The spirit of life

Over the last few weeks, I was spending increasingly more time on the TED website looking up talks on design issues. It was then that I came across a few projects, absolutely stunning in breadth, undertaking and purpose, so much so that I thought I’d put it up on the blog.

The first one’s called ‘We Feel Fine’, a joint project by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar. It plots the emotions of many people from all around the world through diagrammatic and statistical depictions. The design is beautifully simple and easy to understand and can give you a good idea of what’s happening in the lives of people around you. It rounds of the whole attempt by providing interesting and bizarre metrics. You can find the site here and the TED preview here. (Another interesting attempt that runs along the same lines is ‘I Want You To Want Me‘.)

The second one is an even more vast project both in terms of the kind of man power and technology that went into making it and what it hopes to achieve. It’s called the AlloSphere – a large hollow sphere that it is fit with a large host of microcontrollers connected to a supercomputer. What the AlloSphere does is that it generates various designs, constructions, materials and phenomena on an atomic scale which is then projected as a digital image onto the insides of the sphere. A bridge running along a diameter permits up to 20 people at a time to bear witness to breathtaking views that science devoid of creativity cannot hope to present to us at all. Like JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, the director of the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) at UC Santa Barbara, says: “imagine architects standing in the sphere and seeing microstructures and atoms arranged in space – what if they could come up with a new construction material?” [paraphrased]. Again, here‘s where you can find the TED preview.

The last one is a complete revolution in its own right and I think many people will agree when I say it’s the Gapminder by Hans Rosling. The statistics chapter in mathematics you chose to willingly forget while in school because it made you sleep in a snap – Rosling changes all of that by drawing old graphs in new ways. His sports-person commentary also adds to the pace of this lecture as he plots countries and ideas onto digital graph sheets. Find the TED talk here.

What these 3 ideas did was open me up to another idea that world is changing like no other. Like Thomas Friedman puts it, “the world is flat!” He couldn’t have been more right. This world is no longer curved around the edges and you and me are no longer strangers. With Jonathan Harris’ ‘We feel fine’, I’ll know what you’re feeling some 1000 miles away as soon as you know what I’m feeling. Kuchera-Morin’s AlloSphere will open up technology that you and me never thought we could have access to. And before you know it, Hans Rosling will have it up all on a giant graph and tell everyone what we did, what we could have done and how well we did it.

The world is no longer yours or mine, no longer subject to one war in one region amongst one group of people contending for one piece of information.  It has been globalized by just ideas. The world is ours, subject to our war that involves our people contending for the control over all information.

The castigation of vanity

There always seems to be a large crowd mulling around me wherever I go, and all of them preoccupied with their own businesses. Each man and woman is more obsessed with getting their work done before they can even care to look up and admire. I could stand the whole day in such mess and admire these people, and they call me strange. They all laugh at me because I’m different, but I am only inclined to laugh at them because they’re all the same. What joy do they find in staying the same as everyone else around them? What then does it mean by ‘individual’? You become one among a collective, but once you are tagged as being part of a collective, you lose your individuality. Gone are the days when people found in solace in personality and customization for a freer living. We, today, are more concerned about what the third man will say rather than concentrate on what makes you feel comfortable and at home. And if I seem worried enough to complain, I am, apparently, a freak. They dig and dig and don’t give up at all until they can find something to incriminate their fellow brothers and sisters, and eliminate them from something they call a competition. Like a large boa slithering towards its prey, we are all moving like zombies in the dead of the night unto material riches, while we lose touch with ourselves and our lives. Strange. Conformity to normality has vanished to be replaced by conformity to general agreement, and where that stems from God only knows. I could go on and on about this but I don’t know where to begin. This has been the only thing at the back of my mind for a long time now. And not to be surprised if more comes by. I actually have lots to say, and ask, on this.

Wherefrom springs man’s reasons to visualise Utopia as it stands today?

Segment I

Creation stems from a longing of a body that is not ourselves, even in part. Those who seek to create worlds are most often tainted with corruption already, for the need to define values of your own defies absolutionism and seeks to establish activity and responsibility that deviates from what is true and towards what is relative. One of the more important objectives of nihilism is to establish an independence that pertains to the self, the liberation of the self. In this capacity, the state by assuming overall authority denies complete freedom for the individual and therefore must be abolished. Mankind is not in reach of the absolute, and he has also not realised that the absolute does not exist. By trying to believe in a super power so as to establish a roof for the limits of his thought (assuming the ground to be the evils he is capable of), he has flattened his limits of thinking to what he is accountable for by everyone else around him. What he sees, he is; what he does, he is. Anything that looks like gold to a goldsmith has equal chances of looking swinish to a swine. The culture of the West is another example of the effects of nihilism: the culture is in the last stages of its independent existence and is fast facing collapse in the face of every individual withdrawing into himself so as to propagate what he believes in. Life as such cannot be the reason to live. What then is? Every action that we perform and hold ourselves responsible for can only make bad worse through our own inane action and inaction.

Segment II

A contemporary picture drawn that includes the people we see and meet everyday will always show signs of existential nihilism, a need to destroy oneself and to make morals lose value and to make values lose moral. The very fact that we have defined everything around us based on what we can do and not on something defined as an absolute limits ourselves to spaces within this frame of though. We are only capable of making bad situations worse because of our inability to account for a very many number of factors, or parameters as such, owing to the fundamental establishment of our goal of attaining individual freedon. There is no such thing as selflesness. Every action that we perform and every inaction for whose consequences we claim the responsibility propagates ourselves towards that goal, and as regards them being the constitutional elements of life: life is not worth living solely because of its existence. There must exist higher values and morals. Everyone today boasts of a mask contrived to hide collapsing shells of dependence, dependencies that exist due to the basis of everything on ourselves. The only purpose of God’s existence as such then crumbles into the purpose of unmasking chaos.

