The virtue of Sleep

      Sleeping might serve the biological purpose but it also has the latent potential to serve an equally important social purpose. This purpose has never manifested itself considerably chiefly because of the untold harm inflicted upon it throughout the annals of mankind. Sleeping is the greatest virtue if you ask me love,honesty,altruism,kindness all conventionally so cherished the virtues seem dwarfed against it. Why? What's so special? OK let me start from somewhere, for example, primordial man didn't get any spare time, all day he searched for food,female and ate the food he collected. Gradually our primordial men due to his intellects devised techniques that reduced his drudgery and he started producing crops in less and less time and that too far more than he required, thus he started getting idle, experienced anything called boredom which otherwise was alien to him. He had two concerns side by side, first to kill his time and second to do something of the excessive crops he cultivated. So he started exchanging his extra crops for what he thought would help him kill the time i.e some thought living in a good hut would make him happier and if he is happy he would not feel boredom. Thus his anthropology changed our primordial man evolved into what is today called as 'social animal'. And still he is in quest to find more and more means to kill the boredom rightly justifying what Bertrand Russel said "To get out of the boredom, would be the greatest invention of mankind"

     But in this entire fuss men forget that their main purpose was to kill boredom. And sleeping is the other and perhaps better alternative to serve that purpose. If people develop a habit of sleeping(it's hard but my personal experience says its not that hard) when idle, all the civil problems resulting from the hyperactivity will eventually die out(though I don't guarantee other problems will not come out). Imagine a world where people sleep instead of rioting, instead of protesting violently, instead of killing each other, instead of the nations waging war with one another. Governments particularly like this idea because when people sleep they don't ask for water, they don't ask for employment, they don't ask for exam delay. So the Governments, instead of funding for temples and all craps, should develop sleeping shrines where people can sleep for unlimited times. An idiotic utopia may it seem but what better is our present world to forbid this experiment.

     But, hell this world has always been and will always be ruled by all the insomniacs. They will never sleep and never let others sleep. They will shout slogans in commercials to wake us up, they write poetry which spread the message of vigilance, they inflict lessons of wakefulness in the vulnerable minds of children, they will sing the virtues of wakefulness. But then who cares? The Snoozers don't retaliate because for even the retaliation you need to abandon sleep. The entire existence of the universe doesn't bother you once you fall asleep. If sleep is half-death, you half-reincarnate every morning.



     "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

_ E. B. White

(PS: IF you've followed me upto this line congrats for your patience and If any of the above lines stood convincing to you, you are a MORON.)

Astrology...a science?

      I acutely remember that when the earthquake hit Gujarat and devastated the entire villages and towns, I had often read in news papers that such and such astrologer had forecast the disaster in such and such daily. That this kind of claims are largely entertained by Indian people,it is evident by the huge success of astrologers like Bejan Daruwala and others. People are so eager to know about their future that huge attention has been paid to the sms schemes of the cellphone companies which delivers daily horoscopes from the expert astrologers. I, myself does not have any faith in astrology and often I fall into the debate with the people believing the otherwise. I have come across various arguments in favor of the astrology, many of them can be easily discarded with a little effort but some are hard to answer. First and foremost the conspicuous fact is that the entire supposed science of astrology is based upon the belief that the earth is the center the universe, but that according to proponents does not falsify the veracity of astrology because by that way even the Indian calender system is based upon the same conception of earth. Then there is the most eloquent of all arguments, they say astrology had been a well developed science in ancient times(of course in India), But now-a-day due to the invasion of foreign rules the knowledge about that ancient science has faded away and what remains is the present vague form of astrology, so on the basis of that vague science we can't predict anything exactly. These kind of arguments are very hard to counter because the other person is giving the evidences which can not be disproved. At a first thought this statement seems true because Indians were fond of not doing any documentation of whatsoever was worthwhile. Ancient Indian civilization was not like Romanian or Greek which had documented too many things. But given an afterthought these kind of defense does not have any value. Suppose that the ancient Indians had a well established science of astrology, now it can be assumed that at least few noble men like today's scientists were the masters of astrology and thus were able to predict every event including floods,disasters, external invasion in advance. Then why those omniscient masters could not help save their land from external invasion like mughal?, why the masters could not prevent the the deterioration of their science of astrology? So many good or bad things can be done if you know the future, but so far as we know the history nothing that much extraordinary happened. Now the proponents again will argue that there must have been a purpose in their mind to let the history being shaped like what we see it now and we don't know that purpose for the same reason we don't know about astrology. There is no limit to this kind of debate because the context is history and a life long prejudice.

