hence love

one of the worst tortures you can inflict on a man is complete sensory isolation...the only thing he tastes, his own tongue; the only thing he feels, his own body; the only thing he smells, his own fear, the only thing he hears, his own heartbeat; the only thing he sees, his doom. at this point it matters not that outside of this dark room there exists a nature to experience or animals to watch or other people to talk to--these things, though real--but because they cannot be interacted with--are as good as figments to the isolated man. this is the true meaning of being alone.

a man who is completely alive and cognitively viable, but has no control over his paralysed body is as good as a dead man because though his free will exists, he has no manner of option to convey that will into the realm of reality. even the blink of an eye can transmit a message, but what if even the eyelid is no longer connected to the thought of moving it? is not this man lost to the world forever though he is still in it?

what is the meaning of sentient existence if we cannot exert that sentience unto objective reality? the usefulness of descartes' words--knowing you exist simply because you think so--is useless at and beyond the point of knowing what you are capable of, be it the ability to pick up a rock, or the ability to scare a bird, or the highest form of existence validation, the ability to elicit a response from another sentient being. these are abilities that cannot be proven to exist simply by the thought alone but by the connection from thought to objective reality through the interface of perception and reality.

i cannot imagine being in the position of a trapped mind in a useless body, that is the worst fate. but i can imagine being thrown into isolation, where the only thing that can validate the existence of my thoughts is my thoughts--a curse in its own right. i can also imagine being the only human being on this earth, but at least i have the animals to prove to myself that i exist. i can also imagine being the only multicell organism on this earth--there, at least i have rocks to throw and validate my existence. i can imagine being the only object on earth, at least i can see that i can make my hands move--i know i exist. but take away my body, all i have left is my own thoughts, and i am equivalent to a will that has no manner of exerting itself--no meaning for existence.

the very fact that we are a sentient race underscores the primal need to self-validate at a level fit for our intelligence and we do so by bouncing impulses and receiving responses from other sentient beings. but to think such socialisation is merely primal would be a huge mistake. interaction with another human being is not only a necessary but sufficient criterion for meaningful existence.

what is more meaningful than knowing your own existence? the way i see it, its also knowing that there exists another individual sentience whom you identify with more than any other, whom you know is not part of your own existence--a separate one which of its own separate free will also chose to identify with you more than any other. the higher form of existence--not only proving to yourself you exist, but also being proven to exist by somebody else. the credibility of such proofs increases as the level of identification increases, just as the phyiscal, mental, and emotional proximity increases, just as the relationship grows closer...

hence, love.

bittersweet heaven

its hard when people dont happen the way we would prefer. that one extra free will in our life that we allow in our inner circle--knowing that when at odds with our own free will--could make for very hard times. no, not even family nor friend comes that close, but a special one that because we invite into our castle, can make us feel the kind of happiness and the kind of sadness that no one outside the castle can ever possibly achieve. yet deep down, there is no greater honor to a house than to have its room--its purpose for existence--filled.

and when i think about what God did, when he created man and gave all of them free will, i cant help but wonder--though i dare not claim much more than assuming i know what was His intention--was He seeking the same kind of happiness of free wills in His castle, knowing full well He could be disappointed countless times before the final day?

an impossible feat for a mere mortal who struggles to attain this happiness even though he only lets in one free will at a time. yet when it works, he enjoys bittersweet heaven deserving of God Himself.

doctor you are wrong

when deadly affliction arrives, its easy to turn away from the doctor and his good recommendation, hoping he is wrong, while praying to God that He will do something instead. yet when we get a flu, or headache or chickenpox, we take both medication and instruction from the same doctor, knowing we will get better from it and we simply thank God that it was only chickenpox. it is a habit that the religious, the superstitious and the uneducated alike suffer with. which of them can deny that in difficult times, they only place all hope in their God because there is no one else to put it in?

a woman with certain religious values would be most conflicted in a time of ectopic pregnancy, where she would struggle to choose abortion, as opposed to carrying the foetus to term but risk her own life instead. it would be reasonable for this woman and her husband to see another doctor for a second opinion if they didnt like to the first one, but no doctor will ever forget to remind her that the final decision is hers to make. because the gravity of her situation exceeds her faith in not only her doctor, but also in her own ability to make a good decision, it is only at this point where she truly puts her faith in God. and because her faith was placed in the wrong order, no decision is made.

if the situation was simpler: dengue fever perhaps. does even the most religious man with dengue fever reject a doctor and say "I will pray instead. God will heal me."? even if one man were to do this, how far would his fever have to go before he finally says "Doctor, help me. I will pray after."?

a third scenario puts a man at the window of a burning building. he has to jump into the firemen's safety net 10 floors below. does not his faith in the ability of fire to burn and kill him compel him to jump? or does he ask God which choice to take, stay and wait or jump now. it is precisely because of his faith in real fire and ability to estimate his own chances of survival by jumping that helps him decide his course of action. God only comes into the picture after the decision is made, when the man leaps off the building and says in his heart, "God, help me."

in one scene similar to the first, where expert advice is available, suppose a boy is stuck at the edge of a cliff, both hands hanging to a vine for dear life. a helicopter arrives with a rescue worker suspended below it. the rescuer says "give me your hand." the boy is unwilling because his faith in his own two hands tells him he cannot release the vine even from one hand. the rescuer says "i am your rescuer. release your hand or i cannot save you." it is a combination of the immediate fear of death, and the present trust in this rescuer who speaks with confidence that motivates the boy to release the vine.

