Absurdism and Existentialism

 

Recently, I have been reading books that tackle the subject of absurdism and existentialism. The first piece of work to introduce me to the subject was Albert Camus’ The Stranger. I subsequently followed this up with his essays titled The Myth of Sisyphus. It would be foolish and vain of me to proclaim that I completely understand this school of thought, I do not, but nevertheless from the little I could grasp from its essence, I don’t think it is a school of thought I’d identify myself with.

Absurdism is the state of apparent paradox that humans live in. We strive to seek inner meaning and reason out of our lives in a world which is unjustifiable. So, how is it that we tackle this conflict? Do we commit suicide as our lives ultimately amount to nothing? Or is there a way? According to Camus, there is. He suggests that inner peace can be achieved by accepting the absurd world as is. Acceptance will lead to happiness. It will erase every kind of expectation and meaning we try to derive from our lives.

As I’d stated in a previous post on Buddhism (Camus philosophy aligns very closely to that stated in The Dhammapada), I believe that hope is an incredibly important element which is crucial to human survival. This is in direct conflict to Camus’ school of thought. Yes, it might be true that there is no meaning to our lives. We are infinitesimally small, insignificant beings in an extremely vast Universe. But it is futile to delve deep into our damned condition. Maybe, we ought to deceive ourselves. We ought to lie to ourselves, convince ourselves of a meaning. For satisfactory human existence, there must be hope. And I think the Universe can forgive us for forsaking Her truths in favor of possessing hope.

Franz Kafka’s stories also contain elements of absurdism (In fact, in the appendix of The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus analyzes absurdity in the works of Kafka. He concludes saying that although Kafka’s description of the absurd condition is near perfect, he fails as an absurd writer as he retains a glimmer of hope). The two works I’ve read of his, The Metamorphosis and The Trial are often cited as his best works. To be very honest, the books didn’t strike me as exceptional pieces of writing. Maybe what it tried to convey went over my head. In both his works, the protagonists are faced with bizarre, surreal predicaments. One gets turned into a giant insect, the other gets convicted for no reason at all. Both meet a grisly end. Through his works, I think he tries to draw a parallel between the blatant absurdity his characters face and the disguised one in which we live in. But like I said, I didn’t like the books very much. It’s highly unlikely I’ll return to him again.

My main criticism and problem with Camus’ philosophy is explored brilliantly by Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, probably the best Batman comic of all time. It was purely by chance that I picked up this graphic novel and found it to be aligning with the subject of the books I was dealing myself with. In the novel, Joker tries to drive Gordon insane to prove a point: that one bad day is enough to drive a person to madness. He fails and this is where the comic’s primary message comes out. Both Bruce Wayne and Joker had a bad day in their lives. Both lost their dear ones and for a time, their lives lost meaning. They had pushed cruelly into the world of absurdism. One chose to carve meaning out of it and become a symbol of hope; the other succumbed and became the champion of anarchy and psychopathy. That’s probably the only difference between The Dark Knight and the Clown Prince of Crime: A belief in good. A hope for a better world.

 

Begin Again

 

Examinations ended today. And with that, I’m done with half of college. It also brings a close to one hell of a semester. I say this at the cost of sounding cliched but with every ending comes a new beginning. Hopefully, with the summers and the remaining semesters to come, I will be able to find meaning and happiness is whatever it is that I involve myself in.

Around this time, I usually cook up a list of things that I plan on doing during the summers. Although I’ve been moderately successful in completing a fraction of my goals out of lists, I do not intend on doing so this time around. This summer, I will work completely on impulse. I will do whatever my heart pleases. I’m not going to tie myself and my freedom down by setting down a list of goals and targets. Let my imagination run wild this time. Let me be free.

As I’d mentioned in an earlier post, I usually end up failing to do whatever it is that I write about doing. So again, I’ll not be listing stuff I can do either. I’ll only be updating this blog with the stuff I’ve done. And I’ll just keep one check on myself: if at the end of the day, there isn’t anything that I can blog about, then I’ve simply not lived that day to the fullest. I’d like to start off with a clean slate. I’d like to write a beautiful story around myself. I’d like to begin again.

