What do I know?

Disclaimer: This post is part of a series of essays I wrote at the Young India Fellowship. This particular essay was written as part of the Critical Writing course on Mind, Society and Behavior.

I believe the summer of 2016 was one of the most significant phases of my life. I had slipped into a period of depression and my personal and academic life was suffering immensely as a consequence. At my lowest point, I had turned to literature. It seemed to me to be my last respite; my messiah. And it did not disappoint. In a span of three months, I had read close to 75 books. There were days where I was completing 500 pages in a single sitting. I do not know if there is an upper threshold at which reading could be considered unhealthy but if there is, I am pretty sure I had far surpassed that limit.

I can say with absolute confidence that I learned more about myself and the world around me in those three months than the time encompassing the rest of my existence. Therefore, what I reflect upon in this essay will draw heavily from my readings (of philosophy, fiction, science, and religion) from the summer of 2016;.

As I sat pondering upon what knowledge is, I was immediately reminded of a powerful anecdote from The Little Prince, an extremely influential  French novella penned by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

The book contained an image (perhaps one of the most famous in world literature) and asked the reader to ponder upon what it was. At first glance, many readers would agree that the image was that of a hat. However, the author argues that it could very well also be a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant whole. I shall reference this allegory in the subsequent sections of this essay.

I believe that the Universe and the Truth that is associated with it is nothing but utter, absolute chaos. Knowledge to me is simply a proxy; a tool that we think allows us to infer truth about the Universe. And while knowledge does succeed in making sense of some parts of the Universe, there always comes a time when it fails to explain something and descends into futility.

I shall try to demonstrate the above statements using an allegory. Imagine that you are lying on the grass and you see a cloud in the shape of an elephant. The fact that you see an elephant in the cloud is like knowledge. The cloud is the truth. While the shape of the cloud is chaotic and inherently random, you try to build a model of an elephant around its shape in order to explain it and/or understand it better even though nature never intended for that to happen.

Therefore, the creation and pursuance of knowledge is nothing but a never-ending quest to form proxies that would help understand the Universe a little ‘better’ than what previous proxies could do. Ever since mankind was given the gift of sentience, it has indulged in an almost insurmountable quest of making sense of the chaos in the midst in which it found itself in.

The first humans were perplexed by phenomena such as lightning, rain, the stars and the endless cycle of day and nights. In its quest to make sense and gain knowledge of what was going around, mankind developed its first proxy: God. Alexander Drake, in his treatise The Invention of Religion, has argued that any sentient being when placed in an environment of zero knowledge will firstly and eventually develop the concept of God in order to explain phenomena that surrounds him/her.

However, mankind soon realized that the concept of an omnipotent being responsible for everything that surrounded them had its shortcomings. While it performed a satisfactory job of explaining events that had already occurred, it fell extremely short of predicting outcomes around circumstances that were extremely similar. And it is in this shortcoming that we see the genesis of science.

Although science understandably enjoys intellectual hegemony over religion, at its core, the two attempt at doing the same thing: making sense of the Universe. Science tends to enjoy superiority on account of its modeling prowess and predictability. For instance, when the laws of motion were formulated by Newton, it was possible to compute the velocity with which a ball would land if it fell from a certain height. This was true of every ball and every setting as long as the height remained the same. However, we often misjudge this discovery as ‘truth’. Scientific models were never the absolute truth. They were just proxies that explained a certain behavior of the Universe accurately. They were like the elephant in the clouds. The Universe simply does not care for scientific or mathematical laws. It isn’t aware of the laws of motion. It just so happens that in its chaos, we manage to sometimes find apparent order in it.

Since, by its very nature, knowledge is nothing but a collection of proxies, it always tends to break after a certain point of time. As an illustration, consider the evolution of the structure of the atom. In the beginning, it was believed that an atom was a blob of positive charge with negative electrons embedded in it. All phenomena observed in association with the atom could be explained by this model. But then came a period when something else about the atom was observed. The cloud did not look like an elephant anymore. So, now it was postulated that an atom was mostly empty space with a dense, positive nucleus at the center and negative electrons revolving around it. This model, in turn, was rendered useless when quantum mechanics was discovered.

