Meditative Motorcycling

Biking is an experience deeply similar to meditation.

Think about it.
When you meditate, the most critical thing - the essence, really - is to empty out your mind completely, let go all the thoughts buzzing around in circles over and over again as if on rails, and give those tracks a chance to relax from the load, rejuvenate, free-associate again. I developed a technique - as every thought appears, I would just imagine it whooshing away into the background behind me, leaving my head clear again. Once you've treated it that way, it's easy to take everything as it comes, and literally leave it behind you. After a while, nothing new comes, and there's just the sound of your breathing and a warm, deep-brown empty room.
When you're on a bike, it's like that. Everything comes at you from the vanishing point, roars past in the reflected echo of your own engine, and disappears forever. Nothing is permanent except the road, the hum of the engine, wind and sunshine. Riding is automatic; you don't need to see. Everything happens by touch and physical memory of control positions and sequences. And it's ingrained, not needing thought. Reflex. It's like breathing, like heartbeat.
The road is Life. Events come and go, but you steer around the blocks and bad spots, slowing down and speeding up, looking for that break in traffic, those smooth stretches. Friends keep pace with you on their own bikes, sometimes coming near, sometimes far away, on the same road and the same journey but entities by themselves. If someone crashes and burns, he's left behind very, very fast, the pain forgotten in surprisingly short time. If someone skids and falls, he loses a little time, but catches up again soon. Sometimes, if necessary, you interrupt your own journey, stop and help... but in the end, we all move on.
The past is visible, but it takes an effort - of thought, of that impulse to look down at the rear-view mirrors. Mostly it's automatic, just to judge things coming from behind... but sometimes you want to look back. Don't look back too long, though, or something coming up ahead will smash you into pulp, unaware.
At it's core, it's being completely free. Your body, your machine, is doing what it's supposed to do. Your higher mind is at liberty to think, to dream, to go down whatever mental lanes it wants, explore uninterrupted trains of thought. To enjoy the pleasure of pure, uninterrupted thought, and no-thought, just sensation. Disturbing elements literally get whipped away in the slipstream.

A car, now... a car is different. All along, you're aware of the metal shell around you, the controls in front of you, in your field of vision. Wind is cut off, sounds muted, sun dimmed by the windows, smells lost in the air-conditioning. You're always careful, avoiding scratches, bumps, and dents. It's too overt a reminder of your own body, your mortality, your place in life. Traffic is a limiting factor, not a minor obstacle easily bypassed. The rat race, with all the other strugglers around you, physically limits your journey. Sure, you can carry a larger load - luggage, co-passengers, music, all the other paraphernalia of life - but there is a price you pay. The soul will always be aware of the body it inhabits and the pathways it must travel.
It can't ever fly, free in the sun, alone and one with the world around.

Time Travel. It's possible.

But the traffic is always one-way.

In.com introduced a feature that they're downplaying - maybe unintentionally - as a simple boss-impresser and never-forget-a-date-again feature only - the delayed send feature on their email. But Futuremail had it right the first time - it's possible to send a message across time.
Unfortunately, everyone wants to talk to the past. They remember all the wrong choices, bad decisions, all those times when, if only they knew then what they know now... but think about it. Would you want a stranger telling you how to live your life, all the time? Not just any stranger, but a patently loser-type stranger, stuck in a life he hates? Telling you to take choices for reasons you don't believe in, or - and be honest - have already decided about, one way or another, and resent having these decisions questioned?
Manu drew an interesting analogy with life as a tree - read it here.

On the other hand, it is possible for you to talk to your future self. Every mutual fund you buy, you're effectively gifting some cash to your future (lock-in period plus) self. And every credit card swipe is cash borrowed from that future self, with questionable returns. No wonder most of us want to rethink decisions. Every photo album, diary, forgotten trunk in the attic, is a message.

Why not use this? Let's talk to our future selves. The people that matter. There are things we want to tell them. Remind them about what we want them to achieve. Remind them of the time when they were young, and had dreams. Let them realize those dreams are achievable.
Send a mail to yourself for your next birthday. Say what you want to do. See how it feels.

So long, and thanks for the all the memories

"The evil that men do lives on after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."
Not always. Sometimes, the good is stronger.
The flesh is weak. It falters, makes mistakes, falls short of living up to the immortal perfection of the soul.
The flesh dies.
The soul lives on.
The soul is what gave us the music. Gave us the memories. Gave the background score to some of the best times of our lives. The music is something that will always be with us, will always be remembered.

The music will always live on.

