Of Morals and Magnets

After i wrote that long note at the top of this blog, to feed my megalomania. . I realised that i have been writing less meaningful, 'draw people out and shake them, till the world is topsy turvy again' kinda posts ( sometimes colloquialisms are appropriate). I realised that people (those who read my blog({phi !}), and people in general) are settling back into the rabbit's fur(Sophie's world: Jostein Gaarder = brilliant book) and feeling comfortable with their lives, and settling into their private ruts again.And that, my friends, does not work for me. I need to reate conflict and argument, debate and discussion, which funnily enough is at odds with another fundamental part of my psyche, conflict mediation( But this scenario actually goes quite well with my megalomania: I create a conflict, mediate it, and get to be the good guy in the end ! Woah !! I just figured myself out ! "Shh...say no more. . We'll talk later. At the crossroads, when it is neither night nor day") anyway, if I'm done digressing, I'd rather get on with my 'serious' post.

The other day, i was 'relieving myself' ( I love to indulge in highly transparent,subtly vulgar euphemisms. Note that I could have used 'Rearing butt cobras' or 'Making nutty chocolate', but i chose to go with the classic ' relieving myself' so as to not offend my more 'delicate' readers(I, for one enjoy toilet humour almost as much as I did as a child. .), though retrospectively, I realise that by writing this sentence, I have completely defeated that purpose :D . . . Back to the main text..) when a revelation made itself available to me. Now this may seem funny to some of you, but the fact is, that you have a choice in your 'revelations'. Your mind gets the whiff of a revelation and your mind must follow it through till the end for you to actually have the epiphany. I myself recall countless occasions when I found myself at the brink of an epiphany, only to blow it off to pursue some more hedonistic pleasure.Fittingly, one can never seem to recall what that stimulus was that caused you to start upon the path to enlightenment, and one is left wondering whether it was really an epiphany, or just something that seemed like one whose only purpose was to torture one with the thought of having passed it by. In the case that this were true, my theory of epiphany-choosing would undoubtedly be false, and the only 'proof' i have against that is that, at the point of choosing, the choice is very real and consious. (Of course the world still may be deterministic in the sense, that being the person I am, i would never have chosen otherwise and any thoughts to the contrary are just products of plain human stubbornness(No more on that..Read for more: http://blogsareegomaniacal.blogspot.com/200 9/06/further-justification-for-blog-name-are.html))

As I was saying (!), I had an epiphany. I was just wondering, apropos sometihng that had happened to me recently, whether I was really all that good and moral as i purpoted myself to be, and at that moment it struck me: What seems good and moral to a person could very
well seem naive and foolish to another.What one person sees as bad, disgusting and immoral, would be seen as shrewd and infinitely smart to another. And for the life of me , I could not find any way to prove the superiority of one of these viewpoints over the other.The only obvious reason was that the former conforms to modern social norms, but since when does the widespread nature of one view constitute proof of it's superiority over another ? Our norms have changed several times over the centuries, and they are no means of judging right or wrong.(Another causal factor in the creation of social norms is the distribution of power in society and the views of these 'powerful' individuals, but this is not a consideration worth discussing, hence the parentheses :P)

What then ? What is right ? What is wrong ? Does our moral compass have a magnet stuck to it somewhere, a magnet, that someone else hid there(or scarier still, we hid and forgot about)? One option that immediately comes to mind is that, one of the two groups ( Naivete as opposed to conventional morality(in an alternate universe, without loss of coherence, Naivete could be immoral)) are just faking their belief in their morality paradigm and in truth are driven by other immoral 'forces' to behave, and believe that they are right ? The questions raised by this assertion are : a) What immoral forces ? b) Is 'universal' acceptance and belief a good enough measure of morality ? and c) Which of the two views are right ?
Point (c) points to the fact that even if a way can be found out of the multiple paradigms'impasse', the basic question still remains.Point (a) simply calls to one's attention the fact that the final, true system of morality, would be internally coherent, but not necessarily objectively true, and Point (b) asks us the questions ' What is morality ? What is truth ?' Clearly, this argument would be, (if at all) secondary to an argument that can resolve suitably the questions raised by it, for they are fundamental to this analysis of morality and truth.

The only way out of this horrenduous predicament, in my opinion, or atleast the one that is most clear and describes things, at least upto a certain depth in totality, is to adhere to the 'magnet attached to the magnetic compass' theory. You choose a path, by going over the different possible systems of morality, and suitably attach a magnet ot your compass. You then follow the compass, making suitable adjustments to the magnet, as and when you feel the need to change your path entirely. The fixing of the magnet as a default option gives one time to observe ones surroundings, interact with them, and steer (:D). However one must be aware of the fact that there is a magnet, and that the path we are on is not a predecided, universally prescribed one. After all, isn't everybody free to choose one's path.

Analogically, one's moral system is typically personal and must be treated as such.The only thing we can seek , as a parallel to the morality that we pursued in the paradigm where morality was absolute and universal is internal coherence. For example, on the path ( piecewise defined :P) that one has chosen, one can always agree with others on the same path that it is very scenic and beautiful, more so than any other that could have been chosen,in fact the 'beauty' of the path would be one of the parameters that contributed to it's selection over others in the first place.

Apt ....

!!

