Five days of thankfulness challenge

A Friend asked me to do a five days of thankfulness challenge, which meant I was to write three things I was thankful for each day for five consecutive days. I did. I loved doing it. I realized I do enjoy writing I should do this more often. Some friends liked it so I figured I will put it on my blog so it is easier to find it later on.

Here goes.

Day 1 of thankfulness:

1. I'm Thankful for my mom, I may not always say it like this but I am very glad to have you around, you give me strength, your opinion matters more than everyone else's put together.

2. I'm Thankful for the immense love and kindness that is shown to me by my family everyday. The three of you are the gentlest, calmest people I know. I hope I can be more like you everyday.

3. I'm Thankful that my brain is still in 'reasonable' working condition, that as unfruitful as this endeavour has been so far, I am still trying to make sense of the world I live in. As much as the mystics would love for me to give up, I am glad that I can't, not yet.

Day 2 of Thankfulness:

1. I am thankful for Wikipedia, google, youtube and internet in general. I have learned so many things from so many people over the internet who are large hearted enough to have put their knowledge, for my asking, out in the open, without any demand for monetary compensation or thanks. Compare that to the miserliness of people who will not divulge their secret recipe even to friends. My heart fills with gratitude for all those who share their knowledge quite so simply. My thousand parnams to you. Thank you.

2. I am thankful to all the men and women who devote their lives putting together maps. There is no other feeling like the dread of being lost in an unknown shady side street of a big city. Even if you were lucky enough to find a human being who you figured was safe enough to ask for directions, you couldn't always be sure this person knew what he or she was talking about. It was a big risk in every direction. So I am thankful for wonderfully put-together map books, gps software, and online directions. I have no idea of the kind of drudgery such a job would be, but I grateful someone does it. Thank you.

3. I am thankful for pain killers. Thank you.

Day 3 of Thankfulness:

1. I am thankful for books. Their words have reached across time and space and allowed me to live lifetimes in hours. I have made friends with people I would have had no access to otherwise. Okay they are imaginary friends, but think of it, even if I actually lived in Dostoevsky's time and by some remote chance was one of his social circle, how likely was he to pour out his heart and soul to me in person? How often do people do that to the real people they know? Books are the distilled, organized, best version of a person's thoughts and I am glad to have access to minds like Ghalib's, Feynmann's and Plato's. What an embarrassment of riches. Thank you for this bounty.

2. I am thankful for Mohammad Rafi's voice. He has sung at least one thousand songs such that each one of them can make you want to live and love again. ....kadmon ke nishaan khud hi manzil ka pata honge. It is the kind of stuff hope is made of, it is the kind of hope you can hang your life on. That I have this voice at my disposal is - a blessing. Thank you.

3. I am thankful for my ability to forget. I am glad to have forgotten all the many bad things that have been said or done to, for, or about me. Good riddance to all that, thank you very much.

Day 4 of thankfulness: 

1. I am thankful for the technology that makes my everyday existence more comfortable than a queen's from two hundred years ago. My electrical mechanical helpers are much more reliable and predictable than hers ever could have been. A big thank you to all my machines, their inventors, and manufacturers.

2. I am thankful for poetry. Now that my Nanaji has forgotten his own grandkids' names, he still remembers Jan Nisar Akhtar's 'ye zakhm hi apna hissa hain, in zhakhmo par sharmaayen kya...' That gives me hope, if I do get to live as long as he has, then, when every other bit of my painfully acquired learning deserts me, there will still be some very beautiful things left over. ... baad marne ke mere, ghar se ye samaan nikla. I'll take that. Thank you.

3. I am thankful for nail polish. It is probably the only time when I think men got the shorter end of the stick. So many colours and no moral imperative to make up your mind. Get a new one everyday. I do. Thank you.

Day 5 of thankfulness:

1. I am thankful for this uniquely human concept of do-overs, blank slates, and second chances. There is no such provision in the natural order of things. The towering waves of a Tsunami, the rising winds of a hurricane, and the poison of a cyanide have no such option available to them. As far as I know we are the only force in the cosmos that is able to pause a raised hand, suspend judgement, and offer someone a second chance. So I am thankful for all the second chances I have been able to give and receive.

