Forgiveness

Have you ever thought about how many things that are considered righteous and pious are contradictory to the principle of evolution? We humans reached the top of all the living beings on Earth by practicing all instinctual things. But as time passed and cultures developed the very core of out flourishing became taboo. Many things that were the heart of the reward mechanism of our brains became associated with divine prohibitions. Nevertheless, it worked out and those prohibitions shaped our society as it is today, but that is the topic for another day.

Forgiving, for instance, is something we learned is nobler. If someone hurts you, be it anyway physical or emotional, the person who forgives is having an upper-hand in the conflict. Forgiveness has the capacity to assuage the mind of the hurt person. It just gives this awesome feeling of closure even in the absence of apologies. I agree with the stance that forgiving can be sometimes good deed. Moreover, It is obviously instinctual that as time passes and anger subsides and we eventually forgive the person who did us wrong.  Nevertheless, it will be quite ludicrous and childish to never -ever forgive. To err is human, to forgive is divine. Yadda yadda yadda ...

That said, I beg to bring in another point of view in the forgiving scenario.  I would say it is not always the best case to forgive. To forgive is often considered to be the most healthy alternative, but it's not! You are permitted to be bitter and you are permitted to be furious at the person who did you wrong. It is NOT healthy to suck your emotions in because it is noble to be forgiving. Placing this more popular belief on forgiveness above your own feelings of resentment is an act of self-harm. You are allowed to feel and register the betrayal for as long as you need to. Being treated badly by someone is a very fair reason to be pissed at them.

More than often we find people saying "I forgive you" to an unapologetic wrongdoer. If that satisfies them, good for them. However to practice altruism at the cost of your own mental wellbeing is not a good idea. Frankly for me even if someone apologizes I am not obliged to forgive them until I feel they are fit for my pardon.

Apologies should not be obscure. Sorry, is just another word if it doesn't manifest the understanding of hurting and makes a promise to not violate the equilibrium of trust again. It lies in the hands of the wrongdoer to demonstrate that they understand what they did was wrong. Moreover, for the wrongdoers, it's never too late to learn the golden rule "Treat others the way you would like to be treated. Act with compassion and empathy."

Be it the forgiveness for a what-so-ever reason, namely for the nobler one or over time by subsidence of anger, It should not by default mean you are to give them the same position as before. One example of such case is a cheating spouse or partner. If someone is cheated on and their partner apologizes and is forgiven ... A let bygones be bygones kind of situation almost every time leads to a series of cheatings. The thing is after every act of cheating the person's sense of guilt is subsided as they face no repercussions for their actions. Here goes the saying, once a cheater always a cheater. The responsibility of making amendments is with the guilty person and not otherwise.

If you forgive and the wrongdoer don't face any consequences of their actions how does this improves the situation? So if one find peace in forgiving one should not act in self-harm by giving the offender same privileges as before. Forgive eventually, but don't place the knife in their hands to stab you again. rather move on. I understand it can be difficult if the offender is someone you love...

With that thought, I would like to get back on evolution side of the issue. Had we forgiven the predators, back in hunters and gatherer era, you would not have been reading this post, nor I would be writing it. Homo sapiens would have been eradicated. If one is wronged, forgiveness and inviting the wrongdoer back is not noble but silly in the evolutionary sense of the way. We learned to protect ourselves from being hurt. We apply what we learn by our instincts for future dealings. If it was natural to accommodate forgiveness as it is taught to be divine, the rattling of a rattlesnake would not have been registered as a warning sign for rest of the animals.

For me personally, as a typical INFJ, my most typical reaction to betrayal and hurt is cutting them off from my life. #FriendshipOver. I don't give much thought to them after that. (but as my physics teacher would say, exceptions are always there. ) The resentment is wholly justified as taking offense in your own mistreatment is an act of self-respect. I have enough self-esteem to understand that being a part of my life is a prerogative, not a default.

Sum and Substance: No one owes a place in someone else's life. They have to earn it and work for it. If someone doesn't work for a place in your life they shouldn't have one.  If they hurt you or mistreat you it is your right to protect yourself even by the means of cutting someone out off your life completely. You are not to be told to forgive someone and feel "divine".

