Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - Essays - On Shifting Lifestyles

A few months back, somewhere I saw a T-shirt with a joke on it. It was the classic British “Keep calm and carry on” insignia but with the crown inverted and the words changed to “Now panic and freak out.” I laughed out loud because it seemed a novel joke and sarcasm in the typical English style.

But not long after seeing it, I saw that image somewhere on Facebook, and soon after that I saw about one hundred different adaptations of it in a hundred different places. Within the course of probably weeks, something I encountered went from seeming unique and appealing to ubiquitous and cliche. This is the nature of contemporary culture. Nothing lasts very long.

If we add to this fast-paced cultural language two more aspects of modern life, the planned obsolescence of technology, and environmental awareness, it does not seem too surprising that the idea of a sharing economy might emerge. Things go out of style quickly, and they actually stop being usable as well. Given that, buying them just means you will have to throw them away before they wear out, which is wasteful.

One solution is to fight the trend, go back to the old-fashioned, longer lasting methods, avoid getting material things when it’s not necessary, and generally opt out of the modern economy. But an easier method, especially provided the capacity to organize which information technology can provide, is to just share access. Instead of each of us buying an item that will be obsolete or out of style, we can buy access to a collection and constantly trade in for something we haven’t used yet. We can create a public library of power tools, clothes, furniture and electronics. Although, eons away from Indian social landscape, countries like US, have Zipcar for transport or airbnb for hotels — both to cut costs and to increase convenience. But certainly the dream of this sharing economy appeals to many societies and cultures alike.

But it has skeptics as well. The two most common forms of criticism are from different angles, but boil down to the same issue: there are business people who say it won’t be possible to make money, and there are idealists who say that it is nothing but a cover for squeezing pennies from the consumer for every use.

The worry, then, is that it must be something capitalists are just going to exploit, (and this is proven by capitalists worrying over whether they’ll be able to exploit it). The outcome of understanding this so-called sharing as basically a form of micro-renting reveals that it can take away the lower class’s power by denying them ownership. Given this, the business world is perfectly happy to embrace what is essentially a new form of feudalism.

So is anything changing? Certainly the spread of information is far greater than in the past. Additionally, travel and movement is becoming more common, if not to the same degree in different social circles. These factors mean that there may be a shift in the importance placed on ownership. While at one time, the idea of property was rather directly identified with the owner (think of how the word is also used to refer to qualities), in a world so full of duplicates, what we are concerned with now is access.

When I leave my house, I make sure I have my phone, my wallet etc—all items that allow access to other things. Very little of it is unique property. If I lost these things, the annoyance would be getting my access back—new pieces of plastic or metal that could once again allow me have or provide various information. A shared economy seems a natural enough extension of that. Rather than carry a bike around, the modern consumer expects to have a card in the wallet or an app on the phone that allows access to bikes as needed.

Clearly most of us are not so nomadic as to be able to just create a new home every night, but at the same time the deepest roots will probably be where the most social activity takes place, and if that is through texts and posts as much as in living rooms, it may become easy to feel at home if one can get to Facebook or Twitter, with less need for a physical space that represents community. Perhaps what matters is who has got control of those domains. The classic concerns that public ownership is incompetent while private is too greedy and self-centered persist, and it is clear that the idea of a sharing economy isn't going to erase the issues that come with property. But the relationships might be changing nonetheless.

Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - Part Dos - On Swami Vivekananda's Speech

A few days back I came across Swami Vivekananda’s speech at Chicago of 1893 (the full speech). It was a pretty good speech. He talked a lot about the Hindu philosophy and the Vedic principles. Certainly, if I were there among his audience, I would have extolled his speech and venerated him for my life. I do respect him and his thoughts and I also respect the Hindu philosophy which he exalted at Chicago so beautifully. But as I read through it, I wondered whether it was correct to conclude that those thoughts were the final arguments for the existence of God. If it helps my case, even the Rig Veda, in the Nasadiya Sukta (Creation Hymn) has mentioned that question of a creator can’t be addressed. “Who knows whence came creation or whence the creator came. Whether the creator begot this creation or creation begot the creator.” (Not exactly accurate, since I write only what I can recollect, but the message is intact). When the originators of the philosophy are themselves skeptical, why shouldn't be we?

