helpless cortex

Accurate calculated precise timely, my intelligent cortex envies machines... motivated, disciplined, hardworking, racing against the moments, it hates me wasting my time in useless things. Rational, always thinking of the outcomes, calculating gains and losses, it thinks it knows how to get the best of everything. Careful planner, futurist, it believes in its independent existence...

And there's a wild creature, living somewhere deep, fun loving, free, limitless, hating boundaries... stronger, younger, even more intelligent than the planning elderly. Passionate, addicted, mad for some maybe trivial thing... the king, it rules every act of the conscious mind... Odd creature, has odd philosophy that my cortex can't digest... for it giving up is the best way of getting; losing everything offers more joy in some cases than gaining something. An unruly kid, it knows that certainty may be boring, searching joy in being uncertain. Constant, never getting tired, it's as stable as the existence.

I get confused, to whom shall I listen... then I give up, allowing the mad being to take control. My cortex starts planning, ignoring the fatigue, working like a machine, only to satisfy whims of  my untamed mind... partial, I don't help it.

is consciousness a curse

There's no difference, I feel sometimes, between some mindless tiny organism—trying to do it's best to survive, to protect its life cycle in some environment it has no attachment with regardless whether it's neutral or nourishing or hostile, indifferent, dumb with no capacity to peep into the future and no desire—and me, once a native of dreamland, workaholic, ambitious, confident... now just a caricature or carcass of my past, with unconscious dreams, comatose, unable to communicate with my consciousness, with hopes though shrunk resembling constructions of a grandiose mind—stubborn, alive even when the reality is in sharp contrast.

Maybe the tiny organisms are not mindless, thinking deeply, curious, trying to solve puzzles posed by nature on their minds, loving them, trying to tend them while trying to sustain... maybe they're more complex, intelligent, understanding the meaning of life, the purpose of being alive; maybe these brainless existents are born with the knowledge of  mind; maybe they're mature, grown up beyond the concept of me and mine, looking beyond punishment and reward; maybe they're huge, spiritual beings, too big to be confined in boundaries of plasma membrane and cell walls, selfless and polite, thinking of themselves just as a 'part', or they might be infinite, endless, nothing but the universe itself... maybe they're not conscious as we are, their consciousness being the existence itself, their world being 'real', not polluted by senses and feelings—just some 'impression' of the world as in our sensitive, deceptive and fool  minds.

Our world is different, subjective, limited, selfish, it's not even real—getting transformed into something different with even a slight change in perspective attitude attention or information, making us vulnerable, confined, lost in consciousness... it's worse than other animals with simpler joys and straight forward punishments; our joys are complex, punishments are strange, we lose even after winning, sacrifices can make us happy; weak, we can get lost completely—searching happiness while sacrificing our aliveness, planning, cheating, suffocating ourselves in polluted worlds created by our polluted minds; imprisoned in boundaries created by wrong thoughts, scared, insecure, suspicious, we can act as a big disease to ourselves...

Is consciousness a curse, a drawback, neurons being some powerful parasites ruling us making us mad—getting lost in illusory fake worlds existing only in our minds, giving us a false sense of being intelligent independent farsighted, enslaving us, making us to do what they want, while confusing us, deceiving, hiding information from us, masking the reality...

Whatever they do, neurons make us 'conscious'; we've no choice but to be conscious, except for some exceptional glorious moments of intense pleasure as in complete surrender during meditation or devotion in religious spiritual doings, or as in some forms of epilepsy or instances of intense human bonding what we call orgasms, there's always a boundary separating us from rest of the universe, it's hard to feel blended or a 'part'... it's hard to imagine an identity without being conscious, or a different identity— huge eternal encompassing everything; we're not that huge, our brains tell us most of the times—the times when we're 'sane'.

