Warp and Woof

We are all bounded on this earth and in this universe. Our speed is limited by the speed of light. So also, is our fate bounded and challenged by a certain invisible boundary?

These days I have been toying with the questions of our fate versus our free will. Which one is stronger, which one is more effective? Or more importantly which one has a greater role to play in governing our lives.

People have asked unanswerable questions since the dawn of times. Some ask for the proof of the existence of God. Some ask for the exact nature of the atom. Some ask for the structure of universe. Some ask for the possibility of time dilation or time travel. And all of us, almost at some point of our lives want to know what the future holds for us.

Think about it. Before the results are out, you wish (just to kill the suspense) you knew how you faired in the examination. After a job interview, through a nail-biting waiting period, we all wish to know if we grabbed the job or missed the bus. In the middle of the suspense thriller (not all , but just me) I want to know what happens in the end.

But these are small ripples in a vast pond.

For a bigger thing such as wanting to know the future at very step of the journey, is something else. Just before we buy some stocks, we secretly hope and pray that the next day stock market would bring some good news for us. Astrology and predictions existed in all culture and religion. Even to this day, we look at the stars, and wonder if there position is sky could govern our lives. We believe that if we know the future, we can prepare ourselves for the battle ahead. And yet again, knowing too much about the future can always distort our views. Why so?

Knowing our future can inadvertently lead us towards its realization of the prophecy. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, three witches prophesy his doom, which eventually ushers his downfall and death. Oedipus rex by Sophocles talks of prophecy being fulfilled and thus negates the influence of free will. And in both Macbeth and Oedipus Rex, the truth is known (predicted), and it becomes unavoidable to counter ones destiny. Hinduism represents the future and our action in terms of Karma “Fate is past karma; free-will is present karma. Both are really one, that is, karma, though they may differ in the matter of time. There can be no conflict when they are really one.”

Since past present and future are three different times – we might as well see what physics says about them. In Newton’s mechanistic "clockwork" universe everything proceeded deterministically, including human behavior. There is first a cause and then an effect. Hence there is not much chance of evading Fate or Destiny, both are inevitable and there can be only one conclusion to any event. When Einstein discovered neither time nor space are as we perceive them, but are intertwined in a 4-dimensional continuum. Next Quantum physics found that, far from following principles of cause and effect, reality at its fundamental level is inherently in-deterministic. And now we cannot even predict what an atom is going to behave under a give circumstance. Then what about the prediction of our lives, our future? How much truth is there in that Gypsy woman’s words, who looked through her crystal ball and charged 20 bucks for one question?

Despite the randomness of the sub-atomic universe the perceived world consisting of the effect of huge numbers of these micro-events does behave deterministically to a large degree. For example, if you save a few dollars each week your bank balance will grow, if you don't wrap in cold weather you'll likely catch cold.

Does the gamut of small decisions that we take on a daily basis together influence our lives and change our total individual history? Or is it the bigger events, or big drastically life chancing decisions that make the greater impact. After all you may lose your entire fortune in Vegas casinos in one night and land up being in rags the next morning.

There are three basic positions we can adopt on the question of free will: either we have absolute free will, or we have no free will at all, or we have a certain measure of free will. The idea that we are absolutely free is clearly far-fetched, for there are certain obvious restrictions on our freedom: we are not free to do anything that we are physically incapable of doing. For example, we cannot change the past, breathe under water, or fly like a bird. In addition to these physical limitations, there are also psychological limitations on our freedom: our mental conditioning and our numerous habits and instincts play a major role in determining our actions. Some people might say that all these constraints are so powerful that we have no control over them whatsoever and have no free will at all. This extreme position is known as fatalism, predeterminism, or 'hard' determinism. According to fatalism, we cannot choose to do anything other than what we do choose to do; everything we do is predestined, and our feeling of being free is an illusion. Fatalism is impossible to prove, but it's also impossible to disprove, because a fatalist would say that whatever we do or say to try and disprove fatalism is itself determined by fate!

So are we locked in that gilded cage called Fate inside of which we can move freely which we call our Free Will as long as we are inside the cage we can choose to do anything but being bounded by Fate, we can never really get out of captivity.

