I'm one of those people who, when looking at some piece of modern art, do seriously wonder what people see in them. Mind you, some pieces are seriously good, but some actually look like someone's baby puked on them. I once took a philosophy course in college, called art and technology (though I never quite saw the tech part :D ). It was interesting, to say the least. Though my limited philosophical skills saw me scrape throught the course, I did pick up some interesting insights into what is art, and how do people perceive it.
As part of my class presentation, I picked up music as the art subject of interest, and tried to go about thinking, how and why do we actually like music?? or even hate it, or worst of all, go from hating to liking it!. Trust me, songs do have this way of growing on you. And I saw these 2 concepts, "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", and the obvious one, that beautiful things, are beautiful cause they have something in them. Which actually contradict each other, so u can't pick both.
You know, there was something taught in school which I never quite figured out a purpose for, resonance. It's quite wonderful in essence, and it says that everything, i mean everything has a certain resonant frequency. Which means that if u send waves of a certain frequency into the object, it'll vibrate like hell, much more than any other frequency. Still don't get it? remember that cool gadget Bond used to shatter glass? that's it. In school we actually had this experiment to determine the resonant frequency of something, don't remember what. In fact, there's this story that while walking on bridges, armies march out of step so as not to accidently make the bridge collapse, cause supposedly it's happened.
So you may ask why does resonance come into the picture?? well the answer's half already there. Forget the physics of it, and just focus on the concept, everything responds more to a certain input than any other. For more clarity, try and remember any memory in your head, and apart from that vivid image in your head, notice that you'll remember how you felt then. Sometimes those emotions might not even make sense to you, most people just ignore them. But the fact that your brain records them in the same detail as any sensory input gives an important clue to the importance your brain gives to emotions. Before I finally state my claim, consider this fact, you'll always like certain songs when you're in certain moods. It may differ for different people, but there are certain clear trends, like mopey songs when you're sad etc. etc. Well, that's it, isn't it, resonance. Your brain responds to certain types of songs when facing certain emotions. It's like your radio receives signals (resonance again :P) you tune it to a particular frequency, and voila music. Similarly, I believe, emotions tune your brain to accept certain input better, or look at things in a different way.
Still don't believe me? try playing different songs when in different moods, they'll seem seriously different. For me, when I'm pensive, like when writing this blog, I like songs more like Friday, by Goldspot, when i'm depressed or trying to drive myself to work, Linkin Park or other heavy metal style music is more like it. Forgive me, if my music classification is off, never got around to figuring it out. I especially give an example of music, because more people experience this form of art than any other.
With this done, you should be wondering, why does this resonance happen? well your brain gives you clues. It'll faintly reminisce about the past. I believe your brain keeps recalling memories, it's its way of understanding stuff, fitting current experiences to past ones. Which is why, if the song brings back memories whose dominant emotion matches your current state, you'll like it. But you'll still have stronger reactions to sad emotions, that's something I never quite understand. Which brings me to art in general, its appreciation requires that you have experiences some of those emotions expressed by its creation. And creation of art is even more problematic.
Most of you would have noticed, how many artists die of depression related stuff like suicides, drug overdoses etc. And as I said, people have stronger recalls of adverse emotions. Even more personal experiences, I feel that creating art requires a certain amount of depression, sadness. When seems plausible, when you're happy, why would you go through the whole process? why wouldn't you rather enjoy. This probably requires more thought, and so I'd rather leave it for another post considering how long this one has become.
My last topic for this post, nervous exam takers :D, well I'm one too. This too does have some relation to all of this, cause, as I said recall brings back emotions as well. So if u were not too confident while studying, in addition to having low confidence, you run the risk of having those emotions come back during your exam. Try thinking about it sometime.
Well, that about does it, that should clarify some things about art, but u're always welcome to use my opinions about some work of art when I don't like it, a baby could've done it!
Monday, May 5, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Moments...
Have you ever felt, for a moment, that time would stop, and this moment would stop forever? Know it sounds awefully cliched, almost movie worthy cliched, but it's interesting. Better minds than me, have said “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” So it might be worth paying moments more than a cursory glance. I truly do believe in the statement, so if have never have had any such moment, look for one, mebbe you had one but never noticed.
