Psychology of Federer fans

Do you ever wonder how people discriminate between right and wrong? Is morality implied by the common social contract to which people are tacitly bound when they enter into societies?  Or, does God tell us what’s right and what’s wrong? Perhaps morality is a hidden element of a perfect order of reality and as natural as the physical laws that govern the universe?

In truth, these are just convenient rationalizations that explain our a priori sense of justice and fairness. Ethics, like many other things in life, is something our mind imposes on the external world. I don’t claim that it’s impossible to explain or understand morality in rational terms. That is a tougher philosophical quesion. I am merely noting that psychologically, when we actually make decisions, notions of fairness don’t necessarily arise in a conscious manner. They are often determined by our a priori sensibilities. This, for instance, plays a huge role in how we choose values to fight for, make and break friendships, fall in love, form judgements about others and so on.

To many of the Federer fans like myself, the beauty of his game, likewise, appeals directly to our a priori sensibilities. We may talk about Federer’s 16 Grand Slam titles. We may marvel at his virtually unmatchable 23 consecutive Grand Slam semifinal appearances. We may praise the fluidity of his strokes. But, those are just a posteriori rationalizations. We were actually destined to be his fans the day we were born. We hold as a self-evident truth that Federer is the greatest tennis player, even as his critics point to his paltry record against his Nadal. We are rational people however. We don’t think Federer is invincible. We respect the accomplishments of his competitors. We accept that Nadal and Djokovic are currently more likely to beat him than lose to him.¹

Personally, when I see Nadal and Federer playing against each other, what strikes me the most is how little Federer invests in the match compared to Nadal. Let me elaborate. Federer is happily married with two kids. As much as Federer loves tennis, he seems to have emotionally invested a smaller portion of his life in tennis than most other top players. Nadal, on the other hand, is willing to endure as much wear and tear on his body as it takes to win every match. Nadal’s indomitable fighting spirit and his stamina are admirable virtues. But, I do wonder whether Federer sometimes looks at Nadal and thinks, “Do I have to give up so much of my future well-being just to win a single match?” And Federer, unfortunately, is not willing to do that. He absolutely has the right to prioritize based on his own personal philosophy of life.²

I don’t intend to use this as an excuse for Federer’s shortcomings against Nadal. Nadal’s mental strength and comperitive spirit are certainly great virtues that Federer falls short on when he plays Nadal. Nadal is definitely more successful of the two in their head-to-head matchups. However, this doesn’t take anything away from Federer’s overall achievements. For most ardent fans of tennis, Federer is still the greater overall player of the two. The reason, as I said earlier, has nothing to do with statistics.³ It’s the way we are wired. To the real Federer fans, the greatness of his game is as obvious as our sense of justice. And that’s why his losses hurt more than his wins excite. His wins are mere reassurances, while his losses are emotionally draining. It’s not for him that we truly feel sorrow, but for our own intuitive sense of fairness.

I won’t claim that Federer is the greatest player ever. One often gives too much importance to the present time and to one’s own generation. However, if I had to pick the greatest among current tennis players, in my mind, one name stands out clearly from the rest. It’s Roger Federer!

Footnotes:

1. The amazing match Nadal and Djokovic played last night is reason enough to give them the respect they deserve.

2. I guess people who share his priorities are subconsciously drawn to his game and become his fans and this is where arguments becomes subjective.

3. I am willing to present rational points for what makes Federer great in my book and how inferences from simple statistics can be misleading. But that wasn’t the intention of this post.

No means for explanations

Delusions of grandeur: Part 4 
(Continued from, but independent of Part 3)

People, ironically, love to write about things that they don’t understand; that’s why there’s so much literature on happiness, love and God. One can write volumes on these topics and still not have conveyed anything at all. Why? Because these are ideas that transcend the limited domain of intersection between language and people.

I was thinking of something that Mary had said: “God is no different from a madman. I mean, there is no way to tell apart God from a madman, unless He is ready to prove himself.” From her point of view, she was absolutely right and I was glad to acknowledge that.

“Tell me. Do you believe in God?” I asked her.

“I am a strong agnostic,” she said, “I believe it’s impossible to know whether God exists or not.”

“But, don’t you think each person has to answer that question for himself or herself? The atheists who argues against God can never really know the God (the exact God in someone else’s mind) that they are arguing against. Likewise, the believers who shun all atheists don’t understand the precise God that each atheist rejects. It’s one’s certainty of his or her own beliefs that I find baffling.”

