i am retracting, again. this time in crisis. i feel as if i have no RIGHT to talk to anyone. to be friendly with anyone. unless it’s just an acquaintance. and it’s the other person’s initiative. the only thing i thought i had, i am not sure i have it anymore. and without that, i am nothing. i have nothing to give. if i am friends with someone, it has to be give and take. it cannot be just ‘take’, coz then, one day, the friendship would end in bitterness. and so, i am hiding. to avoid situations where i take something… because unless there IS a ‘me’, i cant give anything.

exams

have you ever cried coz you screwed up an exam? an internal exam, to be precise?

“i believe”

something i wrote a few days back in 20 mins (fast by my standards), for a deadline… the task was to write an essay on the quote below. i have a little change of opinion since then, at one point. but whatever.

“I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values.” – Albert Einstein

Ethics are usually taken to mean a moral code that helps one decide what is right and what is wrong, and that leads us to the following question. What IS right and wrong? Who decides what is right and wrong? A selfish society usually tells one that what one does for this society at the cost of self sacrifice is right and what one does just for oneself at the cost of harm to the society is wrong. Clearly, society cannot be taken as the judge of right and wrong because it is an interested party. The other relevant and interested party is the person acting. So, where do we go from here? Is there a third person, who can decide unbiasedly? For the theist, yes. God. But how do we know what God thinks? And how do we even know that God exists? How many of us have known him personally, met Him, seen Him, talked to Him? Our scriptures were written by society. How do we know that they are an unbiased account of what God believes? We can’t say, we don’t know. So, we come back to the 2 interested parties- the society and the individual. Since, ultimately, the individual is the entity actually doing the action, he obviously has a greater right to decide right and wrong. And the rest of the society, in itself constituted by individuals, can act in the context provided by others’ actions. We exist because we are selfish as per Darwin’s theory of natural selection. If we hadn’t been selfish and with a sense of self preservation, we would have been wiped away as a species long ago. So, being selfish is natural. And if an individual decides to make selfish decisions, how is it wrong?

I hear you say- ‘oh but that would lead to anarchy! No one would ever have any respect for anybody else’s life. We would all die!’ Exactly! Anarchy would lead to destruction. And because we are selfish, we don’t want to die, and so we don’t want anarchy. So, what an intelligent person would do is set his ethical code in such a way that he would have sufficient scope for progress without resulting in anarchy, whereas a not so intelligent person could easily lead to anarchy if he follows the simple rule of being selfish. This person needs to be brain washed, needs to be told by the society what is good and what is bad, even for his own good. And we, as a society, need to brain wash him, for OUR own good. So, there comes the idea of ‘instilling’ ethics. Half knowledge is dangerous.

So ultimately, a good purely intellectual attitude would lead to stability in the society. There is no good reason to opt for the abstract “ethics”, without a convincing justification, over facts, which we can see and test. And opting for facts is our nature as a species, because if we understand the causes we can manipulate the effects, which would give us greater powers, and a greater ability to ‘fit’- again, natural selection. However, it has to be borne in mind that this kind of attitude takes time to develop. There will always be people who would acquire only half knowledge and would lead to anarchy. So, for these people, and there’ll be many of them, an intellectual attitude would lead to a weak code of ethics, an impairment of good ethical values.
How do we resolve the situation? We cannot go back intellectually, and so there’ll be a continuous increase in the number of people who set their own selfish ethical code. What we can do is try and implement a concurrent socially determined code of ethics, so that when the person does not have a good code of ethics, he’s put into a dilemma by a prevalent and completely different good code of ethics.

:(

this happening yet again. the last few lines actually.

huh

this was supposed to be the last of my concerns… i mean, X was supposed to help, not make things worse. i dont know why i even bother… i cant handle the whole attitude, especially since it appears to be specially targeted at me. i used to really like X… the only person who ‘was’ always that nice. but it’s just not the same anymore… what it has come down to is this- anything less than perfect and X disappears. you are not supposed be THAT casual with previously happy friendships. and if and when X feels like getting back, maybe i would not be so friendly… get lost, for all i care.

i cant believe i dedicated a WHOLE post to that nut/jerk. maybe i’ll always care… its not easy to give up.

huh.

happy diwali!

i, for one, am in complete fulltu diwali mood, despite the exam season… gorging on chocolates and stuff.