In your free time, try reminiscing for once. What you'll notice, that with each memory, you also tend to recall some bit of the emotions that you felt at the time. In fact, the moments clearest in our minds tend to coincide with our emotional moments (ya that includes being angry as well). Depending on the kind of person you are, you'll probably pay more attention to certain emotions than others. If you think I'm picking up from some theory, nope, in fact I'll be highly surprised if there's a theory that says so.
Why is it important? if what I'm saying is right, then maybe at the fag end of your life, with nothing much to do, you will reminesce. And it's these moments that'll come up in your mind, so it pays to pay some attention, as you might just have some choice in what your life's movie reel look's like. This is mirrored in a lot of literature you'll find, and I'll mention one line from one very nice poem I read once, "Don't dance so fast, time is short, the music won't last"
So try and live life in the moment, mebbe you'll pick a memory that you'll cherish for all life. But don't live in that memory, it's a memory, and is best left in the mind, not to be wondered about. It can never come back, never be changed, only remembered.
In your free time, try reminiscing for once. What you'll notice, that with each memory, you also tend to recall some bit of the emotions that you felt at the time. In fact, the moments clearest in our minds tend to coincide with our emotional moments (ya that includes being angry as well). Depending on the kind of person you are, you'll probably pay more attention to certain emotions than others. If you think I'm picking up from some theory, nope, in fact I'll be highly surprised if there's a theory that says so.
Why is it important? if what I'm saying is right, then maybe at the fag end of your life, with nothing much to do, you will reminesce. And it's these moments that'll come up in your mind, so it pays to pay some attention, as you might just have some choice in what your life's movie reel look's like. This is mirrored in a lot of literature you'll find, and I'll mention one line from one very nice poem I read once, "Don't dance so fast, time is short, the music won't last"
So try and live life in the moment, mebbe you'll pick a memory that you'll cherish for all life. But don't live in that memory, it's a memory, and is best left in the mind, not to be wondered about. It can never come back, never be changed, only remembered.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Exhausting efforts of optimization!
Warning: Any non-geeks, avoid this article, u're unlikely to appreciate, let alone understand the article(no offense, but it is the case here).
I write this post after having spent the past 8 hours on trying to optimize my program. My code was originally written in Visual C++ (i.e. Windows) and on finding no tools to let me profile my code, i shifted to gcc (i.e. linux). Why a commercial programming suite lacks a profiling tool is baffling. It would only let me do a profile guided optimization. In my experience, a good programmer with a profiler can do a hell lot better job at optimization than any compiler. In fact, after my efforts, adding any other optimization flag other than the obv -O3 actually slowed down the code!. That is one big reason i like linux and gcc. It's a developer's os, meant expressly for development, which is why its adoption by other people baffles me a bit, they're not using the most powerful features of the os, and giving up quite a bit of user friendliness in the process.
One of my professors once said, that some code written by a novice programmer can be speeded up about 10-20 times by an highly experienced programmer who knows his hardware, even without knowing what the program does. Though this might be a bit of an insult to some, it's true to an extent. I've actually hit the 10 times mark on some of my own code :D , and the code wasn't badly written to begin with. But, something the confuses me is that there is no comprehensive guide to writing fast code. There are some basic tenets which if followed, can give very good performance on any machine. In my opinion, hardware specific optimizations are best left to compilers, unless u're really gud at it. you'll always find the basic stuff like locality of reference, pass by reference etc. Yet no one usually talks about the stuff you can do if you spend some time with the program. Statistical analysis is an amazing tool. The biggest thing that tend to slow down code is branching. Only very experienced people can truly minimize the branch penalty. But you can do some things on your own. See which options are more likely to occur, and try to keep these options higher up in the 'if' condition checks. Simple as this may sound, it's often ignored. Plus, removing unnecessary conditional checks. See if some condition checks can be reduced, e.g. if u're using nested if's see if conditions on the outer loop variable can be confined to the outer loop, it can speed things up by quite a bit.
Adding threads is also a good idea, especially for scientific codes. OpenMP is an amazing tool that you can use if you don't want to get your hands dirty with thread management. Most modern compilers support it, and using it, you can usually speed up your code by about twice (in most cases which can be parallelized) with about 5 minutes of effort. But not always, it actually slowed down my code by twice, even though it's eminently parallelizable. The fact that it was GCC may have something to do with it, their OpenMP implementation is still new. Open source guys, don't scream that i don't know what i'm doing, that's the reason and it's not gcc's fault, I'm decently experienced at code optimization, and i quite put the blame squarely on gcc, cause the same code was speeded up by vc++ when openmp was switched on.
