Cubic Venerations

“You know, I’m fed up with all of this God nonsense! Can you show me God? No, seriously, can you show me God? If you can, I’m game. Here, take me with you right now. Show me where he is. Is he in the trees? Is the ‘spirit’ within that gives them life? Is in the sky? Is he the one that makes it look all blue and nice? Or, like Friday from ‘Robinson Crusoe’ says, is he in the animals? Is he what makes the cheetah sprint and the fish swim and the man think? Where is he? Is he in you and me because you say so? Or is he in you and me because that’s why we think, that’s why we know? Or are you now going to turn the other cheek and tell me that God does not exist? That all those things around us are capable of doing their thing because science dictates that they do? That the trees grow because there’s enough mineral and water in the soil, that the fish swim because it’s got fins, that the cheetah sprints because it’s built all dynamic, that man thinks because he has a brain and the mind with it? Whatever you tell me, it will be based on what you know. You can never tell me something you don’t know. You can’t tell me that you don’t know the answer to a question without knowing that you don’t know the answer! There is no escaping your knowledge; the brain cannot ever lie without knowing that it is lying. Even if I’m giving you wrong information without my knowledge, it will be because the brain is not aware of the mistake. If it becomes aware, then it knowingly masks the awareness. That’s all. And now, if you tell me there IS a God somewhere, then you know that there IS God somewhere. How do you know it? Did you hear it from someone like I’m hearing it from you? How do you know that person wasn’t lying? How do you know that the person who told that person wasn’t lying? You can see I could go on and on, and I hope you can also see the point here. You can never know. If there was or is a God, you will not find out unless someone shows him (or her) to you, or if you stumble upon him (or her) while crapping in the woods or something. You can never ever find out for yourself about something unless you have either been looking for it, or you have stumbled across it. There is no other type of revelation possible, and I think you know that from you own life. Even if there is no God, how do you know? Are you telling me that since you saw no one with a halo over the head while crapping in the woods, there is no God? How do you know for sure. Maybe there is. Maybe there isn’t!

“What I’m saying is, don’t waste your fucking time looking for something that might not be there! When you’re sitting down reading the Bible, you’re reading about man being good and man being bad and God correcting all of it and forgiving it and doing magic tricks. What religion has done to you is it has blinded you from your own efforts, from seeing your own capable self doing all those things which apparently some God did! Don’t you see that the ‘love’ pardons and befriends is only a product of man’s intention? Do you need a God to tell you something which you you’re capable of? It’s like having a middleman in business. You know you can seel your products to the customer, but you employ a reseller just because he can do it better, right? Wrong! You employ a reseller not because he can do it better, but because you can’t do things as well as he can. You’re just fucking lazy. With God in the picture, you’re not just lazy, but you’re arrogant, you’re foolish and you’re an absolute retard for ignoring what’s at your feet and looking into the distance.”

“Alright, fine, I’ll agree with what you’re saying. You’re saying you need something to represent all these symbols, something that provides you with support everyday. Am I right in thinking you want something like a prayer? Like you say all solemn and all problems are solved and your mind fortified? I’ll give you a prayer. Look to yourself. You are young, you are strong. You have a mind, an infathomable mind, which cannot be controlled by any living man. You are capable of thought, which no other beast on the planet is capable of doing. You are here, and that’s what matters. You’re not like the twisted paradox in the ‘future-life’ of an unborn child or the infinite retirement in the eyes of the dead. You’re here, that’s it. What do you have to do? You’ve to live your life. It’s yours, you dumbass. Yours! Not anybody else’s. You’re not going to let anybody tell you what you do or do not deserve, you’re not going to tell anyone those things for that matter. Don’t waste your time. If you need something to waste just to feel vain about it, then it”l happen automatically in the form of the life you’ll be throwing away. No one knows where in space and time come from. It’s just that when we ‘come to life’, we become understandable to others. You wouldn’t want to return to that statelessness knowing you did nothing, would you? It’s an experience in the offing, take it or leave it. There are thousands of billions of such stateless people waiting to be born, but you have the good luck of getting here first. The world you see around yourself is what it is: the world you see around yourself. By this, I mean that that which you see is there and breathing or lying only and only because YOU see it. If I saw it first and told you it was there, you’ll know only because You learnt of it from me. It’s knowledge, conscious knowledge, that’s the greatest determinant of our future. There could be some other hidden parameters too, but since they’re hidden, you needn’t be bothered about it. Now, at this point, I must introduce you to someone.

