I wish all readers a safe and happy Christmas Day today, followed by a peaceful, joyful, and prosperous new year ahead! May the spirit of Christmas fill us all around the world with much-needed love, empathy and compassion for one another, and care for our fellow human beings in dire need for our timely support, and firm up our resolve and commitment to work for the holistic wellness and stability of the human world!
Although Christmas is being celebrated today, Australia has been infused with the Christmas spirit for several weeks now. Christmas is an essential part of a multicultural Australia and a broad Australian culture; its core message – of love, forgiveness, empathy, and compassion – brings together families and friends across the globe.
Home to immigrants from over 170 countries, Australia truly lives the spirit of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ – a Sanskrit phrase from an ancient Indian text, the Maha Upanishad – which means ‘the world is one family’, without being aware or boasting about it. Australians are amongst the kindest people in the world, benevolent and great philanthropists. Australians from all religious backgrounds enjoy complete freedom to celebrate their native culture and religious festivals, making this beautiful nation a bouquet of vibrant colours and cultures from across the planet.
Enthralling Test Cricket Ahead
The festive season continues beyond the Christmas Day, with the traditional Boxing Day Test cricket at the MCG (in Melbourne) starting tomorrow. The Test is expected to be a fierce contest between the hosts, Australia, and the touring Indian squad; it decides the current 5-Test series. The winner is assured not to lose the Test series. India’s Jasprit Bumrah, the top ranked fast bowler in the world, stands firmly between the two teams. The question is if Australia’s 19-year-old batting sensation, Sam Konstas, is able go past Bumrah in this Test match? Sam, who is making his debut tomorrow, is known for scoring centuries.
This Test series has not been without controversies. Some megastars in this Indian Test squad reportedly had a few run-ins with local (Australian) media and members of public, with the Indian team management calling for a ban on spectators watching (or photographing) the Indian players during their training sessions. Sadly, last Sunday, India’s travelling media XI boycotted a prearranged T20 cricket match, at Junction Oval in Melbourne, against their local (Australian) counterparts, which had been organised by Cricket Australia. Such press matches are organised to revive the traditions.
Australian media is known to be fiercely independent and constantly asking questions of everyone. No business magnate or any politician, not even the prime minister of Australia, has ever been able to dodge the Australian press or evade questions. This is one of the several reasons why Australia sits at the top-tier of free democracy. One would have hoped the megastars of the touring Indian cricket team knew the ground reality that no one, not even the Australian government, controls the Australian media.
A Year of Hope Ahead – 2025
Soon after the Boxing Day Test, the world will welcome the New Year 2025, with traditional fireworks at the Sydney Harbour Bridge heralding its arrival at the midnight of 31 December 2024 / 1 January 2025. A couple of days later, the fifth and the last cricket Test will be contested, at the SCG, between India and Australia.
Will the year 2025 be any different from 2024, particularly, in terms of the Russia-Ukraine war or the Middle East crises? Hopefully, it will be, and the reason being the imminent change in the US leadership. With fervent hope for restoration of a peaceful world order, the peace-loving world can’t wait to see the back of a warmongering Biden administration, and the return of President Trump at the helm. Welcome, President Trump!
The outgoing US leadership will be remembered in history for its incompetence, weakness, and confusion, one that helped to create and nurture unimaginable death and destruction around the world. The outgoing US president has also left a potentially damaging precedence of pardoning his own son from serious tax-related irregularities. Such misuse of executive power is both questionable and condemnable. Such misuse of power not only undermine the essence of democracy but also goes against the spirit of the Magna Carta (June 1215), over which our liberal democratic system is founded.
If President Trump intends to put a full stop to all this madness around the world, he will; he has the capability to do so, and he has nothing to lose. He may even win the Nobel Prize for Peace. Whatever his opponents — both Democrats and Republicans — say about him, he will deliver what he has promised. As a shrewd businessman, he will make everyone pay for receiving freebies in the past and for their transgressions. There will be no escape for anyone, he will make the world pay for fulfilling his MAGA promise.
Something that distinguishes Trump from the rest of the political mob is that he is neither a traditional rightist nor a leftist, he is a capitalist. This characteristic may inevitably disappoint many a far-right nationalist from autocratic countries. Trump is neither for, nor against any particular country or religion; he is solely for the US. As a transactional negotiator and shrewd tactician, he will surprise even the most seasoned politicians. He does not believe in the traditional ‘divide and rule’ mantra. As such, the establishments, which feeds on strife and war, may see him as an adversary.
A Forgettable Year Behind – 2024
This passing year saw immense violence in its more brutal form around the world. Common people – from across the world — the east or the west, or the developed or the developing economies — feel bitterly disillusioned with politics and duped by the politicians who appear to be doing nothing but campaigning incessantly to be voted into power, paradoxically, by the very same common people whom they deceive, misguide and misuse.
