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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Reality Demystified

Alright, I have had enough of people lecturing me to get back to 'reality' and now I am ready to dissect the concept of reality and see what comes up. Feel free to contribute a comment and your own point of view, even if you think I am crazy .
So, reality? What is reality? Things as they are, absolutely as they are, free of perception isn't it? That's how I understand it, I didn't look it up, not yet anyway.
But the question is do you really know how things really are? Let's dig deeper. :P *rubs hands with glee*
Suppose you have a headache, you take a tablet. Now, we all know, most of us anyway, that that tablet doesn't do much in the way of curing the headache, it just anesthetizes (whoa that's a tricky word) the area where the pain is and you don't feel the pain. The cause is there, the pain is also there, but now you don't feel the pain. Which one is reality - pain or no pain? You are not feeling the pain so that can't be a reality for you, and yet you know very well that it's there since the tablet just induced local anaesthesia and nothing more so painlessness is not a real reality! :)
Some people don't take a tablet for headaches just for that reason. To them, I'll ask what about dental surgery? Would you go under the gas or not? What about molar extraction? If you persist, I will persist too, what about heart bypass? What about amputation? Can anyone go under any kind of pain without the help of drugs? No.
My point? You relax your hold on reality for a certain period in order to escape the pain and torture of reality.
Have you seen the movie "Shallow Hal"? This guy, the hero, after a post-hypnotic suggestion, sees all girls as beautiful because of their inner beauty and when his friend wakes him up he is ready to kill him. Why? He explains, "If I like a girl and you don't, would it matter to me, if you think she's not beautiful. I saw a knock-out I don't care what anyone else sees?" Does he sound like he wants reality?
This brings me to my next point, what about love? When people are in love, esp. when they are falling in love, they see things differently. Not only they don't see each other's faults but also the world seems like a perfect place to them. I am not a cynic, not any more, but still I'd admit that the world is far from perfect. Yet, to a couple in love it would seem like paradise itself.
I have been in love, or infatuation or whatever you want to call it, and then out of it. And when I was out of it, I thought "Man! that was a fool's paradise I lived in!" and then soon I realized that the fool's paradise was a very pleasant way of living rather than the "smart" awakened life.
Let me quote from Heinlein, from his book "Revolt in 2100" that I finished today, his young hero says, "Call it what you like and laugh at us, but at that moment we were engulfed in that dear madness more precious than rubies and fine gold, more to be desired than sanity. If you have never experienced it and do not know what I am talking about, I am sorry for you."
Madness that's more to be desired than sanity, eh? Yes, the lad is right, only those who have loved would know what it means. Especially the ones who have loved and lost! For my money, if I had a wish I would ask to be eternally in love, deeply, madly in love and never to be brought back to reality!!
erhm...*shakes head and comes out of the dreamy stare into space*
Other than all that, how are you sure that this dull, work-home-kids-drive routine is reality? Have you seen Matrix? Computers have created a virtual reality that they feed into the minds of humans. Ok, Matrix is science-fiction what about God? All religions talk about God having created the world and ruling it. According to Hinduism God uses his assistant the most-treacherous female 'Maya' to run the world, and,
"Maya maha thagini ham jaani", Maya in itself means mystery and confusion, creating an illusion. So her illusion is your reality?
I can still see people in the crowd shaking their heads (don't mind me, I am envisioning myself on a high stage, discoursing to a great crowd :D )
Any one who did anything in this world, anything worthwhile, anything that made you know their names even though you don't live in the same street, did so by ignoring reality to some point.
Ah, puzzled? Let me explain.
This German doctor, I keep forgetting his name, yes Viktor Frankl, he survived and escaped Hitler's concentration camp, a place where a person could lose their life, their dignity and their mind. He not only kept his sanity, but he helped others, escaped when he got a chance and finally made a difference in the world with his work. He had a vision, all the time he was undergoing the torturous, inhuman treatment in the camps he always focused on an image of a better life, a vision of liberty, equality and a life of dignity. And at one point, he was able to swap his realities. Could he do that if he had just lived in the reality?
Then look at other figures, Euclid, Edison, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Mother Theresa, Lal Bahadur Shastri...each and everyone of them had a dream, a vision, a better place to dwell on than reality.
Shaheed Bhagat Singh had a dream in his mind, the dream of an Independent India for which he gave up his 'reality', his safe and secure life as the beloved son of loving parents, and risked his life and ultimately died for that dream.
To conclude. I can't say that reality is something to be ignored. But reality is not everything. If you want to achieve more than what is real for you now, you have to focus on things that are not real, strive for them, work for them and make them the new reality.
I think I can best conclude with these 2 lines from Allama Iqbal,
"Isi roz-o-shab meiN ulajh kar na reh ja,
Zameen aur bhii aasmaaN aur bhii haiN."
(Don't be confined to this day and night,
there are other Earths there are other skies.)
[From his famous ghazal - Sitaron se aage jahaN aur bhii haiN, abhi ishq ke imtahaaN aur bhii haiiN.]