If free will is a voluntary act, it is also controlled by our nature, which is predetermined by our genetic make up. But boiling everything down to one thing – there seems to be no one outcome of a dice throw. When probability comes into picture, everything has a chance of occurring or not occurring. Every future that we know or don’t know will have its chance of happening and not happening. But who has the hand in making it happen/ not happen?

I’d like to say it’s the individual.

Yet again, it’s another one of those Catch 22 conundrum.

The Sunflower Field

The train stopped with a metallic screech.

It was a hot sweltering afternoon of mid march; the sky was clear blue, fields of yellow sunflower stretched as far as eyes could see from the train window. Jas sat up wriggling his eyes and blinking at the field of sparkling yellow sunflower. Afternoon stupor has set in and his fellow passengers were asleep.

Jas got up, stretching his arms and legs. Might as well take a breath of fresh air outside he thought. Jas climbed down from the train. The train has stopped in the middle of nowhere. Most of the people are asleep , their windows shut to keep out the afternoon sun. Jas had a strange feeling of being alone in this train, even though it was full of people. Suddenly the world seemed to be devoid of sound or movement. There is no wind, Jas thought, that is why this eerie silence.

He waved irritably at the dragon fly which had come from nowhere, flying in front of his face.

Jas looked at the sunflower field that lay before him, the flowers in full bloom facing up at the sun, all in a row. He stared at them. Suddenly he noticed a movement in the field. The plants in the first row in front of him began to move. Jas blinked. Maybe he was daydreaming. But surely, the plants could not have moved. But there it was, the plants had moved to create a small path through the field. Jas tapped his forehead, he was dreaming to be sure. Maybe the path was already there and he did not see it the first time. Curious, he walked towards the fields. There it was, a neat way amidst the sunflower field. He was tempted to go further into the fields.

But then he must be careful. He did not know how long the train will stop. Jas turned to looked at the train, it didn’t look like the train will start any time soon. May be he could take a short walk down the field, Jas thought. He started walking. The sunflower trees were quite tall, reaching 2 or 3 inches above his head. He kept on walking down the field pushing away the branches and stems with his hands. He began to sweat from the heat. Jas halted and looked behind. He had walked a good 15 mins. The train was still there. But, the path behind him was gone. Jas looked again carefully. The path through which he walked was not there anymore, but he could still see the path in front of him. But surely the plants couldn’t have moved. But where did the path go? Then how could it have disappeared.

Jas stood thinking. Suddenly, without warning, the train pulled forward. He started to panic. Then the train began to move slowly. Noooo, he said. He ran forward, waving his hands in the air. Stop. Stop.

But the wheels of the train has already started moving. He broke into a run now. But the sunflower stems were thick and strong. He began to use both his arms to push the stem and branches away. But it was difficult to run through the plants. Was the field so densely planted before? He thought suddenly. Were the trees so closely placed? The train had already started moving away. He began to push the trees wildly in all directions. But they were like a fortress of green. He began to move his arms wildly. The train quickly picked up speed and disappeared in the horizon. Jas stopped, panting with exhaustion and fatigue. Suddenly he realized that he was very tired.

Jas sat down to catch his breath. His heart was racing wildly. The trees began to loom over him, sunflowers looking down at him. Yes, looking down, he realized with horror, the sunflowers were looking down at him. Or maybe he was hallucinating. He rubbed his eyes. No, still the flowers were drooping down from the step facing him. He looked around him. There was an absolute silence. Not even a single fly buzzing in the air.

He moved to the right of were he was sitting. The flowers turned right, facing him. Suddenly he wanted to get out of the fields immediately.

Jas began to crouch on all fours trying to squeeze through the plants. But the foliage was denser below, leaves and thick hairy stem stalks grazed against him. No, it was impossible to get through the plants. He looked up again. The flowers were still looking down at him. The plants seem to crowd around him. He could hardly see the sky. His heart raced. He tried to stand up. But his legs began to shake with fear.

