Risking It All for 90 Seconds

 It’s not the likelihood of the fall, but the weight of its consequences that demands caution

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI: A Man Falling on a Busy Road

Summary: During a trip to Geneva, Salim chose to jaywalk instead of waiting 90 seconds at a pedestrian signal. Mid-crossing, he tripped and narrowly avoided an oncoming car. Embarrassed but unharmed, he later reflected on how easily the incident could have ended in serious injury or worse. Salim’s experience is a reminder that decisions with low probability of adverse outcomes can have potentially outsize life-altering consequences.

The incident occurred during a one-week trip to Geneva — an event that, with slightly different outcomes, could have had lifelong repercussions. A small twist of fate, and Salim would have endlessly wished to turn back time, altering the moment that upended his life.

Salim had enjoyed the familiar routine of visiting Geneva and taking the train from the airport to Gare Cornavin. Stepping out of the station, he felt a sense of comfort as familiar sights greeted him: the Hotel Bernina directly ahead and, to its right, Les Brasseurs, where he’d enjoyed many dinners on past trips. Salim often remarked how much easier it was to travel to places he knew well, requiring little preparation and offering a sense of ease.

It was a pleasant evening in early December, uncharacteristically mild for Geneva. Since his arrival, there had been no rain. That evening, at a dinner with colleagues at Little India, Salim had savored his favorite dishes: onion bhaji with tamarind chutney, saag paneer, and, mindful of his blood sugar, just a small portion of rice. Feeling content, he strolled along Rue Lausanne back to his hotel. Rue Lausanne was bustling, as always, with cars streaming in both directions and Tram №15 periodically rattling past.

To reach his hotel, Salim needed to cross Rue Lausanne, a road with multiple stoplights to ensure safe pedestrian crossing. But for reasons he couldn’t later recall, he decided against walking to the nearest crossing. Perhaps the idea of waiting 90 seconds for the pedestrian signal to turn green seemed like an unnecessary delay. Instead, he glanced left and right, judged the traffic, and decided he had enough time to cross.

Things didn’t go as planned. As Salim hurried across, he tripped and fell — right in front of an oncoming car he’d initially deemed far enough away. In his calculations, he hadn’t accounted time for a fall, the need to scramble up, or the panic that would follow.

Luckily, Salim managed to get up in a hurry and reach the opposite curb in time. When there, his first thought wasn’t about potential injuries. Instead, he was mortified by being the object of a socially awkward situation. Desperate to avoid attention, he briskly walked away, pretending as though nothing had happened. It was only after putting a few blocks between himself and the incident location that he began to check for injuries. His knees stung, and his durable blue jeans had torn at the right knee — a testament to the severity of his fall. When he finally reached his hotel room, a body scan revealed scraped knees and a bruised left palm, the latter having borne the brunt of his fall.

Salim couldn’t help but reflect on how much worse things could have been. He might have sustained serious injuries, necessitating medical care in a foreign country. If he had not gotten out of the way quickly, the driver of the oncoming car might have had to slam on the brakes, possibly causing another accident. Worst of all, Salim himself could have been struck by the vehicle.

And all this for the sake of saving 90 seconds.

Those 90 seconds, insignificant as they seemed, could have brought about a lifetime of regret. Even though none of the worst-case scenarios materialized, the incident served as a sobering lesson: saving a few moments isn’t worth the risk of catastrophic consequences. The cost-benefit analysis was clear — even if tripping was an unlikely event, the stakes if it did happen were too high.

To this day, Salim occasionally revisits that memory. He wonders about the thoughts of those who witnessed the scene. Did a mother tell her child to learn from “that man” and always wait for the pedestrian signal? Did someone shake their head, believing Salim deserved the scare for disregarding safety rules? Whatever their thoughts, Salim will never know. He is just thankful that he got away easy.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

Gravity and Mortality: Brothers in Arms

It is the push against the boundaries that is the essence of what it means to be human.

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI:  Gravity and Mortality

Summary: The parallels between gravity and mortality are striking. Both are ever present in our lives and are forces that cannot be escaped or ignored. They are universal, affecting all matter and all living beings, regardless of circumstance. Both are also attractive in nature, drawing toward a center — gravity toward the center of mass, mortality toward death.

Gravity and mortality! Who would have thought that they are brothers in arms.

Gravity and mortality are forces that shape our existence, each in their own profound way. While gravity governs the motion of planets and the fall of a stone, mortality effects the trajectory of human life. Both are ever-present forces that exert an incessant pull. Exploring their similarities just happens to be a fun exercise, and so, here we are.

Gravity

Gravity is an attractive force that acts between two masses. It is fundamental to the structure and order of the cosmos. Without gravity, the stars would not form, planets would not orbit, and life as we know it would not exist.

Gravity is the reason we remain bound to Earth’s surface, preventing us from drifting into the void of space. When a stone is thrown into the air, gravity slows its ascent, brings it to a halt at its highest point- the vertex, and then accelerates its descent back to the ground. The elegant parabola the stone traces embodies gravity’s pull.

