Identity and absences

It is interesting that at times we assert our presence by exhibiting narcissistic tendencies of creative expression…be it by way of writing a poem, dancing, singing, posting a picture on social networking site, or maybe writing a blog. Interestingly, ones presence can also be felt in absences.

You experience the absence of friends’ comments about a movie, life in general or you. This experience probably holds more weight than the actual content of the comments shared. You call it nostalgia.

You experience the absence of a continuum of your life, should some circumstances so arise, that a discontinuity abrupt what was at the same time both memorable and mundane. You call it change, sometimes welcomed, sometime detested.

You experience the absence of the voice, of the touch of a familiar someone, who may have made you familiar with yourself, a family member like mother, father, sister, brother, nephew or a lover perhaps. Accordingly, you call it homesickness or lovesickness respectively.

Some absences can have a haunting effect…when no one at the end of a telephone call speaks, but instead indulges in listening to the not so hollow ‘hellos’...or when there is a knock at the door, but no one at the door. You call it creepy.

In each of these cases, at times the negation of the existent is a conscious choice and at times it is so unconsciously done, that it hardly seems to be a choice. However, there is always a choice, or so one would like to believe. And the choice really is the manner in which one wishes to exert oneself, by positively exhibiting oneself in a way for others to witness or negatively by escaping cognition. Both, presence and absences are ways to assert one’s identity. This amounts to say, you always assert yourself. At times, when this is done negatively, there seems to be a power play, to hide oneself from being witnessed, you negate others from seeing who you are, propelling them to engage in a search instead.

Changing a profile picture...it sends a lot of messages

It sends a lot of messages. Most minimally, it tells some that you do own a camera. It reminds others that you have free time enough to upload a snap. It tells a few sensitive others that you would rather do social networking than spend time with them. It tells you that you think you look better than other versions of yourself to share with others. It sends a message of a deep seated narcissism. It reminds many ‘friends’ on your page about you, when they are not even thinking of you! It becomes a topic of conversation for some outside of facebook too. For a stalker few, who have somehow managed to access your page, decoding and hacking all necessary privacy settings, unknowingly, it adds an unsavory item to their obsession. It tells your lover who took the previous facebook snap or gifted you some accessory which added a zing to your profile picture…that you have moved on. (Unless of course your changed picture also is a reminder of that lover.) Either way, it informs that you are happy and possibly confident. It tells people that you think that the new picture is a better representative of yourself than your last picture. It tells you that you are photogenic. It may tell some that you think you are photogenic. It tells you that someone photographed you. It signifies that you believe in change and that you are not technologically challenged. To a few deep thinkers, it reminds you of a moment in time which you would like to live for a longer few moments. A longer, but still few moments, because we all know that you are going to change it again sometime in the future....unless you do not have a list of changed profile pictures. It might be a reminder that while traveling or attending some event or get together, there is this one good solo snap of yours which made the entire event or travel bit memorable or even more memorable but most definitely worth capturing. A changed facebook profile picture, it sends a lot of messages. It might inform some cousins or friends or some new people you are chatting up these days that you listen to them when they tell you that you must change your profile picture. It tells some long distance friends, or friends you have maintained distance for a long time that you have changed, if there is a drastic change in your pictures. If the change is too apparent, it allows some friends, the curious ones and the close ones, to review your album or albums. It might just remind someone of you. It might leave an impression. It may leave no impression whatsoever. Some of these messages might hold familiar interpretations for those who have not changed their profile pictures. As some changes are not exclusive to whether you have changed the picture or not. Having said that, it may still be maintained that a changed facebook profile picture may send a lot of messages.

When the good turns bad

My life was about good things, and then it became bad.
It is exciting but it is also quite sad.
That I cash in on other people’s misery
Still the worry is that I don’t cash quite as much
Offering advice to prevent untold incidents
Doesn’t seem to prevent the morning paper with a dozen such
An ethics graduate, teacher and student,
I lie through my teeth now
And my victims know not how
It helps save selected few in the world,
From misery, deceit and murder some how.
But there is misery, there is deceit, there is murder everywhere
Reminds me there are people who kill out there.
They make those like me rich, and they don’t even know
You wonder who I am, I am a research analyst
I am concerned with crime rates, terror threats, security breach
I study patterns and notify trends
I look at rules which others have bent
I wish that I could save the world and update everyone of the dangers out there
But I can’t do that because of a non disclosure agreement
If I do tell, I will come across as paranoid and insecure
That’s quite ironical since on the past seven years of optimism,
I could have bet all my dough
It is perhaps what made me survive so far in the big bad world
But the big bad world triggered the bad wolf in my being
For my job requires untruthfulness, secrecy, insomia and insensivity
And previously, in my being, it was quite unseen.
I wish for a miracle, I wish everyday
That I get rescued from this sinful world of today
I hope to get rescued, I hope to rescue too
But that is a prerogative, of only a selected few.