The heat was terrible. He began to wipe sweat off his face and brows. Jas had a sudden urge to lie down and close his eyes. Maybe this was all a bad dream. Maybe this was his imagination. Maybe he didn’t miss the train. Maybe he wasn’t there at all. He closed his eyes and opened it; he was still there. He pinched himself, no he was not dreaming. Or maybe that was also in the dream. His began to feel tired like he had never felt before. It was the heat, he thought, he was silly. He leaned against the plants and began to rest. Rest is what he needed now he thought to himself. His eyelids began to feel heavy. He tried to keep them open. The plants seem to come still closer. The flowers seem to grow bigger. He did not care anymore. He tried to push the foliage away, but his arms wouldn’t move. Something began sapping all his energy and his desire to move. Deep down, a voice within him was telling him to close his eyes and not to worry.

Maybe he should sleep. It was becoming hard to keep his eyes open. His vision was blurring. He thought he saw stems twine around his feet, his hands and his neck. But he did not feel anything so he just laid there. Then he gave up and closed his eyes. The last thing he saw was the trees moving closer, so close that he could see sunflower right in front of his eyes. He could smell them now the flowers were so close, he could see the brown whorls, the yellow petals. Strangely as they drew closer the flower petals appeared dark red. Everything was blurring out-of-focus fast.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Carcinogenic

A spoon full of sugar went inside my coffee.
And a generous helping of hazelnut flavored whole milk.

You picked up the sweetener
carefully stirring the spoon with your long finger, manicured nails gleaming.

"Did you know that is carcinogenic?" I said.
"Well, my dear," you said, giving me your Greek Goddess look and pointing at my coffee cup,
"Did you know that is full of fat?"

Fate Monkey

I always thought that Fate was a funny guy.
It turns out that Fate is not even a human. Its a funky monkey with wicked brain. Even as I am writing this post, the Fate monkey is jumping from trees and making funny faces at me. It has been throwing twigs, stones and mud at me for quite some time and it has even snatched my food from my hand.
Not to forget the slap in the face. (ouchh!)
And now, again, it is planning some sadist plot , a joke, all at my expense.
(sob, sob)

So, fate monkey, what does your dark and twisted sense of humor have in store for me now?

Riddles, conundrums, illusions and projected self-reflections, etc.

The above painting is by M.C. Escher, a Dutch painter, famous for creating visual riddles, playing with pictorially logical but visually impossible. He called them the “impossible structures” such as the one above where featureless pod-people traverse staircases that seem to go two directions simultaneously. Eyes see illusions, but the mind perceives them as real. Slowly, as science discovers new frontiers, we come to think of our universe as one with 11 dimensions of which we can only see three (four, if we consider time). All the other dimensions are hidden from us, and just like a fish views the world through a cone we see the world in 3 dimensions.As was written by Edwin Abbott, the Shakespearean scholar, we are all flat-landers. We see the world as we want it to be, as a reflection of our own selves. When we are happy, the day is bright and sunny, people we meet are balmy, but when we are sad and morose, we curse the day, the weather, suspect a sinister plot being hatched against us. We are, in a way, trapped in our mind. We also perceive people we meet as how we want them to be and not what they really are. We superimpose our views on the image of the world we live in. Infact, the blue of the sky , the green of the grass is how our eyes mix colors. A simple optical illusion is that of the mirage, or the motion picture. Every movie that we see, gives an illusion of a continuous flow, when it is a conglomeration of images that our brain cannot register.Some say that the universe is a hologram and our existence itself is an illusion. Our notion of time and space is an illusion of our senses. The atom, itself gives the illusion of being sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave. As Heisenberg states, we can never determine the position and velocity of an object at the same time and everything has an inherent quality of uncertainty to it. We look at the railway tracks and in the horizon the two parallel lines seems to meet or even the horizon itself is a line that recedes when approached. Mirrors and glass project the illusion or distortions, the best example of which are kaleidoscope (creating multiple reflections) and the pseudoscope , stereoscope (reversing the depth perception). We experience the natural world through our five senses. And yet everything that we see, that we can feel, that we can taste, that we can hear, that we can perceive with the eyes, everything is temporal.

"Everything in the picture seems to be in place, yet we seem to be in a strange universe where water flows uphill. What is wrong with it? Well, nothing is wrong with it. It is just our minds trying to equate the lines Escher drew with what our senses perceive of the real world."