Mutual respect is the key to our evolution, not love

I have often wondered about the all healing feeling / emotion of love. It gives me pain, yet makes me feel complete. Love the earth, love your family, love what you have and love yourself. When you give love, you get love back in return and we spread our happiness to the world. Love is what makes life worth living.

I have still not covered love in entirety but three sentences makes me think - Wait! Love is what makes animals better than plants, it gives them the capacity to care even when they have to kill and fight with their own for their daily survival. I watched on Discovery Channel in awe when a even a mother lioness kills a pregnant monkey to feed her children, but adopts the monkey infant delivered right then as her own cub. That made me of what we civilized humans are trying to do even today and still not succeeding as well as the animals. Reminds me of the lyrics of Michael Jackson's song, "There are people dying, if you care enough for the living, make it a better place for you and for me and for the entire human race..."

However, even when we do reach the emotional maturity of the animals, like the lioness, we are yet to do something "human". I mean love is what makes life worth living, but that's setting the level of humanity a little low. It feels as if I am being told, "You are born with intelligence. But keep it aside along with your base instincts. Do what animals do best. Love! Don't think and decide. Just feel the love"

Give me a break! If am worthy of a thinking brain, I would rather not put it aside for love. I would take the first step of compassion for all humans, animals and plants alike. Then for humans, I would develop something called respect. That is the only way I would keep learning from each one and keep growing, as an individual and as a human being. In fact, more than unconditional love, I would promote conscious respect for each of us. If I am able to do that, I would have made life my teacher. And some day, my teacher would have made me someone from whom others can learn. That day respect would reach me and I will know that my life has been worth me. The mutual respect will make us growth continuously, out of our boundaries and fears and beyond technology and anything, even artificial life that we would discover and create. This mutual respect is the key to our evolution. 

Bohemia's legacy and my fallacy: Litost

A couple of years back I remember reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera. It was recommended by one of my closest friends, and it easily ranks as the best book I have read. Since then I have developed a deep sense of respect for the author who seems have more insights into the psyche of human beings than the best psychologists. 

I was just going through one of his set of articles in "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" about a feeling called "Litost". It is a Bohemian word, an explains the genius of a feeling that has no parallel word in any other language. Milan Kundera defines litost as a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery. How true!

Hasn't it happened that we have come across situations that we were within arms reach of something we greatly desired, and then suddenly, it disappeared completely from our sight? And for that we end up blaming ourselves and our bad luck for it? It is the same feeling I am trying to explain by the term "litost". 

It has also happened quite a few times when we try to show possessiveness and care for the other person, even end up shouting at and hitting the person we love, just because they did something we could not do. We try to tell them its our overwhelming sense of care and affection, but all the while we are trying to shut ourselves from admitting that we would have been pathetic in the same situation. To make our point we go to the point of staying hungry and even hurting ourselves, just to make a point. A point that was never so important or critical in any sense. We did all that just to bring back a feeling of equality in our hearts, rather restore the balance in favour of our superiority. 

I have faced the same feeling when I tried to go out of the way and create my own venture. I felt unsure of myself and lacked confidence in my abilities when I was graduating from IIM Ahmedabad, so much that it clouded my mind for over three and half years. This feeling started sprouting in me since my near fatal accident during engineering two years before I got admission into the institute. My will power to live created a medical miracle. But it left my mind far more wounded than my bruised and battered body. I was close to getting married to the girl of my life, and I did not get an ounce of feeling that I WILL be able to care of her, whatever life may offer. Without proof to the contrary, I was not sure if I could be a good son to my parents, a good brother and an admired family member. Time came closer, and at the last minute, I left my well-settled job for a venture that was probably ill suited to my characteristics. What in fact I had really lost, was 15 points in IQ, although even after that my IQ was tested to be higher than that of the CAT topper in the entire country. 

At that time, my thought was noble, and the intention was indeed noble. I have tried explaining to myself that the idea was driven by my need to feel connected to my Indian roots that are long lost in the partition days in Bangladesh. I wanted to do something for my nation and my people, burn hard earned money and put at stake all my relationships and ideals and go full steam to educate the rural youth. I did lose more than I could ever imagine. It was loss of a life. 

