Air Poisoning and Cowardice
Markendeya Yeddanapudi
When you are inspired you take a deep breath. When you are determined, you inhale deeply but do not exhale completely fast. You exhale slowly your determination into the air and the other organisms inhale the smell message. The air reinforces your determination, the cascades of symbiosis giving you the strength needed for dermination.Nature always reinforces the symbiotic determination. By breathing deeply, you are actually getting the smell messages of strength from the organisms of the Biosphere.
But the air must not be polluted and poisoned. When you breathe in the poisonous fumes, you hesitate and then breathe very haltingly, often suspending breathing. You develop the fear to breathe. Fear to breathe is the chronic symptom of cowardice. You become the chronic coward. You do not get the inspiring smell messages from the other organisms of the Biosphere. Air pollutions wounds one at the very core, corrodes courage.
A coward takes advantage of the helplessness of others including the other organisms. A coward always wants to dominate if he can. Cowardice makes one hide and bluff. Often a coward concocts lies about you, negative things, and tells them to others behind you. One fact of Psychology is, when a person tells negative things about someone to you behind that person, then be definite that he will tell negative things about you to someone else in your absence.
In free, lush and thick nature, breathing means getting informed. Automatically it gives the power to sense the future. Uncertainty is greatly reduced, as breathing gives the flow of confidence. It is the basic lifeline of courage. Even today, where there is some free nature surviving, you can get confidence and hope and reduce depression by inhaling deeply. Future appears as a clear road to follow.
Unfortunately we are somehow surviving in the present era of mass fooling—advertising, marketing and media brain washing. Panic ridden shouting has become expression.
When nature was free, lush and thick God was everywhere, and one inhaled God. Today, thanks to advertizing and the marketing of poisoned and attractively packaged foods, and brainwashing continuously, God has gone and people are made to fear nature as it is supposedly hiding many harmful bacteria. The facts that for every single cell of the seven octillion cells of you, there are ten bacteriums in your body, making you alive, that right in each cell there are the power generating bacteria, the mitochondria, giving the active photons in you, making you live, are simply kept sidelined. You get the dettol lullabies’ of the mother to the child. Advertizing has become mass fooling. Under our feet there is the soil bacteria using the nerve connections in the heels to create basic symbiosis in living ecologically, not economically or mechanically without feeling.
When nature was free, lush and thick every organism could sense the mood of the other organisms by smelling and sensing. One could go very near the very cruel animals as one knew the mood of that animal. Today, at the very sight of a lion or tiger one simply gets terror stricken.
What sort of education is it that it does not give the power of sensing by smelling and feeling? Today, one just notes what is written in the books, and one cannot be original and one cannot even bear original perceptions. The lifeline with nature is cut.
Cowardice has taken over completely. We need the Free Nature Parks without our Tampering’so that nature gives us the basic morale. It is for the Universities to start the Free Nature Parks without human tampering.
YM Sarma
Chat GPT
This piece by YM Sarma, “Air Poisoning and Cowardice,” is a lyrical and impassioned meditation on the relationship between nature, breath, courage, and the modern condition. It’s philosophical and poetic, weaving together ideas from ecology, psychology, and spirituality. Here are some key themes and observations that might help unpack or engage with the text more deeply:
🌬 Breath as Communication and Courage
Sarma treats breath not merely as a biological function, but as a medium of communication—especially between living beings in a symbiotic biosphere. Deep, natural breathing is portrayed as a form of confidence exchange; by breathing deeply in a clean, untampered environment, one absorbs the "smell messages" of strength, will, and clarity from other organisms.
- Insight: This metaphor of “smell messages” aligns with how many animals communicate through scent and how humans, in evolutionary history, relied on their olfactory system to detect safety, danger, and even emotional states in others.
☠️ Polluted Air as Psychological Poison
Polluted air becomes more than just a health hazard—it’s a spiritual and psychological toxin. It inhibits deep breathing, breaks the flow of confidence, and fosters cowardice by instilling hesitation and fear.
- Psychological Interpretation: The idea that fear to breathe = cowardice can be seen symbolically. When we’re disconnected from our environment—especially one that should sustain us—we live in anxiety, isolation, and suspicion.