Segment III

What is an identity? Does it really define the you? Or is it something more inherent and has been defined just so it can define the you? Beginning at the fundamentals of life and everything else, we are because we decide to be. When we are born, it is with nothing more than the blood in our veins. The new born baby does not even have air in its lungs until it begins to cry. It is the view of many philosophies that when the time comes for one’s death, one should leave with nothing more than the blood in one’s veins: a picture that symbolises the cycle of life and death until one attains moksha, or deliverance, from what is considered a punishment for past sins. When I move on to discussing about where identity fits in in this bigger and more comprehensive picture, the reader will have to know that I am a partial follower of the philosophy that preaches a non-material living in order to accentuate and accelerate the knowing of the inner-self, the state symbolised by complete individual freedom. Getting back to the topic at hand, when you pick up an identity, the ultimate goal, however short lived it may be, should be to give you a home, or rather a shelter, to return to in an argument, a fundamental embodiment of some values and morals that you find reasonable enshrining. An identity must not come to define the limits of your thought, rather the ground or the base from which you can rise in order to search for yourself as to who you are. Anybody who asks himself ‘who am I?’ will construe the question to be answerable by the revelation of an identity, but who YOU are is something completely different: it is more about the question than the answer, which is a discovery of the self more than anthing else. There is no lmit as to how much you can dig in – it is only a matter of you finding peace within yourself. As for an identity, it is but a mask, thought not a wall, to give yourself a face. The purpose of your creation may have very different statements of expression, but the identity behind which you choose to conceal yourself should be picked carefully: it should be such that a continuation of your normal life is promised on the one hand, though what it leads you to believe rests in the other. I, for one, have found that not being associated with any identity as such has benefitted; not that I am a hypocrite or anything, but it has allowed me to think freely and not as someone limited to the confines of a few morals.

Segment IV

Anybody growing up in today’s India is, at some point of time, forced to recognise an identity in some political scenario or the other. In a country where state governments have been set up on the basis of a difference in language, religion will play an important role in the formulation of important policies: if the head of state wants to cater to his people only, the religious principles of the people in question will also have to be catered to in order to imbue a wholesomeness in the service. When so much diversity abounds within a constrained space, it is only expected that people mark their borders with extra care. If you have to survive, those around you must know there is someone as you. If you are to survive, you can not be a hollow vaccuum and stay ignorant of everything else that is going on around you. The Indian political system is now a large network of sewage tunnels, and if you think the same way, you must get into it and start cleaning. Expecting others to do it for you will not work. Indifference will not even feature because you are gradually but firmly pulled into the system, and you are forced to make decisions that you originally would not have considered taking up. When you defend or offend a political party, the poeple around you see not your face, but a mask that behaves like an identity bestowed upon you because of your views on things, whether you want it or not. However, what is sad in today’s situations is that identities have become like football teams. When there is a clash of ideas, a resolution can not be reached via talks. Each party has assumed some ideas and ideals that have been firnly rooted in history in their meaning and purpose, and also have been firmly rooted in the policies of the party. They are rigid. They can not be shaken easily. When there is a clash of ideas, people resort to physical violence like it were something of a sporting campaign: I cheer for A, you cheer for B. If I win, you join me; if you win, I join you. They have brought down higher principles to something of a propaganda issue, instead of respecting them for what they are.

Segment V

The issue of an identity crisis is very widespread in today’s global scenes. When you take up an identity as representing yourself, you are defending some values as close to you. It does not necessitate the offending of another sect of people masked under different identities. Take into consideration the many wars currently raging around the world. People previously living as neighbours fall prey to some frenzied state of aggression and murder and incinerate their ‘friends’ next door. Owing a sense of peace that is completely man-made and not at all natural, men and women around the globe find a need a to guard the identities they have assumed to be themselves. As the fires burn and the weapons are churned out, there is a perpetual need to consume or be consumed in order to believe that one is living or is actually deserving of life. There are some who actually give up the factuality of the availability of options: they surrender the capacity to identify options very early in their lives. Options abound. It is you who are thinking that every identity restricts you to a chosen path. They are not identities. They are decisions made with no relevent information available. Identities can never cross paths. It is not the fault of one man or many that one day you will wake up to find a war raging outside your house because identites have crossed paths. Behind the mask is a face, the face of a man who is calling out to his comrades. Be it a Peruvian, or be it an Indian, or an Argentinian or an Irishman, the only element at work is the human mind. An identity can not become cause because it is the platform you happen to be sitting on. An identity is because it is reality. It is not yours claim as a creation, nor is it yours to apologise for as a mistake. You have taken it upon yourself – you have let it guide you.

