The not-so-timeless romance of despair

I watched a movie this afternoon titled Chinese Coffee, the story of one damaged man seeking help and counsel from his equally damaged friend. It got me thinking, made me open a dusty old box hidden away in one of the many dark corners of my mind and what follows is the result of the analysis that followed.

Despair is timeless, as is the romance of despair. Or are they? Within the context of an individual's existence, despair can indeed be truly lasting. It feeds on itself and on anything and everything, in some ways like that tiny mountain stream that feeds on other streams as it grows into the mighty, unstoppable river, its flow seemingly inexorable, all-consuming. And much like the stream, the despair of one individual has the capacity to consume other around him. Unless and until this unstoppable force meets an immovable object - the will of an individual - despair will drag a man down to depths of oblivion with chilling certainty.

But unlike despair itself, the romance of it is far from everlasting. Over time, the desperate man comes to a fork in the road, though seldom his mind sees it; and, he makes a choice - he either resolves to fight his despair with every fiber of his being or he allows it to consume him until all that is left is venom, that unique flavor of venom which one can only find within a man who has admitted defeat.

In truth, peace is success (the converse is far from true) - and to attain it one must overcome the inertia within, both intellectual and physical. Often the mind balks at the scale of this challenge and one sees despair as something romantic. Thus is born the image of the romantic pauper, living in the dark, grimy shadow of human society and yet somehow beyond it, above it - somehow, noble. This illusion, shallow as it is, is powerful... it drives one to wallow in a living purgatory until the inertia builds up to a level where one can only choose between a cathartic battle to overcome and a spirit-crushing admission of defeat. And only when a man sees the darkness of despair does he realize that the romance it once seemed to hold, it never did - it was nothing more than a reflection of the jaundice in his eyes, an expression of his lack of will.

So, I ask myself, where do I stand? Did I make the right choice when I came to that fateful fork in the road? Or, have I yet to reach it? Do I still wallow in despair? Do you?

Ramblings: A Letter from a brain wrapped in mists

Been a while hasn't it? It's been an interesting few months. The nameless inertia that seemed to dull my days has been shed, or, at least, so it would appear. I've been reading lately and thinking... reading and thinking... thinking and reading. My thoughts are still very much a blur, so much so that I've been having trouble sleeping on account of my mind refusing to pause. So, here I am, letting my wheels spin free in that hope that something with a degree of form may come of it ultimately.

"To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons may be safe fighting, indeed, but it is fighting with shadows. My greatest comfort and encouragement to proceed has been to see that those who have no shame, and no fear of anything else, have appeared touched by my satires." - Junius

If at all you know me, even a little, you will take offense over my words . For it is out of respect that I try to speak with honesty.

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." - Henry David Thoreau

The question is becoming clearer with each passing day of turmoil.

"Nature loves symmetry." - Louis de Broglie

The photon is at once both wave and particle as is matter. Does it therefore follow that man - as he relates to that within and that without - is dual-natured as well? Or does realization of the self demand reconciliation between the two?

"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves." - Henry David Thoreau

Am I lost? If so, when? Is it when I wander, often aimlessly, within the corridors of my own mind? Or is it when I walk, seemingly with purpose, the streets out in the wilderness of human society?

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone." - Henry David Thoreau

The aim is to distill the process of living until I arrive at the truth of my nature. The first step is to paint, in my mind, a clear vision of the ideal. (Needless to say, this process will be lifelong and iterative.)

"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the sufferage of the world." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I must possess the conviction to heed mine own voice and the stillness of mind to speak clearly to myself.

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” - Henry David Thoreau

Indeed, I must be prepared for any test of my courage and resolve.

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude after own own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

But, above all, I must seek balance.

"To be great is to be misunderstood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Importantly, the converse if often untrue. Many who are misunderstood and presume themselves great, do so falsely.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." - Henry David Thoreau

I am off then, to do, to live.

