SELENE’S BOW

My dear, perceptive reader, I come back to you today with an incident, an anecdote, if you will, which set off a rather…….shall we say, unusual chain of thought within me.

About half a week ago, I saw one of the most beautiful sights of my life, a lunar rainbow!! The light of the moon differentially refracted by the mass of the clouds framing her face, creating a ring of colours, like a halo around a saint, only this was no ordinary saint I saw that day, assuredly, it was a bearer of the passion.

But, unfortunately, I had on me at that time, no way to capture the moment. So, trudging back to my room, I put out my feelers by means of that most loyal of friends, Google!! On a whim, I searched for rainbow paintings, and found not a few, but absolutely NO paintings with a lunar rainbow as the artists muse. So I asked myself, as I ask you now, my dear reader, why the lopsidedness? Why are the bursts of vibrant colour considered the sole prerogative of Helios, who cries rivers of gold? Why is Selene (Luna of the Romans) relegated to a backseat, her display of colour considered merely an aberration, something adorable, no doubt, but yet not grand or worthy of immortalization through the hands of an artist? Why must this fairest of the gods; pale maiden with the very stars as her freckles on her fair visage, sister of the Sun, mistress of the silver chariot, dispeller of the dark, temperamental as a teenager and yet mature and consistent as a matriarch, why must she be marginalized thus? This favorite of many poets, especially love poets bathes the world with her silvery light, especially beautiful when it caresses the water of a brook, bringing the feeling of romance. It is said that Selene's moon rays fall upon sleeping mortals, as her kisses fell upon her love, Endymion.

Why do we express awe at the sun and its majesty and yet treat the moon as naught but a toddler, to be coddled but yet not taken seriously? All this does is expose a larger malaise in society, our inability to break free of the bias of the collective consciousness. We form our opinions based on the opinions of our fathers and are very reluctant to discard and/or change them.

To be very honest, I am afraid of the sun. The idea of so much power in the hands of something so temperamental, so unstable terrifies me. And yet, on the other hand, Selene like a mother comes out and coddles me each night. Even on the nights she is absent, I still feel her presence, and know she is watching over me and smiling. Her power is subtle, a far cry from the blazing infernos of her brother Helios, and yet it is no less strong. She is, after all, the mistress of the waters. From her immortal head a radiance is shown from heaven and embraces earth; and great is the beauty that arises from her shining light. But then one wonders, why is she not accorded the same status in the Pantheon as is her brother? Is it just a lack of fear, a narrowness of perspective? Why, my dear reader, does one not realize that the light of the moon, while just as useful as that of the sun, poses no threat at all to us. It is a benign light, a light born of the smile of a lovely lady, a fair goddess. And yet, she looks down upon us and weeps, but even in her weeping she gives to you, my dear perceptive reader, her “Rivers of Silver”.

BELLUM OMNIUM CONTRA OMNES

My dear, perceptive reader, one of the immortal classics of socio-political literature is Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, written in 1651. The purpose of this post is solely to discuss the aforementioned phrase, famous today perhaps in a context different from that which Hobbes originally intended. Literally translated, it means ‘The war of every man against every other’. Hobbes intended it to refer to the concept of civil war, and how a strong governmental figure was required to counter these particular urges of man. I shall add a twist to the interpretation, and use it to discuss the concepts of Darwinian evolution and the eternal battle of idealism vs. realism.

Most believe the concepts of Darwinian evolution to be the ultimate expression of anthropocentrism, and thus it is consciously rejected by many ecologists, deep or otherwise. On the other hand, phrases such as ‘for the greater good of the species’ give middle aged couch potatoes and emotionally repressed housewives a warm glow in the belly. It is a comfortable thought, is it not? Unfortunately, the reality is as far removed from this as the earth from the sun. To quote again from Hobbes, ‘The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. A human thinks first ONLY of himself, for himself. Here, we see a shift from anthropocentrism to egocentrism, in a manner of speaking (I know the parallel is not exact, but it is the best I could come up with). Even those few ‘enlightened’ souls (note the inverted commas) who claim to put society over their selves are only deluding themselves. No one, and I mean no one, is going to act for the greater good if it harms them. It’s just not done. Not only is it impossible, but quite frankly, it is inconceivable. This is the proverbial ‘Tragedy of the Commons’. Once more, I am certain I am in for a load full of protests from all quarters, but I believe I owe it to myself.

