Why shouldn’t we call terrorists — “Radical Islamists”

There is a debate that is going on whether terrorists who commit terrorist activities should be called “Radical Islamists”. If you think “why not”, then how do the following names sound to you?

Radical Baby Saver

Radical Caring Lover

Radical Loving Father

Do these names even make sense? How can someone who is a caring lover or a loving father be radical? Here are the details of each one of these — three of the deadliest mass shootings that happened in US in the recent times.

Radical Baby Saver?

NOV. 29, 2015: 3 dead, 9 injured: Colorado Springs, CO: On November 27, 2015, a gunman attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A police officer and two civilians were killed; five police officers and four civilians were injured. The attacker, Robert Lewis Dear, Jr., was taken into custody and charged three days later with first-degree murder. At a court appearance later, Dear called himself “a warrior for the babies.”

'It was mass chaos': Man held in deadly Planned Parenthood shooting identified as Robert Lewis Dear
Just before noon Friday in this city nestled along Colorado's Front Range, a shooter carried a long gun and several…www.latimes.com

Radical Caring Lover?

MAY 23, 2014: 6 dead, 7 wounded: Isla Vista, CA: On May 23, 2014, in Isla Vista, California, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara, before taking his own life. Before the killings, Rodger uploaded to YouTube a video titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution”, in which he outlined details of his upcoming attack and his motives. He explained that he wanted to punish women for rejecting him and to punish sexually-active men for living a more enjoyable life than his.

Isla Vista shootings: Source names suspect in shooting rampage
A law enforcement source told The Times that Elliot Rodger is the suspected gunman responsible for a shooting rampage…www.latimes.com

Radical Loving Father?

OCT. 12, 2011: 8 killed, 1 injured: Seal Beach, CA: A mass shooting occurred on October 12, 2011, at the Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, California. Eight people inside the salon and one person in the parking lot were shot, and only one victim survived. Scott Evans Dekraai, who was involved in a custody dispute with his ex-wife who was one of the victims, pleaded guilty to the shooting on May 2, 2014. Dekraai divorced his wife Michelle in 2007 after four years of marriage and had been engaged in a bitter custody dispute over his eight-year-old son.

Gunman kills 8 at Seal Beach salon
A suspect is arrested. A custody dispute is blamed in the worst mass killing in county history A gunman apparently…articles.latimes.com

Perpetrators always commit atrocities in the name of one or another cause. In their own heads they believe that they are fighting for noble or just causes. With their acts, they try to make us believe that they just chose radical means of defending or championing this noble cause. They long to be referred as the fighters of this noble cause. However, after the number of people that have been killed or suffered, do we think it is okay to call, for example, Dear as baby saver or Dekraai as loving father? It does not make sense to identify these perpetrators with the causes they claim to defend with their acts, right?

Likewise, when some one commits a terrorist act in the name of religion, say Islam, they long to be identified with a noble cause as well. However, they should not be identified as Radical Islamists. Just like Dekraai stopped being loving father the moment he committed acts of crime, these terrorists stop being Islamists, the moment they commit atrocities. They might have followed the religion in the past, but once violence and violation of human rights are called forth as means, they had nothing to do with anything “noble” or “just”.

Perpetrators want us to identify them with the causes they kill in the name of. That is exactly what we should not give them — identifying them with the cause. They are neither martyrs nor champions of noble or just cause.

What is the discussion “gender pay gap” really about and why many miss it.

In the recent times, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, faced backlash over his comments about gender pay gap. I do not share his thoughts on this issue, but this is also not an article bashing his comments either. His comments however highlight an important point regarding the issue that most people completely misunderstand what the argument about gender pay gap is all about.

To state the facts regarding this, in 2014, there is a gender pay gap of 21 percent in US. In other words, female full-time workers made only 79 cents for every dollar earned by men. The core of the issue is however not entirely about bias against women at "workplace" only but more about bias against women in "society" in general. 

It is no news today that our society has historically been a patriarchal one and the women did not have same rights as men for a long time.  Hopefully, there is general consensus the situation is improving, at least in the developed countries. But the rate of progress has been much up for debate due to lack of a quantitative metric to estimate the progress. "Gender pay gap at work" is one such metric, but an important one. It is a symptom of a disease but not the disease itself and should be dealt as such.

The reason "gender pay gap" is an important metric is because it highlights an important bias in the society that many fail to acknowledge- women spend more time taking care of family than men do in general. i.e If we classify the total time as time spent at work and the rest as time spent taking care of family. As men & women have equal aptitude (hopefully we don't have to debate that at all), there are only two logical reasons that could explain the gender pay gap - the first one is a bias against women at "workplace" and second is that women spend more time taking care of family than men.

In the first case of bias against women at "workplace", obviously the workplaces are to be blamed and they have to fix it. The second case is of more complex nature though. Primarily if we rule out bias against women at workplace, then we need to acknowledge that the reason for gender pay gap is that women spend less "qualitative" time at work and by extension more on family compared to men.