Segment VI

Mankind. Mortality. Birth. Death. Living. Power. Freedom. Individuality. Identity. These nine elements characterize the aspects of living of every man and woman on this earth. Mankind as such guides us through life, imbuing in us the values and morals in order to make those decisions that require it. Mortality is a confine within we are destined to remain, and our rise or fall happens within its four walls. Birth and death are significant philosophical and religious aspects that govern our way of thinking and in the formation of a philosophy for the living. Power happens to be man’s ultimate desire: going beyond the need for human companionship, the skill to command it at will draws us more. Freedom is the necessity to force such megalomaniac individuals to relinquish control, and only with freedom can one’s individuality be explored and one’s identity realised. Everything that happens around us, whether as a consequence of our actions or as a subsequence that impacts us through the actions of others, can be attributed to many of these elements. Even the concept of God, and godliness, finds its roots in them. By trying to reach for the absolute, in whatsoever form it is in, we have have begun our journey in realising who we are and what our purpose is. But by believing a God to be existent, we have established the limits of our own capabilities. Man cannot be God. If man is God, then man is not man anymore. And when you put this reasoning into action, you give up on something which may have truly deserved, in favour of the temporary contentment you come to have with what is already in your grasp. When someone says “too much of power or too much of success is not good”, I am prompted to think why not. God exists only in our beliefs, and beyond that superset, nothing can be proved right or wrong because of what we perceive. Even though one might argue that God is a conception of what is beyond our sensibility, God then invariably constructs the limited universe for us. Mankind, in trying to define infinity, has committed a folly in trying to quantify it as well. Infinity, if left to itself, does not seek to limit our reaches, but in placing an almighty entity as the being that quantifies the unquantifiable, we have locked ourselves into finite realms. Why shouldn’t too much of success be good for anyone? Is it that, then, he or she denies a God His stance? Or is it that he or she will then try to breach our limitations as we know them? The traits to misuse it are, however, imbued in our blood. When you don’t want to deny a lion its meat even when in a zoo, you must also know that man is an animal and deserves to be a non-vegetarian just because he exists! It is as nature intended it. By denying ourselves the opportunity to indulge in our exploits, we are inhibiting evolution as it should be. To cut a long story short: God inspires nihilism.

Segment VII

Marriage is an institution that represents the willful agreement between two individuals to spend the rest of their lives together. As such, if you were to go by the definition, religion does not seem to play a role in it. But since the individuals live in a society safeguarded by the state, the state, in its turn, must recognise the existence of this bond and must do the needful so as to let them be represented that way. And therein comes religion. Today’s nations are forged through the integrity of their peoples, an integrity which stems from a belief in themselves. Since the option of a ‘God’ fosters that belief, a religion that encompasses the belief in that God becomes necessary to sustain the individual in his or her moral obligations, as it were. Therefore, when a nation is built from scratch, the individual passes on his or her beliefs and perceptions to the state to which he or she aspires to belong to. Creation is but a mirror of oneself. But here is wherein I think the difference lies. In the establishment of a state, you may seek to pass on your values to the state as well, but the state is a collective that speaks for more than just one man, woman or child. It speaks for everyone around you, and everyone around you is not who you are. The individuality you represented in your oneness now stands dissolved in the face of a nation. This is the difference between individuality and identity. You now assume an identity, and identities only permit you individuality, they do not define it. The religion you embraced in order to give your morals some ground should not be passed on to the whole state in order to bind it rigidly. It then will no longer constitute representation. Those individuals who do not base their faith in godliness will fall outside the moral reaches of the state, and the establishment will then only represent a section of the population although all of them are citizens. This inability to draw a line between two concepts, both pertaining to the self, is the reason behind almost every conflict on this planet.

Segment VIII

1. Institutionalisation
2. Varied perceptions
3. Acceptance
4. State
5. Society
6. Change

I believe that the structure of the world around us today, be it in its religion, politics, science or philosophy, is erected upon the factors I’ve listed above. Institutionalisation recapitulates a fear of change, acceptance defies the basis of varied perspectivism, and the state and society play with each other to deliver a fairly acceptable social system devised on assumptions and history, a fable but agreed upon. For anyone, you, me, him, her, fitting in cosily amongst such chaotic scenery is a laborous task. The various strata that have to be mined through while simultaneously fashioning hopefully sensible opinions and judgments to gauge the nature of the people around you alone will take up a sizable chunk of your time; all this while you chalk out a superficial make-up to plaster on your face and choose willingly to assume the personality of someone else in a moment of self-loathing and on a whim of just thinking that these are matters to be bypassed in favour of convenience as well as a strongly denied sensation of escapism: our society is a maze.

Every time someone says “life is too short for all this”, I am only prompted to think. Obvious principles of argumentation has us all know that a true and infallible argument is that which is absolute in its standing and fundamental in its logic: it must be that a statement doesn’t exist which can negate the facts quoted in the infallible argument. Saying ‘life is too short fo all this’ is not absolute. If one were to take up the chronological aspects of living, all we have for our consideration are the inhabitants of the planet we ourselves live in: animals, birds. If one were to narrow the comparisons down to sensible footings, we only have the people around us to compare with. In this frame of thought, ‘life is too short’ is a statement without meaning. What are we gauging it against? Against the lifespan of others around us, people with the same biological composition as you and me. If you have 100 years to live and also think that life is too short, are you trying to say others around you try to live longer? And that is just but the chronological aspect of it! The state of which they are citizens, the society of which they are social units, the world of whose theatrics they are spectators – we are part of a similar society, a parallel state and the same wide world.

However, while stating all this, I do not enforce upon others that they take to the logical factors just as favourably as I do. All I am trying to establish is that although it is taken for granted that ‘life is too short’ is a convenient option to bypass those moments that have you making tougher decisions, it is also escapism because it is logically faulted through the inherent convenience itself.

Segment IX

Whenever I have been confronted with the need to ponder upon knowledge, the first thing that comes to my mind is its elemental standing. If you were to question me here, I will confess that ‘elemental standing’ is a term I have coined to imbue the element in question with the duty to declare its purposes with reference to mankind in general. The world we have built for ourselves is a world of extreme dynamicity and deeply rooted materialism. In such a basket, it is hard for anyone to stop for a moment and think as to why it is all the way it is. The innate ability to open a mind’s eye in the darker corners of our brain and perceive things differently has given birth to civilisation – a mensurable parallel to its biological counterpart of evolution. And today, it is too late to rewind through 4,000 years of civilisation and try to pin down the one thing that started it all. However, that is obvious: the quest for knowledge. The very purpose of evolving eyes is to see, ears to hear, skin to feel. Blame it on panspermia, divinity or luck, here we are.

