Father's Dilemma

I felt an instinctive gut-wrench as soon as he started – this was going to end badly. For a few seconds it seemed as though things were going smoothly – then I watched in mute horror as I saw him crash.

Images were flashing by in my mind at light-speed. What had happened between us? Where had those days gone, when he was small and manageable? When I could just look at him and figure out if something was wrong. When coming home didn’t mean avoiding a monster. But then he had grown into a hulking behemoth that I couldn’t begin to fathom. A rebel - he seemed to almost always want to go against instruction. To be fair, it’s not like I wasn’t one of the guilty parties – they say inheritance plays its own role as much as the environment. But had I screwed it up so badly?

The first ripples in the calm started some time back. I had assumed he’d been growing normally and things were fine between us. But he had started hiding information and his behavior had also slowly started changing – growing more abstract and aloof. Warning signs were flashing all over the place but I was in denial and took no notice of them. Then a series of disturbing developments shook my assumption – the link was broken and I had no idea how to repair it.

He had always been kind of strange – you couldn’t categorize him into any one type. One day he’d be playing with bugs and the other he’d cry if you forgot to take him to the library. But however strange his behavior was, I would try to patch things and move on. I guess patches last only so long.

I’m still staring at the wreck in front of me, not knowing what to do. What can one do in this situation? So I just hit F6 and hope my program runs normally this time.

The Highest Form of Art

Life for most of us can be quite mundane; and you could either take comfort in the monotony, or if you’re like me, you can feel very suffocated by the endless routine. Which is where art comes in. It’s what I feel defines us as a civilization. I’m not going to pontificate on the subject, so this post is going to be very short, but hopefully you’ll appreciate its depth.

You’re at your [desk/table/cubicle] staring at a [paper/computer screen/assignment] while keeping a [Facebook/Email] tab open simultaneously. The clock is ticking loudly. The humdrum around you is merging into an incoherent din and you’ve just [refreshed your inbox/stared blankly at your work] for the nth time. Now even the clock is slowing down and each tick is growing louder and slower. You have a million things to do, but you seem oddly trapped.

Version 1:

So you close your eyes. The walls fade away and a soothing calm comes over you. Your body seems light and you’re suddenly gliding – sailing over the apartments and the office blocks, the winding roads and the angry traffic. You’re out of the city and you drift lazily over the tree-tops and the rolling fields as you spot the ocean calmly lining the horizon. The rich blue of the sea is beneath you and you feel you’re being transported into a higher dimension. You’re at the beach taking a stroll with your friends. Dark clouds gather in the distance. A sudden summer storm breaks, and you’re drenched by a sheet of driving rain. It pounds the ocean and you stretch your arms, looking upwards, feeling each drop splatter on your face. Just as quickly as it came, it passes and the ocean is at peace again and so are you. You open your eyes and you’re free within your four walls.

Version 2:

So you click on this and close your eyes.

You open your eyes and you’re free within your four walls.

Life, Time and Kerberos servers

Part 1: Life

28^th September, 2010 was supposed to be like any other normal day. It had begun normally enough as students poured into the sprawling campus of the University of Texas at Austin. There was a full day ahead – lectures to attend, labs to be completed, papers to be written, coffee to be enjoyed along with the many hundreds of small things that clutter the average student’s daily agenda. But for Colton Tooley, the agenda was terrifyingly simple. At 8:12 am, wearing a dark suit and a ski mask, Tooley started firing a loaded AK-47. Within minutes, wailing sirens rent the air and the entire campus was forced into a lockdown as the gunman walked down the streets with his weapon.

Back home, I was preparing to go to campus when my mobile phone buzzed in a message:  “Armed subject last reported at Perry Castaneda Library. Shelter in place, STAY WHERE YOU ARE. If you are off campus, STAY AWAY”. Even as the UTPolice alerted more than 50,000 students, the campus shuttles and city buses started diverting students from the campus perimeter. At 9:53 am, police found Tooley dead on the 6^th floor of the library.

As the hysteria dies down and more witness reports come in, it seems that Tooley could have killed dozens if he wanted to – yet in those moments of sheer desperation, ended up taking his own life. And people are bound to ask why. What could have driven a quiet, studious math major to pick up a gun and end his life? We may never fully understand the story behind the terror, but it made me wonder (trained as I am by 2 close friends, whom we shall call SoA and SoL) what it meant in the first place, to be living.

The dictionary defines life as “an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction”. Very clinical. But would you agree? Am I really “living” if I satisfy those parameters? A car engine takes in petrol, burns it and produces a lot of energy. Infrared sensors can make your life hell if you’re a thief doing Mission Impossible-style stunts. And as for reproduction, would self-generating code be called “alive” (as if it already isn’t a programmer’s nightmare)? What silly examples, you remark! So I’ll make a better argument – would you say that the sulphur-based micro-organisms at the bottom of the ocean “live”? I’m not asking if they’re living organisms...technically yes, they satisfy all the biological requirements, but would you say that they are really any more remarkable than the rock on which they sit?

So let’s take on the big question. When do we transform from being a collection of coexisting organic and inorganic matter, to being a living intelligent organism? When you see a person walk by, if you’re remotely sane (a state I feel far from right now), you wouldn’t probably remark “That’s one hell of a collection of cellulose, keratin and active sodium, potassium, zinc and phosphorus working together as one cohesive unit”! Why - because we aren’t characterized by our flesh and bones. It’s not because I breathe in every second that I feel alive. It’s because I am capable of thought.

As Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am”. And it’s remarkable isn’t it – the way memories can surface, images flash by in the mind’s eye or even strains of music that can stay stuck in your head. And what is a thought? It’s just neurons firing, stupid, says the scientific me. But that’s the amazing thing isn’t it. Elements have evolved and formed a structure that we call our body, but to manipulate the same elemental matter into something as abstract and diverse as thought is hard for me to comprehend. We can take plastic and metal and fashion a computer out of it, we can even write code that makes it do things, but a computer isn’t capable of booting up one fine morning thinking of why it exists.

Which brings me to the other part of this rambling – being aware of one’s mortality. A very controversial subject if there ever was one. Humans are one of the very few species who are aware of their own existence. We may laugh when we see the Youtube video of the puppy yapping away at its reflection, but the fact of the matter is, perhaps that ignorance is bliss. Being aware of our existence implies also being aware of our mortality. For a very long time, we denied the existence of animal suicides. If they aren’t aware of their lives, how can they know to end it? Yet, a few very strange cases have been studied. Forty years ago, animal activist, Richard O'Barry watched a dolphin in the 1960s TV show Flipper, kill itself. It looked him in the eye, sank to the bottom of a steel tank and stopped breathing. And such cases are typically seen in animals capable of intelligent thought depressed beyond repair. Perhaps a tipping point is reached when you’re breathing in and breathing out but you’re really just dead inside. The body remains but the mind has stalled. It’s when thought has dimmed to a darkness where expiration seems a more profitable release than continuing horror. Reality, as we know it, is the interpretation of our surroundings through our five senses. Imagine being in the dark forever – no sound, no light, no surface to touch or feel. No sense of time. The crushing pain of a dead mind and a blank soul.

We will never fully appreciate why Tooley did what he did. The entire machinery that swung into force that day was to protect other lives from being abruptly cut short by another’s actions. Lives that were to be treasured and valued for what they should be – a collection of moments that can be looked back upon and bring up happy memories. But what if there’s a dark void instead? Tooley didn’t die suddenly by gunshot wounds at 9:53am Tuesday; he probably died a painful death long before he took up a gun. 

In the words of William Blake:

“Every night and every morn,

Some to misery are born,

Every morn and every night,

Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night”