Why we believe in the supernatural, godmen, the paranormal etc

The Infinite monkey cage is an extremely witty irreverent discussion hosted by the hilarious Robin Ince and the delectable Brian Cox. And in one of their discussions they touched upon a very beautiful point of uncertainty and control.

Humans hate uncertainty. Very few of us can thrive in an uncertain setting for long and we love to believe that we have control on whats happening around us. And when we lose someone important to us we hate to believe that we dont know whats happening with them and if some conman convinces you into accepting tio talk to your loved one, you will gladly fall for it despite being  scientific minded otherwise.
And same is the case with the multiple homams that godmen make people perform. To say that "Its because your ancestors are unhappy taht your son is falling sick" attributes a reason and thus something we can do something about and control, as compared to " sometimes shit happens". Instead of sitting simply we believe that we are actively doing something about the problem and that accords us a grip on the whole situation. This is always preferred over the whole " we are just pawns in the game of fate".

The same thing is true for multiple things- You were involved in a car accident because you had committed some sins in your past birth and now you are absolved of it sounds more soothing than " its was just a random occurrence, could have been anyone. Accepting that the universe is random and that you have to make the best of what it throws is not as easy as typing it. We always look for other solid reasons to know why this happened to us, what we can do so that it doesn't happen again etc.

And ghosts emerge from the lack of knowledge of what happens after death. To say that we just stop existing seems unacceptable to most of us so we fabricate stories about people continuing to exist after death and whats more, routinely visiting their past lives.

Thats what it ultimately comes down to. Your ability to handle uncertainty is inversely proportional to your belief in astrology, psychics, and other similar phenomenon.  Think about it- Is it easier to believe that someone voodoo conspried to make you hit the car, or to rationally wonder whether it was just a matter of probability?

Just when exactly, does one give up ?

This post is inspired by and entirely dedicated to the Brazil national football team and to their disastrous performance in the semi-finals last night. Everyone knew that Germany was the better team and that Brazil is most likely going to exit the finals, specially given the fact that Silva was not there to defend and Neymar was occupied with the broken back thing, but no one could have predicted the level of humiliation Brazil had to go through. Poor markings, haphazard formations and an abysmal morale led to what is probably the worst defeat Brazil has ever faced. Before half time it was clear who was moving to the next round.

But this post is not about my analysis of the match. There are enough articles on that. 

What touched me  and somehow what no one is talking about is the lone goal scored by Oscar in the 90th minute. Well, of course no one celebrated it. Fans didnt know whether to laugh or to cry. His teammates didnt come rushing to his side, hugging him and pushing him down in a wave of affection and happiness. In fact he himself didnt look relieved and didnt look at anyone for acknowledgement. He simply continued playing as if it were a goal scored during a practice session.

Thats the difference between him and most people. Knowing that that one action isnt going to change the outcomes, yet doing it unselfishly, not to add to his own meagre goal  count ( one more goal would have made no difference) , not to bring glory to his team and country, but merely doing it because it has to be done. Never has a goal been more futile and more unwanted and disrespected, but that didnt stop or deter him.

There is something to be said about that spirit which lets one keep playing for the sake of playing when the game is over, when your exit from the World cup is inevitable and ignominy is anyway a few minutes away- all the other players showed signs of physical and mental fatigue- Luiz was visibly disturbed, Marcelo was incredibly sad but somehow found the strength to run, but Oscar merely continued playing with the same puppy face with which he started in the Croatia match. 

Well, the media might not be talking about it- they are too busy showing us photos of saddened fans , glowing articles might not be written about him, but hey somewhere in the corner of the world there was one blog post about it. 

Far far away from what Oscar or anyone would have wanted from a world cup goal but it is what it is. 

God is in ultraviolet

No, I am not saying that because most of our  Hindu gods are depicted as bluish. The reason is also not because he is right there, you know he is there  but you cant see him.

