Blog Names

Actually, I kinda agree with one of my friend's classification of the different types of blogs there are. I, however have been contemplating getting a domain for myself. That set me thinking about what sorta blog name could possibly increase the number of hits on this page to more than those by the customary 10 people who actually read this blog.

Simply looking around at the blog names other people have, it just struck me how conformist most of our blogs names are. For eg. most blog names/titles (sadly, mine included) contain one or more of the words below:

rambling(s) musing(s) arbitarary thoughts frozen memories deranged wonder confessions dreams more-musing(s) more-rambling(s)

Then there are the titles/names that don't mean anything or sound like some mystic spiritual cult's tag lines comprising of one or more of the following words:

spark fire quest zest eternal unleashed infinity vivacity

There are also those blogs that employ the use of important and difficult sounding words in them:

nemesis incognito minion underworld narcissistic maverick zeitgeist

My primary motivation ofcourse is to get myself offa this mmmiwonder blog name that sounds too full of myself. So I probably oughta have gone for something diminutive like balajeerc.com like my friend Arun tells me, persuading me against li'l-boy-fat-man ("Too confusing, unless you know the names and the order of the bombs. Even then, it sounds nothing like you." "Whatdaya mean?! There's a fat man in it and I was little at some point of time., wasnt I?") I considered something that sounds clever and elitist, like "catcher-of-the-wry" but then decided against it since it sounded, well, clever and elitist.

So, I needed something reasonably clever without sounding too full of myself, needed something that sounds personal without being too narcissistic and to sound witty(hopefully).

After some work, I have settled on and am happy to present my new 10$ a year domain name where this blog will henceforth be mirrored at:

http://www.redcarrotjalabee.com

That pose? Really?

See, I adore Shashi Tharoor just as much as the next guy. I mean, slight ideological differences apart, the guy is one of those few people make Indians feel happy about themselves, and thats saying something. I also think that he'd be a whiff of fresh air in our polity (despite his somewhat gung-ho attitude to globalisation and related Freidmanite tendencies) filled with the rabble rousing, hate mongering politicians of the previous generation and their proteges who have taken the baton from their tainted mentors.

In fact, our polity is so infested with so much rot and taint that its amazing how we have come to associate the traditional swadeshi Khadi apparel, once a mark of self sacrifice and nationalism with such suspicion. In fact, the traditional image of the quintessential opportunist 'netha' is rather easy to draw a caricature of once you get the white khadi kurta/mundu/veshti right.

If you don't believe me, take a look at this [courtesy: shashitharoor.in ]:
Now, just think about how our zeitgeist has changed over the past 60 years. Atleast as far as I am concerned, while there is nothing to suggest any cause for concern, just striking that pose makes him look a lot less the image of integrity that was the former UN Under-Secretary General.

I bet Shashi must have been exasperated trying to convince his Campaign Manager:

ST: Mundu and Veshti? You sure about this?
CM: Yes Saar. Veery soore.
ST: Don't you think I'd go down better in a suit?
CM: Saare, we vaant you to come up... not go down.
ST: Er... no. I meant, I'd look better in my traditional tweeds, won't you say?
CM: Say vaat saare? Vaat should I not(e) say?
ST: Oh, forget it! So what, you just take a close up?
CM: No saare. We take full bo(e)dy.
ST: Well, if you are going to put me on one of those imperial looking thrones and ask me to carry a mace or sword or something, you can forget it.
CM: Oh... but we had a veeerrry nice Simhasanam ready, saare.
ST: !
CM: Sir, you will look veerry good on the Simhasanam saar.
ST: There is no way I am gonna do that. Forget it. I am putting my foot down.
CM: Yes saare. No pro(e)blem. Foot on flo(e)r only. Sit on simhaasanam.

After all the haggling, when the campaign manager relented and asked him to strike just strike that pose, he must have done it in a jiffy, to escape the 'Simhaasanam' on the way. (For the non-malayalee readers, simhasanam is, well, "one of those imperial looking thrones".)

I bet Sashi left long before he heard what else his campaign manager had composed for him. You really wanna hear it even if you don't understand malayalam. Believe me!

Machiavellian Humility

I haven't read any Machiaveli but apparently he wrote, "In life, leave atleast 50% to chance, the rest, is cunning." Now, what is embarassing is probably the fact that it is so utterly correct. To be called machiavellian is not something that one would look favourably upon, but I must say, that aforementioned statement is jarring only because of how brutally honest it is.

Compare this to the typical businessman, politician or actor who attributes most of his success to "hard work" and "god's grace". While we are wont to associate a person who, on having achieved some success in his/her profession, by some measure in comparision to his peers, attributes all of it to God, with the attribute of humility.

What is also implied in this admission, is the hidden proclamation that god "chose" them. Attributing it to chance would mean that they were just lucky, it might just as likely been you standing there instead of them... but attributing it to God, now, that shows that they must be deserving of that in some manner. For as you have heard so many times before, "god does not play dice." This would then suggest that these people have something that distinguishes them from the rest of us lesser beings - some measure of virtue or character that leads God to fawn on them, rather than us.