You'll be amazed how some basic thinking can help you write code that can make those crappy looking algos run better than more sophisticated ones. To those who only believe in big-Oh's , try meeting a systems guy with programming experience, you'll be amazed at how O(n2) may be less than O(nlogn) :D
I write this post after having spent the past 8 hours on trying to optimize my program. My code was originally written in Visual C++ (i.e. Windows) and on finding no tools to let me profile my code, i shifted to gcc (i.e. linux). Why a commercial programming suite lacks a profiling tool is baffling. It would only let me do a profile guided optimization. In my experience, a good programmer with a profiler can do a hell lot better job at optimization than any compiler. In fact, after my efforts, adding any other optimization flag other than the obv -O3 actually slowed down the code!. That is one big reason i like linux and gcc. It's a developer's os, meant expressly for development, which is why its adoption by other people baffles me a bit, they're not using the most powerful features of the os, and giving up quite a bit of user friendliness in the process.
One of my professors once said, that some code written by a novice programmer can be speeded up about 10-20 times by an highly experienced programmer who knows his hardware, even without knowing what the program does. Though this might be a bit of an insult to some, it's true to an extent. I've actually hit the 10 times mark on some of my own code :D , and the code wasn't badly written to begin with. But, something the confuses me is that there is no comprehensive guide to writing fast code. There are some basic tenets which if followed, can give very good performance on any machine. In my opinion, hardware specific optimizations are best left to compilers, unless u're really gud at it. you'll always find the basic stuff like locality of reference, pass by reference etc. Yet no one usually talks about the stuff you can do if you spend some time with the program. Statistical analysis is an amazing tool. The biggest thing that tend to slow down code is branching. Only very experienced people can truly minimize the branch penalty. But you can do some things on your own. See which options are more likely to occur, and try to keep these options higher up in the 'if' condition checks. Simple as this may sound, it's often ignored. Plus, removing unnecessary conditional checks. See if some condition checks can be reduced, e.g. if u're using nested if's see if conditions on the outer loop variable can be confined to the outer loop, it can speed things up by quite a bit.
Adding threads is also a good idea, especially for scientific codes. OpenMP is an amazing tool that you can use if you don't want to get your hands dirty with thread management. Most modern compilers support it, and using it, you can usually speed up your code by about twice (in most cases which can be parallelized) with about 5 minutes of effort. But not always, it actually slowed down my code by twice, even though it's eminently parallelizable. The fact that it was GCC may have something to do with it, their OpenMP implementation is still new. Open source guys, don't scream that i don't know what i'm doing, that's the reason and it's not gcc's fault, I'm decently experienced at code optimization, and i quite put the blame squarely on gcc, cause the same code was speeded up by vc++ when openmp was switched on.
You'll be amazed how some basic thinking can help you write code that can make those crappy looking algos run better than more sophisticated ones. To those who only believe in big-Oh's , try meeting a systems guy with programming experience, you'll be amazed at how O(n2) may be less than O(nlogn) :D
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Wonderful childhood
As kids, we're always in a hurry to grow up. We want to outgrow the dictatorial regime that is our parents and get the freedom to do whatever we want, do whatever we want (and probably eat whatever we want :D). We're carefree, have nothing to think about, and tend to generally have fun. Ok, this is getting a little movie-like perfect, but that's an opinion of a grown up. One of the most, if not the most wonderful parts of childhood, in hindsight, is the freedom from making decisions. Everything is decided for us, be it which school, what to wear (to a certain extent) etc. etc. At that time, we little realise what a perk this is. Resolving a quarrel is so easy! a parent just has to intervene, and we're done, their word is the law.
