Cogito nimis

I think those lines on your hands could mean a lot. Else why would they be there? Must have some purpose. Those lines are changing on mine.
I'm losing my fingerprints. Its not an identity crisis, yet.
I would like to deduce that I will lead a double life, as those lines say. Paranoia doesn't attack, it creeps in slowly.

I wish people accepted that only incidental stupidity is tolerable.
I wish people didn't cheat.
I wish people weren't so condescending as to think that they can fool you to believe that the by-products of their selfishness benefits you in some way and hence accept it.
I wish people were not as afraid of others as they are of themselves.
I wish they could be solved and still intrigue,
they could be known and yet remain strangers,
I wish I didn't allow myself to get bothered with people so much.

And I desperately wish it would burn and sting on the surface, but numb the pain inside.

Do I wish these for sanity or for distraction?

volo nimis

Of Gods, Temples and Faith..

I am a theist ( Thats apparently the word. But it's more like the opposite of an atheist and I don't think I am the opposite of an atheist). Anyways, I believe in God. In quite a lot of them. They are fascinating. And also helpful and comforting, when there be need.
We have the Gods and Super Gods. The Super Gods are the most popular ones. Especially here in India.
Then there are temples- the more famous ones, which enshrine Super Gods and are all-powerful. One trip and all your wishes come true. We prioritize our wishes. The most important and needed ones are reserved for the Super Gods.

Oh, the pointlessness of it all, at times.. I go to the temple and see so many people, immersed in their prayers, asking God to provide cure and bounty. The rich and poor, the literate and the illiterate, they all seek panaceas. Its reassuring and disturbing at the same time. So many of us, placing the responsibility of our lives on One Super Being and leaving it all, almost. Why do we seek what is within us outside? Does the very presence of it outside us make it more powerful for us? We don’t have faith in our own selves but a God.

And why the need for temples? We have our own Gods at our places and do our daily worship? But does that extra effort put in to go and worship shows more devotion on our side? My mom used to say that more the difficulties and struggle you go through to “see” / “visit” God, the more pleased he’ll be with yourself. And even if that doesn’t happen, you’ve probably done too much struggle to deny it. We keep convincing ourselves.

Is it that we are looking for a refuge? Its easier to put the blame on destiny, luck, God and “the mysterious ways in which he works” when something doesn’t happen in the desired manner. I myself find comfort when I go to a temple. Maybe its conditioned in me. But I don’t want to fight it- not when I voluntarily chose to go there and seek something. I do not seek all the answers to life or truth or any such thing. Its those simple and silliest of wishes that we ask for- all that lie more within our power than anyone else’s. But still we do worship and pray. I personally like to go to small obscure temples where there’s not much crowd and its more peaceful. I can also justify it with the fact there are less prayers competing for God’s attention. However, I also reserve the important prayers for Super Gods and do my 5/ 7/11 Tuesdays at Siddhivinayak. My God knows I’m selfish. I think all Gods know that. Hence, they came to be.

But then, I look at all these “followers” and “believers” and ask if I have any right to question their faith? But I’m questioning my own faith isn’t it? And if I question it- do I have any faith at all? But then what is faith? Does its scope lie only within its defined meaning of complete, unfaltering trust? Isn't believing enough? I am a believer. But should that imply that I don’t question?
But how can I not question? There is no commandment forbidding us to think and question. Even if there were, would we follow it? Its not convenient.
It all boils down to three things: Convenience, Selfishness, and Fear.
Doesn’t it?

Bits of Life, while I'm on it...