She smiled and said: “I’m told that in the Holy book that whales sing to each other, God is an all-powerful, white humpback whale. Am I supposed to respect their beliefs also?”

“Until you find a way to see the world through the senses of those whales, I think you ought to. After all, I’m not asking you to believe in someone else’s God. I’m just saying that everyone has a right to their own notion of God.”

“I am fine with that. I guess I don’t see a big difference. If I don’t believe in something, it’s because I think it’s wrong. What difference does it make whether I think others are justified in their beliefs or not? To me, there is but one truth.”

“You’ll readily believe that what makes you happy is different from what makes someone else happy and that love means different things to different people. Isn’t it possible to treat God like that and to acknowledge that there can be as many Gods as there are living creatures in this world?”

“Well, I think that’s a minor distinction that is not of practical importance.”

I had to concede. It’s not important to bicker about definitions. She is conscientious and introspective enough to reflect on it herself. Who cares about words when what really matters are honest intentions which words can never capture?

I could’ve told her that one cannot really think about God without thinking of an individual to whom this God belongs. (Have you ever tried to tell someone that you understand exactly what they are feeling and have them snap back at you? It’s the same with the idea of God.) I could’ve told her that the only religion that matters is that of religious tolerance (and this includes tolerance towards those who are intolerant). But these would’ve just been incomplete words.

I just had one more thing left to say. I asked her to guess the most common question that people cry out to God.

“That’s easy. The question that instantly transforms mirthful men into somber philosophers: Why me?” she guessed.

“Yes. And do you know what I reply?”

“Why not you?”

“No. I just exclaim in a grave tone: Oh, but don’t you understand?”

The end

Nietzsche, Virtues, and Women

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: someday I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche grew up in a staunch Christian environment. As a kid, he probably learned a lot about good and evil and about morality. He vainly tried to follow all conventional guiding principles of ethics to the letter. He soon started to realize that an ideal ethical man is impossible, not because men are imperfect, but because such a conception is a self-contradictory mess (hence the widespread existence of moral dilemmas).¹ When Nietzsche says, “When you have a virtue, a real, whole virtue, you are its victim,” he is not condemning virtues; I think he’s trying to convey that he himself has felt victimized by one of those purest forms of virtue.

But I’m getting ahead. Let me give you an example in order to make it easier to explain his position. I confess that I don’t know a better place to search for specific examples than in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. When Elizabeth speaks of Mr. Bingley, she says: “At his own ball he offended two or three young ladies by not asking them to dance, and I spoke to him twice myself without receiving an answer.”² However, she agrees that he was “inattentive to other people” only because he was “wholly engrossed by” her sister. After all, she says, “Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”

I can imagine Nietzsche at this ball wondering whether the virtue ‘unselfishness in love’ can ever be fully compatible with ‘goodness of man in society’. Nietzsche would’ve cowered. He would’ve finally concluded that “the altruism of love becomes the egoism of the family”³. Austen’s quote about “incivility” is definitely more pleasant than Nietzsche’s, but both of them are referring to the incompatibility of different aspects of ethics. We make choices all the time, and sometimes the choice is between two rights. How unjust all of us can be, when we judge and criticize others based on one “goodness principle”, while they act on a different, yet equally valid principle of morality? Perhaps this is why Dewey said: “severe in judging oneself and humane in judging others”.

Psychologically, people vary in their ability and desire to see generalities behind specific forms of reality. Nietzsche perhaps realized that the traditionally accepted value system could not provide him with the generalities he so longed for in the domain of ethics. He could not accept that morality and ethics could be discussed without generalizations. Therefore, he concluded that traditional views of morality and ethics are not completely correct. Note that Nietzsche doesn’t say that there are no rights and wrongs, just that we don’t understand them completely. He wrote critically about the conventional rules of ethics, but he still lived his life according to the rules he criticized. As Will Durant succinctly puts it, “How he longed to be a sinner, this incorrigible saint!”