For a civilisation spree sparked off by the want to know more by the second, it is only natural that what we have with us today is a scenario that is stable only as long as there are knowledgeable people to handle it. Now, knowledge, as it were, is a summation of all that we know, but just because such a thing exists doesn’t mean it is a necessity; those people who are devoid of the thirst to know more aren’t invalids. They are a hindrance, yes, but not an anomaly. Knowledge, by its existence, only confirms that it can exist, and the purpose we have assumed for ourselves – that of to know more – has nothing to with it. This is a very important point: knowledge and thought are different. When we think that we need to civilise along the same lines as our ancestors, we reach out to the pool of knowledge and partake from it. When civilisation is no longer a serious concern, as in when we are at the top of a graph that dictates sensibilities, knowledge separates itself from the pool of humanity per se.

(Imagine I am mixing up a bit of coffee. The mug being a metaphor of the absolute container, the coffee powder is humanity and water, knowledge. When the person holding the mug – in effect, the goal we have set for ourselves, the definitive plot of civilisation that we chart out – wants to have some coffee, water is poured into the mug and mixed. Coffee consists of the separate ingredients of powder and water, but it is coffee only when they are together. Similarly, the need to civilise consists of the perpetrators of the actions (mankind) and the knowledge that facilitates it. When they separate, it may or may not be civilisation as it originally was or was needed to have been.)

Segment X

Imagine a dream. Imagine that you are free to pursue that dream. Imagine a world that imposes no constraints, no bonds, no chains of wrought iron that bind you down to the earth. Imagine you are part of that world, imagine you are free, and imagine you have only one dream. Would this be your Utopia? Or tell me, why would it not be? Is it not everyone’s dream? It is my dream, and I think that it should be everyone’s. Tonight, that dream is beckoning me. I dream that I stand in front of my class. I dream that one of my professors is asking me to promise the class that I will be a part of that class. That I will do what ever that class is asked to do. That I will not be different from any of them, and when they refer to the class, they refer to me, to you, to him, to her, to my friends, my enemies. I dream that I stand in front of such a class, and tell them of this dream. Would they understand? Would they understand what pursuing such a dream means? I think not. But, the class has not let me down. I have not let the class down by not being a part of it: the people around me mean so much to me. But all I can think of at the end of the day is that, am I any different? However, I know I am not. There is no individuality left in me.

Our dreams, they say, are for us to dream. They make us do the same things, the same tasks. Again and again, till the work process becomes subconsciously triggered whenever I hear someone speak of it. They teach us the same lessons, but they say the difference lies in what part of the lesson we choose to learn. He learns the beginning, and he wants to pursue it till the end of his life. She learns the end, and she wants to pursue it till the end of her life. My friend learns everything, and he wants to do all of them for the rest of his life. They laud them, they clap every time such a dream is spoken. But why is that when I choose to learn nothing, they pity me? Isn’t not wanting to learn anything a lesson by itself? The world they paint in front of my eyes is not the world I want to belong to. My dream lies else where, and they choose not to recognise that dream. I don’t know why. They say they will involve my parents in such issues. Tell me, is that supposed to threaten? Because it doesn’t. Not one bit. And when I say I am only prone to laughing at such statements, they say I am mad. They say I am disoriented, and that I don’t where I am heading in life. Tell me, do choices exist that no one else has ever made? Because no one seems to recognise it. The only choices any one seems capable of recognising are the ones they have made, or the ones they have heard made. To dream is to lose hope in this world. It is not a perfect world, and now I know that it has never been. And a glowering fear inside of me dictates that I can never hope to be part of such a world.

When I stand in front of my class which such ideas in my mind, will they understand? I think that when I can, they should be able to. Unfortunately, they are not. Every where I turn, someone or the other has an explanation that reflects materialism. They fail to recognise that my happiness does, in fact, lie elsewhere. Again, the only choice they know exists is the one they could have made, would have made or should have made. A choice doesn’t exist that hasn’t already been made. What then is the meaning of a dream? I will always ask myself this. Perhaps one realises all of this only when one loses the grasp of a previous dream, a first dream. I question every corner, but they either hold on to a preconceived notion like a babe holds on to the finger of its mother a few days after birth, or they have already let go, surrendering their destiny to a stranger. There only remains a corner which I haven’t already asked these questions, but I don’t want to ask. Why? Because I am afraid of the answer the corner has in store for me. That corner is the small part of my mind I wish to leave open to explore. That is the kind of hope this world instills in me: a blind hope.

For the last time, imagine this: you are in a free world; that you are in a world that does not remind you of the ground; that you are in a world that does not remind you of your insecurities by asking you to remember that the sky is far, far away, and sometimes that it doesn’t even exist. Imagine you are a part of such a world. If this is the world you want to belong to, then ask yourself just one question: do you have it in you to sculpt such a world for yourself?

The shameful immunity of Unit 731

“After Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Douglas MacArthur became the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation. MacArthur secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological warfare.

The United States believed that the research data was valuable because the Allies had never publicly conducted or condoned such experiments on humans due to moral and political revulsion. The United States also did not want other nations, particularly the Soviet Union, to acquire data on biological weapons, not to mention the military benefits of such research.”

– Wikipedia page on Unit 731

The excerpt is about the infamous Unit 731, a covert chemical and biological warfare research and development unit in Japan that was run by the Imperial Japanese army. The unit was responsible for some of the most horrendous Japanese war crimes committed during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and WWII (1939-1945).

