RANDOM OPUS

RANDOM
OPUS
- Random Guy

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Introduction
You could say that this is a philosophical work pretending
to be a short story - but it makes no such claim. This
format merely seems useful to illuminate the processes
that led to some of my beliefs. Further, the process of
searching for answers is often more valuable than any
concrete conclusions in such matters, primarily because
going through the process enables us to examine and thus
change our mindset as we desire, whereas just being
handed conclusions means that we look at those
conclusions along the same lines of thought that we are
otherwise used to. Thus, those conclusions are not so
valuable by themselves.

Another thing that needs to be addressed here is the

reason for writing this book: it is not because I have gained
definitive insights into the issues I examine. Rather, my
ideas keep changing - another reason why the format of
the book is like this: sometimes going over the arguments
made me reconsider my own opinions. However, most
likely my ideas will never really crystallize - this is not
something I fear but rather something I embrace, as I
would want the later parts of my life to mean as much to
me as its first parts. So my ideas will likely never
crystallize, but finding myself to be fundamentally
interconnected with other people and other entities in the
fabric of life it would be a waste to spend all my life thinking

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about certain issues without sharing my thoughts with

others. Sharing my thoughts with others will hopefully do at
least one of two things: 1) Draw their attention to these as
issues worth looking at, and 2) Give them inputs for their
own thoughts on these issues. In any case, suppose I were
to find answers to these that I found to be definitive. Then
one of two things could happen:

1) I could be wrong, in which case to insist on the finality of

my answers would only be to make a fool of myself.
2) I could be right. Here again, two things could happen:
i) My claim to definitive answers, though justified, would
not be accepted. I would not want to put myself through
this.
ii) My claim would be justified and would also be
accepted. This would possibly lead to fanatical thinking
among those who accept my ideas, what with always being
in the right – which would be undesirable. In any case, I
seriously doubt that most people would be inclined to
understand the claims of one who would make such a
justified claim. In practice, they would interpret the claims
according to their own whims and wishes, so that even if
my claims were to always be right about the subjects of
these respective claims, other people would still almost
always be in the wrong about my claims.

Because of these factors, while I see no harm in pursuing

definitive answers as I want on my own, I don't think I
would share such definitive answers with other people
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even if I found them. On the other hand, I firmly believe

that since we are all interconnected I must share with
others whatever insights I may have on issues that have
occupied me for long periods of time. Additionally, I
personally feel that at this point in time I finally have
something that approaches a coherent worldview.

This, along with the fact that coming up with this coherent
worldview involved coming up with certain non-trivial ideas
and perspectives that may not be familiar to most people,
leads me to believe that I should share these views and
the processes behind these with others. Merely talking to
people or posting on various boards gives a fragmented
view of these views, and makes it hard to explain how they
were arrived at and how they all fit together. Hence, I found
it worthwhile to try and express my views on these subjects
and the process behind arriving at them all together, where
they can be examined in their totality.

One obvious way to do that seems to by putting it all

together in a book. I do not expect many people to read or
to appreciate it. This is largely because that is the fate of
most books, but also in part due to the fact that if you look
at my favorites amongst books that address such
questions and were written after the invention of the
printing press – almost all of them were poorly received, at
least to begin with. However, even if only one person finds
this useful to develop their own perspectives on life, and
even if that too happens only after I am already dead, it is
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better than if I had simply taken these thoughts with me to

the grave instead of sharing them with other people.

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Table of Contents

i Introduction 3
ii Table of Contents 7

1 Prologue 11
2 The Living World 15
3 Ideas of Mathematics 22
4 Essentials 26
5 Laws of Nature 35
6 Judge Thyself 37
7 What the Body Wants 41
8 Compassion 43
9 Selfishness 45
10 Emotions snd Identity 47
11 Ego 50
12 Cessation 55
13 Peaks and Plateaus 58
14 Kins and Katas 64
15 Will 71
16 Metaphor 74

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17 True Fanatic 78
18 Mystics 83
19 Fraudmen 86
20 God 88
21 Opposites 91
22 Logic 94
23 Magic 96
24 Technology 101
25 Negative Statements 104
26 Categorical Imperative 109
27 Means and Ends 115
28 Trust 122
29 Courage 123
30 Competition 127
31 Sacred 128
32 Desert 130
33 Greatness 137
34 Heart of Sword 140
35 Plan Management 143
36 Tribalism 150
37 Pacifism 152

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38 Non-Violence 154
39 War 157
40 Likeness 160
41 Assumptions 166
42 Immortality 169
43 Growing Up 171
44 Division of Labor 175
45 Politics of Panacea 179
46 Government 181
47 Equality 183
48 Leniency and Uniformity 190
49 Globalization 194
50 Future Generations 197
51 Epilogue 201
52 Appendix: Witticism 203

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Prologue

It is said that when a man dies, his past life flashes before
his eyes. But what if he is also the last of his kind? Is it not
fitting that the past life of his culture appear to him?

King Abos of the Marahi Civilization, third of that name,

son of the great King Ados - that is how he had been
known. His father, having conquered almost the whole of
the continent, had nevertheless passed away before he
could consolidate his power. This left Abos with a heavy
responsibility to fulfill at the tender age of fifteen. But he
had ably managed his responsibilities, not only
consolidating the kingdom but also conquering the small
tribes that had successfully resisted his father. The next
forty years saw him becoming the longest-serving monarch
in living memory, and that stability in addition to his able
governance meant that the Marahis were soon living in an
era of untold peace and prosperity, one that their ancestors
couldn't even have dreamed of.

But with success comes arrogance, and Abos did not

hesitate to encourage enterprising Marahis to explore out
to the seas. When they came back with news of other
continents and other civilizations who had yet to learn of
ships, he thought to annex them into his kingdom. But
simply because they did not know much about the sea did
not mean that they lacked weapons - they commandeered
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the very ships that had attacked them and forced the
navigators to lead them back to the Marahis. Abos had
neither expected nor prepared for this, and while he tried
very hard to put up some resistance it was a swift loss - not
only did the enemy have the benefit of surprise, they had
lived in a state of continual war for millennia which had led
to far superior firepower on their side.

Abos had believed himself divinely preordained to always

be a victor, so he kept encouraging his troops while laying
tactical plans from the central location of his castle. All
across his kingdom, his loyal Marahi soldiers were falling
by the numbers. But he always believed that this would
merely highlight his skill when victory finally came. Thus,
when the marauding hordes of Rabranias made their way
to his castle, he led his forces up to meet them - which is
when he saw heavy artillery in use for the first time (it had
not yet been invented by the Marahis).

Once he understood how thoroughly they were

outmatched, his confidence gave way to an understanding
of the stark realities of life. Immediately leaving his post, he
fled from his attackers and from his beloved palace as far
as possible. Watching their beloved king flee like an insect
fleeing a thunderstorm broke what spirit the Marahi armies
had left, and soon they surrendered without any further
resistance. The Rabranias, taking advantage of their heavy
machinery, cleansed most of the continent of human life.
Abos proved unexpectedly good at running away, but he
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who had been used to the luxuries of palace life could not
survive long when hunted like a dog. What's more, his
craven display of cowardliness meant that his beloved
former subjects now despised him, and joined the
Rabranias in hunting him down. When they finally found
him and turned him over to the authorities, he was
regarded as no more than a common criminal. Of course,
this did not redeem the Marahis in the eyes of their
captors. Only a few hundred of them were spared, and
they were all imprisoned along with Abos as proof of what
happened to those who resisted the Rabranias.

With the naval technology they had just discovered, and

using the example of the Marahis in addition to their
firepower - they were able to attack and subjugate all the
continents. This took thirty years, and in that time the
imprisoned Marahis kept dying until at the end only Abos,
category 3 slave, was left. They all died cursing Abos,
spitting at him for being a coward who had betrayed their
hopes and aspirations, and for promoting the sea
expeditions that led to their downfall. At this point he was
no longer of any use to the Rabranias, who had renamed
themselves „Rexans', meaning simply 'rulers'. Thus, being
useless, Abos was deemed a waste of state resources. So
at eighty-five years of age, he was kicked out of the prison
into the Seba desert, and told to live on if he could. In an
hour he had realized that he would die that day, and in five
hours he was being proven right. With no food and water,
and with no way to acquire either, he passed out...
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He passed out, and started started dreaming of forgotten

people in forgotten places that he had never seen but
recognized. They spoke in forgotten tongues that he could
nevertheless understand, spoke of things he had not
bothered with earlier...

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The Living World

His first dream, like most that would follow, involved two
friends walking down the streets in a lost city of another
world. They looked otherwise happy but bored, and were
curing their boredom by indulging in petty arguments:

"Lately I have been wondering about the kinds of things

that interest you, Raj - and I have been particularly struck
by a particular question: We know that certain things in the
universe are alive, and that some are not. But I have not
yet found any good criteria to distinguish among them
other than my own prejudices. Where does life begin and
where does the lifeless end? Where does death begin, and
where does life end? Have you given any thought to these
questions?"

"These are difficult questions. For millennia, people have

tried to hold on to the view that they are special, being the
only kind of entity to have a life, a 'soul' so to speak - spirits
in a material world. But this approach led to various difficult
problems. For one, how does the distinctly immaterial soul
keep interacting with the material world? When does life
begin? When does life end? Even after arguing for
millennia, people were not able to reach a firm consensus
regarding when and where it began or ended. The reason
given for this was that consciousness is inherently a
subjective affair, while only objective things can be
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objectively observed. However, while this gives us a good

reason why we can think of ourselves as having
consciousness, it does a far worse job of explaining how
we can be sure that rocks, air, fire too don't have their own
form of consciousness. Eventually, it was decided that we
had too long been thinking of a null hypothesis where the
whole world was purely material, and trying to explain why
and how consciousness in the form of human beings could
appear in this inherently non-conscious world. However,
since we can be far more sure of our own consciousness
than of the non-consciousness of the external world, the
real null hypothesis, the simplest explanation for the issue
at hand, is to assume that all things, if not conscious, at
least had the seed of consciousness in them. What's left
now, is to explain how it is that some things don't appear to
have consciousness. The answer to that is, of course, that
we attribute consciousness, as we understand, to things in
accordance with how similar they seem to us. For
example, even human beings have been considered to
lack souls at various times depending on whether they are
of a different race, skin color, build, and what not. Now that
we understand the judgment of things to have
consciousness or not, as no different from a mere
judgment of how essentially similar they are to us - it
becomes easier to see how we developed the notion of
'consciousness' as having recently arisen in an essentially
'non-conscious' world. After all, for eons before people like
us came to exist, the universe was a patently alien place,
with ways and means of organization that utterly differ from
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our own - at least on the surface. Like anything else,

humanity is no more than a flicker in the vast darkness of
eternity. And so it is, that like just about any other group of
entities that has developed intelligence to the level where it
can ask such questions, we consider the idea of
consciousness as being restricted to us - restricted from
things that don't think, things that do think but don't ask
such questions, and things that ask such questions but are
too different from us for us to understand that they too can
ask and answer questions."

"I see."

"Now, we can understand that without any evidence to the

contrary it is reasonable to assume that all things have
consciousness or at least the seed of it. But what is the
nature of this consciousness? If we regard it as something
that permeates everything and is part of everything, is it
then like matter? We have begun to see that matter
seemingly has certain properties which do not seem to
apply to consciousness. For one, the notions of space,
time and identity seem to apply to nature. That is to say: it
seems that two things cannot be at the same place at the
same time - at least in the sense that there are elementary
particles of which two cannot be at the same place at the
same time. Also, one thing cannot be at two places at the
same time. But if we do admit the existence of differences
in consciousness on the basis of thoughts or some such
thing, then at least in the case of multiple personalities or
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of possession, it is indeed possible for two „consciousness‟

entities to be in the same place at the same time. Also, if
someone is for example running a vehicle through remote
control, it is possible that through practice, he becomes as
proficient at it as in using his own body, and thus comes to
think of it as part of his self. He may begin to feel that he is
projecting his own self to the vehicle, even as his own body
sits some place far away from the vehicle, and is also his
self. If this seems unconvincing, let us not forget that the
idea that his self is attached to his body is also based on
the sense of agency he feels from it, in the same way as
for the vehicle. So if the idea that his self has somehow
become projected in the vehicle is unconvincing, the idea
that his self was in his body to begin with is not any less
so. These things seem to indicate that the notions of
space, time, and identity do not apply to consciousness in
the same way as they do to material things."

"I see, this seems to show the will as coexisting with,

interacting with, but yet distinct from the material world"

"This is what we thought at first. But there are certain

complications to this. To begin with, it turns out that in a
way, material particles can exist in two places at once.
Also, two macroscopic material objects can be made to
coincide for all practical purposes, even if the same cannot
be done with microscopic particles. This is no less than the
notion that two macroscopic conscious entities can
coexist"
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"But then again, this does give us a hint of the difference -

at least there do exist microscopic physical entities. The
notion of microscopic consciousnesses is absurd - except
if you allow for the existence of individual souls."

"The problem with the notion of individual souls is that

there is no way to distinguish them by objective methods.
With a physical elementary particle, you can try to trace its
trajectory through time and space, to find something
continuous. But such a thing cannot be done with
consciousness. Is someone who slips into a coma or loses
past memory the same as the person before the incident?
If so, is a body after death also the same consciousness as
the body before death? If so, then at what point in its decay
and decomposition or alternately during its combustion
does it cease to be so? If a body gets burned and the
ashes are spread over the world, whereby they slowly slip
into the food of various organisms and thus reappear at
various points in the food chain simultaneously, then would
you say that the old consciousness is now spread diffusely
over many organisms? If so, then your notion of atomicity
seems to have gone bust. If not, then at what point did the
dead body which was the same consciousness as the live
body, cease to be so?"

"Of course, such arguments can - and do - get made about

the identity and existence of material elementary particles,
given that they too spend their time getting created and
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destroyed."

"Yes - and like this, as people kept finding out more and
more weird properties of consciousness as opposed to the
material world, they found the material world only too
willing to step up and match said weirdness. Thus, in the
end, they were forced to conclude that the conscious
world, far from being a compatriot of the material world,
was merely another aspect of it - just as waves and
particles were aspects of it. This notion of one thing having
many aspects was earlier supposed to be restricted to
mathematics before the real world jumped on the
bandwagon - but then, this has always been the case. The
revelation of the living world, and later on the revelation of
one thing with many aspects not being an aspect merely of
mathematics or of physics, but of all realms of human
thought, later on led to the birth of mercenaries whose
prime purpose was to find the aspect of any given scenario
that was most beneficial for their employers - but that is
another story."

"All right, I am not interested in all those aspects of your

history. Just tell me one thing - if that is your theory of
consciousness, then what do you think happens when we
die?"

"Ideally, 'you' cease to exist as the person you imagine

yourself to be - primarily because the memories associated
with this identity get eliminated along with the body. But the
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consciousness that resides in you, that feels it to be you,

that you are afraid will die - that cannot and will not die. It is
a somewhat diffuse entity, and thought itself to be various
other things even as it thought itself to be you. With your
death, it will start many new, fresh lives. It may not retain
any memory of being you, but it still is you."

"What, then, of people who have been shown to have past

life experiences?"

"Yes, these people - like ghosts, and apparitions - are all

unfortunate cases. You see, sometimes the identity of
being a particular entity do not cease to be, and the
memories of being a certain person continue long after
they would normally end. This makes the will dwell on the
past and only leads to its getting bogged down, weighed by
the past. A life of infinite terror and weariness is far worse
than one of death and regeneration. These unfortunate
cases happen when the issues in that life failed to get
resolved to any extent. We should help them get rest, for
they are not only the same as us - they are exactly us."

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Ideas of Mathematics

In his second dream, Abos again had the misfortune of

going through the banter of two people talking to each
other in lost lands. The terrain had changed here, but it
would keep changing in all his dreams - as would the
speakers. Describing all of the locales and the people will
merely distract and annoy you, so I will let the speakers
speak for themselves:

"Isn't it great that the world is neatly ordered by

mathematical laws? How would it be for us to live in a
world with no mathematical laws? I can answer that
question: it would be horrible. We would have no control on
our actions, because any action could turn out either way.
Acting without being able to act for any purpose is the
same as not being able to act at all, because the purpose
of any action is not merely to effect changes on our own
body but to effect changes in the wider world through its
use."

"Considering that is largely how we look at social life even

now - with the consequences of actions being
unpredictable - I doubt it would involve anything more than
intelligent guesswork."

"But even the ability to make intelligent guesses assumes

some kind of mathematical structure to the world -
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probabilistic if not deterministic - does it not?"

"I guess I do agree with you there. However, it's a fact that
even if we lived in a world that had no mathematical
structure, or the structure was of a form that was wholly
incomprehensible to us, we would still try to impose on it
structures similar to the ones we employ in this world. If we
did not do that, it would not be us human beings that you
would be talking about here. In other words, the nature of
mathematical ideas we have - about our world and
otherwise, are fundamentally part of our selves. They
make us what we are. So as long as we are talking about
us, no matter what kind of world we lived in we would have
had such ideas, mathematical or otherwise. In other words,
the fact that we have those ideas in no way implies that
those ideas are inherent in the world, only that they are
inherent in our own minds."

"You could say that, but is it not also true that in the world
we actually do inhabit, these ideas have driven
technological progress? That those societies who have
investigated and have worked on these ideas have had a
clear advantage over those who have not done so - both in
warfare and in everyday peaceful life? Does this not
contradict your notion of mathematical ideas merely
existing in our own head?"

"Mathematical ideas do exist in our own head, and this is

borne out by the large amount of work people are willing to
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do on mathematical ideas that seem to have nothing to do

with 'real life'. But, in spite of coming from our own head
these are also part of the structure of the 'real world' that
we live in - as can be seen from all the examples of people
working out abstract ideas in their head, certain that while
they had done something clever it could not be used to kill
people... only for someone, a few years later, to discover a
way to use those discoveries in utterly pragmatic, terrifying
ways. In my opinion, this reflection of mathematical ideas
from our mind to the real world is an indication of the
interconnectedness of all things. What this means is that
we live in the world where mathematical ideas from our
minds make sense. One of the reasons for this is that if we
had lived in a world where we had not belonged, we would
probably have simply have died out - what with finding
patterns that do not exist yet create misleading
expectations. The ability to die where we don't fit in leads
to our existing only where we do fit in. This is why I believe
that even in the case of social and political ideas, after
discovering what our true nature regarding these is, we
should stay true to our nature instead of molding our
fundamental goals and aspirations to the external world: if
we can live in the world being true to ourselves, that is well
and good. But if we cannot, there is no harm in dying
rather than living on perforce in a life of suffering. This
interconnectedness also means that there is no
fundamental disparity between seeking self-knowledge and
knowledge of the world. For example, the act of learning
mathematics can be done for the sake of self-knowledge,
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but in some sense it also gives us knowledge of the world

that we inhabit."

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Essentials

More people, more locations:

"Don't you think that far too many people use words in a
confusing manner? Wouldn't we all be better off with rules
and regulations regarding the correct usage and meaning
of words? I am not talking here of legal rules, but it should
be easy to make programs to dictate what the correct
meanings of words and phrases are. With us being able to
pin down the precise meaning of language, it should be
easy to encourage people to say what they mean and
mean what they say."

" Stop right there. I know what way this is going, and have
very strong views on this and on related subjects. So from
now onwards, let me speak - I will speak and you listen:

To begin with. words do not have meaning in themselves;

what meaning they have is with respect to their context.
The context has everything to do with the one who said it
and the listener. Rather than an expression of general
truths, the purpose of words in general is similar to any
other action caused by the actor (the speaker) on the one
being acted upon (the listener here). Words distinguish
themselves by the variety of effects they can have on the
listener, even when the actions of the speaker remain the
same. This is because they have the potential to appeal to
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higher faculties of intellect and feeling, due to which a book

can mean various different things to various different
people depending on their own experiences and faculties.
But merely because you listen to something that can
appeal to the highest faculties of understanding does not
mean that such an appeal automatically gets made.
Indeed, accumulation of learning can often lead to a false
sense of complacency in someone who was originally
looking not merely for information by itself, but rather for an
understanding regarding what that information means and
implies.

Although words need not necessarily be mere

representations of facts, it does not mean that someone
who relies on words primarily for the representation of facts
is a fool. Rather, when a tool that can be used for any form
of political agenda is instead used to cooperate with others
in the search for understanding (rather than to seek
privileges for those like oneself - or to otherwise make
fools of listeners), we can only say that words are being
put to better use than where they are being used for mere
politics. However, we need to realize that it is the use of
words to gain understanding that is awesome, not words in
themselves. Not only can words be pointless when
indulged in for their own sake and not for any kind of
understanding, they can be positively harmful in the hands
of those who see words merely as a device to further their
political aims. This is not to say that we need to stop such
people from using words (after all, it may cause less loss of
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life to fight with words rather than with guns, and even
crooked words offer some understanding of the speaker
and perhaps even the subject to a discerning listener),
rather that we need to consider words critically,
understanding that proficient use of words may merely
denote a lot of lies and politics to sift through, rather than a
lot of understanding to make use of."

"Even if I did accept this, wouldn't it be strange that words

are only meaningful as means to the end of gaining more
understanding while other concepts like numbers are
meaningful in themselves? Why should words be special in
this regard?"

"Who said that words are special in this regard? Other

mental concepts like numbers are also similar to these,
although they may not be identical. For instance, we may
think that numbers, objects, etc. 'exist' in some sense
which would mean, for example, that any alien civilization
we may come across would definitely have these concepts
and in a similar way to us. But this cannot be regarded as
being strictly true. Although there is no doubt that when
one conceives of, say, numbers 2, 4 and operation on
them + as we do, then 2 + 2 will always equal 4, it is highly
doubtful that a system of thought which is as effective as
our our own (mathematics-based) systems in dealing with
the world and largely in the same way, must necessarily
have the concept of numbers. I would describe it by saying
that numbers are not fundamental to the external world.
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For instance, when we come across a bunch of say 24

grapes, instead of considering them as being 24 grapes,
we could also consider them as being just one thing (a
bundle) or a collection of an extremely large number of
atoms. Here again any given atom is not indisputably part
of the bunch or not: there is a certain hazy boundary where
we will have difficulty in deciding whether or not to allocate
a given atom to the bundle. This haziness also, of course,
puts the notion of identity into doubt: we not only have
difficulty in talking about the 'one bundle' just as we had
difficulty in talking of the 'collection of x atoms', we also
have difficulty in talking of the '24 grapes', because we are
not longer able to talk of even a single grape. Because of
this, we must conclude that numbers are not something
inherent to the world that we forcibly accept due to living in
it, it is rather a feature of our mental organization of the
world as a collection of objects. Once we settle on one of
the many ways in which we can classify our combined
sensory experiences into objects, the fact that we are
mapping a very vast class of 'all possible combinations of
sense experiences' into a rather smaller class of 'objects
as defined by us' means that we can have multiple
instances of any given class of object. It would be
inefficient to classify groups of similar objects into just 'one
object' or 'many objects', so we have the notion of
numbers.