God

“Meet my God. Yes, I’m showing It to you. Yes, my God is an ‘it’. Not a ‘him, not a ‘her’. It. In fact, my God is a small little cube, all blue and nice. You see those little cubes next to him? Those are his divine brothers and sisters. You might be wondering how I could be so dumb enough to give you all that crap about not knowing and stuff, but this God, I know it’s there because I’m showing you. Now, this cube is my God.  My God can turn blue and then just sit there on the floor. He is my God because I found him. You can’t oppose me there, can you? I know my God exists because he does. He’s right there, see him? And I know he’s my God because my God told me. That’s how I found out. My God chose to pop out of the skies, drop into this forest, and tell me, stupid little me, that he’s God, and that there’s nothing I can do about it. So I decide to do nothing about it. Why is it a cube? Well, I’ll asnwer that with a question, and you answer me that. Why is your God a man? Why is your God a woman? Why is your God a little pig? If God can be all those things, then my God can be a cube. I don’t think God’ds got a copyright there, that he can only and only be an animal. Can my God teach me love? No, I asked him not to, because I can do that on my own. The cube doesn’t have to teach me something I already know or can find out myself. All the cube needs to do is be a God so that you and me can go about doing what we do best. You agree?”

The manifestation of argument in the great political debate

• Argument as government: In all, and especially, the industrial democracies of this world, the implementation of the decisions of the state as a discernible body on the functioning of the society is essentially a product of the great political debate. Even though a party has been elected to power, the basis of the presence of argument during the triumphant party’s tenure is contained in the fact that democracy does not halt at granting the citizen his vote, but at crediting him with having influenced the making of a decision in the senate. In fact, in a colloquial sense, democracy would indeed be perceived as the protection of the powers of the citizen on a national level at the very least. However, the strength of democracy lies not completely in the strength of this protection, but in the manifestation of these powers that have been safeguarded by it. As a result, in my opinion, democracy is not the modus operandi of a state post-polity, but the documented encouragement of debate and contention between different leaders and, eventually, different responsibilities. The face of the governing party is only the face of the nation for other states, but within, it is the citizen and rightly so. Argument, even a non-ideal one, dutifully fosters the inculcation of discipline and morality amongst the most narrow-minded amongst us, and when it is that the future of a burgeoning nation of a billion depends on the decisions of a volatile oligarchy, agreement and opposition are both equally essential in the making of a decision. One cannot afford to pin all of one’s hopes on the mindset of one man.

• Argument as representation of the voter:

The big picture

Drawn above is a simple representation of the electoral process in India. Voters from all over the nation vote to elect the central government, which may be a single party which manages to secure the minimum majority of 272 seats (out of a total of 543) in the lower house, Lok Sabha, or multiple parties that coalesce under the umbrella of a common goal. Once a party has been lofted to the center, a ministry is formed that manages the various portfolios. As I stated earlier, the decision of the citizenry in electing such and such a government is questioned in the senate when argument is used as a tool for decision-making. If the ruling party wins the argument, the investment of the voting populace is vindicated. If the ruling party (or parties) meets with formidable opposition that it cannot quell with sufficient conviction, we the people will have made a mistake, nay wronged.

• What the good arguer has: In his ‘Language and Responsibility’ (1977), noted linguist Noam Chomsky asks only the following from any man who has an opinion:

1. 1. The capability of facing the facts objectively,
   2. The usage of a rational line of common sense,
   3. A Cartesian sense of argument, per se, and
   4. A little skepticism.

Whenever there is some “breaking news” in the air, the various components of the mass media, especially the news channels on the television, turn to professionals in fields pertaining to the content of the news in order to extricate an opinion that is either valuable by itself or is made so by repeated broadcasts. Why this esotericism? Why can’t the chap behind the desk ask you and me if the country has to intervene in Angola? When the above factors suffice to define the good arguer, why is it that I must be in possession of compatible certification to but profess a one-line opinion? What must be discussed is the content and not my right to discuss it!

