'Crossing the Alps depicted Napoleon's Downfall '

The painting ‘Crossing the Alps ‘was painted by David in early 1800’s.This painting is a portrait of Napoleon as he was crossing the Alps. Now without too much of introduction, I would like to come directly on to the arguments supporting my thesis. Does this painting actually depict the downfall of Napoleon?

On the first look the Painting looks vibrant. But when closely inspected we actually feel that this painting like many other have a rhetorical base, to which history does comply.Firstly let us discuss about the style of the painting. I would firstly like to discuss about the colors used in painting.The main colors used in this painting are blue , green and white.

According to the color psychology blue color displays depression , coldness and obscenity .The white color does represent purity and youth , but on the other hand it also shows defeat and death ( In eastern cultures).While the green shades, that are very much prominent, symbolizes aggression, inexperience, envy, misfortune, jealousy, money, illness. Also according to the ancient Greek mythology green was considered to be the color for the devil. There can be a counter argument stating that blue and green colors, both have positive traits also. But if that was the case why is the canvas painted in a very dull and depressive atmosphere? And thus I surely believe that the painting wants convey the negative symbolism of the colors.Now , taking Napoleon to be the point of consideration , he is shown to have a glorifying stance , which displays the might and confidence in him and his troops. But I ,would like to differ from this simple yet convincing analysis.

In the painting the horse’s rearing is substantially highlighted. Some people take this stance as a ‘mighty stance’, for some its style. But in the military discipline a soldier on a rearing horse symbolizes that he died in the battle. Napoleon’s scale also seems to be highly hyped up. The average height of the horses that were used were arong 16 hands. Which when converted comes to about 64 inches which further converted roughly comes to 5’8”. The horse’s ratio of torso : legs comes to about 2:1 that means that the torso is about 3.8ft and the legs 2 ft (which are folded). That means the torso of Napoleon would measure a roughly 3.8ft and according to Da vinci’s golden ratio the height of Napoleon comes to about 6ft. So taking everything in to consideration Napoleon’s height comes to 9.8ft (even if the approximations are taken in account it cannot get lower then 8ft ).Taking a look at the hooves of the horse. It is positioned right above Napoleon’s troops. This is a symbolic representation of his army getting trampled. A king normally is always seen in front of the troop. Here he is seen behind his troop which again signifies the depression in his mind. Also one soldier is shown up side down, which might mean that the troop was in great confusion.

· Also a kind of divine light appears on Napoleon. This light signifies that Napoleon had the support of the heavens. But as Napoleons’s death is discussed over and over , I prefer to agree to the argument that this divine light doesnot want to coney the support but actually wants to correspond to the call from the almighty.Which is again in syncronisation with the the arguments made previously.

· Taking a look on the torso of the horse, the expression on the face of the horse signifies some kind of terror.

· The position of the cape of Napoleon is also critical. It is is intersecting the horses head at the exact point which normally means the symbol of sacrifice. Also saffron color does symbolize sacrifice.

· The bridle of the horse is loose. When someone is in such a position the bridle is required to be tight. The loose bridle also signifies, that Napoleon is losing grip over is territory.

· Also the hand gesture of Napoleon seems as if he is asking his soldiers to escape, which again leads us to the hint that this painting was made to show is down fall. There can be an argument at this that this gesture can also mean that he is commanding his troop. But as seen in the painting, he is behind his troop. And a king cannot command from behind.

So now to the final question, was the painting really glorified?

According to logical and rhetorical analysis it seems that the painting was glorified in order to put a mental stress on who-so-ever sees this. And when people start glorifying things, there is some kind of timidity in their mind, which does symbolize that he was growing mentally weak.

This is supposedly the True image of how the alps was crossed... I am surprised to see the difference.....

SEX- The Misunderstood Meditation

A Zen master used to say, "It is clear and so it is hard to see. A dunce once searched for a fire with a lighted lantern. Had he known what fire was, he could have cooked his rice much sooner."