Virtue of a bygone era

I read these post titled 'India doesn't need Olympic pride' and 'Do you think Kashmir is an integral part of India' on India Uncut. The writer articulates the very thoughts that rant and rave about every day and for giving me a voice, I thank him. National pride, if I may be so bold, is a virtue of a bygone era. Tribal and provincial allegiances were once subordinated to national unity and nation states were born. It's time we take the next step and recognize ourselves as individuals whose collective identity derives from the species we all belong to. The nations our forbears forged have evolved from being unifying forces bringing together clans and tribes to being divisive labels keeping neighbors at each others' throats. Take India and Pakistan, for instance - why are we still busy antagonizing each other? It's about time we started identifying ourselves as human beings and it's about time we started acting accordingly. The importance of pride derived from a national identity and the resultant umbrage taken without reason are beyond petty in the face of the very real problems like starvation and strife we face. Is it too much to ask that we forget window dressing and turn our attention to the real issues at hand?

To my inner cynic and yours: Like I've said before, what could be more human than hope?

PS. I'm not deluded enough to think that all the world's problems or even any one of them can be completely resolved. After all what stands in the way is human nature. But I do think that an things can be made better for an individual or a group of individuals. Where's the fun in life if we don't fight for small victories in the name of a lost cause?

PPS. I owe thanks to Partha for pointing me to the posts on India Uncut.

Of clown masks and suicide

I watched two documentaries - Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog's meditation on Antarctica and the eclectic group of people who gravitate towards it's desolate magnificence) and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson - and I read some more Batman comics. And then I did this thing that I have a habit of doing from time to time - I thought. What follows is a brief account of some of what came out of the depths of my considerably dark mind. Do enjoy.

Hunter S. Thompson lived an eventful life to say the least. But who was he? To me he was Cicero reborn as an angry jester - the 60's version of Akira Kurosawa's Kyoami from Ran. As Gonzo, he had the courage of conviction to give voice to the angst that most of us feel but try to ignore and a way with words that forced the meek and the strong alike to stop and take notice. He shocked the timid among us and rattled the cages of the powerful. But such power exacts a heavy price - Gonzo was a clown face that Hunter Thompson could never take off. Just as Bruce Wayne was reduced to little more than a mask that Batman wears during the day, Hunter Thompson, the man, was little more than a vessel for Gonzo. And like Batman, Gonzo is a being with an unquenchable fire of anger burning within his heart - to sustain such a fire means fueling it with one's very life force. And there's only so much wood in the pile. (This is where Bruce Wayne has the advantage of being fictional.) Such men burn bright, a shining beacon, but they burn through life quicker than most - in the end, one must either retire the firebrand alter-ego or face annihilation. Unable to give up being Gonzo perhaps, but without the energy reserves to sustain him much longer, Hunter Thompson took his own life, leaving a note that read, "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt."

When it happened, Thompson's suicide came as no surprise to those who knew him for he had always foretold his end by his own hand, viewing it as a way of dealing with death on his own terms. And that leads me to my next question. Why would any man look upon suicide with such romance? Well, let me begin with a brief segway. Interviewing a reclusive/taciturn penguin researcher in "Encounters ...", Herzog asks, "Do penguins ever go insane? Do they ever commit suicide?" The footage that follows is of a lone penguin breaking away from his colony and walking towards the interior of the continent, towards certain death. There is undeniable power in the image of the lone penguin awkwardly waddling into the vast, desolate expanse of the Antarctic. But why? Well, why do we celebrate tragedy in song, in verse and in prose? The magnetism and romance of sorrow are undeniable. Perhaps it is an expression of the sub-conscious mind reveling in the 'human condition'. Nonetheless, it is this attitude taken to an extreme that leads some of us to see romance in suicide. While I myself no longer hold such a view, I can understand it to a degree.

A lot of us are lazy - physically, intellectually, morally... in more ways than there are words to describe. Observeing the challenges that life throws at some of us, through a veil of laziness, one is often left in doubt of one's ability to cope with adversity. Suicide begins to look more and more like a convenient emergency exit. Add to the mix ideas like reincarnation and the finite nature of our existence is no longer a significant issue. And in an attempt to rationalize a lack of moral fortitude, one begins to paint a rosy picture of suicide as an honorable way out. This could easily happen to a man who's lived long enough, burning his candle at both ends. Rather than sacrifice his ego to give up the hard life, such a man may well decide to check out early from this mortal coil.

