On Music

When I have nothing to hold on to,
I hold on to music,
Which helps me to be unaware of
The abyss of existential absurdities.

Lost Speech of the Nature

I love closeness of the nature. I always thought the nature taught me something. I always thought the nature spoke to me. I always thought I could hear the nature's speech.

When the cool breeze caressed my face, I listened to it, to understand what it was saying to me. When I saw a lone white cloud in a large empty blue sky, I thought the cloud was smiling at me, rejoicing in its own solitude.

I realize. A new knowledge comes to me. I decipher, from the silence of nature itself.

It was an illusion. Nature is just dumb. It teaches me nothing. It does not have its own speech.

It is I who learns from the nature. It is I who speaks to me as if nature speaks. It was my speech that I was hearing all the time. Nature thus lost its speech in front of me.

I am relieved. No more outside speech I have to listen to. It is my speech; it is my own responsibility.

It is my own radical responsibility.

Sandeep, 
Chennai, 
2-July-2015.

Who Am I? The Modern Answer:

I am what the neural network in my brain feels what I am [Period]

Philosophy Out of Nowhere

I am not a pervert. What I meant is I am not religious and I don't care a damn about god (Why don't the god care for me instead?). I love those cognitive psychologists and neuro-scientists who declare that the Self (or rather the sense of having a Self) depends just on how the way the neural network in your brain has evolved. The most mysterious fact about neural network (at least the artificial neural network) is that we don't know how it works, but damn! it works! That is, I think, materialism at its best. In a way that is the Kantian materialism (transcendental idealism), which says one cannot ever know what is the essence of things, but only the physical, empirical phenomena that one can experience through ones own senses. It justifies the attitude that I enjoy even though I don't understand [it]. That is how I do engineering. I don't understand any of it, nonetheless I am good at it (Ain't I?). But at the end, I think, it turns out that pure materialism such as neuro-science is boring. Things get more interesting when we interpret them. In neuro-science, there is no interpretation (I don't know, but I am just shooting. Isn't it worth a shot?). Only psychoanalysis interprets and it does it so beautifully. Why should we care if the interpretation is true or not? Why should we care if it represents the true essence? I don't care. I enjoy the interpretation in spite of my ignorance about its true nature. Pure materialism is dis-interesting. I am not a nihilist, but one who traversed his own nihilism. So I like fiction. Fiction adds meaning to empty materialist life. In a way, our thoughts constitute a form of narration. It narrates our own story to ourselves. That is why we feel life is meaningful. If you feel that your life is meaningless, then you must understand that meaninglessness is the narrative trick your mind uses to find meaning in meaninglessness.

That is all for now. Good bye!!!

-Sandeep