2. I am thankful for friendship. It is the only relationship in life where we come close to a 50-50 balance. Most other relationships work, parents, kids are intrinsically power - imbalanced. A good friendship is not. It is a beautiful thing, not only in the moment that it exists but also when it ceases to be. I have never regretted being friends with someone, no matter how harsh or sudden the 'growing apart'. I may sulk for days, sometimes years, but in this case, for me at least, the present never touches the past. For that moment in time, for that part of our journeys, we were friends, and nothing that happens after can change that, that friendship stays, and I am thankful for that.

3. I am thankful for some good hair genes that I have inherited. When I was younger I have made some pretty awful comments about my own hair, about its texture, unruliness, and just the sheer volume of it. But this being my last day of thankfulness and all, I want to send a recantation out to the universe. I was young and foolish, I did not realize how good I had it, thank you for giving this to me.

En route to E : In the flight

I am not able to sleep. I am not able to read. I am not happy with the leg room. I am quite miserable right at this moment.

Which is crazy really because I had been looking forward to the flight. Travelling without kids has seemed fun for the last 7 years.  I still think it is so much easier being on this plane without the kids, don’t get me wrong, I am pitying both the moms and the poor wailing, screaming, take me to the tiny potty  lil ones on this plane right now with me, I really am, but I am not thinking of this as too much fun.

This flight to E is only three hours and forty seven minutes long, and I cannot wait for it to be over. I am only glad I am not flying to I. That is one long flight and I am always sort of scared of it. I am so proud of my mom that she does it so well. She never complains, and she still makes the effort to visit us when we cannot.

I am grateful for this mac. Thanks husband. I did not want to get a mac. Last night as I unsuccessfully tried to download the pictures from my camera to the mac I was not so happy with it. But right about now - I am.  It is tiny. It fits into my HUGE tote so easily – which has its own ups and downs and I haven’t made up my mind if I like it so much yet. $44 down the drain, or not, will know in a few days. But I digress, back to the mac. I am grateful for its battery life, my old lappie could not survive a two second detachment from the power supply, that is how old it was. Writing is keeping me sane right now.

Wish I could sleep - really want to. I even tried my looks-like-a-padded-push-up-bra eye cover but the crying babies on the plane will not let me relax enough. No there’s not that many, but when you are away from your own, you some how tune in to all the sounds the other kids make. I am not sure who I was feeling worse for the moms or the babies during takeoff. I never know who is in the worse situation.

I am reading Dan Brown’s inferno, and … well, I was hoping it would be interesting, gripping, and hold me in its jaws like the davinci code did. It is not. I can pretty much skip entire pages, read a couple of lines here there and still get the main point of the book. No, I am not doing that. Not yet. I did not keep the other book in my carryon. So this is all I have. What’s the point of finishing it in an hour.  I have miles to go. That would be self-defeating. I am too old to be doing that.

I am not even sure what is wrong with the book. I mean what is the guy going to do, get up and dance for you? He starts with this first person narrative of some guy trying to go from hell into heaven, or not trying to leave entirely, and yet leaving . Something.

I am not entirely sure what that bit was. But here’s the thing, Dan Brown has written at least one good and a few successful books so far. So if the man wants to go on rambling about for three or four pages about something that probably makes a lot of sense to him, and in his mind is vital to how the story needs to be told, then I think he very much has the right to do so.

So what if it makes no sense to me as an average- above average, sometimes dimwitted, mostly critical reader. So what.

The book is his too. So I let him have that. He did not hold me. But I did not leave him. It will hopefully make sense to me by the end of the book. Principle of charity – see I am learning something from the philosophers.

Speaking of philosophers he mentions Kripke. Kripke!!! I have mixed feelings about the man. I thought of what he says about necessary truths before I knew of him or his ideas, so I had a very hard time believing he was famous for that particular thought.

I could not believe no one had thought this before. I am not that smart. Or may be I am. It is just hard to believe that, given all the many completely idiotic things I do.

There is also the issue I have with how credit is given in western academia. I cannot believe that any one person is ever completely responsible for having a brand new thought. In fact, my belief in this is so strong, that I never trust myself for having come up with a brand new thought either.

This thing about truths, if true, being necessarily true – I know I thought of it, I struggled to put it in words, especially eloquent, persuasive words - that happens to me a lot. May be I get lazy, once a thought makes sense to me, I stop trying to make it make sense to others or something, but I know I thought of it, it was a complete thought, it made complete sense to me, and yet when I look back, I always doubt if I thought of it entirely on my own or was it inspired. Had I heard of Kripke’s idea somewhere, years ago, just not his name, then forgotten it.

