On The Shoulders Of Giants

We have all heard that nobody’s perfect, at least in our times. Here are my thoughts on this notion. Imperfections are in fact contradictions, or violations of common sense and logic. Think of a person as a system composed of thoughts and actions. Pass this system through a contradiction/violation machine and mark all the imperfections. I bet that nobody passes this test without some flaws. So the right question is how big is the size of your contradictions and violations and the other question is how open are you to hearing about your own flaws. Because that seems to be one of the easiest ways to minimize the size of your flaws or the hole in your system - if that is what you are up to, that is - to use friends and family as a way of finding our own faults and trying to improve ourselves. I give myself a passing grade on the second question. I’m usually open to constructive criticism but I have noticed that among my friends this quantity varies a lot.

When you think of taboos in American media, you think of anything sexual or something along those lines. I have a different opinion on this. I think the biggest taboo in media is to criticize the American people. Here is how it works. Broadcasters show ads to make money. If the media start criticizing people, people are not going to like it and they will tune out and hence no money.

In the past few weeks many in media have asked a question like this “80% of American people think the country is on the wrong track. Why does this election not look like a landslide?” And many political pundits and strategists have to beat around the bush and come up with nonsensical answers. Answers like “People need to get to know Obama more.” or “Obama has to lay out the details of his plans”. I think people have heard more about Obama and his story more than any other candidate and Obama has laid out his plans. Most of it is on his website, if anybody bothers to read. I think the answer is much simpler. Many white Americans would not vote for a black man, period. They would rather have four more disastrous years than have a black president. Racism can be more powerful than slavery. Bob Herbert of New York Times gently explains it.

I want to raise a question and seek answers.

Some matters are matters of immediacy, when something happens you need to react immediately. But some matters are not matters of immediacy and sometimes it pays off to take a pause and take a step back and look at the bigger picture and ask a few questions. The question is, how do we know whether something is a matter of immediacy and when we have the luxury for a pause. And of course, I’m not talking about the obvious cases. When your child is in physical danger, you need to react immediately. Before getting married, you have to pause and think. But I’m talking about the gray area. How do we know whether we have the luxury of a pause or not?

Randy Pausch passed away last Friday. If you haven’t watched his last lecture video, set aside some time for it.

After reading my friend Khalid’s review of the Joker character in the Dark Knight movie and thinking about it, I started to think of Karl Rove. Most of us know what happened: Karl Rove indoctrinated W, made him the president and with the help of Dick Cheney ran the show for eight years. And all of us who are old enough, know what they did. Was Karl Rove the Joker who wanted to create as much havoc as possible? Was he a nihilist? And if he was, did a nihilist actually run the most powerful country in history for eight years? And if the answer to all of the above is yes, my next question is to Republicans: how did you let this happen to you?

In a sense, the past seven and a half years were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney’s shot at running this country through W. And what we saw of that show was not pretty. It was classless, crude, careless and arrogant. How could half this country let this happen?

My way of making sense out of all of this is to focus on powers of deception. How the “economy of mind” leads to intellectual laziness and becoming prone to deception. Why Americans are so intense on “economy of mind”? It’s just an observation that I have found out that it is easier to find someone help me move than to find someone to spend the same amount of time to help me go through a problem. Call me crazy, but I think this has to do with the Grand Jihad which is to work on the inside as opposed to the Minor Jihad which is to defend yourself on the outside.

Is there such a thing as fate? Or do we need to believe in god to believe in fate? Let’s define fate such that we don’t. I’ll call something fate when some scenario comes out of the blue where you did not expect it and something just blows up in your face and you just have to suck it up and take it in stride. One of those things recently happened in my life and I have been asking myself “what does it mean and why does it happen?” Tonight, I think I found the answer and I want to share it with you. I think the answer is a lesson in humility. I feel much more humble since then and it has made me a better person.
There’s a poem that translates to “The times are constantly at odds with the free.” This is from the Raze No album. This had baffled me for three months. Until tonight, when I found out that it means that life will teach a lot of lessons of humility to the free ones.

I used to believe that my biggest asset was my sanity, that is my ability to reason, my ability to apply logics to problems. I have recently started to think that sanity only takes me so far, but what could take me even further is perhaps insanity, the ability to transcend reason, to make a leap of faith, to go where the logic would not take you. Perhaps Occam’s razor need not be true in all cases. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye.

In the world of start-ups, everybody talks about exit strategies. The venture capitalists provides the seed money, the business grows, breaks even and after about six years, venture capitalists want to cash out of their investment. Usually there are two options: initial public offering (going public in the stock market) or getting acquired by a bigger company.
I was thinking about the analogy between a start-up company and a person’s life. It seemed to me that planning for one’s death is like planing for a start-up’s exit. The very relevant question here is whether we believe in life after death or not, because the answer to this question can dramatically change one’s plans for one’s death. Is it possible to have an exit strategy that is independent of the answer to this question? Is it possible to prepare oneself for one’s death such that at the moment of death - assuming that there is such a moment, as in American Beauty - one can look back at their life and say “I lived a good life and I’m ready for my death”? Is it possible to live one’s life such that one could never be caught off-guard by death? To my limited understanding, it seems like it is possible. I hope I can live my life, such that whenever death visits me and I had a moment of reflection, I could say that magic phrase.

Could drugs be used ethically and responsibly? Could drugs be used without harming oneself or others?
My answer to these questions is, yes. First let’s define drugs. By drugs I mean any behavior or substance that artificially makes you feel good. By artificial, I mean that good feeling is not intrinsic and it is a direct result of that drug. This is a broad definition. This includes a variety of drinks, substances, rituals, religious activities, meditation and so on. You may not agree with me for putting alcohol and meditation in the same category, but I see a similarity here and I would like to talk about what all these things have in common: the fact that they make you feel good artificially and temporarily. I believe if one is careful enough not to harm oneself or others, they should be free to use whatever drugs they want. How is this possible? There are several conditions that need to be met for this to be true:
1. The origin of the substance has be more or less ethical. Sales of cocaine, finances a lot of other crimes such as organized prostitution and human trafficking. That makes cocaine an unethical drug.
2. It should not harm oneself or others. By this token regular use of cigarettes due to all its health risks is unethical. Getting drunk and becoming abusive with others is also reprehensible.
3. Should not interfere with a healthy lifestyle. This rules out alcoholism and heroine addiction and using drugs that would lead one to miss appointments and deadlines.
4. Its side-effects should not outweigh its advantages. By this token getting extremely drunk is not right.
5. It should not put oneself in a position of doing wrong. By this one drunk dialing your exes could be wrong.

As you can see, I don’t consider addiction by itself unethical. A healthy daily dose of meditation or prayer could be very beneficial.

If you can add to the above list, or disagree with me please chime in.

I know this is politics, but that’s how I want my politics: