Crap

this post remained on the boiler for long. never knew if i should have been warranted the audacity to write something such as this, especially since i’m very new to design. finally decided that thoughts, no matter how naive, sometimes ought to be expressed, simply so that they may be read, contemplated upon, and there-by be better suited to refinement, possibly (and seemingly) for the better.

there was big talk. and there was small talk. there were idiots who said design as a field sucked. and there were idiots who proclaimed it didn’t. and then, there was…something, called me.

in principle, any field – be it engineering, be it medicine, be it political sciences, be it accounting, or be it cobbling or rag-picking – each is equally perfect. and each of them can, in a deeper, philosophical sense, be invaluable to humanity, or earth, or the universe even. and on the face of it, each of them is just a means of keeping us occupied and a means of getting us those two square meals we crave for. to live. live – unto what? no one knows.

i am very-much inclined to go down the “whole universe will get destroyed some day, so why live” route here; then again, shall not.

people have said to me that design is all about designing for humanity, and i’ve convinced myself (or, sufficiently allowed others to convince me) that design is a (figuratively-)divine field that has no bounds. i can design something as (outwardly-)simple as a visiting card, or a website, or a chair, or a car, or a naval warship, or complicated social architecture, or an entire system that will enclose within it every person alive today. and well, it’s really quite true. i can. and design is a field that’d give me all the freedom to do so.

but then – the more i see, the more i seem to get convinced that design isn’t really that special. it’s just common sense. true, the common sense does come after practising a fair-bit, and i need to be a ‘designer’ to be permitted that practice. i’ve just spent two days (unsuccessfully) trying to come up with a visiting card design for a client at my internship. i admit, maybe i suck at it. but, as i practised, and practised some more, over the two days, i saw myself get better at it.

it’s all about taking up the cause, and trying. and failing and trying. a guy with no formal education can try to sit and make something that helps rid him of some inconvenience in life, and well, he may end up solving one of the world’s biggest issues. who knows!

all i can see for now, is that i don’t really want to be (branded) a designer. i just want to be a guy who can use his common sense. and maybe help some people along the way. if that’s what you call design, then design it is.

even so, why does design suddenly feel so constricted. why do i not enjoy making tiny posters that’ll probably change no one’s lives? why can i not just walk up to dr manmohan singh and speak with him of all my ideas that’d help change the world? why do we let kasab live while he laughs his ass off at us from the prison cell? what use is all our might when we can’t even physically force pakistan to prevent erstwhile-arrested terrorists from roaming free? why…why?!!

design won’t let me achieve that. or maybe it will. i’m dazed.

–
from: 1 am. june 5, 2009.
(hence, the connections to the news from that day, such as that day’s events from kasab’s trial)

A tiny thought. In reply to this comment. But mostly a random thought.

Nosey Sparker stated that, in a Democracy, we should let the people vote on an issue and let the majority decide.

Oddly though, i don’t think i can agree with the notion of “decisions taken on the basis of a majority vote”. Yes, Democracy is essential, for, it makes the voter believe that he has a proactive role in the running of the nation. He believes.

Unfortunately, that is not how any system can function. Because most people are too unaware of the issue at hand to really cast a good vote. That is mostly why we narrow down the whole Democracy to the elected representatives, who are supposed to keep abreast of the issues that the common man can’t, and use their powers to vote in the Houses of the Parliament, on behalf of the general public.

It is unfortunate to see that Democracy is taken for granted by Newspapers and News Channels and TV Soaps alike, in the form of voting drives. This is diluting the true notion of a Democracy. Because people are casting their votes on flimsy topics, purely on the basis of their emotions, and at the click of a the ’send sms’ button of the cell phone.

A democracy is essentially one  that allows for multiple votes, representing the public, to count towards governance. Every issue can not be thrown open to the public, for, as i said previously, the people are largely unaware of the nitty-gritties of the issue and often driven by emotions and knee-jerk reactions.

In much the same way as how India’s response to the November Bombay attacks could not have been along the lines of what the public at-large wanted. Back then, almost everyone demanded the blood of every pakistani alive, and war sentiment was ripe. But better heads prevailed. Thank whosoever thatpolicy is not framed by such demands.

I’m not against polls. Quite the contrary, i think that they give us a lot to think on, providing us with an idea of what the people want, and what the leaders must do to assist the lay-folk. Infact, once i’d actually sketched out a nice new way of collecting poll data quickly and more efficiently. Maybe someday i’ll launch it as a nice business. So, for now, the idea’s a  secret.

Yeah, as if anyone even wanted to hear it. :P

Life experiments with itself. Tiny defects crop into the molecules that drive life, and often fail. But every once in a while, a defect turns Life itself around. Mutation, the biologists call it. Over time, it gets slated as Evolution. What causes these defects to crop into the mosaic of Life, is one question that could be answered. However, the fact that these defects DO crop up, and seem to work, albeit with miserably low probabilities, is worth noticing here.

If long-drawn Philosophy is not what you tend to palate frequently, i’d sincerely suggest you move onto another post; for this one is rather, well, top-heavy. [ :) ]

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I know where i’m going. And i know that i’ll never get to where i want to.

Humans, i like to believe, live to exist.

Exist. Full-stop.

Infact, we’re all driven by the simplistic motive to make more of our kind. I know it sounds pitifully boring (and kinda gross), but that’s a fact. Replication of the inherent bio-molecules is the single driving force behind all that we do. (I swear, no more bio from this point on.) Life, as a collective term, seems to baffle me on only this one aspect of itself. I don’t quite seem to grasp what the motive of all this existence is.

But then, i begin to figure.

Life doesn’t need to have any motive.

It’s just there. In much the same way that the universe is. It’s there now, and it doesn’t really matter what i believe that it all conspires to achieve. For all i care, the hypotheses pertaining to the contraction of the universe might be right, and in that case, all that i write now, will ultimately be lost, whence the universe shrinks back to the size of a point.

And this is where it gets interesting.

If there is no motive, there obviously can be no imposed limits on how we go about living our pointless existences, as long as we stick to letting humanity, and life in general, move on. So i guess it’d be quite right to become a drug-addict, marry a like-minded lady, have a bunch-o kids, and die happily ever after. I don’t think i can classify such a thought as incorrect. Then again, it doesn’t quite seem correct either.

So where’s the catch?

There isn’t one. And that’s the fun part…

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I’ve wasted 3 days. And most of my resolve stands crumbled. As to what the resolve was (or maybe, still is), is out-of-context. So tonight, i’ll write. With no intent. I just want to spend time. While it away. And then weep.

I’m an atheist.

And the best part about it is that every time i write atheist, i need to look up a dictionary to confirm that the ‘i before e except c‘ rule stands shattered. I guess that defines atheism – make an exception, and let it be rooted in sense. Phonetics, in this case, decries such an exception.

Primarily, i think it’s high time that theories of genesis, that define the creation of man, must be abandoned. (I’m not even gonna attempt justify this, and if someone disagrees with me on this front, trust me, the rest of my post is, for you, pure gibberish.)

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