But they're not that dishonest, giving us a chance at least to suspect to wonder or to imagine that there's a world beyond our consciousness that's real, same to every eye; maybe we'll never evolve to have that objective perspective, to peep into reality to that extent... we've science, we've statistics—very strict measures to overcome our subjectivity; we bend the rules, overlook statistics, our world still being affected by slightest changes. We're not machines, not intelligent beings thinking in terms of statistics and math, even statistic experts being non statistic thinkers, we humans  are just unable to stop being affected by stimuli either relevant or irrelevant.

Maybe neurons make us powerful, the creators—authors, poets, artists, mechanics of our own worlds, the power in fact being just a perception, the world in fact being a mirror image of external world, the image depending upon the angle size shape texture and cleanness of the mirror, changing with any change in the mirror, the mirror being unstable—modifying itself, getting adapted to the perceived mirror images, changing its capacity to reflect, in addition to searching its own place in the reflection; maybe our brains are mirror houses, the mirrors changing themselves constantly, making us dazzled, puzzled, short sighted in order to keep us from getting mad, it being disturbing to know that the reality may not be 'real'...

I give up there, feeling too naive, too small, like a mindless tiny organism—trying its best to survive, to protect its life cycle in... , hoping that one day my human race will come up with the knowledge of mind, will break the bonds of me and mine, will be selfless, everyone feeling sense of being a 'part', of being responsible; feeling unrealistic as unable to think of any plan any way to reach that situation, my consciousness starts suspecting my mental status, and I—dreaming to be a realistic dreamer—shift my focus to present and near future, to my own personal subjective world without suspecting whether it's real.

to make some difference...

It's like swimming in some endless ocean, I feel sometimes, where we're tiny miserable creatures, trying desperately to come out of it, with no sense of destination, no sense of direction, no strong hopes of getting out of it, no purpose for getting out of it or for staying in it... moving hands and legs tirelessly, bearing the pain, with no joy in doing it, the waves in the form of different strange unforeseen incidents dragging us pushing us to random directions. Life, sometimes, seems like a meaningless occurrence, a negligible phenomenon with everything summing up to a big zero, meaningless, waste.

Something happens then, someone calls, asks for something, someone say thanks, someone blames... results we're waiting for arrive, either we succeed or we fail, something pleases the mind, something hurts it making a deep stabbing wound—we get some feedback... the endless moment of meaninglessness ends making us to feel alive. Part of this universe—we constantly interact with the part of universe other than us. The interactions, our actions and reactions, efforts of the body to stay alive or of the mind to know about life, the thought of we impacting rest of the universe enables us enough to keep on trying doing the seemingly meaningless tasks.

Maybe it's negligible, maybe it's short lasting; maybe we're too tiny and short living to affect the universe, but to the universe we can sense and track and keep record of—to the universe of us humans, we can hope to be something more than negligible... almost anything we do, our any decision, any action whether thoughtful or mindless can affect our world: our world with randomness as an important deciding factor, luck as a major controller; we can't control luck, but we can learn to be wise enough to control our wish to control the luck, to know the factors we can control, to be consistent in our efforts of controlling the controllable... maybe that's what we need to make some difference—significant, and essential to sustain our humankind. 

life of management

It's not just wondering about the diseases of individual patients, nor is it just paying heed to tendencies of groups, epidemics, mentality and educational levels of patients... it's not just following the government rules, or adjusting with current political trend... answering to media, local over enthusiastic political activists eager to make issue of anything to gain some political benefit, managing a team of workers elder to me by decades, paying attention to jobs of newcomers, their friendships and rivalries with each others, answering to taluka and district offices... managing economy of scanty drugs, the sanitation of operation theatre and the instruments... managing the government funds, salaries of workers, and government schemes... being a medical officer is being more a manager than a doctor...

