Once again, The Move.

I've been moving for most of my life. My parents moved when I was a kid, then I moved to study, then work, then moved again as leases ran out, either salaries or rents went up, found rats nesting in the kitchen, got married... 
I thought the mother of all moves was in 2014 when I packed up a life, a wife, a baby and a country to fly nine thousand miles to a new continent. 

Hah.

Here we are again, and this one's the biggest yet, because we're packing it all up this time. Last time we came, brimming with relo assistance $$ and confidence, living out of 4 bags. This time, it's going to be a 20-foot container and everything is coming along. 

When you buy decent stuff, it shows. I happily gave away all my campaign equipment in 2014 because it was, frankly, worn out crap. What I have now is still crap, but it's better and pristine-new crap. 
When you buy decent stuff, there's a color scheme. For example, all black furniture. 
Little gewgaws like a hook to hang the headphones. 
Bags and pouches and boxes and cases. 
Enough extension cords and boards to reach the moon and light it up, too. 

There's also a sense of sadness - not in the detritus of finding things long thought lost and now useless, but in finding new, never-used things acquired on hope and dream, now looking at a future of gathering dust in a storage box. Snow boots. mittens. snow chains. carpet cleaner. jogging jacket. all the things Bombay will never offer an opportunity to use. 

But at the same time, there's also the determination that rides on a deeply-banked substratum of anger - mine. Why should I abandon what I want just because of circumstance? This life was mine to make of it what I wanted - what gives anyone else the right to take those things away? 

Interestingly, even here, there's a purge. As things start getting boxed up, drifts of plastic, labels, packaging, and all kinds of junk starts appearing magically - all the things you never knew having or getting. 

Some things never change, I guess. 

Doing the right thing

Listened to a fantastic PoV the other day - there's so much information in the world, it can't be processed, it must be filtered. And with that filter comes bias. And with that bias comes an erosion in the nature absolutes. 
Which means, you can't tell what's the 'right' thing anymore. 

In the past, there were codes, defined and accepted norms of behavior. You knew what you were supposed to do, and so did everyone else. You knew what the consequences of your actions would be. If good, you'd want them known, you'd crow about them, and if not, you'd hide them behind closed doors and in the dark of the night. 
If you were caught, you and everyone around knew what was to be done - ridicule, reprimand, punishment, banishment, excommunication, execution. 

Now, it's all suspect. Everything seems to be serving a hidden agenda, or even just an overt one. Everyone is surrounded by people who tell him he's right, and if he isn't, finding the right people to agree with you takes minutes - even if they live on the other side of the planet and need Google Translate to understand you. 
Everyone's in a bubble full of their own farts. 

Knowing this, living this, how can you imagine anything you believe is real? Anyhting you believe is right, someone else things is wrong and vice versa, and they're right there to tell you. 

In the past, there was a 'done' thing, which wasn't necessarily the 'right' thing - by the standards of me, here, now, with my education, culture, class, and social background -

But it stopped you second-guessing. 

There is no right or wrong, and there may never have been. 
But there's always an is, and a not is.

And if it is what it is - how does it matter either way? 

cracks

older now, i can see
cracks in reality
the hidden spaces around corners
under your feet, behind your head
squirming around your blindspot like an eclipse corona
i walk in sunshine
turn, quick,
gaps in the world
inside, dark figures, shadowed
whispered conversations in unknown language
levers pulled, buttons pushed
strings held, tangled, webbed
laughter
not the good kind
sometimes there are marionettes
not very good
jerky, frozen grins, see the strings
sometimes, worse, they come out in masks
talk to you
if you talk to them they invite you in
sometimes suddenly 
bits fall through and you see them scurry from the sun
chittering in short-lived panic of discovery
and we laugh
and sing
and dance
and be eaten

Never signed up for this

she's in that dreamstate between awake and asleep, twitching, once in a while reaching out to make sure you're there
you watch that little face, soft in the backwash of the streetlights leaking in through the blinds
and you imagine Life thundering down age's tracks at her, with everything it can throw
and something
something squeezes your heart in a fist
love, terrifying in it's coldly uncompromising, absolute, killing, crushing weight, and you can't breathe
or terror, so deep and enmeshed into your being its warmth fills you with a fever, burning
does it matter? is there a difference?
every day, every second, you push this down, lock it up, don't think, turn your face away into books, reports, tv, parks, the next thing to do, place to go
because if you didn't it would destroy you
but sometimes on nights like this you can't
then that one little hand reaches out again
and you will never have a choice about this, ever, this feeling
and she sleeps

To boldly go where everyone has gone before...