Among the fundamental forces of nature, gravity is unique. It is always attractive, never repulsive, drawing masses together rather than pushing them apart like electric charges of same sign do. This universality gives gravity a special role in shaping the universe on a cosmic scale. From the clustering of galaxies to the tides of Earth’s oceans, gravity is a silent hand, always at work.

Mortality

Mortality is a constant presence that shapes the arc of human life. Its influence begins with birth.

At this starting point of our life, we are helpless and are entirely dependent on the care and goodwill of others. The horizon of our choices is very limited. Chew on a toy, claw on the leg of a chair.

The nurturing instincts that natural selection has embedded in us ensure that the fragile beginnings of life are protected and allowed to flourish. As we grow, our capabilities and choices expand. As we enter youth, life’s possibilities seem boundless.

However, just as a stone thrown into the air starts to slow down and reaches a vertex before descending, so too does life’s horizon of possibilities start to shrink as we grow older. Under the influence of mortality, with aging the horizon of our possibilities starts to narrow. The physical and mental vigor that once characterized youth begins to wane.

Life, in its later stages, becomes a process of consolidation and reflection, a return to simplicity of its beginning akin to the stone’s descent to the ground.

Parallels between Gravity and Mortality

The parallels between gravity and mortality are striking. Both are ever present in our lives and are forces that cannot be escaped or ignored. They are universal, affecting all matter and all living beings, regardless of circumstance. Both are also attractive in nature, drawing toward a center — gravity toward the center of mass, mortality toward death.

Gravity and mortality also evoke philosophical questions about existence.

Gravity binds us to the Earth, providing stability and a sense of place in the universe. Yet it also reminds us of our limitations, as we are unable to escape its pull without extraordinary effort.

Similarly, mortality gives life structure and urgency. The awareness of life’s finite nature compels us to seek meaning, to create, and to cherish the moments we have, qualities that also require extraordinary effort.

Both forces also inspire efforts to transcend their limits.

Humanity’s desire to overcome gravity has led to remarkable achievements in science and engineering, from the first flight to the exploration of outer space. Similarly, the desire to transcend mortality has driven advancements in religion, philosophy, medicine, the search for longevity, and the pursuit of legacies through art, knowledge, and culture.

These efforts reflect a fundamental aspect of human nature: the drive to push beyond the boundaries imposed by the forces that surround us. It is the push against the boundaries that is the essence of what it means to be human: to rise, to reach above, aspire to experience the limits of our potential, and ultimately, to return to our beginnings.

Gravity and Mortality are brothers in arms.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

God's Waiting Room

 

The sign said, “Turn Here for 55+ Active Adult Community.”
If we are diligent enough in the fine print it also said welcome to “God’s Waiting Room.”
The developers did not have to include that.
Wherever we are, we all live in God's waiting room.

The origin of my consciousness

 

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, and consciousness is the ability to feel things and have subjective experiences — Yuval Noah Harari

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

A dreary summer afternoon, and there is absolute stillness all around. Not a single leaf on the trees outside is fluttering.

A while back, when I stepped out onto the screened porch for a minute, all I could hear was the buzzing sound of cicadas and flies. It feels as though I am the only one around here, living on some frontier outpost of humanity, waiting for the next supply ship to arrive and bring some cheery news from the Earth.

There is not much else to do here except watch flies scuttle around busily or think about philosophical questions like what consciousness is and what it might have been its origins.

There is an effervescent beauty in philosophical musings. They are also a bottomless source of questions to keep my mind engaged and keep soul sucking boredom at bay.

It is fun to ponder over the origin stories of common objects that are around me — why something is what it is? Do things owe their origin merely to chance accidents or there is some inevitability to their existence?

Why do I have physiological mechanisms for sensing the environment, or for that matter, is there a reason that I have five senses and not six? Are there plausible explanations for observable facts around me?

Philosophical musings, although may not have practical utility, they keep my mind engaged and help me feel connected to something larger than myself. They allow me to transcend the narrow confines of my ego.

So, what could be origins of my consciousness and the reason that I am aware of a fly buzzing around, and when it lands on the cup of muddy coffee I am drinking, it makes me react with annoyance.

There are two origin stories for consciousness. One perspective posits that consciousness is an entity of its own. It is separate from the physical brain, which receives sensory input and seems like an integral and a crucial component for my awareness. This view, known as dualism, suggests that a non-physical substance or property constitutes consciousness.

The alternative view posits that consciousness is a construct of the physical brain’s myriads of activities. This notion argues that consciousness is an acquired capacity and hinges on the workings of the brain. Along the evolutionary path, the capacity for consciousness evolved to give biological organisms an edge in the race to acquire finite resources, thereby increasing their chances of survival and reproduction.

It is easy to comprehend that all biological organisms require a mechanism to (a) sense their surroundings, (b) interpret the sensory input, and © make an inference from the input received and react accordingly. These are the three basic functions of the brain. If I did not have these traits, I might as well be a rock.

