New Sense

A couple of days ago a friend of mine introduced me to a friend of his. The moment I saw her I had a feeling that we had met before… It was like ‘I have seen this face before’ but she immediately replied saying she had never met me before. A little embarrassed and very confused I continued the conversation which branched away elsewhere.

After a few minutes of conversation it turned out we had studied in the same college, but in different classes. That didnt exactly mean that we had met, there were about a thousand students in that college. With over 150 in my class itself I was pretty sure I hadnt met everyone of them during my short two years there. Then the conversation went on and we realized that we lived in the same area… Thats when she mentioned another friend of mine with whom i had been to college with. Putting one and one together it turned out we had for about a year taken the same bus to college everyday, nine years ago!

I was personally amazed by how I had realized that I had seen her before. I am not really good with faces, I tend to remember names better. The odd thing was that I couldn’t place her in a single incident/event that I remembered…

The reason I am mentioning this is that I recently was reading about memories and how the brain works with them. According to the book/study/show(cant remember which) every moment of our active lives we are bombarding the brain with information. For the brain to work normally it needs to sort out this information and choose what it believes will be required in the future. The brain in this process of weeding out ‘forgets’ majority of the data it has been provided. Also when a certain memory has not been recalled for a long time the brain slowly forgets the memory.

With that I spent the evening thinking about how awesome it is what the brain does and how well it does it.

One day Two Buddhist Monks who were on a long journey approached a raging river. On the river bank stood a beautiful young lady. She approached them asking for help to cross the river as she feared drowning. The first monk walked ignored her and crossed the river. The second monk picked up the woman and carried her across the river. He placed her down, they parted ways with woman and on they went with their journey.

As the journey went on, the second monk could see some concern on the other monk’s mind, he asked what was wrong. The monk replied, “how could you carry her like that? You know we can’t touch women, it’s against our way of life”. The second monk answered, “I left the woman at the rivers edge a long way back, why are you still carrying her?”

—–

This has to be one of my favorite zen stories. I have narrated this story so many times that I have lost count and each time I narrate it, I appreciate it a little more…

What I have realised is that its very easy in life to get carried away with the flow of information. I have always been vary of the thoughts I was carrying with me and the disadvantages of their burden.

Very often we carry with us just a singular opinion of an incident and with that come assumptions and prejudice. Things change over time, the perpetrators forget the incident and yet we continue holding onto the assumptions and prejudice. I think it was Buddha who once said “Being angry at someone is like holding onto a burning piece of coal to throw it at them, we are the only ones getting burnt”

One of the hardest lessons I have had to learn in life is that no matter how good you are, no matter how well planned you execute a task it will never make everyone happy. And that sometimes the only way to get the peace of mind you seek is to simply let go.

I was watching the latest episode of Futurama and sipping a hot cup of tea when this question randomly popped into my head:

If I do succeed in making that time machine how the hell am I going to test it?

Ok that question has a lot to do with the latest episode of Futurama… In the episode the Professor invents a “One Way Time Machine”. For details watch the episode (it was pretty good too)

Back to the subject of this post… “How do you test a time machine?”

If it was a normal machine I would try and get it into the state required for it start properly and then check the outputs/results and iterate. But that wont work with a time machine!

Lets say I convince a poor bugger to test my machine(Of course I wont test it myself what if it blows up or something ), there are three possible results:

1. It works perfectly well – ‘Thats coz I am pretty good at building this stuff‘
2. It fails miserably (basically nothing happens) – ‘Ohh cant these assistants do one thing right, guess I have to do everything myself‘
3. It works partially – This is the case we need to talk about…

Lets say it worked fine for going back in time but not forward… I would expect the bugger to track me down and tell me I was successful. What if he went too far back? He cant pass on the message thru my great grand parents! – ‘Oh damn! thats what my granny meant when she said “Works fine, look at going forward” ‘

Basically it wont help my results now, how will I know what to fix…

Lets say it goes only forward… The future me would be thrilled to know but the present me just cant sit around waiting to know
Again if he goes too ahead in time, well thats pointless aint it…

My basic point about all this is that if I can invent a machine that can make people(and itself) disappear I should technically be able to pass it off as a partially working time machine… Right?