And when Prof. R talked about how water being H2O was not a necessary truth, as in scientists could one day find that we have been wrong all along, my mind rebelled.

 If it were true that we had been wrong all along, then water being H2O was not a truth to begin with, leave alone its being necessarily true. We were just making a false statement we believed to be true.

 See what I mean, about not being eloquent enough. I am probably not making any sense. Prof. R did not take me that seriously either. He must have seen a half baked idea. So I suffered for two or more weeks, never accepting that a water=H2O identity was not true in every possible world.

So now imagine my relief when in comes Kripke - dashing, flamboyant, the knight who saves the day, with brand new vocabulary, perfectly balanced equations and says so beautifully what I had been mumbling in my head all along.

How could I not have immediately fallen in love with that. Yes, yes, what he said. I am saying that.

SO for a week and a half Kripke was my most favourite person on this planet.

And then the TA had to burst the bubble. He started talking about Kripke’s ideas about names referring to a particular object and well… I am just leaning more towards Russell on this. Now a criterion of being IN LOVE is that it is an all or nothing state of being, so I was no longer IN love with Kripke.

However I do give him the benefit of doubt, I haven’t read Russell so well yet, and hence have not had a chance to disagree with him so far. Who knows, I might still comeback to the Kripkean way of naming. But that’s the origin of mixed feelings about Kripke. Long story. I know.  Oh and I completely disagree with him on his zombie thing too. But another long story. Leave it for another time.

When I go on rambling like this moving from subject to subject, never having enough time or patience to say all the things I wish to say about a particular subject, I can almost feel sympathy for Nietzsche. My Indian upbringing makes me quite certain he was way smarter than I am, so it must be way harder for him than for me.

Just went to the washroom, looked at myself in the mirror. Why do I always look worse than I think I do? That makes me question what if I am actually less smart than I think I am? Can one ever trust one’s own evaluation of oneself? Whose evaluation to we trust then? Who else could have as much data as you do on yourself. Should you ever bother trusting an evaluation based on less than complete facts.  I love myself. I think I am all kinds of amazing. I also think I am all kinds of an idiot. And given my two contradictory conclusions I conclude I am not in a position to judge myself.

Oh and now I have digressed so far even I have forgotten what I was writing about. Yes, inferno.  So the point I was trying to make was this. Dan Brown cites Saul Kripke as an example of child geniuses. One of the main characters in the book has an IQ of 208, whatever that means. So my beef with that is, how come writers need to exaggerate the abilities of their characters so much. Why do they have to have eidetic memories, be the youngest professors at Harvard, and generally be so much more accomplished than normal people like you and me.

I guess writers of fast paced, save the world kind of thrillers do need extraordinary characters for their stories. May be.

I do not plan on writing those kinds of stories. I want to write ordinary stories of ordinary people. I somehow find them to be the most extraordinary. People like my grandmothers. They were so completely different from each other in a million different ways. But they were the same too. They were wise. They had patience. They lived through bad times and had come out stronger. When they were around you somehow felt like you were protected. They had these auras, of hope, of safety, of truth. I want to write about them. Hmm…

Leaving my kids behind.

I am conflicted about this four day trip to yellowknife, emotionally I feel bad for leaving my kids and husband behind. But intellectually, I see nothing wrong with it.

My husband travels all the time. I manage the house and kids in his absence.

This is the first time I would be gone leaving him to manage the house and kids. First time since the kids were born. How is that wrong.

If anything I should go away more often. But that is reason. I am not always reasonable.

There is this part of me that is scared of leaving my kids. It's like I would choke or something. I would hate to spend all this money and time and put them through this, only to come back and say I did not enjoy because you were not with me.

That would be horrible. That would mean that I wasted all that money and their cute little sacrifice of letting me go.

No, that would not be fair. I must have fun.

There, I have ruined any chances of having fun now, because really how could you have fun on demand.

I also keep thinking about this kid in P's class. His mom just passed away. And I am ashamed of thinking so much about leaving my kids for four days, because ... well, poor thing, she has left hers forever. And she had no choice in the matter. She cannot come back. I hopefully will.

Yellowknife!!

All I have on my mind these days is yellowknife.

I am going there. I don't know why.

I cannot remember since when I have wanted to go there. I have never known why.

Just that the name attracts me. Something about the name sounds so romantic and forlorn that I just have to go and see it for myself.