As I am writing after long under this pen-name that I so ardently love, I realise that it was my litost that was my biggest motivator. Today I am back on my path to recovery and I am certain that I will be able to make good of the lost time, relationships and money. But I am still aware that my litost is a companion who is unwilling to leave me like my shadow. I am reminded of the poems of Defeat (by Khalil Gibran), If (by Rudyard Kipling) and The Road Not Taken (by Robert Frost) that ignited and stirred in me a sense of passion for something I never understood. Today I found a word for that instinct. For once, a man who has dreamed of modifying language to fit the thought patterns of the human brain, is overcome by the effect of a singular word that changed a paradigm of his understanding of something equally complex yet simple and beautiful - life, my life. 

Towards nature's universal language

Language developed as a means of communication, rather as a medium of exchange of ideas. But how well does and idea get captured in words? And how precisely is it perceived by the intended recipient? The entire collection of books and scriptures of a civilization are a true representation of the society that created it. To put this in another way, language captures the essence of a culture, just like the stock price captures the essentials of a company. Language becomes a determinant in the development of civilization. Societies with languages that are gender neutral, like Bengali and German, the power is shared more “equally” among the genders than other societies following gender sensitive languages like Hindi or English. To understand these distinctions more clearly, let us analyse this objectively.

A language grows as the civilization progresses. New objects discovered and invented add to the language in terms of new words. Poetry adds a visualization element to the grammar of the language. A beautiful poem is able to evoke the same visualizations and emotions across a large section of the population thereby elevating the level of “human-ness” in the society. Similarly new concepts developed and scientific progress made elevate the society to a higher standard of living. But is the language inherently strong enough so that it can adapt to the changing cultures due to technology and yet maintain the existing identity of the society?

Let us see what we mean by some of our basic words, like “leaf” and “demand”. What do you mean by the word, leaf? In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant organ specialized for photosynthesis. A stem is elongated structure that supports a plant. So does a cactus have leaves or stems? It is not quite so easy to answer as it appears. Similarly let us try to define the word demand. Frequently understood as a requirement, it has a desire aspect attached to it as well. While the calorie intake required per head may be 2000 calories a day, it does not quantify demand as the demand may be for only 1500 calories or 3000 calories a day depending on lifestyle. The synonyms may help explain meanings, but may end up distorting the meaning as well. Even the basic words are not very cooperative for us to develop higher concepts.

What about the scripts that let us express and share our knowledge? Let us take pictographic scripts for example. They may capture an idea in more complete manner and brief manner, but it faces issues of scale. Scientific advancement will flood the language with new symbols so much that a prowess in language becomes essential for the further progress of technology. Moreover the language is phonetically unclear for everyone and dictionary lookup becomes essential for the intelligentsia. A visualization of a symbol as a picture might undergo changes as the knowledge base expands.

The Chinese (Mandarin) script has over 50,000 symbols of which 10% may be in common use. How much of society and science can be captured in just 5000 symbols? Remember that these symbols are not alphabets but words. To read the names of all elements and compounds in that humanity is aware of, we just need to know 26 alphabets in English. But to do the same in Chinese would require knowledge of not only the symbols for “element” and “compound” but also of each of the 108+ elements. This is a very intuitive understanding of a pictographic language. It is a limited language indeed.

Let us come to the alphabetic languages like English and German. Starting with English, we see that it is predominantly male-focused language. Man represents humans and it is the responsibility of the “white-man” to take civilization forward. The language represents a one-god, no goddess faith system that puts conquest above all rest. Germans on the other hand have a precise language where appointments are fixed in a 24hour time format to avoid confusion. The focus is more on the verb than on gender of the noun. Their nation is their “fatherland” indicating that a sense of pride, power and ambition is central to the collective psyche that coordinates its actions through mathematical “precision” of its language.