Thus, we see that knowledge and its acquisition is merely the development of proxies that we presume are better on account of its potency to explain more facts about the Universe than its predecessors. The scientific world has a current set of proxies with which it understands the world. However, it is an absolute certainty that some phenomena will be eventually discovered that will render it impotent.

Now that we’ve established that knowledge is nothing but a proxy to create order out of something that is inherently chaotic, development of knowledge is simply an exercise of developing apparently more ‘potent’ proxies over existing proxies. Understandably, there is always a base set that arises out of nothing. In this essay, I will refer to these points of knowledge as axioms (akin to Mathematics). These are ‘facts’ that cannot be proved and are assumed to be the truth. All knowledge is built from this base set of axioms.

The potency of knowledge is constantly tested by ensuring it is consonant with the phenomena that it attempts to explain. Once it fails to explain something, it must be either discarded or modified in order to explain the aforementioned phenomena and still maintain consonance with everything that it has correctly explained before.

Some knowledge is created by the easy modification of the current state of knowledge. An example of this is the evolution of Rutherford’s nucleo-centric model from Thomson’s positive blob. Some knowledge, on the other hand, requires a modification of the base axioms in order for it to come into existence. For instance, atoms were considered to be matter. This was considered base truth. However, when quantum mechanics emerged, this axiom had to be discarded in order to make room for the duality notion. It is at this point that I make a reference to the Little Prince hat. Knowledge to me is like that har. It is constantly changing and is never a reflection of absolute truth. For all we know, the shape drawn above is just a random collection of lines. Our observations and existing notions (knowledge) lead us to believe that it is a hat. However, should we see this hat starting to slither, we will evolve our understanding to label it as a boa constrictor that has swallowed an elephant. In the future, we may observe some other things that may not be cognizant with this model either. Then again, we will attempt at describing it as something that explains that particular phenomenon in addition to everything that was observed earlier.

With my thoughts on knowledge substantiated, I shall now turn my attention to what it is I know. If by the term ‘know’, I’m referring to the absolute truths about the Universe, I find it necessary to quote Socrates in saying that I know nothing. All I have with me is a set of useful proxies that allow me to make sense out of some components of the Universe I exist in. I am cognizant of the fact that they may be proved wrong in the future but so far, they have helped me in explaining everything that I have observed and/or experienced.

In the same breath, I would, therefore, say that my conquest of knowledge is simply the acquisition and development of better proxies that enable me to understand a superset of the components of the Universe that my present state of knowledge may fail to explain.

A stated several times in this essay since knowledge is nothing but a set of proxies, the question begs as to how do we actually develop these proxies. We do so by interaction and observation. We observe something that is happening in the Universe and try to construct causal reasoning behind it. If the reasoning (or model) holds for subsequent events of the same nature, it survives for the time being. If it doesn’t, the model is modified. In some other instances, we supply a stimulus and record the response. We observe how responses differ to different stimuli and again, we try and construct a model that is potent enough to extrapolate on stimuli-response pairs that haven’t been explicitly tested before. This relationship between stimuli and its corresponding stimuli is again something we construct. It doesn’t inherently exist. As before, it is like the elephant in the cloud.

If I am made aware of something that I do not ‘know’, it could mean one of two things. Either I do not have a proxy in my set of proxies that can help me understand it. Or I possess a proxy that had given me an incorrect result. In the first case, I simply add the state of the art proxy to my set and in the latter, I modify my existing proxy using techniques that I have explained above. There are several instances where the latter might cause cognitive dissonance in my head. In other words, the modification of a particular proxy threatens the existence of the other proxies. In such cases. I make a cost-benefit analysis. There is never a right answer to this question. It boils down to which I would consider being more taxing to my mental and ethical well being: the ignorance of one phenomenon that my premature proxy cannot explain or a major overhaul of my entire set of proxies altogether.

In the final sections of the essay, I will attempt at creating a narrating around me knowing my self. I have come to understand that there are four components to knowing me. The first is observations and a set of associated explanations that are public knowledge to me as well as others around me. The second are those that are known to me but not to others. The third is vice versa. The fourth and the final are things that are not known by anyone.