It's hard to keep in touch with your medical knowledge, to handle everything according to standard norms, the conditions being slightly strange or not as mentioned in books... x ray machine is here though not properly trained technician, doctor is here—me of course, though not proper health facilities like even basic drugs... patients are uneducated, politically alert villagers wanting me to diagnose and treat every disease with the x ray machine and whichever drugs I have. PHC is a referral service, they say, but they don't provide any means to convince the people to move to higher centers if they show signs of  malignancies, heart diseases or diseases not treatable at PHC level... People look at the referral chit as a proof of the doctor's incompetence, or ignorance—overall lack of interest in their health condition. Many are not willing to invest that much time and energy for their own health or health of their relatives...

I'm out of my big lovely standard books, in real world, among real patients—posing conditions similar to those described in my beloved books but in highly different circumstances, learning to deal with people with very different viewpoints than that of me—very different from one another, to convince them, to handle their differences and sometimes to make use of them, to handle unforeseen circumstances. Maybe this extended part of medical education is worth a year....

It requires strength

"I'm no more a romantic person living in some dreamland or a perfectionist craving for best or an innocent sweet child, honest, always true to her morals... I know it's nearly impossible for life to be perfect, dreams might be just fantasies, not always meant to be achieved; morals are just luxuries only lucky fulfilled and superhuman can afford, or they're rules of some mad obsessed ne'er-do-wells, or are some chants in fairytales—never working in real life. There's no true love, there's no passion; devotion is a meaningless word... selfishness being the first predictor of success, luck being the second. Loving others without expectation is killing your own soul. Trusting someone is risking yourself, promises being stepped down as cheap talks... or bluffs... cheaters are winners, believers are fools—born to be flop. I'm not describing some nightmare, or experience of some negativistic person with some personality disorder... this is real life, alas, not a fiction...."

It's very easy to be cynic in this world, series of experiences pushing us to pessimism... but thankfully it's not all desert. It requires strength—a lot of strength to see the meadows, the rivers, the waterfalls and the jungles... True love is here—able to surpass all fictions, pure care isn't mythological, here is comfort, here is trust... faith is here to make us relaxed. It's not harmful to rest in dreamland when we know what is real... It's not harmful to attempt mending the future while living in present. Number of efforts may not lead us to success, but they're bound to increase its chances—if done in correct direction. We're not passive limp non-living objects moving only with forces from outside, neither are we reptilian brained animals thinking only of me myself and my present tense... we can gain knowledge, can plan the future, can think strategically while still protecting our morals... we can get joy by doing something for our loved ones; we're humans, we're born to celebrate our humanness. 

Luck... Fortune... Life

We never like to admit it, though we can't deny it; inevitable, uncertain, unpredictable and random but for sure in every aspect of our lives 'luck' does play a central role. A collection of unpredictable things, an array of random events, life is composed of a host of life changing phenomena happening without any direct cause just because of nature's tendency of random fluctuations... It's a tendency of us humans to seek out and attribute causes, to make predictions, to expect some outcomes and to get disappointed when things don't happen as we want, or to get ecstatic  on getting unexpected boosts to expect the same victory next time.

"Fortune favors the brave," "man makes his own luck," "luck may help sometimes, work always helps," I used to be a fan of such quotes, until I realized that they're just weak efforts of humans to encourage efforts in extremely hopelessly uncertain and unpredictable environment. Fortune isn't some conscious thing to favor the brave, only the rash decision makers fortunate enough to get positive results are remembered as braves the history being amnesic to the failures. Sometimes good thoughtful decisions come out with bad outcomes, the outcomes have many things along with our actions to depend on, it's an injustice to blame only the decisions when things go wrong and an over admiration to attribute all success to the decisions and actions when we get success. Even if we consider the parts other than us while planning for some action, we can't guarantee accomplishment as there's something we can't guess in proper, that something being luck or random fluctuations of it. Winning one lottery doesn't guarantee another win,  it can be proved that 'hot hand' in games is mere a mirage... your viva may depend upon the answers given by the candidate before you, in written exams things like mood of the examiner, or the quality of your first answer can affect the results more than actual quality of your overall performance. Being good doesn't promise a good outcome, helping everyone including the wrong ones may throw you in crisis or may make you an idol, being moral in immoral situations may make you a star or leader or may throw you in trashes...

