Its a well excepted fact that we guys in engineering colleges have way too much time in our hands. And we make the best use of it trying to learn from others' mistakes, well documented, although arguably a little glamorised, in the paraphernalia of movies, serials, virals and such. However, eventually we do get exhausted by the knowledge onslaught and decide to take some time out. It is an outcome of a multitude of such breaks that I decide was worthy enough to present to you. After my long hibernation, I know this won't be sufficient, but remember the Grinch, and keep a mighty heart.
No issue perplexes us engineers, men of science, more than that of "God". This word, which middle-school maths teachers have great fun equating with {D,O,G} in introduction to set theory, is a concept their students are forever be mystified by. After all, in a world full of laws and equations and probabilities, is there enough maneuvering room for God to even exist? What follows, you are foretold, are my personal views, which I am sharing for discussion purposes. I hope to offend noone, but would be delighted if you leave a comment about your own views on this delicate topic.
What is God? I believe people consider him an omniscient, omnipotent person. By person, we comprehend a human. But arn't we evolving creatures? We know we have a vestigial appendix and the reminiscent of a tailbone. But of course we should talk of the spiritual realm, look beyond the physical. But this spiritual realm is a topic in itself, that would mean we all have souls inside us!(I am not disagreeing, lets just say the discussion is beyond the scope of this post). But why should this spiritual domain be given precedence over our 'real' world? Are we in some kind of matrix-like virtual reality? A version of mythology comes close saying that this whole world is to test our faith....but isn't that too snobbish on God's part? Why is there really is a need for a real world at all when we have this spiritual world(A more serious closer to heart question actually is - What is the need for the universe to exist at all?) Also, this world is too complete, too perfect, too complicated I consider to be a farce. God should instead be detached from all these worlds, like in a 13th dimension with 12 dimension world(s). But there is a better opinion. We should dispel the idea of a person(or maybe you didn't have it from the beginning, and I have totally bored you) and consider 'consciousness' as such.
(Sentient - endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness; "the living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage"- T.E.Lawrence)
So what is God? I believe what we truly consider by God is "the sentient force controlling the whole universe and which is able to take conscious decisions". But then, puff goes religion. Working on such a magnanimous scale, why would God take the slightest interest in the not-even-speck-of-dust planet like ours? Well, maybe because he specially made life possible here and we are his really dear children. In fact, this has some weight, as out of the thousands of scientific constants, (I have heard) even if one was slightly off by the fraction of a decimal, the universe would have a totally different structure, with probably no humans. But then, there would not have been anyone to ask of the existence of God, would there? Or maybe life would come out in a marvelous new form whose weirdness to us would only be comparable to our weirdness to them. But I am digressing.
So we see how god might exist in my world. Since, I keep hearing about people (intellectuals) passionately denying the existence of God, I would for once try to take the other side. The universe has just one more complication, one more singularity, one more infinity to be evolved. I do tend to get an unreal feeling when I consider these abnormalities. Consider, did universe have a beginning? If it had, what about before it? Yes I know, the beginning of universe was itself the beginning of time, but what exactly does it mean? Similarly, does universe have a boundary? Its kinda absurd to say it extends forever. But if it has, what's beyond it? This questions might already be clear to some, but personally I find them really perplexing. In the end, lots boil down to just faith. I have faith that the science laws, which predict the big bang, I have faith in the existance of America, even though I have never been there. The world might just be created this afternoon, with all our memories and ideas planted in place!
Now we come to religion, about which again I have my own two cents. I have absolutely no interest in worship of idols or rituals and various festivities. In my opinion, even if God is overseeing us, why exactly the all-powerful scarcely care that are remembering him or not? Won't he be much above these things? However, I do not detest religion. I accept and hail its therapeutic and psychological effects. It is a means of bringing people together, of giving people purpose in life(and also an economic model in itself). In fact, I believe one of the major tasks of the subconscious mind is preventing an individual knowledge of his own insignificance. We are but less than an evanescent flicker in the fabric of space-time, full realisation of which(I don't have it either) would surely destroy a person. Religion, origin of the immortal soul and life-cycles I imagine had this at the heart of their genesis, the self-defence of sub conscience mind at work. And this will be true always, no matter the technological age.
