If you are a god...

What would you do?

This is a thought experiment that I constantly put my brain to exercise with. What would you do if omniscience is at hand, and omnipotence is the norm? What would you do if you were called upon to be the judge of all judges or so to speak?

See this is not as simple as you might think. This is not a fulfillment of desires, it is more correctly a measure of your understanding of responsibility. It is a question of ethics. At the end of the day - it is a psychological (for the lack of a better expression) conundrum of how you judge your own creations! How you judge things that you don't have absolute control over - but rather they are extensions of yourself. They are things that you are burdened with classifying as objectively beneficial to the common cause or detrimental to it. How much along the lines of causality would you travel to figure out the ultimate effect of these causal passages of time? 

Would the parameters of judgment be based on the laws of nature (considerate exchange - perhaps we can call this karma, everything piles up - judgment of instances based on benefits is cumulative) 

Would the parameters of judgement be based on the laws of the cosmos  (equivalent exchange - instantial repercussions - you reap what you sow but the reaping and sowing are real-time. Absolute conservation of momentum in intentions and actions.)

Would it be based on the laws of man  (Unidirectional benefits - a single creational instance, be it a creature or a plant has the choice to dole out judgment based on what it, in its limited understanding has taken to be the law. You, as a god, are merely a spectator.)

At the cusp of an ideological transaction of most queries on life to artificial intelligence - these are some of the questions I believe would determine the role of ethicality if we are to ever trust AI in our decision-making.

If we are to ever differentiate between all the three paradigms of ethical decision-making to consciously choose between each - how would we choose? Or would the being put in charge, be faced with the same conundrum faced by the goat that's put in between the two stacks of hay as well?

As with most of my writing - the caveat goes: Please do not go diving into this for answers. It is for an entire generation forward to ask questions. 

Kill the question, shoot the messenger -  you will have won the battle perhaps. You will, as sure as sunrise until the sun lives, lose the war and yourself in the process. But then again, wars and battles are almost always fought inside your own head :) 

Our Collective Conscious as Children

As a child...

Life used to be a wait for itself to turn in to stories.

To be of the stuff that legends are made of.

And while we are living it, we are shut off from the significance of happenstances.

Then one day we are too old and we look back.

We lament the loss of a significant amount of realisation. The loss of a consciousness that those times mattered.

And then it will hit us - the life we are living now can and will be bigger and better stories.

There will be stories of fulfillment and experiences, more than loss and despair because those days are behind us and we are armed with experiences spanning all emotions. 

All of them that we are capable of feeling.

We will finally feel like we have lived... 

With a mind, heart and soul... 

Firing on all cylinders...

On and on to infinity.

And beyond!

Right foot forward

As the old adage goes, always start on the right foot. I have always been incapable of that, metaphorically and physically. The oddball that I am. And of late I had been wondering about the cause of this seemingly innocuous malady and came to the conclusion that it was because I used to play too much football. The left foot for a right footer is the anchor point, the fulcrum of balance from which the best movements happens. It is the foot that holds down the fort leaving the right one to do its thing - be it score from an insane free-kick or make the first move to start off a series of fluid dribbles. 

A friend of mine posting about Ted Lasso made me think about the character Dani Rojas running about yelling 'football is life'. And as it is with life itself, football has a place for everyone and everything. It can be dance, it can be a brutal exercise. It can be a calculated strategy or it can be lethargic fluid movements that is as much a pleasure watch as it is beautiful to execute. You can dive or you can get up and keep going. You can feint or you can use sheer physicality prowess. Anything goes within the construct of just 20 or so rules or so to speak. Everyone is welcome. Everyone has a place. It's not the team, it's not the player. Premier leagues and World cups come and go, you're winner once, bottom of the league next. You can't be scoring 91 goals in a season, or maybe in a remote part of the world there is someone who scored a 150 a single season in a small countryside league, which is as important. Because it's the game that matters most.

