Tarkovski: Life, Meaning, and Solitude

I have heard people saying that there are no art cinemas and commercial cinemas. There is only cinema. Obviously, these idiots have not watched Tarkovski. His cinema is purely personal and hence fully artistic. Watching his Zerkalo (The mirror) was a beautiful experience. The way we remembers our past is in a nonlinear and distorted manner. As time goes on, we interpret our own past in different ways. And our memories of our past is only what we own in our life. Once we lose our past, we lose our identity and life itself. At the end of our lives, it is our memories of our past that will convey the ultimate meaning of our lives. In Zerkalo, he really has captured how one remembers his past through dream-like sequences. That makes the movie very beautiful.

I just finished watching Solaris (or, Solyaris) . Without Zizek's Pervert's Guide to Cinema, I would not have understood a bit of it. Thanks to Zizek! Solaris proposes that the meaning of life is ultimately unknowable and one has to be at the end of ones life to understand if his life had any meaning. It is vain to seek the meaning in love and knowledge and so on for they create only fantasies of meaning. When one loves, just love. It is not for seeking the meaning that one loves. But that one loves is the meaning. It is no worth to seek the meaning of human life. But human life is the meaning of life. I know this is not clear. I need to explain it. But let's try another time. For, now I don't know if I have understood it!

The following is an interview by Tarkovski in which he describes his views on life, its meaning, art and solitude. I am touched by his views. How profound they are!!!

The Self

What is the frame of reference of my life, with respect to which I find meaning to every action? Well, I don't want to philosophize here. My answer is this: "my inner feeling that I AM". The central feeling that I AM the one who experiences all this internal as well as external worlds. That is the only thing which I can take as a basis for anything. The feeling which thinks "this mind is mine", "this intellect is mine", "this body is mine", "this experience is mine", and "I exist in this world". Some say, this feeling is absolute and indestructible (ATMAN). Some says, it is a void, a nothingness, an emptiness, or, an illusion (ANATMAN). Modern psycho analysis often adopts the latter point of view. Zizek says, if you remove all the realities from the mind, what remains is nothing! Stephen Hawkins says, the feeling that time is flowing forward an illusion, but it actually is just another dimension like space. Time is not without beginning. There was a time when there was no time. Perhaps, the fact is that my feeling of I AM is a by product of time. It is time that generates my life. I feel time as my memory. If I remove all my memory? I would feel I had no past, I had no life, I had never eaten anything, I had never loved anyone. All those experiences fall into oblivion. I AM thrown into oblivion. In fact, Umberto Eco analyses this in his novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. The protagonist had an accident, and when he wakes up in a hospital, all his personal memory is lost. All he remembers is from his impersonal memory, which contains things he read somewhere! OK. I am digressing from the topic. The topic is the existence or non-existence of the self. Whatever these philosophers, psychoanalysts or physicists say, my experience is foremost for me. And, I can feel my self. I feel that very feeling of I AM. That is the core of my life, I guess.

On 22nd Friday, June 2012, I gave my second Ph. D. seminar to a small audience of around thirty people. To tell the truth, I had not prepared my talk. I had only prepared my slides, which explained my work. How I would introduce new concepts and explain my work was not planned at all. This was not purposefull. Perhaps, my wife is true. She says I am suffering from bipolar disorder. This is the curse of marrying a doctor. What the fuck! I asked her if she meant I was mad. Maybe, she was true. I was unable to prepare my talk. When I went to the seminar hall, I had an empty mind. I set up the laptop and the projector. Then waited for my audience. One by one, came they. Almost all had been known to me. And they gave me a friendly smile as they entered. I smiled back. This may be a social custom that we have developed through evolution. But it helps. I felt a bit relieved. That inescapable moment came at last. The moment of truth. My guide said "Let's begin the talk". I started: "Good afternoon, this is my second Ph. D. seminar". That's all. I don't remember what happened next. I only know that the talk went without any troubles. Because, during my talk, I felt no I AM. There was only the talk. The topic. The slides. The algorithms. The explanations. I went without stop, except for taking a gulp of water now and then. After that talk, my kindhearted friends said the talk was good. However kindhearted they may be, I felt proud. The I AM came back. Now, the I AM became my pride. My arrogance. Then where was that feeling when I was talking? Did it get transformed to the talk itself? Again, is that feeling real? Is it just an illusion? I don't know. But I can't live without that feeling. Without I AM, I may no longer be I am! I am... all that crap. My likes. My dislikes. My desires. The inexhaustible desire for making love. All the confusion. Does god exist or not? Shit. I AM is a burden, too. Maybe, the point is to forget the self... to forget the I AM.

