Why is this Goodbye?

I wanted to blog because I wanted to
Look at myself but not being me;
He seemed great but really great
Was how he looked at me.

So...

He liked being me and I really liked
All the things he was doing to me;
We were two and we were one
Life was never so carefree.

But...

He started to preachify me and I
Am beginning to feel the ennui;
Now, I return to the world of
Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie!

I still feel I'll miss me...

NOTES:

Yes. This is goodbye. I liked seeing myself take another form to tell me things I wish I had known. But, as I said, when he became more like preachifying (that’s actually a word – looked it up in the dictionary), I knew I had to stop. I sure hope it hasn’t been too late.

I’m not going to blog anymore; I’m not willing to take another form again. So, as you think “Is this guy Schizophrenic?”, I’ll tell you this: Everybody is. Everyone has a good side and a bad side, to remember the Tamil song ‘Kadavul paadhi, Mirugam paadhi/ Kalandhu seidha kalavai naan’ (I’m a mixture of half-god and half-beast). And this blog was my good side, preaching too much. So much that the Liar couldn’t stand anymore.

I really think that I won’t be back anytime soon. So, I’d like to thank all of you who helped me write this blog:

Ravi Teja R (me) – for giving all the ideas to write this stuff.

Aditya RR, Subha Rani, Sarma RVSN, J and Kishore Narayan (family) – for reading my posts and giving great feedback.

The Ranting Human – for introducing me to blogging, and all the feedback.

Chaos and Diety – for your valuable friendship, time and appreciation.

Antickpix, Spice Mix, Tsunami, New Illuminati and Punk Parent – for dropping by to leave some comments (and) being great friends.

And all others who have read this blog.

Thank you,

Ravi Teja R.

Why shouldn't all actions be need-driven?

Hi there, nice to see you again. A few days ago, I found out that all things that I liked doing were all need-driven things. I liked doing things that I really wanted to do (who doesn't?) and not the ones that I had no reason to do or the ones I was forced to do. Then, I realized that ‘want’ is a lot different from ‘necessity’. I looked up my thesaurus and it said that they were synonyms; oh, well... but still, I felt that ‘necessity’ is a word used in much stronger sense than ‘want’. For me, it sure makes a lot of difference from saying 'It is necessary for me to have a Pepsi' to 'I want a Pepsi’ (If I am wrong, let me assume that I'm right and proceed).

So, the reason I try to differentiate between these two words is that ‘want’ or ‘need’ is the mother of invention, rather than necessity (To confuse things a little more, let me say want is the necessity of invention). We invented things because we plain wanted them, not that they would be necessary; we needed them just for whim and we got it… not that we couldn’t have lived without them. My point is: That for us to be happy, we should just do the things that we need and not anything else.

Take an average Indian teenager as an example. He’s supposed to eat thrice a day, take a bath daily and do other things that he doesn’t have a reason for. Why should people be forced to do such stuff that they have no reason for? Do animals do things that they don’t need or reason? No. Hence, in a pursuit for happiness, for us human beings, all actions must be need driven; I say, be like animals - they just eat when they feel like eating and go to a nearby river for a bath when they need it. Their life is totally need-driven; hence they’re happy (refer previous post). But, the problem is that we are trying ‘not’ to be like them to become what we call as ‘higher’ creatures. Well, duh, but higher creatures are supposed to be more happy!

This brings to another problem: To get to do the things you want, you must do a lot of things that you really don’t want to. Like to just eat and sleep all day (want to) you must work real hard (don’t want to) to earn enough cash to be in a position to do that. So, what do we do? Fortunately, the answer to this question is beyond the scope of this post, and we can just keep on doing things that we want, no questions asked.

See you later,

Ravi Teja R

Why are we obsessed with numbers?

Hello again. I’ve been thinking about a ‘panacea’ for human beings – whether it actually exists or not. I do not know why, but I have a very strong belief in this adage: Ignorance is bliss. Maybe I’m terribly wrong, but according to me all other living beings are extremely happy in their lives; they are blissfully unaware of their lives being in constant danger (usually from us). So, thinking on the same lines, I realized that the primary thing that separates us very-often-miserable humans from the happy-and-contented animals might be our ‘Superior Intellect’.

So, in my quest for the elusive cure-all, I had stumbled upon the exact opposite of that: the root cause of all the miseries for us humans. Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present the culprit: “Numbers”. Yes, the seemingly innocuous counting units that we have learnt and mastered. Counting, according to me, is that which separates us humans from other animals (I am also aware that research shows that certain primates do have a sense of counting but I believe that is acquired rather that innate).