I have come to realize that I will never come to know the absolute truth about myself. In that sense, I am like the Universe in which I reside. I can only create proxies that help me to understand a component of myself better. The truth about me resides in the fourth component. The other three are merely observations and proxies created on account of it. There are things that I believe are true about myself. There are certain moral principles that I believe I adhere to. But I am cognizant of the fact that these may all be rendered false when I’m put in a situation that forces me to alter my vision of myself. I will never know who I truly am. I will only know parts of me as I progress through life that will hold true until they are broken under certain circumstances. In my pure essence, I am chaos. There is no inherent order to who I am. I can only run with assumptions and be resilient when faced with the prospect of changing my perspective of myself.

The Ship of Theseus

 

Personal Identity has always been that one branch of philosophy that never ceased to entice me. And today, I thought I’d write a small piece on the Ship of Theseus paradox, its proposed solutions and the kind of ramifications it has to the contemporary (and most probably, futuristic) world.

The paradox, one of the most famous and hotly debated ones in philosophical circles, was first explained by Greek philosopher and essayist Plutarch who introduced the problem as follows:

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

It seems to me that the answer to the aforementioned question is in the affirmative. I strongly believe that both the ships are the same. And the school of philosophers who hold the same opinion as mine will tend to give you the example of the human body.

Human cells are continuously formed and destroyed throughout the entire lifetime of a person. This means that every cell you were born with have perished and have been replaced by new cells. Does this make your 1 year old self and you present self two completely different people? I think not.

And why this is the case is what I’d like to devote the crux of this post on. But before that, consider an alternative scenario where Theseus sets sail and in the middle chooses to transfer himself and his crew to another ship. Will the two ships be the same? I think most of us would believe the contrary. But what if the new ship in this Universe was built of exactly the same materials that was used to replace parts in Plutarch’s Universe? Despite the crew and the ship being exactly the same, the two ships have sharply contrasting identities. One can clearly be shown to not be the original ship whereas the other is a source of raging debate.

So, is my premise wrong? Are the two ships not the same? I’d say no. And to defend my position of what clearly seems to be a case of dissonance, I’d like to explain a concept which I call assimilation.

In its bare essence, it means that for an entity A and B to be the same whilst having entirely different compositions, it is mandatory that the replacement of A’s parts with that of B’s be done in a discrete, step-wise manner.

In the case of the ship, the parts were being replaced one by one. So, when the first plank was replaced by a newer, stronger one, the latter became assimilated to the original ship. It now was as much part of Theseus’ ship as all the other original parts. And by induction, every new piece which was introduced into the ship was assimilated too.

But if you were to take this set of new materials and build an entirely new ship altogether, the process of assimilation would be absent. And that is the primary reason why the two scenarios described above had contradictory results.

Think of it in this way. Let’s say you’ve built a huge Lego house built entirely out of yellow blocks. Now, you proceed to replace each yellow block with a red, one by one. While doing so, you wouldn’t end up with a new Lego house even if the end product is completely red (in contrast to the yellow house you started out with). That’s because each red brick became a part of the house when it was replaced. It assimilated. It became one of them.

But again, a very interesting question could be posed. What if those yellow bricks were collected and another house was built that resembled the original house. Which of the two houses would be the original one?

As counter intuitive as this may sound, I’d still say it is the red one. And this, I believe, arises out of something I call ‘assimilation power’. Basically, when one part is removed from another, one part tends to lose its identity of being a part of the object whereas the other retains it. When one plank is removed from Theseus’ ship, it no longer remains a part of Theseus’ ship. It loses that identity. The rest of the ship, however, retains its identity.

Probably this analogy would help convince you more if you aren’t yet. A person excommunicated from a nation (say, the United States) does not remain an American anymore. But all the other citizens of the nation continues to. On the other hand, an immigrant that enters a nation naturally becomes an American.

So, hypothetically, if all the current residents of America were excommunicated one by one and replaced by a new immigrant up to a point of time when all the original residents are banished, which country would be America? The one of the immigrants or the one formed by the excommunicated? Again, I believe the answer is the former.