There is an Indic set of alphabetic languages represented by Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi and Bengali. Each of them captures the Indian essence equally but each has specific characteristics that make them unique. Their differentiating is the separation of consonants and vowels. Among the four above, only Bengali is gender-neutral like German. Bengali borrows consonants in its script from Sanskrit and vowels from Tamil. Tamil keeps the essence of South India alive whereas Hindi shows how Arabic language influences on Sanskrit have been “Indianised”. But Sanskrit being the mother language of all, has an elegance and beauty that echoes the fundamental characteristics of nature.

This brings us to the central point of this article. Not only should the language be flexible enough to adapt to progress in science and technology but it should also mirror nature’s characteristics in its fundamental structure. The concept of a two i.e. a pair is a fundamental truth of nature. The pairs may be opposing, like proton and electron, good and bad, or may co-exist like two strands of DNA, male and female. This fundamental truth should be allowed to reflect itself as a separate concept in the grammar. Among all known languages, only Sanskrit adds a dual to singular and plural forms in the language. This is of monumental importance. Between one and many, us and them, there is a form that exists called both or together. From conflict we have a state of equilibrium in between. So the Sanskrit based Hindu civilizations did not expand by military conquest, but by including and bringing together cultures of varying geographies.

It has always been out endeavor to capture the knowledge inherent in nature. We know that nature expresses itself in mathematics. Many scientists are of the opinion that a breakthrough in science awaits a revolution in our understanding of mathematics. Maybe that understanding of mathematics is hindered by “sub-standard” languages that restrain our thoughts from infancy. We can start bringing about the change by incorporating the “dual” of Sanskrit and then proceeding to incorporate words with specific meanings and lesser stress on synonyms. A scientific grammar will help science. And maybe as time progresses, we may or may not have a language that is gender-neutral.

~ 3-Jan-2011

This too shall pass away

Once in Persia reigned a King,
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maxim true and wise,
Which, if held before his eyes,
Gave him counsel at a glance,
Fit for every change and chance.
Solemn words, and these are they;
"Even this shall pass away."

Trains of camels through the sand
Brought him gems from Samarcand;
Fleets of galleys through the seas
Brought him pearls to match with these;
But he counted not his gain,
Treasures of mine or main;
"What is wealth?" the king would say;
"Even this shall pass away."

Mid the revels of his court,
At the zenith of his sport,
When the palms of all his guests,
Burned with clapping at his jests,
He, amid his figs and wine;
Cried, 'O loving friends of mine;
Pleasures come, but not to stay;
"Even this shall pass away"

Lady, fairest ever seen,
Was the bride he crowned his queen.
Pillowed on his marriage bed,
Softly to his soul he said:
Though no bridegroom ever passed;
Fairer bosom to his breast,
Mortal flesh must come to clay-
"Even this shall pass away"

Fighting on a furious field,
Once a javelin pierced his shield;
Soldiers, with a loud lament,
Bore him bleeding to his tent.
Groaning from his tortured side,
"Pain is hard to bear," he cried;
"But with patience, day by day,
Even this shall pass away.

Towering in the public square,
Twenty cubits in the air,
Rose his statue carved in stone.
Then the king, disguised, unknown,
Stood before his sculptured name,
Musing meekly: "What is fame?"
Fame is but a slow decay;
Even this shall pass away.

Struck with palsy, sore and old,
Waiting at the Gates of Gold,
Said he with his dying breath,
"Life is done, but what is death?"
Then, in answer to the king,
Fell a sun beam on his ring,
"Even this shall pass away."

~ Theodore Tilton

The next evolution stage

A view of the future fills us with wonder, awe and usually fear. Mutants might emerge soon who are superior to us and like us they'll rule over all inferior species, including non-mutant humans. If that doesn't happen aliens will come to earth and wipe out all civilization. And maybe we might just not have so much patience and kill each other by developing more and more deadly weapons.

Such kinds of imagination are no doubt creative and tend to fit a particular theory of probability and scientific possibility. We might very well try a different perspective by asking a basic question. What is the purpose of life/conciousness?

