Random Thoughts

'Humans are social animals'. A very preliminary notion which is imbibed in children in early classes in schools and more often than not just learnt by them. There is a very inherent sense of virtue in the innocence of children, the basic teachings given to them which I feel when looked back upon, no matter however much you have grown up, helps in making life simple, chilled and conscience-controlled. The more you grow up with a threshold sense of such childish virtue, balancing maturity with it, the more maturity exists in deepest of realities. Today I feel pretty much the same, wondering about human nature, basic instincts and reflecting back upon such imbibed thoughts which were not wondered upon when imbibed.

There was a bee hive formed on the second floor of our hostel yesterday, quite close to my room. Immediately there were diverse reactions observed, with almost everyone being concerned about the rather incredibly rapid development and foreseeable consequences, some getting scared, some getting pissed and some even admiring the brilliance of the hard working bees! There was visible the variety of instincts among different people. Anyway, the unanimous agreement (with an exception) was to solve the problem and somehow get rid of the hive, the only way seen visible as to burn the hive. After few unsuccessful attempts with petrol yesterday, the hive was cleared off today with an insecticide sprayed over the bees killing them all. All said and done, it was said that 'practical conditions demanded the action' and obviously anyone objecting it on the basis of emotional arguments would be a subject of mockery. What value does anything hold which has no relevance in practice? But the confusion being the determination of practicality. Subjectivity is inevitable even in determination of practicality. The dead bees now lay scattered in a sticky and messy honey-filled heath throughout our second floor, the hive vanished for no fault on their part, just that they seemed to be a 'practical threat' and inconvenience to us. 

Human behaviour clearly portrays the 'animal' part of us being socially so. There exists nothing above self interest and a mere threat to it or a subjective foresight of intrusion can lead people to the extremes of being defensive. This is where I feel the demarcation of strong and weak lies. The more defensive a person is to the so-considered-to-be intrusions or the more vulnerable (s)he feels, the more defensive (s)he becomes and the more (s)he bothers and reacts. This sometimes even results in aggressive approaches which I consider as the end point of defense i.e. the person becomes so weak and gives up on every other way and directly jumps to the ultimate defence - aggression. This is where practicality comes up as the alibi of the weak and justifies or rather portrays the weak as the strong, the not-to-mess-with kinds, the ones strong personality. Any problem if looked at without the inherent and inevitable fear of consequential loss of self interest, rationally and strongly, would not appear as a problem at all. This is the case where people get along with almost everything. Our inertia of rest makes us resist changes but once stabilized with the change we resist changes to such change. And such is the law of nature - 'nothing is permanent'. Life remains as nothing but the survival of the fittest, the strong and fearless, just that the traits of being fit, strong and fearless need to be understood and identified.

Another such trait protected by the 'overrated practicality' seems to be the abstract noun called as 'ego'. Inevitable as it seems, like every other existing observable thing in this world, it is best when kept at a balance, balance with the lack of ego. The harm principle appears to be the best ever thing in the world with respect to 'ego'. Ego is worst when it operates to the detriment of others but to some extent it is necessary to counter the 'overrated practicality' to survive. Ego often drives people to disrespect others and lack of it makes others walk over and use them. Excess of it creates differences among the best of friends and creates vacuum and lack of communication. Ego coupled with expectations arising from people create all the tensions and problems within close companions and subsequent 'communalism' just fans the fake fire, making it real. Anyway, the conclusive point being that it seldom feels sad observing the prevalence of supremacy of self interest over every other thing despite consequences of all kinds. It again comes to the basic question of normative structure of conscience - subjectivity in deciding the good and bad. However, the priority which i choose is a balance of metaphysical and practical. Practicality is not a vice in itself but when overrated to include a perverted sense of it to justify whatever the apparently and superficially powerful thinks practicality to be and one of the vices of such overrated practicality being that it makes people live in superficiality and they totally ignorant of the deep and actual state of affairs restrict their world merely to whatever exists in superficiality, to whatever is physically observable.

It seems that it is all about the time, tests, moot, exaggerated social life and the very many aspects of a 'professional college' that generate such thoughts, analysis and blog posts notwithstanding the immense workload, pausity of time and the perpetual tag of 'pending'. Probably I have been influenced by observing the application of diplomacy among people and the uncomparable concern for the overrating of 'compartmentalization and practicality' shown by people saving the world!