The Oldest Song

"These were never your true love's eyes.
Why do you feign that you love them?
You that broke from their constancies,
And the wide calm brows above them!

This was never your true love's speech.
Why do you thrill when you hear it?
You that have ridden out of its reach
The width of the world or near it!

This was never your true love's hair, --
You that chafed when it bound you
Screened from knowledge or shame or care,
In the night that it made around you!"

"All these things I know, I know.
And that's why my heart is breaking!"
"Then what do you gain by pretending so?"
"The joy of an old wound waking."

- Rudyard Kipling

Ignorance ain't no bliss, but then, so ain't knowledge

Socrates equated virtue to knowledge. Everyone is deep down, good. No one does wrong intentionally. Wise men do what is right. If man has no knowledge he cannot do what is right. If man has knowledge he cannot do what is wrong. All wrong doing arises out of ingorance. No one does wrong intentionally.

Goodness is knowledge! Actually in real life, it is just the opposite. Bad experiences put things in perspective for people. Presupposing goodness and ignorance just elongates the length of those experiences, till appearances get shattered. Presupposing bad is just as twisted, only it is recognised to be more so. But everybody presupposes. Both good and bad. More often bad than good, I think. Fixing things is not hard with the real at hand. Usually it is not, and that is the hard part. But it is hurtful to fix nevertheless, specially when one doesn't believe in vengence for the bad incurred. More so, because there comes a need to fix, what one has not broken. The remedy is for a patient unaware of an illness diagnosed correctly.

I have a good friend, who is not really so,
Whether not good, Whether not friend,
I do not know.
What I know is that I am a friend,
Whether good, whether not,
Friend doesn't know.
The protocol is to abide by, what one knows.
And no one knows what the other knows.
Because of goodness. That much, I know.

God forbid anyone from going through life because of presupposing the stuff philosophers sell in their sleep. Ignorance or knowledge doesn't really stop anyone from doing anything, does it? No one is aiming towards goodness. Maybe, it should not be aimed for, anyways. If goodness is the aim, that person ain't good. And if that is not true, the good one does, might just be to cover up the bad incurred by some. The need won't arise otherwise. One doesn't need a cross or nails to believe that Jesus lived or live. Just take a look around. There will be many cruxified, others trying to crusify. Whether there is an angel up there, one doesn't know. What there is, is a willingness to engage in this activity. Presupposing goodness is likely to get one engaged in problems. A naive victim doesn't for see the trap, or rather the maze one lives in.

Dusty Music

In the Glee fever I think about soul searching souls and invariably when solos or duets would be performed, I would think about Frank Sinatra and Barbara Streisand. I recently came across ‘Losing you’, beautifully sung by Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien. The name ‘Dusty’ does this woman no justice. Her voice is all about finesse. If I could sing, and sing well, I would like to sing like her. Not just her wonderful voice or the persona. I would like to be as articulate as her singing. I would like to be understood. Her song leaves no communication gap, language and arguments, come across in philosophy. Or atleast, the way I do it. Her voice gives life to the lyrics. It unfolds in itself spiraling a whole lot of meaning, as the song progresses. It didn’t take me long to get submerged by the emotions and the energy of vibrated in her voice. The power of it is uncanny and mesmerizing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95Xd8bgXLLA
She was born in 1939 and died in 1999. The woman’s growing up years was probably living through a world war. In dark political climate one often ends up coming across existential writings and eludes a strange philosophical epiphany to them. But music is buried, when one thinks of that time, in the noise of violence and devastation. And music like this, ‘Pop’! Let’s face it. It is easier to see the silver lining when one is brought up in happier times, with happy ideals and principles. But when one goes through dark times, it seems easier to write in all probability, than sing. It must have taken courage to grow up to be a singer and releasing and revealing oneself like that. We live our lives, oblivious to what we want and strive for. Once we find our true passions, we work towards it. If one is lucky, one succeeds. I don’t know how easy or difficult Dusty’s life has been, how her life choices were made. But when I heard her sing in the video, I am sure, she was able to utilize her being in the best way possible for her to do so. Her voice, it makes me admire not just a good singer, but one person who fulfilled the purpose of her life. It is truly inspirational. I thought I’d share.

Altruism to be 'moral', shouldn't lack 'self worth'

Neera Karpur Bhadwar’s “Altruism Versus Self Interest: Sometimes a False Dichotomy” is an article which in the process of the immediate aim, (i.e. to challenge the view: That self interest cannot be a motive of altruistic act) highlights the importance of self affirmation. Self affirmation and the way in which it is connected to self interest on one side and altruism on the other can help determine if an act is altruistic or not. Self worth, an important factor of self affirmation can help to determine if an act is moral or not.