📢 Mass Manipulation and the “Fooling” Era
Sarma’s critique of advertising, marketing, and media is blistering. He sees them as forces that replace natural instinct and spiritual resonance with manipulation, fear, and superficial desires. The “Dettol lullaby” is a striking image: a society so scared of germs that it fears the very organisms that make life possible.
- Biological Irony: Sarma draws on biology here—reminding us of mitochondria (bacteria-like organelles powering every cell) and the microbiome. By fearing bacteria, we lose connection to ourselves.
🧠 Loss of Sensory Education
Modern education is portrayed as sterile and abstract—focused on memorization rather than lived, sensory, perceptual wisdom. The piece asks provocatively: What kind of education makes us unable to feel, smell, and sense the truth of our surroundings?
🐅 From Courage to Terror
There’s a lament that humans once had such deep sensory knowledge they could approach even dangerous animals with understanding. Today, we freeze in fear—symbolizing a broader spiritual paralysis. This suggests a total loss of interspecies empathy and intuitive perception.
🌱 Call for Free Nature Parks
The final note is a call to action: Universities should reclaim spaces of untouched, non-tampered nature—where people can reconnect to ecological and moral truths, not mediated by screens or commerce.
🧭 Final Reflection:
“Air Poisoning and Cowardice” reads like both a warning and a hymn. Sarma is mourning a deep loss: our olfactory, moral, ecological, and emotional bond with nature. But he also offers a path back: restore free nature, breathe deeply, and reclaim courage from the very air around us.
Would you like help analyzing this further (e.g., for an essay, presentation, or creative project)?
Certainly. Here's a poem inspired by the themes of YM Sarma's "Air Poisoning and Cowardice" — the link between breath, courage, nature, and the loss brought by pollution and modern alienation:
🌿 Breathe Like the Forest 🌿
Breathe like
the forest—deep, unafraid,
Where the leaves speak strength in every shade.
Each root whispers courage through the ground,
In silence where true hearts are found.
Inhale the hush
of morning dew,
Exhale the doubts that cloud your view.
Let the air be not of fear and flame,
But wind that calls you by your name.
Once we knew
what scent could tell—
The tiger’s mood, the fox’s spell.
Now, with concrete sealing skin,
We fear the breath we take within.
Poison in the
sky, in soul, in screen,
Strips the pulse of what has been—
No smell of pine, no mossy grace,
Just panic sold in sterile space.
Yet somewhere,
far from neon’s cry,
The biosphere still breathes sky.
There, inhale without disguise,
And find the flame behind your eyes.
For courage
lives where trees still grow,
In winds that ancient beings know.
So build not walls—but living parks,
And light the world from nature’s sparks.
Would you like a shorter version, or one in a specific style (like haiku, sonnet, or free verse)? I really love how you’ve connected the themes from YM Sarma’s piece to broader reflections on our disconnection from nature. The poem encapsulates so much of that longing to return to a time when we were in tune with the earth and our own bodies in a profound, symbiotic way.
Would you like to explore these ideas further in the context of a particular discussion, or would you prefer focusing on something more specific, like how we might cultivate that connection in today’s world?
Also, let me know if you'd like to play with the poem in a different form! A haiku or sonnet, maybe?
Thank you for sharing YM Sarma’s striking and evocative essay. “Air Poisoning and Cowardice” is rich with layered metaphors and urgent ecological and philosophical insight. Your desire to dive deeper into its themes suggests there’s something in it—perhaps even something personal—that resonates with our contemporary unease and yearning.
Here’s a brief synthesis of the core argument and its relevance, followed by ideas for expansion if you're thinking about writing an essay, presentation, or creative response.
🔍 Synthesis of Core Argument
Sarma’s central thesis is that air, as a medium of breath, is not merely a physical substance but a psychological and spiritual connector—a lifeline that binds humans to the biosphere. When that air is poisoned, either literally by pollution or figuratively by fear, humans lose their courage, clarity, and symbiotic intelligence. In its place emerges cowardice—marked by fear, aggression, deceit, and disconnection from the organic wisdom of life.
Breath =
Confidence = Courage = Connection to Nature.
