Ideas We Believe

One way to put a banner on the course of human civilization is to call it an escape from uncertainty ( most of which would have led us to death). Why do we live in societies? To save ourselves from the uncertainty of getting attacked... Why do we build houses? To mitigate the uncertainty of getting our food washed away in the rain... Why do we rear children? So that we don't fast ourselves to death in old age. So in all these cases, the sheer uncertainty in the future has made us make expensive investments in the present. And those who didn't give in to these fears took a risk.  The pay-off of that risk is, however, independent of the past. In some cases, the risk turned out to be a golden gamble. Just like a flood washing away houses of people...the ones who hadn't built their houses were a little less sad. Risk can give an unexpected reward, but the higher the risk, the greater the return.  But at times, the risk is otherwise. Instead of choice for the individual, it beco...

Ideas and beliefs are abstract terms. In fact, the triumph of humans in the race of the intellectual has been attributed to our understanding of the abstract. No other animal in this world builds a society because it understands society as a concept. They merely do so to enhance their food and livelihood security. But for humans, some reasons arise out of understanding the abstract. If our knowledge is to be stripped down to bones, we might find that we are slaves to our abstraction. We revere value in paper notes, honour in metal medals and fear in stone statues. Ideas are what have made this imaginative creature the ruler of the planet. Our success as a species rests on the coherence and usefulness of the ideas we bear. So, the concepts passed upon to us or occur to us in episodes of creative hallucination can change the face of this earth. So, it is the most remarkable creation of humans and, thus, the origin of property. This blog aims to capture some of such thoughts. Believe, or ...