• Isolation of power by conserving argument: Arguments can be brought to life by interpreting information, and information is nothing but the lingual interpretation of an event, the interpretation being performed in order to transmit and convey it to people who are unaware of the occurrence of it. The information we assess and digest everyday is proportional as well as dependent on the ideals of the local government, which governs the information that it thinks its people need to come into contact with, and the ideas and opinions of the people around us that constitute the populace in general. With a democratic government ruling the central aspects of the Indian economy, finance, industry, society and other aspects of living and development, the interests of each individual vested in it demands productive work day in and day out. On the other hand, the ruling government, to carry out its wishes, needs people other than those who control its functions to fall in line with their solutions. Due to the embedding of this fundamental rule, as it were, in the roots of the structure of every democratic state, information can only play a greater role in the lives of the people of the state every day. The conveyance of this information happens through the media, viz. print, audio, and audiovisual. The print media includes newspapers, magazines, newsletters, articles, essays, stories and others; the audio media includes, prominently, radio channels; video comprises of information delivered via telebroadcasting, movies, etc. The radio and the television are two modern techniques that have stolen the limelight of sorts from the print media. Owing to advancements in technology, of these two, the audiovisual media is growing steadily as well as quickly, borrowing from the inherently faster conveyance of data, the greater accessibility, and, with the incorporation of a sense of personality, the notion of originality and being specific to a given set of peoples with respect to their ethnicity involved is also born. Therefore, keeping in mind the importance of such a medium, its regulation has to be handled with care and finesse in order to get across your message while maintaining the original intensity of the purpose and the frequency of conveying it. But in a large, immensely populous, and democratic nation like India, apart from the already very many number of television channels, there are many more being operated by political parties. Although this does not constitute any violation of any rule for that matter, using the medium as a method of propaganda is not something I would suggest. You can not initiate and run programs just because it’s there for you to. In a way, it violates the right to information. How? Information is only when it is factual and wholly interpretative in a neutral manner. When you tamper and mess with it in order to get across a message that has been interpreted in a biased manner, it is a misrepresentation of the event that has occurred. You are now putting specific ideas in the minds of the people, ideas that can invariably lead only to a single conclusion. Furthermore, but in a partly trivial way, political propaganda must always begin and end during the time of elections for the local or national government, and must be nonexistent at all other times unless it is being projected via the deeds of those elected to office. Telebroadcasting can not be considered as a deed because it is propaganda itself, and parties that use this as a tool to brainwash the plebian and proletarian population in their favour is wrong. You will notice that now, with everyone around you being highly opinionated about some political party or the other, the ability to think freely and objectively will be on the decline.

On the dominance of art

This is a thought I had a few hours back, and thought I’d put it down in order to see what else I discovered along the way.

Where is art? Art, today, is broad. I’ll save you all the jargon and leave it at “omnipresent”. Furthermore, it is discernible to the human eye not through the straightforward impact it has on the human mind, but through the interpretation it is often subjected to, the kind of interpretation that enables it to yield an inadvertent variety. There is art in a little girl’s frock that I might not see but you might. There is art in what seems like “noisy music” to the ardent death metal fan. One can only opine, but one can’t ever judge on the beauty of things. As an absolutist, I do believe that art has an absolute form, but I also believe that humankind can never produce it. To me, this ‘absolute art’ lies in our creation, our form, our purpose, and the meaning we come to infuse in our respective individual existences.

What is happening? Before I digress further, let me come to the point. The first argument I have to make is on the commercialization of perspective. By this, I have to borrow some ideas from the capitalist economy. In such economies, demand and supply are the primary influencing factors. The best way to vary their effect on the market is to alter the elements that generate them in the first place: the products, and the money. Both the producer and the purchaser handle them in sufficient amounts, but in capitalism, greater power is given to the purchaser. Similarly, in the world of art, we have landed up in an age of inevitable commercialization of all things beautiful (or not). These could have been due to various reasons, many of which I am incapable of pursuing, but it is indeed that because of one phenomenon: art forms of one type seem to have larger markets than art forms of another – as opposed to a reduced disparity some decades before.

