I changed my apartment a week ago. The new one is markedly better than the previous one. One such improvement is an Air Conditioner. And this is a problem. Why? It is such a long story; it is the story of humanity.
I do not even know where to begin. So I will begin at some point in mankind's history where material possessions started becoming more important than all other aspects of existence. I am not sure when this transition from "following the wisest" to "following the one who is wealthiest happened". But it happened. And here we are. Our entire race spends its existence in amassing material possessions. This dawned on me one day when I thought to myself - what if I did not give a damn about which brand of shoes I wear or if I owned a car which had cruise control or if the house I lived in had an air conditioner or not. I mean a state where all these things DID NOT MATTER TO ME. I realized I will be liberated. Liberated to achieve and put my energy into doing stuff that truly matters. Put my energy into new ideas or intellectual discussions or eradicating hunger from a village right next to the city where I live in. But no, I, like most other humans, have chosen a path to value things I do not need over things that humanity needs.
Let's examine what happens when one is engulfed by the insatiable lust for material possessions. Any amount of money is consumed, thus creating a need for more. To be able to sustain the current level of lifestyle and take it to the next level, one presses on to means that would result in earning more money. Some refer to this as career advancement. Some also refer to this as bribes. Many other names include embezzlement, crime etc. Before we know it, corruption is rife, the people are afraid of the state rather than it being the other way round, warlords capture and kill children, drug trade kills millions and forms a billion dollar industry that doesn't even exist on paper. The list is endless. Not only this, the very few who do want to put in effort where it really matters are blown away by this gale of money because the entire world is now governed by who owns more expensive stuff and who has more money. So, these very few people are also forced to output only those tools or ideas that will result in the creation of more wealth. I mean every problem we are facing today can be attributed to someone somewhere wanting material comforts and more money. Like I said, it forms the basis of our existence.
This has also led to the wrong people forming the role models. We quite simply look up to the people with more money or with private jets. We aspire to be like them. If not private jets it's a huge apartment with a heated swimming pool or meeting friends in a restaurant that charges 20 times for a pint of beer and so on. And then, when we realize that these people are corrupt or know nothing about life we think something is wrong with the world or people cannot be trusted etc. Well, the truth is, you cannot have so much money without engaging in some activity which is amoral or unethical. And yes, there is something totally wrong with the world and that is us.
So getting back to my problem. I moved into this new apartment because my friends were clearly smitten by the ACs installed in each one of the three bedrooms. However, the fourth bedroom did not have an AC. I had decided that I would take that room and I would not install an AC because I did not need it. I had survived 2 summers at 40 degrees Celsius already and I found it was not that big a problem. If I had some awesome algorithm to work upon or an interesting conversation with someone or a challenging game of Dota with my friends, the heat was forgotten...totally. BUT, my girlfriend usually keeps coming over and she said it was absolutely unacceptable living in that much heat without an AC. She hails from a cooler city so she cannot bear heat. As a result, I ended up with an AC. But more importantly, I ended up one more useless possession toward money-ravagotron. The descent has already begun. I do not know if I can halt it for I am surrounded by a society that will accelerate my descent. No one can resist the force of the society. Unless, I decided to turn to the way of a hermit...it has always held so much appeal.
RANDOM RAMBLINGS [ran-duhm ram-blings] n. 1 straying from one subject to another in a random, haphazard and aimless manner. 2 the most random blog on the internet.
I wanted to contribute to humanity. I ended up with an air conditioner instead.
Vicarious Immortality 2.0, thanks to the internet.
Most of us fear death. The reasons vary from fear of pain, fear of unfinished business or just plain instinctive need for self-preservation. While many of us merely wish to survive without any hassles and die peacefully when the time comes, there is an increasingly large number of humans who want to leave some kind of mark before dying. Some way by which they can be remembered by the world. Or some way to keep affecting the world in their absence.
