SBenegaL

Category: Role

  • Am I an atheist?

    A conversation with my sister triggered this thought of writing a blog. She asked me am I an atheist! And that triggered my thoughtful reflection and what it meant to me.I have had an interest in the notion of GOD for a long time… (read this post) I have also oscillated between the beliefs about God and its nature over a long time. Do these oscillating beliefs make me a liar, or just a constantly curious person who is trying to make sense of the notion, and refining the definition in a constant endeavor.

    Let’s begin with definitions of an atheist fist. “The Cambridge Dictionary” definition of atheist available at https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/atheist – which said its “someone who does not believe in God/gods.” So there is a definitional shift from atheist to “GOD,” and I do the same search again and find the definition as “a spirit or being believed to control some part of the universe or life and often worshipped for doing so, or something that represents this spirit or being.”

    When I look at the definition here, I see three components – the form, the role and the rituals/processes of engaging. The term atheist itself could be confusing if one looks at the three aspects different.

    1. What would form mean for me when I consider myself to be an atheist or not?

    If the form is important, it is often the case that we are in the quest of having a form mostly through the perspectives we hold. Is it male, female or others? Is it nature or is it fiction?
    My early notions of being an atheist were pushed by this aspect – I don’t like the form. I don’t see god in a form.
    But do I not believe in what I don’t cognitively explain? I do.
    I began the quest since I found myself believing in the unexplained. My experience has been a useful guide in this. I realize there are moments when my mind is peaceful, happy and undisturbed. A state of bliss, where I seek nothing more. Where I am grateful to be where I am.
    This I believe is the experiences of divinity that each one of us can have. It doesn’t happen at only specific places like temples. I find myself distancing from temple visits where I don’t find peace, where I cannot connect with myself. There are some moments when it’s so easy to connect and be at a place, just soaking in the moment completely – this for me has been the scenario when I get to treks and just sit watching the waterfall and create magic!
    I then began asking if it’s all about nature itself? Is nature God? And as I began observing my daily life – I realize there are more instances when I can choose to experience divinity. Its the feeling that I had begun soaking in, not the divine itself.
    I now know – the existence of the divine in a form isn’t really necessary for us to feel the divinity that is so easy to experience so its not the form.
    So yes, I am an atheist in the requirement of having a form. I don’t believe in a form.

    2. Role

    The notion of God has emerged for multiple reasons – may be for experiencing the divinity that I talked about earlier, or for the reduction of the uncertainty like I mentioned in the earlier blog, or as Harari says for the unifying role and control that myths around these Gods provide to people.
    I see that the role played by the notion of God gives me peace. Whatever the other aspects of the role of ‘God’ maybe I know it simply gives me a simplistic view of life and allows me to move ahead when I am stuck.
    So no, I am not an atheist in this requirement for the role that is played by God. It helps me!

    3. The process of engaging.

    Rituals and processes are effective to enable to execute their tasks with little cognitive overload. They also allow us to take benefits of the clarity that emerges with the connecting with the feeling of divinity and the reduction in uncertainty. So practices help connect with God and so should make me someone who believes in God ain’t it?
    Here I look at the implications of the rituals to me and my push on others to follow the rituals. I find myself only interested in finding the peace, the flow I experience through following the rituals, but I don’t want others to simply follow what I do. I am pretty sure they have their ways of finding the divine feeling – be it through music, dance or simply our work. We call these as “Aradhana” too, just as we call “praying” in front of God – the worship itself is flexible and just a means.
    So I see as following rituals are never going to be indicative of the belief in god itself. It’s only indicative of being in the moment, doing it for its own sake. The state of flow!
    With this, I guess I realize now that god is a very personal notion. The rituals are simply so customizable to suit our state of mind — that which makes us feel the bliss, the peace, the happiness, the flow.

    So am I an atheist? I don’t know. I do believe I am one in some ways and not one in many ways. Maybe I am agnostic, but simply do what I do.
    My views here are personal. May not be strictly adhering to the notions of anyone else, but you have to find your answers.

  • Stress: Consequences – Eustress & Distress

    In the last byte, we looked at personal demands that affected stress levels in individuals. In today’s byte, we look at the consequences of stress and essentially cover 2 concepts – eustress and distress.

    It is a general assumption that stress is bad – but this is not really the case always. We have talked about eustress in an earlier discussion. The when the stress begins affecting the individual, we have another term – distress. It would be good to summarize the discussion in a pictorial form.

    The above picture is adapted from the reference book.

    An organization striving for high quality products and services would need to have a healthy workforce to support the effort. Eustress is a characteristic of healthy people; and distress is not!

  • Stress: Personal Demands

    In the last byte, we looked at home demands that act as sources of stress. In today’s byte, we look at personal demands that act as sources of stress.

    It is commonly seen in the work environment there are some employees who are workaholic. Workaholism is defined as an imbalanced preoccupation with work at the expense of home and personal life satisfaction. Generally this is self-imposed. Some early signs of workaholism include over commitment to work, inability to enjoy vacations and respites from work, preoccupation with work problems when away from the workplace, and constantly taking work home on the weekends.