Until we discovered ultraviolet rays some of the things were unexplainable. The only way we could explain our way out of it was to attribute it to a mysterious higher force which has the ability to do things us lowly humans cant. This is not true just for ultraviolet. Till electricity was discovered fish which identified its prey based on electrical signals sent by the prey would seem to have been guided by divine instinct. 

In a lot of cases we invoke the divine when our quiver of scientific ideas is inadequate to explain something fully. 

I  mention ultraviolet because it is one of our more recent discoveries which has managed to explain hitherto mysterious things. The conventional belief is that what is mysterious must definitely be magical. But the more practical belief should be that what is mysterious is .. just mysterious. At every point we make this arrogant mistake of thinking that whatever can be invented has been invented, we are at the forefront of technology and our understanding of nature and sciences is so great that it cant really progress beyond this.  

We will be proved wrong. By the next generation. 

They will definitely discover newer things and look at the world with a much better vision. They will dispel some of the ignorance of our generation and wonder how primitive  a life we must have led to not have known <some funky thing> the same way we look at the older generation with pity for not having known the usefulness of Google. They will push back the boundary of the divine just a little bit. 

Because, God can only exist beyond the realms of  understandable science.

(I am of course not taking the poetic argument of those who see God in the beauty of science. They see God in the greatness of evolution and natural selection. They equate beauty and truth with God. And of course some who believe that science can explain everything, but God oversees that. I could get on board with such a god but if that were so, there is no clear reason why God should be so human-centric. There are more bugs than humans, we are definitely outnumbered in terms of the volumes.  )

update: Some article I was reading seemed to hint that astrology is such a science. That we dont know its workings, therefore cant trivialise it. I am on board with it theoretically and do accept taht there is a chance that it works in ways we cant understand at this point, but my heart still finds it silly to think that Jupiter which is a million miles away is influencing how short-tempered I am. 

In defence of the fake.

Original. The word has great value. It means you were the first one to come up with something or it could mean that the world saw yours first. Either way, the value is about hundred times that of the non-original. Fake, on the other hand is its much unloved cousin.  Its cheap and dirty, lives on the by-lanes, sneaks up unsuspected and runs off with the money intended for the original.

It is all so grossly unfair.

Picasso is considered a genius because of his ability to paint. Someone else paints just as well and has painted the same things as him, and his works are indistinguishable from Picasso. But one is considered a master and the other a forger and a scamster purely because they were separated by a few centuries. ( yes, I understand that he was trying to cheat and imitate, but am talking about the basics) Why isnt some random guy's water lilies valued in billions if it looks like the water lilies that Monet was looking at when he painted his? Are we not paying for the beauty of water lilies looking like water lilies? Are we instead paying for the idea? Art collectors and investors would like to tell you that there can be value only when no one else has it. But we started collecting art in order to make ourselves happy. If the only thing that can make you happy is the fact that no one else has it, your problems go deeper than can be solved by a piece of art hanging on your wall.

A similar reasoning can be applied in the case of fashion brands as well. If it looks like Gucci, smells like Gucci, is as durable as Gucci, it is as good as a Gucci even if you pay one tenth of the price.  When brand name implies quality I can understand paying a premium but in most cases we pay just for the brand name. In which case what gives you happiness is not the bag itself but merely the fact that you are possessing one. You are paying for a mental value than a physical utility.

Let me tell you again, this is a scam. A scam run by companies who want you paying more, who do not want you to see whats real, who do not want you to just be happy with the basics. They create random needs you do not have and then make you feel inadequate when you do not fulfil them. What else can be a reason for the existence of so many ridiculuously priced luxury brand of watches? How much value can you extract from a watch for you to pay lakhs and lakhs?

I know I sound like some conspiracy theorist who claims that aliens are running our planet and deluding us into living in this hamster wheel while they amass all our resources but I am not that stupid. All I am claiming is that some earthlings are running our planet and deluding us into living in this hamster wheel while they amass all our resources. 

