Friday, March 5, 2010

Thinking in new'fun'land ...

Holla,

me, from past few years atleast :)

Long time no see huh? Sorry, but it seems that i get motivation to write only when i am on road. Life seems meaningless and aimless otherwise which is not a very good mindset to write blogs i guess. But anyways, I recently moved to a new house and from past few days i am hanging out with a new bunch of awesome friends. It’s a much needed change in my life and i am happy at the moment :) (Wow!).

I finished my second semester few days ago and all my required courses are done. I have like 16 months to myself now for my research and thesis. This thought is scary for me, to keep myself motivated for so long to work on some random naval architecture stuff. But i guess i knew before hand that i will have to go through all this and hence i have been mentally preparing myself. Do i sound like an utterly unmotivated person? Voila, you got me right!

I think engineering as an organized profession is just a result of rat race of the world and universities churning millions of engineers everywhere are just factories fueling the industrial economy. Where are the days where people used to do things because they were really really interested in them?? This is something i see as a side-effect of globalization. An Indian is supposed to work hard because an American or a Chinese is working hard … what a bullshit! I don’t understand this but at the same time i do not have a better system to propose. It just seems to me that this is the natural way of life and somehow it makes me believe in the ancient Indian philosophy that everything is predecided. In a way it also makes me feel very very small in front of i don’t know what. I ask all humans who consider themselves as most superior of all a very simple question. Come up with a global governance system where there is no war and no inequality. Have we ever done it in past 5000 years? Can anybody do it in future?? I don’t think so. You see what i mean now? We are all just part of something random, prisoners of our own image.

And this realization sucks, believe me it does. It has made me a sad person in general. Whenever i do anything which can be considered hedonistic in a smallest possible way, i feel bad. If i drink, or eat good food or party, i feel bad. I feel bad for someone who has no access to all this and i feel bad for my helplessness in helping them. I feel bad when i waste time because i think i should work hard, but then i think work hard in what?? How is naval architecture supposed to create a world with no war and no inequalities?? Shouldn’t we put our time and resources in solving this question then in our blind quest of never-ending materialism! Sometimes i think those humans in ancient India who spent all their life in seclusion thinking about life must have pondered over this question. Weren’t they the most modern human beings who ever walked the earth, the only human beings who were real and free from the prison of their own images?? Hats off ...

At the moment, i neither have a solution to propose to this world, nor do i have balls to lead a secluded life like many of my ancestors did. And it makes me sad.

Conclusion: It’s bad for you to think a lot when you don’t have enough will power to do things that you think are right. (Huh, even the conclusion is a catch 22)

Anyways, i hope i have depressed you enough by now, or maybe you just think i am crazy. Whatever it is, I would love to hear from all of you on this. Till then, chao chao.

For a better world...
Karan