My previous article was being edited for the newsletter. Being temporarily jobless, I was looking over the process and giving my insights and was rambling on about how I meant to write about something else and ended up writing about something completely different. All throughout, I kept thinking of the many things I wanted to blog about.
I distinctly recall thinking of fear and love. I've pondered about enough on love.
After that I watched this movie "Waking Life" and Whoa!! its amazing. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243017/combined

There is this bit about how evolution has taken place for the entire population as such; how there has been no distinct evolutionary growth in the individual per se; how we all have not achieved what we possess the potential for and how there is a barrier that prevents us from reaching our real potential. To this, the philosophy professor says, “The answer to that can be found in another question, and that's this: Which is the most universal human characteristic - fear or laziness?”
http://strivinglife.com/words/post/Waking-Life-Chapter-8---Noise-and-Silence.aspx

And that was the moment for me. That scene basically made the entire movie for me.

It’s so true. All of our actions are influenced by fear or laziness, depending on the action we are about to commit.

We chase happiness and success because we fear unhappiness and failure or what we think are unhappiness and failure. We don’t do some things for the fear that the consequences of our actions may not be as we desire them to be. We do some things for the fear that our inaction may cause subsequent misery. We seek companionship because we are scared of ending up lonely and unloved. We don’t express our love for the fear of our egos and feelings being hurt on probable rejection. We are taught that fear is a form of reverence. We learn to fear our parents and teachers and strangers. We learn that if we commit any act condemned to be sinful by some, we will be punished by God and that the Devil shall take us. We learn to fear God’s wrath more than believing that God is probably a nice old chap. We fear death. We fear life itself. Fear is omnipresent, innit?

As for laziness, well yeah, we are a goddamned lazy species. All of us are bursting with ideas to change the face of humanity. But we are just so lazy that we prefer waking up in the afternoon and managing our own messed up lives. But some of us are too lazy to even do that. We sleepwalk through life, ingesting everything that is fed to us and vomiting the same bilge back. We go with the flow. But in reality, when we “go with the flow” its not a very conscious decision. We are not aware that out of the n options, the sole reason that we are going with the flow is not because we want to, voluntarily, but because we are just too lazy to carry out the other n-1 options. Procrastination is a normal involuntary action like eating tasty and unhealthy food, brushing our teeth, watching TV, etc. We delay everything that can be delayed and which wont cause too much of an inconvenience.

Sometimes fear overtakes laziness. Sometimes the latter subdues it.

The movie makes you think. It throws up so many ideas, theories, beliefs and opinions at you. And that is where you have to think and choose.
(I apologize if all this sounds as if I’m talking down to lowly forms of life or that I’m teaching two plus two equals four and not five. But my recent experiences force me to continue in this vein..)

When we see movies or read news/ articles etc, subconsciously somehow,we imbibe the opinions, views in them. We take in those opinions and beliefs and ideas without really considering the facts. I’m not saying everyone does it and that its wrong or anything of that sort. What I want to say is, there is an excess of information, views, ideas, beliefs and opinions all around us and one should examine all of them properly and learn to make his/ her own assessment of the situation and form his own opinion. Individualism is not about reading Ayn Rand’s Objectivity of Selfishness or her other novels and then claiming to be an individualist. One does not necessarily have to be highly selfish and self-centered to be Individualistic.While taking in all that’s thrown at us, we have to realize that this is someone’s view of something and this is how he/she portrays it.

So, while seeing the movie, I was all amazed and felt like “ yes, this is The TRUTH!!”. But then, later on I came to accept that this is, in the end, a work of fiction. It is someone’s view of reality and illusion and dreams. And its all brilliant. I even agree with some ideas and insights offered in the movie. But then I need not necessarily believe that it is the absolute, ultimate truth. Well, yeah all this is possible and its all cool too. But then it could be un-true too. That’s the best thing about ideas. You can just appreciate them and like them. You don’t have to accept them or believe in them. You can always challenge them and also walk away from them.

The dialogues/ lines will blow your mind away. Each one sounds like a statement of truth, beautiful and scathing. And I chose to believe, not because it sounds cool, but because I do believe that all our lives could be an illusion and we are just moving through one layer to another. And I believe that we must live this illusion. We could chose to be materialistic and perform our deeds and live our lives, chase our dreams knowing that in the end, it’s all an illusion and it doesn’t really matter. Or we could just walk through it like indifferent zombies accepting it as something which is pre-determined and which will not make any difference as to whatever we do. It may be true that the workings of ants could not cause any difference to stars and planets. But it may not necessarily be the only truth.

