My Divinations on life

Disclaimer: In this post i have generalized, categorized a lot, it doesn’t mean you h ave to be like what i have mentioned in the post. These are just some of the qualitative observation and a through scientific quantification is needed to generalize.

It has been nearly 3 weeks since i am back to India. People say that i have changed a lot in the past year. People are judgmental about it. They can’t stand change. The are hesitant in accepting a person deviating from the group, flock or notion of “Collectivist”. Change is a choice that is available by free will to every human being in the planet. The choices you make in life are available to you because of your freedom and decisions in life. Can you stick with the change admist social pressure? I experienced stark contrast in the way, i have lived in the past and the way i live now. I am an individualist now, i don’t conform to a group just because i want to “Fit in”. I have my own ideals, opinions, the way i view the world and choices. I am finding it difficult to sacrifice them to “Fit in” with student groups. I have a choice here, i can act as a hypocrite (sacrifice my ideals) and conform to the “collectivist” behavior. There are major differences in the way i view world and the way my friends view the world. I tend to be less judgmental about things, ofcourse that being said judgement is something that nobody can avoid in life. However, i believe that there are people with varying  levels of judgements, people who are judgmental about evey aspect and people who are laidback, chilled out and  care less about things like dressing, human behavior (Not extreme ones), religious orientations, etc. I prefer to stick to the second category. Although, i prefer second category i have to learn to live peacefully with people in first category.

To diminish the abstractness and give specificity. I am going to stick to a anonymous example.
I was having an argument with one of my friend the other day. I wanted to share my part of the knowledge. Instead of creative exploration for a fact finding, things turned into a heated argument. It ended up in decided who is winning or loosing, i hate it when this happens. I feel that every argument should not be about winning or loosing, It could also be about creative exploration and knowledge sharing. I  believe the mechanism of using arguments to find effective solutions switches away from the goal of sharing knowledge and end’s up in winning/loosing. I believe that winning/loosing and right/wrong are all relative terms. This is probably one of the sharp contrasts i observed. My alter ego from the past would have worked for a amicable solution conforming to the group norms. Now i chose to argue, ended up being viewed as someone who lost an argument in a arrogant way. I observed, in arguments people from groups  tended to take sides instead of neutral standpoints. Some of them are bound by social pressure of fitting in and social acceptance in case of support/rejection of the key members argument. In all these instances, i worry whether an individual’s true opinion is lost and whether such occurances could lead to a person loosing his individuality and have a collectivist behavior.  

There are two questions from all these experiences,

Is the method of arguing about things the best way to enhance knowledge, who is to evaluate this method and is there any other methods?

Should i “fit in”  or create a new and “open” social circle? 

The other day, when i was talking to my friend, we were arguing about the science of morality

I was talking about whether, there exists some thing as right or wrong in the world. He argued that killing another person is wrong and i thought that it was a set of ideas or thinking passed down from generation to generation across civilizations. He further argued that these were biological and compassion is a human feeling.  Now to think about it , i completely agree with him. I googled wikipedia for compassion

and i found that, compassion is actually a biological feeling. It could also mean that some people have more compassion biologically, hence compassion against killing animals is more prevalent in people biologically. Hence i am vegetarian, biologically.

Alright, Happy new year to every one!

Every year i have a new year resolution and it fails time and again. This time, i am going to try something new - 30 day challenge

Things i am going to added and subtracted from my life

Add:

• More Books to read, atleast spend 60 minutes a day on a book
• Read atleast 3 CHI, UIST papers per week
• Do Yoga regularly for atleast 1-2 hours per week
• Produce More DJ Mixes atleast 2-3 per month
• Read more spiritual and philosophical book, 1 book a month
• More voluntary service, atleast 3 hrs per week

Subtract:

• Less TV
• Less nightlife
• Reduce time spent in front of computer

It has been almost a year, since i have been in Zurich. Over the past year, i have learned a lot of things both for life and career. I am trying to list some of the things, that i can say would be proud of after this year. 

Things i Learned:

•  Learned to make decisions in your life for first time.
•  Understood the impact of making incorrect decision
•  Learned to starve, survive on just Swiss bread and cheese, do laundry, meet friends from different walks of life with different ideas.
•  Realized my friends goal in life is different than mine
•  Realized the value of money and what taking care of finances meant
•   Learned to be independent
•  How to differentiate between German, Swiss, Nordic, Eastern European and French people ;)
• Deal with uncertainties, changes in life. Only the more you face grave situations, the more confidence you will have the next time.
• Understood a little bit about how european way of politics work. 
• Critically analyse, what i want in life the most and doing what i want.
• European clubs are much different than the one’s in U.S 
• Culturally see how things are unique/different
• How to relax and hear chillout vocal trance ! :-)
• How to not generalize and judge people.

Things i am Learning :

•     How to do research.
•     What it takes to become a researcher
•     How to deal with European chicks and be a smooth player ;) ( tell you more, if you contact me. Some PUA skills for ma brother from another mother )
•     How to be professional at work.  
•     How to - Drink like a finn, love beer like a german guy, Brave like a serbian, Party like  a Nederlander, prepare home made Polish vodka, not be a conservative like Swiss.

