Mind of my Stroked Brain

Don't worry, I am not getting into whether one country or the other has democracy 🙂 My thinking of late is no country in the world has democracy belonging to this century. Folks may claim to have the world's oldest democracy, or largest, or most diverse or most modern etc., etc. The are all democratic maybe but democracies of past centuries. Dinosaur democracies in my view. In all the democracies and democratic processes I know, we elect a party or coalition of majority into power to rule the nation. All parties have a manifesto (a party or coalition mindset). It could be called Left or Right, conservative or liberal, green or some other colour, labour or something else , etc. But what if I am not alined with any single party's mind on every issue. I might be agreeable with one party's thinking on human rights, another party's religious beliefs, another's views on health, yet another's on minorities etc. I don't have a way for that thinking. I think the...

Giving a like has become quite ubiquitous nowadays - across platforms and media. I have even used it in e-mails sometimes. WhatsApp had resisted for a while until they succumbed to it short while ago. We have a handful of options there as well. Emoticons are everywhere in every platform - several of them to express every possible emotion. But are they really? I feel emoticons have actually stripped us off the ability to actually convey an emotion. I have done it several times and continue to do so as well. But why am I doing it? When I give a like 👍🏼, what am I actually liking (in whatever). Shouldn't I convey what I liked instead of an emoticon. What will the receiver understand? I sometimes have done it as a "consolation prize". "I don't know what I like but I want you to see that I liked it when you count the likes!" Sometimes I have done it as a social pressure (social media pressure actually). "Well, everyone will know otherwise - I better like i...