Musings : 2021

20 November 2021

जिंदगी में

मैं गुजर रहा हु

नहीं पता कब रुकू

मैं गुजर रहा हु

नहीं पता कहा रुकू

जिंदगी में

मैं गुजर रहा हु

मंजिल की खोज में

मैं गुजर रहा हु

यादों की होश में

18 July 2021

Religion, Pride & Logic

What truly is logic? Who decides reason? [...] It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reason can be found.

- John Nash (Fictional - A Beautiful Mind)

Of all the religious beliefs, only atheists can claim to be proud of their religiosity and different from others. They can attain any good, bad, worse, evil traits of a religious person without compromising their own logic, rational and religious integrity. There is no gold standard religion that sits well with logic.

I see two different types of people who are proud of their religion. 1.) Proud due to its values & morals; 2.) Proud as it made them achievers in their field. I have arguments against both of these types.

For the people who are proud of their religion for its implied morals and values, religion undermines human capability by not letting the individuals discover those said morals and merely imparting the values upon them. Religion is simply the teacher giving the answers without reason & self-learning.

For the second type, we cannot simply conclude that religious practice is what made them successful. They could have been successful even if they failed to uphold religion in their lives. At the same time, we can readily see abound number of examples of not successful individuals despite being religious. Simply, there is no counterfactual present that would have proved that one's religion made the said individual successful.

In both the above cases an individual may have discovered the morals & values of religion and be successful without explicitly following a certain religion.

I am not against religion or religious beliefs; I am against the idea of religious pride, which has found its way into the mainstream and causing tensions. I feel that religious pride is one of the reasons that is calling people to arms in the name of protecting their religion.

Suppose an individual is proud of his/her own religion and believes it to be the saviour of the world; does their religion truly warrant protection from other religions and puny humans?

9 June 2021

Happiness !

Happiness increases in value when shared with others and similarly, sadness decreases in strength when shared.

This dialogue is uttered by Babu Bhaiyya in the Bollywood comedy Hera Pheri.

I am here to express my feelings about the former part of the dialogue and hope to revisit the latter part in the future.

Though science and I, in general, agree with this phenomenon, I witnessed an interesting and peculiar observation.

Many negative things came packed with the years 2020 & 2021 and generally have been years of isolation. And isolation leads to inwards thinking of self, I noticed something opposite to the above statement with regards to happiness.

I was all at home locked up due to COVID and nothing seemed to be moving in my direction, I was restless and sleep-deprived at times due to my anxiety towards my future. These tough times also India witnessed a painful migrant crisis (2020 first wave).

Some of my friends were experiencing new and beautiful things in their lives at the same time. And I was meant to be happy, but I could not. Their sense of joy and happiness seemed to be out of reach for me and I was not able to share their joy and enthusiasm. I agree this has something to do with my state of being, but I was startled as I was not happy enough for them.

Again in May 2021, I feel I have a genuine reason to be happy about my career and future (all anxiety from before vanished). But seeing the negative and sad state of affairs surrounding numerous deaths and dire health crisis, I am not able to share my good news on a public forum. I genuinely think that amid all the distress signals my positive news will be inappropriate.

I don't know how to term my feelings. But all my inward thinking led to me believe that