Klimt’s ‘Golden Adele’ (1907), sold for $135 million

What is the effect this has had? This has led to the generation of strong influences that, more often than not, decide how many people look at a specific form of art. Take up the example of paintings and pottery. The great auction houses of London, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, are known to have sold paintings for upwards of a few million pounds. Has anyone ever heard of pottery being sold for that much? Why not? Ignoring a possible anthropological difference, the quickest conclusion is that the difference in demands is immense. Why is the demand immense? Because the works are valuable and provide for easy investment options. Why are they so valuable? Because their predecessors too held the same kind of value. And where did they obtain such values? From the people who bought them, the people who existed in that period. Although times have changed, perceptions have been held on to, often not in keeping with the contemporary conditions.

And what has this led to? In order to capitalize on what looks like an eternally growing market, artists will now begin to focus on paintings more than anything else – often irrespective of what their interests are. The utilitarian demands of life do surface at some points, and they cannot thus be blamed. Although what is happening cannot be termed a ‘crime’ and someone taken to task, this biased focus will magnify down the line, ultimately threatening to completely vaporize the market for a form of art that does not yield monetarily.

What can we do? If the effect is widespread, we can only make a difference over long periods of time. However, at the same time, we have no right to tell others what to appreciate and what not to appreciate. If you ask me, what we can do is make people aware of such effects. Instead of subduing the dominant art form, we can nurture the growth of the ignored.

The claims of a positivist: The reality of a painting on the wall

The revelation that I am a positivist, inadvertently made by me, is indeed profound. I was always of the ‘impression’ that what ever I wrote, whatever I discovered for myself, sprouted from the metaphysical speculation I often sink deep into. Metaphysics, with all its abstractions and interpretative variety, has been alluring me; every so often, when I sit down to think before a session of good and wholesome writing, it dangles a carrot in front of my eyes, and it promises me a wonderland. I am smitten, although it seems at first. To me, positivism is not a belief but an approach towards an idea that I would like to assume in order to understand it better. However, the idea I am approaching comes to light only through the magic of metaphysics. It is like my world is, in essence, defined by the fundamental conceptualizations of objecthood, reality, possibility, causality, etc.; but once I have understood the purpose behind their respective existences and the utilitarian impact they have in the physical world, I need quantification to be able to repeatedly recognize them. Let me take up an elucidatory scenario.

You are in a closed room, and on one of the walls, there hangs a painting. You are in the room, at the center, and looking at it. After some time, you turn around and look at the opposite wall. Now, can you tell me whether the painting behind you exists?

The painting on the wall

Of course, you will, at first, tell me that the painting indeed does for you just happened to see it hanging there. Yes or no? If yes, then the reality of the painting (an inanimate object devoid of senses) has been designated as true by your sight. Therefore, the painting existed because you saw it (thereby also verifying its objecthood). If you hadn’t seen the painting at all, would it have existed?

Again, your answer to this question can be yes or a no, but a more probable answer would be that “it is possible”. So there, we have another one of the metaphysical concepts: that of a possibility. Now, possibility can be understood easily: it is the chance a particular event has of occurring (or not occurring). We say it is a chance because we are not, in our conscious knowledge, endowed with the information necessary to arrive at a certain conclusion. Although whether this information will become known at all is subject to contention, the situation necessitating the understanding of the relationship between ourselves and the event occurring in the future exists nevertheless. And thus, it is a possibility.

Here, I have established for myself that there does exist objecthood, the kind recognizable only through the meaningful interpretation of the object. However, it is that employment of a codified and unified method (for ex. science) that helps me in objectively identifying the nature of their manifestation.

Do Communists really have no class?

It is always easier to understand the reasons that will compel a person to assume a neutral stance in an argument, but have you ever wondered why people in general haven’t been able to tolerate bias? Ask yourself that the next time you pick a fight with a friend. If someone intervenes, you expect him to be either neutral in the judgment delivery or biased in your favor. When the latter happens, your opponent will deny the judgment.