A self affirming act is, by definition, one with some focus on the self. If a self affirming act was necessarily focused entirely on the self then there is a possibility of equating that particular self affirming act with selfishness. Such self affirming act which is also a selfish act will obviously have no moral worth. If this was the only way in which self affirmation works then one could say in all sincerity that a particular act is either self interested act of self affirmation or altruistic but not both. 'However, whether and to what extent a self affirming act is self focused depends on what it affirms.'(1) Here three examples of self affirming acts are given.

1. The act of poetry itself
2. The act of a poem or story telling as an expression of love (with an other directed purpose)
3. The act of rescue of Jews during the holocaust

The first merely indicates an individual’s need to create, a need whose existence and expression is independent of the world’s need for more poems, whose satisfaction may be largely independent of the world’s enjoyment of the product. It is a poem of a solipsist. According to Neera Bhadwar, ‘such an act is highly self focused, for it is motivated by an interest that, by its very nature, is wholly or largely independent of the interests of others: if the individual had not written a particular poem, he would have had little or no interest in its existence, for almost its entire value to him lies in the fact that it is his creation.’(2)
Then there is another example of a mother who writes a story for her son not because he needs that particular story, or that there are no other stories available to tell but that story. She writes the story because in that act she wants to affirm an expression of her love for her son. It matters to her though, that he enjoys the story. So the degree of self focus is less than in the first example.
Then comes the third example of rescuers who helped save the lives of many Jews during the Holocast. When questioned by researchers such as Monroe et al, whether the important thing was that the Jews be saved or if they were the ones to rescue them, most of them responded rather similarly as researches indicate. Neera Bhadwar maintains that ‘Rescuers’ altruistic dispositions made the plight f Jews salient to them, focusing them on their needs rather than their own. They helped insofar as doing so was the best way to save to bring about the desired end: had their attempts created more dangers for the particular person in need, they would have not attempted to help. Again had a rescuer thought that someone else was in a better position to help a particular individual, she would have let that person do it.'(3) The rescuers were not looking for a psychological reward for themselves. Saving the Jews was more important than being the ones to help, but to the extent the latter was compatible with the former, it too was important. In most cases though there was no choice in the sense that most of the rescuers responded to requests for help instead of initiating help. The response of such rescuers was that “Because they came to them and no one else, we helped them.

What makes Neera Bhadwar to reconcile what she calls rational self interest (in the form of self affirmation) as a moral attitude with a moral attitude is the belief that such a self interest is at the core of self respect. The latter has a moral connotation. As Butler also maintains “self love in its due degree is as just and morally good as any affection whatever,” because the goodness of an act depends on whether it is in accordance with our nature and the nature of the case, rather than on whether it is altruistic” . (4)This helps to understand that why some self sacrificial acts, no matter how pure in intent and effect are morally deficient as they lack that element of rational self interest that is needed for self affirmation. Such a person is one who lacks self worth and is no different in a way from the non rescuers during the holocaust who have a lack of self identity and self worth which prevents them from helping others in need.

Neera Bhadwar ends the essay with a description of such a self sacrificial person who though altruistic has lacked moral worth as a necessary element of rational self interest is missing for the kind of moral excellence that provides the main argument for the challenge taken up in this article.

“A person who leads such a self sacrificial life has abdicated or never developed her own independent judgment and ends. If the OTHERS did not wish to use her for their own ends, she would have nothing to live for. Others she sees as ends in themselves; herself, as only a means to their ends. Lacking a sense of self worth she has discounted the importance of her own interests, the interests that a person naturally acquires with her encounters with the world. It is this radical failure of interest in herself for her own sake this radical lack of self, that explains why, in her, even altruism fails to be a virtue.” (5)
I pray to God not to turn or grow into such a woman……

(1) “Altruism Versus Self Interest: Sometimes A False Dicotomy” from Altruism (eds.) E F Paul, Fred D Miller, & Jr , & Jeffery Paul, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pg 112.
(2)“Altruism Versus Self Interest: Sometimes A False Dicotomy” from Altruism (eds.) E F Paul, Fred D Miller, & Jr , & Jeffery Paul, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pg 113.
(3)“Altruism Versus Self Interest: Sometimes A False Dicotomy” from Altruism (eds.) E F Paul, Fred D Miller, & Jr , & Jeffery Paul, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pg 113
(4)Joseph Butler, Five Sermons, eds S. Darwall (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983), preface, para 3.
(5)“Altruism Versus Self Interest: Sometimes A False Dicotomy” from Altruism (eds.) E F Paul, Fred D Miller, & Jr , & Jeffery Paul, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pg 117