Let's be real, galactic colonization is not going to happen anytime soon. 

1. There's no hyperdrive/warp. The physics we have today say it's impossible. Say, in a few years / decades we figure out that it is possible, we'd have nuked / diseased ourselves into oblivion, never mind the Grey Goo apocalypse. 
2. If there were, even going at X times c where X is a triple-digit number would still take years, maybe decades of real time, shipboard, not relativistic time to get there. Which means the ship is effectively a generation starship, which means the mass of all things needed to sustain the humans aboard outweighs the humans aboard by 25 gajillian tons to the kilo. Plus the colonization stuff. Even if the drive did ALL the moving point A to B, just think of the logistics of getting it into the ship and down again. 
1. Cryosleep? Still not as cost-efficient. 
3. Ok, so don't send humans. Send a digitized bank of DNA codes for everything needed, a nanotech factory, and an AI / semi-AI to make it all happen. Will fit under a couple of dozen kilos, but still leaves the rest of us right here. 
4. No hyperdrive, no space elevators, no all-powerful benevolent AI to stop us from nuking / diseasing each other into the void, sea levels rising... we have a few decades at best, and time's running out. 
5. Terraform the solar system? Absolutely. It's hedging bets, and we have the tech (or will have in five years) the means to get there. Maybe in 50 years, even the means to survive there, in a place with different gravity, different soil, different air, different temperature... assuming any of them exist. Stretch goal, but doable. 
6. Space stations, then? As the Earth fades away after the asteroid impact / Singularity event / zombie apocalypse / nuclear winter, there will be a dozen to a few hundred little lights floating in orbit or L1 to 5 points, maybe even the moon... recycling air, water, food... racing on their little centrifuges to make sure their children gestate normal and their bones don't turn to jelly... 
7. Leaving the final, most economical, most doable answer: 

Vaults. 

Weight is not a problem. Space is not a problem. Go deep enough, and soil is not a problem. Gravity is not a problem. With efficient scrubbers, even air, water, and minerals are not a problem. All you need is a solid door and a long, long time. 

Dozens, hundreds, thousands of vaults. 

With functional ecologies, seed or DNA banks, cryosleeping residents tended by robots, or even - as the ultimate backup - that same nanotech factory and DNA bank buried deep underground or in near-Earth orbit with a thousand-year alarm clock ticking away... 

We're here. Whatever happens, we will survive. The planet may die, but we will remain. 

On Bollywood

My relationship with Bollywood's been fairly interesting, I think. 

When I was growing up, Bollywood consisted of this blur of imagery and drama that would happen for a few hours in a week, maybe a Friday evening movie or a bunch of songs in Eastmancolor on a flickering, crackling, bulbous little CRT... but most of all, it was music. Music everywhere, on taxi cassette players, mikes on the corner, brassy, disjointed bands, and everywhere, radio. Single-channel MW bands on battery-powered transistors sitting in faraway corners, singing away in the background. Somehow, always associated with travelling, with holidays and memories, the comfort food of music. 

It's probably the nostalgia factor, but I guess also because I was most of the time too young to really get what was happening. 

Then sometime around Chunky Pandey, I got old enough to understand the stories... and hated them. And the music - however good it might be - was forever tainted from then on with shallow, selfish, misogynistic, boorish, and embarrassing behavior. 

But all that had come before - I think it's pretty much set the tone for what music should be, as far as I'm concerned. There has to be melody. Imagery. Erudition. The ability to paint a lifetime in a few charcoal strokes, just abstract enough to let you fill in the blanks with what you wanted the story to be. Soothing. Distantly on the edge of hearing, yet constantly there. Familiar enough so you can sing along. 

You don't know who's singing, who's composing, who did the music or what film it's from. It's like reading a comic from the middle of a series you found in a box of junk on a vacation afternoon when you had nothing to do. You don't know why they're singing. You don't have any visuals to go with them. 