These are some of the things that come top of my Mind, but i think this trip has changed the way i think, behave and act/will act in life.  Hope i can add more later.

Today I turned 21, These will be the rough sketches of my path to glory in life :)

Age   Achievement

25-26  PhD in HCI at a Top university with very good research contribution

28-29  Post PhD contribution to research as a post-doctorate researcher

30-32  Assistant Professor in a very reputed university

33-35  Professor and Prominent researcher in HCI

35-40  Kick ass program chair of major HCI conferences and killer reviewer ;)

40-rest Go to country like switzerland/luxembourg/lichenstein and chill out !

ages 21-40 never stop partying or don’t even think of settling down. Travel, travel , party, party.

I have a list of topics i am going to share over the coming weeks. 

1. God and Randomness

2.Being individualistic,not confirming to groups but having lots of mutually disconnected groups in our life, a philosophical and social network analysis perspective .

3.Hope,Ideas .confidence and  beliefs, how it can affect our social life, opportunities and  human behavior .

4. Perception ,make it a reality.Change inner thought by changing outward behavior. 

This article is all about how i view culture, religion and conciousness ( Sense to right or wrong ) in my own ideas.

Disclaimer : Consists of some hardcore reality facts, if your not accustomed to some counter-culture ideas, please don’t read this article :P . If your open minded , ready to accept things in life as you see it and perceive it continue reading.

Culture : To me culture is just a set of ideas that every group/community have been following since the evolution of human beings. History suggests, since our evolution man has tried to associate himself with more people and try and establish or implant his ideas on the group that he has created. All these ideas and ways in which groups act/behave transcends from generation to generation, forming what is called as culture. The way in which the group behave or the traditions that the group or community follows is based on ideas that were perceived by founding members of the group or community. As a part of the culture, things/Ideas were added from each generation and in some cases it reached a stable state (which i can be considered as the  Peak of the curve in a graph) since there were no interactions between groups/communities. I think this is the reason we have distinct different culture in different part of the world. The period, before the emergence of communication technology and the reaching of the stable stage or peak i assume it would be very long where no ideas where added to the community and the ideas followed by their ancestor’s where just redundantly for next few decades. Once the communication age started we began contacting groups and being influenced by other good or the most likeable ideas of other communities. We then started adopting these ideas in our lifestyle. Thus this way one culture was influenced by others.

Now the real question is, Do we need to follow our culture (or set of ideas that we have been following from generations) be more rigid and conservative or be more open?

Once all these thoughts struck me, i decided, why could i not assimilate the best of ideas (that are reasonably considered good not violating our consciousness(hoping our consciousness is aware of activities that are perceived to be unlawful by the world)  ) from every different cultures that are there. This way, i define my own culture which has many inputs that are considered to be good from different societies/countries and inputs that are there in the realms of consciousness to me as an individual .

This is one way of looking at it.

Religion: To me religion is a mechanism created to make us stick to the culture. Organised religion is just doesn’t seem to suit me. I think the religions were made to make people stick to groups/communities in order to preserve culture. They were created because of the fears of the community that a person might be influenced by following another culture culture. These are the group of people who are not ready to accept other ideas and philosophical view points from their culture. This fear of losing their culture and ideas, what they believe in drives the community to restrict individuals of the group to follow a custom. We start following this custom, without understanding what it was meant for, this in-turn becomes the traditions for the culture. Traditions being followed without the knowledge of what exactly is going on. According to me, every human being in this world is allowed to have his own ideas and be influenced by others and things like organised religion in the society can only hamper the process of civilization development.

Consciousness :  I presume conciousness as a set of beliefs that we align ourselves to from witnessing the happening’s in society. We have perception of what is good and what is bad,and if we follow the mental model of this perception, we sense our consciousness according to this perception. We develop this perception due to our culture, traditions, ideas, beliefs. 

If the society or community had a  (now considered bad) tradition from the beginning, say for example, stealing others food if it was considered good, for generations we would be in that perception an think that doing such an action is good. It will a part of our consciousness by now. We align ourselves to what we have been following and considering good since our birth. We can change this consciousness or alternate this according to the way we want but make sure we are in sync with the societies, as long as we don’t commit any unlawful crime. 

There are several other people who have pondered about consciousness. This would be a good starting point for all of the things you want to know more about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness.

If by any chance some of you guys read this, do comment and tell me what you think 

Cause no harm to other living beings either by action, word, or thought. This is why I am a vegetarian. By eating meat,a person takes the life of another living creature. I believe that all creatures contain a part of energy which are at equilibrium at other forms of energies in the universe.By causing harm to another creature, a person causes disruption to balance of energy in the universe . Since all living creatures have a part of this equilibrium of energy , by harming another person, you are ultimately harming yourself.Apart from all of this I can’t stand killing a living creature that is able to express itself. Escpecially killing of calf’s for a type of meat called veal. How could one stand the killing of a new creature born like just one of us to explore this world. I am not a pussy or wuss, who only ate vegan from birth, I have had all types of meat before I turned vegetarian,so I am not a propaganda like peta ;) .These are my own views. I am not a perfect vegan myself atleast I realised what is happening and I am trying to push through my limitations. So if you feel, I might be right, give it a try, it might be worthwhile .