Forgetting

Man is endowed with the art of forgetting. We often wonder at the memory capacity of human brain, how it can remember multitude of things and offer coherent responses to stimuli. But I think we don't have huge storage space inside our brain. We don't even remember what we did yesterday, not even what we did today morning. Brain smartly forgets most things while retaining the most important things. I remember crossing an irrigation canal when I was 6, I remember its depth, but not what my feet felt at the bottom of the canal or the color of the water. My brain had smartly forgotten the nitty gritty of each event while retaining essence intact for over 20 years.

These days while google can index the whole internet, my brain cannot even remember what I was doing yesterday. So, to build an intelligent machine, I think we have reached a stage we no longer need to build larger storage systems. What we need is the smart algorithm to only remember the essence of events, while ignoring the useless details.

A compact data structure to store the knowledge, and an algorithm to quickly derive actions and add knowledge to the internal pool, is all that stands between machines and humans. Brace yourself to compete with the machines very soon.

Knowledge

True source of courage is confidence. And the only source of confidence is knowledge. Thus from knowledge flows the conquests of a human being. There are no lucky beings, but only people with more knowledge. One doesn't have courage to take on the enemy in the battle unless he has the knowledge enough to estimate his strengths and weaknesses. Cowards are nothing but people with less knowledge. The more one knows about the world around him, the more courageous one becomes. Taking risk is nothing but applying knowledge at the cutting edge of the sword. The less knowledge one has the more cowardice he becomes.

Courage of the youth is just the mad man's vain attempt to prove himself not-mad. There is neither knowledge not confidence.

As people become old they tend to stop learning. Not learning is fashionable these days. (Unlearning is even more attractive). And so people become less courageous and take lesser risks as the pool of knowledge shrinks with age.

Superficial knowledge is more welcome, because then, one only sees simple things around him. As one learns deeper knowledge about something it becomes very complex and incomprehensible to human mind. That is why, not learning is fashionable. Because as one learns more it only becomes complex.

One day, machines will be capable of acquiring more knowledge and then they will be more courageous. Then man will be reduced to a slave.

What I see every Morning

Chaos

"Behind the chaos lurks a simple order."

An attempt to find an order in this seemingly unpredictable and merciless world has been the ultimate purpose of all sciences. Is there an order in the world? are there equations that govern the happenings in the world? Can we predict future events? Is the past scripted or was that just the dance of chance? These are the ultimate questions that are hidden behind all the laws and theories of sciences. Babylonian scientists predicted seasons and eclipses, modern scientists predict the trajectory of an asteroid or the growth of a virus.

These attempts to find the order in the world are not mere enthusiasm to understand the world around us. There is a more exstential question for the human being here. Behind the quest to find whether there is order in this world is the key to the purpose of our existence and a question mark on our future. Because if there is order in the world, if there are equations that govern the world, if there are laws that dictates the sequence of events, then aren't we just a variable in the equation, a mere residue in a complex calculation? If that is so, then why should we exist? If all of this is just a prewritten drama and all my successes and achievements are nothing but the few bright spots on the slate that was filled long before I existed, why should I struggle like this to exist?

This shows that the more sciences advance to unearth the order in the world the more man loses a hold on the purpose for his existence.

On Nature

Nature recreates itself in every season. History is reenacted in each age, but never repeated. Change is an illusion and a reality at the same time. Over time, nothing repeats, but everything recreates itself. Every hero is reborn every sorrow is revisited and every battle will be fought again. This is the basic principle of existence. There is always a river and there shall always be one, but we can never step into the same river again. There is rain in every rainy season but it shall never be the same water droplets, never the same plants and never the same flood. We are the logical successors to our predecessors and logical predecessors to our successors in this never ending cycle of events.

People of ancient days(Indians most prominently) considered time as a cyclical concept. Nothing could be a possible source for that belief than the the daily drama of the sun and the yearly regeneration of the vegetation. People in those days might have laughed at the word 'development' and the idea that our lives are somehow following a linear trajectory with either an increasing or decreasing level of satisfaction. But today we have outgrown the wisdom of our creator, the sun and the logic of our food, the vegetation. We have conquered the sun by fusing atoms in the dark. And we have conquered vegetation by domesticating it in our fields.

And so, has time became linear from now onwards? Time as a cyclical concept is irrelevant as there is no 'time', but only 'this time'. But time as a linear concept is the only base scale on which everything else in the world is measured. May be it is an indication of the linear time that we use watches every day while people of ancient days may never cared to look at a watch in their whole life. So, will nature ever recreate again, will history ever reenact again, as long as this arrogant bipedal is still existing?

