An ally called Objective Reality

There are four thousand young people who move into the city of Los Angeles on a daily basis, following their dream of becoming successful actors in the cinema industry. Many of them have intense belief - an emotional component that is equally noteworthy amongst youngsters moving to cities like Mumbai and Chennai, following the same dream.

A week away from being slapped in the face by the outcome of the US presidential election, John McCain believes he will win and go on to become the next president. There is a theoretical chance of course, but it is akin to needing 36 runs in the last over of a cricket match - possible, but highly improbable. That's why it has never been achieved. That is objective reality. All knowledge begs us to respect this objective reality, while this pesky thing called "belief" can often step in to reinforce the impossible chance!

Faith and belief are inherently risky things to give any sort of importance to, unless all objective reality and the acknowledgment of such has already been comprehensively thrown out! Belief is that elusive something you will hear from people who succeeded against impossible odds. The truth is, belief played no part, but statistics did. The odds were not beaten, merely reinforced. Those who succeed in these circumstances do so because there already exists a small window of opportunity and they are willing to hang in there hoping to be lucky. It has nothing to do with belief when the chance of being hit by lightning is actually bigger than the chance of winning the biggest lotteries.

The reality is, even the ones who didn't hang around long enough to tell us their stories, those who failed and had to give up, also had belief! Even if they had hung around longer, they would have failed, just because the statistics are stacked against them. Why then, do we promote this nonsense called belief, faith, and so on? Quite simply it is because of our inability to tell someone to base their efforts on mere statistical chance! Faith and belief can give us something to hold on to, however illusionary that may be - to stay positive and run hard while not really acknowledging that sometimes, effort can only go that far, and beyond that, we are as much creatures of chance as we are anything else we might imagine.

In taking stock of an individual's chances of becoming rich, for instance, neither effort nor faith, neither objectivism nor prayer can actually guarantee a favourable result. But those who did take their opportunities and based their judgement on a fundamentally sound direction definitely came out on top. People in the community of successful businesses will put less on faith and more on running hard when they know it is time to accelerate their efforts. This is based on acknowledging the objective realities before them. But asking Tiger Woods to be a standout example of "high performance" that we can all emulate is a bit too much. For a genius breakout success like Tiger Woods to take place, a lot of elements have to naturally find their places together. Vijay Singh probably puts in more effort than Woods, but hasn't seen the same kind of success.

What works in the favour of enterprising people engaged in business ventures is that the onus comes onto them, and on certain market factors which they can still work to their advantage, giving importance to understanding and processing information. There are usually many ways to succeed, unlike actors, for instance, whose success depends on someone else's perceptions at a particular time and a potentially life altering decision that might simply "work out". So, what advice can we sincerely give someone who wants to pursue a chance of being successful in a highly unpredictable line of endeavour? The truthful advice would indeed be "Do your best to prepare for an opportunity that might never come!"

The power of prayer is the one unknown that is yet to be acknowledged as a balance tilter. Coming from someone as competitive and celebrated as Billie Jean King, who said she would have achieved a lot more had she realized the power of prayer earlier on, there has to be some truth to it. There are some parts of this realm outside the purview of knowledge that can be applied to every individual. Hence, it is a challenge to ask people to pray and be serious about it!

The truth is, there is an objective reality that stares down upon us all the time. Some of us acknowledge it and use it to our advantage. Most will perish under its intense glare by ignoring it - it is just too cold to handle for most of us. All suffering is because of a refusal to acknowledge the presence of an objective reality. Knowledge can free us, even while being painful. Faith can destroy us, even while being positive. Stupidity, on the other hand, can be the sweetest, shortest ride to doom. It takes stupidity to use faith instead of knowledge.

In choosing our friends and relationships, it doesn't take much for us to decide what influence is good for us and what can be potentially destructive. And yet, all over human society, we can see some of us stuck in relationships that are purely corrosive, erosive of all good energy, and heading towards, at best, a prolonged state of agony. Yet, we will continue to hear from people their summary dismissal of all objective reality, giving themselves excuses and reasons to maintain status quo just for the comfort of the familiar.