SEX for most of the people, is a word that should be condemned. For some it is a word that carries a style quotient along with it. For few, it is a necessity. But for a couple a people it is a word which actually brings them closer to “Nirvana-The ultimate bliss.” First of all, let us discuss the history of this word. It was a pretty much a natural gift that a man got from nature. No other animal has it except man. Initially there was no condemnation for sex. People took it as a natural chore, such as drinking, eating etc. But then society came in to being and so did people started getting narrow minded. People were then worried about their properties, which women were a part of. People started taking sex as a sin .Because if it wasn’t taken as one the whole system of society would have been destroyed. Then the scriptures came into the play. The priests saw that Sex was a source via which a man could be liberated and if this happens there would be no importance of a church , a temple , a mosque. So they started taking advantage of this, and started preaching that sex is a Sin . No sin is bigger than sex.

People started suppressing their sexual tendencies. People started agreeing that sex is actually a sin. As a result the society started seeing sexual crimes, prostitution came in place. Priests stated preaching the whole subject according to their comfort. Have you ever wondered why is sex such a suppressed energy in people? For example when you meet a someone, even after years altogether you would remember whether that was a male or a female. You might not remember the name, nor the face, not the religion . Only the sex of that person . This is the amount of sexual suppression that people have now-a-days. The art follows sexuality. The most beautiful sculptures have a sexual theme, the songs , movies, paintings , everything now-a-days have a sexual theme. This is a result of the amount of sexual suppression that we have. So the argument in the previous paragraph does support that sex is the biggest suppression that a man has seen in this history.

Now lets see how does sex support meditation. According to the Buddhist ideology the ultimate bliss is known as Nirvana. Nirvana surprisingly means ‘blowing off the candle.’ This is very different now. The ultimate bliss, we are subjected to something new, new doors are opened to us and instead of calling it lighting the candle, the Buddha calls it blowing off the candle! That’s true, actually what Buddha means by Nirvana is that a state in our lives when blow off every lamp in our lives and just live with ourselves. That point in our lives where we live in present, where our ego is dropped, there is a sense of ultimate bliss in our lives, the time seems to halt. All this are the state that a man has when he untangles all the worldly connections and starts a new beginning to the new life.

But the surprising part is that Sex is the only thing where in an individual reaches all these states. At that final point of Sex , there is no ego contained, no one is a millionaire then , no one is world famous actor. And that is actually the only point in our lives that we live in present. We virtually live out the entire period of our lives living either in past or in future. We hardly live in present. And sex is one such point which enables people to actually live in present. Yes there are holy books that state that sex is an attachment, and the ultimate aim of life is to get free from all the attachment in life. So the people started ignoring it, suppressing it. But that exactly is the opposite of what is required. If we close our eyes and can’t see the sun that doesn’t mean that we are defying the existence of the sun. We are only suppressing ourselves for no reason. The reason why sex and death are a taboo is that people live in that folly that by ignoring we do actually defy the attachment to it. But that is totally wrong.

Basically Sex is a form of energy, A huge source of energy which has the power to actually give birth to an offspring. But it also has the power to give birth to ourselves. Now-a-days people have started using this energy as a mode of entertainment. And some use it a mode of religious preaching. But the actual truth is that it does not belong to any of this. Man has special ability of not only using this gift as a catalyst for reproduction, but also for self realization. It is pious way of meeting ourselves. Realizing our inner selves, and attaining Nirvana.

Osho .Sex to Superconciousness.India.Tao publication,2006.English.

Osho. "Sex and Death – The 2 Great taboos” August 12, 2006. Online video clip. YouTube.

Osho .The book of secrets.USA.St martin’s Press.,1998.English.

Osho .Life’s Mysteries.India.Penguin Publication.14-Oct-2000.English

Discipline is paralyzing the world

At the first part the topic above feels a little odd, because till now all we have heard is the importance of discipline in all the streams of the world. And discipline in the school, which is regarded highly important is actually the real problem why world is going insane.

The mere reason why I am disregarding discipline is just because that discipline is killing creativity. And the world is a cripple without creativity. This paper is mostly on why schools should no longer concentrate on discipline.

A famous Philosophist has once said “ A man is born with the most amount of knowledge and dies with the least.” Let us go in a little depth of what does this proverb mean. When a man comes into this world , he was pure , innocent , he was not yet in the contact of the society that us waiting for him to live his life their way , and totally devoid himself of intellectualness. What we forget is that discipline is just a way of students to come to school at time, or make them complete their home work, or even stand in a straight line. But in this process what happens is that the society tends to thrust their ideas on to him .and the brain starts getting conditioned.