P. Sandeep
June 26, 2012,
Chennai.

On Buddha's Problem, from a Contemporary Perspective

Once upon a time I was so fascinated by teachings of Buddha. I often say that I am a frustrated nihilist. I became a nihilist against my will, when I lost my belief in everything in life, all values propagated by the society, and every moral teachings. Yes, I have gone through a time like that. It was in those days I read so much, seeking a foundation of thoughts and values for me. Buddhism was the one of the most important teaching that grabbed my attention and admiration. Here, I would like to talk a little bit of Buddhism and ponder over it, for no particular reason. All the opinions expressed below are personal, and I claim no scholarly value for them. Before beginning, I would like to complete the story of my nihilism by saying that I could never be satisfied by any set of values or teachings. The more I read, the more I sought, the bigger a nihilist I became. Was it my fault? Incapacity to believe -- Is this my fault? Finally, I was bored of my own nihilism. I could no longer bear it. One day, I realized that my nihilism itself had started to become frustrating. Ever since, I considered myself "a frustrated nihilist". And ever since I became free of the need "to seek a foundation of values and thoughts for me". Probably, ever since, I started "to live", freely, without conceptions.

Now, coming back to Buddha's teachings, I would liketo  look at the heart of the problem Buddha tried to analyze. There is a whole story and speculations surrounding Buddha. However, my objective is not to tell or re-tell those stories but actually to look at Buddha's problem and try to understand it from my time and perspective. Understanding Buddha's problem from his own time is an impossible task for me, and can possibly be done only by specialists in Buddhism and its history.

Probably, I have to begin by asking what is the objective or meaning of human life, though I consider it as the most absurd question in heaven and earth to ask (I have not seen hell; therefore, I leave the possibility of asking this question there). Distancing myself from all the available scriptures and previous knowledge, I begin by looking at a more functional level -- the level at which life actually unfolds. I would like to look at how everyone lives in the world. From an animal's perspective, life is all about eating and breeding. When it does not eat or breed, it either takes rest or just play around aimlessly with its fellow animals. These statements about animals may be incomplete, but I am comfortable in handling incompleteness. I rather continue to look at humans who differ from animals in their superior intelligence. In the case of humans, the first two points I said about animals are valid, with a slight modification in the second -- eating and mating (more often for pleasure than for breeding). Regarding the third aspect, the modern humans have almost forgotten to play around with their pals. Except the children, they are "settled" and spend most of their leisure time "resting" in front of television. Apart from these, their other leisure activities or entertainments in general are transitory and have no particular objective. So, let us try to learn from the modern humans what their objective is by looking at how they spend most of their time. Majority of the time is dedicated to "some" job, which they are not particularly interested in but do solely for earning money (a more decent way of putting it is "to make a living") and for the joy of upholding it as a status symbol (In a charming voice she introduced herself, "Well, I work as a ******".). Of course, I am mistaken if I oversimplify the objective of job or work in the modern human life as money-making and attaining an identity. More than that modern humans work so that they can secure the future, marry off their girls decently, meet urgent situations like sickness etc. (Does it again it boil down to money?) I think that we can safely say that the objective of modern life is to lead a safe, comfortable life without much troubles. Money is considered as the means by which these objectives can be achieved. Since humans have not evolved enough, they quite often forget this and pursue money-making as their sole objective. (When one tries to achieve this in little time, one tries to do things like "3G scam", and, if unlucky, ends up in the Tihar jail.) There are exceptions, though. There are people who are more lazy and do not even try to lead safe and comfortable life. They just booze and kill each other in the street. On the other extreme, there are people who work for more (they say) noble objectives like fame, service of the poor, building up own nation, etc. There are more selfish people who aspire to become a movie director, actor, television anchorman, painter, novelist, model, engineer, etc. There are other fools who aspire for academic excellence, like obtaining a Ph.D. from a well-known institute, or for achieving technical competence, like struggling to be an excellent engineer!