What is your opinion on forgiveness? Do you forgive people who hurt you or hurt someone you love with no exceptions? What popular moral codes do you find to be misaligned with your principles in life? Let me know in the comment section below

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Eudaimonia: The Upbeat Background Emotion

The material possessions and things that we achieve in life don’t give us the consistent feeling of happiness. The foreground happiness is fragile, as it should be. I mean, who would want to be happy all the time? I don’t! I want to feel all the possible fragments of emotions throughout the duration of my life. None of them should entirely cloud my emotional state throughout. 

Still, in the vaguest way, we all desire something in life. Something that is not quite tangible ... it is a state of mind that gives us the ultimate satisfaction of a life well-lived. The euphoria of getting a new possession dies out in a couple of days, you may think you got used to your new Car. It just doesn't make you feel the same as the moment you first bought it. Likewise. sometimes, relationships fade off to routine after a span of time especially when they are not taken care of routinely by people involved. Regardless the start of it gives us a sense of satisfaction. As if these things are some sort of instant and short -lived doses of that very desire. 

Satisfaction, perhaps, or the pursuit of happiness may be the nearest translation of the greek word Eudaimonia. It cannot be quite translated to the exact sense of the word but we get the gist of it. The state of emotion that we seek in life that makes us feel happy regardless of the instantaneous foreground emotion that we may be tackling. 

Aristotle, Greek Philosopher, Places this idea of Eudaimonia in the terms of being virtuous. I find myself in agreement with Aristotle. Doing the right thing is what makes life satisfactory. But what is the right thing? It appears to be obscure to say “Right thing”. Right thing can be presumed to be subjective. 

Aristotle said it to be the virtue of the golden mean. Pursuing the right balance between two extremes. Let’s take an example of criticism. While criticizing, one must find the balance in approach between the two extremes of sycophantically praising the given subject/object and rejecting the subject/object of criticism in a harsh way. The right balance would be between the two that will lead the criticism in a constructive direction and make room for improvement. In doing so the person who is criticizing is not only helping the person towards whom the critic is being made, but also himself. By doing the virtuous thing he/she is living a eudaimonic life. This principle can be applied in almost every aspect under the sun if we give it a thought ... love, relationships, pursue of goals, chores in everyday life. Eudaimonia is not a state that one reaches in life is the way of life that has to constantly be iterated.

I find this ancient Greek philosophy to be very much in sync with the modern psychology. Namely, Maslow's hierarchy of needs in order to attain self-actualization, but that is a topic for another day. 

What is your opinion on the goals of human life? Do you agree with Aristotle's idea of golden mean or do you have some other measures of defining virtue? Let me know in the comments section. 

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Dilemma Of Death

 Death is one of the most ancient philosophical topics. Perhaps the reason of it being one of the most frequented philosophical queries is that we cannot conceive the fact that the universe will keep on going as it is after our death. It is a fact that after our death the earth will still spin and the sun will come up every day. 

What happens to the consciousness when one dies? Is there any afterlife? What even is an afterlife, life-after-death? But, isn't death end of life? How can the end be just a passage to the afterlife? What is Death? The act of dying is the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism. But, what about our mind what about our consciousness? The consciousness, it seems to be so much secluded from the perception of body but, It is, after all, some synapses in our brain. Why do we think of it to be something intangible? With such certainty that expects it to be intact even when our body is dead.

 Is death to be fear? Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher claimed that death is nothing to fear about. He said death is either a dreamless sleep or a passage to the afterlife. If it is a dreamless sleep then there is no consciousness to register that we are gone. No emotions or thoughts to cloud us about the worries of being. On the other hand, if it is a passage to another world, then why worry about it. We as a being will eventually triumph over death in the other world. Likewise, most of the philosophers say that death shouldn’t concern us as we will not be there.

“Why should I fear death?

If I am, then death is not.

If Death is, then I am not.

Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?

Long time men lay oppressed with slavish fear.

Religious tyranny did domineer.

At length the mighty one of Greece

Began to assert the liberty of man.”

― Epicurus

 Irrespective of what they say the fear of death is subjective for each one of us. If not our own death, isn’t the death of our loved ones something we all fear? None of us have experienced death first hand, but we have grieved death and that is the closest we have come to it. The death of a loved one is absolutely heart-breaking. We dread the fact that we cannot see them ever again, cannot feel the warmth of their embrace or feel the kindness we felt in their eyes. Often times we mourn the fact they left us without their presence or the pain that they endured during the end of their life, in the cases of slow painful deaths. Sometimes the tragedy of death is the unlikeliness of its arrival. It makes us sad in the end, despite knowing that it is inevitable.

