Tanpa Dialog

Di tjinta kami tak ada kata-kata
Kerna kata-kata tak tumbuh
Kerna kata-kata melibatkan kenjataan shari-hari
Kerna kata-kata mendjelaskan bajangan
Ato kerna kata-kata
Merantjukan pertukaran
Dan sering gagal menjeimbangkan pendengaran and pembitjaraan

Di tjinta kami tak ada kata-kata
Kerna kata-kata tak tumbuh
Kami bertjakap bukan dengan bahasa
Dengan tatap dan tjinta di kmurnian jang sempurna
Kami bisa slaras walopun tak mengerti
Kami bisa bersama walopun berpisah
Memahami melalui kesunjian

Di tjinta kami tak ada kata-kata
Namun hidup keparat mengikat kami
Pada bumi dan tjara-tjaranja, pada waktu dan batasnja
Kalo kami terdjaga oleh kata-kata maka
impian terjoblos menetas mendjadi perdjuangan
Tanpa kata-kata, surga takkan hilang
Dan matipun kami mau
Bertjeraipun

Di tjinta kami tak ada kata-kata
Kerna kata-kata tak tumbuh
Kami adalah malaikat malaikat tjinta
Jang berstubuh di awang-awang
Djatuh kami mati
Lepas kami mendjadi tjahaja
Abadi dari bumi.

The Matrix

What's "real" ? How do you define real? If you are talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, taste and see ... then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. (Morpheus to Neo - The Matrix.)

I guess if we collectively agree that a real event we experience is describable in the same manner, then it's relatively real enough. But, "collectively" ... how do I define that the people constitute the collection are real? It could be splinters of my own mind.

The Paradoxical God

Within the context and boundaries of our reasoning, the concept of an omni-god is laden with paradoxes. To accept it fully, we rely on 'faith'. But the paradoxes are so fundamental that it's not merely faith that is required, but absolute faith. But what is absolute faith? It's the total abandonment of reasoning. But with the total absence of reasoning, anything can be god - the choosing of which now becomes arbitrary. Also, the acceptance of any god is then by forsaking the existence of self - if self is defined through at least a presence of conscious reasoning. So if you don't exist per se, how could you claim that it is YOU who accepts the god?

So there's the dilemma. To accept an omni-god, you must abandon reasoning and hence forsaking your existence. By then, anything can be god and you are NOT you anymore.

God, help me.

O' Father, Where Are Thou?

One day, on a rather cloudy day, while listening to some bebop, he missed his dead father. And just like that, he felt like going after him, so he took all the hard liquors, spices and plenty of panadols, mixed them into a jumbo non-sense and drank them to death.

He entered a new universe and saw all white. Nothing, pure white. Then black, total absence of any other color. These two purest colors then altered before they merged creating levels of grey. No shape, no room, a one-dimensional existence except for his wandering mind. But as the greys grew sophisticated, his mind dwindled to a more black-and-white recollections. Finally, he was reduced to remembering his being there and ever-not being there. That was it, a clear sense of present but vague beginning.

He missed his father no more. He stood there deciphering the complexly growing shades of grey in reciprocal with his ever deteriorating mind. Quite amused. He stood there, and for an eternity he will exist as his mind will take infinite time to ever understand his new world ...

Existence is not dependent on time

In all my discussions about existence, I put a stress on memory. Memory relates to a timeline, something of the past. But then time is in fact not a divine-thing, it's a worldly thing. It's a dimension like space that wasn't there before the big bang. So, really, without this notion of time, the concept of memory also doesn't exist. In our current view of time, it looks as if I exist simultaneously in the past, present and future, or omnipresent. So existence must be defined free of the memory notion.  There must be something of essence about me independent of the worldly space-time dimension.

What is it?

I am who I am? Not really.

Without my memory, I have no continuous existence. If I am to have my memory totally wiped out and started anew, I would be a new being. I could have totally different views of events and the world, and make totally different choices based on these new views. So I am who I am because of my physical world: my biological and physical structures, my upbringing and situational constraints. There is nothin fundamental about myself apart from these. Or, if my soul is to transport to another physical world, another universe, would I retain anything of myself that is of essence? If not, then existence is a volatile thing; there is no memory of myself beyond the boundary of a physical world or a certain time period.

Then, if I won't ever live that long - by process of logic, not chemistry - how could I ever be raised up to Heaven? 

The potential non-symmetry of life and death

Let's play with these:

What is love but to experience emptiness, and what is emptiness but to experience love? What is sadness but to experience happiness, and what is happiness but to experience sadness? Etc. Now, these are opposing but symmetrical meanings. The pair establishes or strengthen each notion.

Now: what is life but to experience death, and what is death but to experience life? These are opposing but not necessarily symmetrical. Who has ever experienced both to tell? So, life does not give meaning to death nor death to life. It just looks it. The symmetry is a presumption made on the limitation of men's knowledge of death.