Rest in peace.

still down with the sickness

the body works in mysterious ways, it's adjustments to perform.
will someone please tell me what does a healthier lifestyle have to do with an excruciatingly painful blocked ear? New cilia growing in the esophagus decide that the best way to celebrate their existence is to forcibly shove all possible phlegm from sinuses into the nearest Eustachain tube? Is this some kind of internal Pink Chaddi campaign?
This happens every time I try to go healthy; catastrophic breakdown. It's like how BC's body reacts to holidays and half-days, or even leaving from office early. I don't get the message.
I need some Blood Music noocytes. Existing systems for internal performance management and KRAs have gone for a toss.
Or maybe I have them already. I wish they'd get a move on, then. This intermediary crap is buggy.

The weekend's score -
C: C-
W: D
F: C+

motivator...

be careful what you ask for.
you just might get it.

yesterday's score:
C: C+
W: B+
F: B-

if you don't succeed the first time...

try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try...
Again.
I'm trying to kick it again. And this time it's not a phase-out; let's try going hardcore. Complete cold turkey. And a generic health / food / workout program as well. Crank it up. Go quantum.

Now I just need to find a motivator...

yesterday's score -
C: F
W: D
F: C-

thinking it through...

Watched a very interesting movie yesterday - The 11th Hour. watch it whenever you get the chance. Informative, eye-opening - and very, very scary.

It got me thinking - let's look at the future, logically.
The Earth's ecosystems are collapsing under the pressure of human civilization. We use too many resources, generate too much waste. We do this because our culture has a built-in greed; a desire to have more things. We don't treat clean air, genetic health, fresh water, and a future as things. So, we have our cars, houses, entertainment, possessions, and desires that come at their expense. It doesn't affect us - yet.

Take this to it's logical conclusion.
The first world -
Will we, as individuals, choose a slower, less versatile, and more expensive car because it's electric? Eat premium, organic foods? Probably. Will large corporations do the same?
The developing nations -
No. They aspire to the first world. Making all the same mistakes, but at a scale several hundred times greater because of the populations.

The Earth will continue to warm. Ice caps will melt, forests will vanish, weather systems will collapse.
Flooding. Famines. Natural disasters. Plagues.
Huge losses of life.
Desertification.
Markets for the first world literally die, or slide into such a wretched condition they are no longer viable. Companies collapse.
Food supplies - and natural resource supplies - dry up.
Economic systems collapse in the first world.
As resources get more scarce, large scale wars will erupt over those few remaining resources. The first world will inevitably win, because they have greater technology. The third world will continue to subsist in unwanted areas until they die.
But the Earth doesn't differentiate on economic parameters. Living conditions will worsen equally everywhere. Developed countries may use tech to stave off the worst of it for a while - but that's expensive. Resources will continue to shrink to the point that wars will come to the developed countries. And plagues. And failing health - sterility. Drastic population decline. Coupled with a collapse in Law & Order. Anarchy.

Regression to self-sustaining systems. When large-scale systems fail, in an anarchic system, it's very difficult to rebuild them. But self-sustaining systems - unless seeded and very, very well-prepared - don't really use very high-end tech, or don't need it. A large global one must be technologically developed. A self-contained community need not be.

But even after a complete collapse of large scale systems, the Earth won't heal so fast. A couple of centuries, possibly millenia. Will unused tech be remembered until then?

This is, of course, assuming that life-sustaining conditions can survive. If the average temperature rises to over 250 degrees C, there's not much tech can do, in a failed economic system.

Space habitats? Unlikely. On Earth? Maybe. Sealed communities. Generation ships in the desert. Working on history's second terraforming project, trying to undo the inadvertent first.

And yes - 90% of all existing life on Earth will die. I really don't see any way that can be averted.

The Drake Equation states - mathematically - that intelligent life will arise, again and again, in the universe. Observed evidence shows there isn't. So there's some factor missing - either intelligent life doesn't arise so easily, or dies very easily. And I guess we can see why.

And as they said - this is our finest hour. We know we can beat this, solve the ecological crisis, develop spacefaring ability, and go out there. And find thousands of dead or barbaric civilizations, who couldn't do what we did.
It can be our destiny to be Gods. And if we succeed - but that's another story.

Read this. It's awesome.
Rare Earth Hypothesis
The Drake Equation
The Fermi Paradox

listlessness

'what's up,' they ask

somebody was biking through snow and hail
somebody was taking pictures
somebody was upgrading
writing
playing
traveling
chains and hooks, and a huge rusty weight on the other end
pinned like a butterfly on the board
dust settling, slowly, gently, and always
sick
tired
exhausted
i miss the crystal air
wings wheeling across a blazing, cool sky
stars come out

heaviness constant
dead zone
stagnant silence

'chal raha hai,' i tell them

Vote for the Vogons

Adsense used to come up with howlers pretty easily, since the only real reason to display an ad was whether someone's talking about the subject, rather than listening to what they're saying.
With SEM, the bar has just jumped a notch higher.