What is even more alarming about the above excerpt is the secret immunity granted by MacArthur to the perpetrators of the violation, instead of having them persecuted as should have been the case, just so the United States of America gained a significant edge over the Soviet Union. Does this mean that if Oppenheimer had decided to stay back in Germany, that if Adolf Hitler had built the nuclear missile before Roosevelt or Truman, MacArthur would have granted him immunity in exchange for the nuclear tecchnology? Further, to quote: “The United States believed that the research data was valuable because the Allies had never publicly conducted or condoned such experiments on humans due to moral and political revulsion.” Is that the only basis for the non-performance of such activities? Mustn’t the abhorrence toward the very idea be based upon the much more empathetic viewpoint of respecting humanity as a whole? In fact, in the same article, it has been mentioned that the only trials involving the staff at Unit 731 were conducted by the Soviet Union, whose soldiers had been captured for the sole purpose of being guinea pigs in the unit.

I’m not well versed in policy formation and conflict research and what not, but I don’t think it takes a scholar here to see that the USA betrayed the whole world when it pardoned those criminals, that the USA granted immunity that was not its to grant at all.

Ideate.

The power of symbols is often misunderstood, and more often than not, misrepresented in an essentially simplistic manner that speaks nothing of its immense capabilities. A symbol is more than a metaphor: a metaphor can only function as the subject wants to, the metaphor itself giving in to be a mere mirror the image borne in which is redundant but for the need to understand. A symbol is an image of the thought itself, a symbol is an idea. Ideas are the birth of revolutions, and ideas supplanted with ideal communication can give rise to a sociopolitical system wherein the society recognises, unmistakably, what it needs, and the politicial system, the means to provide for those needs. An idea is the recognition of the need for construction, the need to grow, the need to understand, the need to tolerate, the need to believe, and ultimately as well as inevitably the need to trust. When the idea is expressed, it conjures a mask as if delivering identity to the expressor, which it does, and the mask is a symbol of the expression’s beliefs. Ideas, however, are very large in number, and the effective communication of them so as to invoke a majority, a recognisable shout amidst the vox populi, is difficult. Ideas vary. What they vary about is anybody’s guess; they are born from morals, values, beliefs, faiths, nativity, social behaviour, the environment and the way in which the person concerned takes to the world in general. Ideas are miniscule, and are therefore quickly ignored. The one good idea flickering for a moment as hope peeking out of Pandora’s box has to be identified and seized as if it were a chance, for you know not when such an idea will be born again. It is your discretion that will serve as the utmost authority in nursing ideas that suit your needs – that, in other words, comply with the activities which concur with the fortification of your skills on whose employment you have what you need, but not necessarily that you have what you want.  

The ability to ideate indicates the ability to evolve. The normality with which we conform in order to establish a routine in our lives, so as to determine the nature of our existence itself, has to be subjected to change so we, the constituent living units that collectively define the normality, can identify that change and thereby, recognise and utilise the idea of progress. The momentum generated by this progression could be made widespread, as a revolution trigger-employed to bring in fresher ideas as well as to sustain the chain, the end goal of which is indicated clearly by the element whence the idea was inspired and the need of the individual. In order to do so, we use the symbolisation of ideas. Although an idea dwells in the mind of one person, at most a group of people who think alike, a symbol is universal. A symbol retains in its perception its very own history, its design and its purpose. A symbol is transcendental in that it reaches beyond the barriers that society has to offer – it bears an innate meaning that is understood as the same by even the different. For example, even though the concept of love assumes different forms in different peoples, the Taj Mahal is understood as being a symbol of love by all. It is in this transcending skill that an idea in one man’s head exposes itself as a tool of change. Blowing up the Taj Mahal, say, will, for a few, will be the loss of a wonderful piece of architecture, but for everyone else, the act itself will speak of an idea that is going against love. Just as we are identified by our ideas, the idea itself is given form and tangibility in actions when it speaks through symbols. 

This is the fundamental footing of semiotics. Through the novel he writes, the author symbolises his ideas in the form of characters, plots and the associated imagery, and the reader understands them by interpreting them for himself. Without having to write that the woman sitting in the corner of the room was sad, the author can place her in darkness, and develop a colouring and mood that contrasts with the rest of the room. Although it is hard to explain why the portrayal has so-so effects on us and not in any other way, it can be understood that the conveyance of ideas becomes easiest when they each are depicted as symbols. 

Traveller In Transit

Vienna International Airport is interestingly small. I knew the ‘small’ part of it beforehand. The whole airport, though being divided into five terminals and displaying a confident sort of busyness, has the standard set of Duty Free stores to offer. However, the ‘interesting’ bit is something I think will remain so only for a few people. When I took off from Stockholm’s Arlanda, I did not know that my connecting flight to Dubai had been canceled, and that I had been rebooked into the 23.15 – a flaw that left me looking at a stale 10-hours of waiting and watching the clock tick slowly away. An SAS employee at a help desk informed me about all this later on – but what made the difference was that she really seemed sorry that Austrian Airlines hadn’t informed me earlier on, and of course, the free food coupons! Anyway, I landed at Vienna with nothing to do at all and, for the first time in 20 years, realised how important spending time usefully actually was. In those ten hours, I must have spent at least five walking up and down the longer span of the airport. The other five, I spent looking out a window. And that’s what made it interesting.