It doesn't hurt that there would be near 20 hour daylight round about now.

But then I know so little about it.

I knew so little about it and booked the tickets.

What does that say about me?

Someone asked me how far it is from here. I had no idea. How long would the flight take. I had no idea. The more I read about it, the more I realize that it is meant for people who would go fishing, or hiking, or kayaking. I am not any one of those people.

So why am I going there? I still have no idea.

But then I am the person, who after just two emails agreed to marry a guy. We will have been married for fifteen years this year.

In that light, a four day trip to yellowknife doesn't sound so bad after all. For all I knew I could have as easily packed my bags and decided to move to yellowknife for good.

I guess I am totally the kind of person who could have done that.

That is scary. Or liberating. I am not sure which one.

The Watsons and Emma Watson: Jane Austen's Unfinished Novel Completed by Joan Aiken

If you are a Jane Austen fan, then definitely read this.

 Closure - is a strong argument.

If you have never read Jane Austen - don't start with this one.

Why the ontological argument does not prove God's existence.

The ontological argument :A critique

The ontological argument is designed to logically prove God's existence; hence it is possible to disagree with the argument, even if you do believe in God. I think this argument does NOT prove God's existence because the first premise is not strong enough and the second is just wrong. It cannot be applied in this case as it contradicts Anslem's very definition of God.

The ontological argument: A summary

Anslem's argument is based on his definition of god as "something than which nothing greater can be thought" and his three premises, such that:

Premise 1: God exists at least in our understanding

Premise 2: Existing in reality is better than existing in understanding

Premise 3: it is possible to think of God existing in reality

Then the argument might be paraphrased as :

1. God does NOT exist in reality (Assumption for an indirect derivation)

2. God exists at least in our understanding  (Premise 1)

3. Therefore God exists only in our understanding (from 1 and 2)

4. Existing in reality is better than existing only in understanding (Premise 2)

5. It is possible to think of God existing in reality (Premise 3)

(That is there is no logical contradiction in thinking that god exists in reality.)

6. Therefore, it is possible to think of God to be better than God is. (From 4, and 5)

(Because if something exists only in our understanding but it is possible for something to exist in reality,

then it is possible for that thing to be better than it is. )

7. God is the greatest being that can be thought of. (by definition)

8. Since 6 and 7 contradict each other, it means that the assumption in 1 must be wrong, therefore the

opposite must be true, hence god does exist in reality.

My Critique:

The way it stands, this argument can be proven invalid by:

1) Showing that the premises are false or

2) Constructing another invalid argument that has the exact same form as this argument, or

The second attack; that of constructing a counter example has already been stated by Gaunilo, in his

reply on behalf of the fool, where Gaunilo applies the same set of steps to prove the existence of a lost island greater than which cannot be thought of.

My objection to the argument stems from the fact that the first two premises are less than certain, and that they do not apply to the present case in particular.

Problems with Premise 1 (God exists at least in our understanding):

To Anselm something exists in our understanding if we are able to think of it, to have a concept of it. He draws the distinction between something existing in thought and existing in real by using the example of a painting existing in the painter's [imagination] understanding even before he paints it, and once he is done paining it, it exists in reality too.

He says that even the fool can understand the definition of god as that than which a greater cannot be thought, just by hearing these words. (page 1) Thus Anselm gets his first premise that god exists at least in our understanding.

But later, Anselm draws a distinction; he says that there must be more than one way in which something is thought; to think a thing is to think the word that signifies that thing. But in another sense, it is to understand what exactly the thing is. (pages 2 and 3) That to merely hear the name of something and thus it existing in your understanding, for example hearing of Santa Claus; is different from actually knowing and understanding what Santa Claus is.

He says No one who understands what God is can think that god does not exist (page 3). 

To me at least, it is not clear which kind of understanding he is using as the premise in his argument. Is he talking about a) god's existence in the understanding of the fool or b) god's existence in the understanding of the NOT fool

a) god's existence in the understanding of the fool: 

If I am a representative sample of the fools then I can say that God can only exist as a name in the fool's understanding, but not as the concept per definition.

For as soon as I think of something as great as I can make it, I right away can think of something better,

so I can think of things than which greater things CAN be thought of, but I can never think of this one

thing that is maximum and complete perfection to which I cannot add anything to make it better. Thus I

cannot think of God and thus God does not exist at least in my understanding.

