Philosophy vs Human Nature

   We all have been exposed to philosophy in some form or the other. How many of us have actually lived by it. Most often we are completely disconnected from when we engage ourselves in day to day activities. For eg., we know that we are to do our duty and don't expect any results, but we always do that. We should never have any emotions, but that is the first thing that we do and if we don't react in the expected manner and appear indifferent then the society has a blast with it by labelling us, rumour mongering etc. We are supposed to be content with what we have, and if we ever say that we are labelled as having no ambition, worthless, incapable and hence hiding our inability in this philosophical attitude and so on.
    The society is not the only one to blame, we also very much have our part in this blame. We become consumed with materialistic things, we like to have more of everything. We feel bad when we don't get that great hike or the much wanted promotion. We are longing for power, money and fame all the time.
    This causes a big rift in me and I don't know which way to go. Some of you might even think that I have lost it with such thoughts or even worse. But this I am sure is not a dilemma just for me but for most of us. How do you people deal with it? Will you do anything to succeed or follow the philosophical path (does not mean that we will not succeed? With this how and on what attributes should we measure success? Any enlightened ones out there to shed some light on this?

Time Travel

We have always talked about the need for time travel. We have seen it in movies and we have always heard about the fabric of space-time continuum getting damaged or even destroyed. Is this true or is it figment of imagination from Hollywood. What would be the benefits or repercussions of time travel?
People would say that if time travel was there then we could possibly stop World Wars, Apartheid, or even solve some personal mistakes or correct injustice. We could answer a lot of questions relating to archeology and remove the deciphering, learn the reason for the disappearance of dinosaurs, the reason for the extinction of species in various continents and probably even avoid them. These are the benefits.
But then what could be the repercussions. Would the world be what it is today? There is a saying in India, "whatever happens, happens for the good". Let us take World Wars for instance, it was definitely bad, but was that all that was to it? Did nothing good come out of the wars? Yes, there was, like advances in science and medicine, food processing technologies, communication technologies, travel technologies, spread of ethnic groups across the globe, providing the diversity, the advent of socialism in Europe. This is not taking away the great fall in humane values when thousands and thousands of people where killed. The WW II also gave numerous countries independence from the British Imperialism and provided an opportunity for these nations to find their identity.
Also let us say that we interfered with the lives of a certain individual who changed the world for good and then this individual changes his course and makes another change how would it affect the current state of world. Like if someone interfered with the work of Thomas Edisson and he decides to quit his experiment on electicity, would we have electricity or would someone else have discovered it? That is a chance which we can ill afford to take.
We are trying to converge the present and the past and then what would happen is anybody's guess.
All this while we have been talking about traveling back in time but what about travelling into the future. Is this feasible at all? This causes an assumption that we are reliving the same life as someone who already has and reliving the same mistakes as our minds are tuned to the fact that to travel to time in the future the time it must have already been in the past. Sounds confusing does it not. Or are we looking at extrapolation and then assuming the world to be in a certain state when we get there? But this is an assumption and so it may be or may not be.
Interesting topic. Think about it and comment your thoughts.

Innate Intelligence

We have always been talking about IQ and now with Mensa we have a way to be certified that we have a very high IQ. But this is all based on tests carried out on certain topics like puzzles, pattern matching, vocabulary (in English) etc. But do these actually give a measure of a person's innate intelligence or does it just give a measure of acquired intelligence. These tests might give an somewhat vague measure of innate intelligence but in my opinion is not the case.
People might say that these are good as they are based on what we need to have in life and to succeed in life. Well this is because we measure our success in how much money we make, how much of books we have read, how much we have traveled or some such things. But for some of the people this might not be the measure of success. For them it could be like leading contended life, spend time with family, gain spiritual knowledge etc. I am not taking any sides nor am I being Hippocratic. Also, the environment in which we live also determine as to what we have acquired based on the needs, interests, patronage, opportunities, access to facilities, etc. So in my opinion there is no way to measure innate intelligence and grade people. Sometimes, I wonder what my innate intelligence measure/quotient would be, a fool or a genius, or somewhere in between.
This paves a way for a strong statement that we should not under estimate anyone in our life and be ready to learn from anyone. Lots of the time our personal egos do and will come in our way but that is the challenge.
As usual "inspired" by reading the book 'Guns, Germs and Steel'.

"Award Winning"

I have been thinking about this quite a lot for a few days. We always say this is an "Award Winning" theatre, actor, software, restaurant, ....
Isn't this a misnomer? How can something be winning an award. You either are going to win an award or you have already have won it. The only time that you are winning it is when you are physically receiving the award and after that you have been awarded something. Also, being awarded something is nothing to brag about as it is history. It is not necessary that you are as good as you are at the time that you were awarded whatever. It is just the expectation/anticipation that you might be as good as that time. It is synonymous to the concept that once a rich man, who is now a pauper, requests a loan from the bank based on the fact that he was once a rich man. Imagine him saying, "I am an award winning rich man, therefore, kindly lend a loan of Rs. 10,00,000/-". It is certainly not going to work.

If I were to be reborn but with a disorder and I could choose the ailment then I would choose Autism.