I don’t know whether Nietzsche actually believed in everything that he wrote. This question becomes especially important when you consider some of the regrettable things he wrote about women. Did Nietzsche, the philosopher who very well understood that many traditional notions are self-imposed illusions, really succumb to the prejudices of his time against women? Perhaps his writings on women are actually a mockery of those prejudices? I don’t feel qualified enough to comment on this issue. However, I do wonder whether present day women can manage to read his works without rightfully feeling repulsed and maybe even a little bit prejudiced against him.⁴

But Nietzsche wrote a lot of other thought-provoking text. He was, of course, mistaken in many aspects of life. I personally view Nietzsche’s writing style as an exaggeration of all the anomalies he saw in real life. He tells neither truths nor lies; he just scrutinizes traditional views of life. That’s why Nietzsche is useful to read even in places where he is blatantly wrong. Because we don’t gain knowledge by directly reading his works; we only gain knowledge from the introspection that follows. We have to dive into his ocean, his world of extreme scrutiny, and when we come out of it, we have to look at ourselves very closely to find out what we’ve gained. It’s a shame that what Nietzsche wrote (and may or may not have believed) about women makes it that much harder to take that plunge. It’s a shame because after all, the same person wrote the lines I quoted at the beginning of this article.

Footnotes:

1-      I find it impossible to interpret Nietzsche without making some of these assumptions about him.

2-      http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppv2n25.html

3-      “The Story of Philosophy” by Will Durant.

4-      I have to ask myself whether I would be able to read an author who is prejudiced against men, but has otherwise written thought-provoking material. I’d like to think that I can. I read fiction like that, but that’s different. Please let me know if you have suggestions for such non-fiction. I would like to give it a try.

Certainty

I was standing next to the small temple in front of my school. I was 8, maybe 9 years old. I remember staring intently at a chicken. Yes, a chicken. India can be (in certain places) a colorful place where chicken, sheep, and people share their streets with Gods carved out of stone residing in small roadside temples. This ridiculous juxtaposition of incongruous worlds may startle anyone not used to this. The skeptic looks at this and says, “I see. There must really be two worlds stiched together carefully by an invisible thread, so perfectly that you don’t even see the boundaries.” I now see that he has a point.

“Why are there so many micro-temples? Who ever has heard of instant divinity?” the skeptic wonders. Occasionally, he sees someone walking in a hurry to catch the bus to work. This person passes by a temple on the street and involuntarily removes his footwear in order to perform a ritualistic worship. This short prayer concluded, the person resumes his/her hurried walk to the bus stop. Is there anything meaningful in this act apparently lacking in sincerity? The skeptic is confused by all this and he laughs. But it’s not a mocking, derisive laugh; he laughs only because he doesn’t understand. And now, I laugh with him. And while I laugh, I wonder if the roadside temples (however they came to be) are somehow meant to remind us that divinity is not a separate entity – that divinity is just a way of living. It’s just a passing thought. But I digress.

Let’s go back to the time I was staring at the chicken. I don’t seem to remember why there was a chicken or where it came from. Perhaps from a nearby butcher shop? I guess I didn’t care enough to think about it because I was thinking about something else. With typical childish curiosity, I started wondering whether I can ever hope to understand what the chicken experiences. It was actually more than mere curiosity; it was a strong desire to find out what the chicken thought and felt. The possibility of all this intrigued me very much. This thought lasted about a minute. And then I was 15. The continuity is perfect in many ways (never mind that it violates physical laws governing the human aging process and such). I was alone in my room and I theorized like an immature philosopher:

Knowing what a chicken feels? Mere foolishness! If you are a chicken, you know what you feel. If one is not a chicken, the question is immaterial if not meaningless to them. I have to restrict my theorizing to people. It’s different with people. I can hope to understand all people because we are all made from the same clay, the same material. We have the same form. Of course, it’s true that I won’t understand everyone. But I’m capable of understanding anyone given enough time; I’m capable of seeing the world through the eyes of anyone. I’m sure of this.

Ten years later, I now know that I was wrong yet again. People are both similar to and different from each other. Isn’t it equally indecent to ignore the differences as it is to be blind to the similarities? I read a poem recently in which the poet says, “It rains in my heart.” One could live a billion years without ever feeling the slightest need to use that outlandish phrase. And yet, the poet wrote those words. It naturally has to be an exaggeration. In some ways, the poet is a liar. This is the only explanation that conforms to reason. Of course, the poet will be pardoned in my court; he’ll be pardoned in the name of artistic license. However, on second thought, what crime did the poet really commit? Who am I to judge what the poet really felt? Maybe the phrase was not only decorative, but even necessary to define his pain in the poem.One’s thoughts and feelings are incomparable to someone else’s. They may not even be comparable to your own thoughts and feelings in the past. Isn’t such the nature of things in this world?

Thoughts and feelings, thoughts and feelings: one can never generalize these products of the brain and the heart; one can only try to understand the general theories behind the processes that generate these. I can never completely know what you think or feel, but I can hope to understand how you think or feel. I am convinced of this now. I’m convinced in the same way I was convinced ten years ago. And I can’t wait to be wrong once more.

