Life and choices
I just got another comment on one of my older posts and this got me excited to write once again (Thanks Sujana!). I had this theme in mind for quite some time so here goes:
I bought the soundtrack of a new Telugu movie called 'Super' which I heard is a remake of a Hindi movie called 'Dhoom'. Anyways, there is a song in the movie whose lines go
"Debbaki manishai puttaaka,
batakaali sachche daaka"
For those who do not understand Telugu - that roughly translates into
"The instant you are born as a man
You have to live till you die" (No Choice is implied)
This got me thinking (this song of all as a seed of thought - what do you say?!)
Why is this so?
In most cultures and societies suicide is considered a sin or taboo and I wont go into that topic altogether. What I want to talk about is the lack of choice - the feeling that you are trapped.
I was just thinking of a hard drive - you buy a new computer, it works fine for some time and then starts to become sluggish (thank you Microsoft). You then have to defragment it or wipe it clean and install everything new. How does one do this with one's life?
One may have lived (say) 20 odd years and then one feels the need to rewind and change everything or just start from scratch - rewrite all childhood memories and teenage anxieties - but there is no way to do this. The compulsion to continue on with baggage that one does not like is either self-imposed or imposed by society.
How do people react to this? In my view, you have the carefree types who just shrug it off and continue, or you could have the depressed types who make the rest of their lives (and most likely the lives of those around them) miserable. There might be a few others who might impose their dreams and aspirations, or at least how they want to rewrite their lives, onto others (their children?). Most people are probably somewhere in between and do not even think about such things. For them, life is just to be lived without any questions, just moving on from day to day and accepting all that comes along.
So the question again rises - is man bound by his society to live a life that is already laid out?
Let me explore this thought a little bit more. Let us consider a natural phenomenon of a species reproducing and continuing through its off spring. The main driver of this phenomenon is that the species should continue. To that end, the parents make sure (either consciously or not) that the best possible scenario is maintained for the off spring. The off spring should be physically strong and also mentally well evolved to adapt to changes in environment. In the case of humans, we have laid more emphasis on the mental evolution as a key to our success. So from one civilization to another we have practiced skills that helped us live our lives successfully so that we can produce off spring who can in turn survive that much more easily (a very reductionist view, but one that might hold some truth). And we have now hit upon a time in our evolution where just physical skills (of say being able to make a pot well) are just not enough and we train our minds through almost 25 years of intellectual education to achieve a life of stability.
This, I feel is the constraint of society and nature as a whole that particularly makes a human being's life more difficult and that much more of a trap. As a comparison, a bird's life has probably not changed as much in the same time frame. It still has to acquire the skills of flying and being able to find its food but not much more. It surely does not have to learn how to use a new version of Office every five or so years!
To cut a long story short - I want to be born now as a bird and lead a simple free life!
I bought the soundtrack of a new Telugu movie called 'Super' which I heard is a remake of a Hindi movie called 'Dhoom'. Anyways, there is a song in the movie whose lines go
"Debbaki manishai puttaaka,
batakaali sachche daaka"
For those who do not understand Telugu - that roughly translates into
"The instant you are born as a man
You have to live till you die" (No Choice is implied)
This got me thinking (this song of all as a seed of thought - what do you say?!)
Why is this so?
In most cultures and societies suicide is considered a sin or taboo and I wont go into that topic altogether. What I want to talk about is the lack of choice - the feeling that you are trapped.
I was just thinking of a hard drive - you buy a new computer, it works fine for some time and then starts to become sluggish (thank you Microsoft). You then have to defragment it or wipe it clean and install everything new. How does one do this with one's life?
One may have lived (say) 20 odd years and then one feels the need to rewind and change everything or just start from scratch - rewrite all childhood memories and teenage anxieties - but there is no way to do this. The compulsion to continue on with baggage that one does not like is either self-imposed or imposed by society.
How do people react to this? In my view, you have the carefree types who just shrug it off and continue, or you could have the depressed types who make the rest of their lives (and most likely the lives of those around them) miserable. There might be a few others who might impose their dreams and aspirations, or at least how they want to rewrite their lives, onto others (their children?). Most people are probably somewhere in between and do not even think about such things. For them, life is just to be lived without any questions, just moving on from day to day and accepting all that comes along.
So the question again rises - is man bound by his society to live a life that is already laid out?
Let me explore this thought a little bit more. Let us consider a natural phenomenon of a species reproducing and continuing through its off spring. The main driver of this phenomenon is that the species should continue. To that end, the parents make sure (either consciously or not) that the best possible scenario is maintained for the off spring. The off spring should be physically strong and also mentally well evolved to adapt to changes in environment. In the case of humans, we have laid more emphasis on the mental evolution as a key to our success. So from one civilization to another we have practiced skills that helped us live our lives successfully so that we can produce off spring who can in turn survive that much more easily (a very reductionist view, but one that might hold some truth). And we have now hit upon a time in our evolution where just physical skills (of say being able to make a pot well) are just not enough and we train our minds through almost 25 years of intellectual education to achieve a life of stability.
This, I feel is the constraint of society and nature as a whole that particularly makes a human being's life more difficult and that much more of a trap. As a comparison, a bird's life has probably not changed as much in the same time frame. It still has to acquire the skills of flying and being able to find its food but not much more. It surely does not have to learn how to use a new version of Office every five or so years!