Then comes the question of the role of the workplace in such scenario and why do workplaces need to address it if they are not the cause of it. The answer is actually very simple. In an ideal world, the issue that women are not able to spend enough "quality" time at work is a personal/family one and should be solved at personal/family level. However, we are not living in an ideal world but a man's one. Workplaces are where most people today come together and spend significant part of their adult life. As the premier institution of the society the workplaces not only have a responsibility to address any such issue but an oppurtunity to be at the forefront and solve it.

The first step to addressing the issue is to accept the bias against women in society in general. The next step is how can workplaces offset this bias against women outside of its walls or have "a bias FOR women at workplace". Let me qualify this statement. Here, I absolutely do not mean that men should be discouraged at workplaces or anything like that. I also absolutely do not mean that women should have higher pay or promoted primarily because of their gender.

The analogy below explains my point of view. There are two runners - runner 'M' and runner 'F' with equal talent for running. Runner 'M' has been consistently beating runner 'F' by a long distance. The reason for this could be that either the track is unfair to runner 'F' or that runner 'F' is not better conditioned/prepared for the run relative to 'M'. If the track is fair to both the runners, then we need to get 'F' conditioned/prepared well. Runner 'F' needs special attention than runner 'M' does in this case. What I am suggesting is not to set the goal differently for runner 'F', but to make sure runner 'F' is conditioned as well as runner 'M' for the race.

Proposals like increased work time flexibility for women and the ability to work from home etc should be considered, discussed and decided on one-one bases. I have a personal beef with PTO policy for example. I have never understood - Why men and woman have same number of PTO days.  I know there is maternity leave, but that is only in the year of child birth. I would also let to my partner at home and colleagues at work know that I care about this issue and will do everything in my power to make it better. There should be lot more, so bring forth to the table.

Next time you hear some one talk about unequal pay, don't go all defensive saying "we are not biased about woman and all workplaces are fair". Acknowledge the bias in the society, embrace the discussion and focus on the ideas to solve it at your workplace as well as your home.

http://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

http://www.iwpr.org/initiatives/pay-equity-and-discrimination

Music, Emotion and Memory

I was skimming through The Golden Globe videos yesterdays when I found out that Ennio Morricone won the award in the Best Original Score category this year. The name Ennio Morricone is a familiar one to me. I have listened to his music before and I remember loving it. My experience after listening to it again yesterday was something what I can only describe as surreal. That is the reason I am jotting down my thoughts here.

Here is some background for the context. I am a 30 year male living in California, happily married and employed. I was in India until I was 21, moved to US for my graduate studies to the state of Massachusetts. Yesterday was nothing more than a typical sunday evening for me; I was happily tucked in our apartment.

Here is the youtube link of the music I listened to yesterday, if you are interested.

When I started listening to the music, I felt chilly suddenly; as if I was thrown into cold winter outdoors of Massachusetts from the warm setup of our California apartment. My anxiety levels spiked up. I could sense it in the pace of my heartbeat, steps and words. Then at around 05:30 into the video, when the “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” theme started to play, I felt completely different again. I was much more joyful. I felt myself sensing the fresh and earthy smell of the rain, if you can believe it. I am still stuck in my apartment, physically atleast, mind you!

Then began my train of thoughts, trying to make sense of this strange experience. “Why did I feel what I felt at that moment is hard to grasp in the context of the present conditions — the ambience I was in and the music I was listening at the moment.What if you thrown in past conditions as well into the mix, would that shed some light to my experience.”

I had two prior encounters with Ennio Morricone’s music; Both are very intense and surprisingly short lived experiences. The first one was when I watched “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly’’ movie for the first time. I was a teenager back then. I do remember the day vividly, though, it was a happy day as my school was shut down due to heavy rains. Spellbound by the music, I vowed to myself that I would love Morricone and listen to him every single day for the rest of the my life. “Rest of your life, really?” you may ask.Thats how much I got psyched up by it.

The second one was was much more interesting time for me. It was during the winter of 2008 in the middle of financial meltdown and I was just let go of my job. As you can imagine, it was quite an anxious time for me. I had all the free time in the world though. I decided to watch the “IMDB top 250 films of all time”. I covered all three movies in “The Dollars Trilogy” back to back. I was completely awe struck by all three movies and more so by the background score. With a cold and silent winter backdrop, the music, with a strong support of caffeine in my body, took me to a trans state. I found myself giving standing ovation to the music in my mind. I became addicted to the album.

See when we take these two previous encounters and reverse engineer to explain how I felt, it seems simple enough.

I do not claim to understand the relation between music & emotion but I can atleast intuitively appreciate how my present mood is elevated/changed based on the music I am listening to. I have always thought that when a group of people with different backgrounds (past conditions) who are more or less in the same mood (present conditions) listen to same set of music, everyone experience will be somewhat similar to each other with varied elevation levels.

But I have never thought that their backgrounds (past conditions) will be a factor to whether they are experience joy, sorrow or some other emotion. That to me is more or less news. When you take the relation between music & emotion, and throw memory as another parameter, this is beyond comprehension for me. For this to work, when you are listening to music, our brain not only need to respond to the music but, simultaneously, has to go and fetch all the relevant past experiences it has stored and associated with the music being at play.

What can a human brain actually do. It is unbelievably fascinating and frankly, a bit scary as well.