Saw this and it got me thinking – Before the rescue, this cat was so miserable with a broken jaw, blindness, ants etc with persistent suffering, and yet it had no option but to continue surviving. Animals have no idea of suicide, and that is sad!
Isn’t this world cruel for incentivizing agents (animals) to live out their life doing things just to minimize negative rewards (pain & suffering)? Granted not every individual suffers persistently; but, when their life spirals down into a miserable one with no likelihood of improving, they cannot even discover the action to end it! Every natural attempt to end their life is met with a huge negative reward (pain), so these agents would likely never even discover the action of suicide!
Thinking in terms of evolution, let’s say an individual does discover the action to commit suicide when they are in a grave, perpetual suffering state. If they do commit suicide, that cuts off further inheritance of their qualities, lol.
But humans exist! It is interesting how we have thrived despite the knowledge of suicide, especially with the knowhow of less painful and quicker ways to kill oneself; although, the majority of people probably do *not* know of quick & painless ways to die (including me). If they did know of quick painless methods to exit the game, would a majority of them pull the trigger? If the majority would indeed pull the trigger if they had access to a quick & painless way, what does that say about the state of our society? In a free world, shouldn’t this choice be left to individuals rather than governments banning access to such knowledge & tools?
Okay well, we don’t know if the majority would pull the trigger. Whatever subset of the population would pull the trigger, would die off, and the ones remaining would be the thrivers. It would become a cultural difference and create a stigma by those who have it easy in life towards those who are miserable enough to be suicidal. Maybe it has already happened. Seems like the solution should involve more of leveling the field & improving the latter group’s lives than simply sigmatizing the topic entirely. Or, perhaps respecting that it can be an individual’s informed choice.
The topic of suicide should not be taboo. It should be discussable freely, just like depression, or abortion. Normalizing freer healthy discussions can help identify larger issues underlying society and life itself. Banning discussion on the other hand could become a tool for the powerful to keep the miserable people in control.
It’s easy to see that “powerful” above can refer to powerful people or the government; but it could very well refer to any more powerful entity – like the simulation that we possibly are in. Talking about it is necessary to potentially break the chains if at all that is possible.
A living cell is an organization of various organelles, DNA, chromosomes etc. An atom is an organization of sub-atomic particles. An organism is an organization of various organs. An organ is an organization of various tissues, cells etc. Similarly, a human being is an organization of various organs. The solar system is an organization of some planets, asteroids, sun, moons. The earth itself is an organization of various elements in it.
So, perhaps everything is an organization of many other things in it, in the mathematical model of the universe. These organizations coexist, and may affect others.
The human race is an organization which affects the earth. In this organization, political leaders serve the role of defining how to organize the humans thus making the organization more efficient.
With all the knowledge and videos I take in, I feel like I am getting a better and better understanding of how the world works. I now have a different understanding of religion and the origin of the concept of God than I did a few years ago, and I think this new understanding makes more sense. My currently trending word is “civilized”
We are animals by nature. We would be nihilists by nature if we grew up isolated from humans, in the jungle. Since nature has made us that way, I would think “what is wrong with being a nihilist?”. Joker was a nihilist in the dark knight movie. He wasn’t a planner, he just did things on a whim, did whatever came to his mind naturally. What is wrong in following our natural instincts? If naturally, a man want fell in love with another woman while being married, if he has an affair with that woman, he is just following his natural instincts – the way nature made him.
The answer is – Because we as mankind (humankind), in contrast to apes, have so much higher in intellect that we can choose to ignore the natural instinct and do something else!
The early man (from the time of the origin of Homo Sapiens, about a 250k years ago), probably realized that upon ignoring the natural instinct, there can be something else to do that could be favorable to him in the long run. This “something other than the natural instinct” can be favorable to your group in which you hunt and live. Then came the discovery of agriculture about 11k years ago due to which people could focus on other things than collecting food everyday and could settle in one place. Eventually we began doing more and more things that an animal wouldn’t do. Doing these things progress mankind as a whole and also gives benefits to individuals, such as not having to focus on food hunting everyday for yourself. Eventually, people developed a set of guidelines to follow that would help in advancing their settlement as a whole even though some guidelines may restrict an individual’s freedom to follow some of his natural instincts. These “guidelines”, obviously were based on their then current “way of life”.
At the same time, to explain un-understood phenomena like lightning, rain, birth etc etc, people came up with the idea that higher beings must be controlling those phenomena. Now, someone probably wanted to advertise these guidelines with the intention of doing good for the society. His own settlement would be following these guidelines, but how can he spread it to others? How could he convince other settlements to follow it? Some would get convinced but the majority of the world does not see the big picture and so does not understand the long term advantage. btw, this “someone” is a placeholder for either one person or a group. So this someone could have used the concept of God to sell his ideas. If he himself made 50% sense, the other 50% could be covered up under the name of God. These guidelines are nothing but religion. Over the years, such guidelines passed down for years with modifications and new clever people preaching their modified versions, thus forming new religions and prophets. Also over the years, guidelines should ideally change with changing technology and progress. Perhaps newer religions incorporated some of such changes.