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

DISSECTION OF REALITY DEMYSTIFIED

Phew! I just read your entire write up about “reality”. You have commendable skills of putting your thoughts into words and in an excellent order. I have a feeling that you probably don’t even need to work a lot on the order of your thinking, your brain can just write an essay in an interesting order of thought, digging deeper as it goes on… Congratulations! for having developed that skill.

I am not going to argue with your statement about whether I think you’re crazy or not because anyone who willingly gets into dissecting “reality” is not much within the limits of accepted borders of sanity! ( I have no defense for myself here). It’s not fair to assess you based only on this one measure though. I also have heard about genius men being perceived by many as outside the usual norms of sanity. (This is very well depicted in the movie “the beautiful mind”, where a Schizophrenic Math professor ends up winning the highest honor for having written genius formulae in economics).

Now, let me jump into the core discussion at hand, what’s reality and what’s not reality and dissect your views there along with adding some of my own perspective. Pardon me if my essay goes longer than yours!

Being in the health care profession and having a knowledge base about disease pathologies and modes of management, I do feel guilty about exercising an upper hand in these matters in this discussion which is totally non-professional. So, I won’t dissect your actual statements about headache and what “the tablet” does to your head, even though I don’t agree with some of what you said there. If you want me to explain, I’ll be glad to share my knowledge with you, but only if you ask me for it.

Now, let me blast the base on which you’ve built your discussion. Your statement, “what is reality? Things as they are, absolutely as they are, free of perception, isn’t it?” , has no meaning on my side of the fence. The world doesn’t exist if someone doesn’t perceive it….. Perception is everything.

Working in hospitals, seeing life and death walking almost hand in hand, it is almost inevitable for my mind to start an argument very far from those borders. But, I’ll talk from a lay man’s view point just to eliminate the gap due to difference in professions. A person who is sitting up in bed, feeling just fine, and chatting with his relatives this moment, can be found to be in total breathing distress and agony the next moment if a blood clot which formed in his legs gets dislodged and gets lodges in his lungs. Within the next few moments, he many even die! All of life’s struggles have ended for him. Story over for him. The world doesn’t exist anymore for him.

But…. for his spouse, children, friends… the world continues to exist…….. because, only because they can continue to perceive it. You see my point? The reality is because it’s being perceived. No perception, nothing exists, no reality.

Ok. Let’s give health care concerns a break. On the sea beach… a shapely young woman in a lime green bikini, is perceived as a desirable partner by a man on the sands and as filling supper by a passer-by shark. Now what is she “really”? A good partner or good food? It depends on whether you’re a man (cannibals are excused out of this discussion) or a shark. Again, it’s all about perception.

Your example about love changing the same world into a paradise strengthens my theory about perception. Maybe I shouldn’t claim this to be my theory. Maybe I should say that your concept about love giving people a chance to live in “fool’s paradise” strengthens my understanding about the vital nature of perception. Let me “dissect” love some more.

“Love”- the feeling on which the world runs, the feeling which keeps the world hopeful, the feeling which is the reason behind procreation, is all about perception too. How can anyone fall “in and out” of love with the same person within months? A girl says to her guy “you’ve changed since I fell in love with you. I don’t love this new person anymore”. But, the person who receives this statement feels pained and cheated because he probably never felt the change in himself. He never changed! The partner had initially not known the person well enough to be able to perceive him as a whole. As she got closer to him, she could see all the flaws that the poor being was born with. What she had perceived as perfection is not perfection to her anymore, just because she perceived it wrong in the first place. She goes after another guy who she perceives as the real “perfect” man, until she finds him out to be an imperfection in his own way. Human beings are all imperfect. So, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. They are just imperfect in different angles, in different arenas of life. One just has to find that particular variety of imperfection which she/ he is willing to bear with and not allow it to bother her/ him on a regular basis. A defect doesn’t exist if you can’t perceive it. “Blissfully unaware” is a beautiful way to put it. Again, it’s all about perception.