This is not to say that numbers are an illusion or that

objects are an illusion. If they are abstractions, they are
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very useful abstractions. They have helped us a lot, and

certainly provide a very good model of the world. However,
the point remains that there is no way to be sure that the
same level of practical utility could not be achieved by say
a species of aliens who were unable to conceive of
numbers, by using some other form of abstraction. Simply
because we cannot conceive of it does not mean that it
cannot happen. I see no way to prove that it cannot
happen. Also, the fact that all numbers, even 1, are merely
useful constructs in our own head, and utterly depend on
the classification we use on objects, mean that without
such rules for classification, numbers are void of meaning.

For instance, we say that there is one sun for the earth.
But if we say that a sun is 'something the earth revolves
around', or even that 'it is a self-luminous ball of largely
hydrogen in space around which the earth revolves', we
could say that the earth has not just one, but many suns.
This can be done like this: take the sun as we know it, and
divide it into smaller sub-balls. This will leave some
residue, but that will be as inconsequential to us as is the
fact that according to our current objects, the earth is
pulled by the gravity of not just the sun, but of myriad other
heavenly bodies too. Alternately, we could keep
subdividing them into a practically infinite number of mini-
suns. According to that we would say that we revolve
around many suns. You could object that only one of them
would hold the center of gravity that the earth revolves
around, but by that logic even in binary star systems, only
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one of the stars - at most - would generally have the center

of gravity that any given planet would revolve around. So
we ignore that objection.

Similarly, the question of whether there is none, one, many

or infinite Gods would be unanswerable as while for any
given description of the term 'God' it may be simple
enough to decide whether or not the answer is 'none', if we
are able to decide that 'none' is not the answer then we
must be able to form a concept of 'God' as an entity. As
soon as we do that, our initial argument of how any entity
we can conceive of can be described as being one, many
or infinite again comes into play and we are unable to
choose between the alternatives. We may be able to
conceive of any particular attribute of God, but not the
entire concept of „God‟, as being completely describable.
Thus the concept of monotheism truly arose not in the
notion that 'God is One', but from the notion that 'God may
be One, Many or Innumerable - but we are One and we
are the Chosen of God'. Similarly, other notions of
monotheism have as a starting point that God who created
the Heavens and the Earth, also dictated some books
truthfully and is alone worthy of being worshiped. Both
these concepts give a certain attribute of God - whether
declaring certain people as His Chosen Ones and
providing supernatural assistance to them, or Creating the
World - and say that only those who satisfy given criteria
deserve worship. None of these is incompatible with the
notion that since God cannot even be completely
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 RANDOM OPUS

conceived of, it is futile to number God even as one - for if

God is one, then what is the many?

Similarly, the same question can be asked of the entirety of

existence - if it is one, then what is the many?

What I am trying to say here is that when we come across

a concept or a word that aims to describe something
transcendent, utterly encompassing our whole existence,
and too profound to lend itself to full comprehension by us
- at those times, the notion of numbers - the attempt to
classify that concept using numbers - becomes a void and
futile quest.

We have already seen how it is futile to argue whether

'God' or 'The Totality of Existence' is one, many or infinite.
Similarly there is one more thing which is so vast, profound
and transcendent that it is futile to try to put numbers to it.
By this I mean: 'The Totality of Consciousness'.

Since we have already seen how the classification into

objects is devoid of any inherent objective reality, and is
rather a convenient abstraction for own minds, it also
follows that the classification into various sentient and non-
sentient beings is also merely a convenient abstraction. To
begin with, the classification into sentient versus non-
sentient entities is itself without any basis. We do have
grounds for believing in our own sentience, but we have no
more cause for belief in the non-sentience of tables and
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 RANDOM OPUS

chairs, for instance, than the fact that they seem different
to us. However, this same logic has been used in the past
to deny the consciousness of other races, and even later
on to deny the consciousness of animals and plants. We
have outgrown all that, so maybe in due course of time we
will also outgrow the notion that certain entities like tables
and chairs have not even the seeds of consciousness. In
due course of time, we will no doubt come to see that all
things have consciousness, albeit to varying degrees.
Once we see that consciousness flows through all, we can
also see that the division of this consciousness into a
number of different conscious entities is purely arbitrary.
For instance, just as we can talk of a living human being,
we can also talk of the living cells, the living organs - even
the living liver - of that human being. Further, just as living
humans beings can be seen as being constituted of living
cells, we can also see human beings as the living cells of
larger living entities like nations, sects and corporations.
They too behave like we would expect living organisms to
behave, except that just as it is hard for us too see living
cells as living because the scale of consciousness is so
different, this difference in scale also prevents us from
properly seeing nations etc. as living entities. However, it
does make sense to see them as living entities.

In short, the classification of consciousness into various

separate living entities is just a special case of the
classification of our sensory experience into separate
objects. I could say that in the end, all consciousness, just
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 RANDOM OPUS

like all material reality, is one - but that is just as arbitrary

as saying that they are both many or infinite. Thus, I will
only say that 'Consciousness' is something to which
numbers don't apply in any meaningful sense, just like
'God' or 'The Totality Of All Material Experience'."

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 RANDOM OPUS

Laws of Nature

"I have said earlier that I don't think there is much evidence
for commonly-held notions of God, and in general it is
meaningless to even try to phrase questions about God,
including existence and number. However, similar
arguments can be made regarding the presence of
physical laws. Whichever laws we come up with seem to
have their own limitations, and it is possible that it is
beyond us to find a concise, coherent set of physical laws
that fully explains all physical phenomena. Also, while the
fact that we can and do try to use the experimental method
to try to disprove a theory may be taken as some sort of
justification for holding on to a particular theory (rather than
others) until it is disproved, it cannot be a justification for
belief in the notion that 'physical laws exist'. This
proposition is something that does not lend itself to
refutation by experiment. Experiments can only refute
specific laws that lay claim to being genuine physical laws.
However, refuting any number of theories that claim to give
us genuine physical laws does not automatically refute the
notion that 'physical laws exist'. Thus, belief in specific
physical laws may be a result of the state of scientific
progress - that in turn is arrived at by using the
experimental method. But the belief that such laws exist in
the first place, rather than the universe being essentially an
arbitrary place that only coincidentally appears to have
causality and laws regulating it built in - this belief in an
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 RANDOM OPUS

ordered, lawful universe is essentially the result of blind

faith. We could say it is something that is innate to us as
human beings. Similarly, the belief in some sort of God
may not be refuted even though specific notions about God
keep getting exposed as being ill-founded, self-
contradictory, etc. However, the belief that God does exist
is innate to many of us, just like the belief in an ordered,
causal universe. For something as basic to our thought as
one of these, it may be futile to try to prove or refute them -
since they seem to lend themselves to neither, and nor can
they be ignored as being inconsequential. Regarding such
questions, it seems inevitable that we will just keep
believing or disbelieving in the existence or non-existence
of 'God' and/or 'Ordered Causal Universe' - as per our
inclinations regarding these. However, we need not let this
stop us from attacking specific scientific theories or specific
religious beliefs. When particular religious beliefs
contradict themselves or our direct sensory experiences, it
seems to me that in such cases it would be reasonable to
reject them."

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 RANDOM OPUS

Judge Thyself

"In ancient times, people believed in the motto of 'know

thyself'. But these days it has become more a question of
'judge thyself': if we don't judge ourselves negatively from
time to time, it would render jobless many people who just
want to improve us."

"Because we would no longer wish to improve ourselves?"

"Yes. But while this process of judging ourselves more and

more is undoubtedly good for everyone around us, some
people judge themselves to be awesome, superb and out-
of-this-world. Is this not cheating? Why is it that when I
judge myself, it makes me feel more and more miserable -
while if someone else judges themselves, they only find
themselves to be superb and awesome? This is unfair.
Further, I suspect that they don't benefit society as much
by positively judging themselves as I do by negatively
judging myself! Should I not regard them all as worthless
narcissists? They are making us all miserable by refusing
to join in our common misery."

"To begin with, the happiness of society derives from the

happiness of individuals. So anyone automatically
contributes to a happy society by being happy himself,
even if his actions don't come with other effects that also
benefit society. Because of this, the notion that becoming
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 RANDOM OPUS

unhappy makes society happy and vice-versa - other

things being equal - is weak to begin with. Moreover, the
industries you help with your self-loathing would simply find
something else to do if you stopped loathing yourself. Don't
underestimate the variety of opportunities this world has to
offer."

"So you think that it is better to have a superiority complex

rather than to feel inferior?"

"In general, yes. But not to the extent that we are not able
to live up to our positive self-image and get even more
devastated when it breaks down. Or when it is built on
patent absurdities, merely to hide deep-rooted insecurities.
Of course, this seems to be reason for such positive
judgment most of the time. However, while genuinely
judging ourselves positively may make more sense than
judging ourselves negatively, the fact is that I don't even
agree with the premise that we should judge ourselves. It
is one thing to know ourselves, that is: to know our relative
strengths and weakness, to know our abilities and their
limitations, to understand how people see us and
otherwise how we relate to those with whom we happen to
be interacting at a given point of time. But to judge
ourselves would mean to have an overall positive or
negative impression of ourselves, like we have for other
people. With other people, it can make sense to judge
them according to our impression of whether are allies or
foes, and otherwise how they view us and what they can
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 RANDOM OPUS

do about it. But how can one judge oneself? One's self is
the very criterion by which he judges others (i.e. by what
they mean to him, and otherwise by how they compare to
him). So there is little sense in trying to judge oneself, for
what does one mean to oneself?"

"The way you are putting it, it looks impossible for people
to judge themselves. But in actual fact, people do judge
themselves - what kind of job they do of it is another
matter."

"People cannot judge themselves like they judge others -

by looking and considering what the subject of judgment
means to themselves. So in such cases, all they can do is
to copy the judgment that others have made about them. In
other words, they see how society looks at them - and
even if the judgment is negative, they still copy it,
internalize it and pass it off as their own. Is this not an
attempt to suck up to society in general? I would say that it
is even worse: it is a sort of slavery to people who think
nothing of them. But even if other people have positive
views about you, to copy those views and to pass them off
as your own is dishonest at best and a form of slavery at
worst. This is because those views are not yours to begin
with - they are not something you came up with according
to your own judgment and your own criteria. For instance,
you could judge that 'wow, other people run so fast'. But
when you judge conversely, i.e. 'wow, I run so slow' it is
not your original opinion, since you would not have come
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 RANDOM OPUS

up with it on your own. Rather, it is something that got

imposed on you when you talked to those other people - or
worse, you have had such talks in the past and have thus
internalized those thoughts about yourself being slow and
weak. Similarly, one does not judge oneself to be good or
bad, tall or short, crazy or ugly. Rather, such judgments
are made by others and then handed to - or imposed on -
the person in question. So while knowing oneself can lead
to freedom, judging oneself is merely a sign of slavery."

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 RANDOM OPUS

What the Body Wants

"You think that starving yourself is good, right?"

"Yes, of course it is. By eating less, we can obtain better

control over our senses."

"Okay, let me ask you something: why does a body die?"

"Because our will is not strong enough to make it keep on

living. I am sure that if my will was strong enough, I could
even live just on air."

"A body does not die because of what you will, but
because of what it wills. Normally, a body will die because
it no longer wishes to live on. A body that is not given
enough food will eventually become unhappy with its
owner that is not giving it enough food. A body that is
made to eat too much will eventually grow resentful of the
owner who demands that it digest too much. A body that is
denied rest will eventually grow resentful towards the mind
in it. Just as we have discussed how all things can be said
to have some form of consciousness, a body too can be
said to have a sort of consciousness that can be
distinguished from that of the mind residing in it. When it
feels mistreated, or it gets bored of existing as it is, it can
decide to die. So someone who wishes to live by pure will
while torturing the body, is like a tyrant who tries to bully
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 RANDOM OPUS

his people into submission. Sometimes it may work: but

even when it does, it is far from being something admirable
and worth replicating. If someone with such beliefs gets
political power, he will be a tyrant politically too. On the
other hand, someone who makes the welfare of the body
his sole aim is like the rudderless person in social life who
merely spends all his life trying to please everyone, and
fails miserably. The course of action that is considerate
and yet purposeful is to have one's own agenda - but to
work with the body, rather than against it, in achieving it."

"Fair enough, and I guess we could also say that those

who abuse the body are people who, for some reason,
hate themselves - but mistakenly identify themselves with
their bodies, and thus punish it for no crime. However,
while you have put many kind of situations to the body not
'wanting' to stay alive, I guess you will still have to make
exceptions for cases like, say being cut up."

"In such cases, you could say that the body after some
effort gives up on life, and lets the blade pass through it.
While it may not be a case of seeking for death, it is
nevertheless different from your interpretation of the body
only being able to act in certain ways as a lifeless entity: I
am sure that someone with good relations with his body
can ask it to pose resistance even to swords and bullets"

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Compassion

"Compassion lies at the root of morality. So we should try

to encourage compassion among others and also amongst
ourselves. You will see that this will lead to a better
society, a more compassionate society - a more moral
society."

"To say that compassion lies at the root of morality is like

saying that anger and revenge lie at the root of justice, or
that fear lies at the root of planning for the future, or that
laziness lies at the root of science and technology - all
these are true in a sense, but misleading. It is true that
someone who has never felt compassion cannot arrive at
morality. It is also true in general that one who feels more
compassion is able to arrive at a more advanced stage of
morality. However, someone who looks at everything
through the lens of compassion, whose sole aim is to
more and more compassionate - is not a moral being.
Properly speaking, compassion is a necessary but not
sufficient forerunner for morality. What makes compassion
turn into morality is the same thing that makes anger turn
into the quest for justice, or laziness turn into science and
technology - when we deliberate on the implications of our
deepest desires and impulses, and act on the conclusions
of those deliberations, we become able to transcend our
limitations and become sources of better expression of
consciousness in the material world. Taken by itself,
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 RANDOM OPUS

compassion is merely another base impulse like fear,

anger or laziness: when we care only for those who remind
us of ourselves, we end up demonizing those who don't.
Love for one leads to hatred for the other. But reflecting on
our preference for one over another leads us to see the
emptiness of such distinctions, and to gradually spread our
compassion to all to the extent that it is not even
recognizable as compassion any longer. This is the real
beginning of morality, at least the kind of heartfelt morality
that arises out of compassion (as opposed to morality for
show, or as a pretext for taking revenge).

Similarly, some people have said that selfishness lies at

the heart of morality. This is as absurd as saying that
compassion lies at the root of morality. Someone who is
instinctively compassionate is immoral while someone who
sublimates compassion with foresight and balance with
other impulses is moral. Similarly someone who uses
foresight to attain selfish ends and balances it with other
needs is moral, but someone who is blindly selfish is not
moral: she is just like a spoiled child."

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Selfishness

"Some people idealize the individual as the measure of all

things, while for others this ideal is the state - or even
humanity as a whole. What are your views regarding
this??"

"The expression of consciousness in the material world

has evolved from atoms to cells to plants to 'lower animals'
to human beings. Even now it is evolving in the form of
societies, as religious groups, etc. Various people have
glorified various stages of this evolution: some idealize a
perfect man who is able to do whatever he wants, free
from any wants, desires or obligations - someone who is
fully a master of his own faculties. For others, the tendency
has been to glorify a perfect state, which like the perfect
man is self-sufficient and fully a master of its constituents -
this being the idea of fascism. But although it is true that
both the ideal man and the ideal state are masterpieces of
evolution, they have the problem of being dead ends - they
no longer retain the capacity to combine with others into a
still higher state of consciousness. Knowing that the
universe is large and a single human or even a whole
nation is small, it is ridiculous to glorify the cessation of
evolution at a stage which is ultimately a small fragment of
its full potential. It seems to make much more sense to
look at alternatives where the ideal unit of consciousness -
man or nation - is seen as tolerant of and friendly towards
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other, less ideal such units because it realizes that

evolution needs consciousness to grow into ever more
complex units, even as alongside we also work towards
the health and integrity of the smaller units so that the
larger unit does not simply implode. For instance, a healthy
man is needed for a healthy society, but a healthy man
leads to a healthy society only when he contributes to it
eventually, instead of being a lifelong hermit."

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 RANDOM OPUS

Emotions and Identity

"Wouldn't it be great to be rid of all negative emotions like

fear, anger, hatred?"

"These emotions have served their own purpose in history.

Without fear, we would have no basis for caution.
Eventually, you would see people walking off cliffs and
burning themselves in ever greater numbers."

"I find your scenario to be exaggerated. Nevertheless,

even if we accept that these emotions have played a useful
role in the past, don't you think that now we have evolved
to the stage where we can do away with them? Can't the
acts which require fear and anger be taken over
completely by machines in a few decades? Aren't we
better off with more positive emotions like confidence, and
harmony among people?"

"What I find disturbing is your idea of human beings

becoming clueless about acts requiring fear and anger,
after giving them over to machines. Also, being saturated
with confidence, harmony and ecstatic physical pleasure is
not really as desirable in itself as you seem to think it is.
Someone who has always been confident without any
reason to be otherwise, and has come to identify himself
as a confident person, will be that much more helpless
against overwhelming odds where he has no reason to be
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confident. This is not only be because he will not have a

genuine understanding of self-doubt - but also because
subconsciously he will keep forcing himself to remain
confident even where that confidence does not have any
basis, simply because he sees himself as a confident
person. The same can be said of pretty much all such
'positive emotions' too, if you think about it: If you have it all
the time and begin to identify yourself with it, then you will
find yourself largely without its opposite in your artillery for
dealing with everyday situations. Further, even to the
extent that you are able to feel and use its opposite
emotion, you will be inhibited from doing so, because of
your self-image as someone who does not have such
negative emotions. Now, anger and even fear do not
always necessarily cause suffering - as can be borne out
by anyone who has ever willingly ridden on a roller-
coaster, seen a horror movie or shouted at other people for
catharsis. However, even positive emotions, once you
begin to identify yourself with them, cause suffering
because your sense of self is restricted to them, because
you don't know what to do without them, and because of
the inhibitions caused by identifying the self with such
emotions. In any case, the distinction of emotions into
'good' and 'bad' emotions can be quite arbitrary, changing
from culture to culture and from time to time. So I think that
when we say that emotions can cause suffering, suffering
is not caused by having certain emotions instead of others.
Rather, it is caused by identifying ourselves with our
emotions, by becoming too attached to the self-image of
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being people who have certain kinds of emotion but not

others."

"You could say that. But I would still have to say that in
general, the emotions we classify as 'negative', tend to be
the ones it is easier to identify ourselves with and harder to
get rid of - while generally the 'positive' emotions, for most
people, are precisely those that we can have without
readily identifying ourselves with them, or becoming unable
to be rid of them."

"In general, that may well be true. But while this is a good
guideline, it is not always true for any given person that he
will be more likely to get attached to and identify with a
'negative' emotion rather than a 'positive' one - it can also
sometimes be the other way round. When this happens, I
feel it would be better for us to realize that the source of
suffering lies not in particular emotions themselves, but in
how we get attached to and identify with them - and
therefore that identification with, 'positive' emotions can
cause as much suffering as with 'negative' emotions. Also,
for this same reason, giving up emotions while becoming
attached to the concept of ourselves as emotionless
persons can hardly be considered a better plan than
having emotions without becoming attached to them."

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Ego

"I hate Raj: He spends so much time into making his body
healthy and well-maintained. Does he not realize that his
excessive zeal for health only exposes his vanity? Much
better to let my body go to dust and make my mind and
soul beautiful!"

"No."

"No?"

"That is something I don't really agree with. In the past I

had a similar point of view, but I have changed my opinion
later on. It is true that many people who take extra care of
their bodies only do so for the sake of vanity, to feel
superior to others and due to fear of age, disease and
decay..."

"See?"

"And yet, with your attitude your neglect of your body is

also a form of vanity - on being less vain than others, and
also of fear - fear that becoming fit will make you one of
them."

"You have agreed that taking care of your body may be a

sign of vanity, but you also claim that not doing so may be
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a sign of the same. If both paths lead to vanity, does that

mean that 'vanity' is merely a part and parcel of life, and
not something we can choose to accept or reject? This
contention goes against anything that I would be inclined to
accept."

"I have never said that both paths lead to vanity. I have
merely said that both attitudes can possibly lead to it, or
rather that both can be symptoms of vanity that already
exists previously. As such, vanity is orthogonal to striving
for good health."

"Wait a moment: I have heard that once a man has done

all that he has set out to do, he becomes careless of the
world around him, like a baby. As such, it is possible to
understand how someone lacking in vanity can take bad
care of his health. But the other case - of someone led to
taking good care of his health due to lack of vanity - is
inconceivable, right?"

"Wrong. First of all, simply because someone is lacking in

vanity does not necessarily mean that he will suddenly turn
into someone who have already done everything he may
have needed to do. On the contrary, lacking in vanity
merely means that you set out on the path towards that
goal. Not only those whose actions are void of all purpose,
but also those who are guided by the need to be at peace
with themselves, more than by the need to impress others
- can be said to be lacking in vanity. Similarly, someone
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who identifies their self with the body can be said to have
an ego. This can be reflected by excessive striving for
health, but it can also manifest itself as running away from
good health. Why is this? If X who feels identification or
ownership towards Y, then that can show itself as
excessive yearning for Y. But on the other hand, it also
shows itself in X feeling the right to abuse Y. When
someone does not feel attachment, identification or
ownership towards something..."

"They are indifferent to it, right? Isn't that the same as

being indifferent towards your health? Then where does
the notion of taking good care of health due to lack in
vanity come from?"

"It is true that X, when feeling no attachment, identification

or ownership towards Y would generally be indifferent
towards Y. But there is one case where this does not hold."

"And where is that?"