These last 2 lines are probably the most important. As you come to the nervous teens and adolescence, you realise how much decisions can hurt, and haunt. Your decisions can be small and insignificant, or ones that shape your life. Don't know about you, but I'm cursed to wonder about what ifs, about each an every decision I make. I'm probably built that way, and my upbringing and having to sit cooped up indoors for long times (I was sick a lot as a kid, asthma), makes me wonder about each and every decision I make, and how that affects me, and more so, others. I always remember my carefree childhood, when the most difficult decision to make was probably which ice-cream flavour to take. Talking about the best time, the worst time is probably adolescence. I have had the opportunity of going to one of the best universities in India, but as I near the end of the degree, I still wonder whether how I spent my 5 years here was right. Whether doing something differently would have made things different, whether the path I've picked is the right one. I believe, decisions taken during this period will stay with one for all life, be it as cherished memories, or nightmares that haunt. This is what makes one realise the true value of the innocence and carefree times that were our childhood. Which is why I hate reports of child prodigies, a child should live their childhood with as little burden as possible. Let them go outside and experience the world, don't push them to work 3 hours a day to master some instrument or chess. What you do as a child makes or breaks you as a person. Most of us focus on working harder and harder, making our minds toil to the ends of their limits, trying to push a little further. Don't trust me? try asking some undergrad from a top institute to sit down and do nothing, just relax and take in the atmosphere, they won't be able to. Why? because your mind aggressively trims powers in the early years which it considers irrelevant, to make space for what, we and it, consider important. And running in the rat race makes you exactly that, a rat, running mindlessly in its wheel, unware that it can stop. Still wondering why many brilliant minds burn out? or sportstars retire in their prime because nothing drives them? See if Phelps or Hingis ring bells. When you work hard, so hard, something inside you dies, that child. That child inside you lets you laugh, to enjoy, to love, and look wonderously at every new day.
Remember my next point? that wonderous resolution of quarrels? well, as you grow up, you become more and more sure of yourself. Gaining knowledge breeds confidence, and whether we like it or not, confidence breeds arrogence. Just as courage is not lack of fear but the ability to overcome it, humility is not the lack of arrogance, but the ability to overcome it. As we become more and more sure of ourselves, we disregard authority, of everyone around us. As we become powerful, even more so. Why do you think that global problems are so hard to resolve? there no one to scold the 2 idiots and make them say sorry. Plus, the slight problem that things that people do as adults tend to become hard to tide over by a simple sorry. Maybe they are, but we attach more to them than as kids. Maybe resolving things this way would be easier, but we'll probably never find out.
So, the next time you try to look at that little kid and think you're better, think again. They have a lot more things you can never have, and can be someone you never will.
These last 2 lines are probably the most important. As you come to the nervous teens and adolescence, you realise how much decisions can hurt, and haunt. Your decisions can be small and insignificant, or ones that shape your life. Don't know about you, but I'm cursed to wonder about what ifs, about each an every decision I make. I'm probably built that way, and my upbringing and having to sit cooped up indoors for long times (I was sick a lot as a kid, asthma), makes me wonder about each and every decision I make, and how that affects me, and more so, others. I always remember my carefree childhood, when the most difficult decision to make was probably which ice-cream flavour to take. Talking about the best time, the worst time is probably adolescence. I have had the opportunity of going to one of the best universities in India, but as I near the end of the degree, I still wonder whether how I spent my 5 years here was right. Whether doing something differently would have made things different, whether the path I've picked is the right one. I believe, decisions taken during this period will stay with one for all life, be it as cherished memories, or nightmares that haunt. This is what makes one realise the true value of the innocence and carefree times that were our childhood. Which is why I hate reports of child prodigies, a child should live their childhood with as little burden as possible. Let them go outside and experience the world, don't push them to work 3 hours a day to master some instrument or chess. What you do as a child makes or breaks you as a person. Most of us focus on working harder and harder, making our minds toil to the ends of their limits, trying to push a little further. Don't trust me? try asking some undergrad from a top institute to sit down and do nothing, just relax and take in the atmosphere, they won't be able to. Why? because your mind aggressively trims powers in the early years which it considers irrelevant, to make space for what, we and it, consider important. And running in the rat race makes you exactly that, a rat, running mindlessly in its wheel, unware that it can stop. Still wondering why many brilliant minds burn out? or sportstars retire in their prime because nothing drives them? See if Phelps or Hingis ring bells. When you work hard, so hard, something inside you dies, that child. That child inside you lets you laugh, to enjoy, to love, and look wonderously at every new day.