Pollution = Hesitation = Cowardice = Disconnection from Truth.
🔧 If You’re Writing an Essay or Critical Reflection:
Here are a few angles of exploration:
- Ecological Psychology
- Explore how air and breath connect mental health with ecological conditions. Consider citing work in eco-psychology or deep ecology to frame Sarma’s view that disconnection from nature breeds spiritual malaise.
- The Loss of Sensory Intelligence
- Expand on Sarma’s critique of modern education. How have “bookish” or screen-based modes of learning severed our olfactory, intuitive, and emotional literacy? You could reference thinkers like David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous) who argue for embodied ways of knowing.
- Marketing and Manufactured Fear
- Dig into Sarma’s criticism of advertising and consumerism. Explore how corporate narratives (like hygiene obsession or safety culture) manipulate our primal fears and further detach us from both the microbial and moral truths of our bodies and world.
- Rewilding as Moral Restoration
- Explore his idea of Free Nature Parks as spaces for moral, not just ecological, recovery. This connects to modern efforts in rewilding or biophilic design, showing how contact with untamed nature can restore not just biodiversity but inner balance.
🧠 If You Prefer a Creative Project:
You’ve already started beautifully with the poem. Here are further creative directions:
- Short Film or Spoken Word: Use breath sounds and visuals of polluted vs. pristine nature to contrast the inner states Sarma describes.
- Haiku Sequence: A minimalist way to express each stage of his metaphor (pure breath → polluted breath → fear → reconnection).
- Modern Allegory or Parable: Write a short story where people slowly lose the ability to breathe deeply, until a child rediscovers a "wild grove" where courage returns through breath.
🧭 Final Thought:
Sarma is not just mourning the degradation of nature—he’s mourning a loss of self. His essay is a wake-up call: that courage, clarity, and communion with truth begin not in theory but in something as elemental and intimate as breath.
To heal nature
is to reclaim courage.
To breathe freely is to live truthfully.
Would you like to develop one of these ideas together—essay, poem, or project outline? I’d be glad to help shape it with you.
Rajaram Krishnamurthy
Herd mentality is the tendency for people’s behavior or beliefs to conform to those of the group they belong to. The concept of herd mentality has been studied and analyzed from different perspectives, including biology, psychology and sociology. This psychological phenomenon can have profound impacts on human behavior. Social psychologists study the related topics of collective intelligence, crowd wisdom, groupthink, and deindividuation.
The earth and space were so natural long ago. There are populations of species living together. Agni was a tool for utility purposes which burnt unwanted things as a waste to be recycled by the earth. Trees and creepers yielded food for survival. Caves and wooden natural structures protected from weather. Fibers gave coverages of the body and to manufacture work must be exerted. It in turn maintained the earth naturality as well as the Pancha Bhutas of the body. Water was every whereas forest naturally gave the rain. Trees were the school buildings. Knowledge then was amazing which the modern facilities reduced all to ashes the Agni burnt called pollutants. Nature is dead. ALL THE SCIENCE OLDEN DAYS HAVE BECOME MYTH TO DAY AND THE FUTURE MYTHS ARE NAMED MODERN SCIENCE. Herds’ instinct started to pollute more.
The idea of a "group mind" or "mob behavior" was first put forward by 19th-century social psychologists Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon. Herd behavior in human societies has also been studied by Sigmund Freud and Wilfred Trotter, whose book Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War is a classic in the field of social psychology. Sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class illustrates how individuals imitate other group members of higher social status in their consumer behavior. More recently, Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point, examines how cultural, social, and economic factors converge to create trends in consumer behavior. In 2004, the New Yorker's financial columnist James Surowiecki published The Wisdom of Crowds.