"When X is using Y to achieve some end that they do care

about. You can think of X interacting with Y for commercial
purposes. X does not care about Y, but nevertheless treats
Y well. If Y leaves of his own accord, there may be others
to take his place. Nevertheless, even though Y by himself
means nothing to you, it can make a lot of sense to treat
him well, and to make sure that since he is of benefit to
you, you are also of benefit to him. True, maybe everyone
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 RANDOM OPUS

does not do that: but you would certainly expect someone

lacking in vanity, or even otherwise any decent person to
do that. When you no longer have anything to do with Y,
you would leave him without any regrets - but while you
are still taking benefit from him, it only makes sense to
provide benefit to him too. Actually, this kind of argument
can easily be extended to where Y is supposedly an
inanimate object, using the notion of consciousness as a
continuum where even inanimate objects have some trace
levels of latent consciousness: but if I were to do that
directly, you would be likely to see it as me lessening the
value of human consciousness."

"Right."

"And I would regard that as a mistake on your part: our

discussion on that would then take us away from the topic
we are talking about here. So let's not go there."

"Can we get back on topic?"

"Yes. So, our relation with our body, at least as long as

there are objectives we want to work through that require
the aid of a live body to accomplish - it is like the
relationship between X and Y. We may not identify with the
body, we may not feel any sort of ownership towards it, we
may not attached to it - and yet, since we are using it for
our benefit it is only fitting that we are also of benefit to it,
and otherwise nurture and maintain it. As long as we do
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have things we still want to do with life, I feel that we are

better off accepting that and working honestly towards
those goals making sure to benefit those who help us in
the way, rather than pretending that we already have no
need for anything."

"Yes, that way we will only leave regrets in our life. I agree
that we are better off facing the realities of life head-on.
When we have achieved all we have to do, it makes sense
to be truly indifferent to all: not before that."

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Cessation

"How great it would be: to not be burdened with thoughts

or responsibilities any more!"

"Is that so? Many people mistakenly believe that, but have
you ever tried actually spending a few months without any
deep thought or any attempt to fulfill your responsibilities?"

"I have not, but that is only because I have yet to find such
an opportunity. I am truly unfortunate in that sense..."

"If you try it, you will feel a sense of dissatisfaction. You
could put it down to boredom - but it seems meaningless to
call it boredom and hate it, when you yourself sought after
it. On the other hand, one could try to pretend that with the
cessation of thought and activity, you have achieved
enlightenment, although your experience of dissatisfaction
would seem to argue against such a claim."

"But what is wrong in thinking so? Is it not great to be free

of thought and activity?"

"It is not so great when the cessation of thought and

activity merely make you further bored and dissatisfied. But
I would still say that this state is required as a prerequisite
to enlightenment, because you need to see the problem in
order to solve this problem."
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 RANDOM OPUS

"Problem?"

"Yes, problem. Boredom may not be the same as

enlightenment, but it is the very opposite of it. The feeling
of dissatisfaction is precisely the thing whose removal is
called enlightenment. One could even describe
enlightenment as the state where one can sit without doing
or thinking anything - without feelings of dissatisfaction
arising as a result of this. This hungering for stuff that
makes our lives hell."

"But why not then just stop doing stuff? Can't we just will
it? Will that really work? Also, I have seen people lose all
hope due to despair and they don't seem to be too
happy..."

"Indeed, it seems meaningless to say that one can merely

will oneself to be happy without doing anything, or that
being in despair is the same as having overcome
attachment. One could say that these feelings that we
have are indications, however imperfect, that we have
work to do. Suppressing these feelings does nothing to
negate that. Therefore, I would say that one is at peace
with himself when he has set out to do what he was born to
do, then has accomplished that, and then has refrained
from frivolously creating new desires to work towards. Of
course, this last part of not creating new issues is often the
hardest part for anyone, but 'cessation of desire' refers to
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the process where old ones are fulfilled and new ones do
not arise because the underlying causes relating to their
arising are taken care of. On the other hand, 'suppression
of desire' refers to a state where even existing desires are
not taken care of, leave alone the underlying issues that
make them arise. So these two are entirely different things.
Further, this is an issue relating to the emotions (cessation
of their underlying causes) not just ideas, and is therefore
something to be done practically. Thus mere thinking about
it, though possibly helpful, is not a substitute for actually
getting your hands dirty. Just like obtaining dexterity in a
sport, it is more about reaching a particular frame of mind
and obtaining practical skills to deal with the underlying
causes of dissatisfaction, rather than about processing
more data from one's current state of mind, or merely
speculating intellectually about concepts which one has
been exposed to only from a theoretical point of view
rather than having a first-hand familiarity with them."

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Peaks and Plateaus

"Should the purpose of life be like a peak or like a plateau?

I have seen many men who seem to think it is okay to just
climb a few peaks, but the way I see it is: this way, once
you do a few things, you are done. Success should be
more like a plateau, where you attain some kind of high
position and people respect you for that. That way, you can
be a winner all the time, instead of just a little of the time"

"Yes, until you die"

"Huh?"

"People who seem to think in terms of attaining some kind

of plateau don't seem to realize that they will eventually
die. A dead person does not have any permanent status
except what is granted to him by the whims of posterity,
and even if by some miracle gets famous enough to be
remembered - that too with respect - for all of time... even if
by some even greater miracle, what is remembered is truly
representative of him, rather than being simply myths
and legends that have been spawned by others using his
name as no more than a prop - even if all this were to
happen, the fact is that a dead body cannot do shit with
any of this. You will not even get to know that someone still
remembers your existence. Further, the reality is that no
one is remembered for long after their death, unless it is in
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the form of legends where their name serves as little more

than a prop for the agenda of other people. So the mere
fact that you will die dictates that your goals should be in
the form of climbing peaks, rather than achieving some
kind of plateau. Of course, most people are so scared of
death that they see no way to deal with it other than to
completely ignore it. This is what makes them chase after
dreams of permanent fame and position"

"Okay, whatever"

"If this would at least ensure their happiness before the

event that they deny, i.e. death, would appear then it would
still be halfway acceptable. But the reality is that this kind
of thinking does not just prevent a good death, it also
prevents a good life: Once you reach the position that you
want to retain for all eternity, you spend the rest of your life
being on the defensive, trying to protect your gains at all
costs. This process in itself makes your life hell, because
you can afford no failure, when failure can happen not just
due to a lack of effort on your part, but also due to a lack of
goodwill by others, or even due to a lack of good luck - on
the other hand, when what you yearn after are a few
peaks, you are able to be far more tolerant of failure,
because even those failures become merely roadblocks on
the way to your desired destination. Consequently, you
don't have to spend all the minutes of your life agonizing
over the possibility of bad luck hitting you some time or the
other - you can get over many kinds of setbacks. So in this
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way, you can live a far more robust and fault-tolerant, and
thus happier life"

"But if we are anyway going to die, doesn't it make more

sense to say that whatever we do is ultimately
meaningless? Why bother to have any goals at all? Picking
up a few goals to have at random seems to be no different
in essence from just randomly doing whatever you want. If
you have, say, ten goals, then most likely you would have
essentially chosen them randomly. On the other hand, if
you have just one goal, then your life becomes
meaningless once you are done with it"

"Fair enough. So let me point out that every human being

has some kind of essential nature, and happiness is
attained by acting in accord with that nature. If you don't
believe that such an essential nature exists, then let's just
say that the combination of all things that you like to do
give you an essential nature, in practice"

"That sounds reasonable at first, but in reality there are

various things that give us pleasure at first, and then lead
to unhappiness. On the other hand, there are also things
that cause sadness at first, but eventually lead to
happiness. This negates your opinion that there can be
things doing which inherently cause happiness, or doing
which inherently cause unhappiness"

"That's why I started off talking of essential nature, not

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things which essentially cause happiness or sadness. It is

true that the simple way to conceive of our nature is to look
at what causes us happiness or unhappiness - but once
you start finding loopholes like you just did, we have to go
deeper into the matter. Basically, what we mean by our
nature is merely this that we all have various things that we
need to do, various things that we cling to. You could think
of it in this way that people are like ropes with knots in
them. So although you could well argue that those knots
are not inherently part of the rope, the fact is that they are
there. And what we need to do here is to untie those knots.
In a certain sense, happiness arises from untying those
knots. It is true that sometimes we find ourselves doing
things that make us unhappy in the long run but seem all
right in the short term. But if you examine your emotions,
you will be able to distinguish between the two kinds of
happiness - where you solve the problem, and where you
hide yourself form the problem. For example, numbing our
minds with intoxicants is almost always going to be a case
of avoiding the problem instead of solving it, which is why it
may lead to short term 'happiness' but not to long term
happiness. Also, another factor which may lead to
apparent contradictions in our search for happiness is that
various 'knots' of ours, so to speak, may not be
independent of each other, but rather be entangled
together in particularly large, vicious knots. I feel that the
way to deal with that is to gain a better awareness of
these, so that we are able to deal with them. For this, we
need to gain more knowledge of ourselves by doing more
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introspection. But in practice, it is hard to figure out the

exact nature of our needs that way. By the way, you were
mentioning earlier how having many peaks compares to
just doing things randomly: just doing things randomly
would indeed be fine for someone who no longer has any
knots, so to speak. This is because it would not really
matter to them what they did or did not do. Anyway, as I
was saying, it is hard to figure out the exact nature of our
knots, so to speak. On the other hand, if we just look at
what we want the next minute, we are confused by social
engineering, political propaganda, and other such things
only too easily - and the knots just get knottier. Thus, a
pragmatic way to deal with all this seems to be like this: at
any point in time, have a list of goals, 'peaks' so to say, all
of which are reasonably non-trivial. Then, we work at
directing all our energies towards achieving those goals;
towards examining if those goals, along with any uninteded
repercussions of achieving them, will really cause us
happiness; and towards examining our motivations for
wanting those goals. Often, it turns out that our motivations
for doing something are different from what we initially
assumed them to be. For instance, we may think that we
want to save the world, whereas in reality we just want to
be reassured that if we are able to save the world, we are
not social rejects. Often, it happens that when our true
underlying motivation for something is different from what
we initially expected it to be, we are merely attracted to it
by some sort of social conditioning or some other form of
ignorance. So by watching the implications of said
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conditioning unfold in front of us, we are able to rid

ourselves of this conditioning. Also, it sometimes turns out
that although doing something is really in line with what we
want, actually achieving it leads to certain unwanted
consequences. If that happens, we look for alternatives. By
this process, we end up with things that we really want to
do for the right reasons, and which furthermore don't cause
catastrophic unintended consequences. These are the
things we follow up on. By working single-mindedly on
them, not only do we untie the knot - so to speak - but we
are also able to achieve a certain unity of mind, body and
soul, which is often something which people desire in itself.
This is the so-called 'heart of sword', which I will talk to you
about later some day"

"So we basically just examine our motives, then examine

the consequences, then act, in that order?"

"Actually, we begin to act, and examining the motives and

the consequences has to be a continuous process
because the more we act, the more information we collect
that tells us about our motives and consequences"

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Kins and Katas

"There are some who believe that happiness lies in the

pursuit of pleasurable experiences, and to be happy we
must 'live life to the full'. On the other hand, there are also
plenty of people who believe that life is suffering, and that
the purpose of life is to put an end to suffering by putting
an end to our sensory perceptions. They withdraw from life
and idealize the ability to be unmoved by things. In our
land, these two have been called the Kinetics and
Katastematics. Of these points of view, which one are you
closer to? It would be interesting to get your views on the
matter..."

"Both views arise out of valid concerns and valid

observations. But I would nevertheless say that both views
also have their own drawbacks."

"That's a diplomatic answer, and we know very well that

diplomatic answers say much but mean little. This is why
diplomacy is only used to gain time and not to solve
issues."

"Okay, okay... let's no go into political affairs here. In any

case, you are well aware of my aversion to seeking
political solutions to issues that are primarily about the
views of an individual, not a state."

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"Of course. But this does not negate the fact that you were
earlier giving a diplomatic answer, and are now trying to
evade the issue altogether."

"Fine then. It is diplomatic to say that both sides have valid

points, but it is honest to say what those valid points on
each side are. Thus, let me elaborate my views on the
dichotomy between the Kinetic and Katastematic schools
of thought..."

"By all means, go ahead."

"I will, if you will just let me... now, it is true that for
someone who thinks of himself as being basically,
essentially and inherently happy and blissful - and then
goes ahead to see physical stimuli as something external
to himself - these stimuli are merely a nuisance that disturb
his inner peace and are thus to be avoided. Now, most
people may not find most stimuli to be disruptive. But it is
also true that almost everyone does feel disrupted in this
sense by ugly sights, by ugly sounds, and by ugly smells -
not to mention other forms of ugly stimuli. Almost
universally, we feel such ugliness to be a disruption to our
relatively peaceful everyday life. In this, we are almost all
in agreement with the Katastematic view. So really, what
differentiates 'Katas' from other people is mainly the fact
that many experiences that we find to be pleasant are also
regarded as disruptive by them. This is because in
pleasant experiences which occur to us as a spike, often
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the pleasure being received by a particular sense is used

to hide the hurt that we are receiving in some other way.
For instance, lights that are too bright can be pleasurable.
But this pleasure hides the strain that looking at these
bright lights causes on our eyes. Similarly, food that is very
tasty often taxes the digestive system, and much loud
music pains the ears. Because of these facts, what we
regard as being a form of net pleasure can often turn out to
be a pain overall if we also account for the pain that this
pleasure hides. I also agree with this. Katas point out that
because of these, the experiences that can be regarded as
causing real pleasure are characterized not by extremes
but by balance - and further, that it makes little sense to
define balance as a positive existence: it is better regarded
as the absence of various kinds of imbalances. For
instance, balance between heat and cold is characterized
by neither heat nor cold, but by the absence of perceptible
heat or cold. Since this balance is something that can only
be characterized negatively, it makes no sense to talk of it
being created by the addition of something external.
Rather, it makes far more sense to regard physical acts as
removing specific forms of imbalance that are disrupting
the natural balance. Further, while balance is regarded as
basic, the imbalances too must no doubt be caused by
external impulses. Therefore, while external impulses can
remove certain problems in the form of imbalances, other
such external forces are the ones who created these
imbalances in the first place. So then this is why, to
preserve the balance - because they respect the balance -
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and realizing the disruptive effect of external stimuli on this

balance, Katas suppress their dependence on external
stimuli as a source of happiness and rather seek it in the
balance they cultivate within themselves. This is why they
withdraw from the world.

You had been diplomatic earlier. But now, through your

words, you have clearly given away the fact that you are in
fact wholly a Kata. Therefore..."

"No, wait. I never said that!"

"But you kept saying: 'I agree with this part', and 'I agree
with that part'! Is this not the same as saying that you are a
Kata?"

"Believing in some aspects of a philosophy does not make

one a follower as long as one disagrees with some other
fundamental aspects of it. For instance, I agree with Katas
that what human beings seek is ultimately balance not
excess. I also agree that many experiences that are
traditionally considered 'happy experiences' are not so,
once one accounts not just for their negative
consequences in the future (which I am inclined to discount
since they won't matter if for example one dies early, and
who has seen the future?), but also for the hidden costs in
the present itself which lead to those negative
consequences in the future. But although I agree with
these, I do not believe in becoming a hermit, nor do I
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believe that all experiences that perturb us are forms of evil

that need to be avoided."

"But you yourself said that what we ultimately aim for is

some sort of balance!"

"Ultimately, yes we do all aim for balance. However, most

of us are born with fundamental desires, goals to life that
stick to us like a knot sticks to a rope. Indeed, there is a
theory that unless one has such fundamental drives, one is
not born. These are not negated by the fact that later on,
under the influence of other people and of sensory
titillation, we also develop a hell lot of new desires and
ambitions that we wouldn't really have if we had the
courage to become hermits and control our senses for
some time. Unfortunately, these so far outnumber the
genuine ambitions in most people that Katas assume that
all desires and ambitions are like such froth and smoke.
However, there is generally no smoke without fire and no
froth without liquids. If you leave a glass alone, the froth
will die out after some time. But the liquid will remain.
Similarly, asceticism can remove our socially imposed
desires - but those are not the sum total of our ambitions.
Unlike froth, milk does not disappear by letting it be - it
merely becomes sour. As another example, a knotted rope
will not untie itself: we have to work at it. Similarly, our true
goals and ambitions once revealed need to be acted upon
- because they will not go away by being ignored. Working
towards and achieving such goals of life can make us
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perturbed - but unlike that produced by chasing after

stimuli, this is a good kind of perturbation (you can even
argue that these lead to a more basic, fundamental type of
balance). I believe that these essential aims must be dealt
with proactively, by working hard towards them before they
curdle inside us and make us into bitter, repressed
versions of ourselves. So even though I don't believe in
doing stuff just for kicks, I am a firm believer in action when
you know what you are working towards. I believe that it is
this understanding - that there are some things we need to
work at instead of escape - that guides the Kinetic school
of thought. And this is where I do agree with them: once
we know what we fundamentally seek - our goals in life, if
you will - we are better off working hard towards them
rather than trying to escape everything."

"But what when we have fulfilled all our fundamental aims

in life? At least you accept that as a good time to escape
everything?"

"Once we have fulfilled our fundamental goals in life, it

makes sense to eschew the desire for more Kinetic
pleasures and to rather focus on balance, harmony and
Katastematic pleasures. You could say that I believe in
doing enough so that we have to do no more. But I feel
that true harmony would lie in 'letting things be', which is
fundamentally different from 'escaping everything'."

"The way you make it sound, the ultimate end of this

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balanced and harmonious life after attaining all your life's

goals is just death, since that is the epitome of 'letting
things be'."

"I don't deny that it is death. Death it is, but fundamentally

different from the death you get from being suddenly taken
away by injury or illness. Also, it is fundamentally different
from the frustration in dying without accomplishing your
life's aims - realizing only at the end the futility of trying to
repress your goals instead of trying to accomplish them. All
the kinds of death I mentioned here are traumatic events, if
not for the one who is dying then for those close to him - in
other words, they are the opposite of 'letting things be'.
Therefore, I would say that my way of doing things does
end in death, but it is a good death: and since all paths that
do not end in eternal torment or eternal boredom do end in
death, it only makes sense to seek a good death after a
good life."

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Will

"I have heard you highly praise philosophers of the 'Will'.

But those who see the world in terms of Will take two
distinct approaches to it: Some feel that it is the cause of
strife and suffering, and thus seek to negate it. On the
other hand, there are those who see Will as representing
not just power but also joy and happiness, pleasure and
victory. These seek to maximize the Will and look down
upon those who want to neutralize it. So, since there are
two diametrically opposite ways of treating this Will that
you are so fond of, which of these two ways are you more
inclined towards?"

"Will being the drive to live, for consciousness to express

itself - it seems odd that any would find issue with the will.
But this opposition is easier to understand on
contemplation. The Will, being the urge for consciousness
to express itself, is witnessed most strongly during the
struggle of the will to express itself. It is but natural to feel
disgust at this struggle, to wish for the struggle to end. But
a war can end with either side winning. Similarly, the
suffering of The War Of The Will can end not only in
complete happiness but also in complete despair. To win is
to get rid of the manifestation of the Will in the struggle to
express consciousness, but to do this through the victory
of the pure Will in this struggle. Death does not equal
defeat. Death after fulfilling your purpose is victory itself,
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for what point is there is there in being alive for no

purpose?

Someone who walks a path where he knows that he will

likely get killed, for the sake of living life his own way, has
done a better job of expressing the Will than one who
cringes and clings to life by changing himself in myriad
ways, leading an unhappy existence just to survive. The
weak-willed says: 'I am not worthy of this world. So I will
con it into finding me worthy. For this I will pretend to be
who I am not, even to myself'. The strong-willed man says:
'This is who I am. If this is not acceptable to the world, then
it is equally meaningful to say that the world did not
deserve to have me live in it, as to say that I did not
deserve to live in the world. If I am incompatible with the
world, I will just live in my own way until this incompatibility
causes my death'

A human being being an inextricable part of the world -

whatever good or evil he does, every atom everywhere in
the universe has some share in it. If one gets killed before
completing his life's work even though he tried, let him not
be unhappy - for the world brought about the conditions
that made such a life's work possible, and then the world
itself took it away. The man having done his job, he has no
share of credit in the conditions existing for the work to be
possible, nor does he share any blame for the work not
coming about due to accidental occurrences not in his
power. The only thing that matters is what he did with what
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was in his power. As he has no right over the rest, he

cannot be said to have any responsibility for it either."

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Metaphor

"I don't know why people keep using lies and metaphors,
but I am also terrified of the boredom I would feel if
everyone was straightforward in what they said - instead of
resorting to such cheap linguistic tricks."

"Some people regard a metaphor as something different

from truth. However, a statement is not always true in
itself. if I say 'the sky is blue' on seeing a blue sky, I would
be saying the truth if I told it to someone who realized that
all I meant was that it would look blue if you look at it
directly upwards when the sun is up in the sky. However,
suppose I knew that I was telling it to a child who I know
from past experience would interpret the statement as 'the
sky is constituted of a blue substance', and thus would
develop the expectation that when he would travel in a
plane the next night, the shiny buildings he would be
looking down on would have a bluish tinge. If I told him that
'the sky is blue', would I not be telling him a lie? Wouldn't I
better off telling him that the sky is not blue in itself but
looks blue because of other colors being absorbed by the
air? This ambiguity in statements being true or false exists
firstly because in natural language, even individual words
don't have fixed, well-defined meanings... and when they
are combined together their meaning can be highly
context-dependent, dependent also on the speaker,
listener and the relationship between them... in this way,
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any use of natural language is less similar to that of an

artificial language. It is more like a game, where you can
manipulate the state of the listener by the words you are
speaking, according to the initial state of the listener and
his preferences. Whenever you speak, you have some
objective regarding how you want the state of the listener
to change... in general, if you want the listener to end up in
a state where he has more understanding regarding
something, then you can be said to be truthful about that
particular subject. Similarly, if you want the listener to end
up being more ignorant, confused or misguided about any
particular subject, then you could be said to be untruthful
about that subject. If you speak in a way that he is equally
likely to become more or less knowledgeable about a
particular subject, then you may be said to be neither
truthful nor untruthful - rather, your approach would
orthogonal to truthfulness regarding the given subject.
Similarly, if you are aiming to make his state change so
that he is in a better position to achieve the goals that he
considers to be ends in themselves, then you are playing
the role of benefactor towards him. On the other hand, if
you want to change his state in such a way that he is
worse off in this way, then you are playing the role of his
enemy. Someone who does not believe in violence for its
own sake would therefore try to speak in such a way as to
make a person better equipped to achieve his goals -
mostly this would involve making him more, not less
knowledgeable about various subjects than he would
otherwise be ... unless he has explicit reason to cause him
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harm (to prevent even more harm to others). One example

is that if A was asked by B, "where is C"? and he knew that
with high probability if B was told the right answer he would
disbelieve it and instead make up another theory about C
to believe, while he may or may not believe other answers,
then A would not be beneficial or truthful to B by telling him
the right answer - because telling him the right answer
would make him believe a wrong answer, rather than the
right one. Thus, A, if he is really B's well-wisher, will keep
silent - this way, B may not know the answer, but at least
he will know for sure that he does not know the answer.
Perhaps this will incline him to search for the answer in
other ways that could work - or to give up on the question if
it is not really important to him, secure in the knowledge
that he does not know and does not care. Even if the
question is important to him and there is no other way to
arrive at the answer, he is probably better off knowing at
least that he does not know the answer, rather than not
knowing even that.