     At the firmest of my belief I can say that astrology is just a mix of probability and a guess work using common sense. So astrology is as much a science as any good guess work can be or any seasoned stockbroker's forecasting can be.

“Respect to diversity” a practice long forgotten…….

 

     A simple question: “what makes a good society?” A simple answer: “good people.” Another simple question: “what makes good people?” and there is no simple answer to this question. Two news events are hitting the headlines now a day first about manglore pub event and second, the arrest of a couple (married) kissing in public. And a lot many headlines are expected to come on 14th Feb as usual. From these headlines a new word has also been added to my English vocabulary and that is “moral police.” As if shiv sevaks were not enough for good of the society that another ram sevaks have also come into scene. As a student of college I am aware of valentine’s day fever taking on over the college campus. I have also seen volunteers distributing pamphlets requesting students not to celebrate valentine’s day and to protect our culture from invasion of western culture. Do these guardians of the Indian culture truly love our culture (for now suppose that there convictions about culture is true and there attitude is justified)? Are they really benevolent by heart towards Indian culture and the only wrong matter is just that they are violent and dogmatic? Well again a tough question to answer. But to me it seems that there is some another thing cooking behind this fervor. I have also seen women distributing pamphlets and protesting against valentine’s day celebration. There was one thing in common among all those protesting women, they all were strikingly ugly, without a single visible attribute of womanlike tenderness. And probably there lies a real reason behind their cries, that reason is not the sense of culture but its rather psychological. These women must be the women who have not get any attention of men in their adolescent and that teenage deprivation of love affair and teenage fun has been converted into a sense of utter jealously and that sense of utter jealously, not the concern for culture, is the prime motive behind this outwardly seeming culture keeping activity.

      This is the case of women I don’t know the case of men but the first conspicuous motive for them is the power and fame which they would get from these activities another motive may (whenever I use ‘may’, actually I am tempted to use ‘must’ but I can’t as I don’t have documented, tangible proof to justify my point. Ha ha this is pretty like softwares that are not open source and you have to guess only about what is running behind?) be the unemployment because you can’t go for ‘dharnas’ on working hour unless you are unemployed(this reason equally applies to rioters also). And I bet that all these sevaks have ugly wives back at their home and they have unhappy and UNROMANTIC marriage life. As in women’s case this unromantic life creates envy of others happy and romantic lives. Let whatever be the issue about the society or about culture there is one question everyone should ask to themselves “Is the culture meant for the good of people? Or are the people meant for the good of culture? Who comes first?”. At least i am pro-life, pro-fun....Have a happy and safe valentine’s day in advance…..

Gods,Religions,Morals…strange trinity...

       I don’t remember the name but a well known thinker once said “If there is no God, I can do anything.” That seems quite palatable for all the proponents of the existence of the God. Why one should be good or generous if there is not any God, not any one who can give you reward for your virtues or sins. We try to be (at least some of us) good or virtuous because we fear God, like a person in general won’t rob anyone because he fears Policemen or laws. Same is the case for most of the believers in God. So discipline and goodness doesn’t come from within but comes from the fear to be punished by GOD. Such is the base of all the religions without a single exception, “FEAR”. Why should atheists have morals and be kind, generous or good because he doesn’t believe in GOD (and by the same reason it is widely believed that atheists are immoral)? The reasons are many I present the soundest one. As we have learned in those boring school text books that man is a”social animal”. Right from the birth a child is constantly in the warmth of society, throughout his childhood, throughout his adolescence he remains in the safety sphere of society where no one can come and kill him, no one can come and eat him. This factors are not seen in animals they kill each other, they eat the flesh of their own siblings because they have one and only thing to consider, ‘survival’, whereas humans do not need to worry about his survival because that is assured by the society and that’s the essence of human society. So if a person is alive till he dies without ferocious efforts like animals, it implicitly mean that he is obliged to the society for the vaccination he had been given, for the cerelac he had been fed with. And also, nothing comes free in this world. Here applies a simple business rule “give something in order to get something”. In order to savour fruits of that society you also have to maintain that society very well by not robbing others, by not killing others, by not eating others, by supporting others and that’s the precise definition of the morals for atheists. So whosoever said the sentence quoted at the beginning of the article is dead wrong.

