Inspirations, Part 2

No real need for me to say much apart from what is said below...

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Invictus
(William Ernest Henley)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as a pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
my head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horrors of the shade,
and yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul.

Inspirations, Part 1

All of us have our inspirations in our life, the kind of things that leads us on. Inspirations however are extremely varied. I have been inspired by people, visions, events, conversations, memories, promises, failures, successes, hope and a host of other things that I don’t think I can recall at this point.

However, I feel that inspiration is not the cause of our action, it is only a catalyst. Inspirations are only reminders, bringing important value decisions we made about our life previously, back into our consciousness from some craggy nook of our brain. Whatever they are, I know I would have achieved half as much (of whatever little I have achieved so far in life) if various inspirations had not crept into my life at vital points.

And on that note, I have to introduce this one song by a band called Tool. Needless to say I’m a big fan of theirs, and the song below in particular has been one of those inspirations for me – thankfully one that I can keep playing from my iPod whenever I need to remind myself.


Forty Six & 2


My shadow's
shedding skin and
I've been picking
Scabs again.
I'm down
Digging through
My old muscles
Looking for a clue.

I've been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could've been.
I've been wallowing in my own confused
And insecure delusions
For a piece to cross me over
Or a word to guide me in.
I wanna feel the changes coming down.
I wanna know what I've been hiding in

My shadow.
Change is coming through my shadow.
My shadow's shedding skin
I've been picking
My scabs again.

I've been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could've been.
I've been wallowing in my own chaotic
And insecure delusions.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing I've endured within

My shadow
Change is coming.
Now is my time.
Listen to my muscle memory.
Contemplate what I've been clinging to.
Forty-six and two ahead of me.

I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be paranoid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.

I choose to live and to
Lie, kill and give and to
Die, learn and love and to
Do what it takes to step through.

See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
Step into the shadow.
Forty six and two are just ahead of me.

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Now for the people interested in understanding what this means (Or at least, means to me)

To begin with, the song has references to Carl Jung’s personality theory and Drunvalo Melchizadek’s theory on morpho genetic grids and evolution… Skipping the details (which interested people can search the net for); the name ’46 & 2’ indicates the next stage of human evolution (a change from the 44 & 2 chromosomes we currently have) and the song is pretty much about that change through investigation of the ‘shadow’ (which in Jungian terms is that part of our psyche that we do not consider part of our ego – something of a counter ego, our personality traits that we do not approve of and do not accept but which still reside within us).

My shadow's
shedding skin and
I've been picking
Scabs again.
I'm down
Digging through
My old muscles
Looking for a clue.

A reference to an individual currently defeated or resigned. ‘Old muscles looking for a clue’ – our traits that seemed to help us be successful for so long have suddenly stopped helping us, and consequently leaving us confused on what our strengths are – triggering some soul searching.

I've been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could've been.
I've been wallowing in my own confused
And insecure delusions
For a piece to cross me over
Or a word to guide me in.
I wanna feel the changes coming down.
I wanna know what I've been hiding in

Tired of trying to figure out my ‘insecure delusions’, I feel the need to get myself out of my hole… to change and to find out what is that hidden inside myself, why there were disconnects, why I failed...

My shadow.
Change is coming through my shadow.
My shadow's shedding skin
I've been picking
My scabs again.

I've been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could've been.
I've been wallowing in my own chaotic
And insecure delusions.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing I've endured within

Important point: ‘Cleansing I’ve endured within’ – an overwhelming desire to succeed goes a long way in helping us loose parts of our personality that hinder our progress, cleansing refers to this process.

My shadow
Change is coming.
Now is my time.
Listen to my muscle memory.
Contemplate what I've been clinging to.
Forty-six and two ahead of me.

‘Listen to my muscle memory, Contemplate what I've been clinging to’ – breaking the perceptions we have about our self, questioning the random beliefs we have been clinging on to, trying to find out what we really want.
‘Forty-six and two ahead of me’ – It is time for me to change, evolve

I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be paranoid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.

I choose to live and to
Lie, kill and give and to
Die, learn and love and to
Do what it takes to step through.

