ROMM - The Hypocrite

He had spent the formative years of his youth living by the dictum "You can't have the cake and eat it too". In a world corrupted by the gradual amortization of morals, he grappled on to his much cherished principles. When he was young, things were simple, and it wasn't always difficult to do and say the same things. In his adolescent days, ignorance was bliss and he was naive enough to believe that you could always do the best for the society while being righteous and consistent. Life chugged along at a metronomic, yet cheerful pace, as he maintained his sangfroid.

However, the above notion was dealt a death knell when he aged. As he reached a position of prominence - one where his actions and decisions could actually affect things around him, he ran into a serious conflict of interest. In umpteen situations, his well thought good natured actions would be circumvented by his past choices. His predicament was - Is it better if actions A & B are both wrong, yet consistent in their intent? or Is it better if actions A & B were inconsistent, which would make at least one of them right?. In the former case he was being true to his principles, but his outcome was not favorable. In the latter, he was a flip-flop and a fickle minded hypocrite, but yet achieved a better end result than the former case. Should his noble intentions in instance B be judged against his sinister reputation in instance A? Should he salvage his reputation and repeat action A for B, or just swallow the ignominy of being dubbed a hypocrite and perform differently, but for the good, on B?

On deeper introspection, he realized that he could debunk the inconsistencies in most actions of every person he knew. Was this setting up a rationale for people being hypocrite? No, this was merely an observation he was suddenly made aware of. It took a while, but enlightenment finally dawned upon the confused. He realized that life is not all white and black, but rather gray, and there is definitely more than one shade of gray. Even the most righteous personalities were guilty of acting differently in different situations. They might not admit it, but it wasn't difficult to look through the veneer of righteousness to see the selfish interests that people knowingly or unknowingly perpetrate. At first, this thought disillusioned him and he felt the world around had just crashed on him. But healing began as soon as he had picked up and cleaned the shards of this aftermath. Soon he began to rebuild his confidence and groom a different school of thought.

Convinced of a new philosophy that pardoned every person in the world for being hypocrite, he no longer pondered for hours over some of the ramifications of his actions. He did what he liked and what he thought was best for everyone, without judging it in the light of his past actions. Soon he realized he could say one thing and do another as long as some of his actions which violate his preaching were actually utilized for the good. Sure, there were those critics and theorists who pointed fingers, but it took him only few minutes to unmask their hidden hypocrisy and justify his actions.

It was only a matter of time before people understood him, and more importantly, his philosophy.This brought in a renaissance of a kind. The world had been gifted with a new order, an order which freed people from the anathema of a vile adjective, and rung in a happy ending. Ironically, with the world embracing hypocrisy, there were no pretenders, instead people were just being themselves.....long live The Hypocrite!!

ROMM* - Death of the Narcissist

The Narcissist died today. He died alone; in a manner befitting, his hollow egotistical
existence. With the world cleansed of the reek emanating from his air of smugness and smoke from his megalomanical dreams, people could finally respire better. Over a period of time, many had changed their thoughts from hatred to sheer callousness, and thus today as he lies in flesh under the mound, there were not many who would lament. The were no eloquent epitaphs; there were no weeping damsels; and there were no sympathetic friends.

During his meaningless lifetime on this earth, his friends pandered to his feeling of
self-importance. Some rebelled, and swore enemity, whereas some swore fake allegiance, but lashed a tirade behind his back. But the latter folks are not to be mistaken as untrue, cause they were only showing their niceness to their so called friend - a fiend if I might rephrase.This act, however, continued to nurture and feed the ego of the Narcissist. It also gave him an excuse to refute and distance from those who actually indicated their honest expressions about him. Buoyed by this false support, and a few self-assumed facts, the Narcissist continued to thrive.

But today, his friends gather to spew venom and lash a vitriolic rhetoric which the Narcissist would never have seen coming. Alas! a thin layer of wooden casket, 2 feet of earth's crust and a veneer of moss laden tomb separates him from his fair whether follower's diatribe. Thus he died, oblivious to what people thought about him - what a pity!! But that did not prevent the hoi polloi, atleast the one who faintly cared for this demon, to pour their hearts out and come out boldly and violently against his deceased body. In the end his sheer hubris, and his condescending attitude led to his downfall.

But, in rebirth, he shall find solace. Faced with a humiliating and in many ways an eye-opening after-life, the Narcissist was reincarntated a different man. His downfall, though, was nowhere nearly bathos. It was a combination of a realisation ridden by denial, and a slow acceptance from all and sundry. Today he stands in front of people, to listen to them, and not to speak about himself and his greatness. His feet have finally touched the ground and realisation has finally dawned upon him that he is only one amongst the billion other mortals that walk the earth. He is greater than none, and at the same time lesser than none. With humility making a comeback, the Narcissist shall atlast continue to lead a normal life........

* ROMM - Ramblings of a Mad man. Some other posts in the same series can be found by clicking the label

ROMM - The selfish Altruist !

I assure you of the fact that by the time you are through with this blog, you would either think of me as a heretic who takes sacrilegious digs at much cherished human values or someone who has a 6 inch nail stuck in his head or worse both. But I am probably going to air some of the views that I have read and heard, interspersed with some of my own connotations to try and make/create a point.