The painter’s perspective

Disclaimer: This post is rather long and maybe a bit abstruse. If you don’t have the time to read completely/think about it, or if you have no interest whatsoever in philosophy, you might find it extremely boring.

Delusions of grandeur: Part 3
(Continued from, but independent of Part 2)

My thoughts wandered to the time I met Irfan, a gifted painter. His work drew high praise from critics and artists alike. His paintings were loved by just about everyone, but himself. He confided in me a problem he was grappling with. “When is a piece of art born?” he asked. I was in no mood to get into semantics. Fortunately, he continued:

Take my paintings, for instance. Is it art when I conceive the idea in my mind? Does it become art when I imagine it? When I picture it in my mind’s eye? Or, is it art only when I finish the painting and when everyone can see it?

If others could somehow see the paintings in my mind, they’d understand how much more beautiful they can be. I stare at my finished painting, compare it with my mental image, and can immediately see the innumerable little things my painting failed to capture. That’s when I realize that some things are condemned to be forever hidden in the depths of our minds.

Then I start wondering about the hidden art inside the minds of others. What do I not see when I look at someone else’s painting? Why do I have to rely on my limited senses to make judgments about the world? If only I could read minds and see what’s hidden, I’ll be able to see true beauty in everyone and everything…

And so he went on venting his frustration. Like many philosophical problems, the sources of the questions are more interesting than any attempted answers. Hence, I’ll stick to the former. Why did Irfan talk about ‘hidden art’ in everyone else? To be precise, why does he suspect there is something in others that he cannot see? Because he looks inside himself, realizes what others fail to ‘see’ when they look at him or his works, and from that, infers that he must also be missing many things when he sees others.

This line of reasoning sounds too simple to even deserve to be written down. However, knowledge is often acquired from what is absent rather than what is present, precisely using this kind of reasoning. You start with what you know about yourself and project the little things you know about everyone else and everything else onto your notions and ideals. This projection sounds very limiting and constraining, but without it, you won’t have a smooth continuous world-view. Without it, people would see huge gaping holes in their view of reality. It is this projection that hides the holes and prevents everyone from going insane. Once in a while, you become aware of these holes and that may actually pave way for a growth in knowledge. In short, it’s perfectly alright if you confront something that doesn’t agree with your world-view. In fact, one should constantly be on the lookout for anomalies that challenge their ideals, for that’s how real progress can take place.

So far I’ve been talking about distinct individuals . Let me digress a bit now and use a painting analogy to explore communication between people. Take stories, for instance. Stories are made up of characters and events. To me, characters and events just form a blank canvas. The real message is actually painted on these characters and events. The existence of this underlying message in stories can only be deduced by the emotion they produce in the reader. The narrative is the same for everyone just like an empty canvas is just that for anyone who looks at it. But, the ‘painting’ in the story represents different things to different people.

(When using analogies, one must take care not to push them too far. I’m not saying plain narratives are empty canvases and I certainly don’t think abstract essays without characters and examples are transient paintings drawn in the air.)

Say, for instance, I want to talk to you about free will. I could try to write an essay on what free will means to me as a God, or to Mary as a human. Instead, I could just tell you the story of how we resolved the problem of free will* and let the story speak on my behalf. Sure, the story will only be approximate and will be understood differently depending on the person reading it. But people have different notions of reality and different nuts need different bolts. In essence, what I mean is that sometimes communication is more effective when you don’t state exactly what you think.

Perhaps now you can understand Mary? She is just a convenient canvas to paint the Divine. I had to start somewhere. I started with her. How else could I explain myself? How else could I introduce God? In the end, all understanding appears to be from the perspective of isolated individuals. Then, everything else can only be projection.

(To be continued…)

* Story for another day

P.S. It’s tempting to compare “hidden art” to a hidden God, but that comparison will probably do more harm than good to bridging the gap in understanding between people.

Snapshots of emotions

I don’t have to think very hard to remember the last time I felt this way. The human brain intrigues me. I wonder if memory is really indexed by the feelings you experience. Anyway, it was the night before my first day of middle school — Or, was it junior high? It doesn’t really matter — and I was feeling empty. It was actually a delightful mix of excitement and fear: an eager enthusiasm for the infinite possibilites and a solemn trepidation about facing the unknown. If either emotion had been a clear winner, I would’ve known how to react. At that particular moment of that particular day, the latter emotion was overpowering ever so slightly, and that delicate, yet decisive edge was creating a weightless fear, a kind of fear experienced only in youth, fear that fails to trigger its usual physiological response.