So as of today, the top 3 contenders for your vote (in the digital space) stand before you arrayed thus -



Am I the only one who is actually reassured?

Playing God

This was a completely random post, inspired by a friend's status update.

Why did God place the Tree of Knowledge in such an easily accessible place? Why does He make it so easy for humanity to face temptation? Why does He, to put it bluntly, screw around with our heads with the whole issue of 'Does God Exist?'
The whole concept of Faith - believing in something greater than ourselves, moral codes, denying our natural instincts - raises some pretty deep questions. Foremost among which is that if He really existed, wouldn't it have been all too easy for him to completely and unequivocally answer all these issues once and for all? Why does He screw around with our heads?

I think there are 2 answers.

• The sociological answer: God does not exist. We created an anthromorphic personification of the needs of society, some rules to make sure society can survive, with guilt and fear as the stick and life beyond death and paradise as the carrot.
  
• The gaming answer: God does exist. He created the universe as a gaming map, laws of nature as game rules, and intelligence as a collective AI. He then created scenarios that unfold according to those rules, just to see what happens.
  Think about it. Ever played Red Alert? Or any RTS war game? Scenarios, rules, behaviors, certain responses to certain stimuli. Get too close to an enemy soldier, and he will shoot at you. Built-in speeds and firepower. Objectives and goals. But the fun comes from the randomness created when large numbers of these rules interact with each other. When you do a tank rush, are you really controlling each unit? No. You've just unleashed them. You can send a spy into an enemy base, but even though you have the power to make him invulnerable, and the enemy deaf, blind, dumb, and weak as kittens, would you do it? It takes all the fun out of the game.
  When a game protagonist plays with cheatcodes, he knows that God exists. God is stopping the bullets, letting him fly, achieving superhuman feats, untouched by fire, falls, teeth and claws. But is the gamer having fun? No. Fun comes with the unexpected. With setbacks. With risk. When you have something to lose, you feel that you have everything to gain. Winning is a rush. When nothing can kill you, you're just a rat wandering through an empty maze.
  

Maybe there were super-civilizations, masters of the Earth and all creation, intelligent, aware, kind, caring, responsible, in harmony with nature and with each other. Enlightened, perfect, and utterly, butterly boring. What more is left to achieve? A perfect civilization will never go beyond it's city, it's kingdom, it's planet at the most. Even planet is unlikely; they will be smart enough to control birthrate, eradicate threats, handle all contingencies. A civilization under constant threat of destruction fights, struggles, spreads, creates backup plans, fallbacks, contingency bases. DNA spreads. Launches generation starships, sets up lunar bases and buried bunkers with hibernating colonists. Reaches for the stars because the planet is on the edge, reaches across galaxies in the face of all-destroying interstellar war, slips into parallel dimensions when the fabric of this reality is likely to be torn.
Perfection is stable. Imperfection, combined with intelligence, explodes like a bomb across creation.
Sweden, with social security, order, sufficiency, and all amenities and comforts has a negative birthrate, because people have all they need. India, with it's near-billion starving and barely able to feed itself, has a population explosion.
A perfect, harmonious civilization, at it's pinnacle with no possibility of a fall, looks like a giant bulls-eye from space, with cosmic arrows all around pointing to it marked Asteroid Strike Here.
Innate imperfection. A flawed human being is unhappy, greedy, fearful... and drives ambition. Knows that life is unstable. Knows he is surrounded by other flawed creatures, by frightening randomness and intransigence. Knows he must amass resources far greater than his immediate need to prepare for this randomness. Establish his escape routes.

And for a gaming God, this is entertainment. Not perfection. Not stability. With an entire universe to explore, why would he tolerate a game protagonist who does not go beyond his own self? Wouldn't it be so much more fun to watch how the randomness manifests in extraordinary leaps of intellect, art, beauty, strength, achievement, skill, discovery... beyond even what He may have originally conceived?
When we do leave the planet, we will meet Others. They will be like us. They will be flawed. Galaxies will sparkle with a million wars, extinctions and escapes, dominions and insurrections, and everything else that is this infinitely varied, kaleidoscopic, random, churning, intoxication explosion called Life.

After all, anything else is so boring, isn't it?