This is not to say that all the people who commit suicide are entirelyto blame for their predicament. There are the less fortunate among us who see nothing more than boundless misery in life and are left drained of hope, thanks to the apathy of their fellow men. When such men chose to take their own lives, everyone of us selfish people deserve equal blame. Civilization, by definition, can not function without an element of altruism. Having ranted at length on this topic in several of my previous posts, I will say no more on the topic... for the moment.

P.S. Describing the Antarctic as desolate magnificience is an undoubtedly lame play on Buzz Aldrin's description of the lunar surface and was therefore, irresistable to me.

What I do and why I do it

What could be more rewarding than utilizing the power of thought to illuminate the workings of the universe (/life) itself? But in order for one to begin connecting the dots, one needs dots. It is the function of experiments and mathematical modeling to provide such dots. While advances in technology have enabled us to obtain ever more precise dots in ever greater number, identification of the pattern that emerges from them remains the sole domain of human intellect. However, inherent in this grand description is recognition of the limited nature of human scientific knowledge. A scientific theory is merely the most complex simplification of a real process that can be achieved at the given time. This is because we are unable to observe the whole fabric of reality, depending instead on experiments and mathematics to transduce a few bits and pieces of it into a form that our senses may perceive. As long as this remains the case, a scientist can never run dry of curiosities to indulge. Indeed what a curious thing the human condition is? Our limitations ironically ensure an inexhaustible source of mystery that we may forever be amused.

Just because we killed you, it doesn't mean we don't love you.

The meaning of one’s existence (I refer to a meaning bounded by the span of one’s consciousness and not to any manner of grand, unifying purpose) comes from interactions of one’s consciousness with the universe at large and with other conscious minds. The proportion of these two types of interactions is determined by who we are and in turn defines our identity. Sometimes, in interacting with certain people we find the meaning of our own existence enriched. These are the people with whom we form stable, meaningful bonds – love, friendship and the like.

Once in a while there comes along an individual whose existence enriches that of many – a hero. Indeed a hero is one who can love many as his own and continue to do so without having to avert his eyes from the truth. Because, heroes are reviled more than they are loved – that is the way of our “society”. Our actions scream out the words we dare not whisper – the only good heroes are dead ones. While they live, heroes are the squeaky wheels that will not be silences. They are the square pegs that will not be contained by the round holes of our “society”. They are the thorn in our collective side. But truly they are the sheep in a den full of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Why do we hold such contempt for them? Perhaps because they are who we wish to be and by being noble, they reflect the ugliness in the rest of us. We are too lazy to live by our principles, or to even have a clear moral framework; so we deem it impossible. We blame our failures on “the human condition”, but then a very human being comes along and offers us a glimpse of what is possible. And we hate him for it. We destroy him as best we can – we may not always succeed at destroying the idea of a hero, but we certainly excel at destroying the person of one. Once we’ve killed a hero, we try to truly bury him and all that he stood for. Failing that, we place him on a pedestal. In what must be the greatest mockery of them all, we then condemn our own hand that did the killing. But at some level we all know that our collective hands are stained with more blood than we care to admit, even to ourselves.

Once a hero is slain we go to work on him with the all the skill of a master artist: we place his name in lights and sing ballads in his honor even as we grind down the idea he stood for, until all that remain are a few weak words. Words like liberty and non-violence – words that we may then utter with mock ceremony without fear of being affected by the idea they once represented. That way we can sweep away our collective guilt under the proverbial carpet and move on with our “lives”. Ain’t WE grand?

The one redeeming truth, though, is that heroes do sometimes succeed – rarely to the extent they had aspired to and almost always, paying with their lives – but at the end of the day, they stand tall over (against?) the rest of us.

P.S. This post was inspired by a radio talk show discussing the ideals that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood for.

What could be more human than hope?

This is in response to a comment on my previous post.