All you know is - this is awesome. 

And I guess that's why there's always going to be that genre that exists only in my head - the soundtrack to those drives in the dark, the walks in dusty golden winter sunlight, browsing through second-hand bookstores... and sometime between KL Saigal and Baba Sehgal, a little golden RD-Rafi period that's can only be labelled 'the most awesome childhood ever'. 

unfinished stories

we don't know where they go, or where they come from. they just are. today. now. that's their perfection, with no excuses and no apologies. they are complete because they do not try to be complete. everything is meaningful, everything is chaos, and everything is infinitely ephemeral. 

Think of the books you really loved, the stories, the b-grade movies you watched drunk, baked, on mute. The music videos that seemed to be trying to say something. The middle issues of a story arc in a moldy yellowing stack of comics you found under the stairs. The flower found still preserved lovingly inside a book in a second-hand store. Yellowing portraits of strangers on a wall. The pastiche of flickering images stitched together in the channels you flipped past at 1 am, too tired to sleep, too sleepy to be really aware of what you were doing. 
Dreams with no meaning. Emotion without reason. Images without plot. Music without words. 

They happen, and you stitch them together into a story that's all yours. It's a story born of your memories, your experiences, your interpretations of what you saw. It's may not be what happened, but because you don't know what did happen... it could even be true. It's a story that nobody else would have, and it's a story that depends on so many moving parts in time that it could never have been anytime before, or anytime since. 

I love these stories. I don't want the series to continue, the the hero to get his vengeance, the loose ends tied up, and the curtain to fall. 
I walk into the middle, and I make it mine. 

Why was this so important? What happened to you, that you should want this? Who is she? Why do you see that face in your nightmares? Are you really going to pull that trigger? Did he ever forgive you? Did he forget? Will he remember? 

Invent your own past, your own reasons for people to be who they are, for things to be what they are. Leap in. Surf. Leap off and make up the rest when you run out of pages. 

Every waking moment is a story you invent as you go along. Every moment past is mystery to be deciphered. Every moment coming is a world of possibility where anything may happen. 

What else is there to live for? 

on demons.

Just a quick brief little note
demons are terrible adversaries to have. you know, they're really quite small? tiny enough that you won't even notice them, take them seriously even as you see them around you, on you, you won't believe they're a genuine threat even as they work their way in under your skin... but it's only when you try to pull them off, out, that you see them for the grain of sand in the oyster, the moth in the circuit, the little linchpin that brings the whole machine crashing down, immovable...
but there's also a weakness they have that few use against them - as unbreakable, as stubborn, as unreasoning they may be, as completely able to subdue your will and read your mind, they're still trapped inside of your head.
their reality is the reality that you feed them.
they cannot be broken, cannot be fought, but they can be... deceived.
lied into little boxes, locked up in the dark cellars and a pleasant but heavy cabinet moved in front of the door, not used for much but scrupulously kept full and heavy. Once in a while it tries to move and you quickly push it back before anyone notices. sometimes when it's quiet, you can still hear the footsteps, the scratching, the growl... and you ignore it the way you ignore everything that can't be got rid of.
you ignore it like you turn a back on an enemy, but you can never forget he's there.
going to be forever a part of you.

the little lies are the tiny little silver keys that lock the door
the spoonful of sugar that lets the medicine go down

two hundred and fifty days now, and it still hasn't realized it's been caged

broken

we all have things to do, places to go. 
people to be. 

and then there's some of the others, the ones who show up now and then. the occasional status update, blog post. a friend we caught up with after too long who mentions what he'd heard. a mention in Midday. 
the ones who did what they wanted. what we wanted. 

and when they intrude into our consciousness, so rudely shouldering aside all the comfortable preconceptions of all we held dear about our goals and place in life, it's a complex feeling. 
we're happy for them. they are friends, after all, and they did got something, did something extraordinary. 
we're also envious, because sometimes we want to be the one standing there. we want our face in the photograph, our name in the air. it's a reminder of the things we still have to to do, the things we now never will do. 
we love them because they're our past, and we hate them because they could have been our future. 