I was young, clueless and didn’t have the ability to articulate my feelings. I was fortunate enough to have parents, to whom, all I had to say was, “I was feeling off.” They knew exactly how I was feeling. My parents made me take a shower (it was around 5 pm) and we went to a nearby temple to get some peace of mind. The rest of the night remains vague in my memory. However, when I went to bed that night, I remember being as cheerful as I could’ve possibly been. I don’t know what helped. Maybe it was the temple. Or maybe talking to my parents was what I had needed. Well, there’s that other possibility… Perhaps it was the holiday assignment I had forgotten to complete, which I hurriedly finished when I came back from the temple.

It doesn’t really matter what helped me then. All I know is this: today, it’s real. I have no unfinished assignments this time. There is a real reason for the excitement: I am pursuing a goal that I had previously only wished for, without any real effort. The fear is also justified because the goal I’m after, i.e., learning a new language, is not exactly my cup of tea. Yet, I know it’s not a fear of failing. If it was, I wouldn’t be writing this. I would’ve reasoned, “What if I don’t succeed in learning anything? I better keep this to myself.” No, it’s definitely not the fear of failing. I got over it a long time ago. Plus, I can never be afraid of failing at something that I so much desire. I know what it is. It’s the fear of not trying enough, of giving up too soon. Yes, that must be it. That’s exactly what it is!

My friends often remark (or complain?) that I tend to romanticize even ordinary situations. But, that’s the way I see the world and experience life. It feels better just to have written this down and that’s why I am sure that my emotions stem from the fear of throwing in the towel too soon. After all, I have the convenient excuse of not being good at languages. I hope I won’t give up easily this time. Sometime in the future, however the results turn out, when I look back on the time I decided to pursue this goal, I’ll read this… and I’ll know that I didn’t decide on a whim.

Boredom

I recently came across a picture of a crying baby very much like this one. I started wondering whether it could serve as a motivational poster with the following caption beneath it:

Sadness is not evil… Boredom is.

I would have to clarify something here though. When I say boredom, I don’t mean it in the ordinary sense of just having nothing to do. When I say boredom, I mean inactivity resulting from extreme apathy and indifference towards your surroundings. It is the state of being unnaturally immune to all external stimuli. However justified this emotion of boredom is, it does well to snap out of it immediately because, as they say, an idle mind is a devil’s workshop. (There are probably better ways to express what I actually mean, but I hope you get the point. Maybe there is a better word than boredom. Maybe you’ll come up with a better-worded caption than mine. I don’t care about those exact words; I care about the message.)

Let me end this brief post with a couple of relevant quotes from Paulo Coelho:

Quote 1: A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.

When he says “be busy with something”, I think he is persuading us to avoid falling into the evil hands of boredom.

Quote 2: She said she was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn’t go on.

I think anything that gets you motivated to be busy is good. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the promise of reward or a battle against suffering.

P.S. An afterthought… Considering the recent famine in East Africa, the following image is probably more appropriate. (Let suffering only be a motivator for action.)

A God for one and a God for all

Delusions of grandeur: Part 2

(Continued from, but independent of Part 1)

Joking is a barrier between man and the world. These are the words of Milan Kundera, a gifted writer. Stripped out of context of the story where it appears, the quote sounds pretentiously general. However, it is in such naked words that one gets to understand the person behind the words.

What did Kundera really mean? He sees joking as a way to distance oneself from the reality of the world. Joking implies a certain degree of denial of the world as it is. Every joke hides behind it a secret desire for a better reality, one in which joking would not be required. People joke either to avoid thinking about their place in the universe (i.e., to forget their ignorance) or to just see a situation in a lighter vein. In any case, joking requires a false interpretation of reality. That’s why Kundera wrote that joking is the ‘enemy of love and poetry’. Because poetry serves to explore the truth, while humor mocks reality.

Does this mean Kundera is against the concept of humor entirely? Of course, not. What if joking is a barrier between man and the world? People deserve a break from reality once in a while. One cannot always travel in a straight path to complete understanding. People are not capable of focused reasoning all the time and humor is a necessary ingredient for good mental health.  Besides, if you are not completely sure about the truth, what else can you do but joke? It is in this spirit that joking is approved everywhere and even actively encouraged… It is small wonder then that Mary thought I was joking when I told her I am God.