What could be more human thank hope?
Anynymous said:

1. Adultery
2. Backstabbing
3. Jealousy
4. Irrationality
5. Wasting Money on Valentines Day
6. Substance Abuse (show me one bonobo or iguana that does it?)
7. Emotional manipulation (the preserve of the average Indian parent)
8. Evil (this is purely a human thing, born entirely out of ignorance)
9. Obsession with stupid games in which grown men fool around with spherical objects
10. Belief in a grand narrative known as life (when it is just a series of digressions)

Indeed many, if not all of the above are all too commonplace. But the question is, do they constitute what may be described as "human"? I for one do not think so. Quite to the contrary, they constitute a failure to be "human". It is my opinion that belonging to the species Homo sapiens sapiens alone does not qualify one as a human being. To me, humanity is an ideal one strives for every moment of one's existence. Humanity is no congenitally conferred label, it is a state of mind achieved through long and rigorous learning (and I'm not talking about reading Chicken Soup for the Soul). For a more detailed discussion of my views on the subject, see "Human Life".

P.S. With regard to Anonymous' list of things human, I find it rather odd that obsession with sports or enriching the coffers of Hallmark should be placed right alongside jealousy, backstabbing and ignorance.

Madness explained? Maybe

First things first. For those who were offended by my statements regarding religion in my previous post "Madness returns...with a vengeance": Calm the fuck down! (Yes, I can be nice.) I have nothing against religion, as long as one man's religion does not step on the toes of another man's liberty. Now, if that's true, why would I say the things I said? That post was supposed to be one long (OK! and somewhat twisted) joke - I was trying consciously to dance on either side of the border between sounding coherent and launching into a 'nonsenseical rant' on the subject of rational thought - I thought it would make for a few good laughs.

That being said, two questions have come up that I would like to address. The first and by far the easier one to answer concerns my rationality. I don't presume to consider myself a rational being. Rather I'm stark raving mad , grasping at the frayed ends of rational thought from time to time. (Maybe I'm just using colorful words describing myself as 'stark raving mad' but for some odd reason it makes me really happy, so, I must really be mad.) [Please tell me you laughed at this one, or else!]

Now for the other question. Being someone who describes himself as a 'man without beliefs', where do I stand on the subject of faith? Nowhere really. Let me clarify. To me liberty is the ultimate and all-encompassing virtue. One who comprehends liberty will value equally his own and that of his fellow men. Thus, such a person automatically seeks the noble within himself. So then, where does the big G fit into all this?

What is God but a construct to rationalize morality (dharma, to be more precise)? It takes little effort to see that this is a construct very much of human making. The understanding that walking the right path is its own reward simply obviates the need for the construct. In essence, a truly rational atheist rejects not the ideal but merely the construct, the packaging of the idea, if you will. A long time ago, a very wise people put this succinctly when they said, “Anbe sivam”. And yet, those who now stand upon the shoulders of these are blind to this truth. Why? Because, millennia of intellectual lethargy have led to the construct replacing the very ideals it stood for. Method has given way to madness, vision to myopia. And the fear bred by myopia feeds on itself, restricting thought even more. Indeed, what a wonderful instrument of control the idea of blasphemy is!

Rather than launch into another lengthy tirade as I am wont to do, I will just say that ignorance is the villain, as always. And should the light of reason ever break through this fog, perhaps people of the different faiths and those of none may see that they are after all more alike than different.

P.S. What could be more human than hope?

Just words...

What's in a word? Everything, some say. That seems to be our collective point of view as a society. Why else would we fear some words so much? Invectives, the very sound of the word is ominous - as though, to say it out loud would invoke some dark malevolent power. Indeed we fear these words so much that we place restrictions on their public use, resorting to censorship even as we speak loftily of the freedom of expression. Such hypocrisy! What are mere words without thoughts behind them and actions ahead? NOTHING! (I'm not denying the power of words here. I'm merely pointing out the fact that the power of words stems from the thoughts that inspire them and the actions that they inspire.) And yet, we obsess over words rather than thoughts and actions. We shield our children, who are the best part of us, from words while it is the thoughts and actions that do them the most harm.

What makes us this way? It's simply laziness - intellectual and moral. We always want an easy out - morality for dummies, if you will. Do these ten things, don't do those ten and you're all set. It's easier to keep a few words out of one's vocabulary than to steer clear of malice, of envy and all things ugly. If only we had the courage to strive to find the right path every moment of our lives, we would see how blind we are to fear words. As a realist, I know that will never be - so I shall plod on, painting invectives for what they are... just words.

P.S. This post was written at Pingu's request to clarify my reasons for peppering my previous post so generously with four letter words and other choice gems from the English lexicon.