the broken ones. 
it takes something extraordinary to get to somewhere extraordinary, to do that something great. greatness is not a comfortable condition, not a soft, gentle, 'approved' state. greatness is a bitch. greatness drives us with curses and a whip, strips the fat from our flesh and later, the flesh from our souls. it drives us while we live, it drives us bleeding and struggling to our deaths, and it drives the spark that makes us what we are beyond that. 
it breaks us first, because the smooth, functioning, well-oiled cog the world wants us to be, that keeps everything moving along, is not what does great things, is not capable of achieving the extraordinary. 
it's only after we break, after we no longer fit in with the engine of the world, that we are free to walk that different path. 
we call them sacrifices. the family, the relationships, the career, the retirement plan. the house and the car, the degrees and the diplomas, the promotions, bonuses and increments. these are all the things we drop, we tear ourselves free of. 
it hurts. every one thing left behind is a rebirth, with all the blood and screams that come with it. 
some people are born just once, into that one life. 
others suffer their rebirths again and again, for a;ll the new lives they bring. 

but we don't see the agony, the suffering, the self-doubt and the regret, the failures. we just see the end, and it mocks us with the mirror it holds up to ourselves. 

but. 

but. 

did you think you were the perfect one? seriously? everyone has choices we chose. mistakes we made. 
secrets in the deep dark of our hearts, words and faces that will never see the light again except for those times when we revisit them, alone, in silent nights while our world sleeps around us. 
the world we so carefully put together. 
the perfect world that shouts out, i am whole, complete, all there. there's nothing wrong with me. 

but there's something wrong, isn't there?
something wrong with everyone. 
we all want that perfection, but nobody's perfect. we all want that shining glossy well-rounded life that everyone aspires to, but we know that under that pristine surface is things we did not do, people we left behind, choices we didn't make and hearts we broke. 

we want to build fairytale palaces on shifting sands. we do. 

we don't need to pity the broken ones their hard choices, or envy them their dreams. 
we are the broken ones. 
all of us. 

That one perfect word

It's a warm, starry, moonless night.

Let's go out, you and I. Walk out into the dark, lie down in the soft grass, and look up. 

...

See that star over there? 

Now, see that one? 

Now, see how in one glance you traveled a distance greater than all of humanity through all of their history, put together? How that one flick of the eye covered a time greater than the existence of mankind, maybe of the planet under us? 

That's the power of imagination. That's the power of what a phrase in a book can do, a million times over, a casual word spoken by a stranger in that perfect moment, that one unique context that your life, knowledge and being put together, that shook everything you were and everything you thought the world was and would be. 

The last electron that smashes down the lightning bolt, the last neutron that triggers the critical mass chain reaction. 

Little things, tiny things, insignificant things that can shatter universes. 

Ripples in the air, squiggles of pigment on paper. 

Reading can be a terribly dangerous thing to do. It can be terrifying, if you think about it. That one word will suddenly come around the corner of the next page you turn, the next link you click, and change everything. For everyone. At any time. 

Terrifying.

Exhilarating. 

A storm of thought that can rip off your mind's sails, wreck you, sink you... or take you to a new continent, a new world. 

That's why we keep turning the pages, riding the storms. We fear it, yet we seek it, a glimpse of that one perfect word. 

Maybe follow it. 

Maybe... one day... if it doesn't rip us to shreds first.. capture it, make it ours. Tame it. 

It has the power to make us the master of our universe. 

Waiting for the Singularity

Nearly there. 

It's been a long ride. We nearly didn't make it so many times. We still might not get there, but we can see the ribbon stretched across the track now. 

I's a relay race that's lasted thirteen billion years. Physics of gravity, nuclear transmutation and supernovae, to chemistry of elements becoming molecules and complex hydrocarbons, to biology's replicating strands and evolution, to the oxygen-making algae, complex multicellular organisms, that first step out of the ocean, the hand and the opposable thumb, sparks from a flint into fire, charcoal marks on the cave wall that told stories and sang songs, from the domesticated wolves to the invisible virii that delivered gene-modifiation therapy, to silicon minds and global networks... 

We nearly didn't make it so many thousands, millions of times. That bacterium smashed into space under a world-ending cosmic bombardment, only to return aeons later. That specific configuration of planets. The asteroid that hit, and all those that missed. The Ice Ages, the Black Death. A Nuclear Winter that almost happened. Maybe others that did. 