    Another type of personal demand comes from civic activities, volunteer work, non organizational commitments etc these demands become more or less stressful depending on their compatibility with the person’s work and family life and their capacity to provide alternative satisfactions for the person.

    Certain situations like job loss, examination failures, termination of romantic attachments etc are all traumatic and could lead to distress if these are not addressed and resolved.

  • Stress: Home Demands

    In the last byte, we discussed about physical demands at work place that forms the source of stress. In today’s byte, we begin understanding non-work demands and the first of these – “Home Demands”.

    The fast changing lifestyle in both urban and rural areas is giving rise to issues that were hereto unseen or unheard of. Family demands related to marriage, child rearing and parental care are common questions that couples in the urban society need to answer. The expectations and lifestyle changes we find today are drastically different from the traditional families that we once knew of. The changing family values and the adoption of newer ones are creating challenges in the process of transition.

    It is increasingly common in urban areas to find parent leave their kids in day care. There is an increasing tension between work and family by people – these acts as a source of real struggle for these people to find a balance in life. In quite a few cases, the attention of the employee would be on the child’s development, when there are increasing demands of work that keep requesting attention. These contrasting demands on the individual cause stress.

    A good way to handle these for any individual is to set out a clear priority. This helps reallocate time to achieve a better balance in life.

    As the society evolves, we shall find more people attempting to find an integrative social identity, integrating the various social roles into a whole identity for a more stress-free balance in work and non-work identities. This process of integration is however not going to be an easy one!

  • Stress: Physical Conditions

    In the last byte, we looked at the various interpersonal demands that could act as a potential source of stress. In today’s byte, we look at how the physical conditions in a work place could act as a source of stress.

    It would be a personal experience for almost all of us – invariably when we are tiered having worked for a long time on something, and it someone else asks for something we shout back! This is a common experience and shouting is a reaction that expresses the stress our body has had.

    Such stress would be higher if the individual has been working in an environment that doesn’t have a conducive atmosphere – say a temperature that is non ambient (could be working close to a furnace for long hours!), an extremely crowded space where lot of people are cramped and working on the production process etc. Such inhuman working conditions are the reason why factories with such harsh conditions are called “sweat shops”.

    It is important to realize that the physical demands of work are often occupation specific. In the case of military pilots who fly high-speed jets, the risk involved would be of gravitationally induced loss of consciousness; in the case of CEOs who globe-trotter pretty frequently, would complaint of jet lag and loss of sleep. All these form sources of stress that evolve out of the work environment.

    In the more common IT scenario, an ergonomic misfit between the person and work place would lead to stress too – the forms could be eyestrain, neck-stiffness and arm/wrist problems etc. So it’s time that we look back at these factors and think of improving the work environment to reduce physical stress.

  • Stress: Interpersonal Demands

    In the last byte, we looked at role related issues that act as a source of stress. In today’s byte, we look at Interpersonal demands that act as a source of stress.

    We could look at interpersonal demands in the following categories:

    1. Emotional Toxins
    2. Sexual Harassment
    3. Poor Leadership
    4. Trust Related
    We quite sometimes find an individual with abrasive personality and a find a set of emotions like anger, guilt, shame, fear etc come in immediately. These emotions make us feel “ill”. These spread through the work environment and cause a range of disturbances – this is one potential source of work stress.

    Sexual Harassment is a gender-related interpersonal demand that creates a stressful working environment both for the person being harassed and for others. A vast majority of sexual harassment is directed at women in the work place is a chronic yet preventable workplace problem.

    Employees who feel secure working with strong, directive leadership may be anxious when handling an open management style. Those comfortable with participative leadership style will not feel comfortable with a very directive leadership. Poor leadership in organizations and excessive, demanding management styles are one of the leading sources of work stress.

    Trust is an important characteristic in any leader-follower interpersonal relation. This is the reason why in most cases, a slight threat to the reputation of the employee with her or his supervisor may be especially stressful! Diversity amongst the project groups could act as a hurdle in building a trusting relationship.

  • Stress: Role related issues

    In the last byte, we looked at how task related issues act as a source of stress. In today’s byte, we look at how role related create a social-psychological demand in a work environment and act as source of stress.

    We can classify role related stress into 2 categories:

    1. Role Conflicts
    2. Role Ambiguity
    Role Conflicts result from result from inconsistent or incompatible expectations communicated to a person. Role Ambiguity is the confusion of a person experience related to the expectations of others. Role ambiguity may be caused by not understanding what is expected, not knowing how to do it, or not knowing the result of failure to do it.

    We can understand Role Conflicts better if we can categorize the same. We can classify these into:

    1. Interrole conflict: is caused by conflicting expectations related to two separate roles. Example: an individual could be as an employee and be a parent. In such cases work-family demands could lead to stress.
    2. Intrarole conflict: is caused by conflicting expectation related to a single role. Example: A manager would press an employee to work fast and also deliver a high-quality work – this in some cases could cause conflict for the employee!
    3. Person-role conflict: is caused when an employee is expected to behave in a way that violates personal values, beliefs or principles. Ethics violations are one source of such person-role conflicts.