Patriotism is the new religion

Don’t get me wrong based on the title. ( Only after reading the post are you allowed to throw stones at me and call me anti-national) . I am as patriotic as the next person. Which is to say that I dislike Pakistan during cricket matches, discuss politics fervently during election time and pay my taxes. I like my country and want to be here for the rest of my life, but that’s hardly patriotism- its more a matter of convenience.  But I am fundamentally apatriotic when it comes to it- I am not emotionally attached to the idea of countries and laying your life for them.

Sure, I agree it is a matter of convenience that blocks of land are governed by distinct bodies. And I am not naïve enough to think that a Micronesian tribal village is the same as an Italian village. But for people to kill people of neighbouring countries for the sake of land seems so beyond me, despite the fact that both are soldiers fighting for their own country.  We are all in our designated countries purely by chance. History could have dictated it any other way. Rajasthan and Gujarat could have been a part of Pakistan, South india could have been a different country along with Srilanka- the possibilities are endless. And we would have been loyal to those countries then. Therefore, it seems stupid to me to sacrifice your life to safeguard the idea or a concept or a group you are a part of , purely by chance.  Sounds familiar?

Religion, while not exactly the same,  has many similar features. You are part of a group your parents are a part of  probably, you believe in its ideals and visions and you are ready to kill someone who is opposed to this view. And that’s what I hate about religion and patriotism- That we are so brazen about killing someone and make them heroes for doing so.  Killing is generally unacceptable in regular society- you are a murderer , but in a different context , you are made a hero- Why? So what if the person killed is a Pakistani?  He is not evil, he has a family back home and he is as much a loving father and son as you probably are. Just because he made the mistake of being born in Pakistan ( which would have been your country had things been slightly different) you are OK with him being dead? But you are not OK with killing someone from Rajasthan, are you?

I am in no way trivializing those people who are sacrificing their lives so I can sit comfortably in my home writing this post. I am merely sad that they have to. I soo wish they had the luxury of sitting at home thinking of useless stuff. Sad that people have to put themselves at risk because two governing bodies cant figure out how to co-exist. That they still behave like tribal clans- killing and looting in order to survive. We are way past that stage now, aren’t we?  We are not putting soldiers between states in an attempt to protect our states from the neighbours ( Karnataka would do it, given a chance, though :D )  Why cant we have that kind of maturity amongst countries?

I am not saying that we all merge into one big blob and be ruled by some world ruler. We can still continue economic discussions and trade discussions and still try and do whats best for your country. But this needless killing can stop? No? 

PS: I understand fully well that at this point its impossible to stop military exercise. It would mean that the other country has to come to the same conclusion. This is a post in an ideal world. I am allowed to fantasise about that, arent I? 

The 100 days Project or The Art of Frauding

In which I explain how I am going to tackle the 100 days project.

I am a big fraud. Not in the alarming sense of " dont pay taxes" or "embezzle company funds" fraud. I dont have the intelligence or the stamina to carry out these activities. No- more in the mundane sense of  " Yes I am five  minutes away" when I haven't even started or " yes yes, its on track, dont worry we are managing it" when I have no clue of whats going on.  Then I go around scrambling to figure out whats going on in the project and scramble some more to ensure that its on track. This when there was no need for me to blabber in the first place.

But my foot in the mouth recently reached a higher level. I had a case of "Foot in the blog mouth". I dont know how else to describe it. Yesterday, as I was writing the post on embarking on the 100 days project, without my knowledge I typed "which will allow me to experiment with different styles of writing". When my brain realised what had been  typed it quickly formulated the disclaimer and stuck it alongside the original line. But I had typed something and  once the thought of "different styles of writing" crept up my mind it was impossible to repress it and say " I will churn out regular posts for 100 days".

There was  a slight problem though. I had no idea what it meant and how to go about doing it.