All the same, when it comes to one's own death, I don't think it matters so much except for the anticipation of pain or panic. It is now known that a dying person's brain secrets dopamine in a large amount. So if anything it will likely be pleasurable. An assumption that we will miss out on things is also there.  However, that is not significant if we are not going to be able to register the missing out. Do you feel deeply saddened by not being present in the history? I doubt it.

Food for thought, Immortality. Since we don't know what lies beyond death. Shouldn't we like to hold on to dear life? Why does immortality somehow seem immoral? Maybe we are conditioned to think it is bad in light to religion's attempt to solve the quandary of not being able to live forever … Because living forever is bad and even worse is to want to live forever.

Perhaps it is why when google launched a venture to "Solve death" everyone thought it was uncanny. No one minds fighting diseases, but heaven forbids if you say immortality. You are asking for things we humans don't deserve. So Google’s venture, Calico, phrase it's mission to solving aging and age-related diseases. Ha! A good paraphrasing can oppress the offense taking.

 Personally, I would pick immortality over death any day. I mean a lot of times I just shrug off chores by considering 'Ugh! We all are going to die. What is the point in anything?" Imagine if that is not the case! Like Death is a thing of past ... I will be able to get a lot of things done. Here comes a classic self-aware epiphany. Bah! After all, someday the sun will swallow the earth and if we live only here we will die. Those chores can do themselves ... if they please. Unless,  if we somehow find technology to go to new solar systems... Or the galaxy becomes navigable or we humans become quite survivable in most unlikely environmental conditions like a robot. Wait! What?

Elon Musk in his new venture, Neuralinks, wants to link human crain to robot. Mearging human consiousnes with machine. Google’s Calico and Musk's Neuralinks are hinting to the same direction. Humanity is evolving into electronic Gods.

What do you think about death? Do you think we are heading to a kind of immortality? Do you think immortality is ethical? Let me know in the comment section.

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My Cognitive Dissonance With Clockwise.

I have the strangest habit of imagining walking in a place I visit often or have had visited in past. It is almost like a thought simulation running in the backdrop of my consciousness. If I am talking to you over the phone Or performing a task that doesn't require much attention,  an unconscious section in my brain is wandering in a physical location. Taking turns on random streets randomly walking in a pre-visited destination. It's like an unconscious simulation going on in this weird section of my brain. I have spotted my mind randomly in very specific locations and destination. Ugh! I frankly don't know what it is, but my mind has a kind of obsession with places. I am not even sure if other people do that!

Perhaps that is why I often find myself studying maps of locations, that I have been to, on Google earth. Just to get a clearer picture of neighborhoods so when I unconsciously stroll around in those streets in my imagination I know where exactly I am. Sometimes I like to zoom out to the map of the city or country and imagine/observe the mental simulation from distance. It is all just fun and games, a smooth distraction for my brain in not-so-engaging times until I zoom it out to a far reach. To an extent when my imagination is hovering over the north pole of Earth and I can picture the Earth spinning anti-clockwise.

I personally find it very uncomfortable, as if something is wrong with the spin. So one time, I was in my mind hovering over our lonely little Earth and was absorbed in this eerie feeling of distorted discomfort over the direction of Earth's spin from the north pole. I wanted to get to the bottom of it Why does it bother me that the earth is spinning anti-clockwise from the given position? I introspected and came to a conclusion.

The way I learned to decipher a map or globe is north is alway the top and that in my mind should be the reference point or standardize the point-of-view. Nevertheless,  I perceive the forward direction of time as clockwise from the standard analog clocks. Thus, When I imagine my standard reference position and don't find it in accordance with the positive direction of time my brain lands me in a dissonance. I may be the only one to find my mind roam around, but I can't be the only one to adopt this line of thinking, namely taking north as top and clockwise as forwarding in the direction of time. Perhaps If we were taught the maps upside down as a standard reference or We had the clocks running anticlockwise I may haven't had found myself in this disharmony.

So, Why are maps north up? Ancient maps were mostly drawn to the standard of the East on top because the Sun rises from the East and that represents a start. The paradigm shift of contemporary standard maps can't be pointed out on the calendar. It seems that this model was gradually adopted as standard. More likely it is as per the standers of right-hand thumb rule this seems to co-ordinate with the rest of the representative standards. The rotation of the Earth is counter-clockwise, so if we curl our right hand's fingers in counterclockwise fashion the direction our thumbs will be pointing shall be taken as the top. So it makes sense...