So the conclusion....
After all my efforts in the philosophical banter, there is finally a conclusion. Existence of God, does not matter....Yes, you read that right, scroll back and read again. At least, it doesn't matter in the way you should live your life. You should do what you like, and enjoy, but of course it should be a sustainable living. Because God, is too busy to care, and you are too insignificant to be cared about. By sustainable, I mean, you can't just spend life idling away, and maybe thief/rob when you need money. Not because it is immoral, and God will punish you, but because it is not sustainable, the society will punish you, and you will end up in jail, which you might not enjoy. Hence, morals have not lost their value, because they should only increase your enjoyment; the kinder you are, arguably the more kinder people will be to you. Principals also havn't lost their value, but you should only have them if they give you satisfaction, fulfilment. Be a vegetarian because you like the thought, not because it is ungodly.
We have come a long way. Let us summarise.
Today, lordvarun explained to you his own take on the stuff he hardly understands anything about. He convinced you he isn't capable of forming any opinion on this 'overseer' business. He said he doesn't doesn't understand religion but sees no harm in it. And the final outcome, to the thrill of all present, was that everyone should live happily and promote world peace.
Thank you for your time
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Vocab blues
I have always been a bit of a snob when it comes to my English, even when I was in an ICSE school. Following that up with 4 years in CBSE didn't help to dispel that notion.
However, I was certainly forced too disabuse myself of any such ideas after coming to college. Here I found people who'd read Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto in Class 10th (if you havent heard of it, suffice it to say that it's a pretty big deal), then there were national level debate champions and so on.
I hope I don't sound toooo smug, but after 2 years of college, I have fared reasonably well even with all these new threats to my position. Now, it's time for the GRE.
The GRE is of course, not a particularly gruelling test, but it does require a certain degree of command over the English language. Moreover, I enjoy finding out new words, a past time you may or may not have experienced. The problem with using these abtruse words (now there's an example!) is that they make you sound all pedantic and anal....an image I'm not anxious to project in coll.
Anyway, I came across this site called freerice.com, and have spent an entertaining 2 days guessing completely into the dark. Here are some examples:
setaceous:
1. bristly, 2. lucky, 3. furious, 4. sexless
If you already know the meaning, you should really not read any further. There are only more words of a similar sort.
Now the meaning is of course not so important as the process, which is the fun part.
now do you call a lucky person,' he is setaceous in all he does'....or,
'he was setaceous when he got her letter'....or, 'Varun is setaceous when it comes to girls'....
the last one might be construed to have some meaning but only by a stretch, but the rest obviously don't sound right.
The answer is of course, bristly.
Another one is hyssop-is it a herb, or a monster. The answer here as well can be had by groping around with sentence...it turns out it is a herb
Now here's where my strategy failed- decorticate. How on earth did someone coin this word for peeling I don't know. In a sentence: "He was decorticating the banana". Even those snooty professors in Harvard wouldn't do that....but apparently someone does.
As I came across more and more weird words, I stumbled onto a site which specialises exclusively on weird words, and pretty interesting it was too.
For example, did you know of the word 'lollapaloosa'? Here's the history of the word:
"You can’t easily misunderstand the meaning of this American word, since it’s so obviously contains within its sounds the idea of something excellent or highly desirable, just right as the name for the annual Lollapalooza pop festival. It has been spelled just about every possible way down the years (the Oxford English Dictionary has it under lallapaloosa). Its extravagant enthusiasm may be judged from an early appearance, in Miss Minerva and William Green Hill by Frances Boyd Calhoun, dated 1909:
“Lordee, Lordee,” he gazed at them admiringly, “you sho’ is genoowine corn-fed, sterlin’ silver, all-wool-an’-a-yard-wide, pure-leaf, Green-River Lollapaloosas.”