When we chose to live our life knowing that in the great cycle of life and death we are insignificant grains of sand, we must also accept that every second of our time is probably a whole lifetime for some beings. Even the lowliest form of life played a role in our evolution into an intelligent species. Every instant matters and every action in that instant matters. We influence others’ lives and actions by our actions without really considering it or being aware of it. If life is an illusion, Maya, then so be it. Why does reality have to be the opposite of it? Why can’t the illusion be the reality? That’s how it is. It is the reality. It is a dream, life. We are living our dreams. A lifetime of dreams. Think of it as lucid dreaming. Sometimes you can control your actions in your dreams. You can also control your own actions in your life. In lucid dreams, when you realize you are dreaming you also realize that you can control the situation and do what you want to do. Same with life, you have to come to realize that, yes there is fate and destiny, but you are there too and you can control the situation.

In dreams allegedly, you can’t switch lights on and off and time is twisted. In life, you cant change day into night and night into day, unless you can teleport ( That is an amazing possibility) and as for time.. well, we all measure it differently, some in years and seconds, some in people and places, and some in smiles, tears, sighs and glances.

Blank Noise

No, it is not inspired from White Noise. (The movie?)
I think its inspiration lies in our conscience.
What is blank noise? Its that noise that goes screeching in your ears when the silence is deafening. Too cliched? No, its true. Imagine an inverter, or any machine for that reason- it goes off and there is that weird beeeeeeeeeeeeeep noise that comes from within. It is that noise which goes on endlessly when you are completely blank. Your mind is erased of any thoughts of your own. Its not a peaceful rest. Its a struggle- of voices and silences.
That is the current state of all of us. We are embroiled in that battle- of voicing out our opinions and keeping mum. The silence is at the wrong time, wrong place. The voices are without reason, rebels without cause. We talk too much. We rant on about the nation going to the dogs. We bemoan the lack of infrastructure and good education system, the prevalent corruption and bureaucracy. We talk, talk and talk.
But we sit silent when innocent people are burnt at the stake. We are mute spectators to the thousand injustices happening. We are apathetic to the misery of millions. We refuse to acknowledge their troubles as anything but public nuisance.
Some one tells me blank noise means, "it generally means women speaking out against harrassment and molestation."
I think blank noise means how we voice out our hollow idealisms and smother our conscience into submissive silence.
We cry out loud when political leaders are caught taking a bribe. But we silently carry out underhand dealing with these leaders' minions. Its termed as "a necessary evil".
We think the riots in Gujarat were the workings of a evil monster. But while Nandigram & Singur burned, SEZs and the subsequent economic development silenced all our misgivings. The geographical proximity of Gujarat could not possibly be the only reason why we are not vociferous against the unfairness of the situation in WB.
We shower child artistes in movies with praise and awards. We label a child working at a tea stall as a victim of child labour and do all that we can to take away what could be his only source of living.
We find it unfair that electricity is subsidized for farmers while we pay more for more power cuts. The rising number of suicide cases amongst farmers is intensely discussed in the news. Yet we fail to find any connection and reserve our views for "intellectual debates".
We think the police are indifferent and inefficient. And probably to help them, we choose to be silent accomplices in a crime by refusing to file a FIR and get involved in a "police case".
Another Mandal Commission catches our fancy for a while and we picket the streets. At the same time, we watch undeserving candidates with money and clout steal our seats with restrained helplessness and indifference.
We debate whether qualification or experience helps our politicians. But we are zipped in asking ourselves whether we want politicians or leaders to govern us.
Many such paradoxes go unnoticed in ambiguity.
There are too many opinions fighting within us. But what comes to the fore is the one which is convenient to voice. One that would find agreement with the majority. The truth becomes molded into the crucible of "public opinion". Its not what we think is right. It is about what everyone decides is right and we learn to adjust ourselves to that right. Anything that won't require us to put up too much of a struggle.
That is how we become screeching machines- parroting the thoughts fed into us by public media. Just because a well-read and sophisticated columnist thinks going nude in public is a person's right to freedom of expression, we all follow suit thinking its the only form of expression. Editorials of a newspaper begin to become textbooks. Opinions become facts for us. Our voice- public opinion- then becomes a mass customized imitation of a select few. A simpler way to put it is- we are sucked into the vortex of herd mentality.
The voices are meaningless. They are just material for a good discussion, nothing is ever done about it. The silences are exasperatingly unfair.
It is all about convenience. Our principles, beliefs and values are modeled on it. But like all things convenient and easy, it is not always right. In a battle of virtue and convenience, we let the latter win.
Can we make some real noise please? Can we for a change not just debate but also act?