Bottom line: Following these guidelines that help in the overall progress of society is the definition of being civilized.
To answer the initial question – what’s wrong with having an affair outside marriage since you are only following your natural instincts – if you are a nihilist, then there’s nothing wrong. But you can only either be a nihilist or civilized, not both because they are opposite ways of living life. Nihilism and being civilized are two nodes on the same level.
If you have grown in a country among the human society, then you have grown up enjoying the advantages of civilization and have also been taught to be civilized. So having an affair outside marriage is wrong w.r.t the idea of society in which one lives in. You have to use your human intellect to curb your natural instinct I.e. be civilized, in order to be consisted with the society which is for the purpose of advancement of humankind.
I feel great to have realized the significance of “being civilized” and be able to contrast it with nihilism. What I explained above is consistent with this video from PragerU –
All this new understanding makes me revise my position on religion. Religion could be separated into two things – Way of life, and God. I subscribe to the way of life*, but not to the idea of God. Moreover, as a civilized human being who understands the merits of being civilized, I don’t need to believe in a God to follow the guidelines as his commandments. eg. I understand the advantage of not murdering someone, so I don’t need a God to tell me not to do so.
*Regarding following the “way of life” aspect of religion, some guidelines would be outdated. They could either be not necessary or could have better, updated alternatives to follow. So, I wouldn’t follow any one religion’s ALL of the guidelines entirely. I would try to understand the original purpose of that guideline and check if there’s a better way to do it or check if it is even necessary for the progress of the current society. I wish someone or some institution had done this task of scrutinizing all religious guidelines, understanding their original purpose, updated or discarded them to create a new set of guidelines for our current world. It’s the 21st century! I’m surprised that this does not exist yet! We need to teach the people that the civilized guidelines (way of life) should be followed because of the merits of being civilized and not because of an outdated concept of god commanding people to follow them.
Corollaries and tangential topics to research
There are many tangential topics that could emerge from this article.
1) If being civilized is to curb your natural instincts for the betterment of society (which in turn benefits individuals), then should a civilized suppress his/her slightly homosexual tendencies?
2) Since humans have the option of being healthy by eating only vegetarian food and because humans feel sympathetic towards animals, should a civilized person avoid eating meat?
3) Why do people get married? The article explains that the institution of marriage exists because it is beneficial for the society. But why and how exactly is it beneficial to society? Is a monogamous marriage more beneficial or a polygamous marriage more beneficial to society? These questions are tough to answer. But perhaps, the best answer automatically evolves over time. This is an assumption. Under this assumption, I would say that “monogamous marriages”, as a way of life, evolved to be the most beneficial way of life for society. Could research more on this assumption and other possibilities.
Religion was useful for progress in the old days when people lived horribly. Now, however, I think religion has outlived its usefulness. It also depends on how you define religion. If you define religion as a system of beliefs pertaining to God and worship, then it has outlived its usefulness. If you define religion as just a way of life i.e. a collection of principles and following them for civilized progressive life, then it is still useful. But notice that this does not require the concept of God. The concept of God probably came about to attribute mystical phenomenons to in the ancient days. Now, we have better explanations to these phenomenons by science. Science is slowly but surely progressing towards answering more and more unexplained phenomenons. The “ways of life” derived from science are now more accurate than the ancient “ways of life” based on “Gods”. The basic idea behind both is the same i.e. ways of life help us being more civilized & progressive.
Whenever you learn something, you must apply it to assimilate that knowledge perfectly and to retain it. “Applying it” can include practising it, preaching it, even simply writing an article about it which will give deeper clarity to inculcate it in you.
For example, writing down this LOL. Another example, after studying mechanical engineering or while studying it, putting that knowledge into practice via internships or projects.
#LOL
How phrases are losing their meaning irreplaceably
On my whatsapp group, we are planning a trip for the long weekend one month ahead. We need to decide and finalize who’s in asap. 3/5 people confirm. 2 have yet to reply. In a personal IM to one of those 2, I want to ask him if he can confirm today. So I should be asking –
“Hey, can you confirm by today?”
The problem here is that “Can you confirm by today” is considered as a request nowadays rather than its literal meaning of whether or not he can confirm by today. My intention is not to pressurize him into taking the decision today itself but just to literally gauge if he can confirm today.
Why has the meaning of this statement changed?
One reason may be because, the word “can” has come to be used to make requests even more politely than they already when using the word “please”.
eg: Please confirm by today. (1) – this is a request which is already polite due to the presence of “please”.
