Goobi's Soggy Shit

Early this morning, Aayush decided to share his theory on creationism, family history, and how God has a part to play in the tying of a cat to a pillar. His hypothesis:

Praying to God to get your wishes fulfilled was invented because that’s the only way you could get the ordinary unwashed masses to meditate, an activity which has actual scientifically proven benefits today; old Hindu saints preached that the cow was a sacred animal and that keeping one in the house as a pet would get you to heaven (and killing it would reserve you a seat in hell) because they knew how essential milk was for our health and wanted to ensure that we would have a constant supply of it. […]

The forebears of human civilisation realised that they needed to incentivise doing the everyday good deeds as well and make people fear doing anything wrong and that’s why they invented God. For that reason, I believe in God, even though I don’t.

Since Aayush went ahead and shared an anecdote to illustrate his point, I’ve decided to go ahead with one, too. I have a lot of vivid dreams during my REMs. Sometimes it’s an action sequence, sometimes it’s horror, and sometimes I’m about to get lucky with Carmen Electra. I mention ‘about to’, because some assturd will wake me up just as the good stuff is about to begin. As soon consciousness takes over, the dream starts fading, and I don’t want that to happen. I quickly shut my eyes, and try to get back into that dream. I try to dream of Carmen again, about how my hands were about to discover the plastic in her chest, but she’s fading away. Everything is slowly turning to reality. The pillow now feels like a pillow, and the simulated perfume no longer exists. I will never have Carmen.

Now whether you like Carmen Electra or not, is a different matter. I have my days; but mostly, I do. That’s besides the point. The point—hypothesis, as Aayush says— is that once you know, you know. There’s no turning back. You can’t dumb yourself down, because let’s admit is, religion is all about dumbing you down. The problem with Aayush’s convoluted mess of a hypothesis, is he confuses God, with religion. God doesn’t exist. End of story. You know it, I know it he knows it. If that’s the case, you’re an atheist, and I’m an atheist; there’s no argument beyond that. Unless, of course, you do believe in God, in which case you should probably stop reading this blog, rethink your beliefs, or just sit quiet in the corner—grown ups are talking.

Religion is culture, with God thrown in just to fuck with people. Aayush is right on many counts, on how many of the religious practices came into being. Whether they are good practices or bad, that’s a whole new argument. But he confuses religion with God. There’s two things about religion that one can be absolutely sure of is thats (a) it’s man-made, and (b) is heavily evolved. Religion of the cave men is different from the religion of the Rishis a few thousand years ago, to the religion of modern day god worshippers. You can single out a few instances where practices in today’s religions have real world benefits, but collectively it’s a waste of time, and mostly detrimental.

A little about my religious beliefs. I’m a Christian. I was born into a Roman Catholic family, and I went was forced to go to church till the age of 18. I’m essentially a Christian Atheist. But I respect other people’s I celebrate Christmas, enjoy village feasts of Saints (the food part of it at least), Easter, San Joao, all that. I even celebrate Hindu festivals with my neighbours. I do not have any Muslim friends though, sadly. To me, religion is about celebrating culture, about taking days off from your regular work-life, about your relatives and friends coming together, communicating. These are important social interactions for healthy human living, and I enjoy them. I do not however waste my time at sunday church, nor do I sit around chanting the rosary, nor do I write letters to the Pope. I am, in my beliefs, and actions, an atheist.

But atheists are not just non-believers. They’re people who think for themselves. Once you remove God and religious doctrines, you have to make up your own. Every decision is your own, and you are aware of it. An atheist understands—or at least tries to understand—the thresholds of what’s good and fun, and what’s detrimental, causes harm, or is just plain fucking stupid. ‘Make up your mind’ doesn’t mean violent, uncultured, anarchic or stupid. Atheists don’t around slaughtering cows, eating unhealthy foods, or refuse to eat neem leaves, any more so than they would if they were followers of a religion. An atheist understands the reasons behind any religious practice, and practices them because of that understanding.

