Thought Blog: Emotional Worldview Archives

Views on same-sex marriage

As California legalized same-sex marriage today,

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9269719

I never write on this topic -- but given this big judgement, I want to write down a few thoughts on this for the first and the last time.

People who support gay-marriages make these same arguments over and over again, and here are my answers to them:

1) If you dont like same-sex marriage, dont do it!
This argument is ridiculous, since if it were rational, then no laws could ever have been made. People can only control themselves by default, but millenniums ago people came together to form societies so that they could live together and decide on some common laws that make sense, and are agreed on by most people, and then enforced on the whole society. Like murder is wrong. They didnt think, if somebody thinks murder is wrong, he should not do it. Or child-sex for example, both the adult and the child may have agreed, but we all consensually agree that a child may not be able to make his own decisions correctly and wisely.

2) They give a history where women had no voting rights, right to property, etc and then slowly the rules came to be as they are today, where equality reigns supreme.
Just past rulings do not imply that any future rulings will be right. Lets decide on this now given the context of the present and the actual argument being made. Just because in the past we have become more and more liberal, it does not imply we should continue to do so without considering the current argument.

3) Gay marriage is a right!
Ridiculous. Nobody is telling you to not do anything here. Nobody is telling you to not live with your same-sex friend/lover or whatever you call that relationship. The fact is actually that you are asking the society for some privileges, not that society is infringing on your rights. You can do whatever you want to -- if you want to mentally consider that you are married, please do. But "marriage" and "family" are society-supported institutions. . so if you are asking for society to consider you as married, society has its own right to evaluate according to its own rules! Until societal rule is changed, gay marriage is not a right!

Now my own arguments:
1) Biology: As humans, only heterosexual couples can have children. Our society should view "marriage" and "family" as a group which can have and raise children, and have a lasting growth of relationships. This serves as an institution which represents our very meaning of life -- the very way we have reached this stage, the very way we grow ourselves, the very way we live.
2) Impact on children: As the next generation teenagers grow -- they will study at school that marriage can be both hetero and homosexual. They will see gay couples around in the society. And this will cause them to choose their own mate in either sex. This will cause a lot of emotional problems and relationship issues. The whole way we related to each other way will collapse. Although this is not a critical problem, since it will stabilize in some way or the other, what is a problem is that, half of these kids might end up in a gay marriage. Which will immediately cause half of the population of the new generation in the country to be infertile. This will raise very serious issues to the country -- ranging from social, sociological, to the economical, and to America's ability to retain its title as superpower.

More arguments could be made, but these are ones that come up at the top of my mind, and with the time I have.

comment on virginia tech shooting tragedy

A comment on this page regarding the shooting tragedy at the Virginia Tech is pasted below --- my view is that basically voilence, sex, drugs, and other misbehaviours should be removed from media (books, movies, internet, videos) and faith and spirituality should be reinforced in this country and culture, in order to avoid tese things. The first thing that should be done though is to stop sales of guns, handguns, rifles, etc. to each and everyone (except the police) and call back all guns that have been sold/registered.

==

Many will again be asking “Why”

I believe that Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine HIgh School shooting in Littleton, Colorado, answered that question in his address to the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee. What he said to our national leaders during this special session of Congress was painfully truthful.

They were not prepared for what he was to say, nor was it received well. It needs to be heard by every parent, every teacher, every politician, every sociologist, every psychologist, and every so-called expert! These courageous words spoken by Darrell Scott are powerful, penetrating, and deeply personal. There is no doubt that God sent this man as a voice crying in the wilderness. The following is a portion of the transcript:

“Since the dawn of creation there has been both good & evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.

“The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used.. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain’s heart.

“In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA - because I don’t believe that they are responsible for my daughter’s death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel’s murder I would be their strongest opponent.

I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy — it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best. This was written way before I knew I would be speaking here today:
Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You’ve stripped away our heritage,
You’ve outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question “Why?”
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!

” Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational
systems for most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact. What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs — politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts.

“As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America, and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him. To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA — I give to you a sincere challenge. Dare to examine your
own heart before casting the first stone!

My daughter’s death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!”

— Posted by Al Montreuil

Getting closer

Why does having no barrier with other people, able to speak out inner wishes with other people, not having too much of self-respect, contrast sharply with perceived behavior characteristics of successful, respectable people?

Progressive?

Progressive -- means not fearing to loose old ways, and seeking better and new paths, towards progress.

I used to think that I am a pretty non-conventional thinker, and progressive on many fronts, but I recently found that I am not as progressive.

Such things you come to know about yourself when you are looking for marriage mates. The process involves analyzing where you have been so far, what you stand for, and where you want to go and what you want to be -- since the decision, which comes once in a lifetime, changes life forever. And we must know a lot abt ourself before making the plunge.

Does a sense of acheivement excite you most in life? Then you are likely to be progressive.

A nice quote about a non-progressive lifestyle:

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconcious, grow up through the common -- this is my symphony.
- William Henry Channing, clergyman, reformer (1810-1884)

Marwaris (an Indian community) are progressive on the money front (do what they can to get more money) and conservative on the family front.

Progressiveness is one imp characteristic that we should match in our lifemate.

Personal Existence

Characteristics of a Person's "Existence":

A particular outlook, a particular direction, a particular preference for a way of life, a confidence that self's way of life works, exposure of the inner unreasoning self out in the open available for interpersonal relationships and connecting with people, a life plan aligned with promotion of self survival and happiness.

(This is an excerpt of an entry I made in my personal blog on July 25, 2004)

Posted by at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview

Making most of it

I have been used to taking life very lightly. I now want to make the most of it.

Posted by at 1:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Want to do

A person can not be described only by his behavior: it is also important to include "what he wants to do".

Posted by at 1:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Words

Whatever you say, is gone. It can never be undone.

Be best at all times -- be what you are at all times -- be what you should be at all times.

If you are unsure whether you should say a thing, stop right there, and think twice before saying it.

Life can change because of it, to be never undone.

Identity due to force-feedback response to conditioning

Force feedback...!! It is the feedback that many gaming machines offer us in response to an instruction that we give to it. For example, in the car racing gaming machines, when we try to move the steering wheel in a particular direction to turn the car, the wheel offers us resistance in the opposite direction or assistance in the same direction to simulate real conditions like inertia of the vehicle, friction of the wheels, air, etc.

Isnt this similar to the response that we give to the conditioning the outer world gives to us, which eventually defines our identity and makes us what we think we are?

When somebody suggests us to do one particular thing, often we either tend to think he is right, and think "that is what I feel I should do", or we tend to think that he is wrong, and think "it is better if I do the opposite". Now, it might appear that this is very obvious, whats so significant about this pattern. I beleive it is. Because this suggestion actually does impact our thinking..! It actually changes our opinions either towards the suggestion or opposite to it, and makes it "change" - makes it different than what it was before -- in other words: "polarizes" it. And this is very often in essence the form in which "conditioning" occurs: polarization due to explicit or implicit suggestions.

This conditioning makes us develop opinions and choices; and the development of these opinions over the longer run makes us what we think we are, since we are after all, a "choosing bag". And our very manifestation in reality is our self-expression of our thoughts, our ideas, and our choices...

Though these are subject to change and conditioning very easily over time, we still appear to "feel" that they have some permanence associated with them and the resulting self-identity has some static or permanent nature, and one of our important goals then becomes to protect our identity, and to "exercise" it.

I have observed that for some people, following lifestyle choices ("exercising identity") becomes more important than everything else, even moral obligations.

Somehow I believe that for me, moral obligations are more important than lifestyle choices, but I am not very sure how strongly I believe that.

By the way, I also think that marriage makes us value lifestyle (greatly overlapping with family values) more and more and more....over everything else...

Will the great Indian family survive

A good article in rediff -- interview with Gitanjali Prasad, author of "The Great Indian Family - New Roles, Old Responsibilities":

Will the great Indian family survive?

Posted by at 6:02 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Image of Limited Good

Excerpt from Register's small article-note -- What cultures don't share Western economic values? -- a view from George Foster, the late anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley

In his A Primitive Mexican Economy (1942) and in later works such as Empire's Children: The People of Tzintzuntzan (1973), Foster wrote of Mexican villagers who believed that, quite the opposite of how we are led to think, all things that are good (wealth, health, good fortune, luck, and happiness) are fixed and finite within the community.

"Good" is limited in quantity, hence the "image of limited good". Given this belief, all individuals are entitled to their fair share. If one individual has far more than their fair share, for whatever reason, this is viewed as immoral. Such a person would be regarded as selfish, an improper citizen, and more or less a community vandal or thief.

With the belief of the "image of limited good", these Mexican villagers would therefore condemn as immoral many of our Western economic and business practices and social behaviors. Among these would be our allowance of the amassing of great fortunes whilst others are poor, the driving of business rivals into bankruptcy, the unwillingness of many to be charitable in heart as well as mind. The list goes on.

Applies to India as well, I guess!

Posted by at 4:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview

"The Clean Slate"

To really understand oneself and the world better, one should start with a clean slate.

Erase all the criss-crosses of the chalk on it, all the dust that has settled on it, and wipe it clean with water and cloth.

Then restart writing on it, this time do it very carefully and slowly.....