When I kept insisting, she started testing me playfully, expecting me to come clean any time. I had to answer a number of personal questions about her before she considered the possibility that I am indeed God.  Where did she hide her childhood treasure of sea shells? When was the last time she cried? Whom did she vote for in the last elections? The questions were endless. I answered all her questions patiently. Finally, she agreed that she had no other explanation for my omniscience. But she was still not ready to completely believe me.

“Why don’t you perform a miracle and prove that you are God?” she asked.

“Let’s say I perform a miracle. Does that really prove anything else other than the fact that I possess superior knowledge? Even the present day man with his airplanes and computers would seem far superior to those who lived in the stone ages… God is not a magician, Mary. You search for God as an abnormality in the limited world that you perceive, while God is actually the obvious and ordinary in a more complex world that you don’t fully comprehend.”

“Like blind men trying to comprehend the notion of colors,” she blurted out.

“Yes, men stumbling around for God,” I helped. We were both quiet for a while. After a few seconds, she broke the silence abruptly.

“If you know everything about me, why do you seem frustrated by my response? Shouldn’t you be excellent at convincing me if you are indeed God and you know everything about me?”

“Knowing and understanding are two different things. Do men understand everything they make? It is the same with God.”

“We mortals astonish God as much as God us,” she said with a sarcastic smile. She was quoting Melville.

“And Melville also had an explanation for that. He said, “It is this Being of the matter; there lies the knot with which we choke ourselves. As soon as you say Me, a God, a Nature, so soon you jump off from your stool and hang from the beam. Yes, that word is the hangman. Take God out of the dictionary, and you would have Him in the street.” He’s mostly correct. God’s uncertainty about people is just a by-product of human limitations rather than an inherent quality of God itself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you wonder why I refer to myself in the third person a lot?”

“Why?”

“Because God is an overloaded word. There is ‘God’, who is at the root of all matter and who symbolizes order in the universe, one who works at a level above human concerns.  You can never understand that universal God. On the other hand, there is God who lives among men and who is able to communicate with them. I am THAT God. I am the one who doesn’t understand people. I am the one who is constantly surprised and frustrated by them. I am the one who depends on them. I am the one with the limitations. And I am just a PART of the perfect universal God.”

“Does that mean you are God, for all human purposes?”

“If it’s easier for you, you can think of the universal God as the aggregate of a multitude of interdependent Gods. I am one of those Gods, one of the very few that humans need to care about.”

“Perhaps that’s why some religions are polytheistic.” That wasn’t a question, so I did not answer. There was that silence again. Silence doesn’t get its due respect these days because, speech, music and noise are taken for granted. But, in reality, silence is the default state, just like darkness, just like coldness and just like nothingness. Hot and cold, bright and dark are relative terms, but they are not equivalent. Everything is dark and cold by default unless there is something that is bright and hot. Before man discovered fire, he didn’t fear the dark nights; before he invented language, he didn’t fear silence.

I waited long enough to pay homage to the silence I was about to kill with the following question: “Mary, would you believe me if I told you that humans are just a part of me, God?”

“Are you saying that we are a part of you?”

“No. But, would you believe me if I said that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I think I would know if I am God, or a part of God.” She paused and thought for a couple of seconds. “If I am a part of you, how am I able to talk to you? Isn’t it as silly as me trying to talk to my little finger?”

“Yet that perfectly sums up the absurdity of the situation, God having to converse with men. You use the word ‘I’ without the slightest clue what it means. The word ‘I’ represents human wish more than any fundamental reality.”

“Are you just trying to prove that people are evil? to expose man’s self-love?”

“On the contrary, I am only trying to get people to understand themselves better and to dispel the myths about men… for once something is accepted as natural and general, it will never be considered evil.”

“So, why did you ask me whether I believed you or not?”

“To tell you the real reason why you won’t believe me entirely. Because if you are a part of God, that would make everyone else a part of God as well. This would mean all men are equal. Men don’t want to be equal. Every man wants to be different from the rest and every man wants a different God for himself.”

“I don’t think that’s true. It is not too difficult for people to be different, if they really wanted to be different. I think life is actually a struggle for fitting in.”

“You know, people can be different from each other in countless ways, but similar in only one way. Despite this fact, you still try to blend in with everyone. Do you think it is because you want to blend in? No, it is because nature intends you to. It is not your wish. Equality is the default state, and human desire is the agent that drives one away from that state (just like the sun driving away the default state of darkness). In fact, man can be sufficiently defined by his desire to break away from that equality. It’s this desire that is at the root of the concept of ego. The desire is neither good nor bad. The word ‘I’ is a cry for a special place for oneself in the world, but there is no need for you to be ashamed of it.”