I do understand that what my line of reasoning may not seem that potent. Particularly, the concept of assimilation power and loss of identity upon removal are some things that I’m not entirely sure of. But again, as it is with almost every question in philosophy, I do hope this encourages some healthy debate. I do not have a lot of comments on my blogs but this time, dear reader, please do make it a point to share your opinions, however polar and contrasting they are to mine.

Summer Reading II: Non-Fiction

 

In the previous post, I had listed down books which predominantly fell into the fiction genre. In contrast, this post will focus primarily on non-fiction. However, before I start listing down my favorites of the genre, I’ll be doing a short section on contemporary fiction first for the sake of achieving a sense of completion.

Contemporary Fiction

To be honest, I haven’t read a lot of contemporary fiction. I haven’t all the books listed over here. I’ve included them purely on the basis of the recommendations of the online community as well as a few credible friends.

• The Fault in Our Stars- John Green
  Two terminally ill teenagers meet and fall in love. This books is an absolute favorite among my female friends. Get ready to get all teary eyed.
• The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseni
  Set in modern Afghanistan, The Kite Runner chronicles the lives of two young Afghan boys as they witness the fall of the Afghan monarchy, the Soviet intervention and the rise of the Taliban regime.
• Q&A- Vikas Swarup
  The book on which the Oscar winning movie Slumdog Millionaire is based on, Q&A offers us a glimpse into the dark, macabre lives of children in Mumbai’s slums. After reading the book, you’ll genuinely happy and content with the quality of life you’ve got.
• The Book Thief- Markus Zusak
  Few books have left me in such a maelstrom of emotions as The Book Thief. Set in Nazi Germany and narrated by Death Himself, it is the story of 13 year old Liesel Meminger as she struggles to find happiness and meaning through books.
• Midnight’s Children- Salman Rushdie
  When a book wins the ‘Booker of Bookers’ in both the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize, you know it has to be something spectacularly good. Set in post-colonial India, with its magical realism, Midnight’s Children is just that. A must read for every literature aficionado.

Poetry

• The Prophet-Khalil Gibran
  The magnum opus of my favorite poet, The Prophet is filled with timeless advice on everything imaginable: love, work, family, children, relationships, hate. And the lines are so beautiful that they are bound to strike a chord with your heart.
• Gitanjali- Rabindranath Tagore
  This work by Tagore made him the first non-European in history to win a Nobel Prize. And it wasn’t without good reason. Even though I read the translated version, I found his verses to be overwhelmingly euphonious.
• 20 Love Songs and a Song of Despair– Pablo Neruda
  The champion of passion and unrequited love, Pablo Neruda has given words to the ardor of countless lovers across the globe. This is a collection of some of his very best (See Twin Geniuses: Tagore and Neruda).
• Essential Rumi- Coleman Barks
  The translated works of 13th century Sufi mystic poet Rumi, Essential Rumi is a treasure trove of wisdom imparted by the mystic almost over a millennium ago. Like Gibran, Rumi’s lines will definitely manage to reach the deepest centers of your heart.

I realize that the poetry I’ve listed are all translated works. If you want to read ‘pure’ English poetry, look for the works of William Blake (Songs of Innocence and Experience), Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass), Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, T.S.Eliot, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Edgar Allen Poe.

Biography

• Steve Jobs- Walter Isaacson
  What sets Walter Isaacson’s biography apart is its unapologetic honesty of the man who founded the most valuable company on the planet. Halfway through the book, I hated and loved Jobs at the same time. Very few books will give you such honesty.
• The Man Who Knew Infinity- Robert Kanigel
  My favorite biography, Kanigel’s account of Indian genius Ramanujan is probably the most comprehensive account you will get of the great mathematician’s life.
• The Accidental Billionaires- Ben Mezrich
  Although not a biography per se, Mezrich’s tale of the rise of Facebook and a bitter legal battle that ensued shortly after its launch makes it an exhilarating read.
• Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!- Richard Feynmann
  The autobiography of one of the most eccentric physicists of the twentieth century, this book is an account of the craziest adventures and discussions undertaken by Feynmann.