Another early example is in a baseball game report in the Fort Wayne Sentinel of May 1903, one we may be glad to have missed (the reporter said disgustedly that one pitcher was all too accurate, since he hit the bat almost every time):
There wasn’t enough ginger in the players nor audience, either, to keep a colicky baby awake, the only excitement being furnished by a loquacious individual in the grand stand who was rooting for Evansville, and he rooted right, too. He proclaimed himself the High-past-potent-grand-mufti-lallapaloosa of the Amalgamated Knockers’ Brotherhood and had a bigger assortment of mallets on hand than a croquet factory.
That was one of its earliest appearances in print, since it seems to have been around in the language for only a few years by then. Other early usages suggest an origin among card players, such as in an 1899 report in the Daily Herald of Delphos, Ohio, about card sharps fleecing a hick: “Another got a lallapaloosa, consisting of three clubs and a pair of spades, and took $85 of the farmer’s money.” In 1897 the Idaho Daily Statesman had another: “‘A lalla-pa-loosa,’ answered big John, and threw his hand to Scovel. There was a jack of hearts and a deuce, tray, four and five of diamonds.”
Where it comes from is uncertain. Lulu and lolla, both also meaning something good, are recorded earlier, and lollapaloosa may be an extravagant outgrowth of the latter. Suggestions that it may derive from appaloosa, the name of the famous breed of Native American horse, are ruled out on grounds of date."
This is of course just one out of thousands. Imagine, a single word carrying an entire history with it. Etymology, as the science of studying words is called, is particularly fascinating, as you may might discover by just digging into the word roots of common words.
However, I was certainly forced too disabuse myself of any such ideas after coming to college. Here I found people who'd read Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto in Class 10th (if you havent heard of it, suffice it to say that it's a pretty big deal), then there were national level debate champions and so on.
I hope I don't sound toooo smug, but after 2 years of college, I have fared reasonably well even with all these new threats to my position. Now, it's time for the GRE.
The GRE is of course, not a particularly gruelling test, but it does require a certain degree of command over the English language. Moreover, I enjoy finding out new words, a past time you may or may not have experienced. The problem with using these abtruse words (now there's an example!) is that they make you sound all pedantic and anal....an image I'm not anxious to project in coll.
Anyway, I came across this site called freerice.com, and have spent an entertaining 2 days guessing completely into the dark. Here are some examples:
setaceous:
1. bristly, 2. lucky, 3. furious, 4. sexless
If you already know the meaning, you should really not read any further. There are only more words of a similar sort.
Now the meaning is of course not so important as the process, which is the fun part.
now do you call a lucky person,' he is setaceous in all he does'....or,
'he was setaceous when he got her letter'....or, 'Varun is setaceous when it comes to girls'....
the last one might be construed to have some meaning but only by a stretch, but the rest obviously don't sound right.
The answer is of course, bristly.
Another one is hyssop-is it a herb, or a monster. The answer here as well can be had by groping around with sentence...it turns out it is a herb
Now here's where my strategy failed- decorticate. How on earth did someone coin this word for peeling I don't know. In a sentence: "He was decorticating the banana". Even those snooty professors in Harvard wouldn't do that....but apparently someone does.
As I came across more and more weird words, I stumbled onto a site which specialises exclusively on weird words, and pretty interesting it was too.
For example, did you know of the word 'lollapaloosa'? Here's the history of the word:
"You can’t easily misunderstand the meaning of this American word, since it’s so obviously contains within its sounds the idea of something excellent or highly desirable, just right as the name for the annual Lollapalooza pop festival. It has been spelled just about every possible way down the years (the Oxford English Dictionary has it under lallapaloosa). Its extravagant enthusiasm may be judged from an early appearance, in Miss Minerva and William Green Hill by Frances Boyd Calhoun, dated 1909:
“Lordee, Lordee,” he gazed at them admiringly, “you sho’ is genoowine corn-fed, sterlin’ silver, all-wool-an’-a-yard-wide, pure-leaf, Green-River Lollapaloosas.”
Another early example is in a baseball game report in the Fort Wayne Sentinel of May 1903, one we may be glad to have missed (the reporter said disgustedly that one pitcher was all too accurate, since he hit the bat almost every time):
There wasn’t enough ginger in the players nor audience, either, to keep a colicky baby awake, the only excitement being furnished by a loquacious individual in the grand stand who was rooting for Evansville, and he rooted right, too. He proclaimed himself the High-past-potent-grand-mufti-lallapaloosa of the Amalgamated Knockers’ Brotherhood and had a bigger assortment of mallets on hand than a croquet factory.