According to the American journal of sociology, every century the rate of invention is declining. For sure the world is reaching to new heights and newer and newer technologies are being built up, but the statistics says that rate at which things are getting invented is declining. This is complete opposite to the expected as the government is spending so much in research grants and educational budget. I mean with State-of-art infrastructure coming up the graph of the invention rate should have been exponentially high or at least would be increasing. But the fact that it is declining actually supports the fact that something is wrong in the whole educational system. And on diagnosis I feel that the only flaw is that schools have stopped encouraging creativity in students.

So what is so wrong in discipline practiced in the schools?

First of all what is discipline? Discipline isn’t just about being well dressed, or coming to classes on time. Actually the real harm that discipline does is actually in your mind. What happens when young children are told to follow something in the name of discipline or religion? Had the child just followed it without giving much thought to it, it would have been alright. But the very fact that the brain starts adapting to the surrounding makes the real problem here. The brain starts forming its thought process based on that simple stupid idea that was someone else’s. And so the child’s brains goes on getting conditioned day after day, month after month, and one fine day he loses his own thought process, there nothing more he can think other then following something that is being told.

While I was writing the paper I went through a video where the speaker was counter arguing by with an example that when you give a farmer an unlimited land to farm he would farm on some space and be satisfied , thinking that this the end of the life. Otherwise give him a small space and he would come up with ways in which he can maximize his profit. So the zest of it was, as Nietzsche has said that “You need a chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star”, that for any man to succeed there has to be constraints in his way. I am not in a favor that a child should be given whatever he wants for, but at the same time the constraints should not be so hard that he starts following the world. Pablo Picasso once said that every child is a born artist, all it counts is how much time he keeps that artist in him while growing up. And that’s exactly what I want to prove. What now-a-days happens is that schools are focusing on Newton’s laws of gravity but I have hardly seen any school where they make the students realize where it came from. Newton and the his story of how he discovered gravity is well known. Now had he been disciplined at the time the apple fell on him , he would probably lift it up and throw it up in a trash can .But what he came up with was a result of creativity. He was creative enough to think that something in this world did actually make the apple fall down.

My argument is simple , why people who either didn’t go to a school or were considered crazy by the society ,made it big. And the list is not small. There is a big list of famous scientists , industrialists , artists who didn’t go to normal schools and have made it big in life. On narrowing down, what I feel is that these people actually weren’t in that vicious circle, and for those who were it was that necessary constraint which actually gave them a boost to actually do something great in life.

When one gets disciplined the rebel in him dies, and he is nothing but a moving dead body among other millions like him. Someone also said that there has to be two opposite forces to give a birth to your inner rebel. That is true, there has to be a certain force that actually can make a rebel. But in this way having discipline is very absolutely right as it is enhancing your opportunity to do something big in your life. But my point is different. I am not arguing on the the presence of discipline, what I am arguing on is the preaching of discipline in schools. According to Harvard Mental news letter, depression in students is rising at a whopping 23% per annum! The world is going to be the way it is, the society Is going to function in its way, what I am arguing is for a school which doesn’t. So a student finally has a vent out from discipline being preached every where around him.

The base line of the whole argument comes on to that the world has gone enough after being disciplined , now it is a time to stop for a while and think , what actually in the world is happening. Now Is a time that people actually start believing in innovation rather than petty theorems of the world on its progress. Discipline is important, but in schools I believe that creativity should count. New and innovative methods of teaching making creativity as a baseline should now be made. The schools are a stepping stone for students and now they should be the one that should believe on how a balance should be created.

More number of schools should be made that doesn’t follow IB board or the GCSE board but gives important to the creative quotient. Make the students realize the immense potential of creative ideas and thinking that is actually there in them. There are companies now that give more importance to creativity then to discipline. Companies like google are really turning the world around. And for institutions like this schools that really value creativity should come in place.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

-Albert Einstein.

I would like to see schools in this world which reverse the famous proverb and prove it to the world what creativity can do.

Alfred B.Stafford. "Is the Rate of invention declining." American sociology journal Volume 57.Issue 1952: Electronic

Robbinson, Ken. Out Of Our Minds. United Kingdom: Capstone Publishing, 2001. Print.

Axelrod, Alan. Edison on Innovation. United States of America: Jossey Bass, 2008n. Print.

Harvard mental health letter, Harvard university press: February,2002

Osho. Creativity unleashing the forces within. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Print.