There are 2 moods in life.

  1. Life is short. Don’t waste your time being disorganised. Spend your time carefully on things that are meaningful.
  2. Life is short. You Only Live Once(YOLO). Don’t think too much. Just do what you feel is the most exciting thing at the present, no matter what it is.

You can suggest that one can plan meticulously and divide one’s time for both the moods. But an overlap is inevitable. When you start doing things that seem most exciting at present, you loose track of time and the mood doesn’t let you stop. For example, watching an exciting movie or reading an exciting book at night takes away time, you know you have to stop doing it so that you wake up early and do other “productive” things. But the YOLO mood doesn’t let you do that. In this blog, I try to explore both the moods via a conversation between 2 friends.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no interest in the questions - What is the meaning of life? , Why do we exist? I believe that questioning the purpose of existence takes away its beauty. But I also believe that on properly reflecting on one’s actions and plans provides a feedback, which helps to change one’s actions that might make you more happy.

(While having a walk, R comes across his friend K)

R: Common, let’s get to have some Pizza!

K: Even I feel like having a Pizza badly from a week. But not today! Have some work to be done tonight.

R: What has Pizza got to do with it? Eat now and work at night.

K: But eating Pizza sedates me and I won’t be able to stay mentally active to think.

R: I get you. But why do you complicate Life so much? Its just a goddam Pizza. If you like having one, you have it. You don’t think much. Its that simple.

K: So, don’t you think that would lead to waste of time in Life if you surrender to such instant gratifications. And don’t you think that it is a meaningless way to spend life?

R: I never thought you would bring up “meaning of life” for a pizza?

K: You started it.

R: See, here is what I view life as. You are well aware that your exist due to cumulative evolution of non-random survival of random hereditary changes. It is just that we are more complicated than other species, but we are no different. You and I are just living creatures, like that dog there, and this mosquito swirling around my ear(swats the mosquito). There is no difference except in size. And it is just due to time and evolution, we just have complex desires. So, if I feel like having a pizza, I should just have it. There is nothing to think about.

K: But do you really see no difference between you and a mosquito, that just squatted?

R: No difference, except that it doesn’t want a pizza like me, and it has its own desires. May be my blood is the pizza equivalent for a mosquito.

K: So, would you be comfortable in killing a dog as much as you were comfortable in killing a mosquito?

R: Are you mad? No, of course. Why will I kill a dog?

K: Then why did you kill that mosquito. Because you implicitly believe that a mosquito is less “living” than you are, less living than a “dog”. It is because of its small sized soul. You don’t believe that the mosquito perceives the life as you do. If you really believed so, you wouldn’t squat the mosquito. Its pure hypocrisy.

R: So, you are now calling me hypocrite? You know what, you are a bigger hypocrite than I am. You speak all this “meaningful way of spending life” and all you do is abstract mathematics and physics, that practically adds no value. At least my research in Public Policy helps in shaping the society better. What has your 11 dimensions in String Theory got to do with real 3 dimensional world?

K: I don’t care if the equations have any practical utility. I do theoretical physics to understand the beautiful nature around me. I am a product of nature, and I feel studying the details of her makes life meaningful. I don’t care if the theoretical ideas add any economic value. Though, I could have given enough examples of instances where theoretical physics provides economic value, I wanted to tell the reason why I do theoretical physics.

R: Ok, if doing things that satisfy you is the main purpose of your life instead of caring about meaning then why don’t you come to have the pizza.

K: You are confusing value with meaning. I said, I find meaning in theoretical physics, though it doesn’t add any value.

R: Is it not a selfish way to live life? To live a life, where you are concerned only about what you want to do, ignoring completely what you can contribute. You are able to live a advanced comfortable life; don’t you feel owed to contributions by other humans of the past and present? Don’t you feel compelled to contribute something of real value to humanity. Where is now the meaning if you forget all that and live only as per your desires?

K: Your words won’t change my opinion.

R: But your words can change my opinion.

K: See, I do understand that abstract physics adds no economic value. But you know, we humans have a beautiful and complicated mind that is capable of doing activities, that no other creature is capable of. So, I do all these sorts of activities because I have a brain that is capable of handling such complexity, I do understand that it doesn’t increase any survival prospects. But I want to do it because I am capable of doing it!

R: At this point, I am convinced that you are spoiled by random useless philosophies. Abstract mathematics and Philosophy make up a perfect poison mixture, which kills a beautiful perception of life. You are like the kid Kolya from The Brothers Karamazov. But like Alyosha, I do love you and hope that you realise things as you grow.

I don’t have a complicated perception of life as yours. You have been giving up instant gratifications for sake of living a meaningful life, which you believe makes you happy. So suppose, on your way to home you meet with an accident and die. What happened to your desires which you postponed for the future? Now, you can’t have any of the good things that you delayed and planned to have them later in life. And this can happen, there is no guarantee to life. And in fact life is too short, the only way to live a meaningful life is too actively seek out for things that want. You should do it if you want it because you never know if you’ll later have a chance.