Hence the discrepancy lies in the way clocks run. Why were the clocks designed in a 'clockwise' direction? Clocks could run perfectly in the anticlockwise direction. Heck! we define the spin direction from a man-made object. It is like the clocks are the forerunner of the standard of spinning. I find it really fascinating!

Why do we have clocks running in the clockwise direction? The analog clock models were based on the sundial. Sundial is basically an ancient way of keeping track of the time during the day.  Due to the movement of the earth throughout the day, the sun appears to move from east to west on earth. This apparent moment of Sun changes the position of shadows. The sundials use this property, it consists of a flat plate (A dial) and a gnomon (Part that casts the shadow) As the position of the sun changes the shadow changes. Sundials can be dated back to 3000 years and were independently used in most major civilization.

However, this doesn't resolve the clockwise and anti-clockwise issue I had. As the sundial possess duality depending on which hemisphere you live on. In the northern hemisphere, the direction of the shadow cast by sundial moves in the clockwise fashion and in the southern hemisphere, it moves in the counter clockwise fashion. Thus the sundials run counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere.

The answer lies in the location where the clocks were designed. Our modern day analog clock was designed in China in 725 AD by Yi Xing, north hemispher. The makers just simply replicated the motion of shadow on the sundial. It was the only rational thing to do from the standpoint of knowledge of that era. That direction became clockwise. Isn't it peculiar that if the clocks were first designed in the southern hemisphere our idea of clockwise and anti-clockwise would have been the absolute opposite! Possibly in some parallel universe, the clock on your wall is ticking in our respective counter-clockwise direction.

In fact, there are some clocks made in Arabic and Hebrew notations that actually run counterclockwise. Simply because the scripts in the Arabic and Hebrew are from right to left, unlike most of the scripts. Despite the natives lands of those two languages are in the northern hemisphere, the clocks are made to accommodate the opposite direction of written scripts. 

What is your opinion on the topic if this blog? Do you have any strange quirky habits or some activities in the backdrop of your mind too? Comment down below and let me know.

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Black Hole's Death

In this post, I explain the contribution of Stephen Hawking to the field of science.

The current understanding of the universe implies that the universe had a beginning and so most likely will have an ending. But today is not the day for the life cycle of the universe. Today, I want to write about a magnificent chunk in the universe the Black holes. That, apparently, like to do its own thing. Very introverted part of our space-time. The more we learn about it, the less we know. Black Holes are complex and I understand that you would rather say why should we care? Well, because Homo Sapiens are curious beings and it is a product of our curiosity that we are currently ruling the planet. It is pretty much a basic instinct for humans to understand this world. So I decided to post about how black holes annihilate. Apparently! 

The black hole is a supermassive ex-star. It is so heavy and so tiny that its escape velocity proceeds the velocity of light. and hence nothing can ever escape it not even light. The center of a black hole is considered to be a single dimensionless point where all its mass is concentrated. This center is called Singularity and an imaginary boundary around a black hole beyond which no light can escape is called its Event Horizon. Anything inside the event horizon is basically out of our reach because inside this imaginary area objects are in the clutch of the gravity of black hole. We know nothing about the insides of the black hole.

The black holes are formed from supermassive stars. However, what we are going to explore in this post is the death of black holes. The black holes die by evaporating. I know it seems very unintuitive as nothing can escape from the black holes, not even light! Then how can a black hole evaporate? Here is where Stephen Hawking's work comes into the play. Hawking, in his work, predicted that black hole emits radiations called Hawking Radiations. 

Since black hole sucks in everything falling inside the event horizon. The emission of hawking radiations seems uncanny. What happens at the event horizon of a black hole is something that explains this phenomenon. However, to understand that from the prospect of the current understanding of science we must dip our toes in a bit of Quantum Physics. Yeyyy! 

My main domain is Mechanical Engineering and for that, I don't 'need' to study Quantum Mechanics. The Gravitational Mechanics works just fine for all practical purposes in contemporary stuff. In fact, it kinda works well for almost everyone except the physicists. However, I find myself dipping my toes in the pool of Quantum world every now and then. More than often, I just want to jump in and dive deep in quantum physics because it is just so fucking intriguing one cannot study it and not feel the sense of awe about ... well, basically how nonintuitive the quantum world is from our basic understanding! So, let us begin this is enough fangirling for the day.