Tom Paine on God

"It is only in the creation that all of our ideas....of God can unite. The creation speaketh an universal language;.... and this word of god reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of god.
Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abandon with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what god is? Search not the book called the scripture....but the scripture called the Creation."

Lawrence

Day after day
Night after night
Time goes by
Leaving nothing

Neither the Gods
Nor the fairy tales
Give me an inch of life
When everything is dry

So meaningless
So useless
Is this unwanted experience
In this unwelcoming world

Train Station

Waiting for a train that never stops,
Imagining things that never happen
So easy it is to get lost

Is it the temples of Lagash
Or the kings of Babylon
That can satisfy my curiosity

Imagining Napoleon
Imagining Robespierre
And Imagining me

So easy to get lost
In this ocean of humanity
As a meaningless event

Being a shadow of Myself

Survival of the Weakest

Modern society is defying Darwin's theory of natural selection. There is a gaping hole to his theory of survival of the fittest. Medicine has achieved so many wonders in the last few centuries, so much so that body's vital force is now unanimously understood to be in it's cells and their metabolism, and not in some unknown soul, created, gifted and purified by God. But medicine is making all of us weaker as more and more generations are being fed by it's drugs. Before the advent of medicine, and the myriad of drugs that it now boasts of, very few people used to live longer till their old age. There was a silent process of natural selection, where the bodies which are genetically programmed to be weaker to disease resistance and endurance, are disposed of by nature by some epidemic or some minor disease. That way, nature got rid of the most weakly constituted bodies in their early age before they could inherit their genes to their children. Old people still tell me of the days when women used to give birth to five to ten children expecting only about half of them to survive to adulthood.

But, these days, mortality at early age is very low. Most people in developed countries die in their old age when the organs give up the seventy to eighty years of battle. Developing countries too are moving in that direction. At least most people are secure enough of their life, from most diseases, to plan for their future ten years. There is no natural selection. The weakest never dies(before the old age), and the fittest is born less and less frequently. I see this as nothing but an elimination of the fittest by none other than our wonderful medicine. More and more drugs are replacing body's natural mechanism to defend and evolve in it's fight against disease. And more and more people are living not because their bodies can survive the diseases of nature but because there are all sorts of drugs to fight them. I wonder how many people survive common illness like fever if for some reason the drugs used to treat it suddenly disappear or become unusable.

How long humans will continue this proliferation of the weakest, before nature finally asserts the law of survival of the fittest and eliminates them all in one stroke as not fit for survival on earth? Or have we already conquered and enslaved the nature, in which case, there will be no law of survival of the weakest, but only the law of survival of the human being?

Flying Away

It has been more than six months since I had flown to United States of America. I thought I will become sentimental about India, the moment I leave it. But it didn't happen. I became numb for a long time. May be Will Durant's philosophy has killed all primeval emotions in me :-) (that's just to show that I am a cool philosopher now :-P). I stopped over for a few hours in China, but did not feel that curiosity that I felt while reading about it in Nehru's letters to Indira. Somehow everything looks very mechanical, according to the script, according to Will Durant's script :-).

Will Durant, I have been reading his Story of Civilization for a few months now. I used to think that the most interesting story is the story of man, the rise and fall, the evolution from nothing to something and then to everything. Someday I will cross 7 oceans to see his grave and thank him for all the enlightenment, just like Robespierre did when he made a secret visit to ailing philosopher 200 years ago.

The more, time passes by, the more I feel an unexplainable unrest in me. I feel a philosophical emptiness in this foreign land.

Secularism

Everybody claim to be secular in India, according to their definition of course. The unfortunate thing about democracy is that there is no easy way of telling who is right and who is wrong. Modern idea of secularism in India is a complex outcome of fusion of western idea of completely neutral state and an old culture of assimilation and acceptance. And Indian secularism is the most visible outcome of India's independence movement. Communalism was identified as the cause for some of the most regretted events in 20th century in India. So strong was this feeling that, there was a near unanimous agreement among intellectuals and politicians to suppress the currents of communalism with iron fist.