Thus, a metaphor is not really an untruth. Probably no

statement is able to convey the full truth about something
at all times. When more direct means have been
exhausted, a metaphor is merely a more indirect and
listener-specific means for us to affect the state of the
listener. In this, a metaphor is like any other statement in
terms of its truth value - it can be used in such a way as to
make the listener have greater or lesser understanding of
any of the involved subject matters. Now, a metaphor does
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run the risk that while it does increase the understanding of

the particular target we had in mind, it may also be read by
others whom we didn't account for - in whom it merely
causes befuddlement. For this purpose, it is generally a
good idea to avoid metaphors or to have some specific
factors either in the subject or in the style of presentation
which filter the possible audience to something
manageable for us to direct the metaphor towards them, at
least if we are being particular about the kind of effect we
want to produce in the audience. On the other hand, there
is something to be said for the use of metaphors to
purposely have a very wide range of possibilities regarding
the effects they can have on the audience ('layers of
meaning'), or merely for the variety of effects they can
have on ourselves. This is a very interesting art-form, but it
probably makes little sense to confuse such metaphorical
statements with the ones that have to do with clarifying or
obfuscating understanding of any subject matter.

Also, if we want to deal with some subject matter that deals

with experiences or ideas which may be entirely new to the
audience, we may have little choice but to use metaphors.
However, metaphors being volatile tools that can cause
very different effects on different individuals - it is probably
a good idea in these cases to filter the audience in some
way so as to have a decent idea of what impact our
metaphors will have on them."

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True Fanatic

"I am so pissed off at the people who think that only their
point of view are right, and that others who don't share
their views need to be all killed."

"Well, different people do bring in different subjective

experiences and thus the ability to think on things on their
own. In practice, the will is using different minds to
increase its understanding of the world and to better
manifest itself in it. Two points of view give more scope for
understanding than one. Killing off and suppressing other
people for having minor differences with your views just
means losing the benefits of the experiences that they had
gained. Thus, it is not reasonable to start off with the
assumption that we must destroy all that is different from
us"

"Yes, that is what I am talking about: peace and tolerance.

I wish we could all just accept all people accepting what
they want and acting as they want"

"Oh really?"

"Why not?"

"Say there is someone who wants to kill you and all that
you value. Or if we do not go to that extent, just think of
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someone who wants to treat everyone who thinks like you

as second-class citizens. Would you still just tolerate him?"

"I suppose I should... after all, it is the tolerant and peace-

loving thing to do"

"Well, let me ask you something... if you have come to

your views after a lot of consideration, don't you think they
deserve to at least have a chance at existence? By letting
violent people walk all over you, you are not doing
something very great: you are merely promoting more
violence for the future, almost to the same extent as you
would by beating up arbitrary people as you come across
them. While tolerating everyone is possibly a good point of
view to start from, we nevertheless need to have a way of
dealing with others that does not wipe itself out. Thus, we
do need to establish political and legal conventions for
society."

"But, how do you figure out what those conventions should

be?"

"We can think of some guidelines, but the full picture

changes according to the times and the laws too change
with them. One way to adaptively change our conventions
with the times seems to be for people who believe in things
have at least some conviction in them without caring about
this that they have become opinionated. This is needed
because once again, if you don't fight for your well-
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considered beliefs, there will nevertheless be others

fighting for their own beliefs, well-considered or not. I think
a sensible way to do it is not to assume that others are evil
for thinking differently, but accepting that your own ideas
are the only set of ideas about whose being well-
considered you can be reasonably sure, you need to take
on the responsibility for the existence of your ideas, for the
benefit of the Will in general."

"But all this still seems not tolerant enough. I was talking to
this guy yesterday and he told me that all religions and
philosophies say the same thing, so it is useless to
distinguish among them."

"While I agree that saying that you alone are right and
everyone else is wrong and needs to be eliminated - is
something of a fanatical idea, the same cannot be said for
merely momentarily ensuring the continuity of the stream
of ideas you came across and examined and found to be
useful: comparing the latter to the former is like comparing
someone who loves his own family to one who wants to kill
everyone not in his immediate family: one shows the will
cooperating with itself, the other shows it fighting against
itself. Also, while it may be fanatical to believe that only
your views are valuable (and the experiences of others can
be thrown away), it is far more fanatical to say that all
religions and philosophies say the same thing. It is clear
there are differences between them, for example some
believe in a God, some don't. Some believe in tribal
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superiority for themselves, some don't. Some believe in

rebirth, and some don't. Like this, you can find many more
differences between any two prominent points of view. To
say that they are the same is like someone saying 'The sky
is blue, but it is also black. So blue and black are the same
color'. Of course, the visible color of the sky changes from
blue to black from day to night, but to imply that this makes
the colors the same is clearly misleading. Similarly, the
differences between various points of view are there for all
to see. So if someone says that all religions are the same,
chances are that he is merely trying to make a fool out of
you. But if that is not the case, it shows him up to be a
fanatic. Someone who wants to destroy all other points of
view may not appreciate the value of other points of view,
but at least he can see that other points of view exist. On
the other hand, this guy who likes to believe that all points
of view are the same, is so fanatical about his beliefs, so
afraid of anything else, so closed with his mind - he refuses
to even accept that these other points of view exist. This is
the extent of his fear and revulsion towards other points of
view. Compared to the one who merely wants to kill others,
he is by far the bigger fanatic. If to him, all points of view
appear to be the same as his own, it is simply because he
has never cultivated the ability to listen to other points of
view. To the man who grew up listening only to English, all
other languages may seem like badly-spoken English. This
does not mean that the proficient speaker of Chinese who
just greeted him is merely a bad English speaker, trying
hard to learn English - it merely shows that there is more
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than one language in this world. Nor does this example do

any credit to the English speaker who can't even concieve
of other languages. Such is the case of people who only
manage to conceive of the doctrines they were
indoctrinated in as children - even when they hear other,
opposing points of view."

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Mystics

"Some day, we should write a book that puts everyone at

peace, solves their perplexities, and enlightens them. Don't
you think that this is an aim worth striving for?"

"Even if we ourselves were at peace, free of perplexity and

enlightened, I do not think that such an act is even
possible. This has mainly to do with the fact that these
things - peace of mind, freedom from perplexity and
enlightenment - are experiential, not theoretical in nature.
So while books, just like many other things, can guide one
- help them in finding these things, they will have different
effects on different people. Ultimately, how far one goes
depends not on how much knowledge they acquired but on
what they did with the knowledge that they acquired."

"In other words, you are a mystic. Does it ever occur to you
that the habit of mystification that goes with this may be the
reason why writing such a book may be beyond you?
Perhaps you are just too esoteric for popular appeal."

"Popular appeal cannot be diverted towards a subject

merely by skillful use of words, when it was not there to
begin with. However, while you may be right in calling me a
mystic, I don't believe in mystification. If you think I do,
then you are mistaken."

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"Ha, liar! Everyone knows that mysticism and mystification

go hand-in-hand."

"In practice, perhaps. But it is not necessarily so. Anyone

who expresses their ideas is like someone who has made
a door from one place to another. We call writers, speakers
good or bad according to our impression of the destination
of this door. Now, a mystic is like a door-maker who
understands that merely looking at a door will not get one
through it, and so generally gives little indication on the
door of what lies behind. Thus, this is also associated with
few people going into the door. An ordinary non-mystic
would give some kind of indication as to the destination,
perhaps letting you see through it. Some people may be so
entranced by the view they get from looking at the door
that they do not bother to cross over. A mystifier, on the
other hand, would purposely mislead others on where the
doors lead, or more commonly indicate it through puzzles
that are notoriously hard to crack and terribly easy to
misunderstand. I am like a door-maker who has made a
door with no frames and kept it always open; as a result
many people don't realize that this is a door at all that
needs to be crossed. Of those who do, many
misunderstand the destination not because of any trick I
played, but simply because they expect it to be puzzling
even when it is not. Consequently, few people bother to
enter. But I am not an ordinary mystic, since I keep my
door always open. On the other hand, I do understand the
importance of actually passing through the gate instead of
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just looking through it, and I do get few clients. Thus, I am

basically a mystic. On the other hand, since I no way
mislead others about their destination, I am certainly not a
mystifier - even though many get confused by expecting a
trick where there is none."

"So you are saying that your gate alone is not selective in
terms of power, intelligence, etc. and yet gets few
entrants?:"

"My gate is the most selective of all, since it selects based

on the willingness of people to enter it. It is the only gate
not yet entered mistakenly by anyone."

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Fraudmen

"All right, so you have said earlier that if God exists, it

would be very hard indeed for us to make any meaningful
statements about him, or even if it is 'him' or 'they'."

"Yes. Even notions like counting imply a level of

understanding of the subject of said counting which I don't
think I have regarding God."

"So then, my question is that there is this guy Baba

Devanand who is basically what we call a 'godman'. His
followers variously believe that he is a great teacher of a
path to enlightenment called 'Dev Yog', then there are
others who believe he is the incarnation of their deity
'Anand Dev'. Then, there are also others who interpret his
speeches to mean that he is actually God himself. This
looks awfully convenient to me. Your arguments have
convinced me that by definition, we have no way to decide
any claims about God, since if we could decide such
claims it would contradict the transcendent Godliness that
is assumed when we talk of God. On the other hand, while
there are no logical reasons to accept or reject his claims,
there is a clear emotional advantage in believing that God
lives a few blocks away and will do our bidding in
exchange for a small monetary donation given in cash.
Since logic goes nowhere and emotions decree that I
believe whatever I find to be convenient, I think I will just
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go and join him."

"This line of reasoning could mistakenly be used to justify

belief in godmen form my perspective, but I think there is a
subtle difference: we may not be able to make positive
statements about God, but we can negative statements.
Can God be helpless, sick, or subject to birth and death?
Can the creator be the created? Not likely. Basically, what I
am saying here is that we may not claim much knowledge
of God, but we do know enough about Swami Devanand.
Presumably, he needs to eat, to sleep, to drink. He was
born, gets sick and will most likely die like all other godmen
in the past. These facts are inconsistent with his fantastic
claims. But even otherwise it is a matter of common sense
that anything in the observed world is created by God if he
exists, and the creator is not the same as the creator. So if
anyone says that some persons, trees or planets are
God/s we can straightaway reject their claims. Especially in
the case of godmen, not only is there good cause to rule
out the possibility that the statement is being made in good
faith, we also have good reasons why he would make the
statement knowing full well that it is false - fame, power,
money. It makes sense to take the reasonable explanation
over obviously false ones. This is why as a general rule it
seems like a good idea to beware of godmen."

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God

"But the stuff you said about being able to make negative
statements if not positive ones about God - is that not also
a strong argument for Monotheism?"

"Why?"

"Consider a table, for instance. When we have not

examined it much - or from a distance - it is one table. But
as we come closer, we may note that it consists of parts,
eg. four legs, one drawer and one top making a total of six
pieces. Then we can keep going further and further until
we come up with a multitude of planks and then end up
with gazillions of atoms. So in a sense once we gain a
certain level of understanding of an object, we further
break it down into various parts to get a number of such
parts. With number of God/s, even once you reject 0 since
the order in the universe - or something else - makes you
believe in God, you still have no basis to cut the concept
into various parts."

"Because of the transcendental nature of the concept of

God."

"Precisely. And thus, it makes more sense to go with 1

than with any other answer."

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"I guess this makes sense. I have newfound respect for

monotheism, at least over polytheism. I still find
agnosticism more justified at least for me given my life
experiences, though."

"Yes, me too. But isn't this line of reasoning eventually

meaningless since we can come to a proof for the non-
existence of God?"

"How is that?"

"The age-old question: can God create a stone so heavy

he cannot lift it?"

"Of course, there is hardly any justification for assuming

that notions like 'lift' make any sense for God. But even if
they did, the question is meaningless because of what
'can' means. First of all, let us agree that making such a
rock can happen only accidentally or intentionally. Can
God create such a rock accidentally? Presumably not,
since the notion of God doing stuff accidentally does not
really seem to make much sense - whatever forces we
tend to consider as causing accidents would all generally
fall at least under the agency of God, by most
understandings of 'God'. But even intentionally, if we
assume that God created the universe then he probably
also created the rules that govern it, including logical ones.
So he would not want to create such a rock, since if he
wanted to do that, he would not have made logic in such a
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way that this concept seems illogical. So there can be no

case where God creates such a rock. But this would not be
a limitation to God's omnipotence because God would also
never want to create such a rock - so a situation would
never arise where God wanted to do something and was
unable to do so - and omnipotence only makes sense as
the absence of such situations, not as the ability to do stuff
randomly (doing things unintentionally is probably a good
indication of a lack of omnipotence)."

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Opposites

"What is the opposite of light?"

"The opposite of light is darkness. Everyone knows this"

"Would it mean that there is no thing less similar to light

than darkness?"

"Of course"

"But is not darkness more similar to light than, say, a

sound is?"

"What kind of question is this? Light is comparable to dark,

but it is not even comparable to a sound. It's like
comparing apples to oranges"

"Of course, two apples would be more similar to each other

than an apple and an orange - which would sort of support
my point - but why can't we compare light to
sound? Both are sensory stimuli"

"But not of the same kind"

"That's the point. Light is a sensory stimulus that is visual

in nature Sound is a sensory stimulus that is NOT visual in
nature. On the other hand, darkness like light is also a
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sensory stimulus that is visual in nature. So wouldn't a

sound be more appropriate than darkness as the opposite
of light?"

"I guess if you put it that way, then yes"

"But why stop there? Like this, I could take something that
is not even a sensory stimulus. Then you would find THAT
to be the real opposite. Again, if I find something common
between light and its so-called opposite, I could find
something that does not share this characteristic. Then you
would find that to be the opposite. I can carry through this
process at least till I claim that 'nothing' is the true opposite
to anything, because anything is 'something', while
'nothing' is not something."

"But that would make no sense. How can all the myriad
things have 'nothing' as their opposite? This is pointless"

"Fair enough. I claim that this is happening because of a

misunderstanding on your part at the very beginning
regarding what is an 'opposite'. An 'opposite' of something
say x, is not something that is least similar to it, rather it is
something that is most similar to it. An opposite shares
every characteristic of the original, save for one. In this
way, it defines the original, by creating a class with only
two elements: the original and the opposite. If we could not
make the distinction between the two things in that set, we
would simply merge them into one - or break the set into a
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continuum from one to the other. So instead of 'light' and

'dark' we can simply have 'brightness'. This is how close
opposites are to each other - the define each other. One
cannot exist without the other. Interestingly, not all
concepts can be broken down like this into opposites. For
example, for 'light' there is only one thing closest to it -
'darkness'. But for 'blue', there would be at least two more
things in the set that is closest to it - 'green', and 'red'.
Similarly, for a circle, all regular polygons can be said to be
in the set of things that are closest to it. Alternatively, we
could even consider all ellipses having the same area as it
to constitute the set closest to it. Either way, the set closest
to it does not consist of just two elements. That is why
there is no such thing as the opposite of a circle or the
opposite of 'blue'.

On the other hand, it is also true that the notion of 'closest

set' is not always well-defined - like with circles. So our
notion of 'opposite' may depend on our notion of 'closest',
but our notion of 'closest' in turn depends on our
conceptual framework"

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Logic

"I am tired of the arbitrariness of life: oh, how I wish that

everything I did, everything I thought was determined by
logic! In fact I find that illogic lies at the root of the world's
problems. If everyone just thought logically, everyone
would necessarily agree with each other. Would this not be
great? This way we would see the end of wars and also
presumably the end of other maladies like hunger and
poverty. Just think: would it not be great?"

"Your line of thought seems to hinge on the assumption

that if everyone thought logically, then everyone would
agree. Right?"

"Yes, I do assume that."

"So then, let me ask you first-off: what is this logic?"

"Well, certain things follow from certain other things. That

is logic."

"...and what about the things they follow from? Where do

they come from?"

"Other things."

"Does this go on or does it end somewhere?"

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"Of course, it must. Otherwise our statements have no

basis."

"Then there are certain basic assumptions you too have to

make, on which all the others hinge. Different people can
have different such cores of beliefs."

"But don't you think that false ones will have an

inconsistent set of core axioms? "

"Some may, some may not - given that by false beliefs,

you refer to systems of belief which you differ from, while
holding on to a particular 'fully logical' system of belief. But
it is entirely possible for various different systems of belief
to each be internally consistent but conflicting with all the
others at some point or the other. If such multiplicities of
logical consistent systems can exist even in a simplified
realm like mathematics, then how much more likely they
are to be in 'real life'. This is because I think that while logic
- meaning logical consistency, is a necessary characteristic
of any meaningful system of belief, it is far from sufficient.
Further, it does not in general uniquely determine your
whole system of belief."

"I guess this is also why it is actually possible for two

people following entirely logical systems of belief to be
constantly at loggerheads with each other"

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Magic

"I am a believer in science. I won't believe that you can do

things by your magical mumbo-jumbo. There must be a
logical explanation behind it. I will find it and then kill you."

"Logical explanation? Of course there is: there is certainly

a scientific explanation. But I doubt you would be able to
comprehend it."

"???"

"Consider the machines you use now. Are not their sizes
regularly reducing? Are not you progressing in a way
where the way you interface with your machines becomes
more and more intuitive?"

"Interface?"

"How you interact with it"

"Yes, I guess all of that is true. But you know, we still deal
with them physically. We don't just mumble at them"

"True, but that is only because your technology is so

primitive. Have you never heard of Aeon?"

"The empire that spanned worlds? Of course, I have heard

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of it - a legend, to suppress common people"

"Just because it is used to suppress people does not

negate the fact that it has a basis - or at least used to. My
own ancestors originated in Aeon - Ruined Aeon, they call
it now: but that is only because their psychological
progress refused to keep up with their technological
progress"

"What does that mean?"

"It means that you can't give guns to thousands of

monkeys and hope they will use it only as a deterrent –
technological and psychological being the two legs of
progress: the dominance of either one leading to
imbalance, falling over and starting over. The point being
that while it is true that Aeonites were savages in many
ways, it is nevertheless true that they had very highly
developed technology. Not only did their machines
eventually become so small and yet so resilient that they
have survived for the millennia since the Great War -
encompassing all, seen by none - but partly due to their
small size newer ways were found to interface with them.
Eventually they settled on talking: just say it and it will be
done"

"That would seem reasonable, given that our technology

too is progressing towards ease of use - but stop trying to
make a fool of me. I know for a fact that your acolytes
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spend years learning your spells. That is the very opposite

of 'ease of use'"

"Nice observation. But what you have failed to observe are

the following: firstly, ease of use generally increases only
during times of relative peace. In times of impending war,
people become warier of the ability for technology to be
used against them. Also, you have failed to account for the
fact that with more technology, while the things you used to
do earlier become easier, you generally also get the ability
to do new things - technology works simply to make there
possible, so it does not necessarily make them very easy.
Therefore, as people hankered after more features,
difficult-to-use advanced functionality did get added to our
'machines' - and once the wars broke out in earnest, this
became the rule rather than the exception"

"However, with this, we would expect only the really

powerful spells to be hard. With you, all your spells are
hard"

"False. You are mistaken. We do have easy spells. We just

don't get around to using them around our enemies, like
yourself. Anyway, as I was saying, not only are the
commands made harder to know, our forefathers also put
in certain voice-detection facilities that would enable our
machines to only respond to commands by people whose
voice patterns 'match' that of their ancestors in certain
ways. This generally acts as a protection against our own
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technology being used against us. This is also why we

have to sometimes turn out people who seem to have 'no
talent at magic', or to deal with 'rogue magicians' - their
voice patterns match those of our ancestors by a quirk of
fate..."

"No, no... you can't just match voices like that. That is not
science, that in itself is magic. So all you have been saying
is that your ancestors too were magicians..."

"No! They were scientists - they followed the scientific

method, not magical thinking where things happen
randomly without cause. They were just many steps ahead
of us"

"Couldn't this plan get seriously messed up if someone

stole your babies, for example?"

"No: even though they had the 'talent', they would never be
trained by us: you can be sure of that"

"But what if the machines themselves go rogue? They are,

after all, machines. Do you guys still know, after all these
years, what made them tick?"

"That's the irony here. We are so much more powerful than

you as long as the machines work well, but once they start
misfiring in a major way, they could end up killing us all,
including us Aeonites"
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"So do something about it: destroy those machines"

"Sorry, no can do. Not only can we not see them, we have
no idea of how they work. We do know how to work them
with our spells, but none of our books give us a spell to
make those nanobots self-destruct...."

"..."

"And even if we could, would we? I am not sure..."

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Technology

"If technology keeps on improving, as our understanding of

the workings of the world also improves, the condition of
human being would generally improve. So why shouldn't
we just focus all our energies on the improvement of
technology?"

"Some people believe, and I too once believed, that

technology would solve all the problems of of the world, all
by itself. But this has changed now. Although I agree that
generally we would probably get things like better health
care and better means of production, that would only mean
that less people die due to human inability. More people
may end up suffering due to human malice in the form of
wars, etc. and with more free time, people would end up
having more time to make other people miserable by
politics and bitching. So real development lies in
augmenting the improvement in technology by the
reduction in human malice. However, the notion of forcibly
removing malice from someone and still regarding them as
the same human you started out with is absurd on the face
of it. Thus, the onus is on individual human beings to take
up the responsibility to remove malice from themselves."

"However, this does not mean that scientific progress is

something to be rejected. It is hardly possible for human
beings with natural curiosity to do without explanations -
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and in the absence of rational explanations all we are left

with is superstition. So although we also need to work on
removing malice, we are better off with science than
without it. An exception can be made to taking funding
from governments and corporations for science, because
in those specific cases work is likely to get directed
towards some means of destruction. However, there
seems to be no harm in trying to satisfy our curiosity by
privately funded work, especially if it is self-funded.