The above two paragraphs are by far the most important in the entire song. They reflect acceptance of the planet the way it is, of the end of personal conflict and random complaining and questioning of why things are the way they are around us. More significantly, they refer to making of making a choice; to live by the rules of this planet, and recommitting to our goals and to ‘Do what it takes to step through’ – to promise ourselves success, no matter the cost.
(BTW, this was the reminder part I referred to earlier)

See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
Step into the shadow.
Forty six and two are just ahead of me.


‘…My Shadow … stretching up and over me’ – when we get deep inside our head, we find so many things that actually don’t fit with our ideals and principals – in effect our shadow or anti-ego grows…
'Soften this old armor' - bringing down our internal defence mechanisms
‘Stepping into our shadow’ – facing ourselves without bias, recalculating our values in life, i.e. redefining our ego and shadow, and finally:
‘Forty six and two are just ahead of me’ - Evolving ourself

The times, they are a-changing...

To all the people who follow my blog regularly

To begin with, I'm hoping that this group of people, includes more than just myself
(And no, I'm not being defensive or trying to save my ego here, Im just being a realist, confronting some highly likely possibilities)

I would like to apologize for the absolute irregularity and insensitivity with which I have maintained my blog - unfortunately, this may continue.

However, this is my season of change, and I realised that I have to make the exercise of my mainatining a blog more fun for myself. And I realised to do that, I have to make my posts more complicated (hopefully however, this time around, they actually convey something sensible... Again not trying to be defensive, blah blah blah)

So from now on I shall enlist the aid of alternative means of expression, such as poetry, music, etc... Owing to my lack of creative talent, it is highly likely that a vast majority of what I put up is not written or conceived of by my own thoughts - but recent changes in my perspective have taught me that imitation is just as effective as innovation, and the power of the idea is chanelled through the person who tells others about it as opposed to the one who comes up with it.

So to begin with, below is something that makes sense atleast to me - apologies for the sudden shift in mood the piece below might bring (read: there is nothing funny about what's written below, its quite serious...)

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A perspective revised

Free and undisturbed, there was nothing
Like wind flowing, uncontrolled, defiant
The will was unbothered, unnecessary

But so was life

Then came the unachievable, the impossible
then came my passion

and then came the realisation

self consumption is the inertial reality
selflessness is the salvation
selfless, because I am now conscious that there exists something greater than myself
the attainment of which alone proves my virility

And I recaliberate

Without this conflict, I am but a grain of sand
without desire, I am insignificant

The one goal, that gives me meaning
the one objective, that gives my life reason
the one destination to reach alive,
if only for a moment from there,
but for that moment atleast

And to be alive,
if only for a moment in my life,
but for that moment only

Why religion is important...

Being a muslim by birth, I think this is politically the most incorrect time for me to write about religion… but this has been a topic I have thought about in some detail for a while; and the fact that religion is one of the most influential aspect on human thought, I couldn’t help but analyze it. I also have a notion that people are moving away from religion across the globe – I’m quite curious how this will impact society at large.

To begin with, religion has a lot of things going against it – the biggest being the fact that it puts limits on personal freedom. “Religious” people are expected to act in a certain way, behave in a certain way, go to a place of worship at given times, etc. Religion has also been the biggest driver of human conflict and war throughout human history – and followers of almost every religion have been the oppressors and the oppressed at different points in time. Personally, the biggest negative for religion is the fact that it puts limits to logical thought and the human desire to question – Religious philosophy for any established religion cannot be questioned. Observe any child curious enough to ask his parents why a certain religious custom is to be followed – the typical answers are built around ideas such as “because God said so”, or “cause that’s what’s written in so and so holy book” or the most dreaded “do the opposite and you’ll go to hell!”

Why then have so many sensible and logical people in human history subscribed to religion? Humans have questioned practically everything in this world, so why are they so afraid to question religion? Why is religion such a touchy-feely topic that people are ready to die for?

Reason #1 - Religion helps people answer the toughest questions in this planet
It helps people make sense of the madness that is planet earth. Not everyone has the guts to appreciate the possibility that their life and the life of everyone else around them is without a meaning. Not everyone has the guts to appreciate the possibility that a person they loved so much died without any good reason. Not everyone can confront the fact that life is just not fair. Religion offers comfort, offers peace of mind. An indication that this is true – western society has seen a massive intake in drug, tobacco and alcohol abuse and an inversely proportional drop in religious belief over the past few decades. Drugs, tobacco and alcohol – all of them offer comfort and a temporary escape from the chaos of this planet. They are now playing the role in people’s lives that religion used to.