The purpose of life is to create beings with supreme intelligence who can adapt to any conditions. Right now we are at the stage where science and technology has brought us to the stage with the following characteristics:
1. Machines having processing / computation speeds higher than the human brain
2. The development of artificial intelligence
3. Machines that can assemble other machines

So what would be we have next? "Smarter" machines that can assemble their "clones" and actually "create" even smarter machines with with better adaptability. Where would we stand in the same world vis-a-vis them?

Intuitively, they would not have emotions nor instincts and hence would act "insensitively" wiping us out or using us humans as resources. Ironically, we think that way because thats the exact way our "civilizations" have emerged. Even more ironically, it was always emotions and instincts that made us "animals" and hence less "human". Maybe we cant take it that machines would be more "human" that us humans!!!

Coming back to the point, we must ask why emotions and instincts emerge, why they exist now and are they required later. Instincts emerged to ensure survival of the body that will house the seat of logic and decision making. It is immediate and local in nature and can handle only simple situations with simple responses. Emotions emerged as a stepping stone towards intelligent consciousness. They also introduced variability in the decision making making them seem irrational. This helped in the being taking decisions that assumed a bigger unknown picture for the decision maker bringing him out of the sub-optimal solution trap.

The emotions and instincts may be required for animals (including humans) probably because they are still evolving. It might also be that they are still required. Maybe both reasons hold. But we started with the assumption that the purpose of life is to create beings with supreme intelligence. It seems we are getting stuck here.

But hold on! We are not getting stuck. The machines may be "smarter", but that is true when they have a task at hand. Will they be able to ask questions? Will they be able to figure out unexpected pattern and perform lateral thinking i.e. be creative? Maybe they need to have emotions and instincts to do so. For that they will need to be living like us humans. The machines need us to be supreme!

In fact we also need machines for their capabilities for us to be supreme. So why cant humans and machines merge? Of course they can! In fact they are already merging. Take for example pacemakers, or for that matter artificial limbs, hearing aids, and even chips that record all that our eyes see. We can clone ourselves and are right now mutating our own species!!!

This outcome is fascinating to say the least. We are creating a new branch of science and even defining what things like evolution and species mean. It does put us at conflict with the supernatural things claimed in all religions. Well except for Hinduism. "Vasudhaiva kutumbakam" means the world is one family. Note that it said the "world", and not all "life".

Maybe the next evolution step is the merging of material and logic at will. Probably it is the same supreme being that will dominate its existence across galaxies. Its happening faster than you feel or think or imagine. Be prepared my friend, be prepared!

(Written on 17-Oct-2009)

Stages of Life

We find it easy to imagine stages of life as the following: Childhood, teenage, youth, middle-age and old-age. Of course, this chronological division is easy to do. A more fruitful activity oriented staging of life is provided by Hinduism as the four ashramas: Bhrahmacharya, Grihastha, Vaanprastha, Sanyaasa; effectively translating into virgin studenthood, family life, reclusion and seclusion. Each phase has been given 25 years assuming a 100 year lifetime.

This is where the ambiguity arises. Neither do we have a fixed lifetime nor do we have fixed times/ratio of times to give to each phase. The transition is gradual yet distinct. Usually we end up not living the last phase of the "sanyaasa" time. But how does that matter?

It matters because somewhere we are trying to classify our life's decisions based on some criteria. These decisions have to be based on some priority order. What is this priority order to take life's most crucial decisions?

The four life phases are better understood if we try to understand what is most important for us in each life phase. In the first phase our parents are most important for us. In the next one it is our life-partner. Following that the most important for us is our children. In the last phase, it is the ambiguous bigger thing that is most important.