It is possible that as people in general want the results of

scientific work but not to reduce their inner malice,
eventually science will result in weapons that will be
misused, but this would only mean that humanity was still
not mature enough for that knowledge. After near-complete
destruction, we can only rebuild and hope that as we have
not given up on self-improvement, by the time we reach
the same stage in the next cycle, humans with the same
level of technology will have less malice. In this way,
humans will eventually reach a level of non-maliciousness
that makes technology practically harmless. In the process
many lives will be lost, but let us not forget that these many
lives would anyway be lost due to human brutality - even
without science. Further, consciousness itself never dies: it
merely ceases to be able to express itself more completely
in the material world - this being the reason why any death
is a hateful thing (murder even more so because it signifies
the will turning on itself). But the net result here of
improvement in technology - even in multiple cycles of
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growth and destruction - is that consciousness becomes

able to better express itself in the material world. Thus it is
the very opposite of a death."

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Negative Statements

"I have known you for a long time now - and whenever I
ask you about anything really important, you answer with
something that is not an answer at all."

“Is that so?”

"Yes: consider the time I asked you about your beliefs

regarding God: You did not say, "God exists", "God does
not exist", or even that "many Gods exist". You only said
that the notion of God is ill-defined, not something a human
mind is able to deal with - and that even the notion of
number as applied to God(s) is meaningless. You did say
that historically and even currently, the belief in God is
largely driven by socio-political factors which have no great
regard for the truth, but then you also said that the
rudiments of theism that lie in the observation that the
world looks like a strutured place with rules and laws, not
merely a realm of chaos - are things you agree with. Then
you expressed the fact that notions like God favoring
certain people or acts among His creations, or an
anthromorphic God who eats and shits - are notions that
you find to be repulsive."

"That's right, but -"

"Also consider the time I asked you about absolute truth

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and you dismissed the question as bogus, or the times

when I asked you about what actions are moral and to
what extent - and you not only came up with the notion that
only intentional acts can be considered to have any moral
content, but also that while certain kinds of acts lead to
certain kinds of results, it is meaningless to talk of a
universal morality due to the differences - both innate and
environmental - among human beings. You gave me this
nonsense about how different people have different moral
ends, and thus different courses of action make sense to
try to achieve those different ends."

"Yes, I said all that."

"But don't you think that through all this, you have merely
been bluffing me all this time? Out of all these situations, in
none have you given me a straightforward, objectively
meaningful answer. You have always twisted and turned
the words in my question to make a new question, and
then answered that. Does this not mean that you are in fact
unable to answer my original question? Aren't you merely
using involved wordplay to avoid admitting to that, and
pushing your own agenda without any intention to deal with
the questions I posed? I get it now, you are so full of
yourself that no matter what anyone else wants to talk to
you about, you just manipulate the conversation according
to your own agenda - while forgetting the initial point the
other guy wanted to discuss about. Why does it have to be
like this? Why is it always about you, you, you? What
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about other people? What about me??? I hate you!"

"Look, you are getting carried away here. While it's true
that I do have my own set of beliefs, my own
understanding of the world according to which I act, it does
not mean that I am always trying to push it, regardless of
what the other person wants to talk about. It is true that I
don't like talking about stuff that does not interest me, like
gossip about celebrities. But when I find someone going on
about something like that, I don't try to cunningly steer the
conversation to subjects that interest me. You know me
well enough to know that I simply refuse to discuss things
that are of no interest to me - I don't try to prevent others
from talking about them either. So when you start a
discussion about something and I join in it - whether it is
about nature and number of God or about morality - it is
because I am interested in the topic in the first place. It is
true that sometimes, I try to rephrase some questions that
you raise before looking for a solution to them, but I have
never rephrased the question in such a way as to deviate
from its initial topic. Rather, I do this to question hidden
assumptions in the original question."

"But why should this sort of thing be needed?"

"Simply because a question can be phrased does not

mean that it makes sense. For instance, you have some
familiarity with mathematics. Sometime in the distant past,
someone must have asked the following question to
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someone: "What is the largest prime number?". Now, you

know and I know that this question is meaningless since
there is no such thing as the largest prime number. Does
this mean that someone who was unable to come with a
number which is the largest prime number is necessarily
ignorant about the topic in question here? Suppose
someone went ahead and told the questioner that there is
no such thing as "the largest prime number", and suppose
that he was able to show why this is the case. Such a
person would not have answered the original question, but
nevertheless he would have given the most meaningful
response to the question. This does not show an ignorance
about the issue, nor an unwillingness to grapple with it.
Rather, by finding the problems inherent in the original
question, you show an even greater understanding - and
willingness to get your hands dirty - than someone who is
merely willing to deal with the question as posed. This is
because in some cases it is only like this that a meaningful
response to the original question can be found: thrashing
about your arms in a wild attempt to find a straightforward
answer to the original question does not contribute
anything to our understanding of the subject matter. On the
other hand, the process of questioning our inherent
assumptions due to badly-phrased questions often does
more to increase our understanding of a topic, than finding
straightforward answers to questions that do make sense.
For instance, it is possible to give a straightforward answer
to the question, "what is the smallest prime number?", but
the answer to that contributes essentially nothing to
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anyone's understanding of what a prime number is.

However, the scope of our understanding generally
increases greatly by understanding how "what is the
largest prime number?", is a badly-phrased question
because for every prime number there is a greater prime
number. These are mere examples of how questioning
questions often provides greater understanding than
answering them. This is why I don't hesitate to do that all
the time, like in the examples you provided... and just like
in the example on prime numbers, I believe that my
approach to the questions you asked is more meaningful
than merely looking for straightforward answers."

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Categorical Imperative

"You keep talking about various subjects, but the

Categorical Imperative has guided me through my life. Do
you even know what it is? If so, what do you think of it?"

"Much has been made of the Categorical Imperative. The

Golden Rule, 'do unto others as you would have them do
unto you', has been a basic moral principle since historic
times. The Categorical Imperative is its generalization in a
more useful form. However, when we examine what it is,
we are left with the feeling that it seems to be void of any
content. 'Act in such a way that it could become a universal
law', in other words, „act in such a way that if it became a
universal law, you would be fine with it‟. Now, someone
who acts nicely with others because he wishes everyone
was pleasant and helpful to others would clearly be
following the categorical imperative. But what of someone,
say Julie, who always hurts others so that she herself may
advance? Is she not acting according to the categorical
imperative? Her universal rule is as follows: 'act in such a
way that Julie may advance, even at the cost of others'. Is
this rule really something she would not like to become a
universal law? I don't think so. She would be as eager to
make that a universal law as anyone else would be, to
make their own categorical law into a universal law. If you
say that this sort of law should be disqualified from being a
universal law because it makes specific reference to the
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one following the law, consider that some combination of

things like height, weight, gender, age, birthplace, name,
etc. can be found which uniquely determine Julie. Now,
suppose she thought of laws like this: all other things being
the same, people whose height is more similar to 5 feet 5
inches (Julie's height) deserve better treatment than those
whose height is more different than it, similarly for weight
being more similar to 140 pounds (her weight), and so on
regarding all the characteristics that would be needed to
uniquely determine her. Would such a set of laws be
acceptable?

If yes, consider that in the end they combine to show that

Julie must always get better treatment than anyone else.
You could argue that it would also require her sympathies
to extend to some extent to people who are more similar to
her, but then consider that treating people similar to you
better than those different than you is merely a political
ploy that must be used by anyone wanting to advance at
all costs to others, for the sake of making alliances. Also,
we could argue that she is not necessarily just treating
those similar to herself better, she is also treating those
different to her worse.

If no, consider that if the whole set of such rules is not

acceptable, is even a single such rule acceptable? If she,
being a woman, is always on the lookout for means to
benefit women in general at the expense of men through
unscrupulous means, is it acceptable? If not, would the
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same be acceptable for a man to do? You could say that

both are unacceptable, and that this shows that generally
such laws should relate to something that it not specific to
the physical constitution of individuals, but should rather be
possible to treat as a purely moral issue. But surely,
people's opinions on morality are also affected by their
physical constitutions. For instance, we would reasonably
expect a population of high-testosterone individuals to
have different moral impulses than a population of low-
testosterone individuals. Additionally, even in the absence
of ill-intent, our views on moral issues would undoubtedly
be informed by our personal experiences.

If we accept that ruling out categorical laws based on our

subjective constitution and personal experiences also rules
out categorical laws based on what we might consider
moral impulses, the question arises: do we even leave any
valid candidates for moral laws?

In the previous example on women's issues, we can say

the problem is that men would probably not consciously
agree to following such a law. But if it is votes we want,
how many is good enough? Do we want something on
which we want a total consensus? If so, we would have to
consider it to be an impossibility, because some madman
somewhere will oppose anything. If we want only a simple
majority, then it is no different from a kind of democracy,
which though a very useful political tool (probably for this
very purpose), cannot be considered very useful to dictate
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our personal behavior, for if the guiding principles behind

the actions of individuals could be determined by
democratic means, then there would be no room for
dissent or innovation - we probably would never have had
even fire. In any case, it seems intuitively obvious that we
are not ants. Also, for the vast majority of interesting
questions, it would be exceedingly difficult to poll a
representative sample regarding which way to go on it,
since most of them could probably not even understand
the question properly, let alone answer it.

But coming back to the problem of consensus, once we

agree that madmen are not legitimate voices in deciding
what is a valid categorical imperative, and generally stupid
people or morally immature ones like say very young
children should be excluded from having a say in it, we
come to realize that to someone with a particular point of
view, anyone with a different point of view tends to be
stupid or immature to some extent. So why not just ignore
the people who disagree with you? Indeed, as you are
probably the only person who agrees with yourself on
every important issue (and probably not even that), why
not just ignore everyone except yourself? But if we do this,
where does this leave the categorical imperative?

So basically I am saying that if we say that 1) categorical

laws based only on personal prejudice are not categorical
laws at all, then 2) since who we are and what we have
experienced guide our opinions on all issues, they also
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guide our opinions on all moral issues. So it is pointless to

think of categorical laws that are not guided by personal
prejudice 3) democratic means to decide what are
reasonable categorical laws are misguided because not
only is it very difficult to decide what the majority opinion
on a specific issue is, and not only must any attempt at
consensus leave out a rather arbitrary set of people,
following the majority opinion at all times would lead to
consequences like the stifling of innovation that most
people would not want.

So, if we have to speak of categorical laws, we must also

allow such laws that are based on personal prejudice. If we
allow them, then everyone would be following any number
of categorical laws - at least if their behavior shows any
kind of consistency.

I posit that the real value of the 'categorical imperative' lies

not in forming moral laws for us to follow, but in giving us
the ability to analyze moral laws that we already follow. For
instance, if someone says that they are guided by the
moral law of always killing criminals - but they would not kill
their own family members for breaking the law, then
possibly their true motives lie not only in the upholding of
the law itself, but in upholding the law as a means to
making the world a safer place for their families. Another
example, suppose Rita always insists on fair weights when
buying things but is negligent on actually giving fair
weights, then her true objective is not fairness in weighing,
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but rather to increase her profits. Weighing is merely a tool

for this purpose. In cases like these, the categorical
imperative becomes a useful tool in the hands of not only
her detractors, but also for herself. Many times we act on
motives that only become clear to us when we look hard at
them. Through the categorical imperative, we can become
better aware of where our impulses are taking us, and thus
we can decide whether or not we like the path it is taking."

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Means and Ends

"What does it mean to be kind to people? I have heard of

many points in support of being good to people and
treating them as I myself would ike to be treated. I like
reading Nex Comics, so I have decided to gift Nex Comics
to random people for the rest of my life. Since it has a low
readership anyway, it is unlikely that it would be wasted on
too many people."

"No, wait. That is fucked up. Do you really think that most
people want to read those things? Don't you think that
most of them would be perfectly able to buy them if they
needed to, and would in fact be pissed off rather than
happy at being spammed each month by the latest issue of
Nex Comics?"

"True enough. But many people would have liked those if

only they had been exposed to Nex Comics at some time
earlier -"

"And an even larger number may have disliked it even

then, to the extent of not wanting to get it even for free."

"Okay, but consider this fact that too many people,

especially orphaned and otherwise poor children, would be
too poor to buy Nex Comics. So giving them Nex Comics
would be about creating opportunities, rather than about
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spam."

"True - but for the amount you would be spending on that,

you could support them in more substantial ways. For
instance, many people have difficulty even finding proper
nutrition. Additionally, the fact that it is called Nex Comics
does not negate the fact that it is essentially a softporn
magazine. If you had been their father, wouldn't you have
been pissed off at strangers sending this to your kids?"

"Yes, but I am not their father. I am simply a stranger to

them, treating them to what I would like to be treated to,
myself."

"You would have liked to see those images when you were
5-6 years old? I doubt it."

"Yes - but that is in the past, while we are talking about

how to treat people in the present. As you know, the
present is a present. So in the present I would like to
present people with stuff I would like to be presented with,
myself."

"I think this situation illustrates the problems involved with

treating people like you would be wanted to be treated
yourself, when in fact there are major differences in your
needs and desires. By sending them softporn now, you are
treating them like you want to be treated in the superficial
sense of 'give us softporn', but not in the more fundamental
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sense of 'give me what I want the most', which underlies

your desire to be treated by the rule of 'give us softporn'.
By treating them superficially but not fundamentally
according to the golden rule, you are in fact not treating
them according to any golden rule at all. If you really want
to be kind and treat them as you treat yourself, you need to
at least understand how you treat yourself, or at least how
you would like to."

"But I do understand how I treat myself - I get whatever I

want. That is how I treat myself."

"This is patently false. Many a time you have skipped on

food, television and games so you could work harder."

"Yes, but I only work harder so I can get a better supply of

Nex Comics. Skipping on food and games is ultimately
only for the sake of getting more of that stuff."

"True, but this means that you don't just get 'whatever you
want': you give up certain kinds of desires for the sake of
others. Don't you think that other people also deserve this
kind of consideration?"

"You mean like giving more priority to long-term goals over

short-term ones?"

"Someone may have the desire to reach the moon when

they are 200 years old. Knowing this, and knowing that he
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will almost certainly not reach to be so old, would you still

give that more preference over everything else? Keep in
mind that not only may he not reach 200, he may not even
reach 50. Many people do die earlier than that, in
accidents and otherwise. Because of this, I believe that
while we must give more preference to some desires over
others, it cannot be on the basis of their time horizons.
Rather, it needs to be on the basis of what drives are more
fundamental for them. Something that is done as an end in
itself needs to be given higher priority to something that is
done as that end, as an end in itself."

"Right - like for me, reading Nex Comics is an end in itself.

On the other hand, things like food, sleep, etc. are just a
means to that end. So Nex Comics is what I need to focus
on. Thus, no harm in sending out Nex Comics to needy
children..."

"... while you seem to have got the point about giving
priority to ends in themselves, when we interact with others
it is not only a question of what you consider an end in
themselves, but also what they consider as an end in itself.
For a starving child, food is an end in itself because when
taking food, they don't have any purpose in mind for the
sake of which they are eating. On the other hand, there are
probably many things they do as a means to getting at
food. When you give Nex Comics to starving children, it
lets them achieve what you consider to be an end in itself.
However, in general it does not help them get at what they
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consider to be an end in itself. Also, it does not help you

get what you consider an end in itself. So this is a silly
thing to do. I would suggest helping them with things that
they consider to be ends in themselves: either directly, or
through helping them find the means to get at those ends.
However, it is well to understand that other people also
have things they consider to be ends in themselves, and
their ends may differ from yours. To treat them by giving
precedence to their ends makes more sense than
imposing your ends on them, at least if you consider those
other people as ends in themselves rather than as mere
means to your ends. Also, I think any reasonable notion of
being good to others would involve regarding them as ends
in themselves rather than as mere means to your ends,
right?"

"But how does all this gel in with your notion about all of us
being indistinguishable from each other? Since we are the
same as each other, would it even make any difference
whether I treat them according to their wishes or my own
wishes?"

"I say that the fundamental consciousness that feels itself

to be alive, cannot be distinguished form person to person
or even among living and seemingly lifeless entities.
However, you and others do have different thoughts and
feelings, even though the consciousness which enables
you to have these thoughts and feelings cannot be rigidly
differentiated between you and others. Thought is not the
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same as consciousness, and treating others as if they

have the same wishes as you is not much different from
being treated yourself as merely a means to the ends of
someone else - and how would you like that? In a human
body, you think as if there is only one consciousness,
namely you for instance. But different parts of the body
have their own abilities and needs. If you started feeding
food to your ears and holding pens in your belly-button for
writing, it may look funny but it could hardly be called
treating your body properly. Similarly, different people with
different abilities, different needs and different life
experiences provide a variety that generally helps us all.
To disregard the value in these differences among people
is like disregarding the value in having a variety of organs
instead of just one."

"I guess because of this it may make more sense to see all
people, and similarly all organs etc., interconnected like
brothers, instead of dwelling on the fact that in some
sense, they could all be considered one."

"Thinking in terms of yourself as a complete human being,

you can conceive of a human being as an entirety. So
there is not much harm in thinking of human beings as
complete entities instead of a bundle of interconnected
organs. But since we are only single human beings, it is
hard to conceive of a societal structure as a whole without
giving undue weight to the aspects of it that concern us
more. Therefore, it is only too easy to disregard the variety
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of purposes human beings serve in a society. Further, in

practice persons who claim to be able to understand
society as a whole tend to be crooks who are trying to
psychologically intimidate others into paying tribute to
them. Thus, acting within our limitations as individual
human beings, we are better off thinking of societies as
collections of interconnected human beings. Once
societies as a whole become conscious to the extent of
being able to ask such questions, they may be better
served by conceiving societies as whole instead of as
collections of interrelated human beings. But as individual
human beings, that sort of thinking does not make much
sense for us."

"Right."

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Trust

"Some people trust anyone, some trust no one. Whom do

you trust?"

"It is foolish and impractical to trust everyone with

everything, because then you merely get taken for a ride.
But it is also foolish to never trust anyone with anything,
because that way nothing would ever get done. So we first
realize that all trust is not the same: there are gradations to
trust and trusting someone to do something that is not
urgent on time is different than trusting someone with your
life.

Thus, having different degrees of trust, we realize that for

us to trust anyone with anything major, they would have to
earn that kind of trust. But when someone is coming to us
with a blank slate, there is no harm in trusting them with
something minor - for if people need to earn our trust, we
must also be willing to give people the chance to earn that
trust."

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Courage

"What is courage? Is it the same as mere recklessness?

Does someone who has no sense of fear automatically
become the most courageous person? Is it the mere
overcoming of fear? If I, for no reason, jump off a cliff and
die, would it make me into someone courageous?

I guess not, but if it is not these things, then what is it?"

"I think that there is no such thing as courage without a

purpose. Acts that with purpose would be courageous
would become merely reckless without it. For example,
consider putting life and limb to risk by fighting someone to
the death. When you do this to protect your loved ones
from slavery and destitution, or even just mismanagement,
you are a courageous warrior. But when people do it in
peacetime for mere amusement, it is no longer worthy of
being called 'courageous'. Then, it is mere recklessness.

Unfortunately, it often happens that when a civilization

does too well - or stagnates in some other way, people are
less exposed to true courage. Thus they are unable to
distinguish it from mere recklessness. This is why we have
gladiators, bullfights, reality shows and the like. I guess we
can see the absence of purpose in all spheres, especially
in activities called courageous - as one of the easily
perceptible and significant indicators of the decay of
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society."

"Yes, I think the main difference between courage and

recklessness is one of purpose: a courageous person sees
his courageous acts as the means to an end, while
recklessness is more often than not an end in itself.
Another way to look at it is to look at the opposite of
courage: let me ask you, what is cowardice?"

"A great man once said, 'to know what is right, and to not
do it, is cowardice' - and I agree.

In the same way, I guess we could say that courage lies in

knowing what is right, and doing it. 'What is right' implies
moral principles that are realized by these courageous
actions but are not conceptually equivalent to the acts
themselves. A person without such moral principles to
uphold cannot therefore be considered courageous. Also, it
implies acting on those notions, so someone who merely
keeps theorizing about moral notions does not become
courageous for doing that."

"You have a point, but although I agree with what you have
said till now as being necessary for something to be called
courage, I think you are missing out on something. If I
know what is right - and I do it - but that is something with
no repercussions either psychologically or socially, am I
doing something courageous? I don't think so. So it should
be more like, 'knowing what is right and overcoming all
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obstacles to achieve it', is courage."

"Society is like a viscous fluid, and so is most people's

psychology: no matter what you do, you face resistance.
You face resistance if you do what you believe in, but you
also face resistance while doing what you don't believe in.
Whether you go along with others' opinions or buck the
trend, most people will in all cases feel some kind of inner
resistance in terms of feelings, however slight, of guilt and
fear. One could even claim that if one is not feeling such
resistance, they are letting themselves stagnate in their
life. One may take this further to claim that the more more
guilt and fear one feels, the more they are doing with their
life -

But this is patently false. Someone may feel more fear and
guilt because of putting in more effort, but also because of
lack of forethought in the way they put in their effort, or
simply because they let life happen to them instead of
happening back to life in turn. Someone who fights his fear
before minimizing it does not become more courageous as
a result. It is true that in the absence of other purposes, we
often just go along the flow by doing whatever is easiest for
us socially and psychologically. Because of this, the
easiest way to know that we are being courageous - by
knowing that we are not merely going along with the flow -
is by sensing how much resistance we are getting: if we
feel more resistance, that probably means that we are
being more purposeful and hence more courageous.
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However, this only makes sense for someone whose

sense of purpose is merely instinctive - being guided by
values he learned in childhood and older instincts.
Because of this, he may be unable to consciously know
and judge what gives him a sense of purpose. So he would
be left with no better alternative than to judge his sense of
purpose by the resistance he gets to his acts. However,
someone who has reflected on his sense of purpose to
know what gives him this sense of purpose, and has then
reflected on his purposes to make his various kinds of
purposes like long-term and short-term purpose, personal
and social purpose etc. all aligned can easily figure out
what course of action goes with this purpose simply by the
use of conscious thought instead of having to resort to
examining how strongly he feels a sense of purpose. When
you figure out your purposes by this means instead of by
measuring the resistance you feel to your plans and
actions, it makes more sense to describe courage as the
willingness to act on what suits your purposes. Of course,
in general it is still true that increased resistance - both
psychological and social - go along with courage.
However, just like mere recklessness, they do not define
courage."

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Competition

"Some people believe that people should be more and

more competitive, while some others feel that it is better for
people to cooperate with each other. Out of these, which
camp do you belong to?"

