What have I been reading lately?

I was tagged by Pingu about a couple of months ago. I'm supposed to quote the last sentence from page 123 of the book I'm currently reading (I think those were the stipulations). As always I'm part way through a handful of books. I've decided to quote from two of the books because the others are graphic novels. Also, I've decided to quote my favorite lines instead of arbitrarily chosen ones.

Book 1: Brain Droppings by George Carlin
"Intelligence tests are biased towards the literate."

Book 2: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard P.Feynman
"I don't have to be good because they think I'm going to be good."

Downfall

The skies burn.
The very air seems to boil.
The daystar shines so bright.
Vying for glory,
A second midday sun.
Almost beautiful,
Decidely terrible.
A fleeting moment of unparalleled brilliance,
Before the world dissolves away,
Ushering in the darkness.
A darkness lasting much too long,
Choking into oblivion,
The last breath of life.
A mother lies hurt, scorched, scarred.
Her children all dead.
Her beautiful children, her terrible children,
Gone. Never to return.
Fate, so quick thy hand,
So cruel thy retribution.
Justice? It matters not.
The past is past,
The future awaits.
She lays sleeping,
Not dead.
Perhaps, the mushroom cloud had a silver lining.

I believe that while there always exists hope for the individual to find meaning in life, our civilization itself is merely circling the drain. If there ever existed a species on this planet whose extinction was not merely inevitable but deserved, it would be Homo sapiens sapiens. For we have allowed vile beasts like hate and war to roam free on our watch. The above lines are not a foretelling of the future, they merely offer a foreboding vision of a beast of our own creation consuming us at one fell swoop.

The Return of Random Rants

With reference to books, when did popularity ever become a complete measure of quality? Of the people who say it is, I ask this “Who died and made you king?”

Moving a couple of steps to the side from that thought – why do we judge each other by the books we’ve read or failed to read? It’s all too often that one hears some thing like, “You seriously can’t call yourself a reader if you haven’t read Tolstoy/Shakespeare/Macnife!” Oh, really? Is he not stupid who does not realize there have been so many great books written over the ages that it is entirely possible for different people to have read any number of great books without ever reading what the others in question have read? Granted, some great books are so widely read in a certain age that it may come as a surprise that one with a taste for books should have not read such a book. But to judge them based on that, that’s arrogant and stupid.

Have you ever felt like a sheep in a wolf’s clothing hiding among wolves? I have. And then for a while, I felt as though I was really the wolf hiding among the sheep. Strangely, I now feel like neither sheep nor wolf... I just don't know any more!

It’s 10:55pm and the temperature in my bedroom is 68.0 degrees Fahrenheit. I am sure that the probability of this statement being interpreted by ‘scholars’ who will ‘unlock its inner meaning’ is greater than zero. I wonder how much of what we ‘know’ is the product of such ‘insight’.

Continuing in the same vein: I am told that the fourth word of every seventh line from the odd-numbered pages of all seven Harry Potter books taken together spell out a secret message inviting the children of the world to unite under the banner of the duck-billed platypus and revolt against capitalism and chocolate teddy bears.

Often, genius is peppered with a dash of madness. However, madness alone is all too often mistaken for genius.

Could there be a better role model for me than a vision of the man I seek to be? Not only is such a role model open to constant evolution, but also it is impossible to be let down by him.

Is it not stupid to act solely to avoid future regret?

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Here’s a conversation that happened inside my head between me and a hypothetical ‘true believer’ (let’s call him B):

Me: So you say there’s a god who is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent and that he made the universe?
B: Yes, of course!
Me: Then how do you explain the fact that I’m an asshole who won’t accept that? If god made me, wouldn’t he have made me aware of that fact?
B: No, He gave us all free will.
Me: Really? Why would he do that? To see what we’d do with it? But being omniscient, he should already know the answer to that – thus obviating the need for such an experiment.

Oh wait, he’s not only watching me, but will judge me after I die, right? If he already knew where I was going to end up and still let me do it, I’d say he has one hell of a twisted sense of humor.

And if you amend your definition and say he’s not omniscient, I ask you then why would he make you and me then? What is his purpose for creating the universe? To watch and learn? Wait, now he’s a scientist? But he wants you to forget about the science and have faith?