Although, I can't ratiocinate with the Vedic philosophy (which is his speech’s later half) because it is just a philosophy or a theory at best (like other theories e.g. relativity, evolution) and can’t be held as the ultimate truth, I wasn’t very much satisfied with his initial half. I have picked up the relevant lines from the speech and tried to answer them to the best of my ability.

Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? – The laws of physics as we know hold true only within our universe, one can’t calculate anything outside and before our universe based on the present laws of physics, classical or quantum. One can’t and shouldn’t comment on anything unknown. Even if one comments, one shouldn’t try to fill that gap with the God rhetoric.

Everything mutable is a compound, and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd. Therefore there never was a time when there was no creation. – First off, he asserts that God dying is an absurd phenomenon and hence rejects it as impossibility. Even accepting his predisposition, he says that it is possible for things to have no beginning at all, like the Vedas and the soul. So if there never was a beginning, we wouldn’t require a beginner or creator, hence no point of existence of god. If he didn’t create us then he holds no authority over us.

Argument about the Ontology of Thought - When he talks about monism, he evokes a very wide and contested dialectic that has been going on since the time of Socrates. The arguments of monism which he uses sound more like metaphysical dualism to me just like the Cartesian arguments (if he quoted the Vedas, the Vedantas give the concept of only absolute monism, they are not dualists). He tries to mix the thoughts of two very different schools namely Idealists (only mind is real) and Materialists (mental and spiritual can be reduced to physical). Further, he uses the presence of “essence” as an argument supporting god, and apparently fell for the round-trip fallacy by implying that the “absence of proof” of its material origin is a “proof of absence” of its material origin. When one uses science as one’s support, there can never be a “dead end” argument. Who knows what might unfold tomorrow! After all, there have been times when people believed in full earnestness that the world was flat and the earth was the center of the universe. They killed people who said otherwise!!

We cannot deny that bodies acquire certain tendencies from heredity, but those tendencies only mean the physical configuration, through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way. There are other tendencies peculiar to a soul caused by its past actions. And a soul with a certain tendency would by the laws of affinity take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency. – Evoking the “Law of Affinity” is plain cherry picking to justify his statement. Even if we assume Law of Affinity pervades all matter (which it does not and in the parts it does, it has various versions; in some instances likes attract, then some instances show that the opposites attract and some complex cases may present a combination of the two, a male and a female may be attracted to each other but they are physically the opposites), and having previously drawn a distinction between matter and spirit, how does he justify that the same scientific laws will apply to the spirit in the same manner as they apply to the matter? Diagonal application (between matter and spirit) is a far cry. Further, he subsequently claims that soul is a part of the almighty, an “abject”, deluded manifestation of God itself, this would mean that God itself is subject to the same laws, which would contradict the Omnipotence of god.

This is direct and demonstrative evidence. Verification is the perfect proof of a theory, and here is the challenge thrown to the world by the Rishis. We have discovered the secret by which the very depths of the ocean of memory can be stirred up-try it and you would get a complete reminiscence of your past life. – Well, the debate on reincarnation is another long and tedious thing to go through. The Hindu philosophy holds that a soul has to repay its debt through this continuous cycle of birth-death-rebirth. Being a pantheist, it also believes that a soul can be born as an animal depending on its behavior and conduct in the previous life. Plato was a vehement advocate of reincarnation. Christianity rejects reincarnation. Oriental philosophies believe Karma to be the sole evaluation criterion for reincarnation while some western belief systems hold that the subject has a choice in the matter. Whatever, we still haven’t reached a point in our intellectual journey so that we can even attempt to examine this alleged phenomenon. Assuming that reincarnation does happen, there have been several studies by psychologists in which their subjects somehow remember their past lives. OK. But it is a very peculiar observation that none of them has ever lived an animal’s life (but we saw earlier that souls can be reborn as animals), and the important people (parents, siblings, lovers etc.) in his/her previous life also occupy important positions in their present life, though the roles are swapped.