The Egg

 

It was just four pages long. It took 3 minutes to read the entire thing. And yet, the message it conveyed was so powerful, one could build a religion around it. Andy Weir’s The Egg blew me away. I still can’t fathom how a story so small, so simply written can have so massive an impact.

Weir’s story begins with you dying in an accident and meeting up with the Almighty. He tells you that your life of 48 years has come to an end and now you will be reincarnated as someone else. What is striking about this story is the model of the Universe created by Weir. Weir says that there are only two entities in the Universe: God and I. Every other person on the planet is a reincarnation of I. Therefore, when I interact with other people on the planet, I’m simply interacting with myself, incarnated in a different form.

The consequences of such a Universe is tremendous. It basically means that every act of kindness or cruelty I do, I do it to myself. I am Hitler, the one who killed millions. At the same time, I am the Jew incarcerated and tortured in a concentration camp. I am a slave master and the slave. So, whatever shit I give to people, I am just giving it to myself. If I exist in one Universe as a slave master, I will be reborn as a slave to the same master and will face the same cruelty that I had once inflected on the slave who was just another form of I. There is no concept of time in the Universe. So, I maybe in the 21st century at one point of time and in 5000 BC, the next. This way, all my past karma will not go unaccounted for.

Imagine a world where we preached the above model as gospel. I think that would be an incredibly powerful propaganda to instill good in people. We are selfish beings. We act out of self love and self interest. We are, more often than not, willing to inflict pain and misery on others if it makes us better off. Some of us also indulge in sadism. But now before we commit a potentially abhorring act, with this model, we will think twice. Whatever it is that we’re doing to another person, it will come back to us when we reincarnate as that person later. Imagine you are Hitler. Would you torture the Jews knowing that after your death, there was a probability of you being reborn in the same time as a Jew being tortured by tools and initiatives that your present form created?

I definitely think not. After reading the story, I find myself a believer in Weir’s version of the Universe. And I feel a much prudent, if not better, person. I think twice before giving shit to people knowing they’re just one of my forms, knowing that I’ll be on the receiving end in another life. The world just so beautifully comes to balance. Karma reigns as the supreme bitch. This school of thought really ought to be a religion. I’ll probably call it Eggism or Weirism. Oh, and do read the entire story here. I’m sure you’ll become an Egger/Weirer too.

Winter Has Come

 

The Red Woman premiered on HBO on the 24th of April (the day before yesterday). We’ve been waiting for the premier episode of Game of Thrones Season 6 for over a year now. I finally watched the episode today. And boy was it worth the wait. For over a year, GoT fans had been speculating about every character, dead and alive; their futures, the time they’d die, their ancestries. One would have thought that every possible direction the show could go in was already hypothesized by the public. The makers of the show proved us wrong and reminded us as to why this show was one of the most popular, highly rated television series on the planet.

First things first. Jon Snow is dead. But there are encouraging signs that he’ll soon be resurrected in some way. Maybe Melisandre will do the needful. Or maybe Jon Snow has warged into Ghost and Davos will sacrifice the direwolf to bring him back to life. If Jon was to remain dead for the rest of the show, they’d have burnt his corpse. Nothing of that sort happened. Plus, Davos and his troops are eagerly guarding his body. And it also remains that Jon Snow is the last remaining candidate for Azor Azhai. The show has conveniently killed off the rest.

Another person whose fate was of great interest to me was Stannis Baratheon. Roose Bolton mentions that Stannis is dead. Brienne also seems to be riding through the woods without him as captor. But I still refuse to believe he’s dead. They haven’t showed his body yet. And apart from Roose’s remark, the entire episode remained suspiciously tight lipped about his fate. Brienne didn’t even mention him. So, it is still highly likely that the last of the Baratheons is still alive.

I never really cared for Daenerys’ or the Dorne story lines. Doran is dead and the Sand Snakes have taken over Dorne. The Lannisters have yet another enemy to fight against. Daenerys is at some Dothraki camp and the subtitles were in Russian so I couldn’t quite understand what the hell was going on. She’s no longer a prisoner though. That’s kind of sad, to be honest.