“As hard as it is to believe all of that, it does explain a few things. My friend once asked me to give a justification for monogamy. Every reason that I could think of had some flaws. But then, there are no real rationales for most things we take for granted. Now I see why monogamy is necessary. Polygamy makes you replaceable, while monogamy ensures that you are special at least in one sense, even if you fail in every other attempt to be different from the rest.”

Mary wasn’t questioning me now. She wasn’t trying to prove or disprove me. She was genuinely trying to understand what I was saying. She was listening to me the same way she would listen to a child who just woke up from a nightmare. The child may tell the most fanciful stories, but the only way to console the child is to try and understand those stories. There are no shortcuts. ‘Time’ is the price you pay for being human. It is a terrible thing to know everything there is to know and still have to spend an eternity to explain it. Oh, to live among men!

(To be continued…)

P.S. Some of these perspectives might have originated from my childhood discussions with my dad. Unfortunately, I can’t resolve origins of thought and point out specifics. But that’s okay. I prefer to just be grateful for all the ‘thoughts’, whether they are mine or otherwise.

Delusions of grandeur

DISCLAIMER 1: “I find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not my own.” (Borrowed and adapted from a Jane Austen character)

DISCLAIMER 2:  If you get the impression that I’m pretending like this is a story, it’s because I’m an idiot. (A story needs a plot that moves the story. In that sense, this is not a story.)

DISCLAIMER 3: I wrote this. (Read it at your own risk… and remember to take it with an ocean’s worth of salt.)

My big secret

I know more about secrets than anyone who has ever lived on the earth, on the moon or in the rest of the lifeless universe. I also have the reputation of being excessively humble and moderately ironical. I have to begin by telling you a few elementary facts about secrets. Everyone has secrets. There are different types of secrets: big and small, happy and sad, simple and complicated… Well, you get the point. I have always been interested in one particular classification though.

Roughly speaking, all secrets can be classified into those that will inconvenience the person with the secret if it is disclosed and those that don’t. Note that this classification only considers how the secret affects the person with the secret. Why is this important? Because it reveals the motivation for the secrecy. Is the person protecting himself/herself by keeping the secret or is he/she just protecting other people? If you have a secret that affects you personally (regardless of whether it affects others or not), you develop a closer relation with the secret than otherwise.

I am a self-proclaimed expert on especially this first kind of secret – the kind of secrets you keep because, for whatever reasons, you don’t look forward to explaining yourself to others. Even the sanest of souls keeping this kind of a secret soon develop an irresistible urge to disclose it. I have one such secret myself. I’ve tried to tell it to others many times before without much success. (To be honest, I’ve actually disclosed my secret on a few of these ocassions. But, no one has believed me yet and that’s why I still call it my secret.) However, I felt it was going to be different with Mary.

Mary is a kindergarten teacher and known among her peers to be a perceptive one. If she can understand all those kids with their various unformed views of the world, she can definitely understand what I have to tell her. It is with this reassurance that I started talking to Mary. I remember thinking that it was going extremely well, when Mary interrupted me.

“How did you know about my fear of chickens?”

“Funny you should mention it. That’s what intrigued me the most about you. I’ve always wondered how can you write so much about something that you are so ashamed to tell anyone.” I have the reputation of seldom giving direct answers.

“Are you talking about what I write in my journal?” she asked in a slightly alarmed voice.

I knew she was distrustful. I was frankly getting annoyed at this point. I thought to myself, “Why don’t people understand my intentions? I know everything about a person even before I say a word to them. Is it wrong on my part to expect the same from them? No, it’s not. If I know them well, they should know me well too. It’s the simple law of reciprocation.” And that’s when I told her.

“Did I tell you that I am God?”

It always comes down to this. I’ve never liked dropping that on people. There were two reasons. Firstly, even religious people never believe me when I tell them that I am God. I don’t know if that’s because they form definite impressions of God and compare me to their notions of God. Perhaps they find it difficult to associate divinity with someone so normal in a circumstance so ordinary? Don’t get me wrong. I like religious people just as much as the others. After all, they do believe in my existence. But, one has to wonder if they have the openness to accept God in a form that they do not anticipate.