And as it is with life itself, all of it has to be done and dusted in 90 minutes or a maximum of 120 if you are going to be technical about it. And at the end of it, you rest. A well deserved rest for playing your heart out. And if you didn't play your heart out, too bad. You should have. 

So by this recklessly contrived syllogism in my head - if football is life, why is it so bad to start on the wrong foot? Give me a little time, you haven't seen what the strong foot can do... Yet.

The Unbearable Weight of Intentions

 The way you have lived or more correctly the way you had been made to live has been a travesty. The length and width of the intend in your actions scrutinised to a point that you don't believe it yourself. Who are you? You've asked multitudes of times looking at mirrors or still waters in a pond, by a whispering brook or even yelled at the wind. You've even pondered the questions by the oceans. The silent grasp at a dramatic semblance of spirituality, But in reality you've asked this question on your third beer of the night, on the way to work in a cab or a bus. You've asked it as you sat for your annual appraisals and of course you've asked it subconsciously every time someone seemingly from a far away generation criticized your hair-do. You've asked it while watching your favourite movie and you've asked it while making love to the one that you nearly loved with all your heart. Nearly. 

You have wondered what it means to be you? What it means to be human and what exactly it is that makes you a human. "Who knows?" you've always settled and spend the next moments in careless escapades - into day dreams. 

The proverbial fork in the road right now. 

That your mind has put in front of you. 

And ahead you are tasked with picking the authentic road. "Be yourself" they said. And you tried. You tried searching for the authenticity in your actions.  You tried searching for the elusive authenticity in your thoughts. You tried to be you. But then you realised the you that you want to be is the condensed form of your existence that you have been led to believe is you. By intend unknown. The balm of perceived self assuredness that you have been addicted to, the one that relieves the pain of existence. The one that takes away the heaviness of your existence. 

The fork in the road turns into a mob. The mob of plastic self assuredness that's the bane of your existence - the criticism of your act of conformity, whenever there is a slight stray in the path. The wavering from the path that you had called art and now that has turned you into a circus to be ogled at and scrutinized. 

Again, what does it mean to be alive? The constant strife of contrasting perspectives and an uphill battle to fit in. While constantly hiding yourself. 

All this well and truly happens inside your own head. 

But as JK Rowling as Dumbledore puts it "Just because all of this is in your head, doesn't make it any less real."

Fifteen Minutes at a Bus Stop - A study in the science of charity

The bus ride yesterday morning was hellish. 

A proverbial measure of the breadth and depth of my discomforts. 

I was seated in the opposite direction of the direction in which the bus was travelling. This causes me to build up a sense of motion sickness in my head. And the direction of the seat meant that the entire set of passengers were looking at me. Intently. As is the case most times when I begin to build up the situation unnecessarily in my head. 

Thinking about how to make the proverbial lemonade about this instance and started reflecting on the various things happening in and around the bus. 

The middle stop or the intermission, if you will, was a rest stop for about 15 minutes. And this gave ample time for interesting things to unfold in the bus. Having given up on smoking and being a tad bit uncomfortable in the journey till then, I decided to sit tight in the bus and not go out to even take a leak (which was a mistake as I learnt further along in the journey, but this is not that story).

One particularly striking thing about that stop is that, it weren't street vendors or salespeople rushing into the bus. It was mostly people requesting alms and charity. 

I ended up watching each of them out of curiosity and the two people that caught my attention were a woman who was selling lottery tickets. A man who was limping and had crutches on him. I did not take a lottery ticket even though I felt that woman was the most in need of help among all of them. 

I had taken up a ten rupee note and decided mentally to give it to this woman if she did not get any cash from anybody - but I saw her sell a few tickets. I waited for the limping man to come by. Right as he was half way to me - a man appeared by my side and then asked me to give him at least 10 rupees for a tea. He was very insistent and I sensed a little urgency and desperation in his voice - this made me act in autopilot and give him the ten rupees. And as the limping man came up to me, I took out a fifty rupee note and passed it to him - he silently pocketed in and left. I appreciate that he did not make a show of it and just pocketed the note.

