Love, Art and Freedom

(1) (This is a part of the series to illuminate and discuss the challenges leading to treating the world as a single unit)

(Edited - 9/05/21 - Completing the excerpts, no more pretensions, all cards on the table)

(Improved excerpts of a letter written to Hermione 2. I succeeded in getting a response. I was too late and a poison must not be sweetened.)

Dear witch, I gather you are a well-honed professional business executive but I am appealing to the girl in there who loves dogs, who is a crazy artist and who believes in magic. To the business executive perhaps I have nothing to offer but I have everything for the other person. See, after college I had an outline of my goals set - work as an engineer for sometime and then go for a world class MBA and be a consultant in a big 3 consultancy firm for the rest of my life. But things happened - I lost some good friendships, I lost some love opportunities and for a time I even lost my mind. I couldn’t make head and tail of the world and I was confused, whether it is the world that is crazy or I am. There is a disturbing photo I would like you to see. I sometimes feel like the photographer looking at the farmers committing suicides, children dying of poverty in Africa and even in India, people fleeing and dying in the regions inflicted with armed conflict etc. I see this and I have also experienced the power of love and care, which everyone of us is capable of, to make everything look sublime. This is the source of my conflict. I think every new mis-happening - even a road accident which is so common in India -somehow makes a part of me responsible for it. I think this is what Democracy means - rule of the people also translates to responsibility of the people. Now, what do I want to do about it? I have two friends who represent the opposite ends of the spectrum of conflict - one believes in efficiency and rationality of free markets and says that’s all the regulation or interference we need in the form of government and the other - who plays western classical on guitar, lives on a hill station oblivious of the realities of the world. I find both of them reasonable - the first one likes the rules of the game and wants to play it to his advantage and the second one doesn’t like the rules of the game and simply doesn’t play it. But I find the rules themselves to be rigged. Markets are the instrument of economics based on reason with complete disregard for emotions. Simply put markets do not care. It has no place for poor, sick and old. It is best at one thing - create enough artificial necessity by throwing people into a corner and make them innovate. These innovations are then considered the hallmarks of progress. I do not like this methodology of making progress. See, reason cannot understand love but love can see through reason. I have concluded that it is a matter of will - if we want to be selfish, we will find every reason to be that and if want to be loving and caring, we will find reason enough to be that. So, I started studying different philosophers. I learnt that humans do not know concretely what consciousness is, we have differing views on the true nature of reality and we do not firmly understand what quantum mechanics is saying and how space-time, quantum mechanics and gravity work together. To say the least, inspite of all our glittering advances in technology and knowledge there is a lot of fundamental stuff we do not understand. So in light of this knowledge (or lack thereof) I find the present construction of society ugly and want to construct a society based on love, art and freedom instead of reason, money and power. I know it all sounds crazy but I have some semblance of a plan like the prodigal three who defeated you-know-who. I want to formally study Physics and help ourselves understand the true nature of reality and hopefully find love in the cold equations of mathematics. To that end I am awaiting a confirmation of seat allocation to a master’s programme in Physics. As a philosopher I want to brood over consciousness. As a politician I want to expose money and power in its hypocrisy as far as possible through my writings and behaviour. And finally as an artist, I want to dream up a society along above lines. So, why am I exploding this bomb on your head? See, you are a friend I never had. You were a childhood sweetheart and competitor and then we went our ways. But overtime as I see your posts or your photos or remember you something in me resonates. You are someone who has inspired me towards excellence always inspite of the obstacles and it is this which has allowed me to see things in this light. I want you to know this - all of us are in this together, whatever this is. There is a vision in Hinduism for the world - “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” - it means that the whole world is a family. I want to live that vision and share it with you. I love you, a bhoot

P.S.: A child born in Africa is as much a royalty as one born in British royal family.