The instinct of Stealing and the concept of Virus

A poor farmer in a distant remote village stole a bunch of banana from his neighbor's field, for his starving family. Is starvation and poverty, an excuse for the crime he had committed? Then how about a banker stealing millions of pound, to satisfy his luxurious dreams? Before comparing the crimes committed by them, let's try to analyze the basic instinct of stealing in a human being. Does that seem absurd? If I argue that the very factor by which any being sustain in this world is by mastering the technique of stealing, am I saying nonsense?

  Little Tom had attended his first month of schooling and was reading his study. "Cow gives us milk and hen give us eggs". Well, that is the biggest 'cover up' of one of the longest sins we are committing. It is not the Da Vinci code or the evolution of homo sapiens or the alien's visit;  but the fact that, as humans, we are stealing milk from cows and eggs from the hens. And in another text, Tom again reads "Cow gives us milk and meat". How grateful of a cow, to give us, its own flesh.

In a planet far from milky way, there is a different earth; where the ability to use brain is comparatively more with zombies than with humans. Over there, zombies feed on human babies and drink human milk. Humans are domesticated over there. Would you prefer to call it slavery? Well then, what we are doing over here is the same 'slavery'. The mere factor that we are feeding the animals does not give us the authority to steal their milk, egg or their flesh; unless we accept the act of stealing as the basic instinct of human being. Well, those people who are on a vegetarian diet may feel a sense of injustice in this context. But don't be... The leaves of any plant are not meant for anyone to consume, but for doing the photosynthesis and create energy for the plants. The fruits we consume is a nutrient sack for the seeds to germinate. And we 'steal' these from the plants. So is the animals, around us. Some take them by force, some by techniques called domestication. Will we call a bear who steals the honey from the honey bee, a thief? The honey is collected by the bees working whole day as busy as a bee, so they could sustain the cold seasons. And the bear and humans takes it or steals it. But when the bear takes the form of a banker and honey takes the form of money, it is a deadly crime. I do not have the courage to justify the act of stealing as I am also brought up with the teaching that 'stealing is bad/crime'; but it should have been rephrased as 'stealing from same species is a crime'.

Before you stone me to death, I would like to make a bigger crime. Read on for that...

In 1530, David was ill from a common cold for the first time. He took some local medicine and he was cured, but only to get sick again on the next rainy season. And finally, on 1550, he was dead in his forties, when medicine was not able to control the virus in his body. Let's do a 'live autopsy' on David's body from 1530 to 1550. On 1530, David was ill; that means he was not able to perform his basic activities as the common cold virus was so abundant in his body. He fought back by taking some pills. It killed the virus making it almost extinct and David was healthy again. The virus regrouped and reproduced and on the next rainy season, they were in so abundance and consuming the resources in David's body that he had to again take some pills. This repeated on and on until, on 1550, the body of David was so weak that pills were not able to destroy the virus in his body. And when David died and his body buried or burned, the millions of virus in his body was also killed.

But what if the virus had controlled their reproduction and consumed the resources in David's body in such a manner that he had never fallen ill. Then virus could have lived in his body until David had died from another cause.

Now let's enlarge the scene. If earth can be compared to David's body, what would the virus be? It could be some species in this earth, consuming resources and reproducing itself at such an alarming rate that it is making the earth sick. The earth or the owner of the earth is fighting back, by taking pills in the form of tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones etc., to control the population of the 'virus' in the earth, until on one '1550', it would be helpless.

The Chinese government is 'bad' as they prevent the access of Facebook from China. But some saints in their government had the vision and braveness to adopt the 'One-child policy'. When I overheard my white acquaintance making a racial remark that "Indians and Chinese are there everywhere (It is the race that is mentioned and not the nationals of India or China.)", I was happy that we got company. But if the Chinese government could withhold their braveness, after a couple of generation, my grandchildren should search for another company (I am of Indian race).

To conclude, let me try to combine the two absurd concepts, that I have discussed. Some visionaries have predicted that the next world war would be fought for resources. That happens, when there is an inappropriate  distribution of resources with respect to the needs of 'virus' in one part of the earth to the other. If the earth sustains that 'pill', then comes the case when all the resources are consumed. If there are no more cows and hens, and the only organism around us, is ourself, then the definition of 'Stealing' should again be re-written. We would domesticate our-self for 'MEAT' and 'MILK' until earth shows mercy and end the show. 

The art of messiness

This is my first post(or blog) and as a person who had, as a little analogy with blogs, I hope to follow, no rules at all, if there are any. That is the beauty of messiness. Of course, as a non-native English speaker, who had been injected with three to four languages from the childhood,( one for myself- Malayalam, one for my country- Hindi, one for my career- English, and last for entertainment- Tamil films) I do intend to follow no rules of any particular language.

This post is written from the inspiration from Weinberger's book, "Everything is miscellaneous". It gives an insight into the cleaning behavior hidden in us. That includes the art of classifying everything around us and keeping everything in the exact place, intended for it.

One look into my room and you will find the messiness in me. But I don't like to keep my room dirty. Wait a minute, not keeping things in its exact position, does not mean it is dirty. It is me who decide where things are to be. It is my room. So how dare you classify my room as messy. The normally accepted notion of cleanliness could be your answer. But it is not written anywhere, nor it is constant and varies with person's perspectives. Which is the ideal place to keep my mobile phone in my room? So I totally discard the notion of the publicly accepted notion. The other concept of messiness could be the ease of findability. I don't find any difficulty to find my stuff from my messy room, or I find it equally difficult to find a thing from my messy room and tidy room. So the point is, my room is not tidy or messy. But as all my fellow flatmates, I forget all the above arguments, on one day of every month. The day of room inspection, done by my hostel warden. I clean my room in commonly accepted notion of cleanliness, to avoid the penalty.

From my childhood, I love to clean my room. I keep my thing in an arranged manner following the beauty of symmetry and rules of classification. Yes, I love to do it, but still, the art of messiness is so inbuilt in me that, I do it seldom rarely. Or it could be because, I want to have the change in untidiness to tidiness to be maximum, so I may be unknowingly making my room untidy, deliberately. Whatever may be the reason, from the day I clean my room to the day I clean again, I am consistently making my room messy.

Yes, like me, the art of messiness is hidden in you too and we are following it. You just need to realize it, and appreciate it.It may not be confined to your room alone, it could be on your computer desktop, in your cloth cupboard, plate racks or in your office cubicle. We are born in a messy world, where nothing is in order and nothing is arranged or classified. Consider the sociology of fruits and vegetables. Both the fruit and vegetables are the evolutionary technique developed by trees to attract animals like monkeys, humans, birds, to eat the juicy substance and drop or excrete the seeds hidden in it to a place far from the main tree. But the fact is that nature does not classify fruit from vegetables, it is just the evolution of the trees to attract the desired animal to have their bait. It is we, who are arranging and classifying things around us.

I am not arguing for the invalidity of the notion of arranging or classifying things, but just want to make the point that, we are all born with perfect messiness and keeping my room untidy is accordance with the laws of nature.