A dying planet unable to cope with the demands we make of it, a species ripping itself apart and all others around it in paroxysms of imagined slights and self-destructive responses. 

We've danced on the edge of the cliff for millenia, and it's second nature now. 

Just another generation, maybe two. Then we can hand over the baton, sit back, and settle peacefully into history as our successor solves all our problems once and for all and goes ahead with Life. 

Touched by a Dark Angel

I see Her sometimes out of the corner of my eye, a flitting dark shadow far away, right there in front of me, going about her work, and I always try to watch the expression on her face. She's sometimes absorbed, serious, curious... sometimes wistful, even compassionate... and sometimes there's a cool, unimaginably alien indifference as She shatters lives and breaks hearts, a remote blankness the ant sees on the oncoming car's wheel... 

We've never spoken, but I could swear She knows what I'm planning, exactly why I'm trying to stay just far away enough so She can't reach for me, but keeping Her close enough to watch, make sure She can't sneak up on me on one dark night, around a blind corner. So far She's mostly amused, not insulted... and why wouldn't She be? She's seen this before. So many billions of times before. The ways and means have varied, but in the end it's all come down to that moment, when the light fades on all the pleading, the tears, the fights, the pain. 
The moment when the light fades away into the silence. 

A baby and a middle-aged man, one a stranger, one the remotest acquaintance, yet...
One is dead, the other is dying, and behind each unknown face I see a familiar one looking out, through that tangle of hair, and is that a wink?

We've all been there, she whispers, done that. Give it your best shot. You're interesting. Maybe I'll give you a little chance. Just to see how far you get. I got the razor to your throat, the bead on your head, but... let's run, anyway. It's fun. 
And who knows?

She's looking directly at me now, like the few times before, and wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I can feel that glance, sliding in like an abstract icicle shard, a diamond-edged scalpel slicing through hopes, dreams, fears, desires, wants, plans, every resource I've saved and every defense I've built. Straight to the heart it goes, and stops, with the faintest single crystalline-cold tingle of a touch that reverberates through my life, then goes back, a little reminder of how close she can get, and how ephemeral the world and all I held close in it was, to begin with. 
A little reminder of how it can all end. Anytime. 
Anytime She wants. 

That's fine, I whisper back, I know you're there, but let's run anyway. It'll be fun. 

And her razor grin widens as her whipcord body relaxes, and - yet again - that tiniest nod. 
Go.

And we run. 

We run through traffic, through blaring horns, skidding rubber, and hurtling metal; we run through the billion, trillion little killer lives hanging in the air waiting to take root; we hurdle open manholes, dodge fizzing, spitting power lines, skate under crumbling, creaking edifices, and past dark alleys glinting with watching eyes and waiting steel. We run past claws, teeth, stings, and talons, we run through deserts, skate over thin ice, jump dark chasms, through freezing cold, open flame, and a witches' brew of poison, we run through night and dark as thunder growls in the building clouds... 

We parkour through that dazzling, dizzying obstacle course called Life and and I can still see Her, still here in the corner of my eye, effortlessly pacing me in the distance, and She's laughing in delight. 

And She's laughing because, no matter how tired, how damaged, how heartsick, I'm laughing too, and I will keep laughing till all the laughter runs out, into the silence at the end. 
But for now, this is the most awesome thing ever. 

And we run. 

The best of all possible worlds

There was a interesting ethical question doing the rounds on Quora - would you go back in time to kill Hitler?

I don't think so. It's not about one man and his evil masterminded scheme; it was a result of history, economic factors, social, political... there would still be nationalism, frustration with the '18 treaty, still the Nationalist Party, still Nazism. 

Kill one baby Hitler, there would still be the same factors - and the times make the man, someone else would simply step up and take his place. 

And maybe not make any of the same mistakes - not invade Russia, not lose the cream of the scientists and fail to make the A-bomb, doesn't alienate the Japanese...

