Faith vs. Reason

Accepting a view on faith is admitting that it cannot be accepted on its own merit - Anon.

The people who do this cannot be expected to reason about everything they do. They can be expected to be unreasonable. And they live upto these expectations.

People like this, in a herd, are a hard bunch to do anything with. Or without.

So people, REASON! Get out of that crowd that acts based on the reason-less brainwashing called faith! Reason and then rigorously examine your reasons. For each of your actions.

Food

Something that so many people go without each night. The lack of which causes so many deaths each year. The primary reason why we labour. I cannot accept food being wasted. No justification can be valid.

I do not eat meat. I can never bring myself to kill my own meat. I cannot enjoy eating something that had to be killed. I have been offered/ coaxed/ forced plenty of times, but I have never knowingly eaten any meat.

Then I dished onto my plate some meat entrée the other day. Unknowingly. A friend told me just in time that it contained meat. I threw the plate away and started over with a new one.

What followed was guilt. Anytime that I saw food for the next few days. Did I do the right thing? I had thrown away what is food for so many.

What are my morals? Is an objective analysis of ones morality ever possible? If it is ones own, is any analysis possible? Can all ones actions be truly morale even only within ones own definitions of morality?

On shadows and then some

While walking home some days ago, some cars tried to trample my shadow. But it was my shadow that always won! Yet, it could lose. If it were on the wrong side of me...

Philosophizing this bit of physics, I inferred what the Mahabharatha says, characterizing Karna as it does. "Be on the right side. And you will win."

If only all things were that simple all the time. Or at the very least some of the times?

By the way, what is right? And what is loss? Does loss lead to sadness? And what is happiness?

What a decision makes

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

- The Scottish Himalayan Expedition by
William Hutchinson Murray quoting Goethe

How many people in this world give up their dreams for senseless reasons? How many people never realise that magic is for them to create? How many never dare?

Far too many.

Tolerance

What is tolerance? The most unimaginative beginning would be to pull words from the dictionary.

From Dictionary.com, Tolerance is "a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry"

That is clear and mostly unambiguous. And yet, we are unable to tolerate even small behavioral differences even though we want to belong in this shrinking world. Is the human race capable of living together as a peaceful, coherent structure? Or will there forever be chaos? Isn't the global village about being together as a people as one community? Can we ever get to that stage where we look at a random person from this planet and say s/he is a potential friend? Without thinking about race, color, religion?

Will there ever be light?

Change the world

Go read: http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Magazine/story/elango-kuthambakkam/

This is to all those of us who can't seem to think that we can actually make the difference. No... I'm not pointing fingers here, I belong in that group too.

I've actually had the fortune of having met this person in my social entrepreneurship classes, and the article pales in comparison to the persona... If you get a chance, go there!

I have a dream

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
- MLK Jr., I Have a Dream

The end does not justify the means. Taking an innocent life can never be justified.

Land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts.
- Gerald O'Hara, Gone With The Wind

Not sure if I agree with this anymore. I probably did when I read it the first time, around 10 years ago. But no piece of land can never be truly yours. It can never belong to one person. It lasts, but it has never been yours. It never will be.

All boundaries are drawn on paper. And they have caused a lot of misery. They will continue to, until we as a population, realise that we are not local anymore. There is no way we can contain ourselves within a border. This makes the border a senseless, archaic, violence causing artifact.

I have a dream that there will be a time when borders do not matter anymore.

Edit: This was written after Prabhakaran was killed and the Sri Lankan army declared victory.  Should the justified struggle of the Tamils have been conducted from a higher moral ground? Would there have been lesser human tragedy and a cleaner, surer victory? I wish I could tell.