Another interesting insight that science has brought in me is the levels of perception. Wow! What an enlightening concept. It fills the gaps in all theories, any theory till date. According to it, human beings are not yet created to perceive everything in their surroundings. There is a lot going on in our surroundings which we are not yet able to perceive with the 5 senses we currently have. How do we know? This theory is an extrapolation on what we know about other forms of life with lower capacities of perception. Cows see everything in two dimensions only. I’m sure a cow believes everything is two dimensional. But, human eye can see things in 3 dimensions! Human beings are higher on the evolution scale. Maybe there will emerge further evolved beings in the far future which can see things in a 4th or a 5th dimension or more too! Currently human mind can perceive and interpret only as much as we believe there is. Maybe the world right around us has more going on and we just don’t perceive all of it. Doesn’t that explain the holes in all theories? Doesn’t that tell us why we state that “science is still incomplete”? We are not far enough on the evolution scale to perceive and understand it all! Again, it’s all about perception.

About your example of a Nazi camp survivor and other known names, I am only going to say that dreams are what you want your surroundings to be ideally. It is neither reality nor totally away from it. It is a distortion from reality only when your mind wants it. One cannot debate that Victor Frankyl didn’t live in the reality of Nazi camp. He did. But, he imagined, or in other words “dreamt” away from it. He never switched the between two realities. What occurred in the Nazi camp already had occurred. Nothing could change that reality. He only chose what he wanted for his future days and worked towards making that a reality for his future days. Nothing was switched to get the other. Both realities co-existed. He only chose to have what he wanted to perceive in his immediate surroundings in his future.

Now, let’s try coming back into the known and accepted norms of reality. Why? Only because that is the way the world functions. Since all human beings are not blessed with the all equal power of perceiving, understanding and accepting the abstract, the society has created norms of reality acceptable to a vast majority of the population. To be perceived as successful, to enjoy the fruits of being “successful” in this world, we have to be successful in a way that is perceived as successful by that vast majority. Else, the world will not understand our genius, not perceive our success and not allow us to lead the life style of a successful person. We will only be allowed to lead the life of mediocrity. Success in a digital world is not success in the real world. Effort put in that digital world is an effort that is constantly going towards the success of another person in the real world! Would you rather not invest the same time, effort and money into your own real life, towards security in your own old age, towards security for your aging parents? The person who created that digital world for you did that for securing his future and the future of his loved ones in the “real” world. Think about it….

In conclusion, every creature has it’s own perception of reality and it’s mind would have drawn it’s own borders about the same. Since there is a smooth blend in the borders of belief in reality, human beings continue to live peacefully on the same planet. Also humans continue to live on the same planet in a domination harmony with other species due to the same blend in borders of inter-species reality. When the borders completely separate and fail to blend smoothly, wars and other unpleasantaries occur. Considering this concept, we can say - everything is “reality”… or….that here is nothing called “reality”

Sunil Goswami said...

Hello my esteemed opponent,

I do always welcome a debate and if it's about things deeper than the bus schedule than all the more welcome.

Let me first take a moment to thank you for your generous praise and appreciation!

At the risk of sounding streotypical, I must reciprocate the sentiment stating that your counter-argument was very well written and did irritate me at times and made my blood boil which is the mark of a great argument! Well done, indeed!

And now,
Let the dance begin!!:)

Oh, pray do tell about the effects of the tablet. I am always open to build upon my sketchy knowledge of things. Your views and any information you may care to impart is very much welcome.

I am sorry I do not accept your blasting of my base. If everything we see is reality then every dream you dream is reality, every fancy, every imagined fact is a reality, every psychopath then carries his own reality with him and we have no call to "get back to reality" as we will always "be" in reality. So things as they are is reality and as we see them is perception and there are not one but a multitude of examples where perception belies reality and yet we accept the reality as an established fact ignoring the data gathered by direct perception. The example that comes readily to mind is the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way round. For my senses, the Sun going around is the reality and yet I accept the fact that it does not. Please argue.

About the guy dying within a few minutes in a hospital bed you make a very good point but I will have to challenge your research data which leads you to positively state that "The world doesn’t exist anymore for him."

About his family, what if I say that they are seeing half the reality and he sees the complete reality which also includes him?

The girl on the beach, both of them see her and her presence on the beach is a fact, but then they both have their own version of 'extended reality' where they imagine potential uses for the girl. It goes perfectly well with the conclusion of my post that reality is flexible, you have to extend yourself beyond 'reality' in order to achieve anything extra-ordinary.

Btw, why lime green, is that your favorite color or something?

On a more sleazy note, I'd add that she could be the means to quench the hunger of both the shark and the young man but in very different ways. :)

I am compelled to challenge your statement that "Love" runs the world. It has never been conclusively proven unless my scholar friend has discovered some new proof? *lifts eyebrow* In my view the world runs on "hunger" and the statement is open to challenge but seeing how this in itself can be a long discussion, if you'd rather keep it aside for another argument, I'd stipulate to such an arrangement.

You claim to blast the base of my argument and yet I find that in more than one places you are arguing to prove my point.

I'd also say the same thing here - the defect is there, you don't see it, so what is real? The defective person or the perfect person?
And in my argument I advised that being in that state where you are imperceptive enough to take them as perfect (and because of them take life as perfect) is much better than the reality where you can see the defects.

I agree with you about the limitations of our senses, our main sense, the mind, is not yet developed to the point where it can not only heighten but completely trascend all other senses.
But again you are arguing on my side by proving that all that we is not reality, reality is more than we perceive yet we accept as reality only that which we can perceive with our limited senses.

"What occurred in the Nazi camp already had occurred." No. It was occuring everyday, every minute of the day that he was living there, if living it can be called. And both realities did not co-exist one was real as the whip of the Nazi guard while the other existed only in his mind as a dream to be attained, until he could escape from the former to the latter.

Soceity and the individual, always my favorite topic of discussion. :)

Success means different things to different people. To some it might mean the post of a headmaster in a school after 20 years of service where the whole town knows your name and you are respected by younger and older citizens alike, while for some it comes in the jingle of freshly minted gold coins and visions of sky-rising towers.

The same applies to the lifestyle of the successful, given unlimited money and power, everyone will choose a lifestyle that suits them. There will of course be some common themes to these but you might be suprised what some people would yearn to have as the ultimate means of pleasure and peace.

Keeping your comments to the side about the digital world for the moment, which I can only label as "uninformed", let me ask you this - given that there is a society-given-and-accepted definition of success, is there also a certain path to success that the society condones? As long as you have a billion dollars does anyone give you less respect because you sold computers for this and not pumped oil out of Iraq? As I remember the dictum goes "End justifies the means".

I can understand your concern about some poor fellow spending time, energy, money and effort in a digital world. It is the same concern expressed by many for the first person that invested his time and money in the building of a computer, or a printing press or the first car.If a new idea is not met by ridicule and "good advice" then the proponent of that idea must take a second look to see if he is on the right path.

"Success in a digital world is not success in the real world."
Would you please tell that to Bill Gates and countless others like him who made their billions from computers in a world where people didn't know what computers are?

For the rest of your comments I refuse to address them until you have done your research and actually know what you are talking about instead of just spewing out advice based on last year's information. This is the information age, wake up and smell the CPU fan. :)

Would you have given the same advice to the first person who sold a computer program? "Whoever heard of selling a couple of files on a floppy disk man, sell clothes, or books or something people can use" ?

If you find a certain irritated edge in my tone, then that's because I resent people trying to give me advice about something that I know more about than they do. I find it contrary to the natural flow of information.

Blending borders of reality? Hmmm, maybe so. I must admit that I am not one hundred percent agreed on this point but we cannot discuss it until we can thrash out a common definition of reality. The same applies to your comment about human beings living in "harmony" with other species.

I don't agree with your reasoning for war, war is conflict of ideas, not necessarily a difference of perception.

"everything is “reality”… or….that here is nothing called “reality”"

I fail to see how you reached on this conclusion from your arguments and I definitely don't agree with you. My original conclusion, which I feel I must elaborate on, was that reality is there, there is something as the real world and reality, but its limits are not as well-defined and opaque as we might believe at one glance. We must, if only to challenge ourselves, venture out of this reality from time to time and explore the unknown realms of un-reality.

Please feel free to rebutt.

[You have not addressed a lot of my points but I will draw on them when I need more ammo in the future arguments. :)]

Anonymous said...

Hi! Sunil,

you have humbled me by giving me the status of your opponent! I don't really know whether I deserve it and

whether I'll be able to live up to it. I am just a passer-by with some views of my own which I wished to present

in front of your esteemed audience (real readers and the ones in your dream crowd for whom you were performing in

your previous write up).

Well, I don't usual need a welcome when it comes to debating about something (including bus schedules). I can go

around and beyond bus schedules for however long. Lemme know when I've dragged on too long. I might realise it if

you say it to me directly.

Thank you for setting me in the right mood by mentioning that you want the "dance to begin". I would love to

share with your audience the fact that I love to dance. Whether you want me to perform a solo or you want to join

me on the dance floor is entirely up to you. I would enjoy both, with preferrence to the latter given the current

situation.

Unfortunately, as per your request, my talk has to begin with explanation about headaches! Well, excluding

certain complicated causes of headaches like those due to pressure symptoms of a tumour or bleed inside the skull

or blockage of cerebro-spinal fluid (fluid which normally gives a cushion effect around the brain and spinal

cord) , I will talk about the common headaches shortly. For example, (1) Migraine headaches are due to a dialated

blood vessle in one part of the brain, occurs during stress, gives a throbbing one sided headache.Ibuprofen

decreases the action of 'mediators of inflammation', decreases that dialatation and your headache disappears with

the cause. (2) Sinus headache- due to heavy secretions in the sinuses of the head, say during an attach of cold.

You take an antihistamine/ decongestant. It decreases the natural allergic response/ decongestant decreases the

congestion and your headache disappears with the cause. I have given 2 simple examples. But, if you need more

knowledge about headaches, maybe you should meet up with me! (one can interpret this statement in many ways and I

know from your writing that you have good imagination). I also expect you to come up with more questions and

counter statements with my explaining only this much. If you do, I'll explain deeper in that direction. Headache

is a deep and vast topic.

Everything is reality - I will back it up with more explanation from my end. Well, you say the colour lime

green exists. For a blind man, it doesn't! So, does that mean the colour is not reality? or is it reality? 2

creations of the same God have totally different view points. Same way, a schizophrenic "sees things" which we

can't see. Maybe he's just a more evolved being with a sense of perception stronger than ours. But, since he's

not within the accepted norms of a vast majority of the society, he's admitted to the mental health unit and

treated until he stops perceiving things we don't see! Now, compare these two scenerios and tell me, isn't the

world being based on what the vast majority think- even though we have no proof that what someone sees or hears

is not reality? Whether something exists or something doesn't exist is not based on what a person with lower

perception thinks, not even on what a person with altered(?higher) perception thinks. The world today works on

what most people think is true, even if they are ordinary, just because they are majority. So, you cannot be sure

when you draw borders to reality. Hence, there are no borders to reality.

Everything we dream cannot be reality, because dreams are random ravings of a bored mind. But, a refined

version of a dream, called "envision",which is usually based on the ideal life one wants to lead at that given

point in life is what motivates a person to put efforts to make it into reality someday. There is a vast boundary

between dreams and beliefs. Belief is what you think is real. Dream is random - sometimes perfect, sometimes

erotic, sometimes scary, sometimes exhilarating.... Dream cannot even be compared to a belief at any given point.

About the earth and the sun... well.... whether earth goes around or the sun goes around, either ways, standing

as an earthling, you would see the same phenomenon of sun rise and sun set. If you were alive before Galileo, you

would have believed that the sun went around. After Galileo and some astronomy later, we have begun to believe

that the earth goes around. To me either ways it doesn't make a difference. I believe that the sun goes around

only because I was taught so in school. If some scientist comes up next and says that the church was right about

the earth being the center of the universe and that the sun goes around it , and pulls up some pictures and

theories to prove it, I don't think I'd be willing to go after it to disprove it. I'd simply accept and swallow

that too and make sure that my children(when I have them) wrote in their test whatever their text book had

printed. I have to earn my bread and butter either ways. Till date, how do you as a person know for sure that it

is actually the earth going around? For God sake's, that is a bit of knowledge you have been convinced to

believe! It is a belief. For you it is real because you believe in it. People in Andromeda galaxy may be laughing

at us because we believed everything wrong for the past few centuries just because a select group of people

called Galileo and his brood decided to spread the word!

Now, I would appreciate it more if you didn't fuel my side of the arguement by giving me total support thru

yours. In my example of a dead man and his family....if you say the man sees it all and the family sees half...

that might be total truth for all we know! But, which would you call reality in that case? Again .... according

to you now.... everything is reality. Whatever you say, remember that the world works on norms set by the

majority. If you sway too far, then you won't enjoy the fruits of what the support of a majority can offer you.

By the way, I have my own reasons for choosing to mention lime green, all of which I don't intend to make

public.