Start with "Should I live or should I die? Why should I want to live?" Give this question some deep thought.

Then go to "What should I do with my time here? What do I want?". Throw in the "Who am I?" and "What have I been doing all this time?" in there somewhere.

After posing various questions, and writing the answers down, which can take days, weeks, months or years, you should have a new perspective on which to make judgements, decisions, etc.

Once the slate is clean, and has statements which only have been put there with deliberate thought, we become open to new ways of thought -- this is its biggest advantage. So at that point, you view whatever you had learned, or got misguided in the past, in a completely different light.

However, I have noticed that this sometimes, at least in my case (see this post and this post) and someone else's I know, results in an individualistic outlook. If one really starts thinking -- "what do I really want", he goes in the "alone, egotist, its-my-life" individualistic approach.

At that point, Yoga, meditation and in general spirituality start helping. Getting to know the world consciousness start having more meaning. "God", "religion", "spirituality", "yoga", "meditation" all start looking as synonyms of non-egoism and dissolved-boundaries-between-self-and-everything-else.

Science, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, technology, culture, relationships, etc start looking as the mirrors of the a kaleidoscope using the light of "ego" and "the non-living".

And then you go crazy, and visit a shrink. Just kidding! :)

UPDATE: Rishi pointed to his very splendidly written insights in this blog post, which I commented to as well.

Awareness

Its surprising to see so many people not being "aware" of what they do -- for them, their natural self is unassailable, unpenetrable, and solid, and awareness only can reach upto its borders.

But I think that one leap in world understanding when our awareness goes much deeper into our own naturral self, and other's.

Posted by at 5:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Faith

Going back home

To this post, about "being twenty something", there were some good comments. For more visibility, I am pasting one of the nice comments that I got, and one of my comment that I made in response.

----------------------
Rmackins wrote:
I have been out of England for two years to Australia for one year and then Korea for another. By the time I came back a year ago it was like everything had grown up and i hadn't. I'm not sure i really want to grow up but I can identify with the comment move forward or get stuck in the past. It's difficult though.

With the pressures of modern day society we have it so much harder than our parents. Every one has a loan, no-one can get a house because they're so expensive, a degree does not guarantee a well paying job and even if it did, would i want to be doing something related to what i chose to study 10 years ago?

I think i want a job that gives me the opportunity to travel (never would have guessed it), is socially concerened and doesn't require me to sit in the same chair for months on end. I think I know how to get it but i may have to sacrifice these things in order to get to it.

I have been travelling around because I don't want an ordinary life but in the end, our roots stabilise us and sometimes you can't see what you actually have for what you want. My family is the most important thing to me. That is why I have moved back to the city I was born in. They are always there for me no matter how scary the world is.

For now i'm trying to stop running and let the grass grow a bit. I'm in the mind set that something will turn up, as long as I keep on looking.

Posted by: rmakins | May 13, 2006 11:48 AM
-------------------------
grkhetan wrote:

Rmakins,

I understand what you face. I do face some sort of a similar situation.

I have come here to the US for the last 5 years. And whenever I visit my hometown, I have this weird feeling. My hometown is a small town in India, and the cultural gap between there and where I am now (San Francisco, USA), is so huge, that I become confused as to who I am, and what I was supposed to be, where I was heading, and where did I head to... I see my family there, cousins, and get this so-weird feeling that their development paths diverged from mine 5 years ago, and somehow something doesnt feel right -- the people have become somewhat different, or maybe I have changed, or maybe my perspective has change, or maybe all of these. But connecting with them in a similar manner as before just does not workout.

Being in a different culture changes you slowly, slowly, until you stop recognizing yourself. Changing cultures, is not a simple thing to do, and requires emotional strength beyond what I have.

I still beleive that going back to my hometown might give me the highest meaning for my life that I could ever give, but I am ever so afraid of the consequences of looking back, not confident at all whether that is the best way of doing things, especially when the world, wholly, is moving forward. Sometimes, emotions and biological survival play games against you, and world is so confusing.
At other times, I feel that being in ignorance is actually bliss, as I see many people around me who have similar situations, just loving the present with a care-free mind without stepping back and looking where they are.
Somebody has said rightly, "take it easy". But others have also righly said, "do what your heart says".

The problem is that hearts are prone to mistakes.
-------------------------

the good things

Good things about me are not mine. I think most of my moral inclinations, my malleable mindset, whatever few virtues that I have, have been borrowed, directly learned from others surrounding me.

I think that if we always try to look at the better sides of people, their virtues, and appreciate them by heart, then the world feels a very nice place to be in. We see goodness and happiness all around us, and feel like being in heaven. And then slowly, we start getting those good things into ourselves, and become a better person. Thus, the ability to perceive only the good in people helps us become good ourselves, and make us feel better as well. Its a win-win situation.

It is said that we get molded based on the company we keep. Bad company, bad friends yield a bad person. But I think if we try to see only the good in our friends and acquaintainces, we become like as if we had the best company of all!

One exercise I can imagine being done in this vein is -- a group of people should sit together and take turns recounting the good virtues of the people they have met in their lives. This will be an amazing exercise, and will allow people to know each other better, know that there are so many good people in the world, know that good is abundant, and in turn will make them better people themselves!

relationships

Sometimes you feel that you can analytically analyze each nut and bolt of a relationship. But then sometimes you realize, like I am doing now, that it is so hard to do that. A relationship is a heavenly creation which has so many varied emotions (security, love, ego, fear, greed, selfishness, fun, self-expression, etc etc) so much intricately involved, that it is in my opinion a fallacy to beleive that your analysis has completely described a relationship.

When relationships work, life feels so good that you are ready to give off all intellectual/analytical stress on the mind, and just relax in bliss, going into the natural state of mind, which is emotional.

By relationships I mean, of course, every relationship under the sun, including brother-sister, parent-child, husband-wife, boyfriend-girlfriend, friend-friend, teacher-student, colleague, parent-of-friend, etc etc etc etc.

Life is a matter of joy.

Posted by at 12:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Recommended

Truth or Happiness?

A conscious decision must be made as to which direction does one consider important -- truth or happiness.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar wrote something like -- "Wisdom is a burden, if it does not make you free". I think this higher level statement implies that wisdom is of no use if it is directed towards just imposing what is right or just finding what is right, and not applied towards finding happiness for self and others.

This is completely true, I beleive. I have been on the wrong path many times. My intention often turns out to be "find what is right", instead "lets be happy".

I have experience now which says that -- happiness is the better path, looking from the holistic point of view.

For example, "judgement". These days I have gotten stronger opinions about morals and rightdoing, as I now look at behavior from a very keenly observant point of view, and find many "wrong" intentions in daily normal behavior. For me, "ego" also falls in the wrong category, and this is one of important reasons why I find all behavior "bad" these days. However, I do find the right ones, dont worry. In fact I find more right ones than bad ones than many other people do, and hence I consider myself close to many people.

But I recently found that it was not helping me. Judging everybody was taking me nowhere. I needed to like the people as they are. Even though they are bad, they always have a good side, if not apparent, sometimes we need to dig it out from them. And most people need love and love can be the means of relationships. (these days, when it is becoming easy to live, people are more tending to not needing love with other people, but i am sure, if they have the proper experience, they will ultimate realize it regardless of how individualistic they are).

And then, when I found somebody who was really not understanding how things work and his/her lack of empathy was causing trouble for everybody, instead of finding solutions to the problem that lead to peace and happiness for all, my ego and anger started rising and I started finding ways which gave support to them (ego and anger) instead, causing bad consequences. However, hopefully I have realized soon, and I can swerve the future.

Let us all be successful in findling joy for everyone. Let was walk vehemently on that path, with determination to never fail.

God help us in doing this.

Old, childhood friends

When we are small -- kids in high school or early college, we are more "real" and spontaneous. And then slowly we start wearing artificial "clothes".

When we meet good ol' friends from early yeers, with whom we have had natural friendships, it feels very good since we can remove our artificial clothes for a while, and relive our natural self.

However, when we meet old friends, with whom we had friendship with artifical clothes on, and then whether we feel good depends on whether our current artifical clothes are compatible with the artificial clothes we had on when we formed the relationship. If they are different, then we are usually surprised by our differences with him, and how we no longer can relive a friendship with him/her.

Posted by at 5:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview

meditation

I think meditation and spirituality are a must in life. One must learn to like silence, inner fulfillment and satisfaction, happiness, faith, calmness, giving, not being egoistic to feel your presence, etc.

Some of the immediate good things coming out of this that we learn to smile and love other people, instead of fighting them and trying to get ahead of them.

Posted by at 2:25 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Faith

Robot Demonstrates Self-awareness

I found an interesting article on slashdot today, related to consciousness, very interesting:
"Robot Demonstrates Self-awareness"
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/22/0112228&tid=216&tid=14

The news article the story points to is a must read. And as always, the comments on the slashdot page are also very interesting.

For example:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171899&cid=14314470
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171899&cid=14315211

Actually this is related to past blog entry of mine: "Questioning assumptions and becoming more aware"

Posted by at 3:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Faith

Intelligent design and Natural Selection

I understand that darwin's theory of evolution must be true.

I also developed some insights by just thinking about evolution before.

But I feel that beleiving in it strongly makes us too strongly scientific, and less religious/spiiritual. And that this can have negative consequences, on the well being of our emotional lives and institutions.

