Seeing is believing?

Ankhon Dekhi (Seeing through own eyes, Hindi; 2014)

Written, Directed and Supporting Actor: Rajat Kapoor.

On one end, we are told not to accept everything related to us without prior investigations. We have been thought to sieve, evaluate, ponder, perambulate and scrutinise thoroughly before believing anything to be true.  Even then, sometimes, our senses deceive us. Seeing is believing, they say, but in the same breath, they say the world is an illusion, Maya, a mirage: so many names. 

On the other end, we are also cautioned that specific unwritten rules cannot or should not be questioned. This includes queries on divinity, scriptures and belief systems. They have a name for it, blasphemy, and the punishment does not look pretty.

It is said that we only use 10% of our brain. Like much of our chromosomal loci which remain dormant, so is our brain. Would we be at a different level of civilisation if we were to utilise the remaining unused part of the mind? Or perhaps we would just be more creative in annihilating each other? Just to recapitulate, serial killers and psychopaths have extremely high IQs.

A 50-something-year-old man, Babuji, is going through an existential crisis of sorts. After discovering that his daughter's boyfriend is not as much a loafer as everyone describes him to be, Babuji takes a vow to also see things from his perspective; no more listening to hearsay. The problem is that he took the whole idea to the limit. He was sacked from his job at a travel agency when he refused to promote tourists' destinations as he had never seen them. Babuji quit his job as he thought it was based on a lie. Just lying around the house, jobless created friction with his younger brother who decided to move out.

His new outlook also helped Babuji to look at things from another angle. He appreciated things after a first-hand experience and expanded his knowledge in making money in a poker game. His one lifelong ambition was to experience the joy flying like a bird, to feel the cold gush of wind cutting through his bare skin as he scaled down a height in the free skies. But, as they say, be careful of what you wish for.

The character in the film reminded me of a sad incident that unfortunately happened to a friend's son. With the ease of access to knowledge to the studies of the occult and realms of the unknown, the curious young man thought that cyberspace was God sent. Exploring into readily available articles online, he delved deeper and deeper into secrets of life and Consciousness. He soon went in-depth to examine questions of Death. He was recruited (it was proposed later on) into a cult which wanted to experience Death. It was later discovered that he succumbed to smothering in a freak accident as he was performing experiments inducing asphyxia with a plastic bag. Sometimes, one wonders whether the human mind is capable of dealing with the Truths of the Universe. Are some things better left unanswered?

An entertaining movie minus the usual clutter that is often seen in most mainstream movies.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 

Trust and Conviction

cgsociety.org

I heard a strange comparison between cryptocurrency and religion the other day.

When we look at the number of people who invest a significant amount of their hard-earned savings into multiple blockchain technology schemes, we sometimes wonder what makes people place so much trust into something so intangible. How many times in the history of man have we seen promises of easy wealth through a yet another newer and more novel way to beat the system? How predictably have the bubble repeatedly burst when people, like rats, followed Piped Piper to the caves?

Even with the knowledge of previous mayhems and follies, with their great reluctance to be detached from their world material wealth, the promise of multiplying their already burgeoning opulence is too much to resist.

There is no central control, hence the lure of concealment. There must be a reason the Blockchain technology is cryptic. Is going to be so mysterious that everything may just go up kaboom into thin air? There is nothing to claim possession, just a series of an algorithm to assert ownership. Right now, the proprietor can just sleep well convincing himself that he may be superrich one day. The day of a real cashless society who would pay for their coffee with Bitcoin is quite remote. It is a promise, no doubt, it may materialise one day, but till then, it is just promises written on water!

What do you know? The premise of religion is not much different from the above. The tenet of most religious practices is based on trust. The conviction that the elders in their faith have discovered a path to protect their interest when their time on Earth is up. That the promise of a figure who would be just out there judging our souls after keeping a tab on our good deeds whilst on Earth.

In both cases, there are no documents to uphold our interests on the day of reckoning. The future rests on mutual trust and blind faith that things will be all alright!