Monday, January 10, 2005

Deductive thinking

Everybody knows that we are the absolute tops. I mean we invented pizza, not to mention shoving the MIR space station right out there. We decomposed the DNA into selective & sequential base pairs, and fought apartheid with gusto. In principle, we are nice things enjoying our tea & prising institutions of virtue - things also of our own invention. We make movies that revolve around the resilience of the human spirit - we may be down, but not quite out - to get an Oscar. Everybody stands up and claps, as some super thespian expresses her gratitude to mothers and the like. Nice & proper.

Glorious, if you ask me.

Tsunamis, therefore, are not for us. They are for lower forms of carbon.

3 comments:

Usha said...

Hey hey hey...I do not think anyone is saying that we need a special treatment from nature. Exactly as you mentioned, we seem to be absolute tops - and when you are just about to fell that you are in control, something like this happens and you are completely shocked out of all that complacency; that you are perhaps still not the fittest and perhaps there is a lot more of survival stuff to be learnt.
Tsunamis are not ok for anyone - if we can help it...if you know what I mean!

S! said...

Yes, Tsunamis are not okay for anyone. But thats really, in the context of the post - cryptic though it was, perhaps - a secondary issue. Here are the two things I wanted to write about:

First, humans as an entity both separate from nature & superior to other forms of life and everything else. It is the most blatant & longest lasting wool over our eyes. Our idea of the world is so much about what the world is to us, or what is our role in it & the like. We are consumed by ourselves in our thoughts, action etc starting at the very basic "I" going on to "mankind". There is an inherent dichotomy in the way we conceptualize this world. And that is unfortunate & is a source of our many sorrows.

Second, if we really valued human life all that much, we'd have no wars. And we have hundreds of them in the name of filmsy isms & other causes coming out of fat books. We would not amass weapons & have a formidable military budgets.

And it is precisely because of all this, that we need to be sober & wipe those tears of conspicuous compassion. Outside of our family in most cases, the Tsunami was news & it killed lakhs of human beings. The fact also remains that if you contribute to the relief effort, you save on tax with the added benefit of feeling good about yourself.

Perhaps, for the benefit of the truly good hearts amongst us, I should change all that "we" to "some of us", but I felt it is not going be a very substantial difference.

S!

Usha said...

ah, sure...I get you drift......if you know what I mean....