Having understood more or less the meaning and objective of modern life, I would like to look at the next aspect in this realm, which comes for sure but uninvited. Summarizing the above paragraph, the objective of life is mostly to "achieve" something. This "something" changes for person to person, country to country (maybe), and time to time. But a major difficulty is "to achieve something permanently". This seems to be (I say "seems to be" because I am still skeptic -- my weakness) impossible. To understand this impossibility, I must have to ask another stupid, age old question: "who am I?". However, because I cannot surpass my own skepticism, I am rather tempted to ask "what am I?". Again, without resorting to all the metaphysical stories written in the sacred text books, I would say, "I am my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my knowledge, my surroundings, my family, my education, my fantasies and so on". Put in one sentence, "I am a bunch of abstract and material elements, which are impermanent and, by and large, irreconcilable". The irreconcilability of the elements which constitute the "I" is an interesting topic for further discussion. But I am interested in the other "fact": the impermanence of every element that makes up "I"! This means that whatever I think, whatever I do, whatever I plan (no matter how diligently I plan), my life and my action and "I" are impermanent. However well I live, however devoted I am towards my life, however noble my pursuits are, I am not permanent... my power will slowly decay and, finally, one day, I have to die. I will be gone, my time will be gone, my work will be gone, my family will be gone, and my world will be gone. This impermanence causes an unsolvable uneasiness in every human being. Knowledge of this very fact makes one to be aware of the futility of everything one strongly attaches oneself to. This weakness of oneself causes eternal suffering -- "dukkha". Is there any solution? Is there any possibilities of salvation? How can I end my suffering? This is the heart of Buddha's teachings.

I admired Buddhism mostly because the way Buddha arrived at his problem, which he considered as the only problem on earth worth solving! While other ancient thoughts start with the solution (faith and salvation), Buddha starts with the problem! And for Buddha, every other metaphysical questions were only sub-problems or no-problems.

Beyond words

'Perfume -- The Story of a Murderer' is a very good movie, though I would not say that it is an exceptional one. It is the story of a man who had a talent for sensing odour, and the extent of his talent goes beyond the usual human possibilities. For example, he knows the smell of iron, frogs, wood, water, and almost anything around his world. Besides, to sense the smell of something, he does not have to go near it; he can sense it from a distance. Even his sexual attraction towards a girl is manifested through his desire for her body odour, which she loses immediately after she dies. At some point of the movie, he realizes that his body does not have any smell of its own. For him, he is the only person in the world 'who' (or rather, 'what') does not possess a smell of his (its) own. Later, he falls into an obsessive struggle to extract the smells of beautiful women, and own those smells for himself. How? That is the story of this film.

In fact, I have no intention in talking about this movie itself. I am more interested in something else. The above character learns to speak lately in his childhood. Up to the age of ten or twelve, he is unable to convey anything through words. He senses the world through odour. And for him, anything around him is distinguished by its odour. When he finally learns to speak, he realizes that words were quite incapable of expressing the reality around him, what he has seen and felt. He could not find equivalent words for many things in the world as he knew it. It is this point I am interested in.

We all see things around us and feel many things inside our minds. And we identify almost all things within and outside us by words. Probably, man has been able to make his distinguishable mark on earth (or is he/she?) because of words. Thoughts originates as words (or do they?). Without words, no thoughts, no discoveries, no stories, no science, no news, no advertisements, and no "culture". But how do we learn words? Someone teaches us! We understand the world around us through the words someone has taught us! How strange! How mistaken we possibly could be about things around us! Shouldn't we learn words through nature? Why are we not taught like that? What if we are confused between things in the world because we identify them with wrong words? Do we have words for everything around us? At least for every feelings we have? What if we think that we are sad when we actually feel a mix of sadness and happiness? This happens to me many times! What are the words we use for our feelings? Anger, happiness, sadness, melancholy, jealousy, lust, serenity, and what else? Do we have feelings which do not have equivalent names? When I say I am angry, is there only one kind of anger? What if I can have many types of anger but I wrongly identify all of them as just "anger"? Have I really understood what anger is? (If you think I am writing some nonsense and I have gone nuts, you might as well be wondering "does he really understand what he is writing"?)

Buddha said "truth is beyond words" and what one needs is not indoctrination, which is merely knowledge of a few words, but a "transmission outside doctrine, with no dependence on words". Saramago has shown us what a person who can see sees in a world, where everyone is blind. Modern science says we have evolved in order to survive the hardships that we come across in the world. What if we have evolved in such a way that we cannot see what we must not understand? Put together, man is limited, imperfect, and blind in some sense.