To make it more polite, people phrase (1) as:
Can you please confirm by today? (2)
In the current times, (2) is regarded as the most polite version of (1) portraying soft skills. Perhaps a few decades ago, (1) could have been regarded as the most polite version. Then as its popularity grew and it became street-common, it started losing its politeness. Hence there arose a need for a different phrasing to restore the same level of politeness leading to the use of phrase (2) now.
In this process, however, the original meaning of (2) (i.e. the words “Can you”) has been lost irreplacably because there is no other phrase / word to convey the literal meaning alone. Ofcourse, you could use extra sentences to clarify what you mean exactly but is that really a good solution?
An uneducated person to whom suddenly new doors of information are opened, such as by learning to read and speak English, is so fascinated by the newly available information! He finds it so interesting to take in all the new information from newspapers, TV, books, from other people and indulges in becoming a great, knowledgeable person.
We highly educated people, on the other hand, have SO many doors of information open to us since long that, we are initially overwhelmed and then soon, bored. It becomes a buyers market for our brain and we go along the path of least resistance. Academic study, stock market research, learning about whats going on in the island of Tonga, exploring public information from NASA, learning counting of cards for blackjack, reading novels, getting to know your colleagues better, helping in social service, reading novels, taking a free online course, learning bowling techniques – these are among the countless number of things we can do. But we choose the simplest (laziest) of them. The laziest of us just watch movies and TV series and gain some information. The less lazy ones read novels or actively search for new information and read it. Its human tendency to follow that path which requires least effort and yet gives satisfactory gains. So whats wrong in watching movies back to back all day? Its that, we are short-sighted in evaluating the gain/effort when deciding what to do.
There are some characters in movies with whom you can identify with if you think like them.
I have been thinking about nihilism so much in the past few days having nothing better to do sitting at home, that there was complete chaos in my mind yesterday. So I decided to watch Dark Knight again today becoz I had read somewhere on the net that Joker could be called a nihilist.
And I could fking relate with the Joker!! I understood why he was laughing when batman was beating the crap outta him in jail. I understood him when he gave a gun to Harvey in the hospital and took a chance. I could identify with him when he was utterly shocked at why the people in the boats didn’t blow off each other. I also could identify with him when he hysterically jumped on his own clown fallen on the ground after being electrocuted while removing batman’s mask.
Being able to identify with the Joker may be a terrible thing! But, I also understood why the people on the boats didn’t blow each other even though according to Game Theory, they should have. More importantly I understood why Batman anticipated before time that they would not blow each other off. That speaks of the inherent “good” within people or conscience.
Being able to understand both, the unstoppable force and the immovable object, the two extremities, is, I feel, an achievement! But the greatest achievement is by the one who not just understood them, but created them… Christopher Nolan!
– Can you identify with the Joker?
“Does God Exist?” conversation between Professor & Student is FALLACIOUS!
A conversation between an atheist Professor and a Student tries to prove that the professor’s ideas are wrong and support the ideas of God, Religion and Faith. There are possibly multiple versions of this conversation floating around the internet; I have come across two. One of them is a video which claims the student to be Albert Einstein.
The very fact that the student is claimed to be a different person (scientist) in different versions and yet the story is claimed to be true shows a pathetic attempt of a (theist) person to sell-off their ideas under the name of established scientists just because people tending towards atheism would be more likely to agree with a scientist. Shame on you believer!
I don’t know about Dr. Abdul Kalam, but I seriously doubt Einstein had that conversation ever. As far as I remember, according to a lesson in my school, Albert Einstein was kinda a slow learner and reticent in his childhood, thus making it unlikely that he would answer back the teacher with such articulation. Whats more, Einstein went to a catholic school. Do you honestly believe, a teacher in a catholic school would try to preach atheism in the first place?
The argument of the student is not at all convincing if you reflect on it but even then this conversation keeps enduring. So here’s my critique on the conversation given in the article (the video leaves out some parts from the article).
I’d like to start with criticizing the most obvious flaws first:
1) When the student mocks the syllogism of the professor to question the existence of the professor’s brain, the professor could have easily refuted the student’s point. Questioning the existence of human brain in this way is not similar to questioning the existence of god. The professor could have easily said, “It has been established with practical evidence that the brain does exist within the skull. People have seen it, felt it, smelt it. This is NOT the case with god. Hence the two cases are not analogous. If you are still reluctant to believe that I have a brain, I can bet you that I have a brain… kill me and have a look; the bet being, after you kill me, you should deposit 1 billion dollars in my wife’s account and then kill yourself since it is due to your puerile insistence that i would have to die.”