The traditional way of doing this is rather painstaking and requires lot of effort. The most widely used and perhaps requiring immense amount of investment (time & money) is children. People believe in transferring knowledge through offsprings who then go on ahead to do the same. What we know today is essentially the result of the contributions of numerous generations. In a way we all have already achieved vicarious immortality. However, most of it is limited to offsprings. Other modes through which some have achieved immortality is through books, art etc. Although they are easy to destroy and hard to expose to a larger population with small amount of effort. But now there is a new means at our disposal to achieve immortality within minutes - The Internet.
Any content I create on the internet is almost indestructible and easily accessible to a huge number of people. One can easily achieve vicarious immortality with the help of a few blog posts. I mean, who knows when someone will read some of my blog posts or use an open source software that I contributed to. It can continue to affect the world for many years after my death.
Although this does put me under pressure. When I have such an awesome tool at my disposal it will be an utter waste for me to waste even a second or an idea by not working toward creating something that could help me achieve VI2.0. I am constantly haunted by the possibility of ignoring some idea that I can easily propagate into the future due to a small oversight.
For some people the internet also means that a record of their lives in the form of facebook, twitter and blog posts will continue to exist for future generations to peek into and learn. To be able to share one's life so easily with others now and in the future brings an innate sense of peace and company.
The Randomness That Is Life
Over the past few years my thinking has been heavily influenced and occupied by the effect of randomness and chaos on the universe. I am not a physicist, mathematician or scientist. So my observations are one of the layman and I do not claim them to be flawless.
One thing that has recently begun to baffle me is people's limited view on free will and determinism. There seem to be only two popular outlooks on this subject.
One being that there is no such thing called free will. Everything is pre-determined. These believers also happen to be ardent believers of creationism most of the time. What this theory ultimately leads to is the fact that irrespective of your actions the outcome is not affected and that the outcome is fixed. This theory has no scientific basis and is mostly proved on the basis of religion. The main argument given in support of this theory is that for life to evolve till the humans is impossible without divine intervention or design. That such level of perfection and thoughtful design can not occur unless it was destined to. Now, I am in total disagreement over the argument used. We know how vast the universe is. It is infinite. There are so many stars, planets, moons etc. that this minute probability of the existence of life gets amplified.
The second, and the opposite theory, is that there exists something called free will and our actions are fully capable of affecting our environment. This definitely makes more sense to me and most of the people. As a result, individuals are filled with vigor. You and I strive towards earning more money, advancing science etc. However, this theory fails to explain the simple phenomenon of a toss coin. You can toss a coin all you want but you cannot affect the outcome.
Now coming to my observations, I feel that reality follows a hybrid path. In reality, your actions have no effect on the universe. However, this does not mean that the path of the Universe is a pre-determined one. It is, in fact, a path of randomness. Which means that what will happen the next instant is unpredictable. It is not determined and scripted. However, irrespective of what you do, you cannot affect what happens at this next instant. Now many would argue that I can totally affect what happens at this next instant - look...I just stepped on that bug.
Well, let's examine this action. Look at the bug crushing from your own point of view. You never expected to crush that bug when you got up this morning. Furthermore, a prime example of how what you do does not affect anything is the beginning of your existence. You were born as a child to your parents out of chance! That swimming sperm which was the strongest was merely out of randomness. When your existence itself began with randomness how can you claim your actions are able to affect anything? All the events that happened around you after your birth were BECAUSE you were born. You were born out of randomness hence those events surrounding you are also the result of randomness. There are numerous examples around us that prove the randomness that is life.
What, then, is the meaning of life? What point is there in living when everything is random? Well, life is all about how we react to the randomness around! Certain things make us happy. What is the harm in flapping our arms violently and see if that results in something that makes us happy! Of course, any action that I perform does not guarantee a desirable outcome. But sitting around idly hoping for something I like to come along the way in life is so boring. I prefer giving random inputs to the universe and see if it changes into a state that is desirable to me :D.