The space-time has this constant electromagnetic field all across it. In Fact, there are two fundamental fields in nature: gravitational field and electromagnetic field. Now, The vacuum is a state in the universe where the electromagnetic field is in its lowest energy state. So it is considered empty, as there are no particles, say photons or any matter,  propagating through or present in the field. However, the vacuum that we consider to be empty is not really empty, all the time. In the vacuum of space, there are often many particles popping up into existence. These particles appear in pairs. Each pair consists of a particle and an antiparticle having an equal magnitude of negative and positive mass (Matter and anti-matter, thus matter/mass is not being created.).  They come into existence out of nowhere from the same spot and vanish when they collide with each other. These particles are called Virtual Particle. 

So how do we know these particles exist? We know the presence of virtual particles by the means of Casimir Effect. The recent observation of  Casimir effect can be found here.  Another evidence the existence of virtual particles is Lamb Shift. For more evidence wait until the end of this blog cos that in itself is an implication of the testimony of the existence of Virtual Particles. 

Back to our black hole's event horizon. As these virtual particles get into existence throughout the space-time. They do so at the event horizon as well. Sometimes one of the particles in the pair falls into the black hole and here is when it gets crazy! As the virtual particle falls in the black hole the black hole lose its mass. This loss of mass of a black hole is regarded as its evaporation of black hole. You must be thinking, how can an added particle make the black hole lose mass!

The lost particle leaves its pair right outside the event horizon. The leftover virtual particle then becomes a real particle, in absence of its anti-particle. It gets a mass equivalent to the mass that the black hole loses.  These particles that come into existence at the event horizon of a black hole propagate through the space-time in the form of radiations. From an outside perspective, it appears that the black hole is emitting radiations. These radiations are the Hawking Radiations. Is the matter is being created? Not at all! The physics is not collapsing in this stance. It is only the mass of the black hole being converted into the energy of the radiations. E=mc^2

We haven't yet observed the total annihilation of a black hole, but it is only a matter of time. Moreover, our observation of a real time a black hole is pretty recent via Gravitational lensing (that's a topic for another day). The scientists at CERN lab are working to create a microscopic black hole in the lab to observe it vanish after emitting Hawking's radiations. #WaitForIt

The beauty of hawking's work is that it simply turns the black hole from a massive evil monster to a kind of a recycling center of the universe.  What is your opinion on black holes? Talk nerdy to me in the comment section.

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Alexandria: The Muser's Hub

If you ask me where would I like to go if I could time travel I would instantly reply to Roman or Greek Empire in the peak of their glory. However, on a second thought, I may take my words back and say "Meh! I am good here in 2017. It is a pretty good time to be a woman and commoner."

Recently I was reading Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. And reading such fine ancient play always takes me back to the library of Alexandria. The event in the ancient history, that I reckon to be most detrimental for human civilization, was the burning of The library of Alexandria in  48 BC and its further obliteration in 642 AD.

The Royal library of Alexandria was one of the most notable libraries of the ancient times. It was a part of the think tank based in Alexandria called the Museum of Alexandria. The Museum was founded and patronaged by the Ptolemaic dynasty in the 300 BC.  It was dedicated to Alexander the great by his right-hand man Ptolemy. The museum was the forerunner of our present day research institutes. A university where scholars from distant lands went to further their study in all sorts of subjects. Museum- a place to muse where philosophers and thinkers gathered and did the thinking and exchanged the ideas. Unlike what we now know to be a museum, a place to display ancient artifacts. The current usage of the word museum was first spotted on in the 1600s. In ancient times Museum was a thinking place.  The royal Museum was also referred as Temple of muses that included idols of pagan Gods. I stress the word "Gods", the polytheistic, good old fashioned Gods because it is kind of a reflection to why we don't have this library today. #Cringe 

The city of Alexandria was situated on a harbor with the most glorious lighthouse of past one of the seven wonders of its time.The traders sailing through the Mediterranean often stopped at this Port. The marines who came to the port were often searched for drugs, did I say drugs? No! books, they searched the sailors and passer-by for the BOOKS. Such was the passion of the Ptolemaic dynasty towards collecting scripts. When the Books (scrolls) were found, they were confiscated and the person carrying books was compensated for the text. The books were then sent to the collection to the library of Alexandria. Alexandria was the hub for its vast collection of information pretty much like our internet. If there was any written material Alexandria probably had a copy of it.