In short, the following turns out to be the priority order in our life in the contemporary time, allowing for some redefinition of life phases:
1. Brahmacharya aashram: Student life
2. Grihastha aashram: Initial job life, marriage, till the arrival of the first offspring
3. Vaanprastha aashram: Continues till the end of education/student life of the youngest offspring
4. Sanyaasa aashram: Period till the end of one's life during which one concentrates and acts on the bigger value of his life's efforts

To make the utility of the above distinction clearer, lets briefly look at the boundary decisions of each:
1. Brahmacharya: Learning to choose based on benefit to self and benefit to significant others (eg: friends, parents, elders). First priority is parents/elders/teachers. Focus is on education.
2. Grihastha: Choosing based on benefit to self. First priority is life-partner. This transition of first priority should have acceptance of the earlier priority holders i.e. parents. If parents dont agree, eliminate the transition option. The transition point is discrete and unambiguous. After marriage, other life decisions during this phase are taken in mutual understanding with life-partner.
3. Vaanprastha: Choosing based on benefit to self and significant others. First priority is children. This transition happening during the arrival of an offspring should have acceptance of the life-partner. Again the transition point is discrete and unambigious. If life-partner interferes in proper education of the children, eliminate the life-partner as an option. But this should only be the last method as the children need both parents for proper development.
4. Sanyaasa: Choosing based on benefit to others. First priority is the nation and humanity. This transition does not need acceptance of any other person. If the child(ren) act against the nation/humanity, eliminate that particular person. This decision is the result of the priority order that is no longer considering benefit to self.

Nowhere have I tried to understate the importance of emotions and relationships as that was not my intention. Please do not look at the narrow definition of the word "benefit". What I have written above is a generalisation and a set of guiding principles that have to be appropriately applied to the specific situation and context. Judgements aside, the decision still remains yours.

(Written on 17-Oct-2009)

Sanatan is Eternal

A couple of days ago, i finished reading the graphic novel “The Watchmen” by Alan Moore… Today i finished watching the movie… The plot reminded me of another very well known story by Isaac Asimov, “I, Robot”… Asimov’s VIKI, the super-intelligent and super-powerful robot had to be terminated in its initiative of bringing peace to human society… But Alan’s super-intelligent Adrian Veidt “The Ozymandias” and super-powerful Jon “Dr. Manhattan” were allowed the same liberties of taking human lives for lasting peace… Ethics, is a word that then started to have a new meaning for me… Ethics is then a matter of the circumstance, situation, maybe perspective or just a matter of time…

It maybe just a matter of time that the communication revolution brings me to a point where the only information i need is the one i dont have… the information about my identity, knowledge about the importance of my identity to the human society, the harmony of my identity with the existence of humanity… I turn to the wisdom of the ages, the guiding lights of my life, Hinduism, the “Sanatan Dharma” Eternal Religion… Its the oldest religion of the human world and claims its superiority from its logical foundations…

Sanatam Dharma tells me my identity is defined by the nation and culture i live in… It tells me the only thing beyond my control is time and all things that are consequent to it and hence it is the omnipresence of God… And finally it tells me to maintain my character and control my senses so that one day i might just turn time in my favour… all to achieve the end… So i prepare myself for anything, absolutely everything that might come my way… Life is sorted out and there’s a grand plan in my head… I strike at every opportune moment i can find… And one day, luck will be my say…

It is like the wish to fly… I am standing on a glass floor in an aircraft… I already feel like a bird… But i need to fly… I jump on the glass to break it… I keep jumping… I know it will break… I am prepared for the leap… The parachute bag is my plan on my shoulder… The glass beneath my feet breaks… I am literally falling from the sky… But i laugh… I am flying…

The average intelligence of the human society decreases as population increases… On top of it we are doing away with all natural resources we were gifted… What is the end we seek??? Where is the plan??? Are we really preparing ourselves??? Or is it that we are still struggling to find our identity simply because we cant find time from fulfilling our dear infinite unsatiable wants??? The answers are there in front of us, in my daily life, in our Sanatan Dharma… No, I am not afraid that tenets of Hinduism will die… 1 billion is too huge a number… But things get diluted and dulled… From our solution books, i fear losing some important pages… With time people would rediscover logic and the Sanatan Dharma… Or maybe humanity might not get the chance to know its too late… They were not so smart at all… The calamity struck when the humans were “still evolving”….. Still, the Buddha is Smiling…

Jai Hind Jai Shri Krishna!!!