You know, this timeline, this reality may be a result of several - maybe dozens, hundreds of interventions from a time-travelling corps - as a best possible outcome. 

sensory continuum

i stood in an empty room
halogens glowed in pools of oil and water on the concrete
rows of chrome gleamed in silence, perfectly disciplined machines, waiting

...nothing happened. 

no sound
no clocks
no people
no change
no footsteps
no breath

the silence sucks the thoughts out
pushing on my eyes

roars in the blood
screams in the tendons
reverberates in the lungs
echoing slam of eyelids

...nothing happened. 

i could stand there forever
i could stand there a precious empty few seconds
no difference
no time
without sound to push it along

perfect, frozen silence
forever

between timelines

haunted by the ghost of a boy who never existed
stepped back a decade or two through the portal
everything changed
forget the family left behind
forget the son
he ceased to exist, never had been
as soon as I went. 

I'm haunted by the ghost of who I'd been
who I might have been
haunted by the future and past I killed

Faffing around Furniture

You know, it's the weirdest thing, but I've come to realize that there's one piece of furniture we always overlook and ignore, but when I think about it, plays a very important role in... I don't know how to describe it better, in sorting out life. The humble desk. 

We buy the beds and the cupboards, then the sofas and coffee tables, a dining set, display cases and sideboards, kitchen cabinets, shoeracks, and then if there's place left over, a desk. 

I think we don't take seriously enough the role rooms and items play in organizing our minds. 

Beds are private places, locked away inside. Cupboards absorb messes, store, and close.  Bookshelves call out your intellectualism. The table's to eat, the coffee table's to socialize. The TV dominates the room, the mind, and time, and stops anything else from happening. 

But my personal favorite is the desk. It's also a private place, but one where your mind is awake, active, and free. You can read, draw, listen to music, play games, work, nap, snack, socialize virtually, and just think. Plan your travels and sort your memories. Organize your life. What's on your desk at any point of time is a snapshot into your mind and psyche. Cameras, cards, disks, accessories. A diary, a sketchpad. A keyboard and mouse. A tablet. Phones. Hobby stuff. Glue, paper, wire, tools. Paint. A poster in front, a to-do-list tacked to a board on the side, a dustbin below. A coffee / water / coke. 

These are all things you do, you love, and cherish time on. Things that give you something, do something, take you somewhere. 

The desk is an active space, probably the most versatile, positive, active space in the house. I miss having this space around. If you don't have a workspace like this set aside somewhere, all the time you spend in the house will feel... wasted, somehow. Unproductive. You'll be itching to get up and go out, do something. You'll be confused, lost, disorganized, mired in ennui. You'll turn into a couch potato, an alcoholic, a  socialite, anything that takes up the time and energy you don't know how to work off. 

Damn, I need a bigger house. 

Looking at the other side

Note - this post is likely to depress you

A few days back, a friend of mine posted a (probably by now a much-shared) link to a series of photos a Chinese tourist took in Varanasi, of corpses abandoned in the river and washed up on the shore. His tone was one of (in my opinion, slightly gleeful) horror at what looks like the rejected props from a Walking Dead episode coexisting with daily life, which goes on like it's nothing out of the ordinary. 

Other than the tone taken, I don't really disagree. Yes, these are corpses, the decaying remains of what was once human beings, abandoned and left to rot like refuse in a public river, with nobody to lay them properly to rest, to clean up, to even bat an eyelid. 

Nobody's disturbed because this is daily life. This is how things are. The only people who get disturbed and upset are the people coming from places where their society has the time, the resources, and the inclination to handle corpse disposal properly. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, but in a similar way, we get shocked when we go to a first-world country and find we can drink the water coming directly from the taps, no filter, no UV, no boiling. 

The truth is, there is no regard for human life here. nobody cares when you're alive, why would they care about your corpse? 

Think about poor Varanasi's history. For centuries, the city has lived under the plague-ridden burden of perception that it is somehow spiritually elevated, that a death here is different, more meaningful in some way for the one dying. Freedom from reincarnation? Spiritual upliftment and enlightenment? Privations in this life rewarded in the next? 

It's meant a flood of people with nothing left but death, a flood of people hungry for soul-cleansing, a flood of people trying to understand something of what's happening. The tourist money keeps the economy running briskly, but the concept of a just reward in an afterlife has left little motivation to improve this one. 

There is no enlightenment here, no spiritual reward. It's something we make up, desperately, to somehow justify the appalling conditions we see, the misery, poverty, deprivation. People don't choose to be poor for a spiritual reward, they are poor because they had no choice, and every waking moment they fight it. There is no alternative. 