Art, Culture and History

• Natasha’s Dance- Orlando Figes
  Russia has given some of the greatest authors in history. Russian novels and stories can pierce your heart like no other. This book is an account of the cultural history of Russia that gives us an insight into the kinds of developments that took place that led to the rise of the Russian arts.
• The Story of Art- E.M.Gombrich
  This introduction to art gives us an account of its history from cave paintings to experimental art of the 1960s.
• On Writing- Stephen King
  This semi-autobiography of King is an ode to the art of writing and the struggles and delights of being a writer.
• The Diary of a Young Girl- Anne Frank
  The unintentional autobiography of Holocaust’s most famous victim, The Diary of a Young Girl gives us a surreal glimpse into the lives of the Jews hiding in Nazi Germany.
• Unbroken- Laura Hillenbrand
  This collection of stories from World War 2 gives us accounts of survival, resilience and redemption showcased by civilians and armies alike.

Technology, Math and Startups

• Zero to One- Peter Thiel
  A collection of the notes of the class taught by founder of Paypal and Palantir, Peter Thiel, Zero to One is widely regarded as the bible of starting up.
• The $100 Startup– Chris Guillebeau
  This book is about micro-businesses and roaming entrepreneurs and how it is actually feasible making a living out of doing something that you love (See Microbusiness and Travel)
• The Code Book- Simon Singh
  One of my favorite non-fiction books of all time, The Code Book narrates the little told story of the art of security and secret writing.
• Fermat’s Last Theorem- Simon Singh
  This book is an account of a three centuries long struggle to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem; a proof which Fermat claimed not to have put on paper because it required too much space.
• God Created The Integers- Stephen Hawking
  With commentary from Hawking, God Created the Integers highlights the biggest mathematical breakthroughs in the history of mankind which went to shape human civilization as we know it.

Science

• A Brief History of Time- Stephen Hawking
  Arguably the most famous science book of all time, A Brief History of Time gives the layman a glimpse into the wonderfully complicated universe that we live in and our struggle to understand it.
• A Short History of Nearly Everything- Bill Bryson
  This book on Big History gives us an account of the history of the Universe, from the Big Bang to the present day (See Big History)
• Chariot of the Gods- Erich von Daniken
  A bold hypothesis of how human civilization was shaped by extra terrestrial beings who visited Earth a long time ago, Chariot of the Gods is the quintessential account (and possibly proof) of panspermia and intelligent extra-terrestrial life.
• What If- Randall Munroe
  In this book, former NASA scientist and founder of xkcd comics Randall Munroe answers absurd questions regarding the world and the universe (See Of Science and Comic Books)

Philosophy and Religion

• The God Delusion- Richard Dawkins
  The bible of atheism, The God Delusion argues how the probability of a supernatural being existing is almost zero if the theory of evolution is to be believed.
• The Dhammapada- Anonymous
  The Dhammapada is a collection of the Buddha’s teachings and gives us a glimpse into the teachings and principles of Buddhism.
• History of Western Philosophy- Bertrand Russell
  History of Western Philosophy is an account of every major philosophical thought from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present

Economics and Psychology

• Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics- Steven Leviit and Stephen Dubner
  The craziest economics books you can find, Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics tell us about the hidden side of everything. Why do drug dealers live with their moms? Why should suicide bombers buy life insurance? How did legalization of abortion lead to a drop in crime rate in the US? Read the books to find out.
• Thinking Fast and Slow- Daniel Kahneman
  The bible of Behavioral Economics, Thinking Fast and Slow is one of the best books you’ll read on the subject (See Revisiting Psychology)
• Predictably Irrational- Dan Ariely
  Like the previous book, this too gives us an insight into the anomalies and idiosyncrasies of human behavior. A must read for anyone who plans on starting a business or is in marketing or public relations (See Human Behavior and Irrationality)
• Economics in One Lesson- Henry Hazlitt
  A champion of the Austrian School of Economic Thought, Hazlitt tries to explain the problems with traditional economic principles through a series of well known historical cases.
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat- Oliver Sacks
  A brilliant account of the strangest cases encountered by Sacks in his medical career, this book is a must read for anyone with the slightest interest in Clinical Psychology.
• Interpretation of Dreams- Sigmund Freud
  One of the pioneers of the field of Psychology, Freud sets out to explain how our dreams can tell us much about our deepest desire, passion, pain and ambition.

