Shall we Linearize?
I have been told many times over the last few weeks that I am killing myself by smoking so much. I have been for more than a year, but somehow, by some design of fate, nobody complained so far. But anyway, thats besides the point. Some days back somebody threw a random fact at me. I shouldnt really call it a fact, but anyway. Did you know, this person declared in a solemn voice, that each cigarette takes away 5 minutes of your life?
Now, it is really difficult to get me thinking...But this was so outrageous and preposterous a statement, that it did.I mean afterall, How should one man know how long a person would have lived had he not smoked? Why, I thought, does man linearize?
That was a rhetoric question. You see, since the dawn of time (or mankind rather) Man has seen things around him that he has miserably failed to understand. I use the term miserably. Its as if there is this vast machine with infinitely many gears and levers, and man gets to see the wonderous workings of that machine, but all the while there is really one thing that is eating him up...How does it work?
Man has a huge burden. Whoever made man made a big mistake. He gave man the power to think, but did not give him the power to comprehend. Man lives, and everything he does brings him closer to that one moment when he dies. And yet, He understand neither life, nor death. Its a scary feeling. We dont understand death, and yet we are forced to think about it. Animals avert death, as long as they can. We have to think about it. Its a quantum leap, and an immensely scary one.
Man doesnt understand how his brain works, and yet he has to think. He doesnnt know how he thinks, and yet he is forced to think about, among other things, how he thinks. His life is hell.
And so, to make his existence a little less poisonous, He linearizes. He makes statements like, "An IQ of 140 shows intellegence". I have absolutely no doubt that whoever devised the IQ test was a very dumb guy with a penchant for guessing which shape fits in best with three other shapes. Man makes statements like "each Cigarette takes away 5 minutes of your life", as if by not smoking, he has ensured that he wont be hit by a car on the road, wont suffer a cardiac arrest, wont get AIDS, wont fall from a building, wont commit suicide,and so on and so forth.
The wise , very long ago, were somewhat better in their efforts at relieving man of his burden. They devised fancy words like "Fate", "God" etc, to relieve man of that sickening feeling that somehow he could control his life, as simply as he can turn knobs, if only he could find the knobs. Call it the folly of wisdom (though I am rather inclined not to call it so), they realized that We are on a wild goose chase. All attempts at comprehension are futile, In fact, that is not why we were put on this planet. They realized that we are born so that we can have a good time as long as we can, and when we cant, well, we bid the world goodbye. Fair enough , isnt it?
No wonder I am a theist.Glory be to God.
Now, it is really difficult to get me thinking...But this was so outrageous and preposterous a statement, that it did.I mean afterall, How should one man know how long a person would have lived had he not smoked? Why, I thought, does man linearize?
That was a rhetoric question. You see, since the dawn of time (or mankind rather) Man has seen things around him that he has miserably failed to understand. I use the term miserably. Its as if there is this vast machine with infinitely many gears and levers, and man gets to see the wonderous workings of that machine, but all the while there is really one thing that is eating him up...How does it work?
Man has a huge burden. Whoever made man made a big mistake. He gave man the power to think, but did not give him the power to comprehend. Man lives, and everything he does brings him closer to that one moment when he dies. And yet, He understand neither life, nor death. Its a scary feeling. We dont understand death, and yet we are forced to think about it. Animals avert death, as long as they can. We have to think about it. Its a quantum leap, and an immensely scary one.
Man doesnt understand how his brain works, and yet he has to think. He doesnnt know how he thinks, and yet he is forced to think about, among other things, how he thinks. His life is hell.
And so, to make his existence a little less poisonous, He linearizes. He makes statements like, "An IQ of 140 shows intellegence". I have absolutely no doubt that whoever devised the IQ test was a very dumb guy with a penchant for guessing which shape fits in best with three other shapes. Man makes statements like "each Cigarette takes away 5 minutes of your life", as if by not smoking, he has ensured that he wont be hit by a car on the road, wont suffer a cardiac arrest, wont get AIDS, wont fall from a building, wont commit suicide,and so on and so forth.
The wise , very long ago, were somewhat better in their efforts at relieving man of his burden. They devised fancy words like "Fate", "God" etc, to relieve man of that sickening feeling that somehow he could control his life, as simply as he can turn knobs, if only he could find the knobs. Call it the folly of wisdom (though I am rather inclined not to call it so), they realized that We are on a wild goose chase. All attempts at comprehension are futile, In fact, that is not why we were put on this planet. They realized that we are born so that we can have a good time as long as we can, and when we cant, well, we bid the world goodbye. Fair enough , isnt it?
No wonder I am a theist.Glory be to God.
posted by '~-)Sandman(-~' at 1:10 PM
8 Comments:
wow ab pata nahi meesum kab padhega...
but i honestly had no idea that you were so wonderful a writer... sure i know u took that lingo course and some of your writings make me wonder did perchance you have the great misfortune of going through the feminist theory course??
reminds me of i dream i had when i fell asleep writing a PDC...
i am in a room and am dual wielding shotguns and there are all the feminists i know in the room...
so i go like "eat slug commie bitches"
immensely satisfying to say the least...
or is it all the dope working overtime... I am so trying out dope once i get my hands on some good shit...
why man why?
would you start taking hamlock becoz it would make you similar to socrates ?
initially cigarettes are smoked becoz men think it gives them super masculine look, later its an addiction
and i am against any addiction that takes away your senses
in the middle part:
must i not call it the fear of unknown (or rather the stage when man tries to come to terms with the reality of seizure of his existence) and proposes hidden variable theories :D
good good, yeah it might be the dope working overtime...
an no, i have succeeded in keeping my feminist instincts at bay for 3 years, and I do not intend to take that course [:p]
of course...meesum is a big feminist, in fact he has a special liking for all females bearing his initials [:d][:d]...
goo shit in kanpur is nearly impossible to get.....i will try to smuggle some to kanpur, but cant really count on the lackadaisical attitude of the airport guys
[:p]
So you finally wrote it...
I read the last line as "No wonder I'm a theorist." :-D
@whoever is reading
Smoking does not take away your senses. Period. :D
now, this is dissapointing..you jumped from some catch-phrase to discourage smokers to humanity's inability to understand anything.
There is a wide rift there and there is no way you ae going to bridge it..
and, by the way, all the statement means is " a smoker, assumed to die a natural death would, provided all other things being the same, lose typically 5 minutes of his life for a cigarette" ..
But yeah, I hate those propaganda messages for several other reasons
even if this one isn't egregiously bad. And that is independent of whether I smoke or not!
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