In his book "Selfish gene", the great biologist Richard Dawkins raises the point that every action performed by living beings is dictated by the selfish gene in a way that would assist the process of natural selection. Seemingly altruistic behaviour of an induvidual towards a group, have inherently ulterior motives of propogating the race, speices or the group itself and must be tagged as selfish. To quote one of his bizarre examples - Living beings sacrifice a hell lot of things for the upbringing of their offsprings. Rather than branding this sacrifice as selfless, he claims that it's the selfish will to propogates one's species which determines all the actions. I am sure most of his reasoning has more of a biological logic to it and doesn't have much to do with morality - or atleast thats what I want to believe !

But then consider this. If I understand human nature correctly, which I will never entirely, then I daresay that we always do things in life that bring us contentment and happiness. Also, a person who always seeks his own self-satisfaction can safely be called a selfish person. Your actions leading you to that particular state of mind, might or might not benefit others, but at the end of the day you have selfishly sought your own goal - which is a "sense of satisfaction". Lets take the example of a woman devoting her entire life to helping out the downtrodden lepers in a big city. One way of looking at it would be that she selflessly dedicated her life to them, and which I believe is beyond doubt. Another cruel way of looking at it would be, that she gained satisfaction by helping out the destitute...and that she helped them out, cause it gave her joy. Now, by the definition stated previously this would technically classify her as any other human being striving for her own happiness and thus selfish (Lord forgive me for such brazen statement...but I am just confused here)

I have closely observed and interacted with some people who have entered into full time charity, people who have abandoned their rewarding profession to help out the indigent mass. Time and again, they claim that the new choice has made them happier than their previous trade......so when they switched to charity, wasn't it for their own self-satisfaction ? Would they be in charity if they didnt enjoy it ? If their previous profession didnt leave them with an uneasy heart, would they have taken the plunge into charity ? Aren't they themselves much happier now than before, even though they seemed to have made a big sacrifice in abandoning a successful career ? Often the trait of selfishness has been linked to materialistic things, and I wonder how intangible virtues like state of mind etc can filter in while defining this ignomible human attribute.

I have thrown enough questions, only to seek answers (comments are very welcome) and guide my train of thoughts .......phew....the nail has finally been removed from my head !

ROMM - The birth of "Unlearning"

( The pre-requisite to this blog is "Death of Learning". Pls read it before you start reading this blog )

The birth of "unlearning" was not a natural outcome of "death of learning". Human beings could have prolonged at a metronomic pace set in the aftermath of learning's death. Deprived of any changes in its wake, life was getting stagnated, nevertheless it was not detrimental to its own existence. But life , and humanity at large, was being led to a state of atrophy due to the ever decadent behavior of a nonfunctioning cranium.

Not only was the art of learning in a state of abeyance, it was also difficult to retain the existing knowledge. The gradual erosion of the much cherised ideas and beliefs gave birth to the process of unlearning. The birth of unlearning was deplored by all and sundry, cause it could easily plunge mankind into an abyss of no-progress. Naturally, people started resisting the onslaught of unlearning. But a few saw it as a light at the end of the tunnel, as an excuse to ring in a new order and overthrow the reign of stalemate which controlled their day to day activities. They started pandering to this new concept of unlearning and were successful in coaxing their colleagues in joining in their endeavours.

Now that unlearning was firmly supplanted at the helm of daily affairs, humanity was dying a slow but excrutiating death. When learning died people found life monotonous, but with unlearning it was unbearable. Not only did people become incapable of improvising and innovating new stuff, they were grappling to carry on chores they had performed for aeons. It needed herculean efforts to carry on some simple day to day activites, which threatened the mere existence of mankind. Life was being washed away from the shore of prosperity to the trenches of sorrow and grief and nobody could do anything about it. Unlearning attacked people with a fury never seen before and reduced life to a cripple - as people got dumber and dumber, their life turned from worse to abject misery.

The end of the world has finally come, and it has come in a way in which no doomsday sage or arm chair theorist could have foreseen - so long people, till we are reincarnated !

ROMM - Death of Learning !

Learning is dead. We are living in a world where people have ceased to learn anything new. Its not that they have shunned the idea of learning, its because people have become incapable of learning. Devoid of this basic skill to learn anything new, life falls into a rut. Things keep happening in a loop - a cycle of never ending boredoom looms large over the mankind. There are some who are trying their best to break this shackles and usher in new technology to the world, but their efforts are nullified by a brain which can't concentrate anymore. Things transform from orderly to regular to a point where it becomes mundane. They say the only thing constant in today's world is change. But now that learning is no more, change has stagnated. The only change brought about on the world is by nature, which in absence of human intervention still maintains its erratic behaviour.

People begin to enjoy the new order, and settle to a life of no change. But soon the realisation dawns upon people - the monotony is unbearable. Deprived of learning, thinking is also dwindling. New ideas are lost in vacuum - the only option is to uphold cliched ideas. People resort to dreams to get away from this envelope of banality. But dreams are nothing but reflections of your life, which in any case has been reduced to a standstill. The end of the world has surely come - and its not because the forces of nature has conspired against us, its because the brain no longer wants to comply with us.

So long till the rebirth of learning !!!