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Sunday, May 30, 2010

ReTry/ReStart/ReSpawn/ReView/ReWind/ReBirth/ReLoad/ReLive/ReDo/ReMake/ReTurn



As you can see from the heading, adding a "Re" to the beginning of another word, has a lot of meaning direct and indirect. I will try to elaborate on those aspects here.

Let me give you a background though.
The idea for this post started when I was having some difficulty with a piece of software. I had (un)installed it several times but the game didn't work. Finally out of frustrations and anger I switched off the laptop and then restarted it. And Voila! the game worked fine now.
This incident make me think... A restart has so much power. And that idea snowballed into something much more inherent.. a restart is always good for us.

A restart( i will use this term to mean all similar terms) is a way to say.."I learned from my mistakes, let me start again with more wisdom" or
"Let me set things right , that I did wrong in the first try" or "Let me do something else and see what happens"

Everyone in their life reaches 2-3 stages when they are too much loaded up. They become slow, tired, and wish for a new lease to life. A restart/rebirth is what is required to forget/leave behind the travesties of the previous stage/try/attempt and to move on with less baggage and more wisdom.

For the believers of Reincarnation, restart applies too. It is the restart of the soul as a new person.

However, a restart inherently is difficult. One simply cannot let go of everything one has worked towards at a whim. It is a difficult decision to make in any scenario. As a gamer I simply hate to be killed and respawned with none of the powerful weapons I had amassed in the last life. Its the same with life. We have too many memories, links, attachments that one would simple hate to see broken.

Some might think "Giving up now and trying again is equivalent to failure. All the work will be a waste.", but in my humble opinion it surely is not so.
A restart doesn't signify failure, it signifies acceptance of that fact that we did something wrong and are willing to make it right again, even if it means starting all over again.

Do we have the courage to add a "Re" to our beginning?

Monday, May 24, 2010

Happiness is a Commodity

"It (The mirror of Erised) shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, more desperate desire of our hearts… However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible…It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that…”

"And the Dog with the Bone saw the other dog with the Bone(its reflection) in the pool and barked, and the bone it had in is mouth fell into the water and was lost."

The above 2 quotes from very famous stories tell us that Happiness is a relative concept. We feel happy when we have even 1 more than our closest competitor, we feel happy when we have more than people around us, we feel happy when people applaud us and pat us on our backs for things well done, we feel happy when we dont have the troubles the other person has and so on and so forth.

One thing to notice is that there is always "another" person involved related to which we measure our happiness. There is this inherent mechanism built into us which always makes us happy only when we judge ourselves against others. The same judgment makes us sad, angry, motivated and a plethora of other feelings which may be good or bad.

Why is it there? Why cannot we set our own goals and motivations rather than always judge ourselves against some one? Why cannot we be happy because we achieved something we just wanted to achieve irrespective of whether others have achieved more than us or not.

Why cannot we be happy because of who we are and where we stand in the Universal Hierarchy of Happy Men? Why is it that we need a reason to be happy?

Another interesting aspect is that what is Happy for one person is Anger, Jealousy, Envy for another. We are never happy to see other people happy. We may have a fake smile on our faces but plunging daggers into the happy person in our hearts. Why cannot we be genuinely happy for the person? Isnt it because we judge our happiness against others?

Is happiness a commodity? Of which there is a finite quantity? So that if one person has some of it, there will be less or none available for us? Is it necessary to steal happiness? Cannot we create it and share it?

I have seen many examples/incidents where a person is happy for a small achievement, almost superfluous for some, and he/she being rudely told that "Its nothing. Its not something to be happy about". What right do others have of telling us when we should or should not be happy? Why cannot people let others enjoy their happiness, however big or small it might be?

As always, I have more question than answers.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Sci-Fi Reality

The Bicentennial Man- SciFI


Reality

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Scifi- MegaTowers


Reality- Burg al Khalifa


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Scifi- Water Colonies



Reality-Hydro Palm


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Had enough? Want more proof? I think not.
What we plebians, who had the (mis)fortune of being born in the 80's, thought as sci-fi/only in movies/crazy scientists/wild imagination have now come into actual reality. Mankind has pushed the frontiers of science and our world further and further in hope to understand its own existence.
The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence(SETI) was nothing but a faint/failed attempt to prove that we are not alone in the entire Universe. Now, we have proved it with actual facts. Microbes on Mars, Water on Moon, distant galaxies with Earth-Like atmosphere..The stuff of science fiction has hit the present..

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

Had any of us ever imagined that we would have knowledge on our fingertips(WWW), that Skynet(Internet) like intelligence was possible, Teleporting(3D Printers) was possible, Flying cars(Terrafugia) was possible, Regeneration(Stem Cells) were possible in real life? We used to pay a lot of money to watch movies depicting them.Now its boring old stale news.

I personally feel that if someone had told me I would be able to gather knowledge about a mountain in South America, look at it, watch it erupting, read about it etc, I would not have believed that person and would have labeled him "Chemically Imbalanced" [:)]

Anyone who has watched "Future Weapons" series on Discovery would know that Star Wars.. nay.. Star Trek weapons and devices are already in prototype mode or even being used in real War. Predators, Laser Guns, Enhanced Armour(Crysis), Invisibility Mode, Mach 5 planes are no long UFO myths. They are actual reality.

Clones(Star Wars-Attack of the Clones), Cyborgs(Robocop) and Centurians are no longer just cartoons or fiction, they are as much real as you and me.

Anyone knows Cyberman, the tv program in which a guy used to enter a computer and fight virus monster? Arn't we doing that everyday on our computer( well its not just as simple as playing a few string and Voila! your inside the pc but still..)

HOW Exciting isnt it? Barely able to keep our joy inside us :)

However, Me being Me, cannot finish a blog without showing you the other side.

Medieval medicines are still in practice, medieval ways of living and thinking are still in practice, superstition and blind faith are still in practice, inhospitable living environments are still present, people are still dying because of lack of proper medical treatment.
While kids in cities play with Hi-Fi toys, kids in some areas of Africa have only a human skull as a toy.

Do not we as all human deserve to share the same future as our peers?
Are not we obliged to give back to the society what was developed for them in the first place? Or should that be the prerogative of the privileged class?

Should Future be welcomed by a chosen few? or Should it be embraced by the whole mankind?