I think it is good to give a mention to Intelligent Design in biology textbooks, saying that some people do beleive in such a theory.

This may leave some more place in their hearts to follow religion later in their lives.

Posted by at 1:11 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview

Meaning and Identity from History

Found this very nice post about Indian history: Revisioning Indian history.

Apart from the good material in the post, there are some very informative comments as well.

Some comments from Sanjay caught my attention -- he gave links to the Gulf of Canbay excavation, which says it was dated to around 7500BC, and a video link which reportedly points out that all non-African people have origins in South-East Asia, based on Oxford DNA study.

But I dont agree with his insights in his last comment. I am pasting his comment below for sake of preservation. And I added another comment on that page, which also I am pasting beneath his comment below, for archiving.

--------------
Recently, several intellectuals have made the point that an obsession with history (more specifically, an historical narrative) is primarily a Western phenomenon. For the european, a historical grand narrative that stood unbroken & unchallenged was a marker of the current power equation (winner take all including the writing of history), an alpha-male type display. Any challenge to it was to be fiercely resisted because it represented an actual or potential erosion of power.

Others have noted with irony the sight of Indians clawing & fighting about historical narratives & have concluded that it demonstrates the extent to which both the indian Left & the Right remain mentally colonized to this day.

Note the recent furore over the movie Mangal Pandey (which went all the way to L.S.) & the potential of conflicting historical narratives to lead to actual street conflict.

There is yet a third group of intellectuals who are re-examining the reaction of europeans upon their first encounter with Indian history. European scholars were aghast "Indians have no history, nor a concrete sense of history", they sniffed. Without history, you're "pre-historic' & "backward", they claimed.

This judgement made some of our babus very ashamed & they worked up significant amounts of sweat as they went about the task of trying to prove the white folks wrong. Very few indians, including gandhiji btw, reflected deeply about why Indians were ahistorical & chose NOT to write grand historical narratives.

To understand gandhi's support for ahistoricity, lets consider an historically attested event such as the holocaust. There are two historical narratives one could construct around this event:

1. The holocaust must never happen to the JEWISH people again
2. The holocaust must never happen to ANY people again

Method #1 leads to a narrative which freezes Jews as perpetual victims; nazis/ germans as perpetual evil doers. Even in 2042, kids will be taught what the germans did to the jews 100 yrs ago. Once community becomes evil forever vs. the other.

Method #2 recognizes that good & evil resides within each of us, it is not "us vs them", no one is perpetually good, nor perpetually evil. There is no point in perpetually demonizing one single community at the expense of another. Therefore, it leads to a historical paradigm where real names of people & communities are erased. Yet, there is also the imperative of recognizing that evil did happen & that we do need to learn from history. So, you mythologize the names - the good guys become the pandavas; the bad guys become the kauravas. You erase the historical tracks, yet you preserve the learning from history.

#2 leads to the ahistorical paradigm which our ancestors must have thought was correct for India.

In my view, if Secular-Right India is seeking a position on Indian history, then it is more authentically Indian, more principled, more defensible, more sensible, more evolved to choose the ahistorical position than to get mired in Left vs Right debates. There are far more important things to do.

imho,
Sanjay
------------

My comment:

------------
This is with reference to the above post by Sanjay.

Sanjay, I think that sometimes #1 is also important.

History, apart from lessons, also provides the very very important sense of "meaning" and "identity". The meaning and identity part of history does not come out if you dont have more particulars about the event (like a narrative, timing details, who-who, etc).

For example, lets imagine a situation similar to the movie "Memento" -- lets say he keeps forgetting what happenned in his past, but still he manages to keep lessons he learns by writing it onto pieces of papers in his pocket. Now, at any given time, he will have all the lessons he learnt in his life, but he wont know what to do now, and why. He wont know who he is, and what is his meaning and purpose.

Knowing lessons means he will know the rules of the game, but he will have no clue as regards to the game's objective.
------------

arrogance begets sharpness

When I try to act smart (arrogance), my sharpness of looking at things increases.

When I act in the normal way -- "we are all equal, and good" -- it decreases.

(similar to what i said in this post)

Posted by at 3:23 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Personal

life as a celebration

Young man:

Treat life as a celebration -- celebration of the human spirit. Life is short; and you just have one of it. Make sure to appreciate all these colorful myriad human faculties, otherwise time will soon pass.

There are so many things wonderful about life --

the way we want to laugh out ourselves :-D
the way we want to accomplish so much in life, we try and learn techniques of how to get things done faster, and reliabily
the way we develop relationships with people, and have fun and happiness together; accomplish something together, grow together
the way we fight, quarrel on small things, as if we really like doing it (well, sometimes we do; and sometimes, quarelling leads to better solution for the situation)
the way we try to seek meaning (we should) in all our endeavors; and try to progress towards an enriching, fulfilling life;
the way we try to smile and solve problems; try to take an effort to make things better for as many people around us as possible
the way we feel insecure and nervous because of the great uncertainties that life, nature provide us, and how we seek emotional and material support to curb those feelings; how we need somebody to talk about the problems, issues that we are facing, and need his helping hand
the way we all, in the end, try to acheive the same things:
1. a sense of accomplishment and meaning
2. doing something worthwhile to us
3. raise a happy, nourishing family
4. fulfill our desires, and our responsibilites
5. security for the future that we will be able to continue doing this
6. a smile on our face
All this because, we are afterall, the same people.. On the surface, we are different, but we all come from the same old ancestors right there in Africa...we are all brothers and sisters. Though we like to divide ourselves, in order to have someone to compare against, and in order to have a better sense of identity, we cannot ignore the same hunger for love in everybody's eyes..
the way we all feel some attraction to the wrong side..., to things like drugs, and lust, which blind us and make us ignorant of the way we wanted to go, and the way we are going
the wonderful arts that we have created -- the glorious ways we have learned to draw, paint, dance, sing, play,...
the wonderful society that we have created.. with such nobel insituitions such as marriage, government, religion, industry,.. all meant to further celebrate our existence

Young man, time is short; dont let this time go away; live fulfillingly, meaningfully; and appreciate and celebrate our existence and its infinite infinitely magnificent dimensions...

Posted by at 3:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Purpose, consciousness

I think the world of consciousness is like the mathematical world -- the mathematical world is so detached from the material world -- (2+2=4) -- is true whether this world exists or not. (p->q && q->r => p->r) would have been true, even if the big bang wouldnt have taken place. I mean to say that, these are "mathematical properties" which have an existence independent of things/matter.

Likewise, I think consciousness is a property -- it is not limited by the life of the biological organism/material body in which it exists. Its a property and properties dont have lifetimes, but instances/manifestations of the property do.

And consciousness has this primary characteristic of "awareness". And I think "awareness" in itself is also somehow a universal, abstract, forever-existing-and-true property.

And consciousness has this amazing characteristic of "seeking meaning" (primarily for itself, but thence also results into seeking meaning for things)

Now, "meaning" is also a universal property, related to "causality", "reason" and "purpose", which are all universal properties.

So....consciousness seeking self-meaning despite the temporary existence of it's instance....is acceptable?

non-harming

Alas, how strongly do I feel the need to lead life without harming anybody's sentiments. Is it possible? Is it recommended?

Virtual layer over truth

I am now beginning to stop minding and start accepting and somewhat loving a virtual layer over the absolute truth, especially when the layer is pro-life and pro-happiness.

Posted by at 4:37 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Faith

Bad habits

Many bad habits and behavior actually help in one way or the other.
And many things that help the world, are actually bad habits in some other way.

Posted by at 4:34 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Faith

Ancient Indian History: So mysterious

A mail sent to some Indian friends (was reading a little about Indian philosophy the past few days)

Hi,

I found an interesting article on Ancient Indian History; it is long, but consists of lots of references to various books, events, and books, indicating that it has some substance. However, according to the organized world, this essay will fall into the category of indian religious fanatics' opinions, considering the hugeness of the dates. I searched some other articles of Prasad Gokhale on http://groups.google.com, and he seems to have studied Indian history a LOT. He is presumably a PhD in Mech.

http://gaurang.org/indian_phil/prasad_gokhale_indian_history.html

(This is a local copy of the article)

Since I know that most of you wont be reading the article, here is the chronology he develops:

Swayambhuva Manu 29,000 B.C.
Veda (early stages) 23,720 B.C.
Samhita (Taitiriya) 22,000 B.C.
Manu Chakshushu 17,500 B.C.
King Pruthu 16,050 B.C.
Manu Vaivasvata 14,000 B.C.
Indra-Skanda dialogue (Mahabharat) 13,000 B.C.
Glaciation period 8,000 B.C.
Dasharadnya War 7,000 B.C.
Ramayana 5,500 B.C.
Orion period 4,000 B.C.
Greeks separate 4,000 B.C.
Rajatarangini begins 3,450 B.C.
Gonanda-I of Kashmir 3,238 B.C.
Mahabharata 3,138 B.C.
Veda (last stages) 3,100 B.C.
Saptarsi era begins 3,076 B.C.
Saraswati-Sindhu Culture 3,000 B.C.
Gautam Siddharta born 1,887 B.C.
Gautam Siddharta Nirvana 1,807 B.C.
Mahaveer Jain born 1,862 B.C.
Chandragupta Maurya 1,534 B.C.
Ashoka Maurya 1,482 B.C.
Ashoka Gonanda 1,448 B.C.
Kanishka 1,294 B.C.
Kumarila Bhatta 557 B.C.
Vruddha Garga 550 B.C.
Aadi Shankaracharya born 509 B.C.
Harsha Vikramaditya 457 B.C.
Shatkarani Gautamiputra 433 B.C.
Chandragupta Gupta 327 B.C.
Shakari Vikramaditya 57 B.C.
Shalivahan 78 A.D.
Huen-Tsang 625 A.D.
Kalhana (Kashmiri historian) 1,148 A.D

About Aryan Invasion Theory, I suggest reading the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_invasion_theory

This has only concrete evidences (although this is only upto 3000 BC).