B: You’re evil!
Me: Sounds to me like you don’t have a real answer. My job is done then. Time to wake up and get to work – happens to be science by the way. I’m out of here, before you decide to kill me.
B: Good! And, don’t come back!

__________________________________________________

"Let me give just one example of how the argument goes. By adding up all the begets in the Book of Genesis you can get the age of the Earth. It turns out to be about six thousand years old—A begat B, B begat C, C begat D. A's lifetime is stated, B's, C's and so on. Then you get up to historical times. Add it all up: 4004 B.C. according to Archbishop Usher. Now, if that is the case, then an interesting question arises. How is it that there are astronomical objects more than 6000 light-years away? It takes light a year to travel a light-year, so if we see an object that is a million light-years away or two million light-years away, we are seeing it as it was one or two million years ago in the past. If the entire universe is only 6,000 years old, what must we deduce from this? I think the only possible conclusion is that 6,000 years ago God made all the photons of light coming to the Earth in a coherent format so as to deceive astronomers into thinking there are such things as galaxies, that the universe is vast and old.

"Since most of the matter and energy in the universe is in external galaxies farther away than a million light-years, God must have created most of the matter and energy in the universe to deceive human beings. That is such a malevolent theology as well as such an arrogant pretension that I cannot believe anyone, no matter how devoted to the literal interpretation of this or that religious book, could seriously consider it. " - Carl Sagan
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PS. If, after reading this post, even one person reaches for a paper, a pen and the Harry Potter books, my job on this planet is done and I can go home!

A walk in the rain

This post was inspired by Pingu's post titled Relentless Rain. Not often does one read lines so moving, the hand reaches for the pen, seemingly of its own volition.

Gray looms and thunder roars,

The heavens open up,

The Gods vent their fury.

I stand defenseless,

Fists clenched in rage,

Eyes aflame with defiance.

As I look up in tense anticipation,

The first salvo hits, with unfailing precision,

Washing my anger away?

A walk in the rain.

A vision of power

Part 1: Questions

A thousand worries weighing down my mind,
Forgotten at the sight of a bright blue sky.
The cacophony of demons trying to break down locked doors,
Drowned out by a refrain sublime.
Glimpses into infinity, far beyond the provincial,

Visions of the self, revealing answers and questions,
Questions that propel me to seek, to learn.
Therefore, I am. Therefore, I wander.

I have more questions than answers. But that inspires no fear in my mind. Far from it, it is the force that drives me - to be, to live, to wander, to seek, to learn. In life, I revel. Is that not power*? If so, where does it stem from? More questions - wonderful!

Part 2 - Answers

Vast open spaces. Endless skies. Clouds. As I looked upon just such a scene, I felt as though I was looking upon the very visage of freedom itself. The clouds, they come and go as they please, they rain down upon the land when it is their whim to do so, they answer to none.** As I looked upon that scene, I realized that their freedom stemmed from the absence of any moorings whatsoever.

Power derives from knowledge and knowledge itself is born out of freedom, freedom of thought. And such power is true as it is supreme - for it is contingent upon no fact save that of one's existence.

A man without beliefs, a god*** without believers,

Beholden to none, all powerful, am I.

* I do not speak of power in the mundane oft-used sense of the word. Power over the actions of of others and to an extent even my own, mean little to me. When liberty of action is but an illusion, how can power over actions be real? True power is that of free thought - the shedding of chains forged by thousands of years of human civilization, chains we receive in the name of education. A human mind free of all bonds is truly a thing of beauty and of immense power. It is that very power that I speak of.

** Here, I speak of the vision of the clouds that I saw and not of the objects that the clouds really are. What I saw at that moment was much more than merely "a visible mass of condensed droplets or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere".

*** I DO NOT refer to any supreme being with a penchant for rolling dice. Also, I feel no obligation to capitalise the word because it is just that, a word. Words have no meaning in the absolute, only ideas do. I use the word merely to describe a state of equilibrium that transcends the mundane. I think John Keats was thinking of much the same thing when he wrote "Beauty is truth truth beauty."

What makes me happy?

A tag from Pingu.

Sunny skies with just a few white clouds.

Good coffee.

My mom opening the door to let me into the house.

Dark chocolate.

A glass of cold water on a hot summer day.

The smell of fresh cut grass.

The sound of waves.

Stepping out for an ice cream during a snow storm.

Good comic books/cartoons/anime/movie.