Remember my next point? that wonderous resolution of quarrels? well, as you grow up, you become more and more sure of yourself. Gaining knowledge breeds confidence, and whether we like it or not, confidence breeds arrogence. Just as courage is not lack of fear but the ability to overcome it, humility is not the lack of arrogance, but the ability to overcome it. As we become more and more sure of ourselves, we disregard authority, of everyone around us. As we become powerful, even more so. Why do you think that global problems are so hard to resolve? there no one to scold the 2 idiots and make them say sorry. Plus, the slight problem that things that people do as adults tend to become hard to tide over by a simple sorry. Maybe they are, but we attach more to them than as kids. Maybe resolving things this way would be easier, but we'll probably never find out.
So, the next time you try to look at that little kid and think you're better, think again. They have a lot more things you can never have, and can be someone you never will.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Things getting hotter!
The topic of global warming is the hot topic these days (pun unintended :D). Especially singers the world over seem to be concerned more than everyone else about it. Why singers is something that escapes me, some other people, notably politicians are always averse to talking about it. In fact, the biggest user of fuels, the USA actually refuses to commit to any changes. The fact that emerging powerhouses, China and India, also do not wish to do anything, doesn't help anyone. They can probably hide behind the argument that their fragile developing economies cannot take the load. While the USA hides behing their fragile developed economy. Actually a lot of people also place doubts on the accuracy and truth behind claims that our actions are responsible for global warming. Some data has been thrown around that it's actually become cooler at some place, god knows where. My hometown has become progressively hotter in the summers and colder in the winters, rainy season is now dry (it rains more in the winters), and the list goes on.
The wonderful work of researchers is evident. Someone (Aaron Levenstein actually, who's he??) once said that, "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." . I'd like to add, like a bikini, what's revealed depends a lot on ur vantage point. You can make interesting conclusions from the same statistics, even completely contradicting stuff.
Still, no one can deny that the earth is definitely heating up. And sense dictates, that like any other natural calamity we try our best to avert it. But, most world leaders seem to be convinced that this is not the case. From what I know, this phase is usually a precursor to a coming ice age, meaning the ice caps at the poles will melt completely, flooding the planet, and eventually freezing to ice. Kinda like Day After tomorrow showed, but a little less dramatic. Well, maybe we'll be around to see whether things actually happen the way it's claimed. Maybe it will, the earth hasn't lost its supremacy to any puny creature as yet, it has ways to show who's boss.
The wonderful work of researchers is evident. Someone (Aaron Levenstein actually, who's he??) once said that, "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." . I'd like to add, like a bikini, what's revealed depends a lot on ur vantage point. You can make interesting conclusions from the same statistics, even completely contradicting stuff.
Still, no one can deny that the earth is definitely heating up. And sense dictates, that like any other natural calamity we try our best to avert it. But, most world leaders seem to be convinced that this is not the case. From what I know, this phase is usually a precursor to a coming ice age, meaning the ice caps at the poles will melt completely, flooding the planet, and eventually freezing to ice. Kinda like Day After tomorrow showed, but a little less dramatic. Well, maybe we'll be around to see whether things actually happen the way it's claimed. Maybe it will, the earth hasn't lost its supremacy to any puny creature as yet, it has ways to show who's boss.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The big fuss about religion
Whether you like it or not, religion remains one of the most powerful phenomenon in this world today, and, has occupied this position of power and prestige for most of known civilized human existence. The kind of blind belief that religion can attract is, in the least, quite amazing. Even though most people would like to believe that religion has been separated from state, it's not true (ya, even in the predominantly christian west). Need proof? for islamic nations, it's simple, but even in the USA, evidence is clear. According to current rules, the USA enforces a limitation on the AIDS funding it provides that one third of it must go to spreading awareness on abstinence. Though some would find this contentious, this is something that stems primarily from religion.
Even more interestingly, most interpreters of religion, i.e. the clergy, defend their right to interpret it the most. Clergy will never tell you to go read the religious texts, even if they do, they find it ok till your interpretation matches theirs. Anyone who has even a basic knowledge of any language, knows that language is inherently ambiguous. Even the same sentence can say a lot of different things depending on the context, and our frame of mind. But first, one must understand the need for religion. For this, I'll borrow from my previous post, the purpose of life. Simply put, it's a question that tends to haunt us throughout our lives. And interestingly, we always wait for that one enlightened one who we wish would come and tell us all the answers we need. And religion tends to pretend to be this one. Though it's irrelevant to this topic, I also feel that this urge is also our basis for our love for superheroes, even more so for ones who are commoners who rise to the challenge. Getting back to topic, this stems from our inability to decide. To quote "Taken", a choice is the death of all other possibilities. And we dread making a choice as it means losing out on the other 'goodies'. So, I actually dread having more options than not having sufficient ones. Having a lot of options usually tends to lead to a lot of heartburn later on whether your decision was correct. It's this insecurity, that religion, and for that matter, most of society exploit for their benefit. They tend to provide answers sanctioned by higher beings, or, just everyone else. Answers that will make you belong, to a group at least. Our herd mentality is legendary(refer to the Gaussian paradox, my post). We find security in the company of others.