Your statement about extending reality towards an ideal situation is what is nomenclatured as "envisoning". It

is not yet reality. But, you can always make efforts towards making it reality. For example, the man on the beach

may 'envision' sating his type of 'hunger' through the girl just as the shark is doing it's bit of envisoning.

But, what becomes reality depends on who approaches her first and which way she runs!

Next, I would only say this much to back up my statement. Hunger cannot run the world, because hunger slows a

person down. Hunger needs fuel (food) . It is not a fuel in itself. Compare 2 countries. One with food (USA) and

one with hunger(Somalia). Which do you think is "running"? Do you still feel that "the world runs on hunger"??

Lemme know. Love is what keeps a person striving for life. If he didn't "love" himself or his woman or his

children, would he be willing to continue to fight life's challenges? What would he do that for?

At this point I am proud to note that you have stated that you don't want to differ from my thought in a

couple views. Thank you! Then, there is nothing left to argue about those points.

Here, I would like to say that I agree that when you take an untrodden path, people oppose it and show their

genuine concern through what you call as "good advise". But, 'second life' is certainly not an untrodden path. It

has obviously become a source of entertainment for millions across the world. Entertainment in any form doesn't

amount to work in the real world. We cannot compare Bill Gates's microsoft computer empire of the real world to

being successful in a computer game called 'second life'. Why? It's because Bill Gates churned out money in

trillions through his work. A business in SL gets you to invest. And no matter how much of a life time you put

into that business , you won't be getting the success of that one successful person, because there are millions

of people across the world who are doing the same thing as you. If you want to be that ONE successful person, you

have to be doing something which none of those millions are doing.

And, I'm sorry I cannot take your advise of smelling the CPU fan, because I'm terribly allergic to dust.

Buddy, I refuse to argue on a point which makes no sense to me. You cannot compare a business in the real world

to a business in a digitally created world. If a person plans to sell a floppy in the real world, I would

encourage him towards that rather than starting a dance club in second life. No personal offense intended. But,

in case the web site closes down someday, then all the investment of money, effort and time away from a girl

friend who loves you goes down the drain. In real world, atleast something is in your control and the rest is in

the hands of God. In second life, it's all under the mercy of that one person who runs that world. Honestly, I'd

rather be at the mercy of God than under the mercy of a fellow human being!

You've said "war is conflict of ideas, not necessarily a difference of perception". But an idea is a product

of perception. Two people perceive things differently, that leads to different ideas and that leads to conflict

and war. So, my statement is proved again.

To further reiterate my conclusion about either "everything is real.... or nothing is real", I have to steel a

thought from Dr.Deepak Chopra's book "ageless body, timeless mind". He explains pretty convincingly that there

are no borders to anything. That the whole universe is one continuous flow. You, and your computer are all one

continuous flow... look at your hand, imagine every cell in your hand. Look at the keyboard and imagine and every

atom that makes up the keyboard. Look at the nucleus and the space around it. If you keep thinking in terms of

smaller and smaller units which create every level of a being or creation, you'll finally end up with pure energy

only. Everything in this universe is purely energy....energy clustered in different ways. So, you are in

continuity with your laptop which is in continuity with the bed on which it is set, which is continuity with the

fair skinned woman in a lime green bikini who is lying on it.... Now, it's upto your mind to decide whether you

want to believe that there are borders between you and that woman or that you are one... it's up to you to dream,

envision or research on what is real and what is not...

I would never choose to rebutt against a person like you who is a 'master' , master of wording, master of writing

essays, master of such orderly thought process and master of things we may not have discussed here. This is just

my point of view which I am expressing until you want me to. Regards and due respects...
you know who..... do you?...."really"?

Sunil Goswami said...

Hi there stranger,

Not a bit, I am just a hack, I play with words and twist them to mean or appear to mean what I want, not at all an educated, well-informed person like you. So the honor, in fact, is mine to bandy words with you in persuance of the definition of something as elusive as reality.

I get the feeling that it'll be a worthwhile experience to watch you do a solo and I would not mind joining you on the dance floor either were it not for the fact that I am not a good dancer. As far as this argument goes, I think we are doing a pretty good job of imitating a nice tango complete with the attitude which is said to the whole essence of tango.

Let me make a general observation, as so often happens when you get too deep into an involved kind of topic, we have lost focus on our actual issue of debate. Allow me to reiterate and clarify.

The whole reason I wrote the original post was the advice from a well-wisher to "come back to reality". Now, if you say that everything is reality or nothing is reality then there can be no coming back to reality. So, I shall be obliged to ignore your comments that prove one of these extremes since they render the advice "to get back to reality" semantically null and void.