Reason #2 - Religion offers a sense of security
Let us just pay some attention to the typical perceptions that people have of God: you can stop believing in him but he will always forgive you, you can confront the devil but he will protect you – basically he takes care of you and never desserts you. Many religions associate God with the concept a father. Fathers make their children feel secure. Given that there has never been a human born who did not experience insecurity at some point in his life, God is a good solution to the problem. From something I posted earlier, I genuinely think an average human is unprepared to accept the fact that he is expected to take care of himself on this planet by himself, and people are more comfortable believing that a greater force is guiding their life.

Reason #3 – Religion helps people reduce internal conflict
No one knows what they are supposed to do in life. Everyone faces conflict on what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. Everyone is looking for a system of beliefs that they can follow and not feel guilty about any actions they take in course of acting in accordance with. Religious philosophy gives a well established set of rules on how people should behave and even how they should think - and further it has been refined by centuries of instutionalization, which makes it a reasonable point of view to hold in life on any merit. More than half of internal human conflict disappears this way. Also to motivate people to act this way, religion has further developed the carrot and stick methodology (heaven and hell).

Reason #4 – Religion helps people mitigate the uncertainty of the future
Every time religious people start something new – they pray. Every time they are afraid that the future will take a turn for the worse, they pray even more. When religious people do something bad and are afraid they will be punished – they do a ‘good’ deed (give money to the poor). Its almost like religious donations are a hedging strategy to offload the risk in our lives (but then would that make the people who accept the donations the speculators?)

The more I think about it, the more reasons I come with… point being that I conclusively hold the opinion that the human race is not prepared to live without religion yet.

I’m not religious myself, at the same time I have nothing against religion – I look at religion as a system of philosophy that arose in different parts of the globe to fulfill human needs as mentioned above and which used the concept of God to justify itself. I also genuinely believe that a lot of humans would live a happier and more fulfilling life if they just followed their religion with greater enthusiasm (This is despite the terrorists). Whether its fine for people to lie to themselves to be happy is the subject of another discussion.

Plain old, typical, average and other normal thoughts

Going by the assumption that my real objective in life is to be happy: my life is about doing the many million things that can make me happy; including have a successful career, have my own family, spend time with my friends, play chess (or rather win a good game of chess), etc. This fairly simple thought complicates itself very quickly – as anyone with a similar view on life would notice.

The problem is we can’t have everything at once, nor can we have anything anytime we want it. We have to work towards things. Be patient. We have to plan for things, and be smart enough to know what we will get where. All these things are reasonably simple to learn and I think I’m getting there with some of them. However the thing I find the toughest is how to go about priorities for these things.

It’s almost like we are gambling; betting that this thing will make us happy more than the other thing, and hence deciding to spend more time on it. To complicate things even further is the whole theory that ‘we should live life in the moment’ – which has its appeal. Primarily because right now I’m 21, and this is my moment to have fun and chill in life. But of course, if I give my career priority as of now – which I have to as well if I want to become as successful as it would take to make me happy – the whole having fun and chilling aspect goes down the dabba.

The trick is finding something to do which is aligned with career aspirations, friends, having fun, etc. But there are theories that such things (starting your own company for example) are not as perfect as they appear to be. There will always be some disconnects – some part of your life that gets screwed up and gets neglected, some part that doesn’t fit in to the whole plan. The question then arises that is it worthy even looking out for things like these that seem to offer fulfillment in all aspects of life, or should we just accept that life is not always jam; that there is a lot of bread and butter, that may not taste as good, but we have to eat anyway.

The biggest problem with accepting that life is not always fun; is that we can’t always be ourselves – there will always be things that we have to stop ourselves from doing, and we will have to do a lot of things that we really don’t enjoy doing. That we will always hate waking up during weekdays and look forward to weekends.

That kind of life seems to average to me, and I think that God has made me the way he has so that I could do better than average. But then reading through the above passage makes me realize that I am an average, run of the mill, typical 21 year old as well – so I guess the next priority is getting used to this. Or at least get used to it as of now.

