Thoughts about nothing

Thoughts about nothing
At times you have a lot to write and at times nothing. This passage is a product of an empty mind with lots of time
on hand. I think at times it is better to start with an empty mind and just write. The beginner's luck might produce
something classic.
Anyway, I never rated my writing skills highly. Lately I have been writing a bit more because of the ideas that seem
worth putting on paper. And that sums up my writing ability - full of ideas, lack of literary skill. As they say if
you are a good writer, you can get away with crappy ideas. Something like those prospective GRE applicants wrote in
college mags, where for every third word you had to use a dictionary. And they thought, it made their material worth
reading.
I think I could have had a couple of publications in the college mag, but what I lacked was confidence. Most
importantly I was confused. I didn't know back then that right and wrong are mere conventions. Cannibalism was
acceptable among Fijians while Jains didn't allow eating Ginger. The source of my confusion and often an inferiority
complex was that these people who so confidently flaunted their ideas on life, religion and anything and anyone,
knew something I didn't. When they flaunted their money, looks, health and anything that they thought they had more
than others, I felt lesser. I guess I am equally guilty for doing the same at times. It is just the inherent
competitiveness in humans. As they say, if there is a characteristic in a living being, it is because it helped it
survive/evolve at a certain stage. Competitiveness, must definitely have a use. It is often observed that there is
more competition between men in mixed gender groups as compared to 'only men' groups. The objective is quite
evident.
Look at all the possibilities of competition in our world. We compete in sports for medals, in school for grades, in
work for promotion, in war for national advantage, in art for fame, in business for money, and in politics for
power. For the winners of competitions there are fat wallets and big egos. What is there for the losers? What is the
ratio of winners to losers? Obviously there are many more losers than winners.
Hence the question to ask is 'Is competition good?'. I would like to take the example of communism, which stood for
collective good. Everybody is content with what they have and hence there is no competition. When there is no
competition, efforts are guided to something which is good for everyone. It seems like such an ideal scenario. I
mean with issues like climate change, poverty and overpopulation we should be directing efforts to eradicate them
rather than just try to beat each other.
Then why did it fail? Ofcourse, the US bled it to slow death. But wasn't it perfect? It did achieve amazing things.
USSR for example became the most powerful country and its people had all the necessities that they needed. They were
scientifically more advanced than any other country in the world. But I guess, it went against the very nature of
the human being. In killing competitiveness, it took away the only motivating factor, the winner takes it all.
Competitiveness has two sides like everything else. The carrot of a win (be it for material benefits or ego boosts)
motivates people to perform better. This is known as a 'healthy competition', where people compete to get better at
what they do, with the objective of the group getting better. Then there is the con side - 'unhealthy competition'
where all we do is to try to outdo each other.
Looking at a democratic setup where politicians do good work for the people so that people vote for them and they
win. I guess that is an ideal democratic scenario. But mostly what happens is politicians undermine each other. So rather than improve their credit they try to spoil the opponent's credit. With the only choice for voters left is 'Which is the better of the two evils?' democracy becomes a mockery.
This is where ethics becomes extremely important. Yes, the objective for a politician is to win elections. But what is the use of winning if the society on the whole is worse off. The politician might become richer and more powerful but he will rule over a low quality populace. So though his power will go up among the people he rules, because the power of the people he rules over goes down, his power goes down.
So now we are talking about ethics. But ethics are based on metaphysics. So we are back to square one. I started with my writing ability and reached metaphysics. It seems where ever I start with, it will take me all the way to
metaphysics. So until the metaphysics is sorted out, I can't define ethics. Until I deifne ethics, the question of
'Is competition good?' is meaningless. So is the democracy vs communism conflict. On it also depends my confidence
over my ideas. But to say the least, I have found out that all metaphysics starts with an assumption. So 'only one'
metaphysics is impossible to determine. Also, the correctness and quality of my writing is subjective and can not be
determined for certain. So any doubts about the correctness of my thoughts need not arise at all. Also any
inferiority complex arising from my inadequecies or 'so called' failures has no basis because what is good is again
subjective.
Hence what is important is to have a personal philosophy which comprises - metaphysics and ethics both backed by
solid reason and at times personal choice. Then there should be an acceptance that my philosophy is the best for me
based knowledge and mental capacity I have at this moment. This justifies different people having different
philosophies and they need not affect you. There should be an openness too for accepting new ideas and testing them.
If found to be correct incorporating them in the philosphy. Also there might be a stage where the new ideas get so
conflicting with the philosophy that I need to start from ground up. At such a time a decision needs to be made
about reworking the philosophy. Ofcourse I dont need to stress that the quality of ideas determines the amount of
effort needed to be put in incorporating them into my philosophy.
So the philosophy might not be able to give an absolute right and wrong answer, but atleast tell me what is best. Formation is an easy thing, implementation is difficult. If I can form such a philosophy and live it to the T I think I would consider it to be a TRUE success.

Should knowledge succumb to spirituality?

There was something wrong with the 'Vedanta' I was learning. I knew it, just what didn't come to me until yesterday. It was the inconcievability of the 'Brahman' - which is defined as everything - the cosmic entity. The argument was that consciousness and knowledge are also a part of the Brahman. But so is a thought a part of a human and contains within itself the consciousness and knowledge of the human and itself too.
The reason was that the word 'inconceivable' sounded defeatist and also that it killed human curiosity. It said that all science and all knowledge was a lie and the truth could be gained by only spiritual means. And this I find objectionable. Not because I feel it is conceivable, I don't know about that, but because I find it goes agains my nature.
Everyone has a philosophy. Even the auto driver who writes at the back of his auto 'Meri chalti hai to teri kyon jalti hai?'. That's his philosphy - fight it out and if you are doing well show it. The objective is to find the right philosophy for oneself. And live by it, put it out in the open. May the best philosophy survive. In a dynamic world even Bangladesh can beat Australia, even if it might seem most impossible.
On a different tangent controlling evolution is one big mistake. Allow it a dynamic growth.

