Der Underdog
Swami Gulagulaananda said:
"The underdog is always the one that gets support - irrespective of being right or wrong"
For those of you who didn't get the title, there is a movie called Der Untergang (Which is a must watch, by the way) and this post is to do with the underdog.
So, who's an underdog anyway? A dictionary would define it as follows
A simple example is in case of an accident on the road. The underdog is the smaller vehicle, the villain is the bigger vehicle, and it doesn't matter who is wrong. The support always goes to the smaller vehicle, and it doesn't matter who's wrong. If a car hit a two wheeler, and the rider is on the ground, it's the car's fault. It is most likely that the motorcycle came in front of the bike out of nowhere, but heck, that doesn't prevent anyone from scuffling with the driver of the car. I am not talking about obvious situations where people saw the two wheeler's error. And similarly, if a lorry hit a car, it's the lorry's fault. If a man and a woman are fighting and it is no longer verbal, the man is at fault for striking the woman - She may have started the physical assaults, but the man is at fault.
This is how popular public perception is. Similarly, people's perception in the technological field is quite similar. Microsoft is evil, Windows sucks and Linux rocks. Lots of fanboys write this all over the place. I don't really understand why. If you provide technical reasons with memory consumption, space consumed, say that windows hangs a lot, etc. while Linux is relatively stable, etc. then it is valid. And people who can give reasons are not usually the ones who go about making these statements. Just by using Linux for a couple days, people start abusing 'Windoze'. Again, I am not defending either and I use both. Both have advantages and disadvantages and I don't say one is better than the other. They just hate Microsoft.
When there is a riot and civilians torch government property indiscriminately, peace keeping forces need to be deployed. Many people enjoy the anarchy and derive thrill out of destroying someone else's things. When Dr. Rajkumar died, people randomly burnt vehicles. What had those poor vehicle owners done? Do you believe people such as these will yield to reason? Never! And when necessary force is applied, then the so called "educated" people, English media and foreign nations start jumping around saying that civilians are being hit. When poor tribals were indiscriminately being forced to Christianity, and when a Hindu guru was murdered, nobody said anything because Hindus are the majority. The underdog Christian missionaries got enormous support from the same group mentioned previously when there were some attacks on them.
Similarly a lot of people hate Shah Rukh Khan and Ra.One before it is out also. They are constantly making various remarks against the movie before it is even out. They just hate him because he is the most popular guy.
This kind of behaviour is quite interesting in the sense that, it appears like people behave quite opposite to the 'might is right' philosophy or the matsya nyaya. Rather, they support the weaker than eating it. Here, I think, people start off with the understanding that the stronger, more powerful entities don't need support, the weaker one cannot fight and needs support. This is ok if the weaker one was the right one. But if it is the other way around, then the supporters are damn fools! But unfortunately, the trend is such.
"The underdog is always the one that gets support - irrespective of being right or wrong"
For those of you who didn't get the title, there is a movie called Der Untergang (Which is a must watch, by the way) and this post is to do with the underdog.
So, who's an underdog anyway? A dictionary would define it as follows
An underdog is a person or group in a competition, frequently in electoral politics, sports and creative works, who is popularly expected to lose.One thing that I have noticed is that the public support, the mob support normally tends to go towards the underdog rather than for the powerful. The general feeling in the minds of the people is that the high and mighty, the powerful, the famous, the popular don't need any kind of support... Rather than saying don't need, I think it would be more appropriate to say don't deserve, for it may be right that they don't need.
A simple example is in case of an accident on the road. The underdog is the smaller vehicle, the villain is the bigger vehicle, and it doesn't matter who is wrong. The support always goes to the smaller vehicle, and it doesn't matter who's wrong. If a car hit a two wheeler, and the rider is on the ground, it's the car's fault. It is most likely that the motorcycle came in front of the bike out of nowhere, but heck, that doesn't prevent anyone from scuffling with the driver of the car. I am not talking about obvious situations where people saw the two wheeler's error. And similarly, if a lorry hit a car, it's the lorry's fault. If a man and a woman are fighting and it is no longer verbal, the man is at fault for striking the woman - She may have started the physical assaults, but the man is at fault.
This is how popular public perception is. Similarly, people's perception in the technological field is quite similar. Microsoft is evil, Windows sucks and Linux rocks. Lots of fanboys write this all over the place. I don't really understand why. If you provide technical reasons with memory consumption, space consumed, say that windows hangs a lot, etc. while Linux is relatively stable, etc. then it is valid. And people who can give reasons are not usually the ones who go about making these statements. Just by using Linux for a couple days, people start abusing 'Windoze'. Again, I am not defending either and I use both. Both have advantages and disadvantages and I don't say one is better than the other. They just hate Microsoft.
When there is a riot and civilians torch government property indiscriminately, peace keeping forces need to be deployed. Many people enjoy the anarchy and derive thrill out of destroying someone else's things. When Dr. Rajkumar died, people randomly burnt vehicles. What had those poor vehicle owners done? Do you believe people such as these will yield to reason? Never! And when necessary force is applied, then the so called "educated" people, English media and foreign nations start jumping around saying that civilians are being hit. When poor tribals were indiscriminately being forced to Christianity, and when a Hindu guru was murdered, nobody said anything because Hindus are the majority. The underdog Christian missionaries got enormous support from the same group mentioned previously when there were some attacks on them.
Similarly a lot of people hate Shah Rukh Khan and Ra.One before it is out also. They are constantly making various remarks against the movie before it is even out. They just hate him because he is the most popular guy.
This kind of behaviour is quite interesting in the sense that, it appears like people behave quite opposite to the 'might is right' philosophy or the matsya nyaya. Rather, they support the weaker than eating it. Here, I think, people start off with the understanding that the stronger, more powerful entities don't need support, the weaker one cannot fight and needs support. This is ok if the weaker one was the right one. But if it is the other way around, then the supporters are damn fools! But unfortunately, the trend is such.
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