I love history, and so know much more about it than most usual people. An interesting fact is, that Christianity itself was born a few centuries after the birth of christ. It was born at a council conducted at the time of Emperor Constantine. Now this emperor is one of the legendary rulers of history, he carved out his empire from the collapsing roman empire, and built the foundations for its successor, the Byzantines, and Constantinople, or modern day Instanbul in Turkey. It's famous walls were of such repute that very few ever dared to even challenge it, and while europe went through the Dark Ages, Byzantium was a haven for new thinkers. And while his empire was safe from outsiders, it was torn by some civil strife within. Romans took pleasure in rounding up christians (which at that time had multiple sects having vastly different beliefs) and putting them in the colloseums, and basically killing them gruesomely. This was the time, when romans were mostly jews. This had started to turn by Constantine's time, and christians were a large enough number that could not be ignored. Hence he organised the first Council of Nicaea(google it), where bishops argued, and decided that Jesus was divine, and not mortal, and basically most of what you see today, including his teachings etc.
So, interestingly, current versions of christianity are basically what a few people felt at some time in history, as the "correct" beliefs, a choice. What, Jesus actually wanted to tell people, we may never know, and whether he was a son of god, well, lets not even get to that, no one can answer that. The point i'm trying to make here, is that most, if not all, religions are attempts by some enlightened to answer the important questions of their time. And after that, these answers have been twisted and filtered by others to what they see fit. And over time, more people have tried to interpret and and fit the phrases to current problems. It's kind of like Microsoft Windows, it's changed so much over time, that little of what it originally was, remains. The same is true of religions. The original texts were translated into different languages, and again went through multiple sequences of interpretation. The Church, islamic leaders, and others, have changed their interpretation of the texts over the ages, sometimes under pressure from others. Otherwise, how come religion has changed its attitude towards women, no god came over later to tell people to change the texts. Religion is really a function of its texts and the needs and demands of society. To put it very crudely, it's like a very, I mean very long running play. Which is why, it is necessary to read and understand the religious texts on your own, if you wish to make them the basis of your decision making. And to be completely correct, you also must understand the historical background in which these were written, otherwise it's an incomplete picture, like trying to recognise someone from a picture of their butt. But it's necessary to do so, because most of what you hear is someone's interpretation, and that someone stands to lose his job if you bypass him. The clergy is like a fast food chain for religion, to serve the needs of people who have no time to pay attention. And don't get me wrong, it tends to get interpreted to suit the needs of people in power. As for considering the clergy holy, that's almost laughable. If you look at the number of cases against clergy of any religion or country, especially those of sexual exploitation, you'll find my statement correct.
The reason for my writing this is that religion has done more to split up this world than any other force. A large part of our problems are due to people sticking fast to their stands, and trading insults over whose religion is better. The problem is, innocent people are brainwashed into doing rash acts in the name of religion, which don't serve god, but only the selfish wishes of some. So next time, before trusting any holy man or clergy, remember what Sigmund Freud said, man first thinks about his primal needs - food, water, survival, and to the clergy, keeping you from the texts is most essential for fulfilling this need.
Even more interestingly, most interpreters of religion, i.e. the clergy, defend their right to interpret it the most. Clergy will never tell you to go read the religious texts, even if they do, they find it ok till your interpretation matches theirs. Anyone who has even a basic knowledge of any language, knows that language is inherently ambiguous. Even the same sentence can say a lot of different things depending on the context, and our frame of mind. But first, one must understand the need for religion. For this, I'll borrow from my previous post, the purpose of life. Simply put, it's a question that tends to haunt us throughout our lives. And interestingly, we always wait for that one enlightened one who we wish would come and tell us all the answers we need. And religion tends to pretend to be this one. Though it's irrelevant to this topic, I also feel that this urge is also our basis for our love for superheroes, even more so for ones who are commoners who rise to the challenge. Getting back to topic, this stems from our inability to decide. To quote "Taken", a choice is the death of all other possibilities. And we dread making a choice as it means losing out on the other 'goodies'. So, I actually dread having more options than not having sufficient ones. Having a lot of options usually tends to lead to a lot of heartburn later on whether your decision was correct. It's this insecurity, that religion, and for that matter, most of society exploit for their benefit. They tend to provide answers sanctioned by higher beings, or, just everyone else. Answers that will make you belong, to a group at least. Our herd mentality is legendary(refer to the Gaussian paradox, my post). We find security in the company of others.