OR

b) god's existence in the understanding of the NOT fool:

Then Anselm must be talking of God existing at least in the understanding of the not fool the one who

'understand[s] what exactly the thing is'. But this makes his argument for proving his premise circular and thus weaker. For someone to understand exactly what the thing is, it presupposes that, that thing already exists in their understanding. It does not prove the existence, of that thing in their understanding. Instead, it follows from the said existence. For e.g. to actually understand what santa claus is, santa claus must first exist in your understanding, and then you would understand what he is.

So I think that the first premise is not the strongest, but even if I were to accept it, the second one breaks his argument anyways.

Problems with Premise 2 (Existing in reality is better than existing in understanding):

At a first glance it looks almost reasonable, but then, I canΓÇÖt answer the question why? Why would existence make something better? May be it is a valid claim as applied to some things, like cupcakes, but definitely not valid when applied to ideas that are already complete in themselves, like perfection or infinity.

For example, the infinity on the number line, only exists in our understanding, there is no real number that is infinite, however there exists an implicit infinity in the fraction 1/3 which can be written as a non-terminating decimal 0.3333…. 

Now saying that if infinity exists in real it is a better infinity than the infinity that exists in our understanding would be wrong. There is no question of infinity becoming qualitatively better merely by existing in real. It is as good or as bad as it is, whether in real or in our understanding. Another example would be the idea of wanting to add something to infinity to make it even more infinite. By definition, infinity is endless. You cannot add something to infinity to make it even more endless. It is already endless.

Similarly if we accept the definition that god is complete perfection then, how would his existence add to his perfection? He IS already perfect, it is done, mission accomplished, if his existence can make him 'more prefect' then it means he was not perfect to begin with, thus contradicting the definition.

Therefore, it is wrong to use this premise for God. It should only be used for things that CAN be made better. By using it for the already 'best' things we will always arrive at a contradiction and thus can prove anything.

Conclusion:

Based on the above objections to the premises, I think the ontological argument, however well intended, does not prove god's existence.

Romantic

The dictionary defines the word as fanciful; unpractical; unrealistic.

oh damn! that's me! the hopeless romantic~ and now i am depressed, my own fault i guess, who goes around reading the dictionary for no reason.

State of Wonder - Ann Patchett

I read it for a book club, I would say it was an okay okay book, maybe i was not in the right frame of mind to judge it and I pretty much pushed my way through it. Perhaps I will develop a better appreciation for it after the discussion with the other girls.

Recommendation : On a scale of 0 to 10; 0 being - never read this, and 10 being - stop everything and read this right now, I would say 1.

The lovely bones - Alice Seobold

It is a disturbing book about a little girl who is raped and murdered by a neighbor who never gets caught and what is more has the audacity to pretend to comfort the grieving mother. The very subject is gruesome. It is more horrifying to read it as a mother. Why did I put myself through that torture? I guess I was hoping to see the man caught and punished. Does that happen? Not really, he dies in the end but.... that's not the same.

It is very well written.  There are parts in there that are simply beautiful. I liked her idea of heaven and at the same time it bothered me. She talks of heaven being a place where your earthly desires come true and yet it is a place where you are somehow trapped, trapped with the things you love the most. Sad, isn't it. To have what you have always wanted and yet... to know that it is not true in a way.

Would you still want this thing then? Could you delude yourself into believing you actually have it? I guess I could not. I would know that it was not real, I only had it in my heaven and not in real life. In the beginning I would love that. Its me and my daydreams, I love them. They help me escape. i need my happy place. But you eventually get bored of your happy place and you need to move. I guess that would happen to my heaven too. Once I had had it for so long, then perhaps I would even stop wanting it anymore. And i am not sure if that would be a horrible fate, the cessation of all desire. In certain parts of the world that is the ultimate object to covet. Am I convinced of that? Some days maybe, others, not so much. Life, as I know it makes no sense outside the context of desires. Maybe some other kind of life does, but I do not know of it, so...

Recommendation : On a scale of 0 to 10; 0 being - never read this, and 10 being - stop everything and read this right now, I would say 2, 3

Love is a verb not a noun....