The window looked out into an area where the planes seemed to be docked. The runway was a little way ahead, and that particular afternoon, it was very foggy and wet. If I looked beneath, I could see the engineers bustling around with all their equipments and waiting for aircraft engines to go faulty or the wings freeze up. This window was exactly opposite a shop whose banner read ‘Travel & Care’, and they played good music. When I came across the window, Annie Lennox’s ‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down‘ was going on, and my calf muscles were beginning to ache. I decided to lean against the railing set adjacent to the wall, and when I saw a couple photographing something out the window, I turned around for a abstractly beautiful view. The metal birds were dozing while the brains ran around them in their trucks and what-nots. There was a group of crows in the distance, dancing with the wind. A parking lot below was full of cars except for one empty slot, into which was revving a black car. The vipers on its windshield were on full swing, and its indicators flashed into the blockade brightly. A gentle drizzle began just then, and if you had been there and put face against the window, you could each raindrop crash and slide against the perspex. It was like watching through a prison cell: as each drop landed, it was like watching a battle just a few inches away from your eyes. So much torment and turbulence at the other end, and you stood here admiring a beauty that only you could see. It was beautiful.

The song changed to Green Day’s ‘Wake Me Up‘. Just then, on the runway, an Emirates jet was building momentum for its ascent. Its end fin cut through the fog as though it wasn’t there, and the dense cold clouds formed a smooth streamlined tail at the end. After the plane took off, all that remained was a streak of water suspended limply in the air, along with billows of dew that had been whipped off the ground. September ended there, and when I looked up, there was a lonely crow flying around in circles.

“Summer has come and passed

The innocent can never last…“

It’s amazing how music can deliver new perspectives every time it’s played, and it’s more amazing how each of these perspectives is different. The battle of the rain drops to crash and break through the window to the inner warmth of the lounge had me wanting me to elbow and bleed my way to the cold torment outside. The sense of freedom, for me, never had anything to with being comfortable, but always had to do with doing what I liked to do. The satsifaction it imparted, the gratification it rewarded, was and will always be overwhelming. And as I’ve before too, nature has a way of showing us these things so subtly, while we sardonic ‘intelligent beings’ mostly mistake them for coincidence or ill-concealed naivety and ignore them. Sometimes, in our need to seem mature and sane, we look beyond the obvious and land ourselves in more chaos. But I guess that’s a necessary evil.

When the Emirates jet ascended, the only remaining signs of its presence were the water clouds hanging a few feet above the runway, and probably some log sheets in the control tower. If I had had a love song with me then and there, one that I had composed and sung to, the picture in front of me would have been the music video for it. The crows flying around the place as though not knowing what to do or what to make of the great white bird sitting beneath which didn’t respond to their bird calls, the black car revving itself into the empty parking slot nonchalantly and as, at the same time, it had nothing to with the bustle around it and its driver being the key to setting everything right in that area, the rain drops and their ceaseless pounding wanting me to belong to a seemingly worse world. Music and nature are some enigmas, and will remain so for quite some time to come.

Vienna International Airport was a ghost town that evening, and I was happy to be an ethereal part of it – if only to myself and to those unconcerned crows.

The Loss Of Meaning: This Chancy, Chancy, Chancy World!

Just like the many organs of the human body enable us to feel, see, hear and speak, the languages we write in, the stories we weave out of them, are given life when we use meanings and symbols to let them feel, see, hear and touch. Not everything is just words. In fact, there are a very few things that are just words – probably definitions of other words.

When you read something, when your eye passes over a sentence, when your brain understands what is being said in what context, you immediately form an image in your mind. That is when little words of four or five letters quiver with the possibility of an infinite interpretations. It is not mandatory, nor is it impossible, that a word, phrase or a sentence be interpreted in just one way. If so, everything would be so rigid, as if creativity had been subjugated to the death of imagination – as if creativity itself had ceased to exist. It would mean the eradication of signs, symbols, explorations, adventures, possibilities, myths, legends, mysteries, the eradication of fascination and wonderment! We are humans, and as humans, we are always curious. As much as we dig deep into the earth and fire rockets into the sky, it would be a sad day when we know everything there is to know. Purpose would be lost, meaning would be lost. Men and women will drop whatever they are doing: what is the necessity, after all? What happens at the end? What happens after I nail the painting into the wall? I will only be looking at it; I will not be able to into it. As much as we need to know, we don’t want to know everything. That is, indeed, a dreadful end to the quest for knowledge: the truth that you now belong in an old world, where you conquered every mystery there was left to conquer. You are king now, but a king of old men sitting by their sickles in the fields, but a king of old women who see no children in their bleak futures, but of children who fear growth itself.

And so, we have creativity, we have imagination, we have wrongs, we have mistakes. Only by weaning out a contrast between two apparently similar objects do we identify and define difference itself, and only with the emergence of a difference do we recognise progress. Change is the unit of time, time is the herald of change. If we hadn’t been able to detect change itself in the first place, time would be a futile requirement. The clock face would be a redundancy: you don’t see a changeless reality reflect the ballet of the three hands. That is why we see mistakes as the stepping stones to success – only, the proverb forgot to tell you mistakes are the the only way to success. The need for imperfection has never been so profound.

So there, I have established that meanings and interpretation are integral to civilisation.
But even in the presence of meanings, it is always up to us to interpret it right. Availability: excellent. Validity: eternal. Truth: can’t say. We have variance in variety. We have millions and millions of words floating around us in the form of speech and image, and it is up to us to understand them in such a way that the interpretation reflects our purpose in the need to understand it. Man does not simply look at the bark of a tree and launch into a list of the metaphors it brings to his mind. He will have his prejudices, his experiences that have fostered them; he will have his reasons, his dreams that have inculcated them; he will have his perceptions, his company that has required it. He will conform to something that finds logic in his beliefs. He will not so easily go against himself. If there are holes, he will plug them. He will construe in the beginning when it seems right and normal, and then he will construct in the end to make it seem so. The imperfection of the self recapitulates imperfection in the world. We cannot, at the same moment, account for all the factors affecting our decisions. We will have assumptions, some ignorances, in coming to our conclusion. Rigidity prohibits probability. If something is to stay so independent of the passage of time, it must either be extremely vulnerable to the subversive forces of nature – in which case it will soon die – or it must be unresponsive.