"Competition is not the opposite of cooperation.

Competition also involves an element of cooperation, in
terms of agreeing to the objectives and the rules of the
competition. Although you believe in differences to the
extent to which people have the ability to achieve the
objectives of the competition while following its rules, you
probably do not believe in differences regarding the aims
of different people. One could argue that the true opposite
of cooperation or rather of the herd mentality is
individualism, where you not only let go of the notion that
people need to be the same in their abilities, you also let
go of the notion that they need to be the same in their
motivations. Thus, someone who is tired of a life whereby
everyone is expected to be the same is better served by
having their own unique motivations, rather than by merely
trying to be more and more competitive. This camp, of
individualism, is the one I am really closest to."

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Sacred

"Have you heard of the guy who said, 'nothing is true,

everything is permitted'? What an absurd statement. If
nothing is true, then what about this very statement?"

"I think the point is not about things being true, but about
them being sacred, sacrosanct and unchallengeable. A lot
of people keep following ideas that restrict their and others'
behavior, but they don't even bother to question and judge
those ideas before becoming slaves to them. Without
treating ideas as such sacred cows, we permit ourselves
everything - and so are able to question ideas to determine
their worth. Even when we find an idea to be worthy, we
follow it not because of being compelled to do so, but out
of our own wish. We permit ourselves everything, and
then, without any artificial restriction on our choices, do
what seems reasonable according to our wishes. Now
contrast this with the opposite, 'tolerant' idea.

'Everything is true, nothing is permitted' "

"Indeed. Some people realize the importance of treating all

ideas the same a priori, but the instinct to revere is so
strong in them that instead of challenging and questioning
everything, they instead end up blindly believing
everything.

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But while some ideas may be consistent with each other, it

is not the case that all ideas are consistent with each
other."

"This is why, once one believes 'everything is true' for long

enough, they develop a disregard for logical consistency.
Once this happens, anyone can dictate anything to them.
There is no shortage in this world of seekers after power
and status, even through deceitful means. Thus, more and
more people start to develop arbitrary rules and
regulations, and there is no one to question them. It is not
uncommon to see that doing something is banned, but so
is not doing it. This state of activities continues until there
is some obscure rule or the other against any kind of
activity. From this situation - from the despair in this of the
people who actually want to follow all rules, from the
jubilation of those to whom rules and regulations mean no
more than opportunities for the naked display of power -
we come to this saying among them: 'everything is true,
nothing is permitted'"

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Desert

"Don't you think that people who let others steal from them
should be killed?"

"I don't know what you are talking about: they are already
fined an amount that is equal to the money stolen from
them. Don't you think that this is punishment enough?"

"It is a form of punishment, but keep in mind that theft

undermines the very basis of civilized society. This is a
serious offense."

"True, but i would think that state-sanctioned murder

undermines it more..."

"Are you serious? Everyone knows that a ruler who cannot

kill his subjects is not a ruler, but a servant to them.
Without the King regularly enforcing his power, he is seen
as weak and is soon overthrown, and..."

"I know all that. I too went to school just like you, and was
indoctrinated with the same bullshit."

"Not only that, you did quite well in it - and that fact has
helped you do well in life so far! So then how can you now
turn traitor to the very system to which you owe
everything? Have you no shame?"
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"I see myself not as a traitor, but as a reformer. What I

believe is that while we have an obligation to the state
which protects us, we have an even deeper commitment to
notions like fairness, leniency and objectivity in treating
various people."

"What do you mean? Everyone knows that notions like

rights and obligations originate from the state, so it is
meaningless to talk of the creations of the state being more
important than the state itself!"

"Unlike you, I believe that although the state can have its
own subjective laws of ruler and ruled - of winner and loser
- nature too has its own objective laws that don't
distinguish between people, just as they don't distinguish
between specks of sand. A person may perish if he goes
against a state, but a state too will perish if it goes against
nature. As patriotic members of our state, our fundamental
duty towards it is to ensure its continued survival. This
supersedes the duties the state imposes on us by force,
because if we don't follow the former, we cannot follow the
latter towards a state in the absence or ruin of the state
itself. In this way, objective laws of nature have always
been the true calling of people like myself, who have
worked hard to realign themselves and their states towards
these laws and have thus strengthened both in the long
run. The fact that the laws of the state must be brought into
accord with the laws of nature is precisely the reason why
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revolutionaries like myself have always been crucial

components of any society."

"Do you think that following these 'objective laws of nature'

instead of the subjective laws of our great state makes you
a hero? It only makes you a zero, a fool! Everyone knows
that the bias towards objectivity has led to the exploitation
of countless people throughout history, and only our
subjective laws favoring the needy has redressed the
injustices meted out by objectivity."

"I too have heard all that when those notions were parroted
to us as little children, the difference between us lying in
precisely this: that I have overcome those childish notions.
First of all, there can be no such thing as a 'bias towards
objectivity', because objectivity by definition is a default
state on which you can superimpose your personal biases
(since nature has no personal biases, it is impartial -
objective). Secondly, the notion of subjectivity being a
friend of human rights is a myth. In case you did not notice,
laws that claim to help the needy and oppressed that are
not phrased objectively (as tends to be the case) -
generally end up persecuting groups hated by the framers
of the law. Similarly, the beneficiaries almost always end
up being the friends, relatives and voters of those who are
in power - even when, in fact especially when, they are not
really oppressed in any way. Examples of such laws
include the ones that have been made so that members of
one group can bring the whole apparatus of the state to
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bear against a personal enemy from another group, who

may not even be capable of having committed the crime he
is accused of. If the role of the two parties had been
reversed here, even you could see that it is unjust. But you
can't, because in your mind you cannot exchange the roles
of the two. This is a prime instance of injustice, and can be
seen to happen only because the framers and executors of
the said law do not bother to be objective."

"Blah blah... come to the point. Why should we not kill

those who let themselves be robbed? All your points are
invalid because we already kill people for sleeping too
much when they should be working."

"The answer I want to give here involves the irrationality

and disproportionality of killing people for slacking off... but
I suspect you don't want to hear that line of argument. I
suspect that I cannot get to you there because of the ways
in which our state has successfully indoctrinated you. So
let me rather come back to the original question: why
should we even be killing people for getting robbed?
Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

"Everyone knows that the responsibility for preventing a

robbery lies on the one being robbed - because if everyone
has perfect security, no one will ever get robbed. Further,
those who are robbed are by definition weaker and thus
more useless sections of society than those who do the
robbing. We need to encourage those lazy people to get
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off their ass, by holding them responsible for the acts they
let happen. There is no point in punishing the strong for the
weaknesses of the weak, because that way we will only
reduce our own strength as a society."

"Robbers, in general, are not defined by being stronger

than their victims: what really distinguishes them is their
willingness to inflict sadness on their victims and then
society's condemnation as a weakling who was robbed.
Now, of course, due to the current state of laws everyone
wants to be a robber so that even if they are robbed they
can hide that fact. But this merely turns the 'strength of the
society' (that you were referring to) against itself.
Therefore, by blaming the victim, you are not reducing but
are actually increasing the time people spend in planning
robberies and in trying to ward them off. If you had merely
blamed the perpetrator instead, this time would have been
freed up for other more constructive pursuits. Additionally,
only a small fraction of the population is willing to actively
break the law (as opposed to the larger population that
ends up breaking it passively when the demands made by
the law cannot be fulfilled in practice). Thus, by simply
locking them up, you could greatly reduce crime instead of
increasing it as is happening with the current approach."

"You are building castles in the air: has such a legal

system ever existed?"

"It existed right here on the land we are standing on, laws
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that protected people from robbery instead of blaming

them for being victims to it. Right now, it is no longer there,
having been overthrown by a generation of people who
wanted to be robbers instead of just being protected from
them... you can see the society that generation created
dying around us. The old society may no longer be there,
but they achieved great things and survived for far longer
than we have any hope of doing right now."

"But how can you excuse a robbee? Isn't he a criminal?

Doesn't he deserve to be punished, at least? Who will give
him his just deserts?"

"My point, which you seem to have been missing all along,
is precisely this: the just deserts of people are not
determined just by them. It also depends on the paradigm
under which you decide to see their actions. For the
successful paradigm you follow, the responsibility to
prevent robbery rests on the owner of said property. But for
the historical, even more successful paradigm followed by
our late ancestors, robbery can and should be tackled by
dealing with the robbers - they are the ones being blamed
for the robbery. So there is nothing inherently criminal
about the robbee: only the attitude of the society makes it
so."

"So two different paradigms can be equally successful in

terms of survival, even as they apportion blame in vastly
different ways for the same crime?"
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"Yes, this is a fact: and this is precisely what I mean when I

say that the just deserts of all people depend on the
glasses through which we look at them... use a different
paradigm, and the hero will become a villain while a villan
become a nobody. Of course, it is hardly conceivable to
look at anything without a paradigm. but then this is the
reason why I don't take my own judgments about anyone
seriously: under a different paradigm, I could possibly have
see them in an entirely different light."

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Greatness

"You know, sometimes I wish I could interact more with the

great philosopher Rahul Raj, so that I could learn from him
and be more like him. Here on my own, it is very hard to
find inspiration."

"Very interesting, so you want to be just like Dr. Rahul?"

"Yes."

"So if you get to know more and more about how he lived
his life, will you try to emulate as much of it as you can?"

"Yes, of course."

"Unfortunately, the more you did that, the less you would
be like him. Why is this? Simply because he himself is an
original, not a carbon copy - and it is largely this that
makes him what he is. Did he spend his whole life trying to
emulate someone, or did he beat his own path? He found
his own path. If you, instead of finding your own path,
merely try to emulate him, then at best you can be like him
only superficially. You will thus be unable to emulate the
very characteristic which made him great - his originality. If
you want to emulate his greatness, then instead of finding
superficial similarities you are probably better off just being
original and true to yourself, like him."
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"Yes, good point. But then how do you explain the fact that
in many cases, great people turn out to have known other
great men, sometimes closely, in their youth and
childhood?"

"To understand this, we are probably better off

understanding their attitudes towards those they knew. Did
they see themselves as creepers and the others as trees
they can creep over by emulating their habits and views?
Or was their attitude more like: 'If this guy can do it then I
too can do it - I can probably do it better'. I think you will
find that it is generally the latter, as borne out by the low
opinion a new generation of great men often has for an old
generation and also by the quarrels and fights they can be
expected to keep having among themselves. My point is
that for someone who wants to become great, other great
men are useful - but not as supports using which he can
hide his own shortcomings, but rather as obstacles he
needs to overcome - signposts of what he wants to
surpass. The old generation's greats became what they
are by surpassing the even older generation - and this
happens because instead of doing things the old way they
did things in new, better ways - or even because they
generally did better things. So in a similar way, for
someone to become a new generation's flag-bearer, they
too need to do things not in the old way but rather in new,
better ways. Thus you need to have the courage to try new
things, the arrogance to believe they can work, and the
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understanding that while better ways need to be new, all

new ways are not necessarily better - this should help
when you try out something that does not work better than
the old way or even does not work at all, with this
understanding you should be able to avoid killing yourself."

"This sounds interesting. Either my desire to emulate

Rahul earlier showed my desire to become great like him,
or my lack of confidence in my ability to do that."

"More like it showed both."

"True, but from now on I am going to do things my own

way. Let's see if I really am really able to surpass him in
that way. If it works, then well and good."

"And what if it doesn't?"

"It is still good. I will have lived life my way, fighting for
what I want instead of gaining fake accomplishments by
superficially emulating others. Even if it does not work out,
it is good enough to have lived life working towards
genuinely getting what I want."

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Heart of Sword

"A heart of sword? What's that? Is that the thing you have
after someone stabs you in the heart? Although I guess
that would be more like a heart pierced by a sword, no?"

"No, that is not the kind of thing I am talking of here. To

understand what I mean by heart of sword, you should
think of most people having hearts of blunt weapons"

"You mean like clubs? Or hammers?"

"There are people who waste time in clubs. There are also
people who keep hammering away at things. So you have
something there. But basically, you got to realize that the
art of war reached a new level when people graduated
from using blunt weapons like clubs and hammers to sharp
stuff like swords. Why? Because sharp objects can focus
much more force to a point than blunt objects, at least if
similar power is applied on both of them. Also, the kind of
point damage inflicted by swords is harder to deal with
than the kind of area damage inflicted by blunt objects"

"Okay, so you are basically talking about focus, no?"

"Yes, but since focus leads to more power, most people

confuse power with focus. In reality, to develop focus, you
don't need much power. All you need is the ability to let go
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of that which is not important. To use the analogy, you

could make a club out of steel, and then sculpt a sword out
of that club. The sword will be much more of a weapon
than the club, even though the sword was created by
removing things from the club, rather than by adding to it.
Similarly, to become more focused, you don't need to add
some mysterious element called 'focus', all you got to do is
to remove what is non-essential. If you take a cross-
section of a club, it is essentially the same in all directions,
but a cross-section of a sword is essentially one-
dimensional. Similarly, someone with a heart of sword is
liable to be described as one-dimensional by those who
have hearts of blunt objects"

"So we basically got to become fanatical about one thing,

and kill our emotions, that sort of thing?"

"It's not about killing your emotions. It's about realizing that
many of our emotions are merely the result of social
conditioning and so don't count for shit. So we become
lazy in acting on them, and soon only thoughts and actions
that lead to our purposes are of any consequence
whatsoever. Also, fanatics become fanatical precisely
because they are led by their conditioned emotions, rather
than by reason. So a person with a heart of sword is
actually the least fanatical of people, although in some
cases he may look like that to others"

"But I just realized that a sword is awesome only if you

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can keep using its blade, it's useless if say at any time you
mistakenly use its thin dimension for hitting anyone"

"That's why it's pointless to have a heart of sword unless

you have something to use it for. Until you are very clear
about what you want to do with your life, you will never be
able to figure out what you want of the sword in your heart.
That is why we say that a purposeful mind needs to arise
before you can think of having a heart of sword"

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Plan Management

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could plan out our lives form

now on until we die? With nothing new to think of, we
would not need to fear anything. Also, we could devote full
effort to our plans if we did not have to keep changing
them from instant to instant."

"Is that so? Aren't you the same guy who was talking with
me yesterday about how you want to live life
spontaneously, in the moment - without having to worry
about what tomorrow will bring?"

"Yes, maybe that was so. But then, you yourself convinced
me about the futility of that line of thinking, and made me
realize the power of having a 'heart of sword', as you call it.
Figuring out the escape from anxiety and doubt, and also
the strength it promises, I have decided to live my life in
that way only: My life will have one purpose only, and I will
use every aspect of my life as a mere tool to achieve that
purpose. With everything geared towards a single purpose,
I will cut through difficulties like a knife -"

"Or a sword..."

"Yeah, I will do that - and with nothing to distract myself,

there will be no one in the whole world who can stop me
from achieving greatness in my chosen field of endeavor! I
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will be the unstoppable force, I will be the immovable

object! All shall look at me and tremble!"

"Very well, but have you even thought of what this single
purpose of your life is going to be; or are you just going to
go with the first arbitrary idea that comes into your head?"

"Not yet, but I will get around to it eventually..."

"And when do you intend to start on this whole 'heart of

sword' thing? Before or after you manage to think of this
purpose?"

"Well..."

"There is a problem here: first of all, you cannot really start

to do it before you have found your one true purpose -
because there is no thing as purposeful action without a
purpose. Further, if you want to wait till you find the best
purpose you can have then merely finding this purpose will
probably take up your whole life. Even if it doesn't, by the
time you find something that looks satisfactory that way,
you will probably be too old and tired to actually make it
happen. On the other hand, suppose you really just wanted
something reasonably awesome. Then by the time you
have finished with that project, you will probably come to
see how it was not all you had hoped it would be. Even if it
is indeed all you had hoped it would be, you may still
realize that you could have thought of and done something
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better - maybe not something entirely different but only a

modification of your original plans. However, once you
have given your whole life to one purpose, it is hard to go
ahead and give your whole life to yet another purpose."

"So then, this must be why the whole concept of 'heart of

sword' is meaningless and no one follows it in practice."

"Rather, this is the reason why, when I talk of the notion of

having a 'heart of sword', taking interest in only what is
essential and ignoring all that is of little relevance to a
given purpose - I only talk about one's state of mind at any
given time: I do not talk of the whole life. And why should
this not be the case? If I was thinking in terms of having
only a single purpose throughout life, it would be like a
blade but one which always faces the same way. Such a
heart could probably be called a 'heart of guillotine', but a
sword is something such that even though its blade clearly
points in only one direction at time, is still capable of being
swung around in different directions. Thus, a 'heart of
sword' too has only a given purpose at any given point of
time: but the direction keeps changing according to our
environment and our understanding of it. As time passes,
new developments keep taking place all around us, which
change our abilities and our responsibilities. Also, we keep
getting insights into the reasons behind our motivations,
and as we keep working towards various objectives we
also gain a better understanding of whether they satisfy
our needs at all, and if so then in what way. Therefore, as
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our understanding changes, it makes sense to readjust our

purposes accordingly."

"But doesn't this process of continually rejudging our

purposes conflict with this notion of having a heart of
sword?"

"Why? If you had a sword, would you continually keep

thrusting it forward, without ever drawing it back? In
practice, you would need to pull it back one in a while just
so you can keep thrusting it forward. In the same way, the
periods of reflection, especially after finishing up smaller
constituent goals, are essential not just to know where to
thrust next, but also to be able to do this thrusting. In fact,
what characterizes a heart of sword is not that it does not
reflect, but rather when it reflects on its experiences
everything it does it geared towards such reflection. A
lesser heart may still have moments of reflection, but when
it reflects it also wants to do a hundred other things - and it
does not know what its priorities are among the hundred-
and-one things it wants. A heart of sword too may
realistically have many goals that it realizes it wants to
achieve over its lifetime, but it is able to prioritize among
them to do them one at a time. Then it does them one at a
time in such a way that at any given time when it is trying
to accomplish a purpose, it does not bother (and thus
worry) itself with the others. Therefore, what really
characterizes a heart of sword is not so much its concern
about what does concern it, but rather a lack of worry
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about what does not concern it then. By keeping aside time

to reflect on its motives and the reasons behind them -
especially by doing this after finishing up with medium-term
goals (which may have been a component of longer-term
goals), it is better able to make use of its experience over
its lifetime, instead of being stuck with the motives and
means of a teenager for its whole life."

"So you really recommend this whole notion of sharpening

one's heart like a sword, huh?"

"I won't really say that I recommend it to everyone, given

how many people are keen to have a slow, complicated
life. However, many people do feel that they were born to
do something, and for them it probably makes sense to
know what the thing is that they wish to do, to plan on how
to go about doing it, and to not worry about stuff that does
not help them with their goals simply because concern for
that stuff was imposed on them by external sociological
factors. Therefore, I think that this notion of having a 'heart
of sword' is certainly very useful as a means to an end, or
even over a lifetime as a means to many ends. However, I
don't really see it as something to be pursued as an end in
itself."

"Hey, all this talk of planning and changing our plans as

per our experience is swell, but why not just let our goals
be dictated by honored authorities who are older and
smarter than us, who are time-tested and respected by
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many? They certainly have had the time to think up the

goals for us to follow. So instead of coming up with hopes
and dreams of our own, isn't it just so much better to have
one final goal in life set for us by authorities? Then we can
gear everything in our lives to just achieving this one goal.
This gives us better focus, and saves us the time spent in
agonizing over our goals."

"A surprisingly common line of thought, whether one thinks

of these 'authorities' as those who get their 'authority' from
age, tradition, or current popularity or achievement.
However, even if one assumes that such an authority is
indeed someone who has given good thought to what
meaningful goals in life are - something that is probably
less common than you may expect - there are still other
problems. For one, if someone lays claim to have found a
goal for all people then they are probably lying or just
deluded, since with the wide variety among human beings
it does not seem likely that the same goal makes sense for
all of us. If, instead, you are thinking in terms of a 'pool of
experts', who have all given you various goals that can be
followed, the process in choosing among them will
essentially be the same as finding your own goal - at least
for most people. This is because, unless one comes up
with a really unorthodox or even cranky goal in life, the
other goals will be similar to things that have already been
attempted by others with at least partial success. So one
will anyway have role models to follow. If the idea of first
making a 'pool of experts' is really any different, it would
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probably have to do largely with the selection of people to

be in this pool being decided by their reputation (i.e. how
much others like them) rather than just by how much you
like doing what they did. In other words, it involves at least
partially killing your dreams for the sake of the prejudices
of others. I don't know if that is much of a good idea
because while it is possible for others to be smarter, wiser,
more accomplished and popular than you - you cannot
really be as sure about anyone else's intentions towards
you as you can be sure of your own intentions towards
yourself."

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Tribalism

"Many people believe that people of their own tribe must

be superior by virtue of the mere fact that they share a
tribe with them. What do you think of this?"

"I do believe that our duty towards the members of tribe in

general exceeds that we have towards others, because our
own tribesmen have invested more time and energy
towards us. However, we have an even greater duty
towards our own selves, and part of our duty to our own
self and other members of our tribe is to not mislead each
other by ideas that are clearly mistaken. After all, it is clear
that intentionally misleading someone is at best a sign of
mistrust and at worst a sign of hostility - so intentionally
misleading our own selves and our own people is like a
sign of mistrust and hostility to our own selves. Like
suicide, it is a sign of the will turning against itself. So I
don't really admire this kind of behavior. One of the
obvious ways to mislead our selves and allies is by
pretending that we are better off than we have reason to
think of being. When we claim to our people that we are
more honest, more intelligent, braver, kinder than
members of other tribes, merely by virtue of being in our
given tribe - we are lying not to our enemies, but to our
own kind. This is violence not against our enemies but
against our allies. Thus, tribalism is the farthest thing from
being well-wishers of each other.
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Of course, this is not the only problem with tribalism. While

we are justified in being more concerned about the welfare
of our own tribespeople than of others (because they have
invested more in us than in others), when we become
oblivious to their well-being, or worse develop a sense of
enmity towards them, we stop consciousness from
expressing itself in units of more than a tribe. In this sense
of stopping its reach, it is analogous to a person being
concerned only with his own welfare, to the extent of
becoming a misanthrope - a tribe as a dead end is not
much different from an individual human as a dead end."

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Pacifism

"What do you think of the pacifists: certain people who

believe that pacifism is worthy as an end in itself, and that
we should never fight others no matter what?"