My personal opinion on reading some articles on the web is that there was no Aryan Invasion; I think we have been here a long time; our scriptures show evidences of being here a long time. We and dravidians are mostly of the same heritage, only they forked out sometime from the Vedic people via Sage Agastya. Harappa civilization was part of Vedic civilization; We dont show enough aggressiveness for me to believe that we were Britishers of the 2nd BCE millenium, invading terretories.

Secondly, some of our scriptures show highly developed mental maturity. In fact, even Egyptians making that Great Pyramid in 2600BC show great mental maturity. This all goes to show that we, as humans, havent developed in mental capacity as much we tend to think; its only cumulative knowledge growth that we are standing upon.

Thirdly, the ancient past of India, as little as we know of it, feels very mysterious and exciting. What were they doing thousands of years ago --- riting scriptures which document the motions of stars, planets, sun and moon to such accuracy; creating social rituals, festivals for social life, trying to fill the mundane life with meaning such that even we today are dependent on their meaning-generating principles; writing stories which require great imagination and social presence; creating religion, which demonstrate extraordinary emotional development of the mind; generating thoughts of the highest philosophical calibre (even contemporary thoughts on meaning of life http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/meaning2.htm matches so much to, say, this hymn 10.129 from the RigVeda, written anywhere between 2000BC-20000BC:

====================================================
Non-being then existed not nor being:
There was no air, nor sky that is beyond it.
What was concealed? Wherein? In whose protection?
And was there deep unfathomable water?

Death then existed not nor life immortal;
Of neither night nor day was any token.
By its inherent force the One breathed windless:
No other thing than that beyond existed.

Darkness there was at first by darkness hidden;
Without distinctive marks, this all was water.
That which, becoming, by the void was covered,
That One by force of heat came into being.

Desire entered the One in the beginning:
It was the earliest seed, of thought the product.
The sages searching in their hearts with wisdom,
Found out the bond of being in non-being.

Their ray extended light across the darkness:
But was the One above or was it under?
Creative force was there, and fertile power:
Below was energy, above was impulse.

Who knows for certain? Who shall here declare it?
Whence was it born, and whence came this creation?
The gods were born after this world's creation:
Then who can konw from whence it has arisen?

None knoweth whence creation has arisen;
And whether he has or has not produced it:
He who surveys it in the highest heaven,
He only knows, or haply he may know not.
===============================================

); developing building capacity so much as to be able to make the pyramids; etc etc etc etc etc etc

Even though the conditions to live that time were so difficult and our "power" so low, that entire civilizations could get wiped out just because a river dried (like the Harappa civilization got wiped out around 3000BC when the Saraswati River dried, they speculate); the human spirit got us through to where we are!

Why does the past always look so beautiful and fascinating?

-Gaurang.

True Self: Frustrated, egoistic, inconsiderate? Or loveable?

What will be our true behavior if we were not suppressed, influenced, pressured in any way by the society?

I used to think, and still think, that in one way we will be a being for and of love. We will give love, and seek love. Love will be the only emotion that appears; other negative emotions have been imposed upon us by bad experiences in the society.

But there is another valid way to think about this -- we observe that if people are with civilians they behave in a civilian manner. But if people are with their family or close friends, they will behave as their true self -- they will emote a lot more, they will criticize what they dont like, they will ridicule other people, they will ridicule other ways of life, they will show more frustration, they will even speak sometimes in a less polite friendly way with family or close friends themselves. They will feel releived while doing so. They will appear as a frustrated, egoistic, and inconsiderate person. They wont feel the pressure of behaving in a civilian manner, and by being able to express their inner negative feelings about others, and they will feel more free and unrestrained.

So, does this mean, that, in their heart, their true behavior was such? So, in reality, people are negativity-expressing people by heart?

Or are they beings of love?

One answer could be -- that we seek love, and that is one of our basic emotions, but not being able to get it easily in the society, makes us a little desperate and frustrated, and thus feel negative about others. So in truth, we were a love-seeker, but then changed as per societal conditions into being a frustrated little self with external show of politeness.

But this sounds too good to be true.

Maybe, even in our true, unconditioned self, there are a little negative emotions along with love? For example, ego(the feeling of being a separate individual entity), which directly originates from our biological nature?

Might be.

Yet another valid way of looking at it is -- we are hardly born with any emotions. Most of our emotions, including most of love and ego were actually acquired when we looked at how people were behaving after we were born. Thus almost all of our emotions, (other than the little slight starting touch that our genes might provide) are society-influenced and generated, and that our true self, is nothing but an empty transparent being, with nothing more than maybe an ant-like biological nature...

Posted by at 3:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview

Looking at self as a person

Today, I decided to look at life with me as an individual, and a living and desiring one at that, rather than looking at life as a bunch of things.

Today I decided to love life rather than things.

Today I decided to connect myself with my past, and to better understand myself -- where I am coming from and where I belong.

I suddenly feel happy and living. Suddenly I know what to do -- suddenly I understand what I want -- suddenly confusions reduce, and problems reduce; and especially masochistic tendencies and habits can be identified and toned down.

Suddenly I understand what I must do to make myself happy, and fulfilled.

We must. We must love life and not things. We must love ourself as a living, desiring-to-be-happy individual rather just a non-entity between logically proceeding world and life.

We must look at life with a consideration of people's emotional needs; and structures which were formed to satisfy those needs including social ones such as family, religions, cultures, and economical such as abstract entities (like a company).

However, such outlooks, which focus upon a person's biological and related origins, may make a person oriented excessively towards the self.

We should try -- and try hard, since that might be necessary -- to find ways which fulfil all people towards what they actually want.

(Incomplete)

Posted by at 1:33 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Chatter | Emotional Worldview | Personal

Small Town Life vs City Life

(the following includes big general statements, which, likely are false as a principle, but are true in specific circumstances)
(to others, all of this might sound like a cliche)

I just visited Brownsville, TX, a small town in southern tip of Tdexas; on the border with Mexico. I loved that place somehow, despite it being very hot at this time of the year. While there, I had memories of my own town, Akola, India, where I am from (I spent my first 18 years of life there).

Something about the town immediately struck a chord within me.

The town was small: in a small little place, you have everything: restaurants (like Mexican (alas! they dont have veggie options there), Subways, McDonalds, etc), hotels/motels, theatres (small ones), clubs, shopping malls (small), etc... Just there were like 2 main roads, one going north, and one going south; and everything about the town, was just a few miles up or down these two roads. This gives a feeling of closeness and oneness. You feel like the town is yours, all of it, and you are a collective part of it.

The people: they were nice, in a small-town kind of way. There was an air of satisfaction, and content. There was a closeness; there was an omnipotent feeling of kinship with the fellow man. People made friends with other people, not because that friendship would provide them "fun", or some other "material help", but just because everybody is meant to be a friend, for reason or no reason. People were not trying to outsmart each other; people were trying to come together as if getting together as a water stream to overthrow the strong muddy barriers of troubles; creating a synergy for mutual life progress.

The town was small enough that everybody seemed to know everything about it; and hence cared for all of it. Town's economic development was seen as a harbinger of joy to all town-people, not as an individual opportunity.

People were not crazy for self progress; they didnt want to do "such a great thing that the whole world will watch". They wanted to do only enough to live a well-to-do life. They didnt want to change the world, they wanted to change little more than the town.

Whereas city life, I feel, while offering better material quality of life, and better opportunities for progress, has one important shortcoming. People want to become rich, and achieve big things, want to do more impact. It operates on the cutting edge, where people are doing things which few in the nation have done before. People want to become bigger and more important, by doing bigger and greater things. There is a glaring difference between qualities of life between different people in the city; and this makes a good reason for discontent and having bigger distance from others.

"Everybody is for himself" speaks loudly the whole city culture; and people are always confused with how close or distant they must be from their friends and acquaintances and strangers.

Ofcourse, it does not mean that city people are behaving badly, or doing something wrong. Rather, it is inherent in the very nature of the city.

I feel that many nations, developed or developing, might be facing a similar situation. For example, this kind of divide is visible in India too -- say between Akola and Bombay. So the absolute amount of development doesnt affect this phenomenon a lot, but their qualitative differences does.

Cities are on the cutting edge of progress; they are venturing out to develop (and market) new ideas and products. Whereas towns are satisfied with just catching up slowly to the cities, which they are never able to do (at least in the short term).

People more ambitious who are in towns, migrate to the cities, so towns tend to maintain their characteristics; and cities tend to collect a lot of smart people.

