A Philosopher's Tale

This post is part of the "First Few Old Blog Posts" archive.
You could expect a certain lack of coherency/maturity from these posts.

Forgive me for being blatantly outright at the beginning but I must tell you that I believe I have endured more pain in my past than I would have thought possible. Pain that would leave scars which delude time ; memories that jump out of the blue to haunt what is left ; scrabbling to devour the last scraps of sanity left to feed the pain.
And what must one do then to go on?
Going on is a simple matter , don't mistake me. But what reply could you possibly have when you ask yourself "Why the fuck should you?"
Every action has a cause , every crime has a motive and at the end of the day , so does every life.

I wake up everyday not to the fresh morning air , but to the stark burden of reality. How many times I have found myself walking outside and realizing that it's really happening. I'm out there among everyone else. That this isn't some vivid dream or a thought turned into an image. Almost every step taken reminds me of a memory that I've long wanted to forget. But memories never do that , do they? At one point this crescendo of assaulting flashbacks traumatizes you so much that you push yourself to go sleep. Sleep ; where none of these evils can touch you. And then finally you realize that you've slept for almost the entire day. And every principle that you've built to utilize time productively has been thrown out of the window.

The key to my will propelling me forward is Philosophy. When you take away philosophy from me , is when I will find no difficulty in tying the noose again. But why philosophy? Because it is the only thing that adds a little meaning to a person's existence on earth. We buy coffee powder to make coffee. And that is the sole reason why coffee is powdered. If some power above is reserving us for a brew , I think we deserve the right to know whether it is tea or coffee.

What is the purpose of our existence?

I don't know. And that is why I cannot stop yet. I see my life as a race between this goal and death. The day someone cracks this final piece in the topology of understanding ourselves is when I will let myself guide my feet , instead of this desire. If I die before this happens then I will only find it sorry that my existence has come to an end without my knowledge consisting of why I ever existed in the first place. Why the universe bothered to instill life only to take it back without granting it this small gratification.

When you are such a philosopher , the meaning of every action changes. You don't see people walking in front of you anymore. What you see is countless unanswered questions instead. You question every event and every action until finally , you strip all meaning from the object itself and and you shrug , knowing that that cannot be correct , and so you start again , hoping to accommodate a better answer next time. And every theory thus formed gives you satisfaction as you inch one step further to reaching that last goal. The thought process of such a person is pitiful indeed. His sole motive being comprehension , he ends up questioning questions , theorizing on theories and searching to search. And even then , when he gets back up , you can clearly see the frustration on his face at having come nowhere close to the final piece.

He knows that he has been given life and whether he likes it or not , he must utilize this to the maximum by doing every act of good and standing by it. Take off your coat and give it someone in the cold. Is it so hard? Is it really so hard to oppose wrong and stand by it though it may compromise your position? He sees it as a duty , as a right when he was brought to life. But to what extent does his sense of judging what is right extend to? He knows this judgement is limited and so tries to expand it in every way possible by Philosophy. Do right , but first know what is right.

So what is Philosophy after all? What is this stupid thing that makes me live?
As Wikipedia says it , Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Problems approached by philosophy are done logically by applying reason , facts and evidence. Contrary to the stereotype that there can be infinite philosophies that can go against one and still appear rational , when two philosophies go against each other , one (or both) is usually wrong. Wordplay does not mask reason. By carefully approaching both philosophies , one (or both) can be ruled out. If not , then one (or both) is usually a fake philosophy

Fake philosophies are those which do not involve any form of logic , critical thinking , reason or some sort of relevant evidence in it's construction. I have the found the most reliable source of fake philosophies commonly as captions in Facebook profile pictures (those yolo swag fag types). You can't simply throw in some fancy words and expect your statement to be philosophically accurate. Again , a philosopher will always accept being proven wrong. He will be more interested in correcting his faulty statement rather than sadly brood over being wrong.

A problem that I face as a philosopher is that it is extremely hard to convert experiences into words. This problem is very common since most philosophies originate from certain experiences. We deliberately walk in the dark , trying to figure out why people are afraid of it. And then if we finally do strike upon some sort of meaning , we find it hard to convey this feeling of elation into words. Trying to see everything in a different light , that is our curse. You take a walk in the streets. Humans turn into storehouses of information. Buses turn into means for these piles of information to save energy and money. Money turn into  pieces of paper that has this strange power to get you what you need.

I envy those who do not need to understand more to move along in life. They say "who cares?" to every small question. It only fascinates me how they do so. I am not saying that such people are wrong , or ignorant or stupid. They are a different type of human. A type that will probably lead a more satisfied life. I call such people realists. They do not explore the intimidating limit of imagination. They don't like to guess as much as they like to prove. If only I had their mindset to console me , it would save me from this eternal frustration of trying to find answers all around.