" This point of view does not seem to have much merit, in
spite of the fact that violence too is not worthy as an end in
itself. Without tribes being willing to defend themselves
form other tribes, the tribes who don't defend themselves
will be eliminated by those who are willing to use force - a
good example being the genocide of neanderthals by
modern humans in the colonization of Europe. But even
within a tribe, if individuals are unwilling to use force to
fight for the rights and freedoms they want, they will find
themselves being subjugated and enslaved by those who
are more unscrupulous than them. Further, this is not an
'honorable act of self-sacrifice' - allowing others to have
their way through the unscrupulous use of force
encourages them to stick to those methods and thus acts
as a disincentive to seek other, more just solutions. Thus,
those who are pacifist for the heck of it also share some
responsibility for the spread of unscrupulous violence in
their society. If we want to live in a society where certain
kinds of ways of solving problems (eg. through considering
the wishes of all) are preferred over others (like beating up
those who are weaker than you), then we need to act in a
way that encourages the means we prefer over the ones
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we don't.

When we realize that many people consider violence to

take forms other than physical - eg. mental, psychological,
etc. - it becomes even clearer that violence is not always
something to be avoided. Any form of evolution involves
the breaking down of old structures, and thus would be
considered to be violence by someone or the other. If we
had this notion of violence in Galileo or Darwin's days, no
doubt they too would have been considered violent.
However, perhaps they have been of more 'value to
society' than others who decided to go along with
everything just the way it already existed becase that is
what was accepted."

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Non-Violence

"The principle behind non-violence is not that we must

reduce suffering: no matter what we do, suffering is
inherent in the struggle for consciousness to establish itself
in the world. It is the birth-pangs, so to speak. Suffering
causes us to have sympathy for each other and thus can
be said to make us better people. However, what is
saddening is when someone willingly causes suffering to
another person or generally another being/thing: because
once we accept that consciousness is spread throughout
with the divisions in it being merely convenient, to believe
that causing harm to another is in itself something to take
pleasure in - and then to act on that belief - is merely the
will turning on itself. This takes away from manifesting
consciousness in the world. To cause suffering to others
for the heck of it is essentially the same as causing
suffering to oneself for the heck of it - it does not help solve
any problem but is merely a show of helplessness, a
misguided attempt by consciousness to deny itself."

"But even to take pleasure in violence in itself can be

cathartic and thus not totally pointless. For instance, when
we are faced with a gross injustice, should we just stand by
and let it perpetuate?"

"If we take the desire to be violent as a form of catharsis,

we must also accept that this violence cannot be an end in
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itself - if at some point we feel compelled to resort to

violence as catharsis due to being unable to deal with the
problem with a view to finding a solution, it can be useful
right then but it is nevertheless a sign of weakness. We
must also accept that eventually we must learn to go to the
root of the problem instead of trying to depend on th high
of cathartic violence. In other words, the desire to use
violence for catharsis is something to be overcome."

"On the other hand, to fight for some concept of justice is

different from fighting for its own sake. It is true that people
who are fighting merely to quench their savagery often
dress it up as a fight for justice, but that does not make
them the same. Nor does it mean that a fight for justice
cannot truly exist. If someone is indeed forced to fight to
uphold justice, and then acts with the end as upholding
justice and fighting as merely the means (not vice-versa),
that is not a case of violence with the will turning on itself."

"Consider the fact that a natural death is considered to be

in the due course of things but a murder is much more
horrible than that. What is the reason for this? In both
cases, someone dies. It cannot merely be a case of dieing
earlier in one case, because murdering someone on their
deathbed is still heinous. To sum up, what is heinous is not
so much that someone died, as the fact that this involved
the consciousness turning on itself."

"This is also why suicide is the worst kind of murder:

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because it is the most egregious case of will turning

against itself."

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War

"You know, I often think that we should just take the path
of least resistance, just going our own ways without being
bothered with what others do. In this way, there could be
true peace in the world Perhaps we wil eventually be done
with war too."

"Ahh, just let things slide... the true joy of peace, true
peace and bliss - right?"

"Yeah. I am so glad to have you agree with me for once..."

"Except for the small detail that with some people willing to
kill for their whims and others not even willing to fight for
their rights, you know very well which group will die out. In
the past, the ability of people to increase their chances of
survival has depended on various factors, including
chance. For the sake of simplicity, we could say that at
least two of these factors would be: 1) How martial you
are: being willing to kill your competitors and thus reduce
competition for resources would increase your 'fitness'. 2)
Technical and and physical prowess. In short, in the first
way it is the size of the fight in the dog that counts, while in
the second it is the size of the man in the fight - or out of it.
But what happens when you become entirely pacifist in
your approach? Since the whole species has not converted
over to non-violence - and even if it did, other species
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would not automatically do so - by being entirely pacifist,

you merely increase the difference in aggressiveness
between two groups of people. Thus, you increase the
importance of aggression as a factor in survival. Thus, you
relatively reduce the importance of technical and physical
prowess, civility and other such civilization-building
characteristics. This is even more so when you mandate
that the benefits of innovation and individual achievement
in general are socialistically distributed among the whole
population. Meanwhile, the advantages of aggression
continue to be privatized even as losses caused by it
continue to be socialized. The net result of this is that
being a violent person increases in evolutionary fitness,
while actually creating value is ridiculed. As a result of this,
while individuals may well keep on pushing the frontiers of
human achievement, the benefits of this to the rest of
society keeps decreasing - not because the new
generation grows up with the wrong genes, so much as
because it grows up with the wrong kind of culture - one of
mindless aggression on the one hand, which is of course
codependent with passivity in the face of aggression on the
other."

"I see your point, but isn't the promotion of violence even in
retaliation only going to result in a net increase in violence
among all? For all people do not always agree on what is
proper retaliation. Also, an eye for an eye will only make
the world go blind."

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"First of all, the notion that an eye for an eye will make the
whole world go blind is absurd. Two eyes for an eye will
make the world go blind, as will most ways of taking 1.1
eyes for an eye. On the other hand, an eye for an eye will
only cause those who intentionally cause blindness in
others to go blind. While I have sympathy even for such
people, this way will in the end cause less harm than
'nothing for an eye', where even one man if he wants can
make all the rest of the world blind. This is why I am a
believer in retaliation. I do agree that not everyone agrees
on what is acceptable retaliation. But while it is always
good to be moderate in using violence, some kind of
retaliation - even if mild - is needed to deter others from
being too violent, although I do agree that violence is best
used sparingly and only after other options have been
exhausted."

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Likeness

"I have been thinking about your arguments against pure

pacifism and passivity. Your ideas seem agreeable as they
go, but I feel that they stop too short. It is true that
removing violence from our lives, and letting all people
share equally in the benefits of progress - only ends up
promoting traits like violence and promiscuity that benefit
individuals over others but harm society as a whole, while
at the same time reducing the value of intelligence,
considerateness, willingness to abide by laws - traits that
may be disadvantageous individually, but are beneficial to
society as a whole at least unless exploited by people with
the former traits. However, is it really good enough to
merely defend against exploitation by violent people? Even
though we may thus have more time to develop civilized
behavior in the short term, in the medium to long term it will
only lead to us having to defend ourselves against stronger
and more numerous violent people. This is clearly
suboptimal. Won't it be better to actively pursue a policy of
exterminating undesirable elements?"

"Do you know what a dollar auction is?"

"Yes, it is a good way to find the undesirable elements in

any society. We just ask people to bid for a single dollar,
starting the bid at 5 cents: the catch being that the second-
highest bidder also has to pay but gets nothing. At first,
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people bid because they see an opportunity to make a

profit. But it quickly deteriorates into a question of pride.
Most people end up paying far too much for a single dollar.
A similar situation can be encountered in almost all
competitive endeavors. For example, as a child at school,
we can see that there is a rivalry among the top few ranks
in every class to be the topper each time. While in general
there are obvious benefits to doing well academically as
compared to not studying, if you start to do it for the sake
of your ego, there is a stage where the added effort would
not be worth it in terms of knowledge gained, especially
since the kind of thing that would make a difference at that
level would not generalize to other areas of activity, and
this inability to generalize would kill the basic aim of
education. This kind of problem can also be seen in any
competitive endeavor where being number one has its own
appeal as distinct from what you otherwise get from doing
well. The basic problem here is that as you specialize
yourself more and more for a certain area, those whom
you are up against are also people who have thus
specialized themselves for it. So you don't have as much
of a competitive advantage as you may expect. Further,
you spend more and more time getting skills that do not
generalize. This is enough to mellow our praise for
competition in a harmless endeavor like studies, although
we may well point out that when this specialization occurs
in accordance to the inclination of the concerned individual
and not only due to societal pressures, it helps the person
involved find his niche and like-minded fellows he can be
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comfortable around. However, this becomes a far greater

problem when we are competing with people we dislike, in
doing things we dislike, simply because we find them to be
disgusting. The problem here is in violence, as in any other
sphere of activity, the better you get at it the better at it are
the people you have to do it with. So the more violence you
use, your habits and inclinations become those of violence,
and so the places you go to and the activities you
undertake begin to be those for which comparatively more
violent people have an inclination. Consequently, you end
up dealing with more people who are violent and thus also
with more violent people than earlier. How does this help?
This makes the problem only worse, not better. To take a
concrete example, suppose you start killing off people you
dislike. This will only increase your visibility among violent
people, among whom some will certainly hate you too and
want to kill you. Even if you managed to defeat them, this
very act would bring to you a new batch of more violent
antagonists, and so forth. So, in the end, you only end up
making things worse for yourself."

"I see, so then this is like the law of karma."

"Except, in the same life. Also, this recognizes that not

everything that happens to people is due to their own
actions or choices. A lot (most?) of what happens to us is
out of our control. We could call this luck. Because of this,
when we see someone suffering from some kind of
misfortune, we feel pity for them, instead of hating them for
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some imaginary misdeed they must have done earlier in

life."

"But by this logic, why not just remain passively non-

violent? If doing this beings us closer to other people who
are also like that, and ultimately that would be better for us
because we too would like to be among such people."

"An interesting point of view, but this approach has its

limitations in the sense that for it to work, you would have
to completely isolate yourself from others who are not
inclined to take advantage of this. At certain points in time,
and at certain places - in certain societies - this could be
made to work. So no harm in doing that then. But in
practice, at most times, at most places and in most
societies it is simply impossible to thus isolate oneself
without someone trying to use violence on you. This
residual amount that cannot be avoided, must be retaliated
against. There is no escaping that. After all, we wouldn't
want to live in a society which being non-violent
nevertheless lets itself get wiped out by more violent ones.
However, when we don't just limit this violence to what we
do to protect ourselves, and instead start to initiate
aggression or to retaliate against by aggression by even
more violence - that is when we stop being a part of the
solution and start to be a part of hte problem. With this, we
start having to deal with more violent people than initially,
and become a scourge not just for others but also for our
own people. Thus, in general, I would think that it is better
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to change ourselves to become less and less violent, but

we have to account for the fact that there is a residual
violence that we cannot escape. Also, suddenly becoming
very non-violent is prone to elicit violent reactions from
those around us. This is also the case when we don't do
anything suddenly, but in general are much more non-
violent than those around us. To account for this, it would
seem that the best path is moderation, where we are less
violent than those around us, but not by a big margin. Also,
in addition to the gradual shift to being around less violent
people that should happen by this method but may be too
slow to be of any actual help, we also have to consciously
account for the fact that we want to be around people that
we like. So we need to look consciously for places with
such people, too. Once among them, if we are more violent
and manipulative than them, it is then up to us to change
ourselves."

"But what if, in such a situation, we find ourselves wanting

to exploit and manipulate them, instead of becoming one of
them?"

"Of course, to avoid such a case is among the reasons to

support moderation. But if we do find ourselves trying to
manipulate them, rest assured that we will likely find
ourselves among such violent manipulators in the near
future. Thus, we would get to be 'punished for our sins', by
being around people like ourselves. Once that happens for
long enough, maybe will learn to change our ways from
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that. This is the „invisible hand of justice‟ at work."

"I see."

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Assumptions

"This neighbor of mine – Ravi - I hate him. He is so

arrogant - I want to beat him up and humiliate him"

"If you use those methods on a guy who is not arrogant,

will he still get beaten up?"

"Yes, of course"

"Then this is not how I would do it. Consider this: all over
the world, people make a big deal of the scientific method.
no doubt you do too. But what is it? Is it not merely the
understanding that no matter how sure you are about a
conclusion when you first think of it, you could be wrong
and it is generally a good idea to seek to disprove ideas
rather than make sacred beliefs out of them? Tell me, isn't
this what lies at the heart of the scientific method?"

"Questioning our assumptions, yes"

"When we look for physical facts, we trust that method. So

why not trust it with psychological facts too? After all it
seems like a trustworthy method."

"True..."

"Now, according to how arrogant you find him to be, do

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you think he would agree to a game of chess with you?"

"Why would he? He knows that I am a far stronger player

than him."

"He presumably knows that you are strong, since this is a

well-known fact. But, did you not just say that he is also
very arrogant? Do you think him arrogant enough to
believe that in spite of your claimed strength, you are
probably weaker than him simply because you are you and
he is full of himself?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Also, according to your assumptions, he will be utterly

angry when he loses to you?"

"Yes, because he is arrogant."

"So you see, in order to punish him for his arrogance we

have found a method which relies on his arrogance. If we
turn out to be correct and he acts as you think he will, then
it is poetic justice for him to be punished by his own
arrogance On the other hand, what if you are wrong? What
is you have misjudged him? What if he is not really that
arrogant? What if he is just socially inept, or just met you
when having a bad day?"

"Then my plan will fail..."

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"But will you be unhappy at it failing?"

"Frustrated, angry perhaps... well, maybe not much since I

would have one less enemy to be paranoid about. What's
more, I will probably be relieved on not having acted on my
misapprehensions earlier..."

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Immortality

"Wouldn't it be nice to be immortal?"

"Of course, when we are young we don't think of old age

and death - and thus are frightened of those when they
appear. But simply because we don't think of death does
not mean we assume that we are going to be immortal. In
fact, we don't think at all about what will happen in a few
decades. Since we can now think of death and its horrors,
you assume that simply removing death and thus
becoming immortal would be great. But immortality is not
merely the absence of the experience of death. You may
not feel death as an immortal, and probably that would also
imply getting rid of physical degradation due to old age.
Nevertheless, you would have to carry the baggage of your
past forever. The memory of that bad accident, those
people who made fun of you - these will never end. An
eternal life can also mean eternal torment, if someone
manages to overpower your eternal self. Had you
considered these things?

Of course not. I guess I always took it for granted that

eternal life would bring eternal joy."

"However, the general experience of life, even without

death, is not one of unadulterated joy. It also consists of a
fair bit of suffering. It seems reasonable to expect that if a
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limited life brings limited suffering, an unlimited life must

then be a source of unlimited suffering. In fact, as the
lifespan increases, we would expect our sorrows to
increase faster than our joys, because new suffering tends
to add to the old unlike joy which stands by itself."

"All of this may be true - but how can we reconcile

ourselves to no longer existing, which is what death is?"

"Look around yourself: no matter where you see, there is

no place where the potential for consciousness is not. In
this vast matrix of awareness, you are but a drop in the
ocean. When you die, the memories for this specific life will
get extinguished, but the ocean of which you are but a part
will not disappear. The end of memories which also include
bad memories is merely a cleansing of this stream of
consciousness. This ocean does not die, but through
individual deaths it replenishes itself and gets reborn each
second into new individuals. This process of continual
replenishment seems to me to be far more desirable than
the monotony and infinite suffering of an infinite, immortal
existence as an individual - which would only lead to
infinite suffering in my understanding."

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Growing Up

"Don't you think that the government should take care of

our food, clothing, shelter - and should also protect us from
having to interact with people we dislike?"

"Not unless you are a child. Listen, resources are not free.
Resources are never free. Someone always has to pay
something for them. If you don't pay by giving stuff in
exchange, you pay by taking care of the resources or of
other resources that generate these resources. There is no
such thing as a free lunch, at least not for long. People
who don't take care of themselves - who don't make good
decisions in life - eventually die out. If they avoid dying
because their culture subsidizes them, then the culture will
eventually have to support more and more such guys
(having supported them earlier) and will eventually die out.
If the wider society decides to bail out such a society, then
for the same reasons it too will die out. Similarly, if you
make a global effort to encourage such societies, the
species could die out - and beyond that whom do you look
to for help? At each of these levels, the capacity to hide
bad choices increases - but so does the certainty of ruin
when they are no longer able to be hidden. So in practice,
if you want to live, then in exchange for something you
have to give something else. If someone helps you, you
too have to help them. If you depend on a species for
survival, you have to protect it from other species and
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otherwise work for its welfare. Even if it is a 'lifeless'

mineral resource that you depend upon, you have a
responsibility towards it: if you keep using it blindly,
eventually you will run out and then where will you be?
Money, goodwill, respect, security - all these have to be
earned. if you don't earn, you will die. If you don't die, you
will be responsible for the end of what stopped you from
dying.

But it is insane to think that society should not help out its
weaker sections. Do you really think that abandoning those
in need is truly the way to survival?"

"I am not talking about abandoning the least fortunate -

bad luck can and should be insured against by larger
social sections. But why should be the effect of bad luck be
minimized?"

"To improve the general well-being of people?"

"This is a shallow way of thinking. do you think that the

well-being of people can be improved without encouraging
in them the characteristics that are conducive to well-
being? As you are, to such situations will you eventually
gravitate. So the real purpose of subsidizing bad luck is not
so that we are able to get a quick-fix solution of handing
out goodness. The real reason is that by making luck a
smaller factor in people's lives, we aim to make hard-work
and good positive choices more important factors in their
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lives. This is how subsidizing bad luck leads to lasting

prosperity in the long term. This is also why, just as we
must subsidize bad luck, we must never subsidize bad
choices. It is sometimes hard to distinguish between bad
luck and bad choices, but at least we can say that getting
hit by lightning is bad luck while refusing to get an
education (when it is a viable option) is merely a bad
choice. In most cases, we are faced with a mixture of bad
luck and bad choices. This is why it is often a good idea to
subsidize most the ones who are yet to make choices and
thus cannot be blamed for making bad choices - children. I
am the first to agree that not only have children not yet
made any choices, but also that they are weak enough to
require help in all ways. So children do deserve help. But
nothing should be expected for nothing. If a parent is
willing to do so much for a child, then the child should also
be willing to do something for the parent. Being obedient to
them, etc. is just part of it because it can never really repay
the debt one owes to their parents as long as they are
alive. This is why it makes sense for them to also be
expected to be obedient etc. to their parents and further to
take care of them even when parents are no longer looking
after them. This is where the concept of 'loan' comes from:
a child is so weak and helpless that it depends utterly on
its parents in very fundamental ways. There is no way for
anyone to ever really compensate for it when getting the
benefits, so it must be left to the future when the child is
grown up and has attained some degree of independence

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itself.

But some people do not see how fundamentally different

the morality of a child and an adult therefore is. A child is
helpless and therefore also dependent. An adult is
independent, so he should also be helpful. Thus, the point
at which, on balance, one starts giving back instead of
receiving, is the time when one really becomes an adult."

"So what do you say to people who demand a nanny state

that looks after them even when they have become
adults?"

"I would say that they may be adults in body and mind, but
not in spirit. Everyone cannot be a net consumer.
Someone has to produce, or at least take care of the
goods that others consume. If you have not yet become
prepared to take on this role, you are little more than a
child. If you refuse to take the initiative, to work for what is
wanted by not just you - but also others who are dear to
you - then you still have a lot of growing up to do."

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Division of Labor

"Why do you people have such rigid divisions between

different occupations? Why must a warrior only be a
warrior and not a scholar too? Why must a scholar not be a
businessman? Don't you think that these hereditary
divisions have weakened your society by forcing people
into classes, one above the other?"

"I agree that the hereditary nature of these divisions has

weakened our society - as has the fact that currently these
divisions are vertical divisions, putting one group above the
other. However, to speak of these divisions as an
unmitigated evil is something that I cannot agree with. If
these divisions are seen as horizontal divisions and
depend on the inclinations and abilities of individuals rather
than on their heredity alone, it is actually a good thing."

"Oh really? Why would you separate warriors form

scholars? Don't you think that a warrior who is also a
scholar would fight for better things than someone who is
only a warrior?"

"Possibly, but I would argue that this task of gaining

scholarly opinions by a warrior may be better done by
having scholars as advisors than by making warriors into
scholars themselves. In fact, there are various things that
are worth fighting for, and good ideas are but one of them.
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It is also worthwhile to fight for business that benefits all by

efficiently distributiong goods, rather than for the sake of
fighting. Similarly, natural resources, religious beliefs and
technological advancements are all worth fighting for. The
love of your people and acclaim by them is also arguably a
better reason than just the joy of fighting.... however, this
does not mean that a warrior needs to be all things that are
worth fighting for. On the contrary, while a warrior should
interact with people who all have such admirable qualities,
he himself should ideally be dispensable - in other words,
he himself should not have those qualities. In real life, what
leads people to become men of war is their unbridled lust
for power. A warrior who also tries to be a hundred other
things will only confuse his own will. Further, if these
qualities are instead encouraged in people who are not
fighters - and the division between fighters and non-
fighters is strictly enforced, what that means is that we
have conventions against killings civilians. These become
quickly lost to philosophies of total war when everyone can
be a warrior and a warrior too can be anyone. With clear
divisions between those who are warriors (by virtue of
having to a critical degree the urge to dominate), and those
who are not - we let the warriors satisfy their lust for power
even as others keep working towards the advancement of
civilization."

"True, but can a similar argument be made for scholars?"

"Of course. Scholars by definition need to spend most of

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their time dealing with concepts at an abstract and

theoretical level. With their training, they are able after long
periods of study to come to reasonable ideas of what is
good and useful, and what is not. At this stage, it makes
sense for their conclusions to be made known. But while
the justifications for those ideas and other ideas that were
explored as abstractions should be accessible to anyone
who desires them or wants to challenge them, it does not
make sense to display them even to people who are not
interested in those subjects. Why is this? The fact is that
there is so much information in the world that no one can
possibly understand all the reasons behind everything that
works and that does not work. Consequently, most people
can go to the details of the reasoning behind only a few
things, trusting authorities in other matters - confident that
their conclusions will hold up against scrutiny. This is
merely a consequence of the natural limitations of the
human mind. Now, suppose you barrage people with
abstract ideas and complex reasoning, not just
conclusions, in areas that they have decided not to focus
on. If you do this, most people will become annoyed at the
extra reasoning that is being demanded of them, or will
simply ignore the whole idea, or will equate what is being
told to them with some kind of conclusion depending on
what they want, ignoring any catch or disclaimer. This is
why it is futile to make an intellectual out of everyone in all
fields, when it is anyway so hard for someone to come to a
reasoned position on even a single field. Because of all
this, the internal workings of scholars are better off being
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isolated from the rest of the people who are not really
interested in them anyway."