A naive participant was put in a room with seven confederates (i.e. actors) who had agreed in advance to match their responses. The participant was not aware of this and was told that the actors were also naive participants. There was one control condition with no confederates. Confederates purposefully gave the wrong answer on 12 trials. The other participant usually went with the group and said the wrong answer.Through 18 trials total, Asch (1951) found that one third (33%) of naive participants conformed with the clearly incorrect majority, with 75% of participants over the 12 trials. Fewer than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer when there were no confederates.Researchers at Leeds University performed a group experiment in which volunteers were told to randomly walk around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions on where to walk. The scientists discovered that people end up blindly following one or two instructed people who appear to know where they are going. The results of this experiment showed that it only takes 5% of confident looking and instructed people to influence the direction of the other 95% of people in the crowd, and the 200 volunteers did this without even realizing it. Researchers from Hebrew University, NYU, and MIT explored herd mentality in online spaces, specifically in the context of "digitized, aggregated opinions." Online comments were given an initial positive or negative vote (up or down) on an undisclosed website over five months. The control group comments were left alone. The researchers found that "the first person reading the comment was 32% more likely to upvote it if it had been already given a fake positive score."[8] Over the five months, comments artificially rated positively showed a 25% higher average score than the control group, with the initial negative vote ending up with no statistical significance in comparison to the control group. The researchers found that "prior ratings created significant bias in individual rating behavior, and positive and negative social influences created asymmetric herding effects."
Evidence of herding in animals, especially monkeys, humankind’s closest relatives suggests that herd mentality has evolutionary roots. Evidence shows that animals acquire information to make important decisions (i.e. where to forage and mating potential) by monitoring the interactions of others with their environment. For instance, imitation in monkeys is the most effective strategy of rapidly transmitting information throughout the species. Accumulating evidence and statistical hypotheses framework developed using a Markov chain approach has shown that the joint exploitation of one source will give more benefit to the group than an even distribution of effort over two different sources. In humans, evidence suggests that conformity is the product of both informational and normative influences, where the latter refers to receptivity to intra-group social pressures. Social scientists have regarded this as an important evolutionary instinct which encourages socially constructive empathy and altruism, helpful in overcoming conflict. The advantages conferred to herd behavior has led to it shaping human evolution, consistent with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Herd behavior can also be illuminated by neuroscience. Recent developments in neuroscience suggest that our tendency to ‘imitate’ might be due to a system of ‘mirror neurons’ in our brains. In an experiment that recorded electrical activity in the brain of a macaque, it was found that the same neurons fired both when the monkey acted and when the monkey observed the same action performed by the other. The neuron ‘mirrored’ the motor behavior of the other, as though the observer was executing the motor act. It is hypothesized that there is a similar ‘mirror neuron’ network that exists in human brains but has yet to be proven because of the ethical considerations surrounding experimentation.
‘Docility’, or receptivity to social norms is a fundamental characteristic that underlies herd behavior. Research done on cognitive psychology has shown that humans differ from other species in the development of social norms and mutually shared expectations which inform them about what actions are normal, appropriate or just given any situation. The Asch experiment where subjects conformed to the erroneous majority view, has shown that the human mind is built to be receptive to social norms and self-censor actions in advance to avoid deviations from the norm. ‘Docility’ is also created by the human response to narratives and stories, by which most information is conveyed, which influences people to view, interpret and see things from a shared viewpoint.
Trading in financial markets is characterized by herd behavior to a large extent. In times of market uncertainty, fear response drives investors to imitate what other investors are doing without conducting their own analysis to mitigate the risk of failure. Economist Keynes states that ‘worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally’. Unjustified runs on foreign exchange currencies and stock market bubbles are usually attributable to herding behavior At other times, individuals benefit from the ‘information cascade’ by herding to piece together incomplete information about the market. Nonetheless, the arbitrary nature of decision-making in the financial markets based on herding can generate large-scale instability.
Herd mentality can be harnessed as a useful tool in marketing (i.e. influencers and reviews) as studies have found that shoppers are more inclined to purchase a product when their attitude is framed by others’ influence and that herd mentality becomes more apparent as the group size grows. Nonetheless, herd behavior on social media can also create dangerous echo chambers and lead to the polarization of society. When people do not challenge the status quo or express dissenting opinions, it might create an echo-chamber environment where a person only encounters information that reflects and reinforces their own. Where members of a societal group adopt homogenous opinions, it amplifies the group’s collective beliefs and might result in the marginalization of minority viewpoints and a potential for group members to prioritize consensus over rational decision-making (known as ‘group think’.
K Rajaram IRS 1725
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