It is indeed a trying state when you form theories about life every night before you sleep: hoping that life is an experiment in which some scientists threw you into a small virtual world with artificial robots all around pretending to be humans. Hoping that someday , a person will finally come up to you and say what enduring those days and nights finally meant.

I hope this post doesn't appear to be funny , strange or exaggerated because it wasn't written in such a mindset.

Quote : "Fuck you world , I'm alive"

EDIT : I was sorta depressed when I wrote this post. Do not judge me too harshly.
Also , thanks to Adithya for clearing out all the bazillion mistakes in my post. He's awesome.

Influence

This post is part of the "First Few Old Blog Posts" archive.
You could expect a certain lack of coherency/maturity from these posts.

Been a long time since I've blogged. You can blame that on school and shit. I've been very preoccupied lately with all the accumulating work that I've been getting and hell it's been hard to even take a minute out and do some thinking.

Anyway , so yeah , you read the title - Influence.
Influence is essentially a very important key factor in psychology and philosophy.

This word has so many meanings and interpretations that it makes a fine topic for long discussions.

Let's start with the definition:
Influence : The occurring effect when there is a deviation in the normal routine/behavior of an object or a body due to impact of force/energy/information originating from an external source.

So at the lowest level , this means that , say a body A is moving with uniform speed along a straight line XY. Collision with another body would result in change in either direction i.e it deviates from XY or change in it's uniform speed. The body is thus said to be influenced.
Note that if there is change in the body's shape/size from the impact of the external force , but no change in speed/direction , then the body is said to have been "uninfluenced" by the external force.
Technically though , this is not really possible. The object that we were talking about had only 2 properties entitled to it , Speed and Direction. Shape and size were just the "features" of the body in it's current context. In reality though , as change in feature WILL cause change in property , it is actually physically impossible for properties to remain unchanged if the body is "influenced" in any way.
Also , as a living being , we have infinite number of properties/features entitled to us. And always , change in one will has resulted in change in every other.
So from henceforth , without mention , we will assume that when influence takes place in a living body , it affects ALL its properties.

The above example of the moving object , can be related to us on several larger scales in more advanced forms. Let's begin with the lowest level cases and progress to the largest.

(The following categories have been separated by me and so I apologize if they already exist under different names or are different from the following.)

1. Sense Influence :

Leaving spirituality behind , we have 5 senses : touch , taste , hear , smell and sight. It is these senses that interact with the external environment and relate to the brain which acts as a whole and respectively responds to the influence by making our body react to it. This reaction can occur in various ways. Speech , movement etc. So yeah , this is pretty much like that stimulus/response thing you learnt in primary school. It forms the basic level of humanity and human character since everything we do relies wholly on what we receive through these senses.

 - No influence :

If all the 5 senses of the body are removed in order to prevent sense influence , then ... umm , idk. This part is a bit weird. There will be nothing. The brain , not knowing that it even exists , will not attempt to do anything? I don't know , we'll have to do some guessing here since I did not find any reliable source for research. So , maybe the brain will just live? Maybe it'll live without even knowing that it exists , so it might be as good as being dead. It will age without any functional change since it has nothing to do. OR , knowing that it does not exist , it may cease to stop living. It might stop all functions including it's blood/oxygen regulation and eventually die out. Anyway , the point here is that it would be horrible.

 - Artificial influence :

Now that we know that the brain essentially holds the sum of form all its senses over time , tampering with those sense can be used to provide artificial sense influence. The technology to do so has already been developed but not perfected enough to be available for testing. Just imagine. Take a brain , isolate it from all its senses. and connect the sense receiving "ports" (I can't find a better word) to computer devices which know how to send/receive data impulses from and to the brain and knows how to interpret the brain signals. We could literally place a person in a virtual environment and give him his own virtual body to interact with. You could send the brain artificial signals about sight , which is actually just the visual rendering of the virtual environment. He could then see around and also his own virtual arms/legs etc. And the brain of the host , sending signals for movement , would then co-relate visual sense as well , as it would be able to see the moving hand it front of it , which the brain had sent signals to do so , and had been interpreted and processed successfully by the machine. He would also register the sense of touch , of how his feet were touching the floor and his body against his clothes , etc. Collectively , he could live in a digitalized environment as though it was completely real.

Now think , what if that IS reality? What if we are all actually living in a virtual environment with the illusion of reality? It's pretty much possible , even though you're probably gonna send me hate mail about The Matrix later today. If this is correct though , the possibilities would be much more interesting.