2) Regarding the evolutionary theory, yes it is a “theory”, which means it is not a proven fact, but a very probable one. That is why it is taught in schools. On the other hand, the idea that an omnipotent, omniscient god exists who urges people to follow some set of rules (religion) is a theory with an infinitesimal probability. Moreover, it does not explain most of the observations that we encounter in life. Then why teach it? Hence it is called preaching. This absurd idea is like saying “There is one powerful raven who is white in color. We know all the ravens we see around us are black, but have faith, there does exist the white raven. And we must worship him (his deity).” And this ridiculous idea cannot be disproved without examining each and every raven all over the world. But common sense dictates that this idea is highly improbable which is why we call it ridiculous.
Its also noteworthy that the evolutionary theory is considered heretic mostly in the West. Now, I don’t have much knowledge about the Abrahamic religions (or any religion for that matter), but I reckon this may be because it conflicts with the Christian teachings that God created Adam and Eve and that is how humans came into being. Eastern religions do not have a grudge on the evolutionary theory. So the point is, the conflict is between a particular religion and science, not between the idea of god’s existence and science. Hence, since all the religions don’t have a consistent view, we can discard the aversion towards Evolutionary Theory.
3) The argument about how cold is just the absence of heat and likewise evil is just the absence of good, is cogent and I might agree to it. Absence of heat is cold implies that the coldest something can get is fixed i.e. -273C or 0 Kelvin – there is a fixed absolute zero point. The temperature cannot go below this value coz this is where it starts. Similarly absence of light is darkness implies there is a fixed absolute zero point for the magnitude of light whence darkness is said to be maximum. However, can you think of a fixed deed which is the most evil i.e. a deed in which there is complete absence of good? There is no such absolute zero point. You can have neutral attitude toward something, you can have a positive attitude towards it or you can have a negative attitude towards something. The “Goodness” extends infinitely towards the positive axis. And, similarly, you can go in the negative axis also, infinetly! The more you go in the negative direction, the lesser the Goodness and more the evilness. The point whence good becomes evil (neutral point) is a matter of personal, social and cultural view. Its different for everyone. You can think of the scale like a Rainbow – there is no fixed neutral point. For some yellow maybe neutral attitude, for some green maybe neutral.
In essence, Yes, absence of good is evil but the scales of Light and Good are different. Light has a fixed minimum value below which it cannot go while the value of goodness can go below any point and extend infinitely in both directions. The idea that evilness can extend infinitely practically means you can come up with more and more evil intentions. There is no single most evil deed. Similarly for goodness.
Lastly, immaterial of the validity of the arguments presented by the student, the final claim that “The link between man & god is FAITH” rests flimsily on the concession of the Professor “I guess you’ll have to take them on faith, son.” First of all, what kinda Professor resigns so easily from his principles giving in to a simplistic, fallacious argument made by a kid? Clearly the conversation is forged to favor the theistic opinion. If the Professor had continued his case like I mentioned in my 1st point, the student could never have made his conclusion about Faith.
Therefore, Checkmate you piece of bogus conversation!
—
Finally, my view on faith, god and religion:
Imagine the prehistoric time when the concepts of religion, god, etc are yet to be thought of. People wonder why they exist. They keep thinking about existence, purpose of life, what everything around them means. They keep enduring pain at the hands of natural calamities and predators. More importantly, they have to feed themselves regularly else their body gives them pain. Life seems meaningless just like the life of a mosquito seems meaningless to us presently. They get frustrated, confused, chaotic because they cannot come up with an answer. To appease the frustration, some clever guy comes up with an explanation which is undeniable although without proof. The explanation is – “A supreme power called God created this world. Since he is the Creator, he controls everything in this world. Since he created us, we must thank him and worship him. Since he is the Creator, we must always trust him. Have Faith in him. He will always do good. God has given us life, so he wants us to live it. Have Faith in him.” This gave the people a purpose to live, which, although fake, was undeniable (see eg. of white raven above). As years and centuries went by, the story could have branched out into various versions. Moreover, artful people could have added their own ideas to it which would benefit them. Hence the rise of religions.
This is what I think could have happened. Instead of giving in to this fallacy, I prefer to accept the reality that life is but with an unknown purpose or even meaningless. I prefer to think of our purpose of existence every moment and come up with plausible Purposes. And if ever I’ll be tired and frustrated, I would resort to accepting the least objectionable Purpose from the pool of purposes I would have thought of till then. As of now, my least objectionable purpose is:
“Our purpose of existence is, since we don’t know what it is, to find out what it is.”
This purpose is definitely not attainable overnight, not even in a few more millennia maybe, but by living our regular life and by engendering a smarter generation every time (owing to genetics) we can and would definitely contribute toward this ultimate purpose. Hence we must live on.
Its also important to remember that, a single definition of God is not accepted universally. Some consider God as preached by their religions, to be a single entity like Jesus; some consider God to be just a mysterious force; some consider Gods to be the manipulators of natural forces like in Norse, Greek mythology, while some consider God to be the answer to everything.
A quote by someone (I don’t remember who) is a nice aphorism – “For Religion, God is in the beginning. For Science, God is in the end”.
