After workouts in the gym, me and some of my teammates usually go to Taramani to get some meat and drink some fruit juice, etc.. A couple of days back we were in Tarams having a glass of juice when we started talking about what each of us wanted to do 10 years down the line. The popular opinion was to open up a business that offers a higher potential for income than conventional jobs. I have been clear about what kind of career I want for atleast 3 years now. The details keep evolving with time, but the basic idea remained the same. But when we were talking about what options we have and how much money we can make through each of those, I started to explore my options. I still knew I would go into a career of research. But this time I really felt the need to justify my decision to go for one thing and not the other. We drank the juice, got chicken fried rice parceled and returned to insti. When I was going back to my room, I started asking a lot of questions but finally landed on one that seemed to be the most important- What is my life all about?
These kinds of questions have no single answer. We can have groups of people debating forever without ever coming to an agreement. Not surprisingly, these are the kind of questions religions try to answer. A lot of people are satisfied with answers given to them by someone else, I am not. I decided to go atleast as far as I can comprehend. I have found that the best way to propose answers to this kind of questions is by comparing our modern civilization to tribals or animals. A lot of questions, including those about religion and ethics can be investigated by this kind of comparisons (I've been planning to write on these, but never got around to do that). So I started to look for the things that make us different from animals.
I believe that the most important factors that have shaped human history are the following: comfort, domination and passion.
From living in caves to peacing out in AC rooms, from walking for miles to driving cars, from hunting animals to industrialized farming, it has always been about leading a comfortable life. That's the major reason for doing science and developing new technology.
War- political, religious or otherwise, is always about one group dominating another. Very rarely two countries may go to war because of reasons like scarcity of resources and such, but even in this case, one country wants to live at the expense of the other. The point of most sports or even job positions is the same, showing that you are better than someone else.
Comfort and domination are something that we share in common with even animals. Animals also want to have food without trying too hard, they want to sit in shade, lay down and sleep, etc... A lot of animal groups have alpha and beta males that are the most powerful in the group, they enjoy more privileges than the others. There is another thing that affects our lives- emotions. Everyone wants to be happy. I prefer not to talk about it here.
But the third factor I mentioned- passion to do things, is one thing that is specific to humans.Animals care first about their survival. Once there is no threat to survival, they seek comfort and/or domination over the others in their group. They just do whatever they feel like without really bothering about anything else. But with us it has been a different story. We have long term goals.We want to do things, not because someone asked us to do it, not because our survival depends on it, not because we expect something out of it, but just because we want to do it. Animals, even the smartest ones like say apes, don't really bother about any long term stuff. They live in the moment, and maybe plan ahead out of caution when there seems to be some threat, but that's all.
This passion is why the human race is the way it is today. For as long as we have existed, people always sat down and said, "Ok, This thing is interesting. I think I can do something about this. I will spend more time on this and see what I'll get." Sometimes it was to make life comfortable, sometimes it was to win wars, sometimes to impress others, but a lot of times we decided to do things for no reason other than that we wanted to do something. This was how philosophy was born, this was how science was born. Suppose everyone stuck to religion, spirituality, ethics etc and no one bothered to venture on new ideas. Suppose no one ever tried to think beyond the absolute requirements for survival and the rules prescribed by religion. In that case, we would still be living in caves, probably without even inventing fire or weapons.
Another thing that we do is, we try to define some values and stick to them. Like say, honesty. Or gratitude. Or plain sadism. Why do we have such values? Why do we try to stick to them? The only answer I can find is, because we choose to. Animals don't seem to care much about values. Atleast not on an individual basis. Very often an entire species has a particular trait, such as loyalty for dogs. They are probably just made that way. We, humans, on the other hand are not. We decide what values we want to have in our life.
So finally, what I realized is, it is our passions and our values that make us different from animals. Do I really want to be different from animals? Or rather, why should I be different from animals? Simply because I can be and I have chosen to. That has always been the most important thing about humans. We choose to do things, we choose to follow some rules. If we, as a species, stop being passionate about our goals or give up all our values and just live like whatever we want to live like, our whole civilization would collapse into anarchy and we'll live like animals (ofcourse, if an individual chooses to have a radical set of ideals, the society, whose most important value is to punish those who fall out of line, would just kill the individual).
