Monday, March 19, 2018

Homo Contradictus

God must have been in a particularly capricious mood when he created us humans. Or, perhaps, like all of us, he left everything to the last moment and, when he felt the deadline pressure of those 7 days, bunged in the brain without properly debugging it. As usual in such cases, it is we who have to live with the consequences.

Take as simple a matter as food, for example. I mean, do you ever salivate at the thought of that low calorie meal, no matter how yummy they claim the recipe to be? Does the thought of a bitter-gourd smoothie or a cabbage soup make you lick your lips and pounce on it the moment it is in your vicinity? (I still retch at the smell of boiling cabbage after going on a diet that seemed to mainline on it) Just get a distant whiff of a baking cake or the heavenly aroma of frying pakoras and try keeping the saliva from pouring out of the mouth like a Niagara! This thing of everything you like being unhealthy and everything healthy seeming unsavory - I mean, come on, how difficult could it have been to wire the brain and body to like what is good for it?

Then there is this weird code that seems to have been exclusively reserved for human brains. I mean, come on, ever seen an animal cause suffering to itself because of what other members of the herd would think? Can you convince a monkey to keep off the local bananas so that it can afford a half-meal of an imported banana a day, nicely wrapped though it may be, so that it can impress the other monkeys? "Nuts to you. They will not be impressed, they will only think me silly and, even if they are, why should I starve myself to impress them?", it would say. Or get a female bear to wax its legs? "WHAT?? If that bloody Bruin does not like the damn hair, there are a lots more where he came from" would be the probable response. And try telling it to wax the legs not for the male bears, oh no, but for the other female bears...And yet, that's the funny thing with the way the human brain is wired. Each one of them, left to themselves, may find it better to 'eat the local bananas' or 'keep the wax for the candles' but the fact that ALL are in agreement with that option somehow does not suffice to keep them from opting for the other, more torturous option. One rather wonders if God was really smoking something that day.

The only consolation for me is that He must be getting paid back in His own coin these days. Once we run the marathon of life and land up at His desk and ask Him for our rewards...well, good luck to you, God, trying to figure out whether we are asking for what we really want or what we think we ought to want. Sooner or later, a badly-written code does become a headache for the one who wrote it...now try debugging THIS!

20 comments:

  1. I have always wanted to ask Him the reasons for making everything yummy unhealthy and everything yucky healthy. It's been tormenting me for quite some time now.

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    1. Almost all of us :) Good to see you back, Alka!

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  2. They do say we use just a fraction of our brain's potential--scary in and of itself--if we can create as much chaos and havoc that we do with just 5%, what would we do if the remaining 95% were to be available on tap? This begs the question, whether HE in his infinite wisdom thought fit to bug us so that we would at least survive a few decades or centuries more. Something to think about.

    Hilarious post this one and bold too, would never have dared to speak of waxing -- don't want to wane!! Thanks Suresh.

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    1. Thanks doc. Me, I like the idea of waning with my BMI being what it is :)

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  3. Now after reading this I want to eat a Mysore Masala Dosai with extra spicy potato filling, followed by a special falooda :)

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  4. I strongly believe we are a beta version of the creation, he wired us wrong as he wanted to know our respond to stimuli such as boiled cabbage and spinach soup and the likes of it, so he can perfecto the best which is yet to come. thoroughly enjoyed.

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  5. I can relate to the imagery you have woven to illustrate your point with my BP keeping anything that is worth eating out of bounds.

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  6. That's why I decided not to use even the 5 per cent .

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    1. For me no problem - even 100% of 0 is still 0 :)

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  7. I love reading a post that can make men and women think.

    Also, thank you for permitting me to comment!

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    1. Thanks! I love comments though I do prefer it when it is not Anonymous :)

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  8. hilarious - thoroughly enjoyed your take on humans ridiculous tendencies being because of badly written code.

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  9. Mai aisa kyu hoon, mai aisa kyon hoon....humming that after reading this post! Methinks He was bored after creating animals and thought of creating some creatures faught with contradictions to simply entertain himself. That said, I agree He needn't have tampered with the sensory wiring that hampers us from opting for health instead of taste, so not fair!

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  10. Yes, we were created the way we have been only to ensure that things do not get into the boredom tag....doing the unexpected instead of the expected and finally when the early action results in the unexpected which actually must have been expected when first chose to do the unexpected is what perhaps, no for sure, makes our own lives, as well as others near and dear to us, so unpredictable that we always go for the unexpected, expecting the expected to happen...I think I have made myself amply clear... P.S. I owe this comment to you Suresh sir for inspiring me to pen it down with your views on homo contradictus!!!

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