There is no guarantee that we live longer by using the seat belt. But it definitely improves our chance of survival in a collision. It is by observing more and more of reality that we have longer life spans today than we did during the stone age. Humans have not progressed by faith and belief. Every step we have taken forward, we have taken because of someone's worship of knowledge and an embrace of curiosity.

And yet, we pray, consult psychics, perform rituals, give our Gods special places in our inconsistent, inconsequential lives, and put unnecessary pressure on them to perform where we might fail! We wear lucky stones, lucky colours, look for auspicious times to do things and basically do everything in our power to ignore objective reality that tells us simply what we need to do better or more than others to get ahead. Now, the number one cause for us to do this has to be laziness. How convenient if we can blame luck instead of lack of effort or understanding! The second more important cause for us to choose this line of reasoning is fear - fear that we might fail despite our best efforts. Fear and ignorance! The two biggest, least mysterious causes for all human problems. May we live to fight them! And may we celebrate reality for the best friend it is!

India Irrational 1 - Vaasthu

If you have been living in India for a while now, you would undoubtedly have heard about "Vaasthu" - the "wisdom" of building design and construction. If you have been living in a fool's paradise, you are likely to have bought into this notion that Vaasthu is indeed a science of some sort, and if you are an absolute idiot, you would have spent money to conform to some of Vaasthu's conditions.

If you have indeed spent money on Vaasthu conformation, you don't deserve even an iota of pity for you have in the age of the internet and rampant communication, chosen to be an ignorant fool fit for the dark ages. For every step forward that science, reason, and rationale have taken, it is fools like you who pull human progress back ten steps.

If I were to argue against Vaasthu, I would first have to give it some credibility in order to merit such an argument. However, as it stands, it does not deserve any rational argument because it is already as irrational as believing the earth is flat, no matter how much proof we have that the earth is rather spherical. Vaasthu stands on ambiguous principles, not "laws". Physics is based on "laws". The "laws" of physics hold true, and form the basis of all engineering that has brought about the progress of humanity.

The design of a building and the engineering codes laid down for development should more than take care of all our requirements of fire safety, ventilation, and all other concerns that Vaasthu is supposed to address in some arbitrary fashion, through rather simplistic and often awkwardly unrealistic mathematical considerations that can make a mockery of a good design.

There is the contention that if this Vaasthu were to have some hidden but potentially beneficial value, there is no harm in adhering to some of its principles. Now, if you are one of these people who sit on the fence with this nonsense in your head, you should know you are also impeding the progress of rational thinking, and hence slowing yourself down. There are many people who perform pujas to their vehicles before going on a pilgrimage tour. If you have a driver whose judgement is not quite sharp, it won't matter how many pujas you have performed on the vehicle, you are at a greater risk of having a mishap. It is that simple.

Your building will be sound and safe if you build it according to engineering specifications. There is no value addition of any sort in extending one corner to be higher than the other, or putting a window in a certain place so that wealth can flow into your life! In fact, by spending more money on getting your building up to these specifications, you have verily proved that Vaasthu is in fact making you poorer not richer. Invest in knowledge and you will benefit. Invest in ignorance and someone else is making a fool out of you.

The next time anybody tries to sell you some nonsense about Vaasthu, ask if you can get your money back if things don't work out the way they are supposed to, and in fact, some portion of the promised "prosperity" that this phenomenon is supposed to bring you. Structural engineers will guarantee the safety of your building, so why can't Vaasthu specialists who make money out of their trade that involves your money and promised returns of some sort? Do not worry if this challenge chases away your Vaasthu expert, for he is no expert. He is a scammer and if he believes in this nonsense completely, it means he has been scammed totally too!

Here's another side of your own coin for you now. What if Vaasthu is indeed capable of some kind of power and the guy who is advising you gets it wrong? Our satellites reach their orbits because of our scientists getting their calculations right. When something goes wrong, they are able to put their fingers on it and correct that for the next launch. Ultimately, we have knowledge guiding us, and that will not fail. If Vaasthu fails you, it is because you are lucky enough to come out of believing in it! Maybe it is no coincidence that "auspicious" is only one letter away from "suspicious"!