I love history, and so know much more about it than most usual people. An interesting fact is, that Christianity itself was born a few centuries after the birth of christ. It was born at a council conducted at the time of Emperor Constantine. Now this emperor is one of the legendary rulers of history, he carved out his empire from the collapsing roman empire, and built the foundations for its successor, the Byzantines, and Constantinople, or modern day Instanbul in Turkey. It's famous walls were of such repute that very few ever dared to even challenge it, and while europe went through the Dark Ages, Byzantium was a haven for new thinkers. And while his empire was safe from outsiders, it was torn by some civil strife within. Romans took pleasure in rounding up christians (which at that time had multiple sects having vastly different beliefs) and putting them in the colloseums, and basically killing them gruesomely. This was the time, when romans were mostly jews. This had started to turn by Constantine's time, and christians were a large enough number that could not be ignored. Hence he organised the first Council of Nicaea(google it), where bishops argued, and decided that Jesus was divine, and not mortal, and basically most of what you see today, including his teachings etc.
So, interestingly, current versions of christianity are basically what a few people felt at some time in history, as the "correct" beliefs, a choice. What, Jesus actually wanted to tell people, we may never know, and whether he was a son of god, well, lets not even get to that, no one can answer that. The point i'm trying to make here, is that most, if not all, religions are attempts by some enlightened to answer the important questions of their time. And after that, these answers have been twisted and filtered by others to what they see fit. And over time, more people have tried to interpret and and fit the phrases to current problems. It's kind of like Microsoft Windows, it's changed so much over time, that little of what it originally was, remains. The same is true of religions. The original texts were translated into different languages, and again went through multiple sequences of interpretation. The Church, islamic leaders, and others, have changed their interpretation of the texts over the ages, sometimes under pressure from others. Otherwise, how come religion has changed its attitude towards women, no god came over later to tell people to change the texts. Religion is really a function of its texts and the needs and demands of society. To put it very crudely, it's like a very, I mean very long running play. Which is why, it is necessary to read and understand the religious texts on your own, if you wish to make them the basis of your decision making. And to be completely correct, you also must understand the historical background in which these were written, otherwise it's an incomplete picture, like trying to recognise someone from a picture of their butt. But it's necessary to do so, because most of what you hear is someone's interpretation, and that someone stands to lose his job if you bypass him. The clergy is like a fast food chain for religion, to serve the needs of people who have no time to pay attention. And don't get me wrong, it tends to get interpreted to suit the needs of people in power. As for considering the clergy holy, that's almost laughable. If you look at the number of cases against clergy of any religion or country, especially those of sexual exploitation, you'll find my statement correct.
The reason for my writing this is that religion has done more to split up this world than any other force. A large part of our problems are due to people sticking fast to their stands, and trading insults over whose religion is better. The problem is, innocent people are brainwashed into doing rash acts in the name of religion, which don't serve god, but only the selfish wishes of some. So next time, before trusting any holy man or clergy, remember what Sigmund Freud said, man first thinks about his primal needs - food, water, survival, and to the clergy, keeping you from the texts is most essential for fulfilling this need.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Quotes
Some of my, and others' quotes
"There's a big difference between tourism and immigration"
"There's a big difference between tourism and immigration"
(me :D)
"One ring to rule them all, One ring to find them,
One ring to bring them together, and in darkness, bind them"
(The one ring, LOTR)
"After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible! Yes. But great"
(Ollivander, Harry Potter)
"The beauty of war is that it simplies things, it simplifies them to a binary choice, life, or death"
(me again!)
Gaye Firdaus Barruye zameen ast,
Hameen asto, hameen asto, hameen ast
(If there is heaven on earth,
It is here, it is here, it is here)
(Humayun, Mughal emperor, on Kashmir)
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