Skip to main content

Dying without a thought



One of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell, said, “Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.” A lion’s share of the evils in the human world could be pre-empted if people started making use of their thinking faculty.

When I returned home an hour ago after dropping Maggie at her workplace, Kittu, my cat, accompanied me from the car porch as he usually does and entered the house even before I did. He has inculcated a sense of entitlement, thanks to my pampering as Maggie alleges. He did something odd today. Instead of going to one of his usual places to sleep, he climbed on to the chair which I normally use for working with my laptop. He went to sleep within seconds. He usurped my place without a second thought.
 
Kittu: Self-contentment
Well, there’s no first thought either for him. Like Walt Whitman, I always end up envying his thoughtless self-contentment. Whitman wished to be like the animals. “They are so placid,” he said. “They do not sweat and whine about their condition … Not one kneels to another,” not even to any god.

But we human beings can’t do that, of course.  We have a more complex mind. So we sit and calculate the gains and losses of our loves. We calculate our neighbours’ gains and losses even more meticulously. We are so much concerned about their gods and totems, their ups and downs, their lifestyle or lack of style. And then we mess up our lives and theirs too. We give sweet names to all that mess: like patriotism, nationalism, gau raksha, and so on.

And these patriots and nationalists are always absolutely certain of themselves while wise people are full of doubts and hesitations. Of course, there’s always been a particular breed of people who rush in where angels fear to tread.  I wish those people would start exercising their thinking faculty. Just a wish; nothing in wrong in wishing, right?




Comments

  1. Vinay NagarajuMay 9, 2019 at 5:34 PM

    "while wise people are full of doubts and hesitations". This explains an awful lot, stupidity seems to have a louder voice. In a society, a crying baby seems to get more attention. I have seen this in a working set up, fundamentalist mindset and limiting beliefs. I don't understand the power of herd mentality, but it is very persuasive and prevalent in its establishment. Right from vehement supporters to violent mentalities - I guess that describes death much sooner than it can actually happen. If growth and improvement is stunted, that pretty is death isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 10, 2019 at 6:54 AM

      It's easier to go with the herd, thinking is not needed at all. Moreover you get a feeling that there's a whole group to support you. This outlook has been reinforced by present day nationalists too.

      Delete
  2. Rajeev MoothedathMay 9, 2019 at 7:13 PM

    "And then we mess up our lives and theirs too."- Nice comparison with the cat. They just live in the moment.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 10, 2019 at 6:56 AM

      Precisely. And they are contented too. My cat teaches me some nice lessons.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...
11 comments
Read more

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
9 comments
Read more