That thing called LOVE

A google search on the word Love generates about " Results 1 - 10 of about 1,630,000,000 for love [definition]. (0.15 seconds)" - more results than those elicited by money, war, sex, drugs, rock and roll and britney spears. The one word that beats it is Life itself.
So, love does really drive this world of ours. Its a pity science can break down love into hormones and chemicals, while poets chose to break it into smiles, glances, tears and sighs.
So love is the best thing possible that can happen to anyone, with the possible exception of winning a lottery and becoming a billionaire overnight or the like.
But whats all the fuss about? With Valentines Day approaching there is way too much love in the air.
Why do we make such a big deal out of it? Why do we bemoan and whine the lack of a love life? I do and I know all those who claim not to, also do.
I have some views about this thing called love and as far as I know only one person seems to agree to it (Well being the only person to be aware of my views..) Thank you, BD :) http://aditya.wordpress.com/
First thing first, I do not believe love is unconditional. It CANNOT BE UNCONDITIONAL. If it were, you would be loving everyone, literally everyone. By the very virtue of knowing someone, liking them and so on do you come to love that person. The very condition for love to happen lies therein.The primary condition to love is to be a condition.
And no, love is not selfless. In fact, I think the very word Selfless is a misnomer. What exactly is selflessness? If you were to be selfless you'd be dead possibly. Because, our survival depends on the fact that we are selfish and look after ourselves and seek to propagate our genes. That is probably the reason we all( well quite a lot of us) hail Darwin's Theory of Survival Of the Fittest. So going on with the whole idea of love being selfless, I think its a lie. When you love someone it is because you feel happy about loving that person or that person makes you happy and so you love that person. Ultimately its your own happiness that decides who, when and how you love. And if we consider those movie-like sequences where love always gives, cries and sacrifices, I think it can again be related to selfishness or rather the lack of any intentional selflessness involved in the sacrifice whatsoever. Its that feeling of being elevated to a higher form or status when we sacrifice that makes us go for sacrifices. We achieve what is described as a sense of being bigger because we can forgive and we can give away what is most valuable to us. But then, surely if it was that valuable and we could sacrifice it, its value decreases accordingly.
By all this I do not say love is not wonderful, beautiful and all those amazing adjectives.
I think, love is even more beautiful. Because, despite all the selfishness involved in love or anywhere else, the by-products of that selfish ambition disguised under a so-called selfless aim does manage to hoodwink many and keeps the illusion of life believable and worth liking, a bit.
Though we do it for our own happiness, the happiness sort of is also shared with the other person. In our own selfish goals we manage to help others in their selfish dreams too.
People in love are too busy floating in the self-induced bliss that comes with it. That is why probably people in love sing songs about being lost, in heaven, day dreaming etc. They are way too happy with themselves. Then after a while you begin to veer towards rationality and reality bites. All this while you were so busy making yourself happy... no wonder break-ups are so messy, we just cant reconcile to the fact that we are selfish bastards/bitches.. Its only us miserable people, who understand this too well will now tread carefully. We know we'll be doing everything for our own good only and we'll prepare ourselves to play the role of an ideal loving person much better.
I think love is selfish, and rightly so.
First love is self love. Only if you love yourself can you love others. Be happy with your own self to make others happy and so on.
Have a nice Valentine's Day with yourself first. No, not really.