Its amazing how when you are thinking of a particular concept or idea and the universe suddenly starts throwing things your way that echo your thoughts. I read somewhere that its a Psychological phenomenon, but its hard to believe that all that is psychology when it seems too ridiculous to be chance… Anyway I digress… This is a follow post to this post: At Stake…

A couple of days back I was talking about how sometimes ethics and helping someone might push you to an uncomfortable choice between them. I even gave an example of a story about a Barber who is driven to make a similar choice when the Dictator of his country walks into his shop for a shave. You can read that story here: Just Lather, That’s All

Today I got an wonderful example of the exact opposite situation. This one was thanks to a beautiful short story, The Missing Mail from the book Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan.  The televised version of the story is embedded below (If you cant see it, you can view the video here: Malgudi Days: The Missing Mail)

The story is about a postman and one of the families of Malgudi. The postman is a wonderful man and is present at every important instance of the life of Kamakshi, the daughter of the family. When its time for her marriage, he also helps in finding the perfect groom for her.

A couple of days before the wedding the postman sees that the family has a letter informing them that the uncle of the bride is critically ill. The next day he receives a mail that the uncle has passed away. Fearing the marriage might get postponed, the postman takes the call of not informing the family until the ceremonies are well past.

This again was similar predicament but handled in a different way, but the things at stake were different… Ironically in both stories(the other one being of the barber) the final choice seems more acceptable for the reader. I believe its in interest of the writer to work in favor of the reader’s sentiment.

If the postman had done his job and delivered the letter it wouldn’t have been a good story. In choosing a different path the writer suddenly added depth to the character and whats more gave the audience what they wanted.

Thats the important distinction between stories and life. Stories are sometimes over simplified to meet the reader halfway. In that simplification the writer makes the call as to what details are important to the reader but you don’t get that choice in life, all details are there and you make the final call.

So where does that leave us… In all the pondering on this topic the one certainty that I encountered was that its impossible to judge what is the best choice. Its also important to realize that the maker of the decision probably had different priorities than you…

Hemanth left a wonderful comment in the last post, there he says:

How you feel is relevant only to you, but what you do (even as a result of how you feel) is relevant to everyone around you ….. the hard truth. So i guess it comes down to saying,either … i am going to play this one for me, or…. i am going to play this one for someone/everyone else.

Its amazing how true and well put that is…

You have the power to cure all the world’s diseases but the price for this is that you must kill a single innocent child, could you kill that child?

Thats the question asked by the protagonist during the climax of Swordfish… I have thought about that question many times, asked it to a few ppl too… Frankly, the answer might tell you something about yourself; About if you can in metaphorical terms ‘pull the trigger’ when the time comes… But what is usually ignored is that, this question is not entirely complete…

The amount of information given is very small compared to what is put at stake… One might wonder about what is to happen to the child after being spared or what about the people of the world, will they live forever? But that actually also does not matter… the question is just a test… there is not child in harms way or no cure for all world’s diseases…

But what if you have the choice to choose between an ethical compromise and helping someone?

What if someone approached you to help some deeply in need. Your heart goes out for the person in need but you doubt the authenticity of the person in front of you. Would you extend you hand to help them knowing full well that you might be getting conned or would you walk away knowing somewhere in your heart that you possibly refused to help someone who direly needed your help.

You might consider weighing your options… but what if the decision has to be made at the moment?

Lets raise the stakes…

What if the help is not insignificant for you? What if your help would be a huge boost for the person in need?

Thinking? Lets see how far we can go with this

What if the help is very significant for you? What if your help would could save someone’s life?

—-

I read a short story a long time back, it was about a barber who was visited by the Dictator of the land. He had in his hand the sharp blade and in front of him the throat of a tyrant who had tortured and destroyed his country. Professional ethics dictated that he do his job and not be biased the political situation…

What would you have done?

During the entire time he is shaving the Dictator’s beard, the barber mentally tries to make the decision… In the end, he does his job. The Dictator walks away a clean shaven man…

So did the Barber make the right call?

I believe, the amount of information given is very small compared to what is put at stake…