The Obsessive-Compulsive 'do-gooders'

Many people are very filled with negativity these days and most amongst them are constantly bothered by pangs of guilt over the fact that they are not giving their spouses/children/loved ones enough of 'quality time'. They are willing to do absurd things just to feel better. In my earlier post 'Stoking the fire within' I wrote about the need to feel good. I recommended doing something concrete, something that we are good at, to achieve a sense of success. The artists amongst us can paint, poets can pen poetry, and so on, but there are a whole load of people who don't really want to do anything that involves real effort, but still want to feel good. What do they do? Give alms to people who don't deserve it, donate money to causes without even finding out their antecedents and do many other irrational things, just to feel that they have done something good. Just a little something to ease the pangs of guilt. If a meaningless act can mean lesser feelings of guilt and sounder sleep, well, so be it.

In the photograph alongside, you can see a pile of biscuits put there by one such 'do-gooder' individual, apparently to feed the stray dogs. Its another matter altogether that no stray dog in the vicinity is even remotely interested in eating it, as they can get hold of choicier food thrown out by nearby eateries! The biscuits just lie there, till they gradually mix in with the dirt or till rain or winds blow them away. In the rarest of rare events, a municipality sweeper may sweep it away. Yet, the person who threw away a packet of good biscuits went home with a lighter heart, telling himself that he had done the day's good deed, public cleanliness be damned.
If the person really cared, he could have found a hungry dog and fed it. Absurd? Well, littering a public place in this fashion seems absurd too! A friend of mine organized a fundraising drive for the cause of blind children and bemoans the fact that she could not get enough publicity or money for the cause. She is not resting on her laurels or sleeping more soundly thanks to all the feel-good energy that she has accumulated, but she is planning a bigger event that can gain more publicity and rake in more money for the cause. People like her a rarity, while the hipocrites like the one who walked away satisfied after littering up the neighborhood for nothing, are found all too often.

Stoking the fire within

Sunday evening. Still feeling dog tired. Have picked up a fever and a nasty cold too. Work has been forced to a standstill, the to-do list is growing faster than ever. The seminar of yesterday was not an absolute disaster, but it came close to being one. The fire in the belly is weaker than the fever that is raging within. All is not well.

Rage is good. Rage can fuel a person into activity when everything else fails. The fire being out inside of you does not mean that you have become a very diffused and peaceful person. The rage is still present, but its totally misdirected. It will be in the blame mode. Pointing fingers at everybody at large, the whole society. Everything and everyone, but yourself; Which is where it ought to be made to point, if you hope to get out of the rut.

Rage, however has a major drawback. Its very exhausting. It can at best be a stop-gap arrangement, much like a shot of adrenaline. To expect to run entirely on rage is foolishness. Rage can be harnessed to get results in the short-term. It can be remarkable effective for a whole night's frenzied activity, for instance. I used just that to get my seminar organized, but the after effects are very visible. I have a fever and don't even have the energy to even sit here much longer.
Rage is not good at rekindling fires, but is quite adept at setting new ones of its own, and that too, in the wrong places, so our original problem of stoking the fire within still remains a problem.

Lots of 'solutions' are being aggressively marketed. Solutions ranging from a cruise in the mediterranean to a spiritual sojourn, depending on exactly how deep your pocket runs. Totally customised solutions, yessir, but how many of them are really feasible for a burnt out student or techie who desperately craves, but in vain, for more rest than the two day weekend provides.

The most practical solution however, is success. Success has the ability to charge up even the most dejected person. Half the reason why a person feels dejected in the first place is because he would have forgotten the feeling of a success-induced euphoria. Do something that you know you are good at, something that you are likely to taste success in. This is not like fishing in an aquarium. Everybody needs to feel good. Feeling good automatically stokes those fires. Im now calling it a day. I hope to wake up feeling better. I intend to start my day doing what Im good at. Solving programming puzzles and problems. Even if they are not related to my immediate work. The high that I derive out of solving a puzzle successfully will go a long way towards rekindling my inner fire.

Crash and burn

Project submissions, seminars, tests... all within the span of a few days. Some of them not even separated by as much as a day. Stuff that nightmares are made of. Absolutely the wrong time to suffer a stress-shutdown or something like that, but it seems so close. The men in white coats seem to be just around the corner. Maybe the sight of them is even going to be welcome, but that too is just another illusion created by a harrowed and fatigued mind. It isn't going to happen, after all. Its just me against myself. My minds slugging it out for control. Nothing more, nothing less. It seems that just when the situation requires the maximum efficiency of body and mind, I'm clean out of fuel, or on the verge of running out. I have a seminar slated for tomorrow. The first for tomorrow, in fact. And I'm clueless as to how I'm going to be able to organise my thoughts by then. Its not really a question of butterflies in the stomach because of the audience too, as I'm quite used to speaking before a large audience. The numbers don't overwhelm me, but my own lack of preparation certainly can. The fire in my belly is all but out.

I got to know that a friend of mine, a senior software engineer in an MNC is putting on a dance performance to raise funds for the cause of blind children. I hear about and see these people around me and feel a tingle in a region that I thought was dead to the world. How do they have the energy, the enthusiasm, the verve and the conviction to do these things? Where is my enthusiasm, my energy? Is it dead? I wanted to be a champion bicyclist, a journalist, a master programmer.... I have made compromise after compromise, giving up things that mattered to me. I have had to make tough decisions, but I have stood by them so far. Why then am I feeling so alone, so weak, so disconsolate now?