The highlight of the episode was its titular character and it was her I was alluding to in the first paragraph. Turns out the red haired seductress is actually over hundreds of years old! The last scene of the episode kind of left me scarred. People who watched GoT for the titties are definitely going to bid farewell to the show. But this was something no one speculated. No on had even thought about it. I still do not know what it means or how it is significant to the plot line. All I know is that I’m counting the days to the next Monday. Winter has finally come.

 

The Goosebumps Nostalgia

 

B0XP03 Enid Blyton’s first Famous Five Children’s Book Five on a Treasure Island first published 1942 FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. Image shot 2008. Exact date unknown. Enid Blyton Famous Five Hardback Book 1942 1940s Enid Blyton writer Famous Five Hardback Book 1942 1940s Children children’s old vintage Enid Blyton writer Famous Five Hardback Book 1942 1940s Children children’s old vintage Clive Rowley

A senior of mine had to get a few books on Accountancy for his sister (believe it or not, there are some things, including books, which are available in Roorkee but not in Chennai). I happen to meet him on his way and I decided to accompany him to the Cambridge Book Store in Civil Lines. Inside the store, I found a shelf of books which hit me with a sharp wave of nostalgia. It was a shelf full of Goosebumps and Famous Five books. It’s been almost a decade since I read them.

Feeling nostalgic, I actually decided to pick up a couple of Goosebumps titles and read them. It was an amazing feeling. It was like I was in seventh grade all over again. And just like its style of writing, it was a reminiscence of a time which was so much more simpler. I still remember waiting for the weekends so that I could cycle to the library and pick up a couple of Goosebumps titles. I would then proceed to my aunt’s house where I would lay in bed, read through both of them and finish them in one sitting. I’d then have dinner, go back home and watch a movie on television with my family.It’s amazing how going through a book you used to like as a kid creates a gigantic craving to go back home and live those moments once again.

I may not be able to go back to seventh grade again but his time when I go back home, I’m going to pick up my old bicycle and visit that library again. I’ll probably renew my membership for a month and pick up a few books just like the old times. I’ll visit my aunt’s house, lie in her bed and read those books. I really want to do this. It’ll probably make me realize the need to keep my life simple, happy and devoid of bullshit.

(Oh, and by the way, I was digging through my old blog and actually found some ghost stories I’d written back in middle school. They’re terrible pieces of writing but they serve as a reminder to the time I actually considered being an author. Strange how we learn to forsake our dreams and completely forget about them in such short time.
In case you’re interested, you can find my old blog at Fantasia. )

 

Chariot of the Gods

 

Since the advent of the End Semester Examinations, there has not been an awful lot I have been able to do apart from drown myself in notes and browse through every social networking site I’ve ever signed up for. Still, I managed to find some time to read Chariot of the Gods, a book by German author Erik von Daniken.

The premise of the book was quite fascinating to start with. Daniken proposes a theory that our ancestors were actually in contact with intelligent extra-terrestrial beings who shaped the future of human civilization on planet Earth. I’ll admit I am a sucker for alternative and conspiracy theories. The Da Vinci Code is one of the my absolute favourites mostly on part of the kind of blasphemy it propagates so boldly. The book also was only about 220 pages long so I figured it wouldn’t take more than 3-4 hours to complete it.

I must admit I found the theories and evidence put forward to back them extremely convincing. There are a lot of things about our past that simply don’t fit into our existing model of our archaeology and scientific research and we choose to ignore it rather than develop radically different theories which could disrupt the scientific status quo.

Most of the ancient religious texts such as The Holy Bible and The Epic of Gilgamesh speak of the Gods creating a devastating flood that wiped out a majority of the human race and sparing a select few to continue their progeny (for instance, Noah in The Bible). Still others such as The Mahabharata and Mayan tablets explain in eerie detail, flying chariots with ‘Gods’ at their helm. Since most of these religions and civilizations responsible for these texts were not in contact with each other, it cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence that so many different people isolated from each other came up with the same story as a figment of their imagination.