I sense there is a little bit of a parable in this whole account. 

What would any of you have done? 

How would this whole instance have played out if any of you guys were among the people involved?

The celebration of disdain - a generation on the verge of cancellation

Having grown up through an era of pretty sounds and pretty sights that are taken in naturally as every thing of substance should be, how did we fall into the decadent pattern of being stuck inside tiny plastic square cages that are essentially on demand supply of the happiness signals that we are addicted to. Whatever happened to putting on a tape of your favourite album while you made love to your soulmate under the moon or the search for tenderness and the struggle of holding on to it? Where did we lose that path?

As a generation that celebrates disdain and superficiality, what heights of those pursuits have we climbed on to? Have we come far enough that a breadcrumb trail of dopamine is the script for our lives. Are we evolving into a hive mind where the interconnected-ness of the entire world is not through the noble lines of language, music and culture - but rather through the convolutions of copper wires connecting multitudes of worlds inside worlds. Love is a click away and the tick tock of a clock is a little light inside your pocket. The breath of a child is a meme and cities burning is reduced to the number of reactions it gets on the inter-web? Organic growth and the search for goodness is no longer a journey, rather it is an on demand service of pretence and prepared verses spanning the timelines of a fleeting blink of an eye. 

Is there a recourse to this sordid narrative? Can we learn to be a species that can still tell a pineapple from an apple by touching them? By smelling them? Are we witnessing the mass genocide of culture in a mass defection of affection and the self righteous suicide of love, and all associated emotions?

Can we listen to a love song without our brains signalling mouths to utter the world ‘cringe’ - where is the fountainhead of this cringe? Are we born into feeling the negative emotions of sacrifice protracted along the continuum of cancellation and the objects that make life worth living diluted to a fleeting glimpse and a narrow view through plastic squares and blinking lights right in front of our drowsy tired eyes? Are we holding things in the palm of hands, such things that should have the enormity of a bright burning star? God forbid I sound like a bitter old world weary man, coming to terms with a fast evolving world - coming to the death of human touching human, soul and body together. As a person who do cherish the accelerated growth of science and the onset of a whole world coming together as one - I do ask the question, is that really the end effect?

Don’t go looking for answers inside this little monologue, they are merely thought-starters for a generation ahead to start asking questions.

Channeling an inner Chetan Bhagat

 Okay that was a good non-date (thats what she said), yeah, but how do you spend more time with her without appearing too clingy? She just offered to take you home in her uber, oh that's a problem, did you forget deo when you left home? ah nah, go with it...

Let her get in first dumbass, you're getting out first. also, dude, don't turn around and look at her face too often, I know it looks perfect even with a mask on, but just... don't... be creepy. Oh wait, whats your mouth doing now? its making sounds. Are you fucking talking? what the fuck are you talking about? do you even know where this is going? Leave mission area, abort dumbass. stop talking and let her talk - that would give you more time to look at her face, yeah...

Yeah, she looks quite cute sitting there. Put your arms around her? No... where the fuck are your arms going? turn it into a stretch stat... turn it into a stretch goddamnit, you're not there... yet. Look out of the auto poignantly, now... act a teeny bit cool and a bit tired maybe. oh oh got one - slide to the edge of the seat and be impish, boyish... wait, you're doing that? you're at chin level with her now, what the fuck do you do now? absolutely do not put your face on her shoulder... holy crap, what are you playing at?

Why's the auto stopping? we're there already? oh god, what do you mean you dont want to get out? hug her politely and get out. Go in for the hug, easy does it, what are you doing with the cheeks? that was an absolutely cringy hug... wait what is she doing now? why is her hand at your tummy? did she just rub your tummy? 

OH MY GOD DUDE, YOU'VE FOUND A DORK JUST LIKE YOU!!!