• Observing the flowchart, you can see that from the presence of a set of laws that can effectively establish eventual governance, there arise the two fundamental and integral concepts of justice and equality. The law must be able to recognize and punish wrong-doings, and the law must treat all those who bow down to it equally – these, by definition.
• With equality comes freedom. In order to further elaborate on the relationship between the two, let me give you an example. When a group of people are free to think and do as they please, if one amongst them is endowed with a greater number of rights than all the others, then the rest of them will, in essence, be denied that one “special” right. That is not equality any more, is it? Reversing this process, if one were to define equality itself based upon a certain group of common rights and duties, then the presence of those rights and duties will indicate the presence of freedom.
• Just as the human mind comprehends the external world in different ways, the freedom it senses is interpreted in different ways. Importantly, there are the freedoms of thought, action and worship. The doings that arise out of the exercising of these permissions will always be constrained by the law, for it is because of the law that they have come into effect as tangible principles. Metaphorically, it is like trying to see smoke. If you attempt to view it in the darkness or against gray skies, it will be futile. But against a bright white sky, it will be visible in its full glory. In our case, freedom and equality are like the smoke, and the law is the white sky.
• When a government is instituted (irrespective of the methods through which it came into power), it means two things: (i) the nation will now have a leader or a group of leaders whose job will not only be to lead the citizens, but (ii) also to be able to claim responsibility for any of the nation’s actions per se. Although this group of people will still belong to the society at large, the state they will now build and constitute will be a separate entity because the end goals of the bodies will be different. For the society, there will exist a subconscious tendency toward on overall betterment in terms of those currencies the world around them employs to measure one’s extent of success in life. In other words, when more money is equated to greater success, the society will function towards that success by trying to acquire that much money. As for the government, it will come to define its own successes in order to establish the nation as a whole as the manifestation of a particular idea on the world map – and the accomplishment of this will again involve ‘peer perceptions’.
• When an installed government finds it desirable to adopt the same principles as its constituent societal model does, then it assumes a stance of neutrality. Again, to establish a metaphor, let’s take up relative motion. When two cars moving on a highway are doing so at the same velocity, albeit one greater than the other, and with no acceleration, the distance between the cars will be the same. Similarly, with the state as the first car and the society as the second, zero acceleration and equal velocities will ensure that the spacial disparity between them is only indicative of the number of processes involved in the transformation of the goals.

And now that I have explained the flowchart, can you answer the following question(s)?

Is this need for equality an inherent compulsion, or does the human psyche derive such a requirement from some mysterious source around us? Is this behavior natural, or has it been acquired through evolution?

I ask because the ‘equality’ box in the chart has been my self-discovered source for all that I have written. Assuming that this equality does not exist, I will be forced to assume that there do exist some people who favor a tyranny. That will bring into effect the varying degrees of powerplay, the even more numerous power equations and, ultimately, the non-democritization of electoral processes. Therefore, I have this next question:

Is equality a prerequisite for democracy to function? If so, why does it seem to be so immensely manifested in theory – as in to which finally predominant effects does it play a prominent cause? And if equality is to be observed and practiced, why does the Communist line of thought fail so miserably? Is it because of the greater number of capitalist nations in the world, or is it because something is terribly wrong with itself?

Paradoxical dualities…

In the unfathomably vast physical universe around us, mankind finds the play of science and reason abounding sans constraint. Looking up into the stars on a cold evening has transgressed from being a simple glance of spirited wonderment to a symbolic gaze of hope and redemption, for we who think are we who live and the universe, our home at least if not for the non-existence of another of its kind, was, is and will continue to be the one inexorable source of every question and answer.

Civilization, a great cycle with an infinitely long radius that governs the minds and stomachs of the billions under its titanic umbrella, did not begin on a presupposed morning amongst a group of men, women and children. It began in the mind, as did every revolution, as did every scourge, a seedling of an idea, a miniscule ray of hope beamed at a different future, for the good or for the bad, driven in purpose to assuage the pain of the heart, driven in will to alleviate the pain of the soul.

Rene Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650)

In the continued employment and belief of one man in these beginnings, and therefore his peers, and therefore his kingdom, lay hidden in the shadows of the infinite pores of curiosity and rebellion the embryos of innovation, discovery and understanding. This universe, the cosmos, may perhaps not have been existent at all for the now-supposed 15 billion years. For, all that is visible, audible and perceptible around is and is only because I can see, hear and perceive them through the translucent veils of my mind. Another mind, another omniscient force at play other than my own, does exist only when my mind itself does. Therefore, you exist because I do, and I do because my mind does, and my mind does because I think it does. In conclusion, I think and, therefore, I am (“Cogito ergo sum”, Rene Descartes). Thus, in my mind the womb, in those embryos of innovation, discovery and understanding, the scientific method that is the very proof of the existence of the triumvirate is questioned; essentially, a young thinker will tell you, it is a paradox. I conclude, “The universe is only as old as I am. When I was but an idea in the mind of Mother Nature, the universe itself was but an idea in my mind.”