What happened was this: Super intelligent beings from a different galaxy ventured into our solar system and found Earth. However, they found the human inhabitants over there to be savages and devoid of the technological wonders that made their travel possible. The Earthlings, on the other hand, were so fascinated by these extra terrestrial beings and their spaceships that they immediately assigned them the status of God. These aliens then taught the humans of some of their technological marvels which explains why some ancient civilizations were aware of things such as the length of a Venus year and the exact mass of planet Earth. The aliens then proceeded to interbreed with the humans and we are all descendants of this cross breeding.

These beings may have come from as close as Planet Mars. There is evidence suggesting that Deimos, one of Mars’ moons is actually an artificial satellite. Based on this evidence, it is not entirely far fetched to presume that intelligent beings actually existed on Mars millions of years ago and they immigrated to Earth once the planet became to hostile to support life any more. It is entirely possible that we are descendants of the Martians.

I’ll refrain from explaining Daniken’s theories any further as it is four in the morning and I really should go to bed. However, I’d strongly suggest you read it. It would make for amazing discussions and debates in your social circles.

Of Science and Comic Books

 

Recently, I was reading through Randall Munroe’s works, namely xkcd volume 0 and What If… Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Both books strongly reminded me of the Horrible Science series by Nick Arnold, a series that formed more than half of my reading shelf in middle school.

Some of the absurd questions covered by Munroe in his book required a basic understanding of complex scientific principles. Yet when he explained them using his signature xkcd style stick figures, reading and understanding the material was a breeze. The same can be said for Nick Arnold. Some of the Horrible Science titles I’ve read introduced me to concepts that are usually taught in college level introductory courses. For example, I read about the Stanley Milgram experiments, a staple of every Social Psychology Introductory Course, in a book called Explosive Experiments when I was in sixth. And I still vividly remember understanding the concept of conformism (though Arnold didn’t specifically use the term).

Horrible Science inspired me so much that I wrote a title of my own. Back in seventh, I had converted my entire Science textbook into a Horrible Science style comic book. It was the beginning of my cartooning. And although I don’t draw too many cartoons these days, I’m sure the nostalgia induced by What If will induce me to draw a few strips.

I have always been a fan of conveying complex ideas through cartoons. How amazing would it be if all our textbooks were designed this way. I believe interest in the sciences would then increase exponentially. It is probably because of the element of humor and the application of intuition that makes them so appealing. Even in complex branches such as engineering, understanding can be more complete if we relied on scientific intuition rather than abstract mathematical models. It is the dominance of differential equations and Fourier transforms in my subjects that make me hate the branch so much. Maybe if it was more practical and less mathematically heavy, I would have learned to love it more.

A Short History of Everything- II

 

Won’t say too much here. I’m done with A Short History of Nearly Everything. As I had mentioned in the previous post, the second half of the book dealt with the history of life on planet Earth and how a series of flukes conveniently paved way for the dawn of homo sapiens.

It’s quite counter intuitive how we know more about the galaxies and stars that dot our skies than our oceans and seas. Apparently 99.9% of the species of organisms that currently inhabit our planet have not been discovered yet. There is a extremely high probability that an expedition into one of the major rain forests in the world could lead to the discovery of at least a dozen species that are currently unknown to man. The magnitude of our ignorance of organisms we share the planet with is kind of surprising, to say the least.

 

A Short History of Everything- I

 

As I had mentioned in Big History, I had zeroed in on Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Everything as my primary source of getting to know more about the subject. I’m halfway through the book and the content provided by the book so far has been so vast and so diverse that I felt it more appropriate to update about it in a series of posts. Devoting a single post to the history of everything didn’t seem to do the book justice, so there.

Firstly, the book does live up to the hype and its ratings. I spent a huge amount of time in middle school reading up Horrible Science books. As a result, I am in possession of a large mental repository of facts about science and scientists that are usually not found in science textbooks. After going through three hundred odd pages, I realized how much I didn’t know about stuff that ought to be known by everyone. How is the age of the Earth and the Universe calculated? Why and how were the dinosaurs suddenly wiped out from the face of the planet? And some of the facts the book stated were really bizarre. Isaac Newton wrote the Principia when a fellow astronomer, Edmond Halley asked him about how and why the earth revolved. Apparently, Newton had formulated his laws of motion and the universal law of gravitation decades ago. He simply didn’t bother to publish his results. It was only upon the insistence of Halley that he wrote the book and became, arguably, the greatest scientist the world has ever known.