The melodramatic loss of innocence

This is more of a pending question… The objective is to sort it out by the end of next year, but then again, these things sort themselves out when they want to.

The question: Are all the amazing values of truth, honesty, sincerity and integrity worth anything in the modern world? Are they intrinsic to humans or are they a product of our upbringing, our belief in religion and spirituality? The latter being stuff that we (or I) was trained to think in lines of (and hence can be ‘untrained’). Basically the question translates into (for me) how honest, truthful and sincere do I need to be to lead a happy and fulfilling life? (From my previous experiences, I know that “all the time” is the wrong answer).

I realized at some point previously that I can’t answer the question straight forward, but would need an overriding logic to steer the discussions in my mind in one direction or the other. One such ‘basis’ of thought was the belief that everything I want in the planet, I should get for myself. To make my self strong and figure out ways to get what I want myself, and let the rest of the world bother itself in what it wants to do. This is being selfish in its true form. In this case obviously the values mentioned above matter internally (in that I will be true to myself, honest to myself – these things are critical for myself to be at peace with myself, and hence ‘strong’); but not externally (I can lie to everyone to get to my objective if I want – if the rest of the world buys it, the world is stupid and that’s not my problem). This also pretty much stems from the whole ‘survival of the fittest’ line of thought, that I still subscribe to in most parts. Also this is what seems to make the most sense, when I analyze people who have been the most successful in their careers – the common trend with all of them is that they are all very level headed (and hence are definitely being honest to themselves); but are absolutely ruthless and politically perfect when it comes to working with others (and hence don’t give a shit about honesty when dealing with other people). Being ambitious, I felt that I should follow the same point of view.

The thing that stopped me from following the logic in the above paragraph, however, was that I value the things that I get from being honest and truthful to people too much to give it up so easily. I value the friends I have – I value their loyalty to me, and my loyalty to them. I value falling having a girl falling in love with me and vice versa – and want to feel all the amazing things that go with it. Of course, there is no pre requisite that we always have to be honest to our friends or the people we love – there are people I have seen, who lie to everyone and get away with it; they are smart enough to figure out a way to get away with it. It’s just that I would hate having to think 50 times before uttering a sentence in front of people that I consider close to me; I would hate having to play games with them all the time, just to make sure that they have the right impression about me.

I got a belief at some point previously in my life, that to have people around me like me, I would rather have them see all parts of my personality, get over the parts they don’t like about me and accept me for what I am, instead of trying to project myself as something they want to see; the latter method requires too much thought and planning before I interact with anyone. If I did that, though others might feel close to me; I would never feel close to them – and that kind of defeats the purpose of me having a friendship / relationship with them (those following this passage would have noted from the above paragraph that I am very self-centered, and hence it is critical for me to feel comfortable in any friendship / relationship; the comfort of the other person comes into play only when I feel my comfort is threatened…).

The obvious answer to the question then, is somehow compartmentalizing life into two separate heads - personal and professional; and follow a different set of rules for each. Be honest and stuff in the personal aspect, and ruthless in the professional aspect. But this is a bit tough as well. There are too many spillovers between the two, too many people who are a part of both. And also when we get used to behaving in a certain way, its hard to change that – or maybe I just can’t be ‘multi-principled’, i.e. follow two separate sets of values in my head, one from 9am to 5 pm – weekdays and one from 5 pm till 11 pm on weekdays and the whole weekends.

There is another variable to this equation – it relates to question of being honest to the organization we are working for. But since this essay is long enough, will save this one for another time. As of now though, refer to the beginning of this essay for an appropriate closing statement.

The future of the human race

A lot of people seem to like to believe that humans are being taken care of by a higher, superior force (e.g. God). I feel these thoughts arise from the average person's absolute disbelief in the idea that we have to take care of ourselves. Most people (even those who don't believe in God) feel that we are incapable of doing so. And I really cannot blame them for thinking like that...

But assuming that no great prophet or saviour turns up on this planet, the question remains... what will happen to us 10000 years from now?? What about 100000? The thing is that humans have existed in a civilized fashion only for the last 5000 years (although if you meet some of my friends you would think that is not true). And it took us that long to realise that we need to take care of ourselves and we need to work together to do so; Im referring to the establishment of agencies such as the UN; or previously the league of nations - we work together now in theory atleast.