Starting from that premise, it is not difficult to envision that as brain functions and structure acquired more complexity to coordinate increasing specialization of different organs, a nascent capacity for proto-consciousness (e.g., a capacity to remember what happened in the past few minutes ago) may have evolved.

Once the capacity to consciousize was there, it gave an enormous edge in the race for survival and reproduction. Shaped by the hands of natural selection, the nascent capacity for proto-consciousness continued to get better and better.

Neuroscience and cognitive science are advancing the understanding of the physical basis of consciousness. The biological foundations for memory already exist and are connected with the concept of synaptic plasticity.

With a neurological basis for memory in place, cognitive science can build on that foundation to develop macro-level explanations for the hallmarks of consciousness such as perception, attention, language, reasoning and problem-solving, flow of time, and metacognition (the ability of consciousness probing itself). These are the traits that are used to define the capacity (or can serve as markers) for consciousness.

This pathway for evolving a capacity for consciousness is a plausible narrative.

A corollary to the possibility above also comes to mind that once the capacity for memory is there, and I am aware of the past, an awareness for the future has to come in. I cannot imagine a world where an awareness of the past without an awareness of the future, and vice versa, can exist.

Plausible as it may be, there are lots of unanswered questions that are associated with the notion for a physical basis for consciousness though:

· Why is there such a big gap in the capacity for consciousness between me and countless biological organisms that exist around me? How and when did this quantum leap happen?

· A more fundamental question, however, is how to measure consciousness to begin with? It is only when I can do that that I can ask if the capacity for consciousness falls on a continuum.

· How consciousness relates to the subjectivity of experience? Is it because of the different physiological structures of the brain? Is it because synapses differ from person to person and (with age for a person) and synapses are what makes us.

· How does capacity for consciousness evolved subsequent to my birth — am I as conscious on the day I was born vs. when I was twenty vs. when I am at 66 now vs. when my current cognitive abilities will decline with age?

· What role the brain as an interpreter of sensory input plays in what ‘consciousness is?’ Does the biological, chemical, and electrical activity in the of brain the seat of consciousness or it is a two-way street?

· Does consciousness and IQ have a connection? Does someone who can speak 58 languages has higher level of consciousness than me who has difficulty keeping track of one.

· Does consciousness…

…and the list of questions can go on and on and is long enough to keep me gainfully occupied for the rest of my living days.

For now, the buzzing fly just could not resist committing hara-kiri and dived into the cup of stale coffee. Time to get up and make a fresh cup of tea.

Once again, the world of living trumps the work of thinking. Thankfully, it always does.

Ciao and thanks for reading.

Consciousness and existential crisis

 Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth — Alan Watts

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI: Consciousness Probing Itself

One of the fundamental causes for the ailment existential crisis is my capacity for consciousness that also makes me aware of the future. It is in the future that mortality resides, and the recognition that I live for a finite span of time lurks. It is said that if I live in the present moment, and thereby, not being aware of the future, I will be connected to immortality or timelessness. But who can manage to always live in the present? For that matter, what is ‘present’?

Along with the awareness of the future, the recognition of my mortality is validated further by the memories from the past (e.g., memory of loss of friends and family that are no longer with us) that I carry.

Being aware of the future and remembrances of things past are hallmarks of the capacity for consciousness. Indeed, various definitions of consciousness are peppered with the word ‘awareness’. Wikipedia suggests that consciousness, at its simplest, is “awareness of internal and external existence” and may include cognition, experience, feeling, or perception. It goes on to say that “It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, metacognition, or self-awareness…”

Merriam-Webster describes consciousness as “the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself.”

What fun I can have splitting hair and continue to ponder on a concise definition for the capacity for consciousness, but whatever it may be, the fact remains that with the awareness of the future it brings, I am also aware that I may no longer be an I in the next moment. Knowing this fact is the cognizance of mortality that fuels and sustains the ailment of existential crisis.

The consciousness and capabilities it provides me with has helped greatly in the evolutionary race for survival and reproduction. It is because of this capability that my species has come to dominate the Earth and has become its self-appointed manager (although humans are not very good at it).

As beneficial as the trait of consciousness may be, it is a double-edged sword — it allows me to be aware of the continuity of time and helps define me and my identity, at the same time letting me know that for me time is also finite.

The capacity for consciousness is no free lunch.

Another trait of consciousness is that it can explore itself. The capacity of consciousness allows me to ask a basic question where consciousness may have emerged from?

Perhaps the self-referential nature of consciousness and its ability to probe itself makes comprehending it an impossible task. The more it probes and learns about itself, deeper questions about itself it comes across.

But for now, let me not chase my own tail and focus on where consciousness may have come from.

There are basically two possible answers to this question. — consciousness is an entity that is independent of the self I am. Alternatively, like other parts of me, it is also a biological construct.

If consciousness is independent of my physical form then even after I perish, the consciousness (presumably in some way influenced by what I have been) will continue on.