And I shall stop here. I think I have covered a majority of the major fields of interest. Yet, I understand that one person’s experience with books leads to the creation of a relatively skewed list. Again as before, this list is in no ways exhaustive of any kind. There are plenty of amazing books I haven’t listed or have missed out on. Please feel free to list them in the comments.

Nietzsche

 

For the past few days, I have been reading the works of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The first book I read, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is widely considered as his magnum opus. I read the Rothingdale’s English version of the book. And by far, this is easily the most difficult book I’ve read. Nietzsche seemed to produce a myriad of ideas in a space of a very few lines that was extremely hard to grasp unless you read through them at least half a dozen times. And each line could be interpreted in a thousand different ways. No wonder the book has been sighted as one of the most misunderstood, misquoted and misrepresented book of all time.

As you go through some of the chapters, it is entirely possible that you extract Nazi principles out of it. I researched a little on this and I found that the Nazis actually did cite this work as support to many of its ideologies. As mentioned above, this was an extremely hard book to read and I probably grasped only a tenth of what was being said. A quick surfing through a few Reddit forums told me that I wasn’t alone. Apparently to understand the book completely, one had to read Nietzsche’s previous works. Also, the Kauffman translation, which preceded Rothingdale’s by a couple of years was the relatively easier read.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra starts with its titular character descending the mountains from a period of self-exile to claim that God is dead. And throughout the book, this is the primary message he tries to propagate. There is no such entity as God. Man mustn’t strive to attain salvation. Instead he must do everything possible to give rise to a new race of supermen, the ubermensch. Man isn’t a goal. He simply is a mean, a bridge between beast and the ubermensch. Another striking element of the book (and of Nietzsche’s other works) is his disdain for Christianity. Time and again Zarathustra mocks those with Christian values and voices out vulgarities sans any fear or shame.

From the little I understood, I’m not really a fan of Zarathustra and his teachings. The style of his preaching was painful to say the least. The book lacked poetic beauty that is characteristic of books of the same genre (The Prophet or The Dhammapada, for instance). And for the most part, I had a feeling that Nietzsche either didn’t himself understand what he was trying to say or had deliberately made the book a difficult read so as to repel the mass who would have been deeply offended by his views. Judging by Nietzsche’s reputation in the modern world, I’m inclined to go with the second proposition.

I followed up this book with The Antichrist. Although a far easier and concise read than Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I found myself at a loss trying to grasp some of the ideas conveyed by Nietzsche. At a very high level, Nietzsche says that goodness is the will to power, evil is anything that arises from weakness and happiness is a net increase in power. With the said definitions, he goes on to say that Christianity, which bases a lot of its principles on mercy and pity is a religion for the coward and the weak. Nietzsche believes that the weak ought to be weeded out rather than be given crutches and be treated as equals to the good (or the powerful). Extremely radical and controversial thoughts. A majority of the other sings he says went over my head. That’s probably because of my lack of knowledge of Christianity. I decided to stop after about two-thirds of the book. I’ll return to it once I’ve read up more about Christianity and Judaism, the two religions he criticizes so blatantly and unapolegetically.

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.

 

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.

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.

Guitar, Buddhism, Wilde and Cancer

 

DP19

As you may have guessed from the title, a lot has been going on the past two days in my life. Firstly, I completed my 50th book of the year (yes, I know I said I’d stop reading until the end semesters but I couldn’t resist), The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It is undoubtedly one of the best works of fiction I’ve ever read and probably will ever read. This is the book since The Da Vinci Code that I was simply unable to put down. The story of a man who sells his soul for eternal youth. There is a romanticism simply in the one line description of the book. One of the main characters of the book, Lord Henry, is, to put it in layman’s terms, the villain of the book. Yet each line attributed to him is an absolute delight to read. He speaks the truth and his words pierce you like a dagger. I’ve never fell as much in love with any fictional character than I did with this spoiled connoisseur.