Take up this micro-scenario. You are reading a story wherein the author has failed to mention the time of day he is referring to. Suddenly, you come across a paragraph which seems to help you in piecing together different pieces of information to conclude that it is night time in the tale. Also, suppose that the words ‘darkness’, ‘loneliness’, ‘blind’, etc., are not mentioned anywhere. Even so, the conclusion only seems logical as to be night. That is the power of symbols: the author can choose to deliberately exclude straightforward adjectives of a phenomenon. Instead, he can choose to employ the imaginative power of the reader to build his or her own physical appearance of the scene and the characters. A good example would be Milan Kundera‘s works, which concentrated more on the mental make-up of the persons.

The need to interpret, rather than to take for granted, is only recognised by itself when exposition is limited. If the author takes time to expose everything about the scene to the reader, the reader will find it hard to from those mental images from which he or construes the message waiting to be conveyed. As much as the author’s imagination is exploding with newer and newer concoctions, he must limit himself to what is really necessary.

• If quoting fact A suffices that fact B follows, then fact B is redundant if printed.
• If fact A may or may not imply fact B, then fact C can be mentioned to corroborate that it is, fact B that is being spoken about.
• If fact A and fact B are both mentioned, fact C can be left up to the reader’s imagination.

But each meaning must exist independently – it can not depend on the other meanings. If a word is interpreted in one way, then the implications must be unchanging. The study of semiotics, for example, sometimes deals with the interchangeability of symbols, and how two symbols at the same time can yield one meaning. However, two meanings cannot lead the interpreter to the same symbol.

Anyway, I have narrowed down the plausibility of probabilities to the constraining of exposition. But, even then, there is a personal remaining to be made: whether to interpret, or not to interpret. This is a very foggy subject for me. In trying to quantify perception and understanding through the definition of cognition and recognising, I now find myself limited by an anticipation. Something tells me I am on virgin territory, fresh land, something new and unexplored! Where do meanings themselves stem from? When we know we have to interpret a riddle in order to understand its implication, why do we take for granted that there will be mystery waiting to be uncloaked? How do words give birth to ideas? Simply put, even if I were to be an expert on a matter, why do I inherently know that there will always be something unknown to me lurking in the corners of it?

If that was my black cloud, this is my silver lining: the thought does not shatter belief. It evokes curiosity and fosters self-inspiration.

Nietzche & The Vedas: The Contradiction Trap

You all know of Friedrich Nietzche, of course, as the founder of the nihilistic basis of thought. The Vedas are ancient texts which were written some 4,000 years ago by Indian sages. Although it was passed down orally from generation to generation, Vyasadeva, the manifested literary incarnation of God (Hinduism), was insipired by their profound wisdom and pit them down in the form of Srimad Bhagavatam. Now, the Bhagavatam consists of many different chapters grouped as cantos, and each chapter deals a specific element of either the Supreme Being, the Universe, Nature, or man. A recurring phrase throughout the books is that of the ‘Absolute Truth’, a reference to pure Krishna consciousness, the ultimate realisation that stems from completely understanding the world.

My father had all the 18 volumes of the text, and when we shifted out residence from Chennai (India) to Uppsala (Sweden), we had to separate the set into those books which we could afford to carry (or wanted to finish reading) and those that could be left behind. I think only two or three books made it that way. One among them, the Twelfth Canto, caught my eye. It dealt with the annihilation of false egos and the glaring mistakes and faults of the Kali yuga which would lead to the downfall of mankind in the Great Flood. Here is a line from the canto (in Sanskrit):

na hi sathyasya naanaathvam|
avidhvaan yadhi manyathe||
naanaathvam chidhrayor yadhvaj|
jyothishor vaathayor iva||

It translates as:

“There is no material duality in the absolute truth. The duality perceived by an ignorant person is like the difference between the sky contained in an empty pot and the sky outside the pot, or the difference between the reflection of the sun in water and the sun itself in the sky, or the difference between the vital air within one living body and that within another body.“

The duality mentioned, if you will observe, is a relative duality. Vyasa says the duality is restricted to materialism, which is also false and illusory. When you perceive an object, the perception assumes meaning when you can observe the effect of the object in its environs. For example, you can know the saturating power of water only when you see and feel a damp cloth or sponge. You can understand the burning power of fire only you feel the heat or when you see ashes. Therefore, the duality in materialism simplifies to the duality of cause and effect. Yet again, the effect of a phenomenon deserves perception only when the cause is perceptible, and there can be no effect if there was no cause. But, as per our earlier argument, the cause itself is realised through but the effect it has come to give birth to. Does this mean the cause and effect of any event are relative to each other? Yes, it does.

Duality?

A: The fire is burning.

B: How do you know?

C: You can feel the heat.

A – cause; C – effect

____________________

A: The fire is burning.

B: How do you know?

C: Why? Don’t you feel the heat?

D: No.

E: Then, it is not fire but something else.

If you were to deductively continue along these lines, you will observe that materialism is proven to be false and illusory. The Vedas decry it, and uphold its defeat in the search for the truth. Everything that has a beginning will have an end, and everything with a beginning and an end will beguile cause and effect, and therefore must be shunned from the self. For example, the cycle of life and death culminates in the attainment of Moksha, or deliverance, and through the deliverance, man attains Heaven. Therefore, the cycle of life and death, in this case, becomes an illusion, and everything contained within dissolves into a tiny atom of the Absolute Truth.