That was one of its earliest appearances in print, since it seems to have been around in the language for only a few years by then. Other early usages suggest an origin among card players, such as in an 1899 report in the Daily Herald of Delphos, Ohio, about card sharps fleecing a hick: “Another got a lallapaloosa, consisting of three clubs and a pair of spades, and took $85 of the farmer’s money.” In 1897 the Idaho Daily Statesman had another: “‘A lalla-pa-loosa,’ answered big John, and threw his hand to Scovel. There was a jack of hearts and a deuce, tray, four and five of diamonds.”
Where it comes from is uncertain. Lulu and lolla, both also meaning something good, are recorded earlier, and lollapaloosa may be an extravagant outgrowth of the latter. Suggestions that it may derive from appaloosa, the name of the famous breed of Native American horse, are ruled out on grounds of date."
This is of course just one out of thousands. Imagine, a single word carrying an entire history with it. Etymology, as the science of studying words is called, is particularly fascinating, as you may might discover by just digging into the word roots of common words.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Me and the Country
The semester has just started, and as one might imagine, I am relatively free during this period. So I spent my time going over the older posts.
One characteristic that I seemed to find recurring in all my posts is how they all seem to revolve around myself....me, my views and my perpective of the universe in general. Now Varun seems to branch out here and there, but I appear to be more than a little obsessed with myself.
Not that there's anything wrong with it- I love myself...to the point of worshipping. When I have enough money, I shall probably erect a temple to myself, and pray there everyday.....moreover, I generally dislike the standard young man/woman. I hate Delhiites, Ranchiites, South Indians, Assamese, and people from all communities. I particularly detest the standard IITians. So it is but natural for me to focus on myself, or my blog would be more of a tirade against all humanity.
However, it has occured to me that this cynicism, in absence of a stronger word, may be an unwise policy. There is something I didn't add to my blog on Bangalore- that I was confusing myself with these thoughts there itself.
Now I am too arrogant to change my views on people - I refuse to take an interest in them. Of late I have discovered non-fiction books, starting with Amartya Sen's Argumentative Indian. I read Shashi Tharoor in Bangalore, and since then the process of discovering my country has become increasingly appealing.
Of course, I expected the books to be boring in general, but I discovered an awful lot which made me feel completely ignorant as an Indian. Reading Tharoor's book, I discovered the whole history behind the Emergency, which has fascinated me a lot over the past month or so.
So now after much circumlocution I arrive at the subject of my blog- India.
The thing that pissed me off most of all was that we were never, ever, taught anything about India's own history-modern post-independence history that is. The few scraps of information that do trickle down to us through our parents, teachers, are generally dismissive. Indira Gandhi is made out more as the heroine of the 1971 war than someone who tarnished India's history of being a vibrant democracy. The Emergency is only famous for Sanjay Gandhi's notorious purge of the slums, and his 'nasbandhi' campaign.
After coming to college, I came across more and more of these scraps. Economists, and here I refer to renowned, internationally acclaimed Western economists, actually lauded the Emergency as being the only period in India's history (till 1977) when the country was being run efficiently. The Emergency is well known for the fact that after its imposition, so many governmeny officials turned up for work that they ran short of furniture. Trains ran on time, and corruption was practically negligible.
History is in general considered very boring, be it in Harry Potter or our own schools- but this history is not irrelevant to us, especially now. After the highly amusing skit in Parliament recently, this piece of India's own romance with a dictatorship evokes many interesting debates, one very important one being the very need of a democracy, and whether India should sacrifice popular opinion in favour of an efficient administration.
After reading a lot about the Emergency, I personally believe that Indira Gandhi might very well have got away with it if she hadn't imposed the nasbandhi policy. I mean, the middle class was happy, and who cares what the poor think anyway?(I am not complaining, I myself don't care what the poor think)...Even now, when I asked my parents and a few other adults about the period, they don't recall it as a particularly bad time. In fact, if anything, many people view it as something good.