The ambitious and individualistic city life; the content, peacefull, collective town life; which one would you choose?

talking to family is like a Tonic

(This has been cross posted from my hidden personal blog, so is more personal than other entries here in this blog)

Whenever I talk to my mummy and daddy, I feel different.

I feel that I have a life. I feel that I know how to live happily.

Its a very weird -- different experience.

Everyday I am thinking of what to do. It appears like such a difficult choice. Whether to go this way or that way. Meeting so many different kinds of people having so many different kinds of lives -- ideas about lives -- that one becomes confused.

When I talk to my parents, I feel I am okay... I am leading a fine life with a fine job, and a fine everything else. I just need to enjoy it.

Its so different.

In the traditional model of life, that my parents have (we are from a small town in India, having our own little way of doing this), I have to just be a simple person following what the values and cultures of traditional life tell...its not about self expression, its about how much you know about "what should be done according to what our society says". Its a completely different model than what we have here -- "what do I want to do?". This difference in the focus over an individual is obvious, glaring, and widereaching.

Its something related to this other observation: When I meet some people, I see that they are dynamic, and are always looking for ways to enrich their life, looking for new ways to have fun, looking for new things to learn (for some: "and analyze"), etc. But there are so many other people, who appear so simple: they look like they are not trying to be happy, they are just happy intrinsically...they have some kind of bliss or some deep contentment written over their face -- they dont need to do a lot to be happy -- just basic simple things will make them happy or sad. They dont confuse or over-complicate their lives. They stick with the basics. They are not the kind of people who will invent theory of relativity (since intelligence, sometimes I feel, is a consequence of some kind of a disturbed, unstable mind); but neither they need someone to do it.

The latter kind of people are easier to love, and befriend. By easier, I mean, I feel like talking to such kind of people more. I feel like being around them. They wont talk about weird new ways of looking at life, but they will pull together a subspace filled with care, support, love and closeness.

When I am very sad, I hardly think about any intelligent thing. I think about my family and love. I think about simplicity of love. I yearn for care, and not analysis.

And look at me...what I have become. I try to analyze everything. I try to analyze happiness and life. I analyze people, and culture. I analyze engineering problems. I try to make analysis as the basis of my behavior.

Its such a burden now that I think about it.

Simplicity is divine, complications are a bane.

God bless Life, simple and complicated, and all that goes with it.

Practical vs the Spiritual

Just finished watching "October Sky" now. So maybe my mental perception has worn a temporary goggle.

But I feel that spiritual path (contentment, happiness by looking towards the self, group harmony by ego subduement, happiness of being, satisfaction in inaction, relationship bliss, loving and being loved as the only worthy emotions, submitting to God, realizing the singular collective consciousness, etc.) might actually be helpful or considered the best choice only in certain situations.

IN situations of mental turmoil, relationship problems, meaninglessness, deep sorrow, and such; spirituality can be a very enriching experience, and a sublime way of life.

But, under normal emotionally fit circumstances, does spirituality fulfil man's complete emotional apetite?

Having been under the belief that it does, I am now bent to think that it might not.

Man is a complex being -- and he exhibits himself in eclectic and diverse forms.

And his ego (sense of existence as a separate, individual, capable, entity) is one of the various embodiments of his conscious self.

All that is associated with the ego.... is that wrong? The eternal conflict within my mind between the force of individualization with the yield of biological bliss, and the force of submission to the collective with the yield of emotional/consciousness bliss; rages on, but I am now at the moment being driven towards the biological.

Ambition, the will to act, expression of individual voliton, self maintainence, etc. are taking on more meaningful roles in my vision of the scheme of things.

After all, why people remember actions and impacts of the individuals after they cease to exist, rather than their state of mind; or even if they remember their state of mind, why do they remember so as to get impacted by it themselves?

Is making an impact, to create egoistic meaning for the individual, a wrong thing to do?

relationships and happiness

I think, to be happy, you need to be able to form mature, fulfilling relationships with people.

Relationships can come in various forms. You can be a brother/sister, a father/mother, a son/daughter, a friend/girlfriend/boyfriend, a wife/husband, a colleague, a compatriot, a classmate, a mentor, a mentoree, a disciple, a preacher, a young person with new ideas, an old person with time-tested wisdom, a coproponent of a cause, a cofollower of a cause, a coseeker of fun, a person who has just passed that way, a trouble-alleviator, a happiness inducer, an old time friend, a new friend on probation, a person of the opposite sex, a provider of support and help, a provider of memes, a person to grow together with, a person to form a community with, a fellow human following humanity, and many other ways.

With any person, you can form a relationship in some form.

And when you are able to form many fulfilling relationships with many people, you will probably be "happy".

Thinking/Feeling 2, psychology, religion

In fact, I have found that I have been subconsciously so sad about loosing my feeling side, that, with my new thinking side, I try to "simulate" or "virtually create" a feeling side, an action which gives dual results, thought mostly a negative in the long run.

Is, just being too thinking alright?

Basically, when I read Eric Berne's "What do you say after you say Hello", I probably went deep into the thinking side. I would kind of recommend the book, because it will broaden your perspective of the world a lot, but at times I have been so frustrated with this kind of broadening that I almost was of the opinion that all books by Eric Berne existing in the world should be burned immediately. :)

Eric Berne was an enlightened person - I think more intellectually enlightened than many founders of religion like Jesus, Buddha, and others. Maybe other people also were. (like Freud? I dont know)

I think, basically psychological study ultimately boils down to a spiritual study of a human, if pursued in specific directions. Like, for example, nowadays, people are developing the field of "positive psychology" -- studying happiness and other positive emotions in humans, rather than the usual focus of psychology on mental disorders. [The emphasis on negative emotions by psychology can be seen in this quote by Sigmund Freud -- "The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization." ] Now, this positive psychology will probably in the long run, with the clockworklike organized fashion that western study proceeds, result into recommendations which are similar to spiritual recommendations that religions produce...

In fact, the culmination of the discipline of positive psychology might probably be a formulation of a new philosophical, spiritual, cultural religion/society itself - who knows. :)

Btw, most women/girls are the epitome of the "Feeling" person, I think.

[UPDATE: I am orignally an INFP, though converted over time to INTP, but still hold both personalities]

Thinking/Feeling

When I was reading about Myers-Briggs-Jung personality types, I saw this trait about Feeling/Thinking. In their concept of personality types, they have four traits: Extravert-Introvert, Sensing-Intuiting, Thinking-Feeling, and Judging-Perceiving.

This Feeling/Thinking trait clicked immediately. I suddenly understood a lot what is happenning to me.

The thing is -- I have been moving from the Feeling type to the Thinking type. And now that I have moved over extremely over to the Thinking side, I have realized that my current depression/sadness is rooted in the demise of my Feeling side.

Feeling was good -- it helped me form relationships with people, it made me have simple minded desires which fueled me onto things. Feeling makes you create a very simple-minded framework of likes-dislikes-desires for yourself, on which you make most of your decisions and choices. You expose this framework to others, and people relate to each other by mixing and matching these frameworks. I think that for being loved, it might almost be "required" to have such a framework.

Whereas "Thinking" is different. You think to make choices, rather than just using some simple emotional framework. I have gone to the extreme end of this line. I think before I even emote. Even the slim emotional framework that still remains in "Thinking" people has become slimmer for me.

This has caused a lot of changes. A lot. Not many of them for the positive.

To live in this world, you need to be atleast slightly tilted towards "feeling", otherwise, you will have a hard time remaining happy and conforming both at the same time. Not that you will understand happiness at that point.

Feeling side is important for relating to people. With no feeling side, it is difficult to have normal emotional relationships with normal people.

[UPDATE: I am orignally an INFP, though converted over time to INTP, but still hold both personalities]

Purpose

I think my purpose is to express my capability to obtain happiness.

Posted by at 1:44 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview

love

When one starts liking himself, then he becomes likable by others.

Posted by at 5:31 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

are people selfish? should they be altruist?

Are people only interested in their convenience and their own happiness. And would they do things which only satisfy their needs?

Sounds scary to me... and makes me feel once again nervous, and alone.

Like I wrote before: If everybody is interested only in their individual self-interests and even "mutual" self-interests, then it means that all of us are essentially alone, very alone.

Should they do like that? Hmm. When we throw stones, they do seem to follow their own track, according to their own velocities, and do not follow other stones which have been thrown in a different direction with a different velocity, do they?

Posted by at 5:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview

a smiling face

You should do everything with a smiling face.

If you cannot have a smiling face while doing some thing, you shouldn't do it. If you really have to, you should learn to change the situation such that you can still be able to have a smiling face while doing it.

:-)

Posted by at 5:08 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Detachment

Its like, you need to get out of the train in order to see what the train looks like. So in order to see what humans are, and how the society functions, you need to get out of the human society. You need detachment in order to actually be more aware! This is strange, and true.

When you are detached from normal society then you can see how the society is functioning and how people are doing what they are doing, and why they are doing. Like why people become angry, why people become miserable, or maybe why people become happy, or why people love?

But then the problem is that you don't connect to people very well. They both come in the same plate. When you become attached you love some people and you hate some people. In fact, if there are no people you hate (like me currently) that means you are detached.