Now, Friedrich Nietzche’s arguments are also along the same lines, although he also furtively discarded the concept of God Himself. Nietzche argues that objective morality does not exist in this world, thereby diffusing the values of objective morals with which to prefer one action over the other. Therefore, even if a God exists, humans have no obligation to worship them. The following is a famous quote by Nietzche.

“To the clean are all things clean’ — thus say the people. I, however, say unto you: To the swine all things become swinish! Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also bowed down): ‘The world itself is a filthy monster.’ For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have no peace or rest, unless they see the world FROM THE BACKSIDE — the backworldsmen! TO THOSE do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly: the world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside, — SO MUCH is true! There is in the world much filth: SO MUCH is true! But the world itself is not therefore a filthy monster!“

The relativism established in perception by Nietzche is unmistakable. “To the clean all things are clean; to the swine, all things become swinish!” – a statement that purports the perceptional reflectivism, a relativism on its own, that becomes clear when the Vedas are taken up as reference. Although the Vedas assume a Supreme Being in order to quantify the cause, they give the Supreme Being no end – fortifying the effectlessness of the cause. Therefore, the Supreme Being is no illusion and exists. However, this is an argument wherein the posteriori argument and the priori justification resemble the head and tail of Kekule’s snake!

Anyway, Nietzche’s nihilism seems to have been borrowed from the Vedas with a few aspects removed. Either which way, the absence of a moral absolute as put forth by both sources is the same: the Vedas argue for no such thing, but by condemning materialism the morals established thus also find themselves set aside. Our search for an absolute being is vain. We are trapped in our own contradictions: we live in a materialistic world, we define our own morals. The absolute we look for can not manifest in such an environment wherein the Creation, a part of the Absolute Truth, dwells, for the reaches of our argument only span something that does not exist. “To the clean all things are clean“. The only truth is the self when everything perceived by the self and everything understood by the self is a reflection of the self again. I am because I am. There is no disputing that. The fire is fire to me if I am me while the fire is: I have to be consciously aware of the self while I touch the fire, and if it is hot, then I describe the fire as ‘hot’ while taking for granted that I am me. Everything else is there because I am. I am the cause. I am the effect because I perceive it and make it seem real.

Except, of course, love failures!

Rain Under My Umbrella

RAIN UNDER MY UMBRELLA: A TRIBUTE I have always enjoyed the rain. Mornings find a new invitation in them when I find that it is raining. The day seems to begin with a unique grandeur, and life seems to commence for the moment on a special note. The leaves have bathed, and the greenery seems refreshed. It strikes a brilliant contrast with the concrete jungle, a welcome change. The smell of mud is carried through the air. It is as if everything has been wrought anew for an occasion such as this. The lingering raindrops on the glass windows leave invisible stains on my memory, only to bring me to these minutes later in the day when the sun has dawned again from behind the clouds as a reprieve for the breeders of evil on this commoditized earth. I dwell in glory when it rains, and I find rain to be the ideal dawn of good, and the sunshine the evil dusk that brightens stone, wood and metal up: you will believe it is the truth for that is what you see as the cause and that is what you perceive as the effect. But what of the truth? But I believe you are to be forgiven, my poor dear friend, for it is only natural, and above all else, there is no time for such pursuits.

My sleep dissolves into awareness when I hear the rain splash into little drops of nothingness on my window. I wake up and draw the curtains open. The sight is glorious. The night sky has been brightened up by the scattered light from the clouds. It seems eerie, like something so unnatural. Science can only tell me what happens and why, but I for one know how it happens: the beauty of it all. You must be a soulless being to not look upon such a sight and not feel humbled. More than being humbled, I feel defeated. Humility does not demand a defeat in battle, but a defeat demands more than humility to be complete. And that is how I feel. If I, at that moment, were to be commanded by God to fly, I would not. I am but a human being, and I am but prone to err. I cannot fathom the universe, and I cannot fathom my mind either. I orient myself in space through physical manifestations of the requirements of the soul, and I would deign those below me as my inferiors. I would demand servitude in my folly. But I would also condemn myself unto eternity in this living, and when anyone else calls upon me to take flight, to soar above spirits that humble me, I am in contradiction with myself. Be it my fall, but a fall restricted to your perception. I am victor, for I have triumphed through the steadfast belief in my beliefs.

I have often wondered whether philosophy per se has an answer to my question. Just as nihilism confines evolution of the mind, I doubt it would. And my only questions are that in defining godliness, would I be permitted to redefine God? Who is God? Is any a God restricted to some confining parameters in order to be ordained so? If yes, then is not the godliness then lost? If no, is not the definition of godliness itself lost?

Anyway, in condemning myself, if condemnation it is, to the servitude to rain, I have equated the inability to spot a single raindrop among a million to the fear, and therefore the inhibition, to look upon one. At 2 AM last night, when I drew the curtains open, it was raining as though it were a prelude to the Great Flood. The glow from the skies was overwhelming, and the street lamps faded in brilliance, if that. I wondered if I would be allowed to look upon the individual molecules of this belief. I, a mere mortal, and The Rain, my God. But here is where the tale takes a turn. My ignorance, my temper, my pride, my ego, my humaneness took over. A belief is only as strong as the weakest believer! And I believe in You! Will you not let me take a glance?! As simple and as silly as it may seem, I did get a glance, but only through the eyes of another man who I thought was my servant in standing, tonight. In the near distance, a few blocks down the street, I saw the raindrops float towards the earth. I could not have seen them if not for the street lamp that illuminated my humility, my defeat, in its fullest.