And this is from well-educated individuals who read the papers and everything. Not just this, several of my college friends (I do have friends, in spite of my tirade earlier), are forever talking about how a dictatorship would be just the thing for India. Then we could sign all the deals we want, persecute all the terrorists we like, with no fear of backlash from th minorities, and so on.
This is a very appealing view, and I'm sure it must have occured to the reader, or you wouldn't have read this far.
Why or why not such a thing should be good for India makes a very interesting discussion, and I am not going into it- I am tired already. The only thing which does bother me is that we have had 60+ years of independence, and we don't seem to be too bothered about what has happened so far- we don't know, and we don't wanna know is the motto.
One characteristic that I seemed to find recurring in all my posts is how they all seem to revolve around myself....me, my views and my perpective of the universe in general. Now Varun seems to branch out here and there, but I appear to be more than a little obsessed with myself.
Not that there's anything wrong with it- I love myself...to the point of worshipping. When I have enough money, I shall probably erect a temple to myself, and pray there everyday.....moreover, I generally dislike the standard young man/woman. I hate Delhiites, Ranchiites, South Indians, Assamese, and people from all communities. I particularly detest the standard IITians. So it is but natural for me to focus on myself, or my blog would be more of a tirade against all humanity.
However, it has occured to me that this cynicism, in absence of a stronger word, may be an unwise policy. There is something I didn't add to my blog on Bangalore- that I was confusing myself with these thoughts there itself.
Now I am too arrogant to change my views on people - I refuse to take an interest in them. Of late I have discovered non-fiction books, starting with Amartya Sen's Argumentative Indian. I read Shashi Tharoor in Bangalore, and since then the process of discovering my country has become increasingly appealing.
Of course, I expected the books to be boring in general, but I discovered an awful lot which made me feel completely ignorant as an Indian. Reading Tharoor's book, I discovered the whole history behind the Emergency, which has fascinated me a lot over the past month or so.
So now after much circumlocution I arrive at the subject of my blog- India.
The thing that pissed me off most of all was that we were never, ever, taught anything about India's own history-modern post-independence history that is. The few scraps of information that do trickle down to us through our parents, teachers, are generally dismissive. Indira Gandhi is made out more as the heroine of the 1971 war than someone who tarnished India's history of being a vibrant democracy. The Emergency is only famous for Sanjay Gandhi's notorious purge of the slums, and his 'nasbandhi' campaign.
After coming to college, I came across more and more of these scraps. Economists, and here I refer to renowned, internationally acclaimed Western economists, actually lauded the Emergency as being the only period in India's history (till 1977) when the country was being run efficiently. The Emergency is well known for the fact that after its imposition, so many governmeny officials turned up for work that they ran short of furniture. Trains ran on time, and corruption was practically negligible.
History is in general considered very boring, be it in Harry Potter or our own schools- but this history is not irrelevant to us, especially now. After the highly amusing skit in Parliament recently, this piece of India's own romance with a dictatorship evokes many interesting debates, one very important one being the very need of a democracy, and whether India should sacrifice popular opinion in favour of an efficient administration.
After reading a lot about the Emergency, I personally believe that Indira Gandhi might very well have got away with it if she hadn't imposed the nasbandhi policy. I mean, the middle class was happy, and who cares what the poor think anyway?(I am not complaining, I myself don't care what the poor think)...Even now, when I asked my parents and a few other adults about the period, they don't recall it as a particularly bad time. In fact, if anything, many people view it as something good.
And this is from well-educated individuals who read the papers and everything. Not just this, several of my college friends (I do have friends, in spite of my tirade earlier), are forever talking about how a dictatorship would be just the thing for India. Then we could sign all the deals we want, persecute all the terrorists we like, with no fear of backlash from th minorities, and so on.
This is a very appealing view, and I'm sure it must have occured to the reader, or you wouldn't have read this far.
Why or why not such a thing should be good for India makes a very interesting discussion, and I am not going into it- I am tired already. The only thing which does bother me is that we have had 60+ years of independence, and we don't seem to be too bothered about what has happened so far- we don't know, and we don't wanna know is the motto.
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