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due to a personal tragedy and its aftermath there has been an unexpectedly long interruption in services here.
Past few months have often found my mind involuntarily meandering on such deadends as the meaning and purpose of death, on the widely held belief in some sort of life after it, on the purpose of life or lack therof and other such futilities.
Why are we born and to what end we die? While both life and death may be entirely puposeless, yet it is human to pine for a reason of existence of self other than being a chance occurrence.
It is human to reflect on being human. And it is human to struggle with scanty and pitiful answers one comes up with. The feebler minds are not able to cope with this struggle and turn to the sedative("opium" according to Marx) of religion with its ready made and seductive myths. Those who know better (or rather, know that we don't know much better- agnostics or atheists like myself) are tormented by questions that seemingly cannot ever be resolved. Not by philisophers or saints or prophets or even by modern scientists with their giant particle-colliders and Theory of Everything.
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| Gustave Doré - Death Depicted as the Grim Reaper on Top of the World from an edition of Poe's The Raven |
We know that we don't know- but, heck, it is so hard to let it go at that! Therein lies the torment. While we may fashion a purpose conciously(to write a novel, become a millionaire, become the preident) or by default(to raise a family, make a career, somehow pass through life without trouble), there is that almost subconcious and constant vexation, like the background radiation of soul - is there something more? Are we born to some cosmic purpose, to some greater calling that we, in our helpless inadequacy, are unble to grasp and fulfill? We live and sure, we will die -but is that all?
If there was God and if one could face Him -one would ask:
"Anything else, my Lord?"
It may be, of course, meaningless to seek a meaning - my mind accepts this despite its resistance; yet it also feels almost a pity on the thought of it being so.
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| Is it all futile? Gustave Doré- Hoarders and Wasters Dante Alighieri's Inferno Plate 22 |
To veer off, among my other forced ponderings was to question the many common assumptions and presumptions-
No, death and taxes are not inevitable!
I am optimist that science shall one day make us immortal. The thought will horrify the huamnity-hating environmentalists, no doubt. But these pestilential specimens will be long dead by the time immortality arrives- otherwise imagine the horror of an undying Al Gore or the never ending scourge of an immortal Rajendra Pachauri! And no there shall be no shortage of space -imagine all the millions and billions of planets waiting for us.
Living forever may be hundreds or thousands of years away - but life without taxes is possible right now. It is a tragedy of humankind not to be able to live with each other without forced servitude(which is what taxes are). But I shall write much more on this later.
There were also some painful lessons I learnt in recent months. Painful and surprising despite my natural cynicism and despite the fact that I anticipated most of what happened. One lesson is that your close ones in their greed of pelf and property will stab you in the back with nary a thought. Brother will deceive brother and sister will twist the knife. Another lesson is that the one doing the stabbing will loudly proclaim himself the victim. Such are the ways of the world.
I might blog on this later.
So dear readers, I am glad to be back and will continue to blog, all my troubles and travails permitting. And a warm thank you to those who wrote in to ask after me. Your mail comforted me in some dark times. Thanks.
Crossposted at-
What the Heck is Art?