Again, like all the things that you see in life, (or maybe those things are the only things worth seeing, rest all follow obviously), this also has its pluses and minuses. If you are detached, you are also not likely to cause a lot of conflict, you are also not likely to hate people, beat people, punish people. Because you can observe yourself, since your detachment might have put you in a place where you are even detached form yourself, where you don't feel the compulsion to do things which have been taught to you as things that one should do. And the other plus is that you will not be very sad either. Because you will be detached from the sorrow that the world and relationships and emotions bring. The disadvantage is that ofcourse you wont be able to love a person intimately. You might be, in some sense, but not in the normal sense.

Though, spirituality and religion sometimes teach you to be detached, that is not the normal way of life -- the way life evolved. Life evolved so that it can sustain, and grow. Detachment detaches you from that need.

Thou shalt be detached or attached?

Posted by at 4:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Faith

Have fun

One thing I have found is that its easy to live with people in some ways. For example, all that people are seeking is a nice way of having fun in life, people meet in order to have fun, and exchange lively, funny, useful conversation. Just believe in this and nothing else, and you have already solved one aspect of your life. Second is realizing the other desires of people -- like security, being loved, considered capable, some intimate company, someone to share joys and sorrows, etc. After realizing this, it should be relatively easy to interact with people in general. AND YES, I SHOULD NOT FORGET -- CONVENIENCE. People look for convenience, AND CONSERVATION OF RESOURCES.

We should learn how to manage all these coveted factors around, and we have learned to live and understand people! :)

Posted by at 5:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

ask yourself how to be happy

Be silent.

Ask your heart what you really want to do, and how you can be really happy. Zoom in on the answer. Clear out unnecessary details. And then do it.

If you are happy, you will involuntarily spread happiness.

Posted by at 2:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

different paths for getting the same things

Its wonderful. All of us seek the same things -- but our paths and ways are so different!

Posted by at 3:55 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview

joining, uniting

the world's beauty is in uniting rather than differentiating....

saying "I need you", rather than saying "I am strong, I can do on my own"

saying "lets walk together", rather than saying "I can run fast"

saying "I have problems, can you help me?", rather than saying "I will solve my problems on my own"

saying "you know things are bad....", rather than saying "things are going just great"

saying "they are our problems, we'll solve them together", rather than "i am for me, you are for you"

lets come close, and walk together.

Posted by at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

This Life (incomplete)

there is this really wonderful, charming world hidden behind these walls,
behind this carpet, behind this Television shows, behind the Telivision,
behind the fireplace, behind those God's idols sitting besides me, behind what I am, behind what
everybody is.

though these all seem common, exceeedingly common, it is only because the wonder
and "life" behind all these commonalities is also, pleasingly, common!

Life itself, which is nothing but the unflinching desire to life.

this song --- this song is not just a song. It is not just a collection of words, language, and rhyme. It has a whole history of emotions and culture embedded within it, that is not only huge, but beautifully huge. The woman in the song is not just saying something with meaning, but she is saying something that reflects the whole human life and world. The world of expectations, aspirations, love, fear, anxiety, insecurity, oneness, ego, .... The emotions where a man wants another to accompany him for life, the emotions in which a man wants to break free and go about it alone,

(incomplete)

Posted by at 1:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

life is good

You laugh,
He laughs.

You cry,
He cries.

You cry,
He laughs.

You smile.

Life is good!

Posted by at 1:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

emotions and life

emotions are strong
emotions are life
emotions of love, friendship, community, caring, desires, .... make up life.

REASON IS ANTI LIFE.

Though it does help us survive, its not what we live for.

Poems have been written, songs have been written, plays, movies, all art, many lives revolve around it. The whole world revolves around it. Emotions.

Thats what we are, and will be.

Posted by at 1:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

living life

Basically if you go down and see the trees, grass, cars, streets and people, and a smile appears on your face, you have learned to live life.

Posted by at 1:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Lets grow together

"Lets grow together."

Posted by at 1:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Cars (Incomplete)

So I started the drive from Fremont BART.

I didnt know where I was going,
But I thought I knew the general direction.
Somebody had advised me.

I also had the map with me,
But the map was very vague,
you could hardly trace through it.

I started out slowly.

I saw many many cars,
all going in various directions,
I wondered where they were going.

I saw some of them going in one direction,
I joined them.

We had fun
(incomplete)

Posted by at 1:23 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Creative | Emotional Worldview

love

Its so wonderful. After all, what all people actually want - is - to be loved.

Love you! :)

--------

Posted by at 2:35 AM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Sweetest Dreams

Some of my sweetest dreams are those in which I get a nod from a delightful, wonderful, beautiful friend for joining me in this long journey and creating a magical world filled with love and caring, a world that helps grow and sustain between us and everybody in our little world all that is beautiful about life -- laughter, cheerfulness, wonder, appreciation, love, sacrifice, caring, individual creativity, support, function, etc.

I think I might have been a little too distracted.

Lets try to make this my goal of life.

--------

Posted by at 9:42 AM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Money (Incomplete)

"I want to earn a lot of money. I should be able to make other people in my family happy with the money. Job will be to earn money, while I will seek happiness through family bliss.

--------

Posted by at 11:00 PM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Alone

If everybody is interested only in their individual self-interests and even "mutual" self-interests, then it means that all of us are essentially alone, very alone.

--------

Posted by at 1:15 AM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

happier

I will be happier with you than without you.

--------

Posted by at 12:51 AM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Hatred (Incomplete)

Why is there so much hatred between man and man? Why is man so averse to other people, especially those who are not their friends, or people who would not have any positive effect on their lives. This feeling is so common, that there must be some good reason why is this needed or required to live. There are so many swear words that are a part of the regular language of so many people... this must be related to this issue. Many people believe that swear words are "good", or it is good to say these words, since they express your emotions of frustrations, and thereby release them, or else you would keep them inside you, and be more and more frustrated internally. Why are swear words bad? Because they express negative feelings of indifference or sadis

--------

Posted by at 11:00 PM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Hello

I look ahead, and I see uncertainty.

Things will go right and things will go wrong.

There'll be really nice people, but, they'll be different.
They might want different things, they might expect different things,
I might want different things, I might expect different things.
There'll be love, there'll be joy,
There'll be disappointment, there'll be distress.
But thats how fascinating people can be.

There'll be responsibilites which I will try to accomplish, but might be harder than I think.
I might fail, and fail often.
Maybe I wont try hard enough to succeed.
Maybe I wont be capable enough.
But thats how it is, and is going to be.

There will be occasions which will be unexpected,
There will be challenges that I havent forseen,
They will be hard,
But they will be sweet.

There will be those desires realized,
there will be those cherishable moments,
but just so that I can enjoy these more,
there will be those moments that I will always wish would have been otherwise,
and those unfulfilled dreams, that I will keep longing for, ever.

With fear, with might,
With self-doubt, with confidence,
With apprehension, with curiosity,
With repulsion, with acceptance,
With pessimism, with optimism,
I welcome life.

Hello.

--------

Posted by at 5:13 PM | Permalink
Posted to Creative | Emotional Worldview | Personal | Recommended

This Life (Incomplete)

When, at times, I stop and look forward, I see, right through the bright lights close by, A short and long, straight and dwindling, dimly lit path. I see people, I see times. I see friends, I see fun. I see successes, I see happiness. I see love, I see bliss. I see misunderstandings, I see sorrow. I see hardships, I see misery. I see problems, I see depression. I see adventure, I see exploration. I see downs, I see ups. I see lefts, I see rights. I see importance, I see worthlessness, I see help, I see harm. The mysterious, Promising joy, love, success, the journey seems inviting, When the unpredictability of the voyage causes me to shiver, It scares me first, the journey through the path, A picture of something like an exciting journey When I look forward, I see an exciting journey. An unpredictable ride One part of me pulls me to one side, Dont believe them, they are illusioned! But arent they happy? I ask But you can be happy being disillusioned... Or can you? Arent illusions a means for happiness?

--------

Posted by at 11:00 PM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview | Personal | Recommended

Just be happy

Dont try to be like others. Just be happy.

Is this just my social panacea or will work for other people as well?

--------

Posted by at 3:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Emotional Worldview | Personal | Recommended

Inner Self (Incomplete)

Did I miss something by not extending my inner self outwards for all people to see? Was my fear of rejection justified as a reason for doing nothing all my life but trying to mold myself in order to make myself pleasant to others? Would doing nothing but seeking enjoyment not have helped me better become part of a shared enjoyment percolating over groups of people?
--------

Posted by at 10:00 PM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview | Personal | Recommended

Relationships (incomplete)

One can define his life by his relationships. If a person is good at forming mature relationships, he will be happy. The best thing a man can do to live the most fulfilling life is to learn how to mix with the abstract common subculture that is formed around him, and

--------

Posted by at 9:50 PM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Maturity (Incomplete)

Maturity is reaching a state, where you can behave in your best interests under all conditions, specifically by requiring no elaborate conscious thought analysis to arrive at that decision. It means that you have gone through life, understood what is that you like, what is that you want, how to get it, and how to get your best interest out of any situation. And have actually programmed all of that as your direct non-deliberated emergent behavior.
--------

Posted by at 9:40 PM | Permalink
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Recommended

The West vs the East (Incomplete)

I "want", hence I suffer. This is really true. It is desires that cause you suffering when they are not fulfilled. And invariably, most (or many) of them can never get fulfilled - it is simply not practically possible, one realizes if he thinks about it. Ok you say, I know this - this is a saying so common that its actually a cliche. But then, I have also realized that: I "want", hence I "do". The basic driving force of all action is a desire. No desire, no action. A Stone. No Stone? Get Desire. The basic desire to live is a desire not unlike all the others like "I want to drive an aeroplane". Nobody can forfeit the desire to live. Its the way your body is made. Suicide is not a withdrawal of all desires, but it itself is an action which follows a desire, the desire to commit suicide.

