Friday, March 25, 2005

What if?

A friend and I had a long conversation today, not quite as desultory as long conversations tend to be. It was about human beings in general, if we are right. And my brain still hasn't stopped hurting from thinking about the possibilities.

We do a lot of things in our lives. How do we know if what we do is right, and how do we know that the way in which we are doing what we do is the way in which to do them? Is it a basic instinct of man, or are we just doing what we're taught to do? Let's take an example. We eat with our mouths. Is it necessary that we should eat only with our mouths? How do we know if that's the only way to eat? Maybe there are other, more efficient ways to eat and digest food. Maybe the mouth wasn't meant for eating at all. How do we know for sure? What is it that makes us do what we do? We weren't taught how to breathe, were we?

The only way we(my friend and I) could figure out to test whether man was doing things out of instinct or from what he learns in life, was to raise a child without interacting with him, to bring him up like how a plant is grown, giving him only the basic necessities. After he's become strong enough, we put him in front of some kind of danger and see how he reacts. There are some fundamental flaws even in this; one of them is that, by giving him basic necessities, we are exposing him to parts of the external world. He might learn something from them. Then there is the possibility of the child becoming mentally retarded due to inadequate interaction with the environment. Also, it is impossible to carry out such an experiment, even if it was, we wouldn't be the ones to do it, for humanitarian reasons.

We take it for granted that we are the highest among all beings. In school, we are taught that Man is at the crest of the food chain; that all other beings only live to serve us, directly or indirectly. Isn't it possible that we might not be at the top, that our existence might be serving some unknown purpose, that we might be working for something bigger than us? What if we were?

Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith) said something in "The Matrix" that comes to my mind now. It goes like this: "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure." Biotechnologists have found a way to use the way in which a virus acts to their advantage. What if someone/something is using the way in which we act to their advantage?

Saturday, March 19, 2005

The news tends to get boring when it's all about Michael Jackson.

Mikey comes to court. Mikey leaves court. Mikey makes little boys
drunk. Mikey denies everything.

Yeesh. When you think about it, it's a bit odd to find a guy, who was
once called the "King Of Pop", in the news more frequently when he's
in deep excreta rather than when he's breaking records. There isn't a
day which goes by without me hearing about Michael Jackson's trial.
Why can't people sue some other celebrity for a change?? Like Bill Gates or someone...

In other news, my dad got me an MP3 player, without me even asking for
one. It's not what I would have asked for if I had the chance, but it
I don't mind it. It's a Creative MuVo TX FM player, with a 1 GB hard
disk. I know he could've bought a cheaper player with a larger
capacity... Ah well.

Now that I have access to the college's internet service, which isn't
as slow as it initially appeared, I'm on an MP3 downloading spree.
I've already stuffed the MuVo, and I'm planning on downloading more
than just MP3s after I get all the songs off it.

Coming to something I'm really pissed about... my semester exam results. Contrary to my expectations, I scraped through Math. But, outta nowhere, my computer exam result was F, instead of being my top score. Someone's going to pay for this... and it's not gonna be me.

Didn't spend much time on the new template, so don't bother complaining about it.