My dear reader, I’m fairly certain that by now, you have figured out how I plan to extrapolate the argument to the idealism vs. realism debate. Nevertheless, I shall take the liberty of boring you a little further, more for my own benefit than yours. Idealists seem to believe that life is a bed of roses, devoid of thorns, of course. They actually believe that faith can move mountains. However, using a truncated form of Hobbes again, ‘The life of man is solitary’. Each man follows his individual path in life, independent of any and all others. And, considering for instance, India herself, that’s more than a billion paths. Now, as any statistics student would easily tell you, the larger the cardinality of any sample space, the more consistent the statistical mean will be, more immune to the minor deviations introduced by the vagaries of individuals. My point is this; the mean path which, in turn, is the path of the entire country, is invariant, regardless of the actions of any person. This is what sociologists call ‘Social Inertia’, and in a society the size of our country, that inertia is immense!! While we have all the power to choose our own actions and influence our own fates, the same is not true for the whole. More on this, you my dear reader must have already seen here.

With this, my dear reader, I shall take your leave for now. I hope I have impressed upon you the wisdom of Thomas Hobbes and the seeming futility of idealism (note that I mentioned ‘seeming’, more on that later). As always, I look forward to your views on the matter. Farewell… until the next time we meet!!

A BREACH OF COURTESY? A PARADIGM SHIFT?

My dear, perceptive reader; I come back to you today with a short post about a little anecdote. Earlier today, as I was walking out of the classroom, I failed to notice a lady acquaintance of mine. Well, to cut a long story shot, she hailed me back and after a few polite exchanges, we said our goodbyes. No big deal, say you? Perhaps. But one point struck me. A few decades ago, in the Victorian Era, it would have been considered a heinous breach of courtesy to ignore a lady, no matter how concerned you may be with other, pressing matters. And yet, here, it was brushed aside as though it was nothing.

Perhaps my judgment is warped by the fact that I read too many novels by Victorian authors when I was younger, but those little niceties, quaint and outdated as they may be, have always appealed to me. As I cycled away from the aforesaid encounter, the delayed realization struck me!! Something had definitely changed. But what was it? Was it me? Or is it society has ‘evolved’ sufficiently to ignore such common courtesies? Is this the outcome of the ‘Neo-Hellenistic’ revolution?? Am I alone in having a problem with the turn of events?

With that thought, I leave you, my dear, perceptive reader. As always, I invite you to form your own opinions, and request you to share them with me.

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

My dear, perceptive reader, I come back to you today with more of my inchoate musings about the mundane. Perhaps in no other thing is displayed as clearly incontrovertible proof of the takeover of the technological age and its associated social implications as in the morning routine of a typical IITian. Consider, for instance, yours truly, I wake up in the morning, thanks largely to a voice alarm which, trust me, is as irritating as it is effective. My first action in the morn is to yawn and sleepily toggle the switch on my desk onto the ‘ON’ position, do the same to my UPS device and switch on my computer. (Note that I make no mention of performing my morning ablutions prior to this)

Thankfully, I have a fast, reliable for the most part, internet connection available in my room at all not-so-unearthly hours. I shudder to think of how my life would be without the internet. For those as intensely private as yours truly, it is a godsend, no less!! It allows me to maintain the essential interaction with other members of the human race, but yet it allows me to have it on my own terms.

Consider, for a moment, my dear reader, the vast myriad of social networking websites and instant messaging (IM) services. I myself use way too many of the afore-mentioned for my own good. Anyway, I am reasonably certain that the creators of this concept had in mind not its use by people like me, but rather by those extroverts who like nothing better in life than to make new friends. But, foreseen or otherwise, my kind owes an eternal debt to the creation and its creators.

