Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Aldehyde

"My love affair with everywhere, was innocent, why do you care?" -Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wet Sand

I am still reeling under the shock of the weighty revelations that I received this morning. That of people actually being interested in what I write. Strangely enough, dear reader, you seem to read, and actually like most of the blogs that spew forth from my rather modestly priced laptop, and rather immodestly retarded brain. Equally strange, I seem to have received 4900 hits for the 153 blog posts I have written, and assuming the highly overpaid engineers at Google aren't complete idiots and know something of what they are doing, they must be unique.

Which means that an average of 30 odd people would actually take some time off to read the stuff that I write. Which should make me suffocate under the burden of an unbelievably large quantum of expectations.

Yeah right!!

A common complaint is that no one can actually understand what I write. Presumably, they just read my blog because they're preparing for the GRE, GMAT or any other acronymous(read shit) examination that requires a healthy knowledge of English. Considering that I never let my prose adumbrate the exigency of my epistles, I dont feel like anyone would hope to gain any sort of reasonable knowledge of English, or anything else for that matter from my blog. So then, why do people read it? Let's face it, most blogs really don't talk about anything in particular, other than that of opinions. And the larger the number of opinions that are present, the larger the number of interested readers logging on to get their fill.

But that's not the point at all.

The point is, being a polyvore or a polymath(I forget which is which) enables me to write on probably every topic in the world. Which probably isn't a good thing, since I do not happen to be a hot girl. Considering that there isn't any dearth of hot girls anymore in the world(seriously...what the hell happened to average-looking females in this country?!) I would be out of business if any one of them figured out what a blog was. OR how to log into their google account AND then create a Blogger account.

So, I guess I would continue to extol the virtues of writing, on any range of topics, ranging from alcohols to aldehydes, and from zebras to, well, bras. And all manner of exhortations aside, the world economy really wouldn't engage as much attention as the sort of explosive chemistry that would allow you to make TNT using some ice and a bottle of shampoo.

Or I could just write about bras...

Research

How to Change the World

You might remember the essays you used to write in junior school. One of the topics that would require you to scratch your head was that of Ambition. Or, as your junior school teachers tended to elucidate for the benefit of your puerile mind..” What do you want to be when you grow up” 

Now most people want to be doctors or engineers (yes.. that’s the Great Indian Dream). A few want to be rockstars or astronauts. A few want to travel the world and meet new and exotic species of camels. But every so often, some weird kid decides to write an essay on how he would like to change the world. Predictably this kid gets lambasted by his teacher, scores the lowest grade on the paper, and gets a severe bout of head shaking and fist pumping from his parents. But what is really surprising, is the statistics of it all. You see, with an occurrence this rare, in schools across the world, you can be sure that there would be a million such weirdos who would do something like this (Pareto distribution..huh??). And for the million who have the dream in their head, there would be at least a hundred thousand with the necessary talent to pull it off.

But if everything ended there we would be living in an ideal world, and alcohol would be free of cost and professors would be your best friends and drinking buddies. It is really NOT an ideal world, as the most perceptive of you must have already figured out. It is a cancerous world, and we are all living out our own sad little versions of non Hodgkins lymphoma. The point is, of those hundred thousand weird kids who have the dream and the talent to change the world, only five would ever get the chance to make it happen. Three would die early in road accidents involving Yamaha bikes. One would die accidentally while trying to plug her hair dryer into a two pin socket with no earthing. And the ONE, would grow depressed, and question his motivation at every single point in his life.

In the end, that is what it all boils down to..motivation. Very few people with the wherewithal (the REAL talent, not the sort of shit that passes off as talent these days) to change the world are actually concerned about money, so there that goes down the drain. And even fewer are motivated by power and prestige and the ability to become their own personal version of God. What most people would like though, is recognition, and a little bit of appreciation.

And this is where everything falls apart. The world, you see, is made up of idiots. And in the end, if you are looking to them for motivation, you are bound to come up short in some respect or the other. Most people would not appreciate the changing of the world, albeit for the better, because most people love to be safely ensconced in the security of their own static world. Most people also tend to appreciate people like themselves, which means idiots would earn most of the acclaim from the other idiots of this world.

The motivation to change this world should not hinge on the appreciation or recognition you get from it. The world is a thankless creature, and would do anything to ensure the status quo is maintained. The motivation should hinge on your own personal satisfaction, dear weirdo, to be able to stand up to yourself one day, and say that you did it.

You changed the world.

Altruism

We have often heard the words human nature bandied about. These two words are used to cover everything from repetitive excesses of indulgence to rape and murder. We can allow ourselves to believe that whatever mistakes we commit, and whatever fraud we are guilty of can be explained away so easily because we are in effect the sort of flawed creatures we call human. In fact, this is so ingrained into our psychology there is a very famous saying in our society, we say, to err is human, and to forgive divine. We tend to associate our nature with the least desirable of our qualities. In essence, most humans tend to deviate towards evil, and this has been reflected to no small extent in our history and our religion.

If this is true, then what is most repugnant to human nature, would in fact be altruism. You see, what makes altruism so brilliant is that it bucks the trend.

Most, if not all humans, can in effect be categorised as being self centred. Now, wait a minute, you look at yourself, dear reader, and for all that you know, you are probably the most generous person in the world. Hell, you probably give more to charity than you save up in a year. But, keep in mind, you only do this because it makes you feel GOOD. It gives you the right to look down your nose at all those other idiots who seem to be wasting their lives (and a considerable part of their incomes) satisfying meaningless cravings. It allows you to scoff at materialistic pleasures and earthly avarice. The point is, dear reader, that in being GOOD, or probably BETTER than most, you are still acting in your own self interest.

Human nature then, can be defined as actions undertaken by us in our own self interest. Or so you would THINK.

Because, you see, what sets us apart(from animals and magic talking lizards) is the fact that we can be altruistic. And altruism isn;t just doing good, or doing the right thing. Altruism is doing the right thing even when there is no perceptible reward available for the same. And if there is a severe detriment to us for doing the right thing, then some of us still go ahead and do it. This is known as sacrifice, and is something that our religion and all of our mythology has gone into great detail on. Human beings are capable of great sacrifice, almost other worldly sacrifice, the sort of scrifice that you would normally reserve for epic tomes of fiction, like one of our fabled epics.

Now, after all of this dear reader, the question still remains. What exactly is human nature? And the only way to answer this is through a quasi-answer, something that does not satisfy the question at all.

You see, the only thing that is consistent in human nature is that it is random. And that is what makes us human. The fact that we can be utterly random. This allows us to make great sacrifices, or act in our own self interest. We will always deviate towards evil, the only thing that saves us from its overreaching clutches is that sometimes, spontaneously, and rather randomly, we decide to do good things.