I had read up a little about Buddhist philosophy and the concept of Nirvana was particularly interesting so much so that I picked up the Dhammapada, a collection of sayings by the great Buddha. The book was small but its wisdom far transcended its size. Some of the Buddhist ideals are really worth applying to in our lives. I felt a sort of liberation simply by reading the book. Although I do not think I will be able to apply the principles of asceticism and stoicism that the Buddha so staunchly propagates, I do find myself wiser knowing about it. According to Buddha, Nirvana can be attained only when one is free of desires. When one is stoic to the face of pleasures, he/she becomes indifferent to grief. It is indifference to these multitude of emotions that can give you freedom from the continuous, hapless cycle of rebirth. I, however, feel differently. I believe that we ought to embrace these emotions to the fullest. We need to allow grief to sear holes into our hearts and in turn let joy fill in those holes. Emotion is paramount to human existence. It’s what makes us alive. It is the mother of all art. It is what survives in the sands of time.

The second book I’m reading on Buddhism is a certain Siddhartha by Hermann Heese. I’m almost halfway through the book and so far, it has turned out to be a pretty interesting read. Although I do not identify myself with all the principles of Buddhism, I do intend on visiting a monastery soon. If there is one word that could sum up this entire religion, it would be peace.

Today, I finally summed up the will to resume playing the guitar again. I went through the first two weeks worth of course material of Berklee’s Intrduction to Guitar. It felt really good to play the instrument after such a long time again.

Last, but not least, I ended up writing my term paper for Engineering Electromagnetics course. It was on the possibility of a correlation between cancer and increased exposure to electromagnetic radiation. Honestly speaking, I learnt more researching about this topic than all the classes I have attended combined. It would be really cool if profs assigned a considerable portion of the course grade to term papers. That would do wonders to my GPA and would actually imbibe some knowledge of the department I’ve come to hate so passionately.

(And in case you’re interested, you can find the paper here)

Reading Dostoyevsky

I don’t usually read short stories. I don’t enjoy them too much. Most of the ones I’ve read were from my Literature textbook. It’s maybe because I have this feeling that you can never really establish intimacy with a story if it isn’t sufficiently long. I’m more likely to be satiated if I read a two hundred page novel than 5 forty page stories.

But I must make an exception to this opinion of mine. For after reading the shorter works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I think I have begun to appreciate and realize the kind of power and impact short narratives can have.

So far, I’ve read five works of Dostoyevsky, all of them short stories. Now this is a man who lived two centuries ago in Russia and wrote in Russian. Yet, as I sit reading his translated works two hundred years later, I find them to be so uncannily relevant to my life. The man manages to sear a hole in your heart with his narratives. He demonstrates what words can really do to men. They move, they bring tears, they create a maelstrom of emotions. Now, that is power.

Maybe this has something to do with the nature of his works. His stories are usually classified as ‘Philosophical Fiction’. And one of the stark characteristics of philosophical fiction is its relevance. All of Dostoyevsky’s stories were set in the times he lived, a time which was magnitudes different from the times we live in. Yet, when you read some of his stories, it is like seeing a chapter of your own life in print. It almost creates a feeling of deja vu. And I’m sure that two hundred years from now, his works will trigger the same emotions, the same feelings as it did mine.

When you read Dostoyevsky, it is like the man has stripped you naked and looked into your soul. That is not something most writers can do. And it is what makes his works so incredibly powerful. Take White Nights, for example. The nameless narrator has become a sort of a champion of unrequited love. Any heartbroken man or woman will be moved to tears in the part where Nastenka tears away from his arms to return to her former lover. Or The Meek One which dives deep into the subjects of suicide and narcissistic love. The Crocodile gives us insights into the highly impersonal world we live in today (and, I’m sure, has been the inspiration for many similar works such as Kafka’s magnum opus, The Metamorphosis).

Dostoyevsky’s short stories are a must read for anyone who enjoys fiction. His works also sometimes manage to give a kind of solace, a reasoning to some unexplained things in life. And if a nineteen year old like me is able to find solutions and reasons from Russian translated works published centuries ago, you will have to admit there is something magical about it.