Now my choices are justified. I have some values that restrict what kind of careers I can choose. I have a passion for some particular thing. I can go after only money and try to live comfortably, but then I'd be ditching my passion and my values, which are what make me human. These days there is a lot of stuff going around about careers, what you should do in life and all. I'd never tell anyone what to do and what is right, because the other person has his own set of values and passions and what is important to him may be just a load of crap to me. If you have patiently gone through the whole article, I urge you to take a few more minutes to sit down and list a set of values that you want to live by and make a very small list of things that you are most passionate about. Stick them both on your wall and try to live exactly by the lists for just a couple of days. Most people cannot. But after you try this, you will definitely have a better clarity about what you are and what you want.
These kinds of questions have no single answer. We can have groups of people debating forever without ever coming to an agreement. Not surprisingly, these are the kind of questions religions try to answer. A lot of people are satisfied with answers given to them by someone else, I am not. I decided to go atleast as far as I can comprehend. I have found that the best way to propose answers to this kind of questions is by comparing our modern civilization to tribals or animals. A lot of questions, including those about religion and ethics can be investigated by this kind of comparisons (I've been planning to write on these, but never got around to do that). So I started to look for the things that make us different from animals.
I believe that the most important factors that have shaped human history are the following: comfort, domination and passion.
From living in caves to peacing out in AC rooms, from walking for miles to driving cars, from hunting animals to industrialized farming, it has always been about leading a comfortable life. That's the major reason for doing science and developing new technology.
War- political, religious or otherwise, is always about one group dominating another. Very rarely two countries may go to war because of reasons like scarcity of resources and such, but even in this case, one country wants to live at the expense of the other. The point of most sports or even job positions is the same, showing that you are better than someone else.
Comfort and domination are something that we share in common with even animals. Animals also want to have food without trying too hard, they want to sit in shade, lay down and sleep, etc... A lot of animal groups have alpha and beta males that are the most powerful in the group, they enjoy more privileges than the others. There is another thing that affects our lives- emotions. Everyone wants to be happy. I prefer not to talk about it here.
But the third factor I mentioned- passion to do things, is one thing that is specific to humans.Animals care first about their survival. Once there is no threat to survival, they seek comfort and/or domination over the others in their group. They just do whatever they feel like without really bothering about anything else. But with us it has been a different story. We have long term goals.We want to do things, not because someone asked us to do it, not because our survival depends on it, not because we expect something out of it, but just because we want to do it. Animals, even the smartest ones like say apes, don't really bother about any long term stuff. They live in the moment, and maybe plan ahead out of caution when there seems to be some threat, but that's all.
This passion is why the human race is the way it is today. For as long as we have existed, people always sat down and said, "Ok, This thing is interesting. I think I can do something about this. I will spend more time on this and see what I'll get." Sometimes it was to make life comfortable, sometimes it was to win wars, sometimes to impress others, but a lot of times we decided to do things for no reason other than that we wanted to do something. This was how philosophy was born, this was how science was born. Suppose everyone stuck to religion, spirituality, ethics etc and no one bothered to venture on new ideas. Suppose no one ever tried to think beyond the absolute requirements for survival and the rules prescribed by religion. In that case, we would still be living in caves, probably without even inventing fire or weapons.
Another thing that we do is, we try to define some values and stick to them. Like say, honesty. Or gratitude. Or plain sadism. Why do we have such values? Why do we try to stick to them? The only answer I can find is, because we choose to. Animals don't seem to care much about values. Atleast not on an individual basis. Very often an entire species has a particular trait, such as loyalty for dogs. They are probably just made that way. We, humans, on the other hand are not. We decide what values we want to have in our life.
So finally, what I realized is, it is our passions and our values that make us different from animals. Do I really want to be different from animals? Or rather, why should I be different from animals? Simply because I can be and I have chosen to. That has always been the most important thing about humans. We choose to do things, we choose to follow some rules. If we, as a species, stop being passionate about our goals or give up all our values and just live like whatever we want to live like, our whole civilization would collapse into anarchy and we'll live like animals (ofcourse, if an individual chooses to have a radical set of ideals, the society, whose most important value is to punish those who fall out of line, would just kill the individual).
Now my choices are justified. I have some values that restrict what kind of careers I can choose. I have a passion for some particular thing. I can go after only money and try to live comfortably, but then I'd be ditching my passion and my values, which are what make me human. These days there is a lot of stuff going around about careers, what you should do in life and all. I'd never tell anyone what to do and what is right, because the other person has his own set of values and passions and what is important to him may be just a load of crap to me. If you have patiently gone through the whole article, I urge you to take a few more minutes to sit down and list a set of values that you want to live by and make a very small list of things that you are most passionate about. Stick them both on your wall and try to live exactly by the lists for just a couple of days. Most people cannot. But after you try this, you will definitely have a better clarity about what you are and what you want.