If it is a biological construct then both my physical form and my consciousness will cease to exist at some point in time. Among the two, conceptually this option is a much easier answer to construct but is much harder to swallow and the discomfort leads to the ailment of existential crisis. [The former is a more acceptable option but is full of riddles].

The feasibility of the second alternative being possible is not that hard to envision.

In an environment, to be able to survive and reproduce, a biological organism has to have some mechanism to (a) sense its surroundings, (b) interpret the sensory input, and © react to it [what kind of reactions). This necessity of these three functions is the blueprint of nervous system and the brain.

Following evolution as biological organisms became more complicated and started to develop specialized parts, the nervous system and brain had to also evolve more sophisticated capacities to coordinate different specialized parts.

Along the trajectory of developing and achieving more and more sophistication, the nervous system and brain, perhaps by accident (either genetic mutation or because of the environmental pressure to be better than others, at some point may have evolved a nascent capability for memory formation. Giving an advantage in the race of survival and reproduction, the nascent capacity for memory would evolve further to become a trait. Once established, it ultimately matured into a capacity to remember the past, and that by definition, an awareness for the future.

Following this plausible path, here I am living with the capacity of consciousness that wants to explore itself. I have a memory of the past, an awareness for the future. I also have the cognizance of my mortality, and with that, the ailment of existence crisis.

Once in a while I also wonder in what way the capacity for consciousness probing itself helps in any way and how does all this philosophizing matters. Is knowing or not knowing what consciousness is and what its origin would be of any utility.

In those moments of doubts, I am reminded of something I read in a book by Daniel M. Klein (Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live): “My [philosophical] wonderings certainly never really get me anything or anywhere. But they do happen to make me feel more alive.”

These wonderings certainly do make me feel more alive. They also connect me to a larger universe, make me look beyond the confines of my narrow self. They prove to be soothing balm to calm the ailment of existential crisis. They help provide a meaning and purpose to life that the aware of mortality is constantly trying to marginalize.

Ciao.

Note: Writing ‘capacity for consciousness’ over and over starts to feel tedious. When queried, one of the suggestions from ChatGPT for a verb alternative for ‘capacity for consciousness’ was Consciousize (kon-shuh-sahyz): To become aware or make someone aware. Example: The mindfulness workshop was designed to consciousize participants about their inner thoughts and emotions; I can consciousize; I consciousize, therefore I am.

Not a bad suggestion.

Buffering existential crisis

 

You don’t find oak trees having existential crisis. ‘I feel so rotten about myself. I don’t produce as much acorns as the one next to me — Adyashanti

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

For some, the cognizance of mortality is a cataclysmic event. Although its precise consequences are unpredictable and could be either positive or negative. They might lead to debilitation, foster spiritual development, or serve as a wellspring for creativity. In one way or another, the event can end up turning one’s life upside down. It disrupts our assumptions, challenges our purpose, and forces us to confront our finite existence.

In the presence of mortality, even seemingly simple acts like reading, learning, and working take on a questioning hue.

The cognizance of mortality is like Dementors — it can slowly drain happiness and vitality.

The cognizance of mortality makes us wonder about the meaning and purpose of life. Balancing mortality and life within us can be challenging, if not insurmountable.

The dysfunctional union of mortality and life is the beginning of the existential crisis and makes us question life’s meaning and purpose. Why are we born with a beginning and an end? What purpose does our finite existence serve on this Earth? If all is going to end in the loss of the self that we cultivate with much effort and diligence, what is the point of the journey and all the effort it entails?

While being born was not our choice, we must carry on despite existential crises. To be able to live with a semblance of sanity, we have to find (and build) a meaning for our existence. While doing that we also need to accept the fact that the meaning we construct may not last forever.

We must acknowledge that circumstances change, and the protective moat of meaning we construct may eventually run dry.

For instance, aging or other factors — social, cognitive, or physical — may necessitate us to retire and make us question our identity. The loss of a loved one may bring questions about existence anew.

Change can also be as subtle as our evolving values; what was meaningful yesterday may lose its impact today.

When change occurs, successfully navigating the transition involves rebuilding our inner moat and finding a new meaning and purpose for life.

Ultimately, a recipe for a peaceful life involves skillfully confronting changes and fortifying our moats against existential crisis.

With all that the cognizance of mortality can gift or curse us with, what brings it on to begin with?

Our awareness of mortality fundamentally stems from our awareness of the future. Our capability to think about the future, in turn, is part of the matrix that our consciousness is.

One hallmark of our consciousness is the ability to perceive the flow of time — to know where we were, where we are, and where we might be tomorrow. It is remembering the past, knowing the present, and thinking about the future.

Consciousness is a double-edged sword. It granted us an advantage in the game of natural selection for survival and reproduction. It also gifted us with knowledge of the future.

It is in the future where mortality lurks, and it is our ability to think about the future that its cognizance emerges from.

I guess consciousness is no free lunch. At least some of us have to pay a price for its gift.