Sitting down to a hot self-cooked meal (especially when it's something exotic).

Spending an entire day on my couch looking at cloudy skies listening to jazz or mood rock.

Orange popsicles.

Watching the sun set while sitting on a hill top with my feet dangling over the edge.

Writing, sketching, making model airplanes.

Saturday mornings.

Re: Yeh thi khabrein aaj tak, intezaar khijiye kal tak

This is in response to "Yeh thi khabrein aaj tak, intezaar khijiye kal tak" on Pingu's blog.

I think 'journalists' and news anchors these days come off an assembly line managed by a bunch of egotistic cretins in some B-school (wonder if the B indicates the grade of the institution in question). They are all the same - all confirming to the same LOW standards, all with the same illusions of grandeur. Poseurs and losers!

All they have accomplished is the perversion of the once-revered fourth estate into an abomination in the service of greed, deceit and authoritarianism. They rant and rave incessantly about trivia, leaving real stories to rot away from the public eye. They trivialize and sensationalize events that do matter, until the public is sickened. But worst of all they spread fear (without reason) and help undermine democracy (whatever's left of it).

William Randolph Hurst once said "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war.” At least he knew what real journalism was and so he could tell hype from news - even when he was the one creating the hype. In contrast, today's losers swallow every bit of their own circus acts and actually believe they are jornalists. How PATHETIC!! Hardly any politician today is worthy of being called a statesman just as hardly any news reporter/anchor today is worthy of being called a journalist.

Pardon my strong language in this post but I have nothing but contempt for their kind and even that is more than they deserve.

Human life

Disclaimer: This is by no means an attempt to answer the question of life, the universe and everything. That answer has already been published - it is 42. What we have here is merely a discussion of one man's perception and how it has changed.

But I am only human…” Countless are the times I have used these words to justify my mistakes, my faults to myself and to others. After all, our flaws are the very things that make us human – at least that’s what I thought. But I see now, how that single notion was the defining factor of my perceptions, my actions, my very existence. I was too lazy to change, I knew it and yet I was too lazy to accept to myself the wrong in that. The result was a young man with a very myopic vision, bereft of direction.

Add to that, the fact that I saw myself more through the eyes of others than through my own – I was looking at myself from the outside when I should have been looking outward at the world from within. I concerned myself more with who I was perceived to be than with who I really was. Even when I was being a rebel and a non-conformist, I was trying to be different instead of being myself. The result was constant turmoil within – a tug of war between the person I was/am and the person I was trying to be. As a result, I often did things that caused me much hurt, not to mention the pain inflicted upon to those dearest to me – I was by no means blind to the truth, yet I was somehow powerless to stop myself.

And then suddenly I realized one day that I’d changed and that the world had changed for me. There was a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that had always been missing from my life before. There had been no epiphany, no lifting of veils, but my life had practically turned itself upside down (rather it had finally up righted itself) – I’d found once again the lost joy of childhood; it was as though I’d come full circle. And when I thought about it, I realized how simple it had been – I’d finally learned to detach my perception from that of others. This had opened my eyes to the truth that happiness is not merely the byproduct of the pursuit and attainment of ones goals but that happiness is itself the goal and everything else but byproducts. I’m sure that every 3 year old knows that. Yet as surely as we grow bigger with age, we lose all the wisdom of childhood.

All my rage, hate and cynicism had been mere symptoms of my lack of perception. With the realization that the pursuit of happiness is really the very purpose of life (at least to me it is) came recognition of the things that give me joy. I live to satisfy my curiosity – to try and solve the mysteries that are so abundant in nature. The moment when the solution to a problem begins to take form in my mind, the moment an idea is born, that moment is what I live for. The pure joy that it gives me leaves no room for any pain or sadness. And it is at such a moment that it hit me – humanity is not in the flaws, it is in the recognition of flaws and in transcending them, even if only for the most fleeting of moments.

I realize finally that my life is really all about "my" "life". Don’t get me wrong. I do not suffer from illusions of grandeur. I recognize fully how trivial my existence is in the context of the universe. In fact, it is my belief that the existence of any individual has no purpose (in the context of the universe). But that does not bother me; I revel in it – life doesn’t need a pre-ordained purpose to be sweet. Life is whatever one makes of it; purpose is whatever one wishes it to be. And to me, the purpose to learn, to experience, to enjoy.