Today, someone was wondering if he could realize an ideal lowpass filter (for non-techies, tuning of your radio in a perfect sense, without any extra interference). And by discussion, I could make him see why he could not! The trade-off between time and frequency characteristics, the uncertain principle and the practical non-realizability of infinity! But even then, we can cleanly listen to our radios, watch T.V. and talk to our friends over mobile phones! All these situations need filters. He said "Signal processing is great! Our technology is great!". I replied him "It is the opposite. We are imperfect. Even with imperfect technology, we can do many things that we are doing. We cannot sense any imperfection introduced by technology in radio music, T.V. shows, or mobile conversations. This is because, I repeat, we are limited and we need only limited technology". Will you agree with me? Without technology, we cannot see the infra-red radiation. When we see it by the help of technology, we feel that the technology is excellent. On the contrary, we cannot perceive the imperfection of the technology because whatever imperfections our technology suffers from are all due to the imperfection possessed by us!

Starting from a movie, I have gone to technology. I do not know what is happening to me. Probably, I have really gone insane! Nonetheless, I still dare to wonder what is beyond words?.

Mathematics -- Pure and Applied -- and Engineering

I was trying to understand "what is mathematics" and how it differs from engineering (indeed, a stupid question to ask). I love mathematics, and I am fascinated by it, though I have no good mathematical talents. Furthermore, I know that engineering problems demand so much mathematical skills and knowledge. And many a time, my mind digress from  the simplicity of engineering to the wilderness of mathematics without my knowledge. This creates confusion as to what I am doing. A confused mind needs clarity. That is how I began to ask the above question.

I had heard that there is a difference between pure mathematics and applied mathematics. A notable mathematician of the last century, Paul R. Halmos gives clear distinction between them in his talks, interviews and books. According to him, mathematics is an intellectual discipline, done for its own sake. Though it is influenced by nature -- in the sense that a mathematician is a human being, who is a product of nature -- its objective is not the study of nature. In other words, its objective does not have to deal with any natural phenomena, or control of nature, or use of natural forces for humanity. Its objective is to play around clearly defined axioms -- which are often motivated by nature but generalized and expressed as abstract ideas so that its connection with nature has become irrelevant and invisible -- and to understand their implications completely. That is, mathematicians are after  the complete knowledge of an axiomatic system. Research in mathematics is to discover (note this: discover, not invent) any hidden knowledge in the abstract system, generated by axioms. And axioms are gods -- no questioning them, as long as they are clearly defined (there are debated axioms, too, e.g., axiom of choice -- if I am wrong tell me). On the contrary, the objective of applied mathematics is, using the Halmos' term, action; he implies physical action, or manipulating nature and its forces for some use. In other words, applied mathematics solves mathematical problems, which arise exclusively from applications. For example, suppose we arrive at a weird and so far unheard type of differential equation (I don't know if such an equation exists, but I contrive this as an illustrative example from my limited imagination) while trying to design a system. Finding out a method to solve such a problem means research in applied mathematics. Or else, it can be trying to find an efficient (fast or computationally light) method from the existing ones. Hence, applied mathematics heavily appears in physics, engineering and other applied sciences -- wherever there is action. To summarise, the pure mathematicians are after knowledge, whereas the applied mathematicians are after action.

Of course, an engineer can solve the kind of problems that an applied mathematician works on, but one must be very talented, having a good hold on mathematics. Rather, engineering is probably different. By and large, people say that an engineer is a problem solver. So, he may not really develop the mathematics required to solve a problem, but, rather, he may borrow the most appropriate concepts from mathematics to develop an efficient and practically realizable solution. This is my current thought on this.  However, I know that it is not complete. I am trying to understand this more. I guess that I should look into what the "engineers" have done in the past, especially, the greatest ones.

In the above effort, which was just an errand from my normal studies, I found a few interesting facts. I list them above, without organizing them well and without any purpose.

1. Paul R. Halmos is the first to use "iff" in the place of "if and only if" in mathematics literature (at least he claims so).
2. Paul Halmos is the first to use the small square to indicate the end of a proof in mathematics.
3. Josiaph Willard Gibbs is the first person who was awarded the first Ph.D. in the United States in engineering (strictly speaking, applied science and engineering); this happened in 1863, and he got the degree from Yale University. Why it is interesting to me is just because I, as a signal processing engineer, know Gibbs through Gibbs phenomenon. He is not a signal processing engineer, though.