"And the argument regarding businessmen being?"

"Once again, most people just want the output produced

by them, not to have competition between businesses
determining political activity (in terms of granting
monopolies, for example), nor do they want scholars to be
conducting research with a financial agenda promoting
certain results in mind. This is why business must also be
separated from the rest of the society. In this way we
divide society into various parts, each part interacting
vigorously within itself in a tumultuous fashion. But each
part interacts with other such parts in limited, clearly
defined ways. This way, each part gets the benefits it can
from the other parts but is isolated from the volatility and
the violence that goes into getting those final products.
That is what our caste system originally was, and this is
why some people hold on to it even now when it has
become rigidly hereditary and when it has become a
vertical rather than a horizontal division of labor."

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Politics of Panacea

"Various people have various political systems that they

prefer: some people find that one political system will solve
all the world's problems, while others find some other
political system to be the one that will solve all the world's
problems. Which of these varied political systems do you
think will make the world a better place?"

"Many people have this notion that there exists a political

system somewhere which, if taken up by society as whole,
will solve all human problems. But no matter what societal
rules we have, they ultimately have to be enforced by
people only. Whether you are in a capitalist or communist
society, people can always exploit others - by paying them
less than proportionately for their work when the ability to
relocate is less, or by refusing to work and still sharing in
the collective distribution of profit. Similarly, whether
society as a whole is religious or atheist, people are
susceptible to groupthink - either by belief in supernatural
entities, or by the belief in the overawing ability of scientists
or political leaders you allow to do the thinking for you.
Ultimately, those who think to setup a social system where
everyone will be happy are living a fool's dream because it
is essentially impossible for one person to individually even
understand the desires of all people, and further because
of the many ways in which people tend to find joy in the
suffering of others. Thus, while we do have duties towards
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others, it lies primarily in making sure that if someone has

made an investment in us or has expectations form us, we
either repay their investments or their expectations, or
otherwise try to make up for our inability to do so. It does
not consist in forcing them to believe certain things or to
act in a certain way 'for their own good' - after all, we are
not their guardians. While I understand that the happiness
of one is inextricably linked to the happiness of others, the
happiness of one need not be derived from the same
sources as the happiness of others. Thus, if we truly are
their well-wishers, we are better off seeing them as ends in
themselves rather than as means to an end."

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Government

"Earlier, you told me of your opposition to a nanny state.

However, you have expressed your views many times
about what a government should or should not do. If you
feel that there are some things a government should do -
but that it should not aim to do all things for us - then what
are the things a government should look at? What is the
purpose of a government according to you?"

"The purpose of government is not to make things for

people: that is done well enough in the state of nature, or
otherwise by private individuals without government acting
as a difficult middleman.

The purpose is to solve the problems arising in a state of

nature: in other words, government must provide 1) safety
from other states 2) safety from people inside its own state
3) legal enforcement of contracts.

Generally, these things are required for people to be able

to make long-term plans. Once people are ensured the
protections which let them make long-term plans without
infringing upon their freedoms (that are found in a state of
nature) so much that they are unable to do productive
work, they are best left to themselves to sort out other
issues like what to produce and what is moral.

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Even other than these purposes, governments have been

used to legalize morality: something about which it is
questionable if there should be a monopoly in any large
area. The problem seems to be that all long-term planning
gets relegated to government, whereas it should be
restricted to providing safeguards to enable long term
planning in areas where the safeguards need to be
provided by a monopoly, rather than by doing all the long-
term planning itself.

However, a government which acts merely for the short-

term without a view to enabling people to make long-term
plans, is no government at all. It is merely a tyrant in a
state of nature with its own subjects. Such a government
serves no purpose.”

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Equality

"We keep hearing about how it is a good idea to treat all as

the same, seeing our selves in all. But even seeing our
selves in all, knowing that we are all ultimately
indistinguishable from each other, should we behave in the
same way towards all?"

"It seems that those theories like marxism and feminism

which call for equality tend to be dishonest in the sense
that they obfuscate the term 'equality' by taking it to be a
given. Even if you try to specify it as, say, 'cultural and
economic equality', still what does that mean? If we start
treating women the same way as we treat men now, would
it be okay with them? That would imply the expectation that
they would take risks, be vilified and occasionally asked to
die in wars to protect their relatives. Would it be ok for us
to deny maternity leave to women because men don't get it
either? Should they cease to have separate sporting
events, instead being required to compete in a single
unisex tournament? If these are not okay, would they
rather have us treat men like women? But that would
apparently be mere cruelty to them if we accept the
premise that women have traditionally been oppressed. If
neither of these, then probably they expect to evolve some
new kind of unisex treatment for both sexes that is different
from how both men and women have been treated in the
past? Of course, that would still involve at least the
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following: 1) both sexes playing together in unisex

tournaments and 2) men no longer being ripped off in
courts in cases of divorce. Since they tend to oppose both
of these, I assume they are not looking for any kind of
unisex treatment. Thus, even if we are generous in our
estimation of them, we can only assume that they are
looking for specific kinds of equality for two fundamentally
different entities (the different genders). Once we realize
that, we can immediately see that the concerned notion of
'equality' must be a smokescreen, because if someone
really wanted specific kinds of equality among different
entities, they would focus on the domain wherein they
wanted equality, not on the term 'equality' itself. In
particular, the fact that they believe that equality must be
achieved in a sense that is entirely determined by women
is an indication that it is merely a special interest group for
women, pretending to be seekers for justice. To this, the
response can be made that since women have been
oppressed historically, it should be up to them to determine
how to seek equality. But the premise that women have
been mistreated historically does not hold up against the
observation that women would not like to be treated
exactly like men, whereas every truly oppressed group
would jump at the opportunity to have the same treatment
as non-oppressed groups. Of course, we can further
strengthen the argument by pointing out concrete
instances like women having longer life expectancy than
men, less women in jails, women getting lighter sentences
for the same crimes as men, women not being forced to
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fight and die for their relatives, etc. - however, I believe the
point has already been made strongly enough, and has
little need of being further reinforced. This is thus a clear
example of a group wanting further privileges without any
moral scruples parading as a group who merely seek
'equality', thus conveniently using the fact that when you
talk of equality for fundamentally different entities, you can
pick and choose your notion of equality to make it anything
but equitable.

Another part of this is communism, where we seek equality

in economic terms among various people. no matter how
much you work, you got to get only as much as someone
who does the bare minimum. But of course all inequality is
not economic. It could well be that the one who is working
harder is only doing so because he looks and talks in a
weird way so no one likes him. The odds are already
against him, due to factors not in his control. Then again,
someone may be good-looking and good at talking to
people and naturally is popular with others. This is not due
to any work on his part, but merely due to good luck.
Someone may be good at acquiring political power in
communist politics because he is more ruthless and
amoral than others, and can torture people for power. This
inequality benefits those who are most ruthless and
unscrupulous. All these sources of inequality benefit those
who are merely lucky or those who are ruthless and
unscrupulous. None of these are opposed by communists.
Of course, people also derive economic benefits form
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being lucky and from being ruthless and unscrupulous. But

there are characteristics it shares with forms of inequality
that are unopposed or even condoned by communists. So
to find out why communists only oppose economic
inequality, we need to look at the characteristics which can
help people economically but not so much in terms of other
forms of inequality. I think we can put it down to 1) the
willingness to work hard and in things that others are not
willing to do 2) the ability to find creative solutions to
problems 3) the ability to plan ahead. None of these seem
so awful that people who benefit from it deserve to have
their advantages taken from them while those whose
advantages derive mostly from other sources get to keep
them. Therefore, although communism uses the
smokescreen of 'equality', all it equates to is a war on
those who want to derive advantages largely from hard
work, creativity and foresight - declared on them by people
who want to rely more on ruthlessness and
unscrupulousness. This is not to say that the latter sort of
people generally do worse than the former one in non-
communist societies - in fact, due to the general human
love for ruthless and unscrupulous people, they tend to do
generally better in any society. It is just that in non-
communist societies, the former kind of people at least
have a shot at a decent life. Communism is basically the
drive to take even that away from them, disempowering
them, branding them as traitors, imprisoning and killing
them - all under the guise of 'equality'.

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In general, it seems that all movements for general

'equality' among fundamentally different entities say X and
Y is a smokescreen for trying find 'equality' in the areas
where X has an advantage, while not bothering with it in
areas where Y has advantage. Since complete equality
between fundamentally different entities is something of a
conceptual impossibility, making a movement for 'equality'
seems to be convenient way to pick and choose the kind of
'equality' you want, using the strategy outlined earlier with
X and Y, basically acting as an interest group for Y,
virulently opposing everything about X - and doing it all
under the guise of equality.

It is tempting to think that if the problem with notions of

'equality' is that they act as a smokescreen for being an
interest group, we should be okay with genuinely treating
everyone as the same. In a way, I do agree with this. But
the problem with this is that 'treating everyone the same' is
a statement that is void of any content. For example,
suppose I said that one aspect of this would be that I would
speak to everyone in Hindi. The problem with this is that
not everyone speaks Hindi, and if someone knows only
English, and I know it too, to speak to them in Hindi would
seem to be a bad idea. Of course, no language is truly
universal, so the same thing can be said about using
English. This is just a very obvious example - and any
number of less obvious ones can be made - that any
notion of treating people the 'same' must deal with the fact
that people have different needs, and in fact different
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values and other preferences. Also, this is not the only

thing that needs to be considered. For example, suppose
that I am dealing with two people, A and B. I borrow 100
dollars from A for some reason. Then after some time,
suppose I had the money to repay the loan. Should I then,
having recently made the decision to treat everyone the
same, give 50 dollars each to A and B instead of the whole
to A? Now, some naive guy can say that we should just
wait till we have 200 dollars, and then give 100 to both A
and B. Unfortunately, that solution does not scale to the
case where we have billions of people to deal with, not just
two. So what I am trying is that any meaningful notion of
dealing 'equally' with people must necessarily deal with the
fact that various people have made various kinds of
investment in us. This being why it does make sense to
generally give preference to one's family over other
contrypeople, and contrypeople to others - because of the
investment people have made in them. If someone invests
time and money in us and we treat them the same as other
who have not done so, it is the same as robbing them to
pay the others - not something awesome. I do find it
reasonable that only the needs of people and the
investment they have made in them should determine our
behavior towards them - with respect to other criteria we
should have equal treatment, but it is clear that almost any
kind of bias can be described in terms of those. So this
notion of equality is hollow like other notions of equality,
not being properly describable as a meaningful concept of
'equality'. However, although it may not be a meaningful
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notion of equality, it does seem a reasonable guideline for

our behavior with others. And since the notion of 'equality'
itself seems to be hollow, something not being a
meaningful notion of equality hardly seems to be an
argument against it. Further, while this does not go well
with 'equality', this is in accord with what made us try for
'equality' in the first place - the understanding that we are
not fundamentally distinguishable from others, and thus
that we all can be seen as reflections of a single
consciousness. To account for dealing with people purely
according to what they have invested in us and what they
need, it seems good enough to see for what reason the
investment was made in the first place, and then 1) if it was
made for a specific purpose that is not disagreeable to us
for any other reason, to satisfy that purpose, or 2) if it was
made without any discernable purpose, or if the purpose is
disagreeable to us, to try to repay the investment that was
made to us. It seems that this, rather than notions of
'equality', are a better way to reflect the notion of us
humans being fundamentally indistinguishable from each
other.”

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Leniency and Uniformity

"Look at that man there, violating the parking regulations. I

wish there was a law to shoot people like that."

"Oh, but do you wish for the same thing to happen to you
when you do so?"

"I may have mistakenly violated some regulation

sometime, but I have corrected it whenever someone has
pointed it out to me. In other words, I am a law-abiding
citizen. The laws are not made to deal with people like me,
but with those who willingly abuse it."

"So, which group do you think that guy belongs to? He

may well be another guy like you, who has merely made a
mistake in a hurry. In other words, you and that guy are in
the same boat. But now let me ask you something: would
you have been able to make such a statement if the
regulations had been violated by a lawmaker?"

"Why bother, they make those laws but are the most
corrupt of people. Even if I wanted, there is very little to
make him follow the laws he himself created."

"So you take out your anger on other people just like you?"

"It is not a question of anger: I merely feel that it would be

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good to make at least a few people law-abiding."

"I understand your feelings, but you are only one of many
people who feel helpless in making hotshots follow the law
and yet keep trying hard to enforce them for others. This
kind of helpless vigilante-ism makes the elites of the
society have more and more power (by being able to make
any sort of laws and knowing that people would fall over
themselves enforcing them) with no responsibility (by
knowing that no matter what laws they make, they
themselves would not be subjected to it). It would be better
to work towards the uniform applicability of laws by
showing your vigilante acts towards lawmakers, instead of
towards random mistake-makers."

"Why do you keep talking about uniformity? Are you a

socialist?"

"I don't believe that different people necessarily deserve

the same outcome for their efforts. This is because some
people may have put in more effort than others towards
what they desire, and giving some people better
opportunities may benefit not just themselves but also who
have put in efforts towards that even though the direct
beneficiary may not have done so. Further, some people
put in efforts more intelligently, thus benefiting others
around them more - and thus also deserve to be benefited
more than others who don't do so. Because of these facts,
I cannot be called a socialist. However, while I believe
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inequality can be and is justified in a large variety of

measures particularly economic ones, I also believe that
public amenities like laws need to see all people equally.
One reason for this is that a law which is not universally
applicable, or applies with less force towards people with
more power - is not a law at all. Instead, it is essentially
just a tyrant's decree. When those who make laws are not
affected by them, they feel empowered to make arbitrarily
ruthless laws. On the other hand, if when making laws one
knows that he and his loved ones too can be subject to
them, it is more likely that such laws would be made that
are reasonable and as lenient as possible. This is because
the pain of being punished by a too-harsh law is far greater
than the pleasure you can get by making such a law. On
the other hand, if the laws are lenient and equitable, then
the lawmakers too would be less inclined to jump in to
save their near and dear ones from the laws they
themselves make. They may even protest less violently
when subject to their own laws."

"So you are saying that this guy who broke the rules
deserves to not be punished for that?"

"I am saying that if you put in more effort in enforcing laws

for the lawmakers instead of for such people, it would lead
to lesser, more lenient laws. For instance, you would not
have 34 laws regarding how and where to park. Such
lenient laws could be easily enforced. Uniform application
of laws and the presence of fewer, more lenient laws go
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hand in hand."

"I see."

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Globalization

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was just one world with

one language, one culture, one religion, one government?"

"Sure, it can look wonderful to someone who understands

the misery of war - or even of enmity in general between
nations, cultures, governments. But even if such a world
was attained, do you think that people would all be the
same?"

"Sure, why not? Maybe they would not all be exactly the
same, but they would become far more homogeneous than
they are now."

"Would a world where everyone is essentially the same as

everyone else be desirable? Wouldn't you rather die than
live among many 'you's'?"

"Probably, but they don't need to be exactly the same...

just mutually peaceful."

"Is there anything in the history of humanity which

suggests that? Indeed, the evidence is so much against it
that even if such people did manage to live peacefully with
each other, I doubt if they could really be called human
beings at all."

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"Maybe, but don't you think that artificial geographical

borders need to be removed nevertheless? Maybe people
will differ among each other, maybe they will fight, maybe
they will exploit - but at least it won't be for stuff like land
and religion that currently drive wars."

"Do you really think that simply because the subjects of

war change, its effects too will change?"

"Not necessarily, but consider the fact that in the absence

of geographical demarcation among different peoples in a
conflict, the parties in the conflict will necessarily be
economically dependent on each other, and will otherwise
be part of the same social networks as the others. This will
prevent escalation of conflicts."

"First of all, these factors haven't worked that well in the

case of say nations that trade with each other. More
importantly, in the absence of one world government, when
hard working non-violent guys were oppressed by violent
thugs, they have always tried to look for places to escape
to. What this nation-less world essentially does is that it
cuts off such routes of escape. What this must lead to is an
increase in violence among people as non-violence
becomes less and less tenable (being unaccompanied by
the ability to leave, which is really all that non-violent
people have even now). This naturally leads to a
government which rules with an iron fist to curb this
violence - once again targeting innocent people since they
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can't escape. Throughout history, civilization has lived

because civilized people could walk away from violent
thugs and make their own societies... if you take this away,
you are left not with an utopia but with hell on earth."

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Future Generations

"Your children get spoiled and waste away their youth,

spending no time in study or learning, nor in cultivating
their bodies or friendship. Yet you don't care - you just
keep at your work, trying to make more and more money.
Is this really fine?"

"I am going to make so much money that my children will

never have to work in their life. Is this not good enough?
Not only will I make the money, I will also develop
connections so that they can do whatever they want
without suffering, simply enjoying the good things in life. Is
this not good enough? Did I, as a youth, not want to fritter
away my life in endless pleasure? Is it not only perforce
that I have had to work so hard to be where I am today? Is
it not good that my children have what I could only pine
for? Why are you envious of them?"

"It is not envy, but pity that I feel towards them. Consider
the fact that the nature of needs change with times, and
what you have left for them may not suffice when you are
no longer alive. Also, consider that even if you have done
enough to let your children glide through life, they will not
be able to do the same for their children without learning
any abilities. Also, a life without abilities necessarily
becomes a life without purpose. For all but a few men,
such a life may seem pleasant - but only when you are not
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actually living it. What good is it to have nothing to look

forward to each new day? Being listless, bored and
dejected is the very opposite of happiness. Even if you
leave little for your children in terms of money and
connections, you real inheritance would lie in the qualities
you imbibed in them and in the skills they acquired due to
you. It also lies in the memories of happy times you spent
together. Of course, all these do in fact require money. But
it is folly to regard money as an end in itself in such cases,
instead of as a means to an end. You can look at the
history of any family, any society, any nation - and you will
see that to benefit the next generation through changes
made to their attitudes and skills just works, the other way
with trying to make children useless and then pamper them
doesn't. This is because, at least on average, people get
what they deserve more often than what they were given.
Societies which try to disregard this rule by imposing
artificially strong hereditary rules, only weaken themselves
in the process. This is not to say that material things and
other benefits should not be inheritable, rather that it
should not be considered a moral prerogative to benefit
your children entirely with such inheritances. Mere objects
as inheritance do not count for much in the long run, and
thus they deserve to be seen by individuals as
unimportant."

"I guess this can be seen as part of a more general

principle of: cure the disease and not merely its
symptoms."
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"Yes, and in its direct version, i.e. the one relating to

physical ailments, it is easy to see that. However, it can
become hard to see in general, especially in situations
which we don't regard as containing problem areas -
'diseases'. But the same principle applies in all these
cases, which is also summed up by the following saying:
'Give a man a fish and he will east for a day. Teach a man
to fish and he will generally keep eating'."

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Epilogue

Unknown to Abos, these were the memories of his distant

ancestors who had founded the Marahi civilization many
millennia ago - if many different people in his dreams had
expressed ideas that were largely similar to each other, it
is because they had widely shared those ideas among
each other in the Ancient Marahi Civilization. As the last
Marahi, it was fitting that he see and understand the
beliefs, the dreams and ambitions that had initially defined
the course of the Marahi Civilization, and had subtly
influenced it even after they had left their home planet for a
new watery world far away in space.

You may think that these dreams would affect him, inspire
him in some way to keep on living and revive the Marahi
empire. But as I have already mentioned, he was out of
food and water. So after seeing those dreams, Abos did
not wake up. Rather, he saw other dreams. Then he died.

But it is rumored that Oxer, the king of the Rexans who

finally quelled the minor rebellions in their planet and made
them push towards outer space again, was Abos reborn -
and this time, the expedition did not go so badly. But I am
sure you knew that already.

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Appendix: Witticism

As part of his last dream, Abos saw his ancestor Gein

interviewing the famous theologist Waat D. Faulkmann,
from the sect of Witticism:

"But why do you say that stars have no material

existence?"

"Well it's really simple, little one. If the stars had material
existence, what would stop them from falling to the
ground?"

"True, but how else could this light get generated?"

"The more important question is: how could all this dark
get generated? It is a well-known fact that all things are
naturally luminescent - this is a prime aspect of our
theology. So for there to be such darkness, there has to be
something keeping it out, something shutting in the world."

"And what could that be?"

"You see, the world used to be full of light. But then a

demon decided to take it away from us. As you know,
demons are shaped like humans, think like humans and
even have customs like humans - very large humans, of
course. So one day, a demon got jealous of all the
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happiness we used to have, and to make us miserable, put

us all in a discarded old briefcase which he used to carry to
work. Since then, there was total darkness for many years,
before the great hero Mythzilphtulilack ascended to the
heavens and made holes in the suitcase for light to come
in from. First he made many smaller holes, then two larger
ones. The first one, we call the moon, the next one, though
only as large, was apparently near some bright object in
the devil's world. This killed Mythzilphtulilack who was
blinded by the light, and consequently put in hell. But it
benefited us greatly."

"But if these are holes, then why does their position keep
on changing?"

"That is observed to be the case simply because it is we

who keep moving."

"Doesn't it make more sense to assume that the demon

was actually trying to protect us from being blinded by the
light, and thus from falling into hell? After all, demons
never share their thoughts with us, so maybe he actually
did us some good in the end."

"Yes, but then he would have put in some smaller sources

of light too for our use, if he really wanted to help us."

"Who knows, maybe that's really what happened. I am

beginning to doubt this story of Mythzilphtulilack. After all,
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no one claims to have known him personally, no writings or

sayings by him have ever been found, and no one could
even have seen him in the absence of light. So I am
assuming on one day, light suddenly arose from darkness
and people invented a mythical hero to praise for it.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to assume that
perhaps the demon was a bit benevolent, rather than
assume the existence of a hero, a hundred of whom could
probably put an end to this cursed darkness once and for
all? Wouldn't it make more sense to assume that therefore
the stars are actually material objects put in there for our
benefit?"

"Ah, but that violates the most fundamental aspect of our

belief, doesn't it?"

"What do you mean? It still presumes the existence of the

world and of the demon."

"Yes, but haven't you read the very first line of our holy
book, the Tractatus Religio Philosophicus? This line, our
testament of faith, very clearly says: The world is all that is
in the case. And you better believe it too: The world is all
that is in the case."

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