To cut a long story short - I want to be born now as a bird and lead a simple free life!
posted by Bharani Ashokan at 2:00 PM
1 Comments:
reg death, here's an interesting way of looking at it. (by Nehru, in ‘The Discovery of India’)
Death is the birthright of every person born. A curious way of putting an obvious thing.
It is a birthright which nobody has denied or can deny, and which all of us seek to forget and escape so long as we may. And yet there was something novel and attractive about the phrase. Those who complain so bitterly of life have always a way out of it, if they so choose. That is always in our power to achieve. If we cannot master life we can at least master death. A pleasing thought lessening the feeling of helplessness.
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Death -- I think is usually not in our thoughts when we’re young and hence invulnerable (it definitely feels that way) unless may be we witnessed the passing away of dear ones. Then we start to hear of someone’s parents passing away, but never does it occur to us or we fiercely block that line of thought that it might happen to us some day (this is as far as I could bring myself and for the first time) Our own death still is not in our thoughts yet. It’s that of loved ones that plagues us and I think it is so ‘cos we still consider ourselves immune to it. And may be as we get older, even our own death becomes real enough.
This is kinda off the tangent, ‘cos I guess you’re saying there’s no choice than to live once we’re born, whereas I think no one likes even the thought of death. It’s the ultimate truth, the sole and the greatest equalizer and yet it’s never a part of most people’s consciousness. And even though suicide is considered a taboo/sin/whatever else, every person has that choice, no one’s really trapped or condemned to live. I won’t go into debating whether it’s the kinda choice we talk about when we are debating abortion/euthanasia, ‘cos even though I believe everyone is free to do what one wants with one’s life, the fact that life has been made unbearable to some, felt so by some makes me feel sad personally and seems to say that we, collectively as humanity failed in some way.
Coming to the defragmentation etc, I’d think even if you could install everything anew, you still need some kinda basic structure or something where you’d do that. I mean, it has to be based off of something, a mother board or whatever (I’m not a hardware or software person). If you’re talking about revitalizing your old/sluggish computer, that’s very true for and very much possible with our lives too. Our childhood or our past is the base off of which we build our future much like how we defragment the pc. But if you’re talking about losing your old computer and replacing it with a new one, then that’s a different story. If we’re sure of reincarnation and are guaranteed prescience (actually the memory/knowledge of your previous life) then we could simply take our lives whenever we feel a need to start from the scratch. As I say this, it occurs to me that there has to be an external agent for this sorta thing to happen. We, human beings, need to do the defragmenting or replacing the computer which presupposes some knowledge in that field. Applying that analogy to life and humans, we’re not lifeless as computers and so can do our own defragmenting WITH the knowledge of our growing-up years/experiences. So all that baggage probably comes to our aid. For reincarnation, we need someone like Mr. God himself and I think that I’d just like to take the humble approach there and consider humanity as different, perhaps even special (whatever happened to humility?), but nevertheless just one other species on the planet that has to face the inevitable, death, just as every other species does and thus not bother with supernatural powers, rebirth etc.
To your question - is man bound by his society to live a life that is already laid out and your thoughts on society/man himself making his life a trap and how birds have it easy etc. -- I only know a tiny bit about evolution and have extremely limited knowledge on the planet and its constituents. So within those limits, I’d say that there’s varying degrees of complexities among various forms of life and with it, varying degrees of pain and pleasure (reducing the whole gamut of experiences/emotions into just two categories for the sake of simplicity) Having said that, even within the depths and confines of the knowledge we have about ourselves and everything around us, human beings are different and powerful in their own way. Except for situations out of our control, like accidents and the unfortunate ones where the powerful/greedy oppress the powerless, preventing them from reaching their potential, for average folks like us, society does not really dictate anything, does not lay out a certain kind of life for us to live. We totally have the ability to make our own reality. It is a matter of will, strength, courage, patience, inclination/willingness etc.
Coming to physical skills vs intellectual -- not based on any personal knowledge of evolution, the functioning of human brain etc, but on my feeling/worldview, I think human beings and their brains are probably designed to keep coming up with these so-called comforts, conveniences etc to make both their own generation’s and that of their successors’, easier. Where the intellectual skills you talk about come handy. If we were to just feed/shelter ourselves, we wouldn’t have to go through all that we have. But if you observe what’s going on in the environmental-friendly/sustainability world, you’ll see people revisiting the current practice of our lives and going back to appreciating the old world’s wisdom. One small example – going back to cloth towels from paper towels. I’m not saying the human race on the whole hasn’t made any progress that’s worth its while. The field of medicine is a great example. I think we are kinda limited in our ability to get the BIG picture, we can only look few thousand years backwards and some forward and that too not collectively. But if we are able to get the big picture, all that is going on is probably similar to the evolutionary process in other life forms. We go forward, armed with information and by trial and error, look to history to guide us, refine our process and continue to do that, in, may be perpetuity. Or may be not.
WOW, am not even sure if it's possible to leave such HUGE comments.
I'd like to conclude, for now, by saying -- don't wanna be a bird, but yes, I too wish life had been simpler. but once you realize and internalize that it simply is not, you could actually work on making it simpler yourself. I think, by design, life's not simple. but we could make it so by choice.
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