Wednesday, March 08, 2006

detachment stares at you in face after a while

When one starts brooding some self neutrally about life, one quickly realizes that the nature of world around us is very particular..
in the specific sense that it is one of the numerous possibilities .. things could turn out to be any one of a vast number of alternative possible ways.. then they go a certain way..
this is a non trivial aspect of our existance. however, it is so deeply ingrained in our thinking that many of us probably will not think of it as a topic of relevance.

What i have in mind however is very specific. This "existance in particulars" is the backbone of the feeling of freedom. At any level freedom is about being able to choose. It can be freedom of thought, action or anything else. Ultimately it is based upon this world of particulars.

Pushing that further, the particularization of existance seems like a painting being worked upon as we live through it.. one can only guess how it might look.. but one can never be sure.. the colors may mix a certain way and add to each other or show conflict or there could simply be a minor mishap at one corner by a careless stroke of brush..

in any case, what we so closely hold as our being, is really a path of evolution.. and we could be fundamentally different and by the same logic non existant if things were somewhat different. I mean to say, the person i am today in some sense competed with several other potentially possible "me"s and would not have been there if things turned out differently. Hence I would not be there , it would be someone else built upon the infrastructure of my publicly accepted self.

Hence, it is really secondary to me as to what I gain, lose, aspire, manage, forget and all such stuff..

deep down i almost can feel as if i am a neutral observer to the dance of possibilities.... my feelings, aspirations, strenghts, circumstances and the world around me being a part of the same big whole!!!

Around this time, detachment no longer remains a desired state, it just occurs naturally to you!

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

bad feeling about iran and the larger clash of civilizations

Iran developments do not feel right. US is back to its good old ways of force and creating the viscious circle of instigating military regimes through aggression and then claiming that it needs to use further force to contain them.
Of course Iran is threat to the safety of US. But a much bigger threat is US to Iran. Without getting into who is right and who is not, it can probably be seen obviously that US is looking for excuses to attack Iran and Iran is justified in pushing back on it through whatever little force it has.

The bigger issue lurking beneath is of course a lethal blow to the dream of a peaceful or at least somewhat better 21st century. As in, times when countries differ on export quotas or the likes and not on very right to survival of each other. In the post WWII period, neither US nor USSR has done anything to promote the vision. Under the garbe of security, what we are slowly moving towards is a world full of dichotomies - well off people in west (current west and Brazil, Argentina et al) and in the east (Japs, koreans, chinese and hopefully Indians) with a increasingly troubled middle (Middle east, Israel, Balkans, North Africa). This does not sound much better than the warlike early 20th century. The proportions might have changed. The mode of war has sure changed - and for worse because the war is now at our doorstep and in our backyard and not merely at the border; also it is on 24/7 and not merely during bursts of war years.

The contours of social evolution of the human population are not very soothing to say the least!