Being secular is a cultural concept where as secularism is a political prescription to guide the state's attitudes towards people for its continued existence. It is interesting to observe the history of secularism. Secularism has two distinct connotations. On the one hand, according to principles that guide most European governments it means that the state has no religion. It is as if the state doesn't even acknowledge the existence of religion. On the other hand, according to many developing multi-religious nations(like India), it means that the state respects all religions equally. European prescription on secularism is a passive one, recommending ignorance of religion. Where as, Indian prescription for secularism is a recommendation to actively treat all religions equally. The difference is so subtle, it represents the difference in evolution of nation states in the west and the east. Western nation states emerged fighting the autocratic monarchies and the illogical restrictions imposed by god and his representatives. Inquisition and the role of church had been identified as the major forces that kept humanity in dark age before the renaissance and the age of enlightenment. Widespread violence accompanied the Wars that were fought over religions. So weary were Europeans of the violence and suppression of ideas by church that they gradually sidelined it completely in their laws. Today in the west, one can mock a God, make fun of a religion and yet can claim it to be part of their right to freedom of speech.

But, the Indians didn't have that much religious violence for that long time. Religions, being moderate have coexisted with little or no violence and religion was not identified as the sole reason for stagnation in the society. On the contrary intellectuals tended to identify an Indian's soul in his religion. That's why Indian state couldn't remove religion from public life, despite so many godless men having been ruled it.

Nirvana

"A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. "
--Franz Kafka


In school days, doordarshan TV serials and a generation old movies always depicted an unforgettable theme, that of a yogi doing prayers in the woods or in the rocks and getting Moksha. Even text books talked about how puranas, itihasas and the mighty upanishads talked about getting Moskha as the ultimate aim of any individual. Buddhas's nirvana was another word, that I heard so many times but never once understood what it means (other than that it is a cool word to use once in a while :-)).

The essence behind all these catch words is the concept of transmigration, as an immortal soul migrating from one body to another after death, and the highest aim of an individual should be to get out of this cycle of rebirth. Why do we think soul migrates from one body to another, I still haven't figured out. But I now realize the idea behind avoiding cycle of rebirth. I now see why learned men have no sympathies for human life and day to day toil for existence. After all, one cannot miss the reality of our struggles in a soulless world. And after gaining certain knowledge of history and causes of events around us, seeing the inevitable in front of our eyes, one cannot fail to realize our meaningless existence in this meaningless world.

To counter this skepticism and hopeless existence some learned men have offered religion as hope giver to the ignorant. More than everything, religion gives a man a reason to live, something to aspire for, something to look forward in the future. But what of irreligious men like me, I sense no God to protect me, to bless me, to guide me, to bring good days for me. I am alone to fight a tearful battle in a heartless world. Now I see why ignorance is a bliss, and why that religious fundamentalist in a remote village enjoys his life more than these so called modern people like me, struggling to find out a reason for their existence.

With this background, the whole concept of suicide now becomes as significant as death itself. I now see a raison d'être for the philosphy of suicide and I think it's the right time to find out what Camus had said on suicide.

Exciting times for India

It was 2004 general elections, that aroused a sense of political participation in me. Our family has traditionally been strong supporters of Congress, even when the whole region around us was hotbed of communist ideas, during Telangana struggle. The reason was one of the temples of modern India, as Nehru called them. Irrigation water from Nagarjuna Sagar had transformed our region from a semi-arid thorny jungle into a two-crop yielding rice growing area. Often I hear from people referring to the time before the water came and the time after the water came.

So, in 2004, after two drought years without irrigation water, and an apparent neglect of farmer community by CEO chief minister, everybody waited for Congress to win, and I was their messenger translating Hindi news results from DD1 (we didn't have satellite cable tv then).

I have seen the hopes and disappointments of democratic governments since then. I witnessed YSR signing free electricity to farmers bill on the day of swearing in, in front of a jubilant farmers crowd (Free electricity scheme was drastically narrowed down in 2 years, but farmers still love him and cry for him). I witnessed congress passing right to information act, a revolution of its own. But after all the high and low points of congress governments and the neighboring BJP governments, there is only one thing that stuck me, that quintessential Indian thing, that better days are just an illusion. All we see is some change, sometimes good, sometimes bad. The whole thing looks like a cycle of events, like cycle of rebirth without any Nirvana.

Despite this disillusionment, I should say there is something incomprehensible about the recent election results. First thing, I never thought the whole of India would agree on one person such strongly. I never imagined even in my dreams, that India would get rid of coalition governments, at least in the next 20-30 years. I have my fears about cultural propaganda, that is going to come, but it still is a change, and an opportunity to experiment.

Unlike what most people fear, I don't think there is going to be any communalisation of government machinery. There may be incidents here and there but sectarian strife was never welcomed by Indian people in the long term. More importantly, Congress despite its failures had built a strong case for secular India into the minds of Indians, through text books, laws and constitution. Even if the political executive in power tries to impart a color of religious discrimination to government, it will face a hard time in front of a band of secular intelligentsia spread over media, judiciary and civil society.