The second reason I dislike calling myself God is that it’s not the complete truth. Well, it’s not a lie either. What is a lie really? Lie requires an intent to deceive. If I can say anything with certainty, it’s that I don’t intend to deceive anyone. You might say that a lie without an intent to deceive is still a false statement. But, consider this. Let’s say there is a language in which the colors blue and green had the same name. Would it still be false to say “sky has the same color as grass” in that language? This is the kind of dilemma I face when I utter the words ‘I am God’. Perhaps this confliction is revealed in the way I announce myself to people and THAT is why they don’t believe that I am God. In any case, it is with all these doubts that I told Mary that I am God.

To be continued… (Now that I’ve put this commitment in writing, I’ll hopefully take the time to finish my thoughts.)

On slaps

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. (Matthew 5:39, NIV)

(This article is not a comprehensive analysis of this biblical quotation. In fact, the dialogue presented below may misinterpret the intended meaning of the quotation. I have some Christian friends, but I am sure they will understand my intentions and forgive me for this apparent blasphemy, if any. I think I may also have some Christian enemies. Who doesn’t? I can only ask them to read on.)

A professor of comparative religion gave a speech on the relevance of scriptures to the present world. An interested member in the audience approached the professor after the talk.

“Hello, professor. I am Sami Richt. Great talk today.”

“Thank you, Mr. Richt.”

“I like your analysis of religious texts without involving God. I have a question for you. Do you think Matthew 5:39 is still relevant today, if it ever was?”

“I think the essence of the saying relies on the fundamental belief that human beings are capable of realizing their mistakes on their own. In order to bring someone to repent for their follies, you just have to give them enough time and provide them with the right circumstances. Now, what are those right circumstances? Shame is the first step in the path towards repentance. And nothing makes a guilty person more shameful than the magnanimity shown by the opponent they have wronged. In this sense, I believe that the saying is still relevant. And it has always been.”

“Preaching non-violence is one thing. But, asking people to facilitate violence against themselves? It somehow doesn’t seem right to me.”

“I am glad you realize that distinction. There is actually a school of thought that believes that the passage only advocates non-violence and nothing more. I am, however, taking a stronger point of view. Don’t you think it is more magnanimous to expose yourself to more harm at the hands of your aggressor? It is the kind of gesture you need to make your opponent aware of his sins.”

“But, what about myself? I mean, you are talking about the aggressor. What about the victim? Is it fair to my loved ones that I allow myself to be harmed just so the bad guy learns a lesson?”

“Well, this is one of the pitfalls of over-simplification. Religious texts are only intended to give you prescriptions for moral behavior. There are very few rules that are universal. There are definitely situations when resisting evil is the right course to take. At the same time, it is important to realize the possibility of dealing with evil in a pacifist way.”

“That’s a good academic answer, professor. But, how does that help me with my decisions? Let me ask you this. If someone slaps me for no justifiable reason, should I show them the other side of my face? I am speaking figuratively, of course.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you there. Even if you provide me a specific scenario, I could only possibly tell you how I would act. You’ll have to choose your course of action yourself.”

“Well, what would you do, professor?”

“I would show them my other cheek.”

“Forgive my insolence, professor. But, don’t you realize that most people will just slap you again? Is it possible that you show your other cheek just to take the moral high ground? Or maybe for the snotty self-satisfaction you derive from it?”

“Those are certainly possibilities that cannot be ruled out… Mr. Richt, let’s say that I turn my other cheek to every person who slaps me? Do you believe that at least some of those people are courageous enough to regret their mistakes and refrain from slapping me for a second time?”

“I guess… I mean, I don’t know how many such people there are. But, I do believe such people exist.”

“If I am afraid to turn my other cheek, how would I find these people?”

The man fell silent at these words. Before he left, he only said, “We think too differently, professor. Thanks for your time.” The man and the professor are both characters in my head. If I somehow gave the impression that the professor is morally superior, I sincerely apologize for that. I think moral dilemma is as admirable as the certainty of knowing the right thing to do. I always wonder about the reasoning that goes behind most religious texts I come across. It is much harder to figure out how to apply all those principles in real life. In that context, the later part of the dialogue is widely applicable in life.

As Dumbledore famously remarked, we are sometimes required to make a choice between “what is right, and what is easy“. There is a lot of truth in those words, but I wonder if it is too strong. What if there are no clear rights or wrongs? I think we often have to choose between what we actually believe in, and what is convenient to believe. There are times when sticking to our beliefs can seem as foolish as ‘turning the other cheek’, but how else do we find the right friends to surround ourselves with in our lives?