Déjà vu is another argument. Many people experience déjà vu, including me. But unfortunately my déjà vu is limited to the events about to happen in the near future. I dream about some insignificant event and a few days later the same thing unfolds in exactly the same manner. You might call me a deluded raconteur, but how can you reject my account? There is no way you can examine my brain and question its veracity or mendacity. Strange it is that I would be questioned but a person claiming to remember his/her previous life won’t. In light of all this, I would just say that the concept of karma is important, in the sense, that it maintains a moral thought among people. Humans always fear doing certain things because they don’t want to mess up their after-life. Probably, that was a reason why the concept of reincarnation was brought in the first place, to introduce a “selfish” motive behind a person’s moral behavior for the general welfare, because probably the Rishis had discerned that one’s own welfare is of the utmost importance to a person, if someone truly rises above it, he achieves Moksha, the ultimate emancipation from worldly worries and malaise.

All right, I am talking gibberish. Reincarnation does happen. But then, one must ask, what is the purpose of all this? Why create so many souls, put them on a “small mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam” in some dark, obscured corner of the universe? What does the Almighty Creator intend to do with our souls once they reach Heaven? Some say that “From each incarnation the soul takes the quintessence of its experiences. From these different episodes in the evolution of the soul, it is possible to gain a comprehensive understanding of many different experiences.” But what will the soul do after it has amassed so much experience? (Further it begets a paradox. If rebirths are truly meant to teach the deluded souls the ultimate truth by employing the faculty of experience, why do we witness infant mortality? Certainly it is safe to assume that a child who died at an age of, say, 5 years wouldn’t have gained any considerable spiritual experience. Then why first send it to earth and suddenly call the whole thing off? So, does the divine err a lot?).

The Hindu philosophy tells us that the ultimate goal of the soul is realizing that it is a part of something big, something grand and after this realization it finally merges with the omnipresent essence, the pervasive ether. But what after that? If this and only this is the ultimate goal then I find it to be a sheer wastage, which, given the attributes of god would be absurd. If you are still thinking that Hinduism actually tells us about a God, a being with no form, no anthropomorphic attributes and no judgments about our eensy, worldly behavior and conduct (I have faced this argument too) but who is present everywhere and just wants you to learn about the spiritual elation through Karma (that is more or less, Swami Vivekananda’s speech’s rest part), then I would say that you are playing with words now. Because, what you call as God I call a set of philosophical thoughts and as an atheist, I refuse to call it God. As a human, when I look up at the night sky, shimmering with umpteen stars, I wonder sometimes about the vastness of the cosmos and I am simply humbled. But that is, just a feeling, you might call it God, but I won’t, I call it the universe.

I would tell about Existential Nihilism, but as a human, you probably won’t buy it. We have a tendency of finding an explanation, a purpose behind everything which scientists and psychologists call an evolutionary necessity. But it isn’t always helpful, certainly not in these times when we have a Quantum physics which in a way implies that “God” does play dice. I could try to quench your thirst for a theistic explanation by proffering the possibility that, we are just an experiment at best, the denizens of a cosmic flask under precise observations by some cosmic scientist (which you would call god). Which leads to another premise that such a squeamish scientist would not want to interfere in its experiment’s vicissitudes. At best he/she would leave us alone and let us live our life on our own terms. Worrying about the recycling of souls would be far below on his/her list of priorities and so should it be on ours. Live life to the best possible extent and create a more tangible goal for your life. That is the best one could with one’s life according to me. (This is my explanation. I could call it God, but strange isn’t it? You wouldn’t accept it as God. You would call it a deluded, materialistic worldview!! Think again).

Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - Essays - On the Conundrum of Owning a gene

Although I was working on a continuation for my previous post, but a recent article in The Economist about the recent raucous on patented genes (the story on The Economist ) has prompted me to write this.

The issue has been put up against the patents on genes being awarded to research agencies which would give them exclusive rights over that particular gene for extensive research. But is it right? This sounds much like a science fiction to me. How could someone own a gene? The human genome took millions and millions of years to develop and become what it is today. If anyone should be granted the patent, it must be Mother Nature!!