Ciao.

Of interest:
Building a framework for Living — A laminated guide
Paradox of Living
The ailment of existential crisis
Taming Mortality

A reflection on death

 

It’s part of the privilege of being human that we have our moment when we have to say goodbye. — Patti Smith

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

As years pass and another birthday is on me, mortality comes to say Happy Birthday. These days, sometimes it forgets to add “and many more.” Or that omission is on purpose. It knows that there are not that many more birthdays left for me.

Also, as I get older, visitations of mortality are happening more and that too in between birthdays.

In the days of my youth, it was not so. Then, it did not even bother to visit me every birthday. Things change.

An unintended consequence of getting old and facing frequent visits of mortality is that I often find myself pondering over the moment of death. The moment of crossing over from the realm of living into the land of something that I know absolutely nothing about.

For the moment of death, I have no words to describe what to expect or not to expect.

For all I know, there is nothing after. Perhaps it is as simple as that, and I will just cease to exist.

The moment of death will be like entering a room, looking around, reaching out for the light switch and turning it off.

With so many billions of people that have already crossed the threshold of death, there is surprisingly little and anecdotal evidence at best about what may be there.

Dying has been a massive experiment since the origin of life but there is not much to say about it.

Other than death happens, and not knowing much about death, I often find myself wondering what the moment of death would feel like?

The closest I have ever come to seeing someone crossing over the threshold is sitting next to my father in a small hospital room on the night when he made the journey. When it happened, I was holding his hand and thinking that my small gesture may help him in some way. Something like holding the hand of a child to help take its first steps.

Before he did cross from the world, his breathing was getting progressively intermittent and then it stopped. Something in his biology wanted to keep on living but it was too tiring of an effort to make.

When the moment did arrive, nothing unusual happened. I am sure he was not in a cognitive is a state to know what was happening. As far as I can tell, he was unaware of going over.

His case was not in any way unique.

There are so many roads travelling along which one can cross over the threshold between life and death without being aware of the moment of taking the one final step — it could occur during sleep; it could be after we have already lost our cognitive abilities to process sensory inputs; it could be a sudden accident; it could be a moment like in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

In all such cases, the opportunity to be aware and learn something about the moment of death is not there.

There are also paths when the moment of death is known — death row inmates; the decision to end one’s own life because of being in constant pain and of no hope of recovery (euthanasia).

In those instances, can one develop a playbook of dying on how the approach the moment of death, so the fragment of experiences gets recoded, and the journeyperson keeps sending reports until the communication slowly breaks away.

It would be like an astronaut whose communication is gradually fading while sending reports back to the base in Houston. “Houston, we are drifting away in space and because of the leak, our oxygen level is steadily going down.” As moments tick away, messages get progressively intermittent and finally completely break off.

The line on the heart monitor flat lines.

The irony is that even though mortality is visiting increasingly more and keeps reminding me of death, I would never know what that experience would actually be like except that I will not be what I am now.

To know anything better than I know now, there is no experiment I can think of, or design an experiment to know more about the experience of death and communicate it to those that would be left behind.

Would it not be interesting if the approach to the moment of death was like falling into a black hole.

As I approach the event horizon of death the time slows down (at least from the perspective of people who are observing me). I approach the event horizon but never fall through the event horizon and have the luxury of sending communiques about by experiences.

Perhaps, moment of death is a singularity which we not been able to comprehend yet. But our quest continues.

Ciao.

Articles of interest:
If death was Zeno’s paradox

If death was Zeno's paradox

 

“Death’s got an Invisibility Cloak?” Harry interrupted again. “So he can sneak up on people,” said Ron — J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

There’s a paradox in wondering whether I can perceive objects or understand notions that I have never experienced.

Can I perceive a world beyond the range of my sensory physiology, which is shaped by the guardrails of what enhanced my chances of survival and reproduction.

The fact of the matter is that what I can perceive in the external world is restricted by evolution optimizing my traits to best fit the environment it had to work with. That is the reason that my eyes respond to electromagnetic spectrum between violet (380 nanometers) and red (750 nanometers). And to those experiences I have given names - violet and red.

Can I even imagine or have the words to describe what would 4th dimension of space, if it were to exist, would be like? What would it feel like to be in it? How would I describe the direction that is other than left/right, up/down, front/back.

For that matter, would 4th space dimension even be dimensions like space I am familiar with?

If the 4th space dimension does exist, and since I do not have words to describe it, perhaps I will invent words nadri and sadri to mimic left/right in the world of my current familiarity. Those words sound like a good choice as any. How else left & right themselves would have originated? In the beginning, they might have sounded silly.

A positive aspect of the things I cannot experience is that generally they do not generate the emotion of unease or fear. How can I be afraid of things that I cannot sense?

What I love, hate, fear, starts with what my senses deliver to my brain, where based on past experiences, the sensory input gets processed into an emotion, and then, into actions.