        (comparing morals defined by religons over the morals defined by individual on basis of reason)Now the concept has taken 180 degree turn. First in case of GOD based morals it is fear that convinces people that they should be good, in second case it is also the fear. But there is a vital difference, in the former case the GOD is a third party who decides the morals but in the latter case it is a person itself who decides individually or the entire society collectively, what the morals are. Don’t both the cases give the same result? No there is a fatal flaw in the former case(wherein we consider the god as a regulatory element), which is that the concept of GOD is not intuitive, a child learn that concept eventually from the parents(or rather say religion), parents (or religion) may teach the wrong definition of the GOD and his rules ( so is the case when it was believed that a widow has to be burnt alive with the corpse of his dead husband otherwise GOD would get angry or in case of Islam one must not portray GOD otherwise he would punish) and the child even after growing mature can’t change those wrong definitions because it is based on the wisdom of a few persons who died thousands years ago and not on the wisdom of the contemporary men who are according to Charles Darwin far more intelligent and sensible. Whereas the morals based on reasons can be changed eventually and can not be wrong as often as it would have been in the GOD’s case. Morals or ethics based on the GOD(or religion) is unchanging, static but the morals deducted from reasons may be changed when need be(like drinking may be immoral in east as it is addictive but in the west with freezing cold drinking it must be moral). Religion and morals can not be considered synonyms instead they are often contradictory.


"It is very beautiful over there!" -Thomas Alva Edison (considered to have been told by him in his last days)

Terrorism

Rs.1.5/- lac as reward per perpetrator * 10 perpetrator= Rs.15/- lac Rs.
250$ per 1000 bullets.
Approximately 200$ for satellite phone.
Approximately 200$ for gps system.
500$ to acquire an AK-47.

        By summing up above expenses and adding other major expenses like traveling, hand grenades, expenses in search of the candidates and rigorous trainings of them would according to me make the staggering total of more than 1 Crore Rs. Terrorism comes at a cost, deadly cost because the people around from your community can’t get their daily food and you worry about the people geographically far away from you whom you have never seen whom you have never talked to. How stupid people can be?


        They (terrorists or rather say the masterminds behind them) used this amount just for a single attack on Mumbai in order to kill people. By killing people as they justify it, they are being benefactors for their fellow Muslim brothers in India who according to them are being suppressed, killed and executed from 1992 Babari Breakdown to 2002 Godhra Carnage and from Palestine to Kashmir. And I almost certainly believe that a large portion of Indian underdeveloped Muslims or the victims of Godhra Carnage believe in so called jihad in order to teach their suppressors( majority Hindu or in a global view everyone except Muslims) a lesson. Correct that the entire India is learning her lessons the hardest way but hold it!! Hold it!! My question is, are those terrorists who call themselves the true worshipers of faith really being beneficent to their brothers? No certainly not..because if they were to do good to so called suppressed Muslims, they could have opened new madressas, new orphanages, new old age homes or other activities which would give an effect far immediate than the other options. They could have used this money to rebuild the houses of Muslims who lost their homes in Godhra Carnage. And who knows how many hundreds of crores of money have already been wasted in fostering of terrorism which would have alternatively been utilized in more sophisticated and fruitful way. But call it inanity of them or the eloquences of mullahs that some Indian Muslim would continue to entertain them.

"It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this." - Bertrand Russell

............................

       Marketing sometimes helps the customers to know about the products they need, but the other times it’s the most pleasant way for both the parties, for it helps the seller ‘to cheat’ and helps the buyer in the act of ‘to be cheated’. Now-a-days every economic activity includes marketing strategies at different levels and the grand business of begging is no more an exception. After I came to Ahmedabad for study I’ve been experiencing some tremendous types of beggars with equally tremendous begging acumen (of course I don’t know the names of them). On an occasion I was at bus stand waiting for bus and a young man in neat and clean clothes came and told me that his cycle had got a flat tire and he didn’t have enough money to go home by bus and asked for the ticket fare. Without even the slightest suspicion I gave him 5rs. with the immense satisfaction of being a philanthropist, and to be frank I could have given even more money if he had asked for so. Then I met the similar type of experience again and this time also funded him his rent convinced that in such a big city like Ahmedabad two persons can have their cycles with flat tire and pockets with empty wallet simultaneously. Now it was the third time I heard the same story but till than I was no more a vulnerable subject and was prepared not to be robbed (though I don’t call them robbers or cheaters due to the negligible amount they rob or cheat) by all such types of broad day robberies.