Now compare this to successful 'Machiavellian', who says, "Half of it was just dumb luck."

Personally, I'd choose Machiavellian humility over the godly version anyday, won't you?

ETs and Blaming it all on Religion

Do you belive in UFOs? Extra-terretrials and all that sorta stuff? You don't? Well, I am an agnost when it comes to belief in ETs. I am an atheist when it comes to belief in a God but an agnost when as regards ETs; one has to admit that ETs are infinitely more plausible than God.

However, you must have noticed how you are more likely to be thought out of your mind if you believe in ETs rather than if you believed in God. I can't say it better than George Carlin does in his book, 'When will Jesus bring the Pork Chops?' where he marvels at this paradox where we are willing to believe in virgin births, resurrections, angels, demons and talking snakes while at the same time we think that anyone who thinks that there could be intelligent life out there amongst the billions of stars, several of them with a reasonable chance of having orbiting planets similar to our own capable of nurturing life, is positively cuckoo. However I go a little further than Carlin, I have a theory as to why this may be.

Let's think this through. Why wouldn't an ET life-form capable of inter-stellar travel (or capable of the deception that it must have taken for them to elude detection in this solar system itself, right under our noses) choose not to make open diplomatic, or worse, belligerent contact with the human race which they must have by now recognised as being capable of significant intelligent self-determination (well, atleast some of us, some of the time). Clearly they must be technologically superior to us, so it cannot be for any fear of our technological might.

It could be something like in Star Trek, where other 'Warp-Drive' capable species make contact with other civilizations only after they become warp capable themselves, so as not to artificially distort the intellectual development of the species. Well, that would be a noble thing to do. Yet, applying yardsticks derived from our own history, I don't consider that a good enough reason. Come on, the Spaniards, didn't just arrive in America and lay wait hiding in the bushes, twiddling thumbs till the Injuns managed to work out gunpowder for themselves. No, they just unloaded the barrels of gunpowder they had in the holds of their ship and blew the Injuns to smithereens. Ofcourse, one must mention that they did try to baptise as many Injuns as possible before they blew their brains out, but there were only so many Injuns willing to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and saviour who will deliver their souls that were just about to be dispatched from their bodies unto him, in a few seconds. No, on prelimnary analysis, there doesn't seem to be reason enough for not making contact.

On the other hand, lets look at reasons that are compellingly in favour of making contact.
a) In quest of adventure and knowledge that is sure to come from such an exchange.
b) The access to some of the resources on the planet, even if it be through conquest.

These are no brainers. If we came across a technologically inferior civilization sitting on top of something economically useful to us, we'll just take it by force. That's what we have been doing since time immemorial. That's what we still do (think Iraq). Its probably the strongest motivational force driving such expeditions.

Yet why is it that the ETs only choose to reveal themselves in rare and priveleged encounters to John Lennon (taking care to wait till he was high before showing up)? Why wouldn't they just advertise their coming for all to see. Well, again, history may offer us a clue here.

There was a third motivational force "to seek out new life and new civilizations" that our ancestors (and Star Trek buffs) were quite taken with.

3) A drive to spread the word of Our Lord, the one True God to the savages.

Hm...well, I don't see too many ET funded missions to whatever deity it is that they worship. Interesting. This possibly means one of two things:

a) They don't have any idea about religion. They are quite perplexed by the phenomenon that is religion that is prevalent among the humans they are trying to understand and are thus apprehensive of somehow infecting themselves by open contact with us.

b) They do have religious ideas of their own but find the ones prevalent in our lands more compelling. Thus they are afraid that their religions may be swept away and replaced by our own.

In effect, both the above points can be combined into one: Fear of our 'earthly' God!

However, we are again missing the glaringly obvious possibility. Lets say that one fine day, the President of the United States is visited by an ET from galaxy far-far away from a species that doesn't have any seminal idea of God, hails from an egalitarian society built on simple, rational laws free from the excesses that religion forces on it. A society of free thinkers and innovators who won't go about toiling in a mundane, boring and gruelling work regime under exploitative super rich elite who work them and give little back in return for the services rendered, on the hope that there is a better, eternal afterlife that awaits them provided they suffer in obedience and virtue. A world without neocons, theocons, Republicans, saffron brigades, moral police,evangelicals, missionaries, Taliban and Freidmanites. A society that would be demonstrative of everything against what the fabric of human civilization on earth is built on and yet is the one capable of interstellar travel. A truly superior working model of civilization.

Come on! How many ways would you react if you were a conservative, God fearing, gun-toting, homophobic, capitalist President? How would you react if you were an Ayotollah, a Taliban supremo or Jerry Fallwell ( or Pat Robertson)?

Thus, the net inference is that religion and its figureheads are most likely the ones keeping us from meeting our visitors from beyond.