Among the class of objects that I have no firsthand experience with, and thus, have no prior frame of reference under which to categorize them and discuss, the notion of death and cognizance of my own mortality holds a unique position.

I have no firsthand idea what the moment of death feels like, and I will never know. While alive, by definition, I have not felt death, and as long I am alive, I will not feel it either.

And yet, the thought that at some moment in time my ‘self’ will cease to exist, while I have not a shred of clue what would happen to the self beyond that point, death has been an unsettling thought that keeps recurring.

It is a thought that has modulated my (and humanity’s) behavior in so many ways.

What is death anyway? I do know that it is a point of transition when I step from the realm of conscious self to a different realm. I have observed that happen round me. [Note — In that way death is somewhat different from say the 4th space dimension I do not even know if it exists. I have seen handiwork of death everywhere even though I have no personal experience of it.]

I saw death happen with my father lying in the hospital bed and watching him take his last breath. I have watched his unconscious body trying to hold on to this realm but eventually let go. When the breathing finally stopped, I was still around but he was either in a different world or he just was not anymore.

That is what is the fear and unease of death — knowing that it exists and also knowing that the act entails destruction of self and what it has been (without a phenomenological evidence that it continues on).

Would it not be wonderful if the moment of death was something like Zeno’s paradox? It would be exquisite to feel the experience the moment of death getting nearer and nearer but never arrive.

The moment of death as an asymptote. One by one layers of onion peeling away but never revealing the central core.

The thought becomes a poem in mind:

Could death’s moment
mirror Zeno’s paradox?
How exquisite — forever nearing the void,
yet never gone.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

The ailment of existential crisis

 

We all have to die one day, we might as well die with some obscure meaning attached to it — Ryan Gelpke

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

The existential crisis is a condition born from the union of life and death sleeping together in the same bed called the living.

Compelled to coexist, they strive for amicability. Yet, their efforts often culminate in struggle, especially when death seeks to strip life of all significance and meaning, leaving it exposed and trembling in the cold of night.

Nonetheless, they persist in their efforts to remain together and honor each other’s individuality. Even when their elbows occasionally collide, they hold onto the hope that the majority of their remaining time on this Earth can be of mutual respect and peaceful coexistence.

Together they strive to have shared time where empathy and mutual understanding prevail, and compassion is the bridge across their divide.

In their quest for harmonious coexistence, they’ve consulted therapists, delved into self-help books, and explored philosophical texts, seeking to unravel the significance of their ongoing struggles and discover effective solutions.

After a long enough struggle with living succumbing to the moods and vagaries of the tension that exists between them, a solution they have come is to recognize the reality that their personalities are different and the tension between them may not go away.

After enduring a protracted struggle, with living succumbing to the unpredictable shifts and nuances of the tension that binds life and death, they have arrived at a realization: their distinct personalities are there to stay, and the tension between them will remain.

To keep moving forward, they’ve reached a compromise solution that has been effective.

What they have settled down is to let life have a meaning, purpose, goal, and something to look forward to in the mornings. Yet, being perfectly aware that periods of tranquility could be taken over by occasions of death doubting the authenticity of everything life does. They have come to an acceptance that when that happens it would be moments of facing the ailment of existential crisis once again.

Indeed, they acknowledge that equilibrium between always be tenuous and is capable of shifting without a formal announcement.

For now, the arrangement has been working out well.

Ciao.

Taming mortality

 

Why fear death when we can never perceive it — Epictetus

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

Often, I envision a future where I reside in a community for those 55 and older, engaging in activities like playing pickleball. During the game, I am fully immersed, and everything is going well. However, once the game concludes, a gradual sense of futility regarding the activity begins to set in. The mechanics behind this transition is as follows:

After the game is over, a remembrance of my mortality sneaks. This thought brings a cognizance that life ends with death, the point at which the self is annihilated. While I will cease to exist, the party goes on. Remembering this, I feel as though I am enveloped in a cloud of meaninglessness that mortality can bestow upon daily engagements, including playing pickleball.

(Note: In the context of this discussion, ‘playing pickleball’ serves merely as an example and could be replaced with any other activity such as cooking, reading, or watching a movie.)

This vision of the future elicits an unease about the meaninglessness of activities that are occurring in the present. At its core, the reason is the dissonance between the necessity to live and the inevitability of death. This dissonance renders life’s activities seemingly futile and complicates the search for an inherent (and life-sustaining) meaning within them.

This vision of the future further intensifies the sense of existential unease about living, which also gets intertwined with the angst about the remaining days of my fleeting existence on the Earth.

The transition from engaging moments of pickleball to feelings of its futility leads me to wonder if life will follow in the same sequence of events day after day.

After each game of pickleball, when confronted with mortality, will I continue to question its meaning?

Do not misunderstand me. When I am in the midst of a pickleball game, I am completely absorbed. In those moments, there are no thoughts of mortality or the game’s futility. I strive to excel. I find myself getting frustrated with mistakes I make.