Be, or die. 

That's why the tourists flock here, too. They cannot imagine a life that is so bad, yet continues to be lived. They're convinced there's some great secret behind it all, something that we know and they don't, something that justifies this horror. Some mysterious philosophy of rebirth, reincarnation cycles, karma, an understanding of the nature of reality that they haven't got yet. Some knowledge that lets us continue to live in this place, walk these streets, where corpses wash up on the banks and lie putrefying in the sun. 

Chill, guys, there's no great secret. Step back and look at the big picture. We live because the alternative is to die. We live here because there are a thousand million little threads that tie us here, because there is nowhere else to go. 

The native will keep the farce going. The yogis and godmen will speak about this great secret in hints and allusions, translated into the guides' commentaries, the documentaries, the book and the stories. 

We live, and we die. There is nothing after, but as long as people believe there is, the money keeps coming, the stories keep perpetuating, the society keeps functioning. 

We make the tools we need to survive, and faith and hope are just some of those tools. 

Crime, Punishment and Belief

It just occurred to me, the whole concept of the death penalty works if the condemned - and the accused, the potential perpetrators - believe in an afterlife of eternal damnation, believe that the human judge on this side mirrors the eventual judgement they will receive and the following punishment. 

If you believe that what you are doing is wrong, wrong enough to warrant an eternity of the lake of fire, and the lake of fire exists and is waiting, and you will be caught, and when you are hung, God will send you to hell to forever burn... you will be deterred. You'll think twice. 

But,

If you think you won't be caught - 

If caught, you think you can evade punishment - 

If punished, the punishment is too light - especially if the roof and regular meals of prison looks attractive compared to whatever brutal hell you are already living in - 

If the maximum punishment is given, you don't believe in God or hell - 

Or if you believe his judgement will be different from society's - 

The the entire concept of punishment to act as a deterrent to crime breaks down. It becomes an escape, a start-over. A reward. An irritant. Fame and glamour. Not the stuff that will ever stop crime. 

What's an acceptable alternative? 

Honestly, I don't know. It's not that easy. For the victim of the crimes, it's easy to like increasing brutality, barbaric punishments. Taliban-esque. Make the immediate, visible results of a crime seen to all, the thieves without hands to make other thieves think a thousand times. But this will make societies increasingly brutal. The chances of an innocent caught in the machine. It also needs a enforcement and judicial system that's fast, efficient, and accurate. 

Maybe humanity's just too big to govern effectively now. 

Drugs are a necessity...

...as a socio-evolutionary regulator. 

Think about it. 

In any given situation, if one person gains a slight advantage over others, he will attempt to further that advantage. Like wishing for three more wishes as your third wish.

And if he has an advantage already, he will succeed. The gap widens.

Over time, one person will have all the resources, while the rest have none.

As a result, this person will have the capability to continue to hold all the resources, while the rest continue to starve.

And what happens when you have no resources? You can't have kids. Either you can't afford them, or raise them properly, or save them in dire situations.

Genetic diversity of a society starts to become completely skewed towards the one guy. Or girl, it doesn't matter.

And this is not a good thing. 

But, if there were something else that becomes accessible as a result of having all (or a lot of) resources - like money - something expensive, hard to get, but that would make you feel good, that you desire - you would try to get it. And you would succeed.

Something that others couldn't take away from them, and they could stop them if they tried. 

Something like...  a gateway drug. That leads to the harder, more dangerous stuff.

The resourceless, the impoverished, can't afford it. Only they can.

And once they're addicted, it eats away all their resources and kills them.

Balance is restored.

If you have nothing, it's just a waiting game. The person who has everything also has, inevitably, something that will destroy him.

Fast cars. Alcohol. Venereal disease. Drugs. Thrill-chasing. Fights. 

All you have to do is make sure it doesn't get you as well, accidentally.

Self-control is the greatest weapon you have, the hardest to manage and the easiest to use. 

Everything else is working with the universe to make sure genes continue to proliferate. You, the self, the consciousness, the mind inside that meat bag whose sole purpose is to act as a life-supporting vehicle for your genetic code, is an accidental, happy, short-lived coincidence. 

Enjoy it. 

Don't throw it away. 

