Saturday, 23 April 2016

Review of "When breath becomes air"

I recently completed reading "When breath becomes air" by Paul Kalanithi. While knowing the fate of Paul from starting it was a compelling read and it did raise some important points which anyone with "existential crisis" would have thought about.
We as humans identify ourselves to a particular identity and ask ourselves what makes us us. This leads to asking the meaning of one's life and in turn dictates what would one want to do with one's life. People with this strong sense of identification have to justify themselves their existence and their actions. Paul's case was no different.
His search for the difference between life and death and what made death so alluring a concept was crucial
in making his life decisions. He learnt english, philosophy, the workings of the brain to understand what was the
meaning of life and how did death change it. His sense of importance, a hubris, if I might add, of his life is prevalent and maybe even characteristic of humans. What makes me me.
The book offers an insight into his thought processes and mind, the things which make Paul Paul. Having been to the best of the schools in the world, his was definitely a uneasy and questioning mind. This quality is greatly
appreciated in any intellectual school. Most probably because the intellectuals schools has people who themselves were grappled by questions about existence, realism, importance in the promenade of their youths and these questions withered away with age. Not to say they were solved. They never are. One just learns to ignore and even gets comfortable with fat paychecks and easy life.
Paul did not venture into the territory of understanding death after becoming a neurosurgeon. This was the
backdrop in which his the story plays, a real life story. It is accepted that the life of a doctor, a neurosurgeon at that is quite tough. But as he mentions, it was a calling not a choice. Calling is what best justifies the existence of a person who has a strong sense of existence. Existing for the sake of existing is too trivial (and frowned upon) a reason and one needs to do better. Guided by the great minds who have walked the Earth he tries to find his calling too, a justification for his existence.
The story is of sorrow and pain but it is somehow not obvious because of unwavering tone in Paul's writing.
He was steady on the operating table and on the typewriter too, with not too many emotions. A cut two milimeters below can damage and hence one needs to be precise and sharp. It was a beautiful piece of writing.
Also, Paul would have been one of the best doctors around, had he lived. Having snatched everything he yearned to live for, this is a tale of sadness. What goes around doesn't come around. He was living in the future and the future refused to come.
The return to theism was quite spectacular and it give a key insight into his mind. Men are guided by meaning in their lives. For Paul the absence of God meant that the scientific facts were correct but there was no meaning. It was merely a giant machine roaring and moving. His and quite often all the other theists have but this argument for their theism. Our lives would not make sense if not for a higher purpose, a meaning of sorts. We are not ready to accept that there might be no meaning of life. That we are just a stupid lot living and we are all meaningless.
Overall, the book was a good read and it made me look through a different lens of life.

Thursday, 25 February 2016

Meaning of life

Humans living on this planet have barely arrived about 100,000 years ago, so it would be wrong to say we are owners of this Earth. For that matter even caretaker of this Earth. Dinosaurs have lived on this planet for time periods longer than that of humans and they did not own the Earth or care about it. Most probably, we as species would not live for more than a million years. That is very very less in evolutionary timescales and would not matter to anyone.
We have occupied Earth, created religions, created gods, demi-gods, gods among human, societies, vegetarians, vegans, hippies, music, arts, mathematics, respect, emotions, hatred, sexiness etc. The point being that almost all the concepts/ideals we live by, are anthropomorphic and have no actual significance. For all we know societies could have developed where treating people with kindness was looked down upon. Animals were not allowed to mate. Various bizzare things could have happened. What we are witnessing is a particular kind of society which developed. There was no reason for it to be preferred over other models of society. Being emotional beings, people wanted to give "meaning" to life, "meaning" to death, "meaning" to cat crossing the path. Hell, meaning to everything. We wanted everything to hold significance in our lives coz as humans we are darn special. We are better than other species.
Truth is(in my perspective), lives have no meaning. There is no better reason to live a life than is to start building large temples in the middle of the road.
Given this perspective, that nothing in life is meaningful many people become cynical. They dread the fact that since life has no meaning there is no reason to live and hence one must die. Of course, no reason to live comes with no reason to die too. Some things give us happiness and some things make us sad. Most of this could be conditioned by our society or for that matter evolution too. Helping other makes us feel good because we have been taught that it is a good thing. Feeling envy is bad because our parents have told us so, movies around us, teachers around us. Of course there are other "universal" pleasures. Most people like sweet dishes and desserts. That is coming from evolution. Natural selection makes sure that you like whatever will make your body more active for reproduction. Sweet things inevitably contain glucose which gives energy. I must say that evolution does not work in hindsight. It did not realise that making people such that they like sweet things could have bad consequences. People getting diabetes, impotency and other diseases as a direct or indirect consequence of glucose are side effects of making the body like glucose. Natural selection will act and make people in which these tendencies are limited. That will take a long time. Anyways, I digress.

Noting that point that lives do not hold purpose and our emotions are conditioned or evolutionarily trained we ask ourselves what to do with this long boring life. Should we go kill ourselves or should we write blogs or should we contemplate life or should we read Proust.

This is where the answer is very very simple. Do what you like. Find peace in the fact that nothing is going to matter. Anarchy, corruption, sadness, death hold no more meaning that kindness, greed, love, happiness etc.

Nothing is forever.