On the court, everything is as it should be. It is only afterward that the doubts begin to surface.

I also know that the malady I experience could be worse.

Currently, at least, when I play pickleball, awareness of mortality does not coincide and occupy the same mental space. Therefore, mortality does not prompt me to question the meaning of pickleball while I am engaged in it. A more troubling scenario is conceivable.

It’s possible that while playing pickleball, I become simultaneously aware of mortality, allowing both to coexist. In the midst of the game, this awareness could prompt me to question the purpose of my actions, draining all focus and pleasure from the activity.

Should that to occur, it might lead me into a depressive state, characterized by a lack of motivation to engage in any activity — a far graver situation.

The fact that, while playing pickleball, the awareness of mortality does not consume my thoughts (and remains in the background), and I experience no sense of unease, suggests a way to navigate the tension between living and dying.

The answer for appeasing the life sucking tendency of mortality (no pun intended) may lie in living in the present.

In a way, living in the present disassociates the mind away from the future, and it is in the shadows of the thought of the future where mortality lurks. Living in the present makes life forever.

To quote Ludwig Wittgenstein “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.”

Living in the present, thus, may be the antidote of the existential crisis born from the tension between living and dying.

Ciao.

Connectedness is an antidote to mortality

 

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself — Carl Sagan

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

On rare occasions, I receive a gift of connectedness. The trigger could be the upbeat rhythm, or its opposite, the sadness of a song. It could be an aftermath of immersing in moments of creativity, or a gust of cool wind in the middle of summer brushing against the face. It could be an unexpected whiff of sweet fragrance of jasmine, or a chance look at the open spaces stretching to the horizon that is aglow with an orange sunset. It could be a sudden ache of nostalgia of moments gone by and realizing how old I have become and how little time is left there to be lived.

The feeling of connectedness dissolves the invisible boundaries between the self that I am and the rest that is out there. Without the notion of duality I have always lived with, the idea of the destruction of the self after death also dissipates. The fear of mortality, in those ever-fleeting moments, no longer haunts.

After all, what else is the fear of mortality if not the fear of the destruction of the self? The thought that I will no longer be here, but the party will continue without me is the fear and the angst of mortality. I simply wish not to disappear without a trace.

Today, I experienced brief moments of connectedness, and for an instant, the fear of mortality receded once more. In its wake, a question emerged: Could the self I possess be immortal, and is my fear of mortality merely irrational?

At the physical level I am immortal. I am connected with everything else that existed or will exist in space and time.

I, like everything that is out there, is made of the same atoms that originated at the moment of the Big Bang. After death, the atoms of my physical self would be given back to the universe. They would eventually become part of some other form — a rock, a bacterium, a chimpanzee, perhaps another human being.

The principle of conservation of energy provides the foundation for my physical immortality and I have no reason to doubt that I will continue to exist either as matter or as ephemeral energy.

Would my consciousness self also continue to exist beyond the moment of my death? After my death, would I remember what I was and what I accomplished during this lifetime?

As for my conscious self, other than for a few moments when I feel connected with the rest of the universe (and when the sense mortality dissolves), I am not as certain about my immortality.

There is no phenomenological evidence for my immortality. In my current form I do not remember anything what I was prior to taking this form. People pass away and without missing a beat the universe continues on its merry journey. There is nothing to make me think that the same would not happen when I die.

Even if my consciousness is immortal, however, if it does not have any remembrance, then functionally, that immortality is equivalent to being mortal.

For all I know, the awareness of self may have been just an outgrowth of the process of natural selection and is meant to increase my chances for survival and reproduction. The self is nothing more than that and when I die there is nothing left vying for survival and reproduction.

It is only in the rare moments of connectedness that the awareness of self is eliminated. In those moments, the self is no longer the skin I need. But it is also hard to let that skin go and feel naked, and so I hold on to the self and become a mortal again.

Ciao.

The Perhaps of Life

 

…only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers — Paul Tillich

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

There is a part of living that sometimes does not want to run as a well-oiled machine. With the turning of the wheels, if I pay attention, I can hear a faint squeaking.

Sometimes, when I stop along the path I am walking and listen carefully, I can feel an undercurrent that is constantly trying to erode my peace of mind. It is like wanting to sleep and letting go for a while, but there is an annoying mosquito that keeps buzzing around and will not allow sleep to descend.

Finding peace and the feeling of being together (and living with a sense of ease), alongside the uncertainty of whether or not I will be alive tomorrow, are two clashing thoughts. Their battles often leave me feeling exhausted. The thought that everything I do might one day be for nothing, yet there is still the need to keep on going and doing things the best I can, saps the will and energy.

The futility of moving forward but with the knowledge that each step is towards a precipice, and further, at any step, bottom could fall out, makes one want to let limbs go lethargic. In those moments, a sense of fatigue descends upon the spirit, making it hard to keep on moving.

Something inside wants to whisper, “Please leave me here and please keep going. For now, I am too tired to take another step.”