अगर सुख पाना आपके नसीब में नही तो क्या सुख देना भी आपके भाग में नही? Asks vaijanthimala of Rajender Kumar in Saathi. I loved that thought, it is beautiful, isn't it? I am so completely inspired with it, In fact the whole movie is quite inspiring. There is of course the issue of why women in Hindi movies can be good only as long as they are giving up for others. the minute a woman wants something for herself (simi garewal in the movie ) she falls from her 'heroine' status, and the only way for her to regain the lost goodwill is by making some extreme sacrifice. It's okay for men to want things but not okay for women, Hindi film heroines never want anything. It is a different matter that the only reason they don't want things is because at least in the film everything is given to them on a platter, Everything is theirs - without asking, no wonder they can play the martyr and pretend to not even want these things, you can only want things that you dont have!! But I digress, back to the thought....

It is very nice , it gets us to focus on the things that we control and helps us let go of stuff that is beyond us. Now where did I read, that love is a verb, not a noun, and hence statements like ' I dont love him anymore' are self defeating. Why don't you? Why don't you love him anymore? Love is not a spectator sport, you need to put yourself out there, do things for him that make him happy, be of service to him, make his life easier, love him, in action, in deeds, a real living love, instead of waiting for some Hindi film style 'electric shock' moments. In my experience the said 'electric shock' moments are random events and it would be highly imprudent for you to chart the course of your life based on or for random events.

Yes, there is the whole argument about how all order might just be a random co-incidence and stuff, but right now I am not getting into that, this above is just pragmatic good sense and hence worth following, until a more sound theory can be formed.

Asimov

I just read two asimov books in two days, so that was a hark back to the olden days when i used to read a book a day, i have not done that in ages. The ones I read just now were, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation.

I liked them, would I recommend someone to read them - sure, only if you are the kind of person who reads a lot of books, then you should read these, but if you are the kind of person who is only going to read say ten books in your whole life, then no, I don't think this needs to be one of those ten. this is in no way me being disrespectful of Mr. Asimov, I think he is a very fine writer, it is just that I do know people who do not read books at all, and I love them regardless, so this is just my opinion for them.

Asimov is brilliant in his conceptions of different worlds, he is brave enough to put his thoughts in to shape and then diligent enough to put in the time and energy it takes to fill in those shapes with details. I think i was not surprised by anything this time, When i had read foundation's edge I was surprised at the end on finding that the girl Novi was not the simple hamishwoman she was pretending to be, but this time, since I knew his MO I could pretty much suspect and predict those twists in the plot, so that did ruin my fun a bit, and i was a litlle bit (with all due respect) dissapointed in Asimov because of that. I just expected this brilliant man to not have an MO :) Patternless is what I was hoping he would be.

on the nature of morality

So Nietzsche says no moral facts exist. He thinks morality is a social construct, the idea of good and bad comes in to play only in society, it is a point of view, the oppressor calls himself good, while the victim calls the oppressor bad and so on. But no objective morality exists. There are other aspects to his analysis of the origin of morality and there is merit to it, but for the time being I only want to concentrate on the idea that "no moral facts exist".

Do I agree? well, I do and I do not. The question I would like to ask is does fire exist? You cannot have a flame in the absence of a combustible substance reaching its ignition temperature and a supporter of combustion, if you take any one thing out of the equation fire no longer exists. There are conditions to the existence of fire. So does that mean no objective fire exists?

Similarly does motion exist? If you had an isolated single object in a vast unbounded universe, does it move? you need at least two objects to be reasonably be able to say that one is moving wrt to the other or they are both stationery wrt to each other and so on, so can you say that no objective motion exists? oh wait actually we do say that... hmm...

if yes, then fine, it is safe to say that no objective moral facts exist.

But if we agree that the existence of every observable phenomenon has its own conditions then, that would apply to morality also. then the question becoems, what are the conditions necessary for the existence of morality?

To me morality comes into existence not just with a large organized society, but any time there are more than one living things in the system, that system has acquired morality, there is now a point of view by which certain actions look good or bad and by corollary another point of view in which those very same actions look the opposite. They don't have to be human, two animals, one human being with another animal or plant, how does one behave or act towards the other, does it treat it with respect, does it value the other organism's right to live with dignity or does it not. Does one of them thrive at the cost of the other, does it make the other pay for its own survival.

so there, that is my answer. i think morality exists, just as much as other physical facts exist, like them it has its own set of conditions necessary for its existence namely the presence of more than one life form and their mutual interaction.