While the legal issue is interesting, my focus will be on the philosophical aspects of the matter. After all, it was once perfectly legal to own human beings—so what is legal is rather different from what is right.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for the ownership of genes is a stock consequentialist argument   (Consequentialism) . If corporations cannot patent and thus profit from genes, then they will have no incentive to engage in expensive genetic research (such as developing tests for specific genes that are linked to cancer). The lack of such research will mean that numerous benefits to individuals and society will not be acquired (such as treatments for specific genetic conditions). As such, not allowing patents on human genes would be wrong.

While this argument does have considerable appeal, it can be countered by another consequentialist argument. If human genes can be patented, then this will allow corporations to take exclusive ownership of these genes, thus allowing them a monopoly. Such patents will allow them to control the allowed research conducted even at non-profit institutions such as universities (who sometimes do research for the sake of research), thus restricting the expansion of knowledge and potentially slowing down the development of treatments. This monopoly would also allow the corporation to set the pricing for relevant products or services without any competition. This is likely to result in artificially high prices which could very well deny people needed medical services or products simply because they cannot meet the artificially high prices arising from the lack of competition. As such, allowing patents on human genes would be wrong.

Naturally, this counter argument can be countered. However, the harms of allowing the ownership of human genes would seem to outweigh the benefits—at least when the general good is considered. Obviously, such ownership would be very good for the corporation that owns the patent.

In addition to the moral concerns regarding the consequences, there is also the general matter of whether it is reasonable to regard a gene as something that can be owned. Addressing this properly requires some consideration of the basis of property.

John Locke presents a fairly plausible account of property: a person owns his body and thus his labor. While everything is initially common property, a person makes something his own property by mixing his labor with it. To use a simple example, if Bill and Sally are shipwrecked on an ownerless island and Sally gathers coconuts from the trees and build a hut for herself, then the coconuts and hut are her property. If Bill wants coconuts or a hut, he’ll have to either do work or ask Sally for access to her property.

On Locke’s account, perhaps researchers could mix their labor with the gene and make it their own. Or perhaps not—I do not, for example, gain ownership of the word “word” in general because I mixed my labor with it by typing it out. I just own the work I have created in particular. That is, I own this essay, not the words making it up.

Sticking with Locke’s account, he also claims that we are owned by God because He created us. Interestingly, for folks who believe that God created the world, it would seem to follow that a corporation cannot own a human gene. After all, God is the creator of the genes and they are thus His property. As such, any attempt to patent a human gene would be an infringement on God’s property rights.

It could be countered that although God created everything, since He allows us to own the stuff He created (like land, gold, and apples), then He would be fine with people owning human genes. However, the basis for owning a gene would still seem problematic—it would be a case of someone trying to patent an invention which was invented by another person—after all, if God exists then He invented our genes, so a corporation cannot claim to have invented them. If the corporation claims to have a right to ownership because they worked hard and spent a lot of money, the obvious reply is that working hard and spending a lot of money to discover what is already owned by another would not transfer ownership. To use an analogy, if a company worked hard and spent a lot to figure out the secret formula to Coke, it would not thus be entitled to own Coca Cola’s formula.

Naturally, if there is no God, then the matter changes (unless we were created by something else, of course). In this case, the gene is not the property of a creator, but something that arose naturally. In this case, while someone can rightfully claim to be the first to discover a gene, no one could claim to be the inventor of a naturally occurring gene. As such, the idea that ownership would be confirmed by mere discovery would seem to be a rather odd one, at least in the case of a gene.

The obvious counter is that people claim ownership of land, oil, gold and other resources by discovering them. One could thus argue that genes are analogous to gold or oil: discovering them turns them into property of the discoverer. There are, of course, those who claim that the ownership of land and such is unjustified, but this concern will be set aside for the sake of the argument (but not ignored—if discovery does not confer ownership, then gene ownership would be right out in regards to natural genes).