So, what to do? Is there a way out of the existential dilemma of needing to live and yet being aware of mortality? Is there a way to blunt the sharpness of the realization that mortality could just flatten a three-dimensional life into a meaningless nothing?

Once in a while, what antidote can one take to ward off these feelings and emotions that the internalization of mortality is susceptible to bringing? A glass of wine? A belief in something divine?

Perhaps, for some of us, there are no permanent resolutions, and the best we can do is learn to manage the conflict. We can hope to find ways to maintain a truce between living and dying, while acknowledging that occasionally, a full-blown conflict between the two may erupt.

Perhaps, we must always live with the realization that occasionally, the rug may be pulled out from under our feet, and we may fall. It could also be that the tension between living and dying is what defines life, making it interesting and vibrant.

The tension makes living alive.

Once the fall happens, I would question the logic and the meaning of existence once again. After lying flat on my face for a while, I will get up (as I have always done) and either build a new edifice or repair the one I already have (and possibly, make some tweaks to add resiliency).

Perhaps part of managing is accepting that for some of us, this is as good as it gets, and having this option in hand is a lot better than not having any alternatives and merely feeling lost.

Another possibility towards gaining a sense of lasting peace is to experience a sense of universal connectedness, which brings about the feeling of existing beyond one’s present form. This connectedness removes mortality from the equation. Left alone, life has no adversary to contend with. There have been moments of such connectedness, however, they are fleeting.

Perhaps one day, the essence of such ephemeral moments will be captured and preserved in a glass vial, to be worn around the neck and become my companion for life.

Perhaps, one day, I will wear a smile that mirrors the serene joy seen on the lips of enlightened beings.

Ciao.

Falling in and out of a trance: A tale of (almost) buying a home

 

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong — Thomas Sowell

Arun Kumar

AI Generated Image

Yesterday, I experienced a transition from a trance-like state to a moment of sudden awakening and realization. It felt as if I was on auto-pilot, guided by a force beyond my conscious control, similar to being in a hypnotic or religious trance. Then, something snapped me out of it.

In this trance-like state, I behaved out of character, performing actions that were not typical of me. This state could be likened to a form of dissociation, where I felt detached from my actions. It was as if I was observing my actions from an outsider’s perspective, aware that the actor was me, but his actions were beyond my control.

Then, the dream shattered, and there was a sudden shift. I “woke up” and was abruptly thrust back into reality, confronting the world with a sense of surprise and confusion. This return was a jarring reconnection with reality, a stark contrast to the trance-like state I had been in.

The feeling that follows a sudden transition from a state of two disconnected selves to a state where they coalesce is strange. The process brings a feeling of disorientation like waking up in an unfamiliar place, unsure of where you are.

This state of trance was not induced by intense focus or deep meditation. It occurred during a scouting trip to the low country of South Carolina in search of potential retirement locations.

The trip involved visiting retirement communities to get a feel of what they are like and see what home models they had to offer. However, during our explorations, the mindset subtly shifted from merely looking around to considering it perfectly acceptable to spend $500K on a second home and then deal with the logistics of managing two homesteads separated by five hundred miles.

Two factors precipitated this transition.

When visiting a retirement community where new homes are still being built, the first stop is the model homes. These homes are showcased to attract you like a bee to a fragrant flower. The model homes appear far superior to the homes we ordinary mortals live in. The idea of living in them feels like a quantum leap in the standard of living, akin to moving to an imaginary life in heaven. Your eyes glaze over, and your mind is transported into a trance where reason has no place.

The other factor relates to the real estate broker accompanying you, who earns money only when a home is bought or sold. Given this, it is in their best interest to make you buy a home with the least amount of their time invested. While you are already slipping into a trance-like state, they are adept at applying subtle psychological tactics to nudge you further over the precipice of rationality. They do this by hinting that if you do not buy the home in the next few days, the price will skyrocket.

Another trick they employ is to make you feel that if you miss a particular house that you demonstrated a little admiration for will not come along. They play on your fear of missing out (FOMO).

The agent may highlight the uniqueness of a home, its features, location, or price to create a sense of scarcity. They might suggest that such opportunities are rare and if missed, similar options may be hard to come by anytime soon. Their strategy is designed to create a sense of urgency among the entranced, pushing them to decide quickly. The sense of urgency, combined with the trance-like state you are already in, makes you susceptible to signing a contract before what was supposed to be just a scouting trip is over, unless…

…unless something snaps you out of the trance and you blink with a sudden realization of the uncharacteristic folly you were about to commit. All I needed was to get out of the setting, disassociate with the real estate broker, who is part hypnotist, part manipulator, and have a cup of coffee at Starbucks sitting on their patio and feel the breeze in my face. In that simple act the trance broke and in a moment of clarity, I realized the importance of stepping back to remind myself why I was here and not getting into the logistical challenge of buying a second home.

Without carrying any regrets, tomorrow I will be heading back home. The place has a potential to settle down after retirement, however, buying a home can wait for another day.

Ciao.