Ramble on...

World without money:

Many a time I wonder how would the world be if money didn't exist and everybody was provided for, just like that. You could get whatever you wanted for nothing. People would have had so many more choices in doing whatever they wanted with their lives. I, for one, would have been a traveller. All I would have done would be listen to music, may be create some, read books, try new food everyday, meet new people, smoke, drink and travel freely around the world. In short, I would have been a hippy. I know my imagination is flying too high but for some time I just want to let it.

Stuff dreams are made of:

The biggest problem with most of our's life is that we plan it. Our parents teach us to be good children and study so that we can be successful in life. When we grow up, we go to a big college, get a fancy degree and then a “good” job so that we can provide for ourselves and our family, grow rich and be accepted by society. I wish it would have been different.

Stuff life is made of:

Sometimes I feel that my life, my very existence is a dream, that the world I see around me doesn't really exist but is only a simulation created in my mind. What if I am deep in sleep and dreaming all this. My childhood, my family, friends, relatives, my neighbourhood, my college, my knowledge, my job, my colleagues and the whole world. What if all this exists but only in my brain. What if someday I wake up and find that the universe is nothing but a “big nothing”, a void - infinite and dark. There's no light, no air, no physical matter. But if it would have been like that then even I would not have existed and if I didn't exist I wouldn't have learnt that there is nothing. I believe that “I am, therefore I think”.

Dazed and Confused

Is the world around us real or is it just an illusion?

We experience the world through our senses. We see, smell, hear, touch and taste. On the basis of all these sense perceptions our brain makes us see a three dimensional world around us (including ourselves) with all of its different characteristics, for example- the color red, an ice cube, the hard surface of a table, a song, etc. To put it in simple words, our senses bring a lot of data to our brain, which analyses it and creates an experience for us.

There are two questions that arise here and baffle us.

1. Can our senses detect everything in this world? That is, do they bring all the data that there is to our brain?
2. Does our brain form a true picture of the world from the data that it receives from our senses?

Now, some may attack the very point I have taken for granted and argue that the brain does not only work upon the data brought in by senses but can also think on its own and provide us with an experience not derived from our sense perception. In the category of such experiences they would put mathematics and such abstract concepts. To them I would ask to imagine a world where there is an organism that lives inside water and can't move. It can see only water around it. There are no other organisms. Let us call this organism Pappu. Pappu lives only on the oxygen that's present inside water. It continuously takes in water, uses the oxygen and gives out remaining water. Now, can Pappu ever form a concept of counting? Can it ever know what it is like to see 1, 2 or 3 objects? It can't. Your pet dog can differentiate between 1 and 2. You can count infinitely. It is because you have experienced the world in way completely different from Pappu. You can only think of things made up of concepts that you have experienced. In brief, you cannot go beyond your sense perception of the world. In fact there is a very simple thing that you can do that proves that your imagination is limited to the experiences created by your sense perception – Try to think of a colour you have never seen. Can you do that?

To illustrate my point more, lets do an experiment. Think of an imaginary creature that you have never seen or know of. What mental image did you form? You probably imagined a kind of creature they show as aliens on TV. You probably thought of two big eys, a green coloured skin, tiny legs, big ears or may be something completely different. Whatever you imagined, you must have most probably thought of it in these terms, namely eyes, ears, limbs, colour of its skin, sound that it produces, etc. Now forget about all your previous concepts of limbs and try to imagine a body part that the creature uses for locomotion but that's completely different from any kind of limb that you have ever seen. It is not even a combination of limbs of two or more different creatures that you know of. Can you do that? I bet you can't. If you think you can, think again. You are definitely forming an image derived from something that you have already experienced. It is always like that about everything. Our imagination consists of things that we have experienced through our senses. It might form new entities by combining different forms that we already know of but it is essentially formed out of our previous experiences.

So now, I have given you enough proof to be sure of the fact that our brain can work only on data that it receives from our senses. So the objection to my assumption is invalid.

We move ahead to the first question. In middle school science we are taught that we can visually perceive a limited range of electromagnetic radiation. What if we could see colours beyond red and violet? Our world would have been completely different. We can hear sounds having frequency from 20Hz to 20,000Hz. What if we could hear sounds with lower and higher frequencies respectively? Our senses are limited in their powers and can only obtain a limited range of data from the outside world. This proves that there is whole world out there that we simply can't perceive through our limited senses. Certain technological achievements can aid in overcoming this shortcoming but they will always be that-aids. They will never give us a first hand experience of that hidden world.

Now the second question. The answer is obvious. Our brain has a lot of shortcomings and many a times it is not even sure of how to arrange the data that it receives. A very simple example can be a Necker Cube. Perhaps Gestalt figures provide a more interesting example. We see that our brain is confused. It is not perfect. We can't be sure of whether it is providing us with the right analysis of the data that it receives. Our experience of the world is formed in our brain and our brain might very possibly be deceiving us. A very interesting article to read about how our brain arranges the data it receives in a particular fashion and can do so in infinitely many other fashions is can be read here.

So now what are we left with? A collection of senses that are limited in their powers and can only present our brain with a very small part of the world that actually exists. And as if this is not a problem enough, our brain cannot even form a true picture of that very small part of the world with the help of the limited data presented to it by our senses.

Have you started feeling hopeless? There is still more to come. Suppose that our brain is very mischievous and deceives us into believing that there is a world outside. Suppose the experience of perceiving something is not a real experience but only some electrical signals travelling through the neurons in our brain and creating an illusion of some real perception. For example, think about you looking at this screen. Are you really looking at this screen or is it merely an illusion created in your brain by some electrical signals and chemical reactions? In fact, is even the act of thinking about this illusion an illusion?

Now, you should have a reason to believe that our experience of the world around us is only an illusion. It is like a dream. We can't be too sure of whatever we see, hear or feel.

Out on the tiles

With long disheveled grey hair and a beard that fell to his chest, a man, shivering with cold, sat arched on the footpath across the street where my friends and I were enjoying cappuccinos and mocha lattes. I wondered how much protection was the ragged piece of cloth, on which he sat, against the benumbing sensation of the stone-cold footpath. The man wore nothing but a dirty shirt, torn at places, and an equally dirty pair of pants clinging to his rawboned physique. The man would stare at something for long and mumble. To everyone who passed by him, he would extend his quivering hand and if given alms would clutch the coins in his fist and get busy with his mumbling. The strength of the clutch seemed unforgiving.

Suddenly, the man, with all his might, tried to stand up. Days of hunger and cold were weighing down on him. Taking support of the electric pole that stood behind him, he finally managed to stand but could hardly straighten up his back. Sluggishly, he started walking along the footpath, his infirm legs bent at his knees.

The man was a burning effigy of human dignity. Was he a man? Could he be called a man? Dignity makes a man. For centuries, authors and poets have glorified man as the noblest of god’s creations but what I witnessed that cold winter day was certainly not nobility. It was destitution. It filled me with shame.