thus many times in life, at a tough point we refuse to make a decision because we cannot comprehend the urgency of it, and that we do not fully appreciate the value of advice coming from someone whom we should admit, knows alot more about the situation. it is the failure of understanding of both these concepts which causes us, in the time we need the most help, to reject it from the people who are most able to provide it, while telling ourselves it is all okay, because God will do something about it. at the end of the day, we dont make any decision with the false belief that we can do no wrong if we do nothing.

yet with our knowledge of today, is religion in the name of ignorance truly acceptable?

a noble profession

i am one of the smaller group of people which has almost no desire to be part of the capitalist rat race of the modern city. on more than one occassion this has been pointed out to me to be to be a sign of weak ambition. on those days i nodded or looked away, admitting that such a statement was indeed factual. but after some conversation the other day with a couple of new friends on my vision of an ideal life in the village or rural countrysides, i only came to become more convicted of my position. if anything, i am less guilty for thinking this way. i realised that drive of ambition is not the source of but rather the equivalent of a desire for competition in the corporate world. in other words, if not wanting to join the cutthroat marketplace means i am weakwilled, i will accept that that title with no embarrassment.

after all, being on the other side of the fence, though strongwilled and in focus, would make me a type of human i would respect less than a dog. knowing myself full well, i am completely able, if i were to set my eyes on the ladder of modern success, to scale it easily while biting the legs of the dogs above me and kicking the heads of the dogs below me; my rational mind allows me to calculate the cost of a dog's life and if need be, allow some of them to fall off to their deaths once i quantified the profit from doing so. but it is simply because i would rather be an average human rather than a top dog--a simple comparison of my fundamental desires--that makes me choose the village over the city.

during the conversation last week i had the fortune of being reminded of the old adage of the greenness of pastures on the far side of fences, that the rural world has its own share of difficulties, that the struggle for money is replaced by the struggle for food. simply it seemed, it was a shift of market rather than a shift of job. i didnt have the wisdom that day to give an answer; getting out of a bias accusation is impossible without the help of a third party. but now that i am no longer in that conversaion, i do in fact consider myself a third party...and i once again discover that my previous statement about my different value system would suffice as a response--that because i detest the corporate struggle more than the so-called primitive one, id reasonably and logically choose to stay in a place where my rewards come from plain sweat rather than cunning.

true, good talents should never be wasted. no doubt, i possess the kind of mind, almost criminal if i was untethered, that could squeeze profit out of other minds just like a sucessful capitalist would. but today i am more and more disillusioned with the nectar of wealth and its corrupting properties and i see it happening daily to my city which prioriti$e$ talent over humanity under the euphemistic term meritocracy. everyone is nice only to the point where money is concerned--suddenly its sorry, but i have to or it is a tough time, it must be done. the only way to survive in the zoo is to become an animal.

sorry, id rather be a farmer in his field than a manager in his office.

voting for tolerance

many worry for the fate of humanity, especially the religious bunch. any modern day christian will be quick to inform you that the end is near because of growing immorality, loosening values and wider thought. if a doomed world is one that grows to empower itself rather than rely on God, then they are right.

but if i say that a succeeding world is one that causes a massive reproduction of human life and sustenance of that population via advancements in technology, law and philosophy, then like all good debates, the opponents are merely arguing around and about different definitions of the problem.

since we started recording history we have abolished slavery, criminalized inhumanity, granted women equal rights, welcomed the lgbts and so on. we have embraced rationalism--gone are the days of learned men being persecuted for delivering science in a manner that made pious men appear less apt at explaining the world. knowing what we know today, which sane man would say, "let us go back into the days where the gods ruled"? these are the same days where capital crimes were punished by stoning, where women were the property of men, slaves were symbols of of wealth to those who owned them, and a homosexual did not exist because it was better not to. what world is the world of the old where men trounced upon men with no compassion? are not the most beautiful religions of the world about compassion?

i detest any religious man who places his religion above the rest--he who uses his position to sequester and dominate the heathen peoples around him. what kind of peace are we trying to achieve by waging war for the sake of it? is it right for one religion to infiltrate the government? the workplace? the marketplace? how about we try love, compassion and tolerance before we try to "conquer" this mortal plane for our respective Gods? does your God want our big cities, tall buildings and our land, which he could likely destroy and rebuild in a day, or does he really want our freely-given hearts which he cannot destroy and rebuild in a day?

every man with a moral conviction would understandably stand firm in his views. such a man would also do his best to teach the others around him of his ways which he knows from his heart is true. but to what end does such a man push until he knows to stop, step back, and let the other man pursue his own convictions? if one woman is against abortion, at what point does she stop herself from preventing another woman from terminating her pregnancy? should one man be able to vote against another? throughout history the power of voting has been used as a force of good to free the imprisoned, rest the burdened and deliver justice to the helpless. in some cases it has been misused as a tool for one section of society to impose its will on the other.

it pains me when i hear a Christian state who should and shouldnt be allowed to go to Church and when i see the number of people who agree with him. it pains me when a woman says she will vote against abortion to prevent another woman from doing what could possibly be the best for her and her unborn child. it pains me when a husband says he owns his wife and subjugates her to his hypocrisy. it pains me when people who know nothing about death tell me stoutly that the death penalty should stay. opinions are unavoidable, and in many cases it is a sign of intellect. but coupled with the power to translate those opinion to action, the biggest failure of modern humanity is the use of democracy to restrict the minority rather than to liberate them.

the biggest pain is that i will not and cannot stop them. but what burns like a fire in my heart is my duty to the weak minority.