I am indebted to you for the useful information about headache and the cure, I stand corrected. In view of this latest information I'd like to strike from record my original comment about the tablet and let my comments about anaesthesia stand alone to support that point.

Your point about dreams brings to my mind a couple of extremely beautiful lines by Faani Budayuni about life, he says,
"Ek mu_amma hai samajh_ne ka na sam_jhaane ka,
Zindagi kaahe ko hai, khwaab hai deewaane ka."

Meaning: It is an enigma, not to be understood or explained. Why call it life, when it is the raving dream of a psychotic.

The thoughts of a psychotic are pretty chaotic and I believe they don't follow a set or rational pattern, the same thing is true of dreams where things usually go randomly without limitations or rules. So when you combine both, the dream of a psyhotic, the degree of randomness is unimaginable. That's what he calls, life, our reality.
But what convinces you my dear that we are not part of a dream, may be not human but part of the dream of a being called God, or Maya?

The Earth going around the Sun is not a personal belief but a belief propogated by society, your so-called majority. Anyone daring to challenge it will be considered crazy in today's times just as Galileo was called in his time to say it. Isn't most of your 'reality' or 'real life' based on such principles and rules which are nothing but beliefs commonly accepted and imposed by society?

It would be a lie to say that I am not intrigued by your choice of lime green now, but I will refrain from prying. :)

Love/hunger. So you mean to say that there is a shortage of loving, caring people in Somalia? If love made the world go around than I think we have that kind of people everywhere, don't we? No, my dear, it may not be very romantic but if man didn't have hunger in his stomach he would not get off his butt to work, which in turn leads to everything else, the tendency to possess and collect, to socialize, to respect others....everything. More on that later.

Loving oneself here I'd keep separate from loving another, but yes, you can find enough examples in today's world where people go on with their lives, sometimes their miserable, meaningless life even when they have noone to love or care for. I would be completely content loving myself, just lying on my back were it not for the two basic needs of life - food and sex. Yes, sex, not love!


But I digress!

Again, on Deepak Chopra, if all the universe is one flow, then there's no going out of and coming back to reality,is there?

Oh, I wish there was this girl in bikini on my bed just so I could take a break from things.

War is not always a difference in perception, it's not what they see that is different but what they want.

Ok, now I come to the gist of the whole discussion. From your arguments two things predominantly come to the fore - one, that reality is defined by the majority of the society, and two, that Second Life a waste of time and effort. I will address both one by one.

I agree with you that reality or real life is defined by society and I will also agree with you about some people having a 'vision'. Actually there's nothing to agree there as we have both said that same thing in our previous arguments.

Now, I ask you, is the vision of a person always something that's accepted by the majority? Ultimately, yes. But at that time no. And yet these people, these leaders persist in their vision and prove themselves and their idea against the majority's pre-conceived beliefs. so, just because something, now, is not part of the society's reality, doesn't make it unreal.

Let's talk about second life now. I have to admit that your arguments which originate from your complete ignorance of SL infuriate and amuse me at the same time. I would again implore you to first research and then you might be able to argue in a more informed fashion. But here I'll respond to your arguments simply in order to get a sadistic pleasure of taking your arguments to pieces.


"Buddy, I refuse to argue on a point which makes no sense to me."
You are absolutely right, you should first find out more, and then argue about it when it makes sense to you. I can talk about the so-called real life and Second Life because I have seen both. You should be able to say the same.

"You cannot compare a business in the real world to a business in a digitally created world."
Why not? On what do you base your rule that I can't make this comparison?

"If a person plans to sell a floppy in the real world, I would encourage him towards that"
You would encourage him now, in today's time, but when he was the first person to sell a floppy or a few programs on a floppy you would be among the first few people to tell him that he's stupid. Time makes the difference. And the person who can grasp that idea before the whole society accepts it as a rule is called a leader.

But don't worry you are in good company, very good company. Let me share some thoughts from well-known, and "successful" people who thought like you.

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"Internet is a fad, it'll pass!"
- Bill Gates, 1993

Visionaries in reverse it seems.

I'd rather have a thousand bad ideas and follow them to their bitter end than follow in the tracks of the tried and accepted.

I'd like to share my personal philosophy in the form of this quote,

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Don't worry about personal offense, when I take an action I make sure I am able to justify it at least to myself. Just as I am entitled to my opinion you are to yours. I welcome your criticism and analysis openly. Please feel free.