But I digress. The reason for this post was another. I wished to highlight the point that say, GTalk, provides an interface for interaction which is intensely comfortable. I do not have to subject myself to the actual presence of the person with whom I wish to converse or vice versa. (No offense intended, of course) There is an indescribable romance, a mystery to IMing which for some reason, chooses not to reveal itself to me. Yet, I sense that it is there, teasingly, tantalizingly just outside my reach. Don’t you feel it too, my dear reader? Don’t you feel the charm of the chat window, the mystique of multiple interpretations to every line typed, the incredible convenience (to those insecure few) of being able to consider what you say before you actually say it!! Aren’t you, with such a interface, much less likely to put your overly large foot in your mouth??

A case in point for this argument is the use of the call function of GTalk. How many of us actually use it? And when we do use it, it is rare to do so for a full blown conversation rather than a few terse statements, very breve and business-like.

And yet, it is not without its drawbacks. Over such an interface, you see but a façade, only that part of the other the other wants you to see in the first place. You have to inkling of the true nature of the man behind the words. (Or woman, I shall not be accused of sexism) IM is, borrowing from an old fable, the golden fleece which can make the wolf seem a lamb.

One wonders about the cause of this unprecedented comfort level experienced over this interface. As always, I have my own opinions. (Yeah right, big surprise!!) I believe that no one ever truly opens up in a conversation, be t face to face or otherwise. A shield is always raised, invariably. It is just that in a face to face conversation, your counterpart has many more opportunities to sneak peeks of the real you. On the other hand, in an internet conversation, the benefits are dual; the shield can be raised with less effort and also the other cannot penetrate it without substantial effort.

Well, I’m afraid I shall have to truncate this discussion abruptly. I leave it to you, my dear perceptive reader, to form your own opinions and, as always, live on the hope that you shall share them with me.

WHO SPEAKS FOR EARTH?

We look back through countless millions of years and see the great will to live struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from power to power, crawling and then walking confidently upon the land, struggling generation after generation to master the air, creeping down into the darkness of the deep; we see it turn upon itself in rage and hunger and reshape itself anew, we watch it draw nearer and more akin to us, expanding, elaborating itself, pursuing its relentless inconceivable purpose, until at last it reaches us and its being beats through our brains and arteries … It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening … Out of our … lineage, minds will spring, that will reach back to us in our littleness to know us better than we know ourselves. A day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars.
-H.G.Wells, “The Discovery of the Future,”


It’s good to see you again, my dear perceptive reader. I hope you’ve been well, as have been I. For my humanities elective, I chose a course called ‘Literature and the Environment’. Great course, excellent teacher. But even though I really enjoy the classes, somehow I feel uncomfortable with the philosophy of the course.

Say, for instance, an extraterrestrial intelligence comes to earth and asks for one sentient life being to represent the planet. Surely you can imagine the strife among the factions of our society as to who represents us. But ponder this; do we ever consider that the planets representative be any other life form other than humans? What leads to this specio-centrism? Are we the dominant life-form on this planet? Surely not. We are nowhere close to, say, bacteria. It has always been the Age of Bacteria. There has never been a time in life’s history when they have not been the most abundant life form. What is it then? Yes, it is the fact that we are the most intelligent species on the planet.

Well then, who does the planet belong to? Most would give me one of two answers: either no one at all or all the beings that inhabit the planet. I, on the other hand, beg to differ. I believe the planet belongs to us, humans. By what virtue, by what right, ask you? Do we have a ‘divine’ birthright which gives us control? Certainly not. We have the right because we TAKE the right. I ask people, what is the reason people pursue environment conservation and all that? Again, two answers. One, because plants and animals, (I use the phrase generically, science students please don’t contradict me about the bacteria and the like.) are useful to us. I have no problems thus far. I more than agree, in fact. Later, people tend to get into the divine right of all life to live. This is where I must jump in. We are the most intelligent species on the planet. We are the ones who will eventually colonize the galaxy. I do not believe in the sacrament of life, but in that of intelligence.

We are the local embodiment of a cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of molecules raised to consciousness. Our loyalties lie towards our species, towards intelligence itself. We have an obligation to survive. WE speak for earth.