I don’t know how it all came to be like this. Maybe I am overreacting, but probably not. No one can be this good.
Fuck, I don’t wanna write about this. It’s so lame, writing about this.
I went around Mumbai with Nikolas today. He’s from France. Nice guy. I’ve also met Beverly from America. She is also very nice. I want to meet the Japanese guy next.
Why does a moving thing keep moving unless stopped? Who made that rule? Does it come from some more fundamental rule? And that comes from something still more fundamental? And it ends somewhere? Some ultimate rule that can explain itself, why it should exist instead of some other rule? And we have a universe that can explain itself? I don’t think so. It’s a classic bootstrap problem.
A young shadowy figure…
while the insides change the block stays the same…
that this crumpled up paper can be perfect again…
I learned to say ‘where do you live’ in French. And Nikolas learned to say it in Bangla.
I got some bad news today. It hit me. It moved some ground from beneath my feet. I am feeling bad. Sad, and angry, and brooding. So I’m listening to loud rock music where people are yelling. I like it. Definitely beats sitting alone on the roof staring at the lights of Marine Drive.
Take everything from the inside…
Some people lead their lives in a very lop-sided, distorted, unfair way. I mean, unfair to others. What should we do with them?
Yesterday I was sitting on the shore at dusk when it was getting dark and there was a lot of wind, and I was so peaceful and happy. So then I thought, the natural resources, or for that matter, anything, is not the property of anyone. This is a fundamental idea in Hinduism, but I won’t get into that. It made sense to me, but then I thought whether there was any situation where I might be forced to think otherwise. I imagined a guy working very hard behind a particular apple tree to bring it to life, and to sustain it against all odds. He does this for many years, and has to sacrifice a lot. Then, when the apples are ripe, someone else comes and sees them and takes them all away. Will it be right?
I thought, no. So there was a contradiction.
Then I found the answer.
What is ‘right’? What is ‘wrong’? The ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ we generally have in mind are human-defined artificial ones. So whether a thing is right or wrong depends on this plastic definition. It is a very artificial, fabricated morality.
So is there any inherent morality that we can fall back on? No, no morality, but there is just the rules of nature. In nature, there is no morality, just a list of things you do to survive. This list comprises very uncivilized things. If you call something that increases your chances of survival as ‘right’ (but that is exactly what ‘civilization’ won’t do), then eating that apple is ‘right’. This sort of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is the only sort that we can define objectively. Anything else will be influenced and distorted by human tendencies, which I believe are artificial, being a result of our particular history and current culture.
I feel better now, but not much. I shall listen to more sad and angry songs until I feel satisfied.
These things keep happening to me.
Prof. Harold Helfgott fell asleep during the night class today. It was funny. He is a nice, apologetic kind of guy. I like him a lot. My roommate and I call him Helu-da.
I am talking now about the Summer School in Analytic Questions in Arithmetic at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.
I need to take a dump. TTYL.