April 25, 2009

Choices

I have always been a believer of the fact that we always have a choice. I work for Sabun Nakhun and Datun Unlimited (SNDU) since I like the work that I do, since I choose to. Responsibility towards family, society and rest of the universe actually is inconsequential to what I choose. Those are evil plans by society to dominate the individual. However, what if all our actions are driven by our sub-conscious? What if, we were just puppets on a string? What if the reality was that we were not choosing but were in fact rationalizing the choices that had been made for us?

In the Great Game, the Master Player is the one who can make sure that the game progresses according to his or her wishes while making others think that they control the course of the game. What if God was playing the Great Game with me making me think that I have a choice? What if I really were an experimental anomaly in the laboratory of the Mice?

What if I had somewhere sometime in another age, taken the blue pill? Would that at least have been a conscious choice?

6 comments:

Stupidosaur said...

Matrix rules!

And anyways, when it comes to matter of concious choice, free will, intelligent decision, I have my own little quaint analogy.

I am daring to present it condisering the labels such as Bits Pilani in your blog :)

Suppose that we are like the microprocessor. Or rather, suppose there is a microprocessor more like us, and yet a lot like the present microprocessors.

Its like the present microprocessors in the sense that it just fetches instructions from the memory based on the program counter, into the instruction register, from where its circuits act upon the instruction.

But its more like in the sense that it is not a junk of circuits. Or rather it has an additional junk of circuits that makes it 'self aware', 'concious'.

The limitation is, it is aware of its own activities only from the moment instruction comes in the instruction register. It is not aware of how the instruction was fetched using address in the program counter, how it came over the bus from the memory, etc.

So if you ask it, how it knew to solve a particular problem, it will say,
"Oh you know, I am a genius! Whatever the problem, I just know what next instruction will be needed to solve it through! I create the instructions out of thin air!"

Maybe we are 'creatively intelligent' in such a way only :P.

Soumya Sen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Soumya Sen said...

"Those are evil plans by society to dominate the individual. However, what if all our actions are driven by our sub-conscious? What if, we were just puppets on a string? What if the reality was that we were not choosing but were in fact rationalizing the choices that had been made for us?"

This isn't anything to wonder about. Corporations have indeed manipulated the so-called 'individualists' for years now by appealing to their unconscious desires. And this is done through scientific ways of identifying personalities and segmenting them, because no matter how much individualist one might think oneself to be, only a finite number of segments are enough to classify the person into one or more categories and appeal accordingly. You will know more about this than I do from your professional training. Are you trying to be naive or you really don't see it? You cannot side with the bourgeoisie and pretend to be one of the proletariat!

The theory behind this behavior was proposed long ago by Sigmund Freud and popularized in USA by his daughter, Anna Freud, and his nephew, Edward Barneys, who established the first Public Relations Offices in US for the corporations to apply Freud's ideas in real markets to control the masses' desire. Then this concept was extended to be used even by Political Parties on both sides of the spectrum -by the Republicans in US (Reagan) and Tories in UK (Thatcher), later on by the Democrats (Clinton) and Labour (Blair) to win elections. In short, the "evil plans" you seem to be so afraid of are already in existence and have been put into practice by the bourgeoisie society to dominate the individuals. Economic improvement is good, but regulations on corporate greed is important. Individuals first become the victims of corporations, and then they elect Governments that too have to comply with their irrational consumerism spree that empower the big businesses and render the Government impotent of taking any actions against such malpractices. It goes to show how flawed democracy is as a concept because it helplessly relies on the rationality of the masses who are inherently irrational and are so deluded that they are sure of their own rationality and infallible judgment. Consequently, the masses are dominated because of their own stupidity. Abolition of classes is the only way to prevent the creation of an oppressor and the oppressed. One has to either fight against it or just be a part of that machinery. However it is better to be aware of it than being completely ignorant.

sayrem said...

I don't think u've taken the blue pill. if you had, you would have been woken up on the streets by the girl who labeled another as the saddest girl to ever hold a martini.
And Siddharta would never have seen what he saw.
Pain comes with the red pill.

Madhurjya (Banjo) Banerjee said...

@ Stupidosaur - microprocessor under JPM or Sumo? :) Interesting take.

@Soumya - please restart blogging. This deserves a post

@ Sayrem - Dude!!! You know the saddest girl holding the martini :) So you know pain. But you forget pain is a great intoxicant

Soumya Sen said...

@Banjo- What deserves a post? A tirade against Capitalism and the shortcomings of democracy? :) Ok, I guess I could write one if I have time tonight.