2. Emotional Influence :

The next big thing is how we are all so much affected by our own emotions. Emotions are responsible for most of the choices we make and the actions we perform. Although emotions themselves are products of influence , they themselves play a very large role in the forthcoming and resulting influence. Emotions can result in good/bad actions. If Hitler wasn't so hateful toward the Jew doctor who was treating his mother when she died , the holocaust would've probably never occurred. If our army forces weren't influenced by courage and bravery , they wouldn't take the risk of protecting us form terrorists and other threats. If we couldn't laugh , then there would be no comedy shows. If we did not feel being scared , then no one would make horror movies. The whole world is so diverse and running the way it is because of emotionally based actions and choices occurring everywhere. This is partly why a robot does not laugh when you tell it "There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who can read binary and those who can't"

 - No influence :

When emotional influence is removed , we get complete unbiased opinions , decisions and actions. A computer will not stop processing because it hates you. It is very rare to see people making choices that are not biased on one personal emotion or another. It actually helps several times especially when you're angry. You just have to tell yourself that you wouldn't make such decisions if you weren't emotionally influenced , so just calm down and think what logically should be done , regardless of how you feel about it. This can be a bit hard to do , but once you're successful , you will realize it's importance. It takes a great man to be calm and remain proud of his actions with everyone else laughing beside at him.

- Artificial influence :

This is the interesting part. I myself realized this was possible just a few days ago. I found out that it is actually possible to "simulate" emotions in a person and thus indirectly influencing a person's actions. The color blue for example , imparts piece and calm to a person whereas red stands for anxiety and aggression. In a similar way , the manner in which you speak to a person can also affect his/her emotions toward you , hence influencing their actions. So next time you want Bob to do something for you , don't shout at him , you retard. Just buy him a goddamn drink. Once you realize it , it's actually quite fun. The way you can induce emotions in any random person by just speech and actions and hence manipulating his actions to your advantage. Similarly , you can forcefully convince yourself to be happy when someone/something angers you to avoid negative emotional influence.

3. Informational Influence :
From the moment we are born , we are loaded with information from all sources. We start by learning and adapting to a language , then learn to communicate through it. Then use that language to receive more information in that language. This "premade" information that we receive which did not originate form ourselves , is responsible for informational influence. This influence is responsible for today's advancement in knowledge. We are learning what others have discovered/created and are basing our discoveries/creations on them. This pre-existing information acts as a base on which we contribute to. In school , at home , from the television , from the internet , almost EVERYTHING today that we comprehend is not made by us , thus playing its part in informational influence. For example , this blog post is MY creation , so it won't have any influence on me. But on you , it plays its part , since it was not you form where this information came from. But the essential information I required to make this post had come from an external source . Thus informational influence leads to resulting information that just adds to it. It can be compared to a tower. Every person born must contribute to either increasing its height or guard a part of the tower that has already been built. A person does not have to make the tower from scratch since lots of it has already been built by his ancestors. This is how information escalates. The person who invented the cloth button , we probably don't know his name today , but he influences all our lives. This means that if he had not come up with that invention , the universe would have probably taken a different turn and the world today would probably be different , regardless of whether the button would be invented later by a different person or not. If he made the button as a square , then that small change would have impacted all our lives today. It is a sum of all these small factors that shape our lives today. As much important as is the process of gaining knowledge , it is also necessary to discover knowledge sometimes , even though it has already been made. In that case , there is no informational influence , as it is you who is deriving knowledge. But then again , doing so will cost valuable time that can be used to make yourself up to date with more later knowledge. Here's a relevant chat log : http://pastebin.com/T48TGQPc

 - No influence :
This is what the Early Men had to endure. They has nothing to start with. Just themselves. But as humans , they felt the need to communicate and make work easier. Thus they invented languages , made drawings etc to communicate and start out creating information. It is a gift that we have so much already made for us , that we don't need to "invent the wheel" again. And by being given so much information to learn , it is our responsibility to in turn contribute by adding information to it.

 - Artificial influence :
This is ambiguous. Artificial information would probably mean , a lie. Because a lie isn't real information , it's false , and hence artificial. So next time someone accuses you of lying , you can put on a nerd cap and say that you were just just influencing him with artificial information.

Well that's all I have for now. After days of procrastination , finally my post is complete :D
It was fun influencing you with influence about influencing influence.
I can drab on and write separate blog posts on topics like "Emotions" or "Information" , but that'll have to wait for sometime.
Alright , I'm done here. Catchya Laterz. Don't forget to influence me with any questions down in the comments. Ciao.

Quote : "You have the option of either building ideas on existing ideas or starting out as the Early Man" ~ EnKrypt