The Order-Chaos Continuum. A book lover's perspective

Books of Ayn Rand are something of a hand-me-down in my family. When I told my uncle that I had just finished reading the Fountainhead, he gave me a knowing smile and asked me how I felt about it. After listening to my enthusiastic response, his smile widened and he said that I was now ready to take on her next book, Atlas Shrugged. He not only said this, but also gave me his much dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged, the same copy that has been read by many of my cousins, over and over again. It was a matter of great pride for me to receive it. It was a sort of coming of age ritual. I was now no more just a kid, but an adult, who had an independent reasoning mind, one that could assimilate the profound thoughts of Ayn Rand.

Its been over three years since I read Atlas Shrugged. I used to be a voracious reader, but have become a shadow of my old self, of late. Maybe because of the rigors of my course. Maybe not. Its been a long time since I read a book, fiction or otherwise. My last reading was Stephen King's horror-thriller Rose Madder. Late 2005 and early 2006 was a period that was really memorable for me. I was working for a college as a lab programmer. The job was fun and my heart was light. I went on a book buying spree in which I bought amongst other things, 'The Green Mile' (TGM) by Stephen King, a travelogue of sorts of Agatha Christie called 'Tell me how you live'(TMHYL), 'Notes to myself' by Hugh Prather and 'The Virtue of Selfishness' (TVS) by Ayn Rand. While I got through TGM and TMHYL early last year itself, I still haven't gotten around to finishing either TVS or Notes'. The ever present Damocles' sword of deadlines hanging over the head and the gruelling schedule has put paid to all that. The stress levels have gotten phenomenally high and there is no sign of any kind of respite on the horizon. New year came and went. Those who partied are now feeling that it was a time that was ill-utilized, that the party was a luxury that they couldn't really afford in the first place while those who did not are feeling pretty blue too, thinking that they could have at least had a bit of fun while it lasted!!!

While its true that there is no sign of any respite along the horizon, I have no intention of turning into a nervous wreck just because the work load is high. I have the ability to work with focus for extremely prolonged hours, often at a single stretch and this is the very trait of mine that I'm putting my money on to get me through this course, and also perhaps through many a situation in the outside world. After rummaging through my belongings in the chaos that is called my room, I managed to find my copy of TVS, and just about began reading it. The clarity of the thoughts of the author (Ayn Rand) is just amazing. I really like her thoughts and identify with her ideas about Objectivism. Reading a book, and that too a Rand book, after a really long time brought back fond memories. Its a nice feeling to read a book and though at present, I really can't afford the luxury of reading books cover to cover, its nice to even read a few pages now, a couple later and so on.

The couple of pages of TVS that I read today charged me up somewhat and I googled Objectivism. While the first couple of hits led to Ayn Rand Institute (as expected), that was not what I really was interested in. I was looking for other people's thoughts about Objectivism, and came across plenty of that after the first page of search results. To say that the results were disappointing would be an understatement.

The search result brought up a piece called 'Whats really wrong with Objectivism' (http://www.jeffcomp.com/faq/) by a person called Chris Wolf. This was just one of the hundreds, maybe thousands more like it. The article, whether biased or unbiased (though Mr Wolf makes his intentions pretty clear and even uses words that are pretty uncivil, I'm giving the article the benefit of doubt) makes it pretty clear that not all is well with the Objectivists of the world.

Another piece, authored by a person claiming to be an Objectivist claims that Atheism is the key to be an Objectivist, while Rand herself, to my knowledge has made no such statements.

The results just proved that no organisation, thought, or philosophy could really survive with its integrity intact, over a period of time. The period of time varies from case to case, but in the end, everything gets corrupted, beyond the point of redemption. There will always be purists who will try to hold on to the shards of truth and keep it from getting corrupted, but there is only so much that a small set of people can do. Its comparable to the sound of a buzzing bumblebee in a busy railway station. The bumble bee never goes silent, but is it audible over the din?

George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is a book that comes to the mind when the topic is of dilution/distortion/disintegration taking place in any organisation.

Spoiler warning: The storyline of 'Animal Farm' is discussed in brief below.

'Animal Farm', is a story in which a group of farm animals, lead by a pig, fed up with the way their owners mistreat them, organise a rebellion and become independent and set up their own farm called the 'Animal Farm'. A set of rules to protect the interests of the members of 'Animal Farm' is laid down and is painted on a wall. The book describes the manner in which the leadership of the farm changes hands and how the disintegration of values takes place. The rules that were laid down are diluted to suit the purposes of the leaders. For example, one of the original rules that said "No animal on the farm shall drink alcohol" is changed overnight to read "No animal on the farm shall drink alcohol to excess" just to accommodate those in power who wanted to drink alcohol. The very spirit of the farm is killed in a gradual manner. The first and most important slogan of the Animal farm, 'Four legs good, two legs bad' is also given an unceremonious burial with the power block (the pigs on the farm) coining a new slogan 'Four legs good, two legs better' and even proceeding to begin walking on two legs to prove the point.

End of Spoiler.

I studied a bit of Kannada literature in my high school and had a non detailed piece called 'Naagareeka' (Citizen or civilian) in the syllabus, that further reinforces this thought. It was a story about a citizen of a certain fictitious city who is very frustrated in life as he feels that there is no hope to anything or anybody. His pet peeve? The crumbling of the legendary Vijayanagara empire, painstakingly put together by Sage Vidhyaranya. The citizen feels that when an empire as glorious as the Vijayanagara empire can come down like a pack of cards and slip into oblivion, there can be no hope for anybody else. The piece ends with the citizen getting a vision in which the dead Sage Vidhyaranya comes back, alive and well, a vision in which the great sage tells the citizen that everything in life, including Dharma itself, has an expiry date attached to it, after which the clean up starts. Everything has to go through all the stages. The four Yugas or eras in the Hindu belief too are designed for this very purpose. Order falls to chaos and garbage collection follows before order is restored.