How Populairty kills Creativity.

As my last post said, I’m running out of creativity as also of reasons to put the blame on. Being utterly jobless, I resorted to my 2nd most visited website (first being orkut I’m ashamed to admit). And I put creativity to search and this is one of the images which popped up.

It was so simple yet so true and enlightening at the same moment. Its my “wallpaper for a long time”.

Yes, Popularity is killing all creativity. Rather the popular media. TV, Internet, Cell phones, ipods, and all those things that keep you away from the real world.

I must make it clear outright that I’m not against advancement of technology. I’m glad there are these medium to bring people together, even tough it sorts of backfires at places.

TV from being a mode of disseminating information and a bit of entertainment on the side, has turned out to be this monster which has everyone and anyone addicted to it. Its worse than drugs. Yes, you may not watch TV, but you download all those series and stuff and watch them obsessively either ways. Here again, I must say some of them are really good- the TV stuff, but how can you watch them again and again and with such dedication? Reality TV is the worst thing happening to mankind. It’s the most distorted form of reality being fed to millions who accept anything that comes their way. It’s the most gruesome intrusion on privacy and a perfect example of how nobody’s business is everybody’s business.

Then there’s the internet. Second life, virtual reality, orkut and all sorts of networking, cool gizmo sites- all cool stuff man. But at what price? I’m sure there are more lonely depressed chronic schizophrenics now in the world than ever before. The internet seems to be the panacea to all our miseries in life. We allow the hidden monster to come to fore here. Take my own example for instance, years ago when I was bored or frustrated I was with friends (face to face conversations in the real world), reading books, and writing in my diary. Now I chat on gtalk or on my cell or I blog (I’m not complaining at all here). I’ve met some really brilliant people on the internet and met them in real life too. And I’m grateful for that. But then I hear so many of them call the internet their best friend and how they are married to the screen in front of them.

Then we have our favorites- cell phones and ipods. When I see people walking alone ( or even when they have company), they are chattering away on their cells or listening to their music on their players. What did people do when they didn’t have these? They just walked right? Maybe thought about life and stuff and came up with some great works of art and literature. All the man-hours spent on these gadgets- I’m sure takes away all the time share for grey matter to exercise. What if all those news items regarding brain and oral cancers due to usage of cell phones turned out to be true and not just a pile of rat droppings?

In the good old days, when there were no such media to “ bring people closer” I think we were better off. We had more time on our hands. We did our work, met people and had a good time and when we had leisure, we pondered and thought and thus philosophers came. It was a good time to have such people who devoted their life to think about the world and universe and life and birds and bees and humans and ethics and society and all those things that now we find easily on Wikipedia. Knowledge is power and we have it our fingertips, literally. But somewhere we are losing our imagination. Someone had once said ( I think it was Einstein) : Imagination is more important than knowledge. We’re losing that by the day. We have some creativity left, but it doesn’t seem all that refreshingly fresh. We are becoming a generation of androids glued to screens, every waking moment of their lives.

If we think of philosophers, most people, or atleast I would, think of Plato, Socrates, Nietzsche, Marx, Machiavelli, et al. I can’t recall any of the modern ones as such except maybe Albert Camus, Sartre and Bertrand Russel. And I’ve only just heard of them.
This list maybe helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Western_philosophers
Same of writers, http://gutenberg.net.au/greatest-books-a.html
Go to the end of the list and try to find out how many and how much do you know about them ( not that you’d know a lot about the old ones). And somehow if you see the timeline for invention and widespread use of technology and media-
TV- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televison
Internet- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
Cell Phones- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones
Ipods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod

- you’ll find some link between the lack of creative greats in this era and that of increasing dependence on such media.