On the personal level, this year has been a disappointing one for me, albeit one that also delivered some bitter lessons for a much-needed realisation about the reality of life and living. This year, first we lost my father-in-law, and then a relatively young gardener, and, more recently, our 14-year-old husky.
My 91-year-old father-in-law had been suffering from a severe memory loss, due to the Alzheimer’s disease. Eventually, after a fated fall at a dementia facility, in which he broke his hip, the overall quality of his life deteriorated quickly although he had been operated upon successfully. His last few weeks raised some sensitive questions about the meaning of life: What is the purpose of life and living a long life, especially, if it is reduced to sheer existence, with full dependence on other people? What is human life sans memory? Analogously, can a computer function as a computer if it loses all its Random-Access Memory (RAM)?
Steve, our gardener for several years, passed on within a few weeks after being diagnosed with a terminal cancer. He had lost around 30 kgs within a period of about three months. I spoke to him last when he was at the hospital, waiting to be administered his first dose of chemotherapy the next day. He said he had been given him just about a month to live. I never heard from him again.
Cancer did not spare even our 14-year-old Siberian husky. How devastating it can be when your darling pet leaves you with a notice of only a few hours. Immediately upon our landing in Perth, in the first week of December 2024, we learnt Sakha, our husky, had suddenly become very unwell at the kennel where he had been residing from time to time, during the periods of our absence from Perth. By the end of the day, he was diagnosed to be terminally ill, and nothing could be done to save him, as cancer had rapidly spread around. We were faced with making a soul-crushing call about his life. It was a devastating blow to every member of the family, but Sakha lives on in our fond memories! He taught us how to live each moment and love unconditionally.
As per Nature, what is born, must die, whether it is an individual, or a powerful regime, or the natural processes. Nothing is linear in this world — what goes up, must come down, whether it is a manmade structure, political power, or an individual’s physic a strength, ego or arrogance.
Buddha’s Four Noble Truths about life are so true! However, life remains interesting and worth living when we remain optimistic and reasonably oblivious to the inevitable. Deciphering it unnecessarily in advance ruins the joy of pleasant surprises. After all, no one has seen the future. No one knows what is going to happen the next minute, hour, day, or the week.
My Personal Journey Ahead
During me recent absence from Perth, in November 2024, I attended a couple of international conferences / workshops at Rohtak and Patiala, both in India. I also spoke about the need for holistic education for students at all levels – primary, secondary and tertiary – so that we able to create generation of moral and responsible citizens. In this capitalistic day and age, while education is seen essential to (a) earn livelihood, (b) live an informed, dignified life, and (c) rise in the socioeconomic strata, and to empower oneself, the core purpose of education — to live a ‘noble and good’ life — may have got lost to many of us.
While learning of sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics is necessary for creating workers, both in the developed and emerging economies, the focus of educationists on a holistic education of young students is equally necessary to ensure the human-world remains stable and sustainable for our future generations.
Moral and ethical education, through the educational stream of Arts – literature and philosophy – is absolutely necessary, as the call of the hour, for creating complete citizens, those who are able to think and live responsibly, those who are able to nurture and sustain the natural environment necessary for the survival of the human race. Holistic education will work as an essential antidote to the ongoing misuse of sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics by the callous, greedy and misguided humans.
The purpose of education has constantly been changing with advances in sciences and technology, especially after the dawn of the Industrial Age three centuries ago. However, with the arrival of Artificial Intelligence, and its phenomenal rise, partly due to our blind and unconditional romanticism towards embracing it in all walks of our mundane life, and, as a consequence, how quickly it has infused most if not all aspects of our fickle existence, we may have now reached the precipice of our human existence. Before it is too late to return, therefore, we must assess if we are sleepwalking to creating a generation of robotic humanoids, those who are not able to use their own intelligence but can be programmed and controlled digitally by unseen forces operating from the other side of the planet; or, if we must work consciously and with urgency to retain our original humanness, howsoever, erroneous that humanness may be. It is time we take a deliberate pause and critically review our current education system and policies, with sole aim to sustain our inherent humanness and the human world. ‘To err is human’, as the saying goes.
A perfect robot must not be allowed to replace an imperfect human, howsoever, attractive or cost-effective it may seem to be. Humans must be preserved with all our ingenuity and imperfections, both.
With these thoughts on education, and my intent to maintain and further enhance the liveability of an already pristine Bicton electorate, and to improve the infrastructural interconnectivity within the Perth metropolitan, with my background as a professional engineer, I am running for the Western Australian parliament in the March 2025 state election. I need a high dose of luck to succeed in my endeavours!
To conclude, I wish all readers a safe and happy Christmas today, followed by a peaceful and prosperous New Year 2025.
Bill K Koul, 25 Dec 2024 (Perth, Western Australia)
Copyright © Bill K Koul