No one knows what was the extent of the collection in the library, but many people believe that its destruction probably threw humanity a century behind in its course for the pursuit of knowledge. One of the most revolutionary inventions was the invention of the Steam Engine in the late 1700s. It changed the course of the human race, as they knew it at that time. In the museum of Alexandria in ancient Egypt scholars such as  Archimedes, Vitruvius, Heron ho Alexandreus, Hypatia and Ctesibius (and many others) were enrolled. Many of them were working on harnessing the energy from steam and wind. One such example is Aeolipile a precursor of the steam engine by Heron. Arguably, the purpose of getting machine power to eliminate human labor may not be the motivation of the engineers of Alexandria ... after all slaves were there to do that! It may have taken humanity some time to up its game on human rights, but regardless the work was in its nascent stage and would have been eventually put to application had the library of Alexandria not been destroyed.

The destruction of the library is often attributed to multiple instants and is disputed over by historians, but one thing is certain the library was completely eliminated by 642 AD. It is not known which of these events is responsible for destroying the library to what degree. However, majorly four recorded events are held responsible for it altogether.

The first destruction is on the hand's Roman republic during the siege of Alexandria in 48 BC.  Julia Caesar burned his own ships to distract his enemy and the fire started by Caesar's soldiers went astray and burned down a section of the library.  It was still not completely destroyed as Alexandria was still the scholar's hub during the time of Augustus of Roman Empire.

The second destruction was an attack on the Alexandria by the Aurelian in the 270 AD, during the fighting of this era the area where the library was situated was destroyed some of the content of the library may have been destroyed.

The third destruction was the order of the Pope/ Emperor Theodosius in 415 AD, under his reign Paganism was made illegal in Rome. During this time the empire was rioting. Every temple was shut down or destroyed by mobs. It was during one of those days when Hypatia, a female Mathematician of Alexandria, was murdered by the mob. After her death, the museum of Alexandria along with the temple was sacked the library was rampaged in the riots.

Lastly, the destruction or the annihilation of whatever was left of the scrolls and books is attributed to the Islamic caliphate of second Caliph Omar/Umar in 642 AD under the command of Amr ibn Al-As during the Muslim conquest of Egypt the fate of library was put to the hands of Caliph by Amr the commander of Arab army. He wrote to the caliph and received a reply (and I quote). ”If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them."

Even if we could not technically advance as a civilization in spite of the great library. As a book nerd, I still would have cherished the ancient plays and literature that is lost in the time. How do you think humanity would have been had we still had the library in its ancient form intact? Comment Down below. Let us muse here in this comment section in memory of The Library of Alexandria.

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PS. I understand that the last destruction by the Caliph is often controversial (Most of them are as I mentioned in the post.) I have provided the link to the sources in that section. The mentioned quote is there on the Wikipedia as well. Moreover, I think I must include this Islamic site that infers more or less the same narration. Please click here to reach the site. This link is already included in the given site so I didn't worry to add while writing but in light of providing the source I must include it as well. 

Book Review: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A thought provoking book that presents the possibilities of the directions in which humanity is heading, I must say it is quite convincing. Some bits are pleasant and others are downright scary. Harari takes a dig on a great variety of subjects from artificial intelligence to biology from psychology to politics and so on ...

I really found the part on free-will and Individual really exciting. It is sort of like bringing back my long time undecided stance on Solipsism. I am Not really Solipsist, but I enjoy exploring that philosophical idea. The parts in the book about individual and free-will bring in a new dimension to my pondering on the same.And not to mention the book overall reaffirmed my nihilistic world view. :|

I liked how Harari discredits the power that terrorism claims and calls the terrorist agenda a dead cause. He infers humanity have walked past the God phase. I reckon terrorism is a legit problem, but the terrorist's inability to have an organized armed force, as nations do, makes them not a real threat but a sort of just noise and distraction with relatively lesser calamities. As of course, there will be casualties but Harari is making a point on the scale of humanity as a whole and on that scale, the casualties are less. The second thing that is discredited is Climate Change which currently is a big threat to life on the planet. humanity. I personally think if we assume it to be out of the scenario then the possibilities mentioned are pretty reasonable, but in the light of climate change, we can't go much far unless we deal wit it.

The writing style of this book is colloquial and that keeps one interested to carry on reading. I often get bored of non-fiction when they start taking the textbook tone. Not that there is anything wrong with textbooks, but for leisure reading, I prefer more engaging text. I kinda cruised through this pretty smoothly and can't wait to read Sapiens. This book has a wide range of topics involved thus it offers something for everyone. I think everyone can give it a try.


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