where it is banned or where it is beyond the economical means of outreach, that piracy is blessing in disguise. And we can easily find thousands of such examples. The initiation on social parameters creates the brand identity of the ‘cause’, a must for it to go viral.

A cause cannot bring the change until it goes viral.

It is in stark contrast with the silly attempts to restrict the flow of information in the name of preventing piracy. Piracy is bad but killing the information flow is sin.

In the typical Coelho manner, he advises us to go rouge happily and that is great – it can be like reading something that has been so-in yet so-out.

Has the time come to identify good piracy from its bad counterpart? I think so.

It is good to take a detour sometime, so I had a pirated book on my bay after the Brazilian wordsmith advocated for it. Pirated stuff, not just books, aren’t we all have used or use regularly? We all are pirates, of this sort, of that hue. Isn't it? :) 

“Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.” - Santiago's heart (The Alchemist)

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/