And the scientist will lunge, provoked like the majestic eagle when the security of its nest is threatened, his penetrating stare seeming to bore burning holes through the walls of space and time, his mind racing to argue, to oppose and prove, to contradict and disprove. And he does, for is he not the child of science himself, gaunt and proud, sober and mystique, unwavering in his beliefs and willing to expand the confines of that which he construes scientific? And he spake! “The winds that blow, the leaves that dance – how would you know the cause, understand the effect, and learn, ultimately, your lesson were it not for the knowledge of the mobility of air, the physics of a frail leaf, and ultimately, the mechanics of the eye that beholds the wonder and the mind that remembers it?” We have studied the universe, together with the entities of space and time that contain it, through the lens of science, that sorceress. Her spells let us stray afar seldom; she is an empress even. Her kingdom is mighty and beautiful, with power in the hands of those who deserve it, and naught can they hold on to, they who desire too much for it. It is, therefore, a just empire. There is but right and wrong, and she abhors uncertainty. To the curious, to the inquisitive, to the young, her laws appeal straight to the heart. For, do you think they will not? Between that chance conception, between that singular ignition that gave birth to everything this universe houses, and that mathematical aberration that preceded its occurrence, that localized blackness which we must all collapse into one day, all that is is a product of science. “Would you, then, say science is not an absolute methodology itself but a “chance” conception of the mind – minds that will soon cease to exist?”

But whatever you chose, remember to look to your own efforts to make this world a better place to live in before looking up at a god.

Painterman

We’d called for two men to whitewash the halls of our house for my upcoming Upanayanam. The next day, the two men showed up. One was in his 40s. A forty-year old man painting houses for a living. I don’t want to think how much that got him. His help was a young guy, he should have been around 15. I sit here in my bedroom, on the comfort of a spring mattress, watching him work on a small section of the wall just outside the door. For his age, he is quite meticulous, quite unlike the young men who are distracted easily into trivial undertakings. He carries a bucket of yellow paint with him and a fat brush. Unlike his master, he is quite tall and doesn’t have to stand on a stool to reach the ceiling. He’s capable of reaching it on the tips of his toes. And yet, unlike his master, he hasn’t yet mastered the art of using continuous brush strokes to deliver a smooth finish on the surface. I can see that by the way he begins. First, he dips the brush completely into the bucket, and on his way up and out of it, he taps the small steel part of the brush that’s between his fingers and the fibres on the edge of the bucket. The small excesses of paint redundantly clinging to the tool drip down, leaving behind them the memories of a funny sound and a heavenly fragrance. It’s just normal paint, not any fancy perfumed variety. But the smell of paint is indeed heavenly. A little stronger, and with a little more density in that smell, and I would have had doubts about choosing petrol over it. Anyway, he raises himself to his fullest and attends to the junctioned corner between the upper reaches of the wall and the ends of the ceiling. Carefully, he marks a fat line of paint that does not come in contact with the ceiling. Doing so, he observes it to see if any nook has been left out. A few seconds later, he is satisfied. He moves on to the next stroking process, which consists of him bending down, dipping his brush into the bucket, tapping it, and moving all the way up again. I notice his arms look strong; the sinewy veins show up in the gleam of his sweat. He could have slung the bucket on one of them instead of having to move his spine up and down all the while. He didn’t. He was a painter, not a logistician or even a mathematician. He didn’t have the time to optimize his movements. The only thing he had time to spare for was painting, and so he did it. Watching him work was tiring for me, and I know not how that is. Of course, you will agree that it is not entertainment at its best! He went up, brushed twice or thrice, looked, smiled, and came down again. All this while, the only thing that changed was, ignorably, the sound of that brush tapping on the plastic. This went on for 10 minutes or so, after which he stopped and looked at him. He probably knew I was intermittently looking at him while typing all of this out. He washed his hands at the basing and came to me. He didn’t look at me though, and I was scared for some reason that he would. He looked at my laptop’s screen, all covered in spindly yellow lettering.