"Honestly, I'd rather be at the mercy of God than under the mercy of a fellow human being!"

Are you sure? Are you really sure? I think these are just words and you don't follow them in real life. You can't. Nobody can. Allow me to illustrate.

When you are traveling in a bus, train or plane, are you not at the mercy of a single or maybe a few, fellow human beings? When you start a real-world business are you not at the mercy of the goverment to not change the laws so you won't lose everything you have? Or your suppliers? Or your employees? The doorman of your society? The mechanic of your car? Each and everyone of them is in a position to hurt you or cause to hurt you, financially or physically, in some cases fatally. It is very much in the power of a pilot to the plunge the plane down into the ground killing everyone aboard. You, I, we all are at the mercy of our fellow men almost constantly. Yet, we are comfortable in that because we expect them to behave as per the rational, acceptable manner of a sane person. We place that trust in them, implicitly.

The residents of SL place the same trust in the creator of the digital world and the company that manages it.

"in case the web site closes down someday, then all the investment of money, effort and time away from a girl friend who loves you goes down the drain."

There is currently no girlfriend in my sad, lonely life, but I get your point, the risk. How many businesses do you know in your "real" life where there is no risk of loss or closure? What is the risk-reward ratio? How do you know that the risk-reward ratio of a SL business is not better than a RL business? I can prove it. Can you prove otherwise?

It sounds almost like Dettol, "Because it hurts, it must be effective and vice versa.". Similarly, you are arguing that just because something is fun it can't be profitable. Are you sure you are not stuck in pre-conceived, society-induced track?

So you like Bill Gates but you respect him for having earned Trillions of dollars, I respect for doing what he did at at time when people called him an idiot for doing it.

Just because someone calls me an idiot doesn't mean that I am a genius, but just because someone calls me an idiot doesn't mean that I am an idiot. Even if that someone is the majority of the society.

"Entertainment in any form doesn't amount to work in the real world."

Hmmm, this single line shows that you have a lot to learn in this particular area. Oh god, so many points, so many things to mention. Ok, I can't type it all, just one single point. What is real world work? Why do I have to do real world work? It all hinges on money doesn't it? If a girl is dancing in a club, in real life, and earning 3000USD per month is that real work? If a girl is dancing in an SL club, in a digital world, as a digital avatar, and earning the same amount of USD, is that real work? What's wrong with the second one?

"We cannot compare Bill Gates's microsoft computer empire of the real world to being successful in a computer game called 'second life'."
I am sure there were a lot of people when Bill was writing out programs for the PC who would have said that they can't compare Bill's earnings to anyone else's who have a "real job". Even today there are a number of people who earn just as much as they would from a real-world job but still get goaded by their parents or friends to get a "real job".

"Why? It's because Bill Gates churned out money in trillions through his work."
There are thousands of businessmen in the world who have not made Trillions but are considered successful by the society, in Bill's line of work and others. Trillions is not a criterion and Bill's work is not the only work.

"A business in SL gets you to invest."
I think almost all businesses get you to invest. How is that a bad thing?

"And no matter how much of a life time you put into that business , you won't be getting the success of that one successful person,"
Why do I have to get the success of that one person? Can't I earn my own comfortable, sizable income and be happy? Or build upon it and create my own empire? And what makes you so sure I won't?

" because there are millions of people across the world who are doing the same thing as you. If you want to be that ONE successful person, you have to be doing something which none of those millions are doing."

There are millions of people around the world running software companies, would you give this same advice to anyone who starts a new software company also? Because there are already people in the field means that there is no more potential in that field? I failed economics in college but even I think that's not the right conclusion.

Now it should actually meet your approval because there are so many people doing it, that it's kind of an accepted idea and not the novel kind of thing that you find unpalettable.

If I seem a bit harsh or too brisk in these arguments that is because your advice goes against everything that I believe in - risk-taking, bold enterprise, exploring the unknown, loving the novel ideas and having fun in what I do.


I would not call myself a master of such skills but I am grateful for your kind words. But feel free to come back with your arguments as many times as you like, my sword is not sheathed yet. :), or maybe I should say, my dancing foot is still on the floor.

Anonymous said...

Hi, Guys
I like your debate.
Actually what Sunil is saying I got understand exactly. But the comments of the girl made me feel boring. I don't know why? perhaps becuz of my hand tight in english or..? Nevermind the one thing I got to know that is we need to research more on reality. That's a good point for anyone to research on.