I mean good

Peeking at me from those last few pages of the book was my own name. In his expedition to prove quality as the Tao and universe as being inherently moral, Robert Pirsig in his Lila was looking for a similar line of thought in the human history to as far back as he could go. While looking at the meaning of the word 'good' in the thesaurus the Victorian virtue lead him to the Greek arete and he had stopped there in his first book. As he was investigating the true root of the word in this second book, I found myself impatiently shouting out 'It is Rta, it is Rta'. Rta- the vedic term for the moral order of the universe, or in other words whatever is true, or reality in general. Thats where my name comes from - 'RITESH'(Rta - Eesh). He did eventually find it.

Metaphysics of Vedanta

I have almost reached the end of the book 'Vedanta Treatise'. The book has become fascinating in the last section because it has started talking about the metaphysical aspects of the philosophy. I will just write my interpretation of the philosophy, parts read in the last week.
God and RealityThe Brahman (or God, or Supreme Entity or the Self) is incomprehensible. The senses operate within the domain of the Brahman. Brahman is the subject of perception. It can not be made the object of perception. Space, time and causation are characteristics of the Brahman. They too operate within the domain of Brahman. To make it clearer, these three are just manifestations of Brahman and applying them to the Brahman would mean making Brahman the subject. This would mean exiting the domain of Brahman. But these three manifestations will cease to exist outside the Brahman which is a paradox. I always had doubts about the reality we perceive and this has just given a structure to those doubts.
ReincarnationThis section started by talking about death. It said that the Brahman is all-pervading and the body does not disappear after death. The brain is still there. So what disappears is the Mind-Intellect. Or this conditioned consciousness. It goes on to say that if nothing can be destroyed (as per our science) this conditioned consciousness returns as another birth. If it is a self realised person where this conditioned consciousness( or vasanas) do not exist, there is no rebirth and only complete oneness with brahman. It does say that it is just a theory and can not be proved. It can neither be logically deduced without anyone being able to dispute it. And hence it is a theory, an opinion which can become a belief if you accept it.
I have always felt metaphysics is more about what seems more plausible to a person. Vedanta has a lot of concepts which are just amazing, but few which would rather be shelved at the moment. Reincarnation is one such concept. My experience says that life is definitely much beyond the chemical reactions. But accepting the God as being Reality, we put everything inside the boundry of the God (if there is such a boundry). This includes knowlege and perception. Our world is a sum total of object-qualities and subject-thoughts and the underlying reality - the Brahman. Death and reincarnation lie beyond our world and hence we make these half baked theories. But living is within our world boundaries and there are various techniques to live well. We should atleast try to live a good life and leave the metaphysics for later, if such a time ever comes.

Purpose of Life, Vedanta and Ayn Rand

Been a long time since my first post. But you gotta have something to write, right? So here we go. This one originates from some stuff I read about Ayn Rand and her philosophy on Wednesday. And it got me all excited because, a lot of these concepts were quite similar to what I have been thinking, but her inference from them was different from mine. The statement that struck me was that 'A man's own happiness is the only moral purpose of his life'. She then goes on to describe the concept of 'happiness barometer' and how happiness is an evolved human trait, which is at a higher level as compared to the biological instincts of other animals, obviously because of much more varied awareness. She said that the purpose of a man is to sustain his own life and happiness is an indicator of that fulfillment of purpose at any point in time.
This exactly matches with what I have been thinking and writing for the last few months, and so to speak I have never read Any Rand (which I intend to do soon). I agree with her till here but then take a few steps further and dig a bit deeper. Yes, happiness is the dashboard of the car of life, but making happiness the only indicator is like looking at the dashboard and assuming that the car is fine. Ofcourse she proposes the use of reason and intellect, and that is what I am going to do now.
I agree that human happiness is definitely an evolved trait which indicates the level of success in fulfillment of one's life's purpose. But rather that make happiness the purpose, I propose to make sustenance the purpose. Sustenance of not just my life but humanity and all life. Because if you look closely, this struggle for individual sustenance has let to the extinction of weak characteristics and the development of the more useful of human characteristics through the process of natural selection. A rational evaluation of this characteristic of individual sustenance will show that the underlying purpose is the sustenance of life.
So that would mean that though we make happiness an indicator of our purpose, we take the identification of ourselves to include the whole universe. We are the universe and not separate from it. This would include concepts such as environmental protection and social service within the domain of selfishness. This is the selfishness we should strive to achieve. Where an understanding is achieved that the self is all inclusive not just this piece of flesh, or family, or city, or state, or nation, or this world. The self is everything. Vedanta meets Any Rand? Well, it does. To be sure I have to read more of her work.

My First Post

Until recently, I never had anything to write, atleast that is what I thought. There were thoughts, but I didn't see any beauty in them. These days I do, and hence this blog. I guess they have grown up with me. I believe my writing will be more analytical rather than creative. Will someone ever read it? It does not matter. I think, they are worth putting up on the blog. Thus ends my first ever post on my first ever blog.