Now the question i am working on in my head is if you had two independent universes with the same kinds of life forms on each, would the morality in each have to be the same. Are there laws that govern the evolution of morality, laws that would govern the behavior of living things towards each other. Is there any real 'should' that actions ought to conform to? Or is might always right, at least to the group that has the might, as Nietzsche seems to point. hmm...

March Books

In defense of Food: I liked it fine, the one take away point I got was his suggestion to not eat anything your grandmother would not recognize as food. He thinks our eating habits have changed so much in the past couple of generations that our bodies have not evolved fast enough to cope with the change, and hence we suffer from a whole lot of new health problems.

Angela's Ashes : I finally gave up on this book. It has taken me forever to read it. Actually that is not true, it took me forever to pick it up between readings. It was just so god damned painful to read it. It describes poverty and hunger in such great detail and so close and personal it makes you cognizant of the painful lives other people in your community are leading. Personally every time I read it I wondered if i had any right to be eating all the things I was, I just couldn't eat, the guilt was too much. I could not convince myself that I was not responsible for the child who went hungry tonight, isn't the blood on all our hands? It has been one of the most traumatic books I have ever read. I questioned myself on my duty towards the hunger problem, I have tried to find out about hunger in my community, I have tried to learn more about food banks, about this food drive that the hare rama hare krishna people run in india and abroad, I have thought long and hard about this, I am not doing anything close to what I think I should be doing, but the book has definitely gotten me thinking in the direction. I am no longer oblivious to the fact that there is a problem and it needs to be addressed. And yet, I am the wuss who could not finish reading the book. It was just excruciatingly painful, I admit defeat.

am feeling lonely

Today is one of those days when I am feeling so alone, left out, just all by myself. Usually I like that, to have time to myself, to be able to hear myself think, to not have to make conversation. But once in a while it can get to you. As human beings it is in our very natures to seek contact with other human beings. However flawed and unsatisfying we might find that interaction, however upset we might get at their inabilities to understand us, to relate to us, we still seek out someone who would listen to us. And when we don't get that for a while we become sad and forlorn.

You know that feeling, when you are walking on the side of a bridge, on a cold, dark, misty night. You are enjoying the chill in the air, the soft wet vapors that barely condense on your face, inhaling the essence of a lonely night. And then you happen to look at the scene below. For a few minutes you admire it. The valley to the right, the city to the left, and miles of highway below your feet, with its long lines of cars, the unending white lights of those approaching and the red ones of those going away. A necklace of pearls and rubies. Cars coming and going - from nowhere to nowhere.

But no. Not from nowhere, not to nowhere. No, cars coming coming from homes going home. From work, from visiting family, from vacations. Cars hauling people and their possessions, nick-knacks, things. And it occurs to you, that at this hour of the night, they are probably all going home. All trying their best to not cross the speed limit too much, to not fall asleep behind the wheel, and to not stop for gas and just somehow get home.

Home - what an thing, what a place, what a concept.

You look at the city lights, and it dawns on you that as pretty as they look, each one of those shimmering, twinkling, sometimes struggling lights, is a home. Every single one of those lights is a place where some weary traveler longs to be when he is out on the road. Yes, some of those lights are homes where bad things happen. Kids go to bed hungry, women get punched, yelling kicking screaming fests unfold. Where bones and hearts get broken, and people get hurt. Yes, some of those lights are homes, where bad things happen. And yet people would rather be home. Something about a roof and four walls, that compared to all the troubles of homes, the streets are filthier still.

And the night is not so good anymore, is it? This thought about homes has ruined it for you. All those things about this night that you were not just comfortable with, but were positively enjoying moments before, are not so beautiful anymore. The night is cold, the air damp, it even smells malicious. This long line of cars below your feet is a reminder of just how far away from home you are. You are a stranger in these parts, an outsider in an alien land, you don't belong.

And that gets you to wondering who in their right minds would come out on to this dark bridge, in the middle of the night, all by themselves.What were you hoping to achieve - getting mugged? That if you had an iota of sense you would have stayed home and not ventured out.

That is how I am feeling right now. Sitting with my laptop, on the verge of finding 500 million friends, I feel alone. All by myself. Lonely... Here at my fingertips are all those social networking sites, where people update statuses, write messages, and keep in touch with each other on a second by second basis. And yes they are not all friendly interactions, all those messages are not pretty or cordial, there is gossip and spite and malice, there is bitchiness and cattiness and all those other mean things that women do to each other in social contexts. And I am sure men have their own pissing contests, but I am not tuned in to those.