While the analogy is appealing, the obvious reply is that when someone discovers a natural resource, he gains ownership of that specific find and not all instances of what he found. For example, when someone discovers gold, they own that gold but not gold itself. As another example, if I am the first human to stumble across naturally occurring "Unobtanium" on an owner-less alien world, I thus do not gain ownership of all instances of "Unobtanium" even if it cost me a lot of money and work to find it. However, if I artificially create it in my philosophy lab, then it would seem to be rightfully mine. As such, the researchers that found the gene could claim ownership of that particular genetic object, but not the gene in general on the grounds that they merely found it rather than created it. Also, if they had created a new artificial gene that occurs nowhere in nature, then they would have grounds for a claim of ownership—at least to the degree they created the gene.

Philosophical Musings and Ruminations - Part Uno - Intelligent Design and Meaning of Life

"There is no justification for life, but also no reason not to live. Those who claim to find meaning in their lives are either dishonest or deluded. In either case, they fail to face up to the harsh reality of the human situation" - Donald A. Crosby

"What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself" - Jean Paul Sartre

Finally I am back after a long time. But still unable to think I decided to write some excerpts from my diary, on which I have been scribbling for the past four years. 

I've been considering and rewriting this particular post for a few months now. My problem is the approach. Given that I've had such difficulty I'll try to be straight forward and see how everything turns out. Simply put, my query is that if we were in fact made then what is to be gained from the existence of humanity? Not in the form of a metaphorical or existential quandary  rather a very literal what is the end goal purpose of the human race. Assuming we were designed I would imagine it was with a purpose even if that purpose was to satisfy some curiosity. I can not conceive a scenario in which any sort of omnipotent or omniscient deity would be responsible in particular considering any flaw in a creation reflects a flaw in the creator therefore if it was a deity they could not be considered either. Even if the flaws were intentional to some unknown purpose. 

I see the potential for where we could have been created and yet I see no evidence of that being the case or to be more precise being that if that is the case then there was no follow through once the experiment started. In opposition, I see the potential for how we were born of chaos which I see plenty of support for and yet that too is incomplete. One particular point of interest is that if we were of chaos and therefore have no implicit purpose, how then among the chaos have we established dominance and mastery essentially removing ourselves from the chaos while remaining within it?

For those of you that would dare to bring religion directly into this discussion let me just shut you down right now. If we were created as glorious representatives of some all powerful being and that's all, then that all powerful should be damn ashamed of itself. Not only is that level of egotistical vanity so far off the charts but they clearly failed or if they succeeded then we need only look at the failure itself that is humanity as a representative of how horrific such a being is. Humanity is clearly not something worthy of praise and if there is such a vain being then it too is unworthy of praise.

Jean Paul Sartre, in his book "Being and Nothingness", gave a very nihilistic view of life that it has no inherent purpose. It is up to you to make your own purpose in this life and your pursuit of your own purpose is what will define you. This is a question of what the human race as a whole is meant for if it was created on purpose by something capable of such creation rather than by chance.  

If we were created the only conceivable ends to our purpose,  is our end itself to which I find ample evidence to, suggest that if we were created it was to study the nature of death itself. Not only are we to study it but also to provide example for others to study, others being not only ourselves but our creators if that is the case. In this potential scenario of intelligent design I understand how every facet of our existence is created to perpetuate an experiment revealing the details of life and death on a scientific level so they might be understood by others.

The question then if that should be the case is what would happen to humanity when the experiment ends? What if it has already ended? If death is now understood completely and entirely by the creator/s then what are the results and how should the experiment end?

Approaching the concept of humanity as if I were using it as an experiment using deductive reasoning I can only conclude that death is the most likely purpose of the experiment and on that note I have yet to discover a proper dissolution of the experiment given that I am not as objective to the concept as I should be. I can only imagine that our end would come suddenly if at all perhaps the experiment was designed so that we will destroy ourselves as a final test or proof of theories or that we will be allowed to continue without interference to establish secondary attributes of death such as addiction or contagiousness either of death directly or power over death. Though it may be far beyond that and it may also be simply that the experiment is nowhere near completed yet which only leads me to question what the next round of tests will be like...