No Brain, No Pain.

There was a time when I developed a compulsion of wanting to know everything about Bhagavadgita. I was told that the holy book had all the recipe for a meaningful life. And I heard about a volunteer at a local temple who was conducting a series of lectures on that subject. My acquaintances were all praises about the speaker and the contents of his classes.  

I was drawn in. I decided to give it a try. In the first lecture, all that I heard was that I was nothing. I was smaller than the smallest of the speck in the Universe. I did not matter to the greater scheme of things. Hence, the last thing I needed was my ego. I had to crack my hardshell called ego, following which enlightenment would flow in like an eternal fountain of knowledge. Like how Arjuna had to clear his head of all his doubts to receive the unlimited erudition from the Lord himself.

I thought to myself, "I do not need these people to tell me that I am nothing; my wife tells me all the time that my ego is bigger than my head! These people are asking me to be a zombie - to operate like a non-functional lump of protoplasm working in a reflex arc at the spinal level. I did not like to be another statistic along the line of a cult member of the Branch Davidian who perished in the Waco massacre smiling in anticipation of the bliss of entropy.

The little bit of sense that prevailed within me told me that these just will not do. Echoes of my mother's childhood stories of Socrates in his death bed murmured somewhere in the nook of my mind. Even though she barely scraped through primary schooling at a time when discrimination against girls was rife, she managed to sponge whatever she could from radio dramas, movies, storybooks and periodicals. Her words reverberated, "don't listen just because this fellow or that fellow said so; enquire and investigate and be enlightened!" or something to that effect.

Hence, I recoiled to the company of me, myself and I to indulge in a little soul searching and introspection. 

Ego, a sense of self-importance and self-esteem, cannot be all so bad. It is the trait to make one so embarrassed to hold out his hand for alms as his pride tells him that he can fend for himself in this big wide world. It prods that if a lame or a blind can survive, why can't he? 

It is the thing that pushes him to be better than his neighbour. It is that satisfying, gloated feeling that propels him to go beyond boundaries that no man has ever been before. Many individuals are addicted to immersion in the sea of endorphins as they become successful in their outlandish endeavours. Some fail, but that also inspires them to try harder to succeed. Well, that is how the human race progresses. It is the hard work of mad minds of the insane with a never say die attitude, not the complacent bumpkin who thinks very lowly of himself and no self-pride but just follows the herd. Beware, the shepherd, despite all the seemingly cordial and charming smiles, has only one thing on his mind - to fatten the flock and to prepare for the slaughter! He has a vested interest. For vegetarians, there is the proverbial cash cow to milk. 

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Machines to aid, not replace?

I heard that the human race is redundant. The race is useless. They are dispensable. They are more of a nuisance. Putting a small segment of the population aside, the majority can be done away. We need to propel the human race forward with its knowledge, advancement in sciences, development of the arts and exploring of the spaces beyond the confines of our Milky Way. The way we act, we tend to create animosity and thrive on separating ourselves under banners of race, religion, skin colour, social class and what not. Workers are not reliable. Like Neanderthals, we fight, squabble over trivialities influenced by our animalistic instincts. 

Lost in Space
"It does not compute!"

The world is changing, but the only thing that holds us down are people themselves. Despite the easy access to a plethora of information at their fingertips for them to peruse, judge and form their opinions, we opt to stay ignorant and behave like zombies, wandering aimlessly to the wand of their leaders. Maybe the overloading of data makes us dull.

For example, many of the jobs that we do are repetitive. It does not need much cognitive power to go on. Collecting cash at a toll booth, dispensing carpark tickets, ordering food and even preparing standard legal documents, we do not need people. With the correct algorithms, responsive, obedient, not-talking-back artificial intelligence (AI) can do the trick; minus the medical leaves, union strike and post-holiday absences from work!

Things are already moving that way. If we are casual with our desires to learn a new skill, go to YouTube. If one needs to learn the guitar, look no further than for videos on that subject. If one wants to buy a faulty part in your machinery, forget the local hardware owner to source for you. If we know the model of your device, the components and their sellers are just literally a screen away. Have you heard of the guy who learned swimming through YouTube and completing his triathlon? It is true. Amazing.
Surely, humankind is not to take all these lying down. We naturally did not come to be crowned as the most successful species on Earth for nothing. In spite of the presence of bigger, more ferocious and older species, we have come out tops. A new working class will undoubtedly emerge as machine wreckers and AI hackers. Man will rebound.

Lest we not forget, our steadfast confidence in artificial intelligence in lifting us to the skies may have brought us down. As we await with bated breaths the investigation results of the ill-fated Boeing 737 Max flights, there is still a glimmer of hope in the duel between machine and Man.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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You need tragedy in life!

Inside Out ( Animation; 2015)


Wow, Pixar is going cerebral now, dwelling into the realm of neuropsychology! After telling stories about toys, cars, sea creatures, bugs and monsters, there are literally playing with emotions now. Their latest offering is about the going-ons of traits in the mind, the little voices in the head that control our final action!

It shows this through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl as we see her grow from a baby. Life was bliss, all about joy and learning till her parents decide to migrate from icy cold hockey loving Minnesota to sunny San Francisco. The new environment, school, friends (lack of) and the shoe box townhouse proved too much for Riley, the protagonist, to handle.

We learn that the brain is controlled by 5 basic emotions - Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. Then there is core memory which stores up thoughts for the long term. The child’s brain builds islands of personality based on her everyday learning and other life input. Occasionally there is a train of thought. Yes, a train which transports thoughts! 

At that tender age of 11, joy (happiness) seem to be most important thing in her life. So, with the adverse turn of events after their transfer to San Francisco, and sadness takes over Riley’s life, Joy goes into overdrive to save the day.

After a wild ride to the crypts and crevices of the grey matter and beyond and the chance meeting of Riley’s long forgotten imaginary friend, Bing Bong, and Riley almost running away from home, sanity prevailed. Joy soon realised that in order for a person to function at all cylinders, all kinds of emotions need to play its role. Being happy alone is everything in life!

Heart, brain, liver and soul

I remember one of my classmates, KT, asking a teacher when we were in Form 2. It was a Malay language class. And the guy had a coarse way of demanding an answer to his question.

He asked,  “Why are the people so stupid? Why do people say, ‘jatuh hati’ when you fall in love, ‘patah hati’ when you are heart-broken or falling out of love?” trying to sound like a smart alec. “We think with our brain, not liver!” (Hati is liver in the Malay language)

Sounds like a simple question but believe me, it is not. Greek philosophers have been arguing that the soul a person is in the heart or the mind. It was Galen who first proposed the tripartite division of souls; the rational one in the brain, the spiritual one in the heart and appetitive one in the liver.

As love and lust are forms of desire just as appetite satisfies the culinary desires of an individual, they must have bundled to arise from the liver. So, the message is, do not listen to heart, do not rationalise the relationship by overthinking. As long as she can satisfy your appetite, gustatory, i.e., go for it.  As they say, the way to the man’s heart is through his stomach! And he can stomach her, that is.

N.B. 'Berhati perut' interestingly means 'showing compassion' in another Malay proverb.

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