A Myth in Creation

"Anyone who loves you is in for a lot of pain..." writes Albert Camus in his novel A Happy Death , and when i read this sentence, the first person who came to my mind was myself. :)

"Look for the girl with the broken smile" says Maroon 5 in their song 'She will be loved'. And i have always wondered, 'What does a broken smile look like?' and my meagre limits of experience and imagination have not been able to conjure up any image. And i imagine myself walking down some street, years later in unknown future, minding my own business, and suddenly i would spot a smiling girl, and Eureka! The song would come into my mind like a revelation and i would exclamate in the joy of discovery, "So, this is what a broken smile is!". Ah, the joys of fantasy. Talk about romantic expectations! :)

It struck me today that in many ways, our thoughts resemble habits... and there is a deep insight in the commonly used [and commonly ignored] term 'thinking habits'. Just like we developing different habits like smoking, or biting nails, we develop habits of patterns of thinking. Just as these physical habits are determined by conditioned reflexes, type I [Pavlovian] and type II [reward and punishment], the thinking habits are also reinforced by social conditioning. Due to different factors, the patterns of thinking are cemented and it becomes really difficult to change them. It is sometimes said about some person 'He is pessimistic by nature'. But no person is pessimistic [or optimistic] by 'nature', it is the conditioning of his mind which has led to the habit of thinking pessimistically. And like any habit, thinking habits can be changed as well, but it requires patience and consistency, just like in changing physical habits.

Why is virginity associated with body and not also with the soul? Are not the brushes of first love as much important a psychological event as the physical act of coitus? Mental and physical virginity are surely distinct and i think it is quite possible that a prostitute might still be a mental virgin... she may have experienced sex but has she experienced love?

"I have reached a point where I consider no woman really attractive. No defect can be hidden from me. That is impotence." I. B. Singer , A Friend of Kafka

If a woman becomes aware that a person is interested in her because of her beauty, would she be flattered or offended? Flattered, because it is a compliment to her looks. Offended, because this admiration ignores her personality and what she is as a person.

I had a chance to read a dialogue between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins on the issue of God and Science, organized by TIME magazine. The debate can be seen at this link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132-1,00.html I'd like to make some comments about it. The dialogue was good in the sense that it made clear the two conflicting positions of Dawkins and Collins. It would have been foolish to expect some sort of a compromise or a synthesis of the two views. It is not a simple matter of reason, because both Dawkins and Collins were presenting their ideas on the basis of some 'belief', forming a kind of closed system. When you begin to conjecture about things that have at the moment no possibility of empirical or rational verification/ falsification, then it becomes impossible to refute the opposing view. For example, one of the reasons Collins gave for his belief in God was that it is almost impossible by pure chance alone that the values of the six

A person, who later got quite close, said to me once, "Wah je... position in f.sc, topper of entry test, philosopher, poet, thinker.....and a long list, inspite of all dat u managed to FALL IN LOVE...hah, i am really amused." I suppose i should consider this a compliment! :-D

The Nobel Laureate author I. B. Singer developed his own brand of religion after a phase of skepticism. He called it 'Private Mysticism'. " Since God was completely unknown and eternally silent, He could be endowed with whatever traits one elected to hang upon Him ." And it is my own observation that different people have a different concept of God, although they may not be explicitly aware of it. Generally speaking, there are three types of God which people have in their minds: 1) The Benevolent God: A merciful, gracious God who loves humanity and is willing forgive the sins of mankind. 2) The Just God: A God who has laid down some rules of reward and punishment and doesn't deviate from them. 3) The Malevolent God: An angry, revengeful God who takes delight in tormenting the people in the burning fires of hell. Most of the time a combination of these three types is present, but usually one of them is in dominance. Which sort of idea you come to have of God depen

My learning of epistemological and ethical skepticism has rendered me invalid and incapable of thinking 'normally'. My world has been reduced to a set of possibilities and probabilities. Certainty has become a myth. Can you say that you trust your friend when you are aware that there is a 1 in 100 chance that he might be lying to you? Can you say that this or that scientific theory is true while accepting the fact that the very next observation may refute it? Ah, how i crave for certainty and ah, how it hides itself beneath layers of veils.