When I leave this post, a few problems are lingering in my mind: What is engineering? What is a "fundamental" problem in engineering like? What can be considered as a seminal contribution in engineering:  solving a "problem" or inventing "something" new?

Paragon of stupidity...

Thus leaves me yet another month: October.  This month I have done a lot of blunders.  Very frequently I was caught up in awkward situations, and most of the time, my reactions were shamefully foolish.  This reminded me of the limitations of life, as I have written in a previous blog.  Maybe, I will argue that the knowledge of my limitations helped me to accept my foolishness, overcome it and stay calm.  It helped me not to loose my self-respect yet.  In the past, it was my arrogance and self-pride that helped me to stay calm in difficult situations.  But in situations where I look foolish, arrogance will not help; on the other hand, it may aggravate my shame.  This is where self-pity, not in the usual sense, but in the most profound sense, helps me stay calm.

Self-pity, for the weak man, is self-denouncement or self-negation, but for the strong, it is the knowledge of the "edges"--the boundaries, the limitations.  At the same time a strong man will also be aware of the opposite--the limitlessness of man.  Furthermore, only he / she who is aware of the edges knows how vast is the space contained by the edges.  This is very similar to my other favourite thoughts: "only he / she who is aware of the meaninglessness of life knows its meaning," or "only he / she who understands hate knows what is love."  Am I talking about the opposites here?  No, I am just saying there are no opposites--there are only duals.

Thinking about it, I am reminded of a few lines I read a few years back:

"What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! --and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me--nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."

--William Shakespeare

After all, quoting a man with rich words is much better than writing it down in my poor ones.

--Sandeep Palakkal

On limits of life

Many a time, when I reread what I've written in the past, I feel that I was an idiot then. One of my friends had confessed to me that he also used to feel the same. This time, I feel that it was so foolish of me to have connected my limitations with my academic life in the previous blog! There I have been wondering if I was encountering a lot of my limitations because I was doing PhD. However, later, I was reminded that life itself is limited. It does not matter what life---within academic circles or not---you are living, you can't live forever. Life is limited! What a simple idea! Any school boy knows that. But I did not take this into consideration while I was thinking about life's limitations in general. Many of my hypotheses had been wrong. Finally, this one wins: everything in the world is limited, and has limitations! Limits are real.

Imperfection of Life?

Ten years ago, when I was in my teen age, life seemed full of hopes, full of possibilities. That was a time with a lot of immature impulses and dreams most of which were almost impossible. It was so until a year back. But now, I am confronted only by limitations: my own limitations!. Maybe, one can justify saying that it is because I'm doing Ph.D. You search for something; it is like searching for a shadow in the dark! And, you can't be sure of what you are doing, whether your search is going in the right direction, whether it is worth doing it, or whether you would be able get somewhere. There are moments of helplessness, but there are moments of extreme exaltations too! But moments of despair are more. They are enervating for some time though will fuel further actions later. One thing I'm not sure about is that whether my feeling of helplessness, or experience of limitations, is a part of PhD or a part of life itself. Since I did not have a life outside academic circles, outside the campus, I can't answer; someone else should tell me. Or, is it the imperfection of life that a lot of people, both wise and unwise alike, talked of?

I strongly feel and in fact, my experiences in life at different times indicate that a problem intellectually understood and emotionally came in terms with is no longer a problem at all. Perhaps, this explains my uncontrollable urge to search for a better explanation, a better understanding of life and myself (though my motto is "when you live, you just live"---maybe, I must explain what I mean by this in another blog). I pondered about my limitations also for quite some time. I constructed a lot of hypotheses. Yet I'm not sure of them and I am unable to accept them---what they are is pointless. So, I don't conclude, and the questions go on. It is not that I intentionally ask these absurd, rather fancy questions; I can't help asking, I have no control over this process.

Since I have no conclusions, I just experience my limitations, without trying to construe them in any way. At the moment, I guess, this is the best I can do. Or maybe, I must console myself saying that "it's your life, whether you like or not".

Understanding Life

Yeah! Now I understand what life is:

"Life is a tomato!"