“How much is this?” He had a soft voice.

And without waiting for a response, he left to his brush again. I don’t know what made him walk away. I don’t know what fear or anger he bore in him.

An elder future

This post is a note to myself; an idea that struck me while I was reading up on the fundamentals of anthropology. The study of evolutionary sciences has showed us that we have traveled through space and time over a million years, beginning from a single cell and, in all probability, effectively hitting a veritable saturation point in the way we perceive the objects around us, animate or inanimate, and in the way we interpret their static or dynamic presence. Nature has always been a precursor when it came to the evolution of the structural definition of systems, and how we, as creators ourselves, could calculate and predict their various possible interactions while assuming that only certain behaviours were permissible. After all, we were and are the children of science and thus will grow up as every such child does. In this perspective, history is a lesson we write everyday just for your children and grandchildren to read about and learn. No, it is not an account of one’s experiences, for it is so only in the miniscule fraction of a second that immediately follows the experience itself. Once the cloud of our probabilistic future looms low and close, the memory of the experience itself becomes translated in our minds into a story of causality. We learn from experiences yes, but they are experiences no longer. It is but nature’s way of forcing the mind itself into succumbing to the forces of evolution.

While I was on this line of thought, I realised that our children, our grandchildren, our forthcoming generations all of them will then be open, in the distant future, to a history more comprehensive and detailed than the ones we have for ourselves now. Cause-effect relationships will not be short and frail threads each sporting an enigma at one end, but mighty ropes of jute that speak of eons of evolution of body and mind. The lessons we have learnt are manifested in the lessons we will come to live, but to a young man who will soon be witness to the sun engulfing our dear planet Earth, his history will have hoarded in him insurmountable mountains of knowledge. In this, I believe that evolution is not only an experience of the evolving, but also of those who serve to be the divine embryo of the causes of evolution itself. When we touch a hot flame, we learn not to touch it again: that is of the body. When we make a mistake and learn from it, we also stow away the relationship between cause and effect in our head: that is of the mind. But when we live and grow and reproduce, the nature that is the great container of all that we see and believe in whispers in our ears stories of the past and the lessons they teach. That is the beauty of this cosmos; the three dimensions along with time are what they are for a reason. For, if they had been anything else, our lives would hold no hope in the remedies of the future.

Frail fodder

Early in the morning, I switch on the TV to find CNN-IBN’s sports section diverting all its attention on Baichung Bhutia, India’s football icon/idol, having missed an exhibition match in favour of attending a celebrity dance show which he also happened to win. I wondered why such a prolific news channel was spending hours together trying to get every scrap of worthless information on the screen – information that somehow concerned Bhutia’s personal life as well. I was also surprised to see a live interview running simultaneously, with the host firing question after question at the poor footballer as to why he decided to take some time off for himself in the middle of a season that didn’t have more than a few league games in the offing.

Dhoni on Times Now

The same thing happened last week when India lost their quarter-finals berth in the ICC T20 World Cup being held in England. Of course, being defenders of the title from the tournament’s debut in 2008, the expectations from the team was high. However, to many, a loss was expected somewhere down the line because the IPL T20 league games had only just finished and many, if not all, of the team players were under considerable stress and fatigue. Once India lost the crucial game to England, both Times Now and CNN-IBN became rife with questions of whether Dhoni (the captain) should be replaced, and how the Indian team was slipping, and how this was wrong and how that was wrong. There are two aberrations I see here. The first is that I’m 100% sure that if we’d won the game with England, Dhoni would have entered his “Poster Boy of India” Phase II and the media persons would have jumped around carrying his image on their heads. And secondly, having spent valuable hours scrounging for information that will (inevitably) soon be forgotten, I’m only led to believe these news channels will popularise anything to make money.

(And before I leave you, there’s another small thing I’d like to bring to light. I, rather we all, learnt that there was a women’s T20 World Cup going on. This came to light only when the men’s tourney showed no signs of progress. Is it that these news channels go solely after the money? Or is it that these news channels are allowed to assume what the viewer wants or does not want to see?)

On service & duty

One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.