If there were a comet or an asteroid approaching our planet, we wouldn’t be aware of it until two weeks before it was due to collide and by then, it would be too late to do anything. Essentially, if there was an asteroid approaching our planet, we would be in the dark (quite literally) about it and the havoc it would create on colliding with the planet i enough to end the human race as we know it. And considering there are hundreds of thousands of asteroids in our system, every moment we live might be our last. Terrifyingly fascinating, isn’t it?

It is facts like these, backed up by credible scientific research and evidence that makes Bryson’s book such a compelling read. So far, I have read about the Big Bang, the Universe, the Galaxies and our Solar System. You may feel that you have adequate knowledge of the aforementioned topics but it is only after reading chapters dedicating to these topics due you actually grasp the magnitude of your ignorance (at least in my case). Did you know, for instance, that until very recently the Earth was believed to be only a few million years old? Or that the first dinosaur fossil found was discarded as the discoverer couldn’t grasp its importance?

Bryson’s later chapters are devoted to the planet we live on and broadly gives an overview of the planet from the viewpoint of two subjects: Chemistry and Geology. After reading the chapter on Alchemy, Chemistry and the Elements, I kind of grasped as to how cruel and unfair the world of science can sometimes be. Some of the greatest geniuses who ever lived are not even mentioned in scientific literature. Take Swedish Chemist Carl Scheele, for example. This man independently discovered eight elements including hydrogen, oxygen and chlorine. But he is not given credit for it. The majority of the world doesn’t even know his name.

I’ve never been a fan of Geology or Geography but the fact that I went through almost a dozen chapters dedicated to them effortlessly speaks of the effortless ease with which the author conveys major ideas to us. Although it is highly unlikely that I will pick up a book on Geology as a follow-up, I can confidently say that I know enough to discuss a few topics with a geologist over a cup of tea.

The latter half of the book covers Biology and Evolution and I’m sure it will be an even more exhilarating read than the former. I liked Biology at one point of time. I have a feeling I still do. I maybe just halfway through the book but here’s one piece of advice I’d give to anyone who wants to know about how the universe and the world works: read the book. Trust me, it’s worth it. Every single page of it.

 

French Classical Literature

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I’ll be honest. I never intended on studying or even going through French classical literature. I was just randomly surfing through the Kindle Store looking for French books to learn the language from. I came across this one book called Classic French Course in English by William Cleaver Wilkinson and assumed that the book was an elementary textbook for the French language. I was hugely mistaken.

What the book actually is, is an account of French geniuses who shaped the history of French literature and the sciences from the fourteenth century to the present. This was certainly not the book I was looking for. However, after going through its lengthy preface, I decided to go ahead and read the book. It had an impressive set of people for its chapters. Voltaire, Rousseau and Pascal, to name a few.

The book is highly academic in nature and provides a descriptive criticism of every person it takes into consideration in a single chapter. Frankly, I found the first couple of chapters boring. It spoke of French historians Froissart and Rabelais respectively. I would have put the book away had it not been for the chapters on La Montaigne and La Rochefoucald.

This were the chapters were the book actually began to feed you information and facts that were interesting. I had never heard of the two aforementioned people before. However, their philosophies had a extremely critical impact in the history of the French school of thought. Montaigne’s solitary work Essays literally shaped the views of French thinkers for centuries and continue to do so. I was personally deeply moved by the schools of thought the two propagated, especially the latter. La Rochefoucald’s Maxim is an extremely small book of a collection of over 700 verses. In most of his verses, he speaks of his concept of self-love being the major driving force of every human activity, including apparently contradictory acts such as altruism. The book gave a glimpse into a few of his verses and I was hooked. I think I’ve stated this before in my posts but there is a certain romance in being able to relate to words written centuries ago. It is a beautiful, humbling feeling to fully grasp the might of the pen.

I’m only a third through the book. I will probably devote two more posts to update my progress with it, along with A Short History of Everything. In other news, End Semesters are approaching and I really, desperately need to get on with studying. Now.