--------

Posted by at 9:20 PM | Permalink
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Faith | Recommended

Success (Incomplete)

If you are able to keep yourself happy, you have succeeded in life. But then, you will say, mundane matters creep in: Problems in life. Which prevent you from being happy. Problems external to you, internal to you. But are problems really external to you? As Mark Twain aptly said "Life does not consist mainly - or even largely - of facts and happening. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head." Are your problems really external to you? And what about internal problems.....that is what you gotta learn to learn to live happily along with them...

--------

Posted by at 9:10 PM | Permalink
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview

Is Intelligence Good? (Incomplete)

--- ShadowJD@aol.com wrote:
> I pose a question to the group in sincerity (unlike some of my
> rantings!). Is the intellectually superior person more of a benefit
> to society than the average person? Is there a positive correlation
> of intellegence and success, and where is intellegence a liability?
> Does intellegence breed socially undesirable traits (sociopathy,
> megolomania, feelings of isolation and persecution) or mearly
> acts as an amplifier for these traits?
>
> I have not settled on an answer and would apprieciate insight on
> this matter.
>
> Res Ipsa Loquitor
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> It is better to be intelligent than average. Ignorance
> isn't really bliss. But knowledge isn't bliss either. Knowing
> about the suffering of others is itself painful.
>
> On the positive side, knowledge helps relieve suffering.
> As long as intelligence is combined with other traits like
> sympathy and tolerance, it's possible to achieve goals,
> and the pursuit of knowledge keeps life interesting.
>
> Jay

Define "good" :-
for self: He should be able to be happy.
for society: The society should benefit from his existence. In what way? That
they should be happier because of his existence.

[Is good for society more important than for self? Umm. Well, they are more.
However, when both can be achieved be at the same time, it serves the most ppl.
[But this is digressing from topic]]

Define "intelligence":
Option 1: He should have good analytical skills. Empty, isnt it?
Option 2: He should be able to best meet his ends. What are his ends? Here in
comes the non-intelligence-related-attitudes. His ends will be to achieve a
particular combination of good for himself and good for society with a
particular importance distribution.

If you choose option 1, then I dont think intelligence helps. It might in fact,
be bad for both himself and the society, because of the associated negative
social tendencies (and usually functional social interactions are a big part of
reasons for happines)

If you choose option 2, then goodness for himself and the society depends on
the importance distribution that the person has. If the importance distribution
is favorable for either, then good intelligence aids it. Bad intelligence
suppresses it.

However, your question was more like "how being intelligent affects the
importance distribution?", so I havent even answered the question yet.

Well, if the person is intelligent enough (as per Option 2), then he must have
figured out the most appropriate importance distribution from where he is
seeing the world. I am only intelligent as per Option 1, and to figure out the
appropriate importance distribution is beyond me.

-Gaurang.

--------

I am. I think I

I am. I think I am.
--------

Posted by at 11:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Recommended

All I want to do in Life (Marianne Faithful)

From http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/All-I-Wanna-Do-in-Life-lyrics-Marianne-Faithfull/BE36406B122DB5C148256AA8001258C0

You've been right and I've been wrong,
I've been weak and you've been strong.
You've been good and I've been bad,
Think I've had enough of that.
'Cause all I wanna do in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.
All I wanna do in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.
I loved the days, you loved the night,
I loved to love, you loved to fight.
I drive to you, you're far away,
It gets harder every day.
All I wanna do in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.
All I wanna do in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.
Wish you could be a friend of mine,
Wish you could learn to play with time.
You say I dream my life away -
If I do, well that's OK.
All I wanna do in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.
All I wanna do in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.
All I wanna do in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.
All I wanna in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.
All I wanna do in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.
All I wanna do in life
Is to love somebody with all my might.

--------

Posted by at 3:29 AM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

How are you doing?

The "How are you doing?" greeting that is very frequently used in the US, is philosophically quite different from the "How are you?" I was used to hearing in India (which may have British roots).

With "How are you", you are asking about the state of the persons being. You are asking whether he is happy, whether he is sad. It lays importance on the state of the mind or the state of being as an important attribute that people like to know about others.

On the other hand, "How are you doing?" asks you how are you doing, not how you yourself are. It implies that every person must be doing something, probably for his livelihood, or for fun. The importance is on action. It assumes that every person is in a state of constant action. His state of being is not very important, but whether he is having fun whatever he is doing. The activity he is doing is not considered separately from his emotional state. But that he derives his emotional state from the activity he is doing. Or that he has to pursue some activity to reach a better emotional state.

This implies that people generally dont care about whether the other person is happy or not. They are busy having their own fun doing their own little activities.

This is my life man. Your life is yours.

Have fun!
I dont care whether you actually are happy, just have fun doing whatever it is that you are doing. :-)

--------

Posted by at 2:35 AM | Permalink
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Chatter | Emotional Worldview

Happiness

Whether you have what you expect to have, determines (single-handedly?) whether you are happy.
--------

Posted by at 4:26 AM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview | Recommended

So what did you expect?

Life is such a complex affair when you look at relationships. Relationships bring "expectation". And guessing expectations of others is so difficult that it becomes very easy to misguess one. And there you go, you come very close to breaking the whole relationship.

Breaking of expectations is sorrowful. And breaking of relationships is even more so.

If there were a way in which people could read other people's minds, then life would be entirely different. The whole social construct would change.

Since you will know other people's expectations, you will avoid all the misunderstandings etc and avoid breaking most relationships.

We can actually try and simulate this in reality. Just dont keep your expectations from friends to yourselves. Say aloud your thoughts. Talk them way. If you expect your friend to take you along with his girlfriend to the theatre, tell him. If you expect your roommate to clean up after he eats in the kitchen, tell him.

This will surely make life a little easier. Instead of spending millions of mind hours in guessing what others expect you to do, and then spend millions of mind hours trying to solve problems due to unfulfilled expectations, you have your solution gifted to you.

The next stage in this would be letting your acquaintances know of all your thoughts. This will be difficult to do in reality, but can be speculated to solve a certain class of social problems. Tell whatever you think to everybody around you. Tell him that you didnt like his banging the door while coming in today. Tell him that he was a jerk to think like that. This will sound bitter but maybe people will adjust to such social conditions over time. But probably this will solve a lot of communication problems.

So lets try to talk every thought out at all levels of acquaintainces and friendships; lets lend a ear for others' thoughts; lets make all friendships into close friendships.

This might make this world a much better place.

--------

Posted by at 4:13 AM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview | Recommended

Selfishness (Incomplete)

[SCRATCH]

People are selfish.

People expect other people to be selfish.

Selfish meaning that you care for yourself. You look where you are going, you make sure you are doing what you want. You do what you want.

If you are not selfish, you have a problem.

This is what is the general practical opinion.

Again, doesnt fare well with the romantic in me.

--------

Posted by at 7:08 PM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

Destiny

When I look at the Moon, the moon calls me,
When I look at the Ocean, the ocean calls me,
When I look at the Forest, the forest calls me,
When I look at a flower, the flower calls me.

When I look at a mountain, the mountain calls me,
When I look at the sky, the sky calls me.

When I look at a building, the building calls me,
When I look at a car, the car calls me.

When I look at him, he calls me,
When I look at her, she calls me.

When I look at Him, He calls me.

--------

Posted by at 9:10 PM | Permalink
Posted to Creative | Emotional Worldview

Love

The winds of time, blowing upon the sands of life,
Inevitably blow away the stones that lie on it:
The stones of ego, material desire, and immortality,
The only stone that fiercely withstands this test,
Is the stone of Love.

--------

Posted by at 9:05 PM | Permalink
Posted to Creative | Emotional Worldview | Recommended

To share or not to share

2 years before, just some time after I joined USC, I was thinking of buying a bike to traverse from home to school. But there was this hesitation I had. I used to come by the school tram (bus) from my apartment to the campus. Though bikes looked appealing since they increase productivity and reduce effort, they will make me more alone... When travelling on the tram, I got to meet fellow students, some whom I already knew and some whom I didnt, and thus could use that time for socializing. When travelling on the bike, I was alone.

Later I found myself in a parallel situation when I was thinking about buying a laptop. I used to use computers in the school public labs and I met a lot of people there. In fact, most of the new people I had met were those I had met in the public labs of the school. If, however, I used a laptop, then I would have to sit in the library in a cubical alone, and surf there. Or maybe use it at home further reducing social interaction. The desktop is even worse: you wont leave your home at all if you get one!

Yes, its quite obvious - use public things and you are surrounded by the public, use your own things and you are surrounded by your own things...

Attend schools and you will meet other students. Pay the teacher to come and teach you at home, and you will meet just the teacher.