– Mahatma Gandhi

To begin nonchalantly on such a broad issue is a momentous task. To spare myself the trouble and the reader all the verbal nimiety, let me begin by asking myself: what is service? A service is work done by the individual as substitution for the duty that is due another individual. When you exercise your right or perform your duty, it does not constitute service because both of them are for you to do so. It is when you offer to help someone or to give up some time of your own in order to do someone else’s work does it become service. At a restaurant, the waiters perform a service when they deliver the food to your tables. The price it comes at is money. On the warfront, when a soldier fires his gun and kills a terrorist, he performs a service for his nation. In both cases, it is not their duty to do so. The waiter earns money in the bargain, and the soldier does it out of either the need for survival or in gratitude of his nation’s gifts. The world around you and me would indeed be drab and devoid of any humanity were it not for the services of those around us. Self-sustenance in this scenario is a highly impossible state of living. We can hope to progress only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

As a 20 year-old, service does not usually take on such magnified proportions for me. I live in a small world around me. My duties, from day to night, include washing the plate I have eaten in and dusting the mattress I have lept on. The food I eat is prepared in the kitchen by my mother. the water I drink seems ready available when I open the taps. However, what I do does not seem like any service to me. It seems a frail triviality as soon as I step outside my door and begin to walk the busy streets outside my house. The either sides of the streets are lined with tens of shops and what seem like small malls, and the floating population on the road at any time of day stand between 5,000-10,000. With no regard for, at the very least, the cleaners who sweep the road at night, garbage lies strewn all over the place. Now, would you imagine me walking up to a stranger outside a saree shop who just threw down a plastic bag full of emptied food packets, and asking her to pick the bag up and put it in the garbage bin? That is what I did, and the woman turned around and ran. She thought I was mad.

Suppose 5,000 such men, and 5,000 such women. Petitions to the local municipal councils don’t help – all I did was ask for them to impose a fine upon those who littered. Their reply: “All that garbage is inevitable. Do you expect each and every one of them to find a garbage bin and throw their stuff in there?” Yes, I do. I replied so, and the counselor looked away. What is wrong in expecting such behaviour? If I can do it, why can’t you? If I could wake up to the day when each and every one of those individuals on the street uses the garbage bins provided, I will be a happy man, for that will be true service. The support you can provide the nation with does not stop at finding work within the country and boosting up its economy. In fact, that is not service at all if you don’t live in gratitude of what the country seems capable of giving you day after day, free of charge. It is like your house; rather, it is your house. Keep it clean. Would you litter your bedroom with rotten vegetables just because the maid cleans it for a fee everyday? I am sure you wouldn’t. It is for this reason that I would, if given the chance, enter into politics. I would like to impart this objectivity in thought, this simplicity of cause, to everyone around me. When Mahatma Gandhi called out for all “brothers and sisters to enter politics, to better this nation”, our nation, the likes of Lal Bahadur Shastri and Chakravarti Rajagopalachari came together. Of course, I can go on about corruption in the form of bribes and what not, but what I want to stress is the dereliction of duty. Glaring in contrast to the glory of days past, what irks me most is that, today, the performance of one’s duty happens to be the rendition of a service. That is a shame.

Many of us look to a service as optional. It is not, but neither is it obligatory. Today, it is required. Like in a game that involves no luck, when a point is lost to the opponent, a lead can only be established when all players put in some extra effort. Similarly, looking at the state of the nation in terms of one’s recognition of one’s duties and responsibilities, a difference can be effected only when we step out of our way, only when we put in some extra effort. The preparedness to do so manifests as true hope, and the will of action manifests as the vision. As a 20 year-old, I believe I should hope, and this is one of the many paths that seem to readily open its gates. Switch off all unnecessary electronic appliances when you leave a room. We don’t need a ‘World Earth Day’ or a ‘World Energy Day’ to make us do that for one hour in a year. They do that to make us aware. If you want to respond, don’t mimick. Act. When you walk the streets, don’t litter. If you see someone littering, do not ignore. That is where you make the real difference. With all the intelligence we boast of at the places where we study and work, we don’t seem to have to put any of it into action. We look to win the Nobel, we look to make money. If that is what you ultimately seek above all else, then you will have come into this world and left without a sign of gratitude.