Greetings Readers!
I have finally got some feedback on this blog which I have kept top secret. So this piece is dedicated to my first critic. And here I go..
Humans have an inbuilt sense of direction. A direction they want to pursue. A direction they feel is the best. Well this is the inner voice all of us follow. This is "The Voice" (Sucks without Shakira and Adam Levine, doesn't it?) We follow this voice throughout our lives. It takes us to the dizzying highs of success and the chasms of failure but the one constant is that it never deserts you. And hence we feel that we are the ones who control our destiny with our choices and the adhering to of "The Voice"
But are we really in control? Or are we not?
The title of a particular book that has captivated my imagination for a while now (though I have not found the time, neither saved up enough to buy) is "Prisoner by Birth", by Jeffrey Archer. The title has my mind racing with its possible implications and the one that stands out the most is the one I shall share with you today.
We are simply caught up in an illusion of control. We have absolutely no control over our lives from the moment we are born. Our birth itself is more random than a game of Roulette! If we begin our lives with a random event the rest is simply a mixture of time and place.
Imagine the birth of 2 kids at the height of the Cold War on the same day. One is born in the shadow of the United States Capitol Building in Washington and the other in the shadow of the Kremlin in Moscow. They have had their sides picked for them in a war they probably wouldn't have even been a part of in a different time or place! Hell,these two could have been twins!
So basically saying that anything is your birthright is more like saying you won it in a lottery.
A while back I read a book called "The Black Swan" by Nicholas Nassim Taleb.(No, the hot steamy movie with the lesbian scene was not inspired from THIS book) This dude is a Guru of randomness and in the book he talks about how our lives are very minimally affected by our own attempts at control but rather are given direction by 'low-probability yet high impact' events that he refers to as "black swans"(Surprise! Surprise!)
Truly a gem! (sadly I do not understand a lot of the technical stuff but the idea was very clear to me)
So basically my point is that...
So till my next post, Cheerio!
I have finally got some feedback on this blog which I have kept top secret. So this piece is dedicated to my first critic. And here I go..
Humans have an inbuilt sense of direction. A direction they want to pursue. A direction they feel is the best. Well this is the inner voice all of us follow. This is "The Voice" (Sucks without Shakira and Adam Levine, doesn't it?) We follow this voice throughout our lives. It takes us to the dizzying highs of success and the chasms of failure but the one constant is that it never deserts you. And hence we feel that we are the ones who control our destiny with our choices and the adhering to of "The Voice"
But are we really in control? Or are we not?
The title of a particular book that has captivated my imagination for a while now (though I have not found the time, neither saved up enough to buy) is "Prisoner by Birth", by Jeffrey Archer. The title has my mind racing with its possible implications and the one that stands out the most is the one I shall share with you today.
We are simply caught up in an illusion of control. We have absolutely no control over our lives from the moment we are born. Our birth itself is more random than a game of Roulette! If we begin our lives with a random event the rest is simply a mixture of time and place.
Imagine the birth of 2 kids at the height of the Cold War on the same day. One is born in the shadow of the United States Capitol Building in Washington and the other in the shadow of the Kremlin in Moscow. They have had their sides picked for them in a war they probably wouldn't have even been a part of in a different time or place! Hell,these two could have been twins!
So basically saying that anything is your birthright is more like saying you won it in a lottery.
A while back I read a book called "The Black Swan" by Nicholas Nassim Taleb.(No, the hot steamy movie with the lesbian scene was not inspired from THIS book) This dude is a Guru of randomness and in the book he talks about how our lives are very minimally affected by our own attempts at control but rather are given direction by 'low-probability yet high impact' events that he refers to as "black swans"(Surprise! Surprise!)
Truly a gem! (sadly I do not understand a lot of the technical stuff but the idea was very clear to me)
So basically my point is that...
"Control is an illusion"I am reading another one of Mr. Taleb's works entitled "Fooled by Randomness" and I in completing it will gain a little more insight that I can share with you my dear readers at a later point in time.
So till my next post, Cheerio!
Yours Truly,
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