       On another incident we were in Delhi sitting in the bus to Agra when a poor girl came and handed over us a template asking for monetary help which claimed that the girl is an orphan, and above all the template borne a sign of an advocate. Till now I was become highly invincible against these traps and didn’t give a single rupee but I was slightly feeling guilty for not helping her, but that guilt was completely vaporized when an another girl came on the next station with the same type of template.

       On yet another but the most memorable occasion in Ahmedabad me and my friend was waiting for bus and a man in thirties, well dressed came and told us that he had taken a pledge for his daughter that he would collect some money only by bagging and would present that collected money before the goddess in some temple, having informed this he showed us his wallet with the amount of money more than the total amount we had in our wallets and asked for 10rs. by adding that money doesn’t matter it was only a matter of pledge. Now this was totally irresistible for both of us, and my friend contributed his part to his ‘holy’ pledge. Needless to say it was only a trick.

       But such wonderful experiences make me ponder a little. Should we patronize the beggars? Well this has been a big topic of debate. Out of a sympathetic feeling some are in favor of helping them on the other side there are so called rational people who never give a paisa to them. I am partially in favour and partially in opposition. By digging deep into this apparently trivial but yet a factor affecting all of us, I can say that there are 3 cases of beggars. First the children , nobody should ever give a single rupee to them if we think of philanthropy because the moment he starts believing that the begging business is a profitable and easy one he would never come out of it and would remain a beggar lifetime. The another case is the youngsters, with the rising economy even the biharis get the daily wage by drudgery so why cant those beggars? The last case is of old-aged, there are two types of old-aged beggars one who have always been beggars right from their childhood and have never tried to work, they deserve this poverty and should not be given help. The second type is of those who because of old-age are not able to work and at a last solution they chose begging, to help them is a social duty for every one of us. But how to differentiate between these two types? Well don’t care take risk, patronize the both types.

the rama and the ramayana

       For the majority of indian population the most sought-after kind of societal arrangement would surely be "ramrajya". Ya there should be a society like that, because 'ramrajya' is in any sense better than todays society. But as far as the factor of perfection or 100 touch is concerned, "ramrajya" is also not spared. why? what was imperfect in bhagvan Rama? let me write point by point.

1. it is obvious that when a war is waged, thousands of lives are put at the death. So one has to have the strong reasons in justification of war before he wages it. In case of bhagvan Rama, the conspicuous reason was the kidnapping of godess seeta. But had the rama any reght to bring thousands of lives at the brink just for his beloved wife? True that the pride of the ayodhya was in question, but in that condition too was the war only option? I remember a plot from the movie "troy", wherein the enemy countries had their representatives fight(one from each) with each other and the winner representative would win the war for his country. with the cost of only one life the war was over. couldn't rama use the same tactic? So morally the war was the bad option. Now if i suppose that the war could be justifiable morally, than also logically the war was the bad option because it did not guarantee seeta. Was there any guarantee that on seeing the defeat at the horizon, ravan would not kill seeta himself? In that case rama would have lost the war even after winning it.

2. This issue is of more serious concern. He abandoned seeta, for not a single logical reason. At the very root i can say that he should have realised that in the society he lived, to save ones wife was the duty of her husband, and he could not fulfill it so at first he should have punish himself and than innocent sita. He knew that his decision to deport seeta was wrong, and he did it just because of the society, he did it just because of the fear of loosing his 'prestige'. And the 'prestige' of a person is largely related to himself and to hold the prestige high at the disaster of your beloved ones, is purely a selfish act and nothing more. so wasn't that the selfish act by rama?

       To conclude with, I am just calling a spade a spade. Personally i like many of his characteristics and believe that there are too many good aspects of lord rama to introduce in our life. But that shouldn't make me blind, i have written this post just to make one point very clear that this is the age of "reason" or "logic" and "rationality", in science we use these extensively but when it come to religion or deep rooted beliefs we become totally 'immune to reason'. We bury everything under the label of "faith" where common sense contradicts.


"Life is short, play more"
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