I had recorded a short video while we were traveling by car in the ghats some days ago. Somehow I recorded it upside down and to my amazement, it looks much cooler that way. See for yourself! (Watch in fullscreen 1080p HD)
The sky feels as though it's a sea ..
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Recently saw Piku. Shouldn't have made Amitabh look fat, it doesn't suit him. Good acting, esp Irrfan. Fav scenes - the one in which Irrfan Khan shouts Choop! when people around him are arguing - and the one in which the maid comes back to work at the end, what nerve she has! On a serious note, it's a breath of fresh air to watch a believable portrayal of a "normal" family. I still can't relate to Amitabh's character though, where do such ultra-crazy-liberal fathers exist?
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this song is pure bliss and lull inducing. heard it four years ago. Vienna by Matt Costa.
Sick of reading gruesome news about acts of violence towards men, women and children everyday, I thought of a grand solution to this problem once and for all. No, it's not better laws and their strict implementation. Neither it is teaching the principles of Buddha and Gandhi to the masses, hoping that they will grow up towards non-violence. People can go astray anytime. I wanted a foolproof answer.
Steven Pinker says that human violence has surprisingly declined and
"we may be living in the most peaceable era in human existence."
But I think humans should strive towards taking this issue head-on rather than waiting passively for world-peace.
Gun rights advocates say "Guns don't kill people, people do". I agree, so let's fix the people.
Here is the plan. Study the brain activity during acts of
aggression/violence towards other living beings. Identify the chemical
reactions and then come up with a new medicine that would make anyone who is injected with it non-violent. Sure, situation of personal and group conflicts could occur any time, but no one ever has thoughts of physically harming another person. They could choose to communicate logically, communicate nonsensically, or choose not to communicate at all .. but no actual violence. No violence at personal level will "automatically" result in no violence at international level (no more wars with guns and drones). I think Bill Gates should fund such venture rather than anti-ageing research which I think has less of use to human race as a whole. Well, not really. Anti-ageing research is useful too, otherwise how will humans travel light-years of distances trying to reach newer planets without dying in between? But overall the problem of violence seems more critical and resulting in greater good to me.
I know, it sounds crazy. Brain is not a computer despite the similarities. The problem is not as easy as finding a bug in a piece of software and fix some lines of codes. But let's assume that through Herculean efforts, our neurologists manage to find a permanent solution to physical violence without side-effects on other brain functions. What will be the issues once that milestone is reached?
First, we need a plan to inject every human with this Medicine of Peace. Biggest hurdle will be to convince everyone to get injected. In today's times, some people don't even trust vaccines, so how can we hope they will trust this?
What would be main challenges any such peace-plan will face?
1. Violation of personal freedom
I agree. But there is no other way to fix this problem, is there? We have to collectively understand that however well-meaning a person might be, there could be times at which slip-ups may happen resulting in violence. Hence we need to temporarily give up personal freedom, for the sake of humanity.
Some people might argue that only known violent criminals should be administered this medicine. Kind of like "sterilization of stray dogs" if you pardon the example. But this will create problems for these persons when they get out of jail, unless they are well versed in self-defense. Other people could exploit them.
2. Rogue elements
Practically speaking it's not possible to inject every human at the same time. World population is 7.x Billion
right now and we don't have a database of all the people. Even if we
had a database of every country's citizens and each country manages to
inject every known person with it, there will still be a number of
people hiding and waiting for everyone to turn non-violent and then
attacking them for their own benefits.
Another possibility is that the politicians could form a nexus and make all the citizens non-aggressive and then commit a lot of crimes, because there will be no physical retaliation.
Both the situations can really be disastrous.
3. What about animals?
People might argue that if all the humans become non-aggressive, what if jungle/sea animals
take control of the world after observing that no one is trying to harm
them? Frankly, I don't think this will actually happen. Planet of the Apes will not happen because (IMO) animals don't have tendency to harm humans, as long as we don't disturb them.
4. Who will go first?
Obviously, Indian government will not allow administration of any such solution until Pakistan does it, and vice a versa. Only a stupid would want to send letters of condemnation when the enemy is busy firing guns. This diplomatic deadlock will not allow any progress towards this goal.
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How to surmount these challenges? I can't think of any solution at the moment. Perhaps any such universal plan will have to take place after the next world war when our population has reduced to a large extent (I hope this doesn't happen, but WW3 is a real possibility) and people are more prone to act sensibly and easier to convince since their number is smaller.
It is super ironic that in order to have a non-violent society, we first need to have a massive war!
Besides the above issues there is one other crucial issue. Even though the anti-aggression medicine will make everyone non-violent, what if aliens attack us tomorrow. We can't sit defenseless. Brains should still be capable to use force in self-defense.
So may be making such a medicine and giving it to everyone is not a sound plan.
So last weekend four of us planned to go for a one day trip to Hehuanshan mountain in central Taiwan.
We left via car from Taipai at ~10 pm, rested once in the night and were in time for the sunrise at 5:30 am. It was windy and chilly there at 4°C.
Our route to sunrise spot, walked up a small hill to reach the top (red)
Pre-dawn
Turtle shaped cloud gliding across
Mystic Haveli
Lenticular clouds on the left
The atmosphere was quite refreshing hues in both sky and on land were awesome. In fact not even slight brightness correction was required in any of the photos! We stopped by at a few locations to take snaps.
just perfect
Clouds across the cliff (Watch in full-screen HD to get better feel.)
After having breakfast at a roadside place we went to see a place called Qingjing farm It looked beautiful on the net so we decided to check it out. When we reached there, a large family crowd was buying entry tickets (200 NT/person).
Entry to QuinJing farm
inside
It was scenic, and very well maintained.
Each sheep has an identification number stitched to its ears.
After entering, we went straight to a place where there was sitting arrangement for ~200 people around a "sheep castle". A guy from New Zealand was handing the whole show and gave us the idea of life on a sheep farm. The sun had turned unbearable now and clouds had vanished. After watching the sheep show we were feeling exhausted and decided to ditch another show (which was about horses) and return after wandering a bit Everywhere I saw people were busy getting clicked getting their money's worth of FB likes perhaps, but hey, who am i to judge ..
After getting out of the farm we decided to return to Taipei but via a different route (towards Yilan) which turned out to be not so wise decision. It took us a lot of time to cover the same distance through mountainous path. Temperature dropped a few notches and at times it was too foggy to see the road.
So there seems to be a class of humour called 'Jewish humour'. Had a good chuckle at the following ..
A young housewife living in the town of Chełm had a very strange occurrence. One morning, after buttering a piece of bread she accidentally dropped it on the floor. To her amazement, it fell buttered side up. As everyone knows, whenever a buttered piece of bread is dropped on the floor, it always falls buttered side down; this is like a law of physics. But on this occasion it had fallen buttered side up, and this was a great mystery which had to be solved. So all the Rabbis and elders and wise men of Chełm were summoned together and they spent three days in the synagogue fasting and praying and debating this marvelous event among themselves. After those three days they returned to the young housewife with this answer: "Madam, the problem is that you have buttered the wrong side of the bread."