Are we just puppets? If everything depends on luck, what's the role of making efforts? Does it have any role... We can't control luck. We are puppets in some sense, the consequences of our actions depending at least in part on something we can't control. But we're not lifeless dolls tied with some invisible strings getting moved by some invisible hands moving on random... we're capable of making actions, and planning them before making; we're capable of thinking and learning to think, of understanding the situations our capacities and incapacities, of estimating the odds of success impartially while restricting our tendencies of favoring our own decisions or those of doubting them more than needed if we're anxious, of deciding whether to take the risks, and of controlling our emotional responses when we fail or when we succeed.  We're capable of resisting temptations and learning to wait, to have more patience, to sacrifice immediate joys to get more enjoyment in future, or to accept minor losses in order to avoid major ones in future... We're born with certain levels of optimism, but we're capable of increasing it if we lack it or of decreasing it if we're born with optimism that is delusional. We can learn to direct our limited resources to things which really matter, we can learn to be rational while still being a dreamer.... Aren't we lucky that we're alive enough?

Why violence

Horror movies with ugly ghosts, screams and shouts, or brainless violent movies with dance of cruelty, injustice and blood... we are lucky to be able to choose whether to see them, but there are humans whose life is nothing but a live regular experience of such incidents. People fight, they beat others, verbally and physically abuse others, do injustice to the innocent, behave like some angry reckless beasts that too in their own homes. Every day starts (if there is a day) with extreme fear and uncertainty about the existence, every now and then there's possibility of severe violence...

When survival is a big challenge, thinking about growth and progress is out of question. misery rules lives over there. There are bad even vulgar words; there are moans, groans, cries; there are tears and pathological villainous laughter, there are wounds, bleeding, slashes, abrasions, hematomas, and even fractures... loss of organs or organ functions....

With all hopes wiped out, life over there is synonymous with a blend of stress and pain. Before recovery can progress to healing, another assault follows. Sickness, illness or  decreased working capacity are treated with doses of threats, abuses and physical violence... and they're not some wandering ghosts or renowned criminals, for most of the times they wander in outer world as normal humans. I really can't understand in terms of traditional evolution the existence of mother beaters, wife beaters and child abusers. Do they really gain something by hurting their own kin, by transforming their own homes into live hells?

Many times they are males, sometimes addicted to one or more psychoactive drugs with those drugs seizing their controls over their own brains... sometimes they're hale and hearty, conscious, maybe without any drug flowing in their bloodstreams and they just happen to love violence; some may be very intelligent, using planning and high tech techniques of offering distress to take revenge of innumerable small offenses done against them, such as cooking something they don't like... maybe they're psychopaths, maybe they're frustrated failures attempting to get rid of the frustration by doing something injurious to the innocent.........

What's wrong with their world... who's at fault? What makes the crops of psychopaths so common? Lower socioeconomic status with scarcity of resources, scant facilities and excess of problems is said to be associated with high levels of improper aggression. And such aggression does nothing but worsens the situation. Why do people to fall into vicious cycle of scant resources to aggression to destruction of the resources, rather than using the available resources judiciously economically and effectively for helping themselves and others? Why do they choose to hurt others when in fact comforting, helping and loving others can be a great source of solace and relaxation?

Actually more than the actual socioeconomic status, person's own rating about his socioeconomic status is more strongly associated with such improper behavior. In other words, unsatisfied souls tend to be more improperly aggressive. Their aggression is the major obstacle in progress, and the major cause of distress to themselves, their closed ones and to the whole world...    

I don't know how rational it is to think to alter them... I don't know whether there is some rational way to do so... It's like a huge forest in fire, I don't know from where to start and how. For now I'm trying to keep my sensitivity alive, perhaps by chance someday the destiny might offer a chance to make some difference, it won't be a good thing to miss it mere due to indifference.