Don't be a pawn of the Universe, a statistic, a variable like trillions of others in the great dance of life, a cog in a machine. 

Be yourself.

Do you really want to live forever?

Thought Experiment. 

Medical science finally gets telomere-repairing gene therapy right, and we all can now live till age 500+, in perfectly healthy bodies. What happens to the world?

Step One: Population Bomb. Natural death rate will fall to zero, and given that everyone's fit and healthy, and likely to remain so for a long time, children being born will go through the roof. And their children. And their children. For over 20 generations, and let's not forget the original parents are still breeding. Exponentially explosive growth doesn't remotely cover it, this shit is nuclear. 

"They won't be that stupid", you say? Maybe the countries and populations with easy, affordable access to birth control won't, but that's only the upper layers of first-world countries and the very narrow upper layers of the rest, or in other words, around 1-5% of the population. For the rest, it's literally bang, and boom. 

Step Two: Resources Vanish. In less than a generation, we'll be hellishly overcrowded. It's not just a case of people having 1-2 kids in their prime; their prime is now nearly infinite. They can keep earning for decades, they think, so it;s a new generation every few years. Jobs, education, space, food, and water become scarcer and scarcer. 

Step Three: Economies of Scale. With family sizes exploding, and each generation competing with forefathers and ancestors for the same place in the sun, the individual family unit will be too inefficient; there'll be a movement into joint families, then commune-style setups. 

Step Four: Total War. With the economies of scale in place, each community or extended family unit is an effective, organized force, with its own supply chains and specialist systems. What used to be bad blood and feuds, will have the potential to become all-out battles, especially if the prize is twice the living space and resources up for grabs. And with that many people around, human life will look cheap. 

Step Five. The Recession. As life becomes more and more brutal - and we're still talking about a time maybe a hundred years ahead - people will start realizing that a controlled approach is the only way this will work. And since children are no longer the means for you to control your resources and wealth over time - you can do it yourself - they'll lose all meaning and just take on nuisance value. Infanticide, indoctrination, slavery. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world...

The more developed countries will see the spectre of a population bomb sweeping out from Africa, Asia and consuming everything in its path. If they can hold themselves together for even a generation, the enemy will have starved himself into a non-threat, and in two generations, will be a collapsed, shattered economy - ripe for the plucking. Then will begin the real horror of systematic invasions, genocides, exterminations. They might be holding themselves together, but they're still bursting at the seams, and the need the oil, water, farmland. 

A first thought that comes to mind is that ecology will be devastated, but that may not happen. Societies crumbling under the weight of their populations will have access barely to an industrial-age technology, while the more developed will be forced into long-term, ecologically sustainable green tech - after all, they're still going to be around, so anything that turns bad in 50, 100 years will not be wanted. And nations that are sparsely populated but technologically developed will have a huge headstart in this. As long as they can repel the raiders. 

Don;t confuse this with eco-friendliness, though. If there's something that can be harvested with no long-term impact - thought it might wipe out entire species - it will happen. 

So there's likely to be a massive expansion into oceans, space, and underground, to open up new areas for expansion and maintain a technological edge, at least in the first world... and then a few centuries of fighting to keep those from falling into the hands of the starving millions. 

And this is something straight from Larry Niven - with a longer life, will people be more careful? Take fewer risks? Or will the ravaged world they now live in, allow the luxury of a low-risk life? 

Preservation through Overtaxation

Given the catastrophic fallout, the drug is not likely to be available easily. Very restricted, very high-priced. So obtained only by the very few - who then continue to hang tightly to their positions of wealth and power. 

Very strong urge to build long-lasting structures to maintain the status quo. Strong opposition to any kind of systemic change. 

Extend this to political power positions, and you see not just Dictator-for-life, but for several of his subject's lifetimes. Within a lifetime, revolutions will become impossible, and he will become a living god within his indestructible castle. 

So will begin the era of assassinations, political games, and power plays between the long-lived players. 

Who else will have access? The ones who took it illegally. It's going to be a very, very expensive drug. And the criminal syndicates and families will become unshakeable. 

End result - 

Warlords, tyrants, politicos, and kingpins - and merchant princes - living in a unchanging, stagnant world, full of ignorant serfs, assassins, starving slaves, destroyed biodiversity...