K: I have read the Paul Graham’s article Life is too short that you are trying to quote. But if I die on my way, I will die happily that I died trying to do what I wanted to. I will have no regrets! And ya, I love you too, though I disagree a lot with you.

R: Aah, its a waste of time to argue further. I am going to have my pizza!

(Both part their ways)

Inspiration for a Conversation

I love Hofstadter’s writing style. And I am convinced that his style is one of a kind. In his book Godel Escher Bach, each chapter is preceded by a conversation between characters mostly involving Tortoise and Achilles(sometimes a crab also creeps in. Hofstadter took these characters from Lewis Caroll’s book What the Tortoise said to Achilles). In the conversation, Hofstadter tries to explore the concepts of upcoming chapter in an indirect way. In preface of “I am a Strange Loop”, Hofstadter writes that while he was presenting his ideas, he had fallen into a conversation between him and a hypothetical sceptical reader. So he took a pair of characters and explored the idea via a conversation.

The book Courage to be disliked, express the ideas of Adlerian Psychology through a conversation between a young man and a philosopher. The purpose of including the conversation was similar to Hofstadter’s. The ideas of Adlerian Psychology are counter-intuitive. A direct introduction of such ideas would give rise to number of objections and questions in a reader’s mind. So, the book explores the ideas via a conversation where the student plays the role of a sceptical reader.

Conversation styled writing seem to be an effective way to introduce new ideas, which have an immediate tendency to be opposed.

References

The conversation was a hodgepodge of some of my favourite ideas, which are tatooed on my neurons. Here is the list of references(The phrase tatooed on neurons was taken from a Scott Hughes’s lecture)

  • The words cumulative evolution of non-random survival of random hereditary changes was taken from Dawkin’s essay - Darwinian Triumphant from the book A Devil’s Chaplain.

  • Small Sized souls, the idea that mosquitoes are not self aware as we are, the idea that people squat mosquito because they implicitly believe mosquitoes are not as “living” as other creatures are taken from I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter.

  • One should do such complicated things, because of the capabilities our mind has was taken from a video of Dawkins titled The importance of doing useless things.

  • Context of Kolya: In the book The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, Kolya is a 13 year old kid, who is intelligent and far more matured than any child of his age. At an early age Kolya gets exposed to many philosophical ideas and starts believing in Socialism, Atheism and has a radical view on many things in life. Alyosha thinks that Kolya has been spoiled by reading philosophies at a tender age, which are beyond his understanding and believes in them blindly due to lack of maturity. But Alyosha admires Kolya’s intelligence and treats him as an equal and loves him as a friend. Alyosha believes that he will get a better understanding of world, when he grows up. Here is a great monologue on Kolya’s character.

  • The words one should actively seek out things that matter is taken from Paul Graham’s essay - Life is short

  • Though the gender of both the friends is not mentioned, they tell each other “I love you”. I deliberately put this to talk about the kind of love that doesn’t have to be romantic(I admit that I did it poorly). The word love is mostly used in 2 cases - romantic relationship, a family relationship like Mother’s love for her son, brother’s love for his sister. The idea of using the word love between 2 friends may seem strange, but it cannot be wrong if the friendship arouses the beautiful feeling akin to one caused by romantic relationship. I got introduced to this idea in one of the essays of Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green, where John writes

We[John and his friend] were not afraid to say “I love you” to each other.

There are couple of videos of John on the same topic - 1, 2. John also started the culture of Esther day in the memory of Esther Earl, who suggest him the idea of celebrating such kinds of love.

  • The idea of not delaying good things because you never know when you will die was a revelation after I had an accident(Luckily, everyone was safe!).

Appendix

You are able to live a advanced comfortable life; don’t you feel owed to contributions by other humans of the past and present? Don’t you feel compelled to contribute something of real value to humanity. Where is now the meaning if you forget all that and live only as per your desires?

If you look back at history, most of the great theories and discoveries were made because people working on it were obsessed with the problem. They didn’t care if the problem had any economic value. It is sometimes years later that the abstract theories find their practical usage. For example, number theory which was believed to be an abstract field later played a key role in development of cryptography, which is now undeniably important for a secure internet. Similarly, non-Euclidean geometry developed by Riemann, Gauss, Lobachevsky and Bolyai was used in developing a theory of Gravity(General Relativity) by Einstein, which is now used in GPS. I guess that’s why it is advised to work on problems that you are excited about, without being bothered by other things. This Feynman’s letter explains it well.

But I didn’t write all this, as I felt that would divert the theme of the conversation. I was interested in exploring the personal reasons than historical.