Good or bad, we are obsessed with numbers; we want to measure everything we see and discover. Also, numbers are the basic units of comparison which, in turn, is the first step in ascertaining the inferiority/superiority of an object. Undeniably, we crave for ‘better’ numbers in all the material things in this world, like better bank balances, better grades in schools, better clock-speeds in processors, better values of HDL Cholesterol and so on. This has ensured one thing: No one can have the ‘best’ because there is always a better number than you have. Materialistically speaking, this means that no one can be absolutely happy.

I have also realized that the things that give us true happiness are the things that cannot be counted: Love, pleasure and even happiness itself. This means that these things cannot be compared and hence everyone can equally be absolutely happy without the need for comparing who is more/less happy. That is why I think animals are innately happy; they do not compare among themselves who is better and who is not, and in fact, they cannot because all are equally happy. Thus, ignorance is bliss.

Take care,

Ravi Teja R.

Why did Man invent God?

Thanks for coming back. If you didn’t know earlier, let me tell you in advance that I am an atheist and assure you that I shall remain so until further notice. This time around, I’m thinking about why we men (and women) invented ‘god’, which is something that is as intangible as ‘love’ or ‘fear’, but very less perceivable when compared to these. How could the majority of people (assuming that atheists are a minority) have such a very singular notion? Maybe god really invented (or created) man and not vice-versa; after all 80% (a wild guess) of the people can’t be wrong! As I stressed before in my blog, there are no definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to questions; most of them are ‘maybe’.

We human beings are in an eternal quest to understand everything; we want everything to make sense. In that pursuance, we naturally encounter many things that do not make sense. So, how do we proceed? I learnt that Mathematicians give such things arbitrary names such as ‘x’ or ‘y’ until their actual ‘value’ or ‘meaning’ is found out. We, being very analytic creatures, applied the same principle for our quest too.

As a result, whenever we encountered something inexplicable by any one of us, we placed it a set of unknowns: the ‘god’ set. It was a natural escape route for us to give an answer to all those questions we didn’t have a logical answer for; just attribute it god – no questions asked. So, in early days of man, the ‘god’ set, comprised a lot of things. As time progressed, we found out reasons for many things like ‘Gee… Lightning is caused by oppositely charged particles; god has nothing to do with it, after all’. Naturally, we decreased the size of the ‘god’ set.

This leads us to many questions: Will a time come when all stuff will make sense? Will god be no longer necessary then? My answer is ‘no’. My brother (who, by co-incidence, is, in quest of god) read somewhere a quote: ‘As knowledge increases, ignorance unfolds’. So, when we learn something new, we realize that there are many others still to be learnt and understood, which would be attributed to god. Hence, the ‘god’ set continually increases and decreases but never can become void.

Thus, in a quest for answers, we needed something that could give a ‘don’t-ask-any-more-questions’ kind of an answer for unanswerable questions. That is why we invented god. Why do I ask such questions and try to answer them? : god knows why.

Bye-bye,

Ravi Teja R.

Am I still a poet?

Good to see you again. After I wrote 'Lobotomy' (see previous post: 'Am I a poet?'), I really liked it to the extent that I decided to write a few more poems. As you will soon find out, all of the following poems are based on classroom-related incidents. I tried to rhyme in some of these poems which, according to my opinion, demeaned the 'raw quality' of my thoughts. Anyway, here goes nothing:

Corporal Punishment

Struggling to get away
Wriggling out of trouble's way
Hatred over fear and anger is winning
Tormentors are icily grinning
Screaming as loud as silence can be
When, oh when, will we be free?

Brownie Points

Counterfieted smiles on the front row
Individuality takes a backseat now
No one cares if it's good or bad
Blind compliance makes it funny-sad.

Sleep Deprivation

Eyelids shutting comprehension down
Voids eating my cranial nerves
Bluebirds flying in numerous forms
Old Rip calling with outstretched hands.

Notes:

For the first and last time on my blog, let me be personal. I hated school-days; I wanted to get out of it as soon as possible. The only solace for me was with my English teacher - now he was a 'diamond in the rough' kind of person; these poems are about the others - the vicous kind. The cultural stereotyping in India (at least in Tiruvallur) meant that the teachers could do anything they wanted to and get away with it. Hence the reference to the 'Fear -> Anger -> Hatred' theory as to how a student feels by being subjected to such torturous brutes.