Few minutes after my post, I was wondering what different styles of writing I was capable of. Well, I thought to myself "  I can do movie reviews and book reviews, have never done those before". I was now left with the simple task of figuring out 98 other styles.  It then occured to me that I could write for different magazines- different genres of magazines which will ensure that I will be forced to write about topics which I normally dont. I can write columns for Femina, Architecture weekly, homes and interiors, gardening magazines, political magazines, nature& wildlife, food magazines, Psychology, lonely planet,  etc.  Not only will it force me to expand my horizons of writing , it will also keep my ranting to a minimum as I would pretend I am writing for a magazine.

Of course, none of this precludes fraud. I can clearly see myself writing whatever comes to mind and slotting it into some magazine section. And there is always the option of calling it the column submission for Outlook or Week. Have you seen the irrelevant articles they publish?

One of these days I will make a list of the magazines I definitely want to cover but until then I will post as they come, with a mention of which magazine it is intended for. I am not deluded enough to think that it is worthy of getting published in the magazine, it is merely my attempt at writing for the audience of these. Its just a way of keeping the 100 days project interesting for me with some semblance of a structure instead of random posts being thrown into the universe, all of which can loosely be assembled into one giant post.

As fascinating as this idea is, it comes directly in conflict with a thought I have been having about the blog recently. Unlike business or subject blogs which run purely on content  and the greatness of the writing, individuals' blogs need the personal touch. You cant follow some unknown person's blog unless you get some sense of how their lives are. Not every minute details of their lives, but a broad sketch of their life, against which context the readers can understand the blog contents better. Unless their content is so powerful and their writing is so beautiful that you would read them regardless.

 So, in the awareness that my writing isnt so fantastic that it will keep the reader hooked, I will make the magazine articles more personal than the ones you see in the actual magazine. I will somehow also try and keep it objective.

Thank you, my dear useless subconscious, for the last paragraph. Now I have to figure out how that needs to be done. Seriously, cant you check with me before just typing stuff?

Rational, with a pinch of salt

Human beings are wired to look for patterns. Your brain figuring out that those random spots is a leopard is the difference between you surviving by getting out of sight and being the leopard's lunch. Well, the evolutionary justification is pretty clear- the better you are at figuring out patterns, the greater your chances of survival.

This is what leads us to see those optical illusions where the brain completes a triangle even when you show it only parts of a triangle. It is hardly the brain's fault that we have moved from dense jungles to stupid concrete jungles. Yeah, so what? you might ask. So we see some patterns where there arent any. Its all right. Doesn't really impact us much in our daily life. Well, think again.

How many completely rational humans who otherwise dont believe in superstitions or horoscopes or anything have you heard saying " But yes. She is Aries. Obviously you expect that shortfuse from her.' Or  "Ohh a Leo. Hmm.. that explains a lot". I dont say that these people would make major life decisions based on zodiac signs but somewhere in the back of their minds they are trying to categorise people. And zodiac based categiorising is just one of them. I am no exception to this rule either. I find myself analysing people, especially in an emotional context, based on their zodiac signs.

This could be a big mistake because the universe is essentially random but we have this unstoppable urge to look for patterns. Whats worse, we look for patterns with us in the centre. Lets say you are trying to find a restaurant in a corner of the city you have never been to. The roads are not straight, there are lanes and by-lanes and its a crazy maze. You have made a few wrong turns. And finally something feels right. You think " I have made soo many wrong turns. Now it will be the right turn". Based on nothing. You think that just becuase you have made so many wrong turns the universe is obliged give you the right one now. Well, guess what? The universe doesnt care.  Well, not care isn't the correct way to put it. The universe doesnt know you exist. It goes on being random, doing what it always has and suddenly you swoop in and demand  something favourable to you and you  alone purely because of a pattern seen from your stand point, the universe really couldnt care less.

But its a tough thing to wrap your head around. That all this you are battling, crying, smiling, fighting, struggling for is essentially going unnoticed by the universe. The universe doesnt care that you have failed million times to bend down, pat you on the head and give you the thing you were fighting for. If you are an intelligent human you should have found the thing you were looking for, dont look to the universe for help. It is busy being random.

Perhaps forcibly unseeing the patterns is the difference between surviving and perishing in today's world. Think about it.