Obviously though; despite the fact that some humans individually have a reasonably quick learning curve; the collective human race seems to be a very slow learner.

But even learning slowly might be good enough, as long as we do learn. Most popular economic, political and social thought now a days seems to believe in the principle of survival of the fittest - e.g. capitalism implies having a free market where the most competitive (or fittest) companies will survive; democracy implies freedom of political & social viewpoints where the political party with the most relevant agenda (again the 'fittest' in some sense) will gain popular acceptance and come to power. And thus, many people seem to be content in the idea that evolution of our thought and our society will continue as per this framework and we will keep getting better as a species. There seems to be an overwhelming belief in this quarter of the populace that in the long run humans cannot go wrong because survivalism will ensure that obsolete schools of thought will keep getting eliminated.

I am compelled to agree from the above theory, putting aside the possibilities of some extreme scenarios, that we should continue to evolve or atleast survive indefinitely into the future; because atleast this framework allows us to learn from our mistakes (however slowly that may be).

And thus we are now compelled to look into the extreme scenarios that may suddenly end our survival. Why? The study of the course of evolution gives a good reason - the dinosaurs. For a major portion of the existence of this planet the reptiles seemed to be kicking everyone elses asses and if any impartial alien observer ever landed on planet earth during the triassic period, he/she (or it) would have been convinced that the reptiles were the future. After all they had made it this far and were evolving within their race as well.

But then suddenly, the reptiles got screwed over when suddenly a meteor came down and annihilated the surface of the earth. I can actually imagine how when one day the dinosaurs were celebrating their survival thus far and their survival into the future as well (like humans do right now); from all the things that were possible, a meteor came and ended their race. They must have been really dissapointed, some of them must have certainly cried 'foul play'.

The thing is that we cannot simply trust the theory of evolution to just take its own course and believe that we will continue to survive... random events can kill us all off any time (ask any dinosaur). So maybe humans will not have all the time in the universe to stay alive, and the same greater force that decided to kill the dinosaurs using the meteor attack, decides to get rid of the humans someday, thereby ending our course of evolution...

Coming to the point; my personal predictions on what the future will hold for humans (considering possbile extreme scenarios that can end the normal course of our evolution):

1. A meteor hits earth and kills us all (like it most probably killed the dinosaurs). Also human attempts to pull off the 'Armageddon' type rescue attempt fail miserably because Bruce Willis has died by then. Cockroaches, rats or other small insect like creatures take over the planet and study humans at some point in the future like we study the dinosaurs.
Probable time of death of the human race: Any time after Bruce Willis dies

2. We survive all meteor attacks but screw this planet over so badly that there aren't enough resources left to support a large population. A small section of humans still survives on limited resources before planet earth gets destroyed by the collapse of the sun.
Probable time of death of the human race: 5 billion years from now (the predicted collapse of the sun)

3. We screw planet earth over, but also find a way out of the planet & start to colonize other planets (or moons) in the solar system and eventually other parts of the galaxy... We thus minimize the risk of our race ending due to meteor attacks or collapse of the central star of each planetary system. We survive till the universe ends or we land up between the Alien Vs Predator conflict.
Probable time till death of the human race: 42 billion years from now (where the assumed big crunch might occur)

4. In the above scenario, a meteor hits each of the planets we colonized at precisely the same time.
Probable time till death of the human race: Again, any time after Bruce Willis dies

5. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away; Darth Vader built the death star as per command of the evil emperor Palpatine. They test fired a few shots into what they thought was empty space, and unfortunately one of those shots was unknowingly aimed right at earth.
Probable time till death of the human race: Depends on how far 'far, far away' actually is

6. Some stupid kid wanders into the pentagon by mistake and launches the entire barrage of nuclear weapons the US holds. A nuclear war follows and in the following nuclear winter all humans die due to extensive exposure to harmful radiation.
Probable time till death of the human race: Anytime soon; some stupid kids have already made it to the white house

Ofcourse the religious people could be right as well; now that I think about scenario 6 above, we most probably did not make it this far on our own merit and we do have a greater force taking care of us. Either way Ill most probably die at some point as well anyway, so I guess I don't have to worry about this topic too much...