So most of the times I feel why bother? Why ever sign into any of those lousy sites? They are the same people, sitting in front of you, passing you on the street, or commenting on your comments. If you don't get each other in person, it ain't gonna happen online either.

But on some days, you would take even that. Because you are that lonely. And that is one depressing thought.

But mine is not the kind of heart that can stay sad too long, and usually it is on nights like these, before I get too blue, that I think of that song - जाने क्या सोच कर नही गुज़रा... वो एक पल रात भर नही गुज़रा.' there is a line in there ... अपनी तन्हाई का शिकवा न किसी से करना, तुम अकेले नही वो सब भी अकेले हैं. ये अकेला सफ़र नही गुज़रा...
and that always makes me smile. Always, and somehow feel less lonely. Because it is true, i may feel lonely sometimes, but I am not alone. I know that there are a whole lot of people out there who probably feel the same way too. So ... whatever.... I need to get over myself, right. :)

February books part 2

It was like i had expected, i was not able to get a lot done during february. :((

1. The emotional brain: Joseph Ledoux: I was loving it in the beginning. It is a neurobiologist's look at how the brain generates, interprets, and responds to emotions. What stimuli produce what kinds of reactions, what parts of the brain are involved and what are not. He goes over the history of the science of understanding emotions and does a pretty good job of it if i might say so. He describes experiments that give scientists a peek into the mysteries of what goes on in the brain.

Like there was this one experiment, where they gave women a lot of stockings in different bins and asked them to pick the best ones. Later they were asked reasons for their choices and people used explanations like texture, feel, quality of the cloth etc. The catch was, that they were all the same kinds of stockings, exactly alike. The inference being that once people make a choice, they fill in the reasons themselves, irrespective of whether those reasons exist in fact or not. Which I find very interesting, because that means that all you can ever say with confidence is that you like or do not like something, you can not really know why, your brain will give you bogus excuses. Or perhaps you cannot even be sure it likes what it likes, because why would it like one pair of stockings over the other when they are all supposedly alike? Interesting stuff isn't it.

In fact, i was having so much fun in the beginning I had half a mind to write to him and ask him if he would let me come work for him, then i figured, him being a brain scientist and all, he might insist on a full mind commitment :)

But later on the experiments conducted on animals got a bit too gore for my sensibilities, now may be i am wuss of all kinds, but I cannot imagine chopping off parts of a monkey's brain to infer that even though the visual regions of the brain were completely intact the monkey had the lost the ability to interpret the vision so he acted blind and would touch and smell and taste everything to be able to decide if that was edible or not. that is heinous! Or this other other one where they scared rats 'shitless' literally and measured the amount of fear by the number of droppings. Or where they modified the parts of the brain that experience fear, and then provided scary stimulii. How inhumane is that. I just find it hard to digest that you can learn about emotions in human beings by so grossly denying the one emotion that makes us human - compassion. How can we be so cruel to animals in the name of research. I could not stomach it anymore so I had to give up on it.

2. The E Myth revisted - The book is about the entrepreneurial myth, why most small businesses fail and what to do about it, being the tag line. I enjoyed it because it was very relevant, I could see my husband having gone through those stages since he started his business a few years back. It was also humbling, because of all the arguments and disagreements that we have had about the business - at least according to this book - he was right and i was wrong. Which is good too, because I ahve this whole new respect for him for having had foresight and instinct without reading about it in any book :) But then, this book did for me, what he himself has not been able to do in all these years. It has given me a whole new understanding of what a business should be about and just completely changed my idea of who should and should not go into business. I enjoyed reading it.

I am going to be honest with you.....

What's the first thing that comes to your mind when someone says that?

So were you being dishonest with me so far?

yeah! me too. I really wonder why people say that. It puts me off like nobody's business, especially when I am interviewing someone and in the middle of the interview they say 'oh I am going to be honest with you.....' ohh my god! Usually I stop asking questions after that disclosure or if i do, it is just to be polite. I once actually replied to this woman with a 'thank you so much for deciding to finally be honest with me, I appreciate that.' Well, she didn't get the sarcasm, she just smiled.

No, i have never hired someone who has used that sentence, or kept them for long. Maybe that is my bias against this particular combination of words, but so it is.

And yes, I know there are exceptions to the rule. I am sure I have probably said them myself too at some point, but i am sure that in those circumstances it was perfectly justified ;)