PS: Of course, all this could still be deterministic ....a la the post, the link to which i have pasted somewhere in the middle of this one : what the heck : http://blogsareegomaniacal.blogspot.com/2009/06/further-justification-for-blog-name-are.html (:P)

PPS: Is beauty really subjective ?

PPPS: The actual analysis of the different systems of morality would be an extremely involved, though interesting task....Maybe another time ....

Where is Wonder Woman ?

I am sad. . . .I lay on my back on my bed in my room in Hostel 6, IIT Powai, and I am sad, bored, dejected and depressed. . I am also hot. . .Unbearably so. . Covered in sweat, I lie there,staring at the ceiling of the tiny room that I share with another. . He is speaking, but I do not hear him. My mind is buzzing my aural sense into disrepair. . I look at the cobwebs, on my ceiling, and see past them. The ceiling fades away and is replaced by the great black sky. . Stars. . . billions of them. . I look at them and am catapulted into space, rushing forwards at a speed so fast, I fear that i may fall. . i keep going on and on, and all I see are bright stars, all around me stretching for , dare i say, miles ??!!
A jerk later, I am back on my bed, sweaty and panting, but exhilarated. . . I have seen worlds, beautiful worlds, terrible worlds. . rather, i have seen, with my own two eyes, the possibility of their existence, and i will never again be content with what I have. Is it true then that ignorance is bliss ?? Or is an unexamined life,not worth living ?. . .The universe, of which we are but a microscopic fraction, stretches on and on, till what ? An end ? Itself ? Nothingness ? What then is nothingness ? Can one even comprehend such a state. Time zero. . . Space zero . . .The inevitable question pops up in our mind. . . But, what was before that, behind that, after that, ahead of it. . . ? What indeed . .
There are days when such thoughts fill oneself with a tremendous feeling of hope and ecstasy. . our mind is bright with the rich images of a journey yet to be made, of a future, and indeed a past, yet to be discovered.Of a logic yet to be understood, and of an outside, something beyond everything, to be seen.
And then there are other days, when these same thoughts fill your mind with confusion and frustration. They make you want to fall to your knees, your hands pointed heavanward, as the camera slowly zooms out inflationarily( there should be a word like that ) and your observable universe becomes a speck in the distance as the exponential function flexes its muscle........

As I recall, I was sad....I cannot imagine why, but at some point very close in time to this one, I was sad, depressed, dejected and worst of all: bored.....And i was hot...As i get up, suddenly, jerkily, the buzzing in my ears stops.I suddenly have a very heightened sense of awareness,a feeling i vaguely associate with the bullet time action sequences i used to execute in 'Max Payne: the Game'. I get off my bed, put on a pair of slippers and walk out of my room, The corridor seems to stretch on forever. I look both ways and turn right, walking briskly past several other doors. There is a light on in some, music in others, while yet others are cold and silent, inhabitants, either asleep or not in attendance.Other doors are open and I see people inside, with their normal lives, eating sleeping , playing....

I turn right again, then again, then left. I am now going down a flight of stairs: dark, yet inviting. They seem to stretch on endlessly, much like the corridor that i have just traversed. The more i walk, the more lost and confused i seem to get. I walk faster, but the the flight of stairs is just as unending and my mind just as confused....

Finally, i hit the bottom. Where there should be an open corridor, there is an enclosed passage, dark alcoves and turnoffs every few metres, left and right. I raise my eyes, looking for some light, a window or a door that will lead me out, but all i see are more passages.All the passages in this building seem to share a lighting pattern.The light is dim, but comfortable. It seems normal, almost natural in a way. The air in here seems ordinary and entirely normal, but conditioned, fabricated,treated in a way, not natural.

I jerk back to consciousness, realising that all this while i have been walking.I must've taken some random and arbitrary turns, for I no longer know where i am. I am now in a high arched room, flooded with a more beatific hue of the same ochre light. In front of me I see a window, with stars sparkling and twinkling outside.I run to the window and breathless, throw myself on it, feeling a draught of cold air, fresh air.As i bask in that freedom, a horrible thought comes into that mind..The darkness, the stars, the air, are all horrifyingly reminiscent of the planetarium I remember visiting recently......

I wake up......

We live, in a system. A system, that forms the entirety of our existence. We follow it, adhere to it, almost as if it were right and perfect, innately so. Even our rebellions, our revolutions, our protests, are but mechanations of this system. We live in a big castle, full of amusement arcades. An all spanning, colossus of a castle. Wherever we run,seeking windows, doors, we only find more brick and stone.It is comfortable and ordinary, yet false and synthetic. We know nothing of anything. What it means, why it means what it does and who ordained that it be so. Just the mores and norms of the system, the brick and stone of the castle.

Our universe seems to be, by definition, infinite and endless. Our world is less so. Prohibitively vast perhaps, but finite in time and space, at least by our present knowledge. As of now , we live, not in a tiny planet, among 10(odd) revolving around a small star, that is one of billions in a galaxy, that again, is one among trillions, but yet in a system, one of infinitely many possibilities, on the tiny planet. We dream, hope and 'plan' to conquer the stars, to go where no man has ever gone, but in this small world of ours we are blinkered and bound by the ropes that mark our lane in the race. A race, the purpose of which we do not know, of which we do not wonder......

PS: I didn't mean to sound quite so 'armageddon'y, but i have this daydream often. . Cages within cages, systems within systems, all built on a base, a very long time ago, by God knows who...

PPS: Seriously, there is no wonder left in the world anymore...