I could be completely wrong in my opinions here. Maybe I’m biased in restricting creativity to writers and philosophers. Maybe I’m handicapped by my own lack of knowledge about today’s literary icons and intellectuals. Maybe these guys would be legends for the generations to come. But something tells me Shakespeare would still be more famous and acclaimed than Rushdie. And I’m sure really intelligent and widely read and omniscient persons will find this rubbish, but then hell its my blog :P. All I'm trying to convey here is that this age of " being connected 24/7" seems to rob us of any creativity that we could possess. I do not mean that the internet and others don't allow us to be creative. What I intend here is to point out that, there is an over-exposure to lots of attractive things on these media and we get distracted and are sucked into a whirlpool of instant entertainment and gratification and don't really sit down to to ponder and express and explore our own creative talents to the fullest. Well, that's about it, I guess. I have to wake up early tomorrow.

A beginning.

Let me just type. Let me just write. I do not know what will result from this exercise.

But I need to do it, nevertheless. I hate not being able to write. That was my only outlet.

I feel suffocated, strangled, drowned, tied up and restless without it. There’s this inexplicable tightness clutching at my heart and I have no clue why and how to deal with it. There are these moments when you are restless and nervous. As if you know there’s something miserable waiting to happen, just around the corner and you don’t know what to do when you are face to face with it. That is how I feel. Any given moment when I’m not busy doing nothing important. Its physiological, mental, psychological and a lot of other things. There’s no word for it, yet.

There are no dreams. My mind’s become barren. Imagination has become infertile.

Does growing old do that to you?

Those days, when you were bursting with innocence, hormones, feelings, wishes. Those musings, pouring of words and tears, smiling into space thinking about nothing and everything, and those escapades into unreality- where have they gone?

The artist inside has ceased existing. There was no space for life. It was crowded with ambitions, mundane aims, selfish needs and walls. Walls around my heart, soul, mind. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out. Forever locked. Frozen. Yet burning within me every moment.

This is so juvenile. Still, its necessary.

There is this canvas waiting to be filled. But it remains white. White is a color? Or there’s such darkness that its black, impenetrable. Even grey fails to come on it.

Is it just that my outlets have closed or do I have nothing to express?

Either ways, I feel un-alive.

The entire world is an illusion. Do I just tread through this illusion waiting for it to end on my death? Or do I live it out? I have to live it out. Breathe in the scents and dust. I want to feel pain and happiness. Immeasurable pain and indefinite happiness. And express it the way I want to.

Nothing is stopping me. But I find myself incapable.

Something within is dying. There is the optimist lying docile.

There’s so much I want to do, want to achieve. But they all seem meaningless now that I feel incapable of doing what I thought I was best at and loved to- to write.

Maybe its my fault- I am lazy. Despite that, I just feel incapable otherwise. Its as if I’ve become handicapped, lost my limbs or lungs or heart or just everything.

Being sad and hurt allowed me to vent it out and write. Pain helps. I tried, in vain.

I think its true. As they say, external wound and pain are superficial and its when the heart is bleeding with sorrow and grief and misery that you really suffer. The turmoil within is worse than the injuries on surface. But I don’t have either. I tried the latter- got my ears pierced again in an attempt to “feel” the pain. Needless to say, it didn’t help matters much.

Even loneliness is something that’s so detached. Yet so deeply entrenched into the psyche. I feel miserably lonely at times. That solitude doesn’t encourage any creativity.

I think I’ve run out of reasons, of miseries to put blame on for my incompetence.

Nothing seems to help.

And I resort to whining, which just tires you out and saps your creativity further.

Maybe I should just continue to write. Somewhere, sometime I’ll find a way out or a way in. I must force myself to write everyday. I have to let things affect me. See, hear, feel and experience. And express everything. Maybe that will help.

I have to keep trying. I must.