Taking this lightly is an advice: "If you suffer in this life and you want to die, who is to say that it will be the opposite of the life as you know it? Stick with your life, always better the devil you know."

Virtue of bullshitting

Competent people, most of them, can't claim more than what they are worth - they can't bullshit. This lack of skill causes them to take longer time to be noticed and hence to realize their full potentials. They NEED to learn how to bullshit, just to get them first under the spotlight. Their actual competence will let them to stay on and improve.

Unfortunately, or rather naturally, bullshitting skill and real competence seldom come in pair. But from whatever side you starting on, you must also master the other. But it's harder to do it if you start from the one particular side - ah, you know which.

A day of leadership in an Indian company

Team Member (TM)    : Sir, we have a big problem
Project Manager (PM) : I want priority action immediately!
TM : Sir, we don’t have a plan until today for our course of actions
PM : Priority action immediately! Please do the needful!
TM : We are not sure of the problems to be addressed …
PM : Close monitoring! Close monitoring! Any problem revert back to me!
TM : But this is the problem sir … we don’t know what the problems are …
PM : Please prepare and coordinate with me for discussions
TM : But we are trying to discuss it with you NOW sir ….
PM : Ok, any blockings discuss with me
TM : Sir, right now, it’s nothing BUT blockings!
PM : Please support the customer, I want priority action and daily update
TM : Sir, I want to resign …
PM : Ok, requesting you to make an action plan to achieve the same
TM : Sir, I’m resigning now!
PM : Good going, keep it up.

(Written as inspired by some GREAT people who managed to confuse even the most conscious)

Business anyone?

I have just came out of a meeting ...

I have just came out of a meeting, where they were all confused but they were all talking. The ones who understand did not speak, for they did not know where to start since matters had strayed so far off the tangent that anything discussed are both relevant and irrelevant at the same time. Then they made trivial decisions, produced obvious questions, and smiled contently. A good meeting! A good meeting!

Forgive them for they know not what they do.

I exist, You don't

One day I dreamt and awaken just to find out I was yet in another dream, I'm dreaming that I'm dreaming of me dreaming of ... ad infinitum. What if life is just one big perfect dream and death is I being awaken to the previous level up of yet another dream? This may go at least three ways: ad infinitum, cyclic, or finally I find 'reality', ie. God or Heaven. Either way, I exist, You don't.

But if between jumping dreams I remember not the previous existence, won't I be a new being everytime, and hence I as I know myself will actually cease to exist everytime? Unless at the end of the journey or at some point, the recollections are recalled and summed up - like when you are awaken and recalling your dreams - as pieces that form together into one big super existence. Are we god himself?

Marsillam and Pansus

We learn of meanings by contrasting: tall-short, pretty-ugly, rich-poor. Then refinement of meanings when the comparison objects present levels: tall-less tall, pretty-less pretty. At early stage your understanding is binary, the black or white. Then both intelligence, or the learning, and exposures, or the knowledge, refine the understanding.

These are what earn you a 'seat' in life: intelligence and knowledge. Absence of both however, earn you seats in this world. So Marsillam sat on one side, and the Pansus on the other ...

Dilemma of Faith

Faith is to trust with absence of reasons. Practical faith involves faint trails of reasons, but absolute faith shall involve absolutely no reasons. But if I don't reason, I am not being. A non-existent me can't possibly love. How could I love my God in faith?

Physical matters are complex product of coagulations of abstract notions

I have always wondered, if you divide matter ad infinitum, would you find God? God is the space, the absolute nothingness where divisions stop. The very fabric making up all the existences, the omni-present. All the notions, conceptions started out from this, then it starts forming matters and higher dimension existence.

The physical world is a product of coagulations of these abstract notions at after many levels. Reality is just a more complex product of such.

He wants you to be a god

Christianity at its core is a teaching of absolute 'arrogance' and self-esteem. How else could you forgive your enemy, turn the other cheek, and love all regardless if you are not superior to them? How else could you forever forgive the wrong-doings of a 5-year old but to establish that he/she is a 5 and you are a 40-year olds? How else could you forgive the sins of men unless you are god?

Existence is a hot air notion

During one's lifetime, is existence continuous? If I pass out and hence rendered unconscious, where does my conscious-self go? Have I ceased to exist albeit momentarily? Further, if I have no memories at all tying up myselves before and after passing out, then won't I be a new person - putting the clinical psychology aside and staying on the philosophical notion?

Now and then I explore the logical fallout of this thought further and I grow unsettled ...

Existence

Existence is a conscious-self. When my knowledge grows, I become more 'conscious', ergo I exist more. As such, the smarter me exists more than the dumb me. Yes?

Agnotism

I have not enough ground to accept nor reject. When knowledge is limited, it's unwise for me to form an opinion. And when I can't form an opinion, it's unwise for me to take a stand.

But then what is the limit set for the bound of knowledge? Such limit is what makes me an opinionated or a wise man or an agnostic.