4 yrs back on diwali, 4 nov, 2005, tuesday… i went on a 5.6 km jog between 6 and 7 am, and when i got back there was a pus filled lesion slightly lateral to the middle of my upper lip. it swelled up big time and left a huge scar which is still there as big as ever, with visible remnant hardened pus beneath a thick skin… unfortunately, this diwali i again had a similar lesion slightly lateral to the previous one. painful and big. and pus filled…
do you think i have herpes?

the weird thing is… both times i got this lesion, i was thinking abt the same thing…

secrets :)

this post takes inspiration from this, aditi chatterjee’s blog, which i discovered today. most, but not all, the questions match… so here it goes:

Q. crush on teachers?
A. never.

Q. crush on celebrities?
A. tom felton, imran khan, hugh laurie.

Q. ever stolen?
A. often. money from parents, for buying goodies at school, in 4th or 5th. told them recently. once (10-12 years back) stole from a cousin. it was a ball my dad had gifted to him, but which i wanted too. he was visiting us for the summer, and we went to drop him back in delhi… before we left for chandigarh, i stole and hid the ball in my bag. then he stole it from my bag, and got it back. we have never talked about this till date.

Q. ever cheated?
A. often. in 6th and 7th. stopped cheating in 7th finals. dont see and dont show policy. once, in 9th, i cheated again in anne’s, in a math class test. confessed the next day to the teacher, linda ma’am. now i dont see but do show. when i hear or see something accidentally, i intentionally don’t write it, even if i feel i would have figured it out without the ‘help’. though in practical exams, i do confirm the procedures with others.

Q. urinated in a public place?
A. often. on roadsides, usually during long travels. though try to avoid, if can help it. but sometimes there is no option.

Q. ever had proper non-veg food?
A. prawns when i was in 5th, in goa. they were small prawns, tasted like omelettes.

Q. biggest regret in life?
A. was cruel once to a young cousin, and my dog. cruel, as in CRUEL. though i loved them both. i hate myself for that.

Q. ever made a friend cry?
A. if you exclude family from friends, 2 friends i think. unintentional both times.

Q. ever cried because of friends?
A. yes. nostalgically.

Q. ever “broke up” with a friend?
A. itika- recently we discussed things out in detail, over a 5 hours long conversation… we are trying hard to redevelop. hopefully we’ll be successful.

Q. longest phone conversation with a friend?
A. dont remember… maybe itika. 2-3 hours, or more. dunno.

Q. friend with whom had max phone conversations?
A. itika, hands down. followed by erra, i guess.

Q. friend with whom fought the most/worst?
A. in general, am the kind of person who says nothing and just disappears when things don’t go well. so there have been very few REAL fights. still, fought the most with sandeep and the worst with itika. i think.

Q. ever had a crush on a friend?
A. often. but usually crushes lasting only a few days at max.

Q. no. of people been in love with?
A. not sure. maybe two. at different times, of course. BADLY infatuated with three.

Q. ever had a crush on a family member?
A. yes.

Q. ever really hated anyone?
A. yes. after joining college. hated itika for a while when we broke up. hate avinav, my classmate, for hating and irritating me.

Q. people i am personally acquainted with and admire?
A. too shy to tell. sorry.

Q. closest friend?
A. used to be itika before we broke up. apart from that, many close friends, but none very close… although many are very very prized. again too shy to name them.

Q. why so shy?
A. don’t want to tell people (there are many of them, some will be shocked that i like them or admire them so much… coz i try not to let on) they are important to me… embarrassing if feelings not reciprocated as intensely. idiotic of me, i know… maybe will come around sometime.

unadulterated

sometimes i just wish to strip myself off my physical existence… i want to live, dont get me wrong, i want to live more than almost anybody else i have ever met. but i want it to be without a physical existence… i wish i could hide somewhere… that no one had ever seen me, or heard me, or known me, except because of what i let on… except for the extent to which i show my mind. i want to be famous, but famous for my work, for my ideas… without any positive or negative or just neutral but complicating complications of a physical existence… just the pure unadulterated effect of what i consider my strengths, or what i want to be my strengths. if you know what i mean.

and no, this isn’t just a mood swing… its something i have felt since i was a little kid.

as for the last post, don’t bother. my circadian mood swings have been very prominent of late.

myriad… senseless

restless tortured exhausted confused disappointed aching fatigued excitable depressed guilty unsatisfied… very very unsatisfied.
unsatisfied and retracting, like i did then, and then i did it again, and doing now. retracting back into a rare shell, rapidly, decisively, torturedly… and still not forgetting the norms… irony! hypocrisy! amazed… disgusted… confused. speechless, sobbing, lonely.

everything is wrong

terribly terribly wrong… i cant make anything out of it… what’s wrong with me? where’s all the motivation, the ambition, the craziness, the everything… and why is there is such a cold fog everywhere… i must bear the consequences of my mistake… but i wish, really really wish, that no one else had to.

help me, please.