Live on earth and you get 6 billion people. Buy a whole planet all for yourself, you get the planet.

I have been up all night, so I am probably spilling out non-sense.

--------

Posted by at 7:38 AM | Permalink
Posted to Chatter | Emotional Worldview | Personal

Its about the Picture

Its about the picture.

The picture you create.

The picture of the world.

The picture of the world as you see it.

An image of the world.

And people like to create happy, cool, fun images.

This evening, listening to George Michael's "Careless Whisper" in my headphones and reading the past blog archives of Dan Trachtman on his beautifully wonderful site, after watching the past webcam shots of Krismay, my image of the world at the moment is the cool, fun, hip-hop American-style modern image of life, that young people today have and like to have.

Have fun, hang out with girlfriends, boyfriends, dance, listen to music, meet new people, go to discos/pubs, watch television, relax, you will have a non-decreasing salary, hang out with people at work, etc : that's what's life.

But this image is never constant. It is fragile, temporary, non-existing, imaginary, illusionary, ....

To demonstrate, I will switch the song to - George Winston's wonderfully melodious piano "December"...after 1-2 minutes, I am feeling gloomy, the world's really a sad place... people are born, they come to like people, then they die, then the people they liked cry - this is repeated again and again and again - in a similar way as the periodiicity of music... lifes really a sad place after all...thats what's life.

After switching to one of my favorites - Skeeter Davis' passionate "The end of the world", I am feeling emotional in addition to gloomy.... yes, passion, love, deep love, I wanna love somebody, very passionately, very emotionally, very deeply, I wanna love nature, how beautiful's nature, how bad is leaving, how bad is dying, small people have so many expectations, to recieve love, if they dont recieve how bad they will feel, oh god, better to not have expectations, all should be happy and laughing all the time - thats whats life.

The funny part is I can choose an image by switching songs. I can choose an image by selecting different people to be with.

There you go - thats taste. Choosing an image to see life as.

Hmm... this is very similar to the stuff I keep reading....life and the world are not good or bad....it is not warm or cold...it is not happy or sad...these are all the judgemental adjectives imposed by humans. Its the way we choose to look at it.

Oh...let me switch to Randy Travis's innocent "Good Intentions" before I close. :-)

--------

Posted by at 11:56 PM | Permalink
Posted to Analytical Worldview | Emotional Worldview | Recommended

Stars

This is a quick scribbling of thoughts I did some 5 years ago, when I was in the beginning of my bachelors study. At that time, I was very fascinated by the Stars - with the fuel to the fire being Startrek and some Discovery Channel Programs:

"The Stars"

If you were ever gazing into a dark starry night, far away from city lights and noise, you would have felt the loneliness of mankind. Distances so great that one cannot even imagine separate this tiny Earth from the heavenly stars - and the distances between galaxies still increasing at incredible rates every moment. The silence of the night and the silence of the stars will inevitably drive you to that simple question - Is there someone out there? Then we unfailingly are driven into thinking that there may be someone of humane qualities, someone who could feel emotions of sadness, anger, joy, happiness, the same way as we do, someone who will be anxious to meet us out there, waiting for us to respond.

Infinite stars, infinite planets....and abundant life. People living like we do, laughing like we do, crying like we do. Isn't it our duty to meet them? Isn't it our duty to help them? Isn't it our duty to progress with them? To learn new things, to explore, to go where no man has gone before? Are the people on Earth enough? Wouldn't you like to meet some more - some different things? Yes, it is almost a fact that there has to be life beyond the solar system. Billions of billions of billions of stars and life on just one planet of one star? No. A big NO.

Shouldn't we just leave now? Isn't it late? Find the means and leave for the stars - is what I feel I must do now. But the means are not there. I am just waiting for someone to announce that the first spaceship is waiting to be filled.

Or may we wait for someone to be found in the skies or wait for them to find us? This seems a more better and realistic solution. But this should happen fast. We must, MUST HAVE TO find them. It is our moral obligation to our Galaxy. In the same way, as we help our neighbors - our citymen, countrymen and the Earth people.

T0 GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE....BUT SOME OTHERS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THERE, WAITING FOR US.

It is our inherent desire -- it will be their inherent desire - TO MEET.

What is so good about meeting? One may ask. But I think perhaps that is what we have been doing since brith....meeting new people and making them happy - and maybe perhaps that is the reason for which we live.

I many time feel that I can sense their ship coming toward us -- on the way right now and reaching us any moment. The moment of the HISTORY OF MANKIND. The most significant achievement man has ever made. And with most impact on humankind.

These silent - mysteriously silent stars speak a lot. As if inviting us to to come their way. The pleasant cool appearing stars are in fact very hot and firing and fatal if we go too near. But whatever they may be, they are a symbol for the life revolving around them - the peace, the pleasant, the anxious - the life around them.

What one will get by living on the earth. The earth has bound us with responsibilities, duties but the thing that matters to God and not to earthlings is that WE GO AND SPREAD.

Thats why I imagine myself on a space ship bound for the stars - feeling that I have succeeded in my life - doing a thing for man - what man must do.

Date: somewhere in 1998

Link to this in text format

--------

Posted by at 5:15 AM | Permalink
Posted to Creative | Emotional Worldview | Personal | Recommended

Seeing the world

I am seeing the world differently than I did most of my life.

World and Life is nothing more to me these days than "an intellectual exercise". I tend to see everything, the living and non-living, and myself as some "objects", to which some laws apply.

However, there is still a strong emotional component inside me - something that has not gone away because of its strong roots.

--------

Posted by at 6:29 PM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview

What to do in Life -- emotionally

I just hit upon a mail which I had sent two years ago to a mailing list consisting of people who were heading to the US for studies.

----------------------------------------
Hi friends -

I am going to pen down some of the thoughts which are coming to my mind now. If you can spare some 2-3 minutes, I dont think they will be wasted if you read this.

You know, I think that interaction and communication between people helps people live.

Imagine a person living in an isolated island. What will he do? He will inevitably die of loneliness.

Fortunately, we are in a world which contains a lot of people which ensures that we do not get bored of life anytime. Talk to people, and see their reactions - a whole lot of diversity is present, perhaps due to the huge number of variations possible of the human genome, and the huge number of possible experiences a man can have. This makes this world and its people hugely diverse in nature and form. This adds very heavily to the richness of the human life.

When you live this life, make sure, you see and experience a lot of it. Make sure you meet people with attitudes opposite to you - I am sure you will find something fascinating and interesting in them too. The variety and richness of human life is there - in front of you - waiting for you - to come over and have a taste of it. Make sure you do!!

Meet and talk to different people, strangers - and you will find happiness in times of sadness.

Talk to rude people, and see if you can find their lost corner of softness by your talk. If you try, you may fail, but to surely succeed sometime.

Personally, I have found every man I met, to be a source of inspiration. Of course, every decision by every person is the result of his some decades of experience in this world, which will be totally different than you had, and provide a different perspective to life and things, which even to know is fascinating by itself.

This is related to this egroup, since we are just about to take a step towards this end, and to experience life in a big way in different surroundings and different perspectives, which is one of my motives behind US study.

Let's explore Life! It is Beautiful, filled with more pulchritude than you had thought...You just require that aesthetic sense.

Read this today, and read this tomorrow, and read this a year later, and you will be able to always apply this differently to the situation you are in. In other words, keep reading this, at different times, and you will feel better.

-----------------------

--------

Posted by at 5:47 PM | Permalink
Posted to Emotional Worldview | Recommended

Thought Blog

Reflections off the Dysfunctional Meta Thread (semi-realized?)

May 15, 2008

Views on same-sex marriage

April 16, 2007

comment on virginia tech shooting tragedy

November 22, 2006

Getting closer

September 2, 2006

Progressive?

August 29, 2006

Personal Existence

August 26, 2006

Making most of it

Want to do

Words

July 28, 2006

Identity due to force-feedback response to conditioning

July 5, 2006

Will the great Indian family survive

June 19, 2006

Image of Limited Good

June 7, 2006

"The Clean Slate"

May 25, 2006

Awareness

May 17, 2006

Going back home

the good things

May 16, 2006

relationships

May 15, 2006

Truth or Happiness?

May 4, 2006

Old, childhood friends

meditation

December 22, 2005

Robot Demonstrates Self-awareness

October 31, 2005

Intelligent design and Natural Selection

October 26, 2005

Meaning and Identity from History

October 13, 2005

arrogance begets sharpness

October 3, 2005

life as a celebration

September 19, 2005

Purpose, consciousness

September 8, 2005

non-harming

August 29, 2005

Virtual layer over truth

Bad habits

August 19, 2005

Ancient Indian History: So mysterious

July 20, 2005

True Self: Frustrated, egoistic, inconsiderate? Or loveable?

June 15, 2005

Looking at self as a person

May 25, 2005

Small Town Life vs City Life

May 19, 2005

talking to family is like a Tonic

May 1, 2005

Practical vs the Spiritual

April 3, 2005

relationships and happiness

Thinking/Feeling 2, psychology, religion

March 28, 2005

Thinking/Feeling

January 26, 2005

Purpose

January 25, 2005

love

January 15, 2005

are people selfish? should they be altruist?

a smiling face

Detachment

January 10, 2005

Have fun