I do not mean that all students were treated this way; you need to be a 'bootlick' to be in their good looks. The respect was always demanded; never commanded (with the exception of my English Teacher). So, all you need to do is sit in the front row, do whatever they wanted you to, say 'Sir, yes Sir!' to all the say and voila! you are the best student. Hence my poem on brownie points.

So, what does a regular, self-respecting student do? Sleep. What if that too is denied? Sleep Deprivation. Rip van Winkle was always a role-model for me during those days.

That's enough poems for some time, I guess; back to my Philosophies, then.

Ta-ta,

Ravi Teja R.      

Am I a poet?

Hello there. I’ve been thinking about writing poems since when I was very young. A couple of days ago, I sat down to write a few. It was then I realized that as long as I was bounded by the fetters of rhyme and reason (which are very essential for good poetry), I couldn’t write poems. So, I decided to take a break (from the ordinary) and just started following my brain. Till now, I’ve come up with some that have really amazed me. Here is the first one:

Lobotomy

The windows screaming with open mouths
Clouds doing little barrel rolls
The air carries some weighted lies
Asphalt’s hissing on some rattle-snakes

Electrons releasing light on bulbs
Heart’s pumping like a giddy top
Thunder rumbling on paned glass
Neurons routing ways to empty paths.

Notes:

Lobotomy (Lobo - lobe; tomos - slice, to cut ) is a surgical procedure that involves the removal of the connecting nerves for the frontal lobe of the brain. This is usually done for mentally challenged people and people with brain tumors that pose the risk of spreading to the healthy parts of the brain (see movies “And One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” and “From Hell”).

Here, the poem is set in such a way that the poet has undergone lobotomy and is unable to relate things properly. The ‘links’ in his brain have been destroyed, leading his thoughts to switch from topic to topic. But, since he can still vaguely remember things, the topics being switched having a very fine thread of connection.

The open windows remind him of people screaming; Clouds remind him of the recent air-show he’s been to; He remembers his Physics teacher telling him that air has weight. The word weight leads to a phrase called ‘weighted lies’. Then, he thinks about the movie where they show the desert with rattlesnakes on the scorching road.

The thought about the sun leads him to think about light, thereby light bulbs and electrons. From electrons, he goes to the ‘Conduction of heartbeat’ lesson in his Biology class. He then remembers the teacher in his primary school telling him that the heart was like a top. Heartbeat reminds him of thunder, leading to rumbling and the recent earthquake that caused the window panes to rumble. The final note is about his neural pathways that still exist in the other portions of his brain, with no way to go; hence they are empty paths.

Thus, the train of thought of a man devoid of the ability to properly connect things is written in the poem. I have used my own 'bad-linked' memories (I just followed the next thought that popped up in my mind, without reasoning) to get 'into' the mind of the lobotomized person. The rest, like most of us un-lobotomized people, is plain guesswork.

More poems to come,

Thanks!

Ravi Teja R.

Is all this for nothing? - An introspection

Note: Please read my previous post, "Is all this for nothing?" prior to reading this one.

Hello there. After posting 'Is all this for nothing?', I read the whole post all over once again. After doing so, I was surprised that I left out the most important aspect of life: Suffering. The primary reason why people fear death is suffering. Since death is common to all, people try to eliminate other causes of suffering. That, is why we need 'virtues', and comforts; just to avoid suffering and be happy. Hence, I strongly believe that the primary purpose (assuming that we have a purpose) in life is the avoidance of suffering: both for us and for our children.

Since suffering cannot be absolutely avoided, what we call 'virtues' are certain set of rules, which, a person, upon practising in life, can avoid suffering to the maximum extent. That is also the main reason why these virutes change from time to time, and, in certain cases, person to person. What I mean is that way to happily live one's life is not a universal constant. Early men, in the dark ages, had many causes for suffering. So, what they did was to form certain rules (mostly by trial and error) to avoid suffering so that they and their future generations need not suffer in the same way. Thus, the rules underwent many changes to become the rules (virtues) that we have now.

This leads us to the question: Are we suffering any lesser than the people in the dark ages? Well, the answer is yes and no. Yes, because we need not fear saber-toothed tigers entering our homes and devouring our children; No, because they never worried about large metal birds crashing onto their caves and killing them all. I personally think that the 'yes's outweigh the 'no's but I might be very wrong.

So, are we better off after all these years of evolution? I don't think many people have an answer for that. The only thing that we can do about it is continue doing our job of trying to eliminate suffering for us and for our children.

Cheerio!

Ravi Teja R.