Thankfully, modern civilisation and things-to-do-other-than-god-stuff is bringing about a change in thinking, with a lot more atheists roaming free on this planet. This is a good thing, for the points illustrated above. Aayush isn’t exactly wrong, but he isn’t right either. First of all, I think he’s got his concepts about Agnosticism wrong. He’s clearly an atheist, so we’re off on a good start. His folly is he wants to blindly follow religion because he assumes it’s good for him; and that’s an irresponsible decision. He quotes neem and meditation, and while those are acceptable religious practices, we’ve seen a lot of them which are detrimental to humanity. Besides, religion is not even required to perform them. As we have seen, you can meditate without praying to a God, you can have neem leaves without a morning sacrifice, and humanely rear cows without considering them to be gods.

But let’s excuse Aayush this once. I have a feeling the Hawas got to him which resulted in his thought-compass going haywire. I mean, on this very same day the idiot actually wanted the iPhone to have an extra button, that would serve functions like creating new tweets. Oh Aayush, get well soon.

[To note: A German Nazi helped me collect my thoughts.]

Every few years, some company starts a [selfish] ad campaign to save the tiger, and everyone follows along. The latest is Aircel, who is busy counting down to the last tiger as if it were New Year’s night. There are some 1400 odd tigers alive they say, and the numbers are rapidly decreasing.

I obviously have a problem with this.

Let me start by saying I’m not against tigers. I think they should be protected, and allowed to regenerate their population. I’m not against killing anything—except bloodsucking mosquitos and maybe our three dogs—so tigers are safe. In fact, I’ve always wanted a Tiger as a pet cat; where even an extremely large house cat would do. But, I have a problem with this largely fake sympathy toward Tigers.

Tigers and other carnivores are ecologically redundant. Their purpose in nature was to make sure the herbivores don’t eat up all of the grass, thereby leaving the earth barren; ending life. Now, humans are very well capable of doing that job—trigger happy Salman is just waiting to shoot down some black buck—so where does the Tiger fit in? The Tiger is only for the saving. The vanishing of the glamorous cat puts us all in extreme guilt for our better lives, so we want to do something about it. Nature doesn’t give a shit about Tigers. Nature doesn’t need tigers. Existence is not depending on whether or not tigers roam this planet. What are we saving them for. Our children? Aside from knowing that there are tigers in the wild, when was the last time you ever saw one? I’m not counting zoos here. And if you did make a Safari trip, how do you feel about yourself, disturbing their lives with your fucking cameras and littering?

Say something against Tigers, and it won’t be a second before someone yells out, “what a fucking self-important self-riteous selfish ass-tard”. Which is what I am. All individuals are selfish. It starts at the individual level, them family, local society, country, and finally, the species. With animals on the other hand it’s much simpler. In many cases it’s a direct jump from individual to species. Sometimes not even species. My point is we’re all selfish, so it’s not wrong to think of our species first.

Let me get the trivial stuff out of the way. We have no reason to kill tigers. Poaching is just plain wrong, and people who own tiger skin should be hanged at the local beat show. But that’s not why Tigers are disappearing—rather, they’re not proliferating. It’s because of drying watering holes, lack of prey, receding forest cover, and things like that which lead to the Tiger crossing paths with a human. Should we do something about it? What can we do about it? Not much. No matter how many speeches and documentaries we watch, we continue to use motor vehicles, we continue to eat chicken and beef, we continue to live in concrete houses, and continue to breed. As long as there’s development, there will be a climb. The climb may show a steady decline in increase, but it’s increasing nonetheless. Selfish species for sure, but evolution taught us that. It’s nature’s mistake really. It made man so powerful and smart, that he has taken over the planet. I’d like to blame this God fellow, but I’ll leave him alone for a change. But then, the age old philosophical question is asked again, “what are we here for?”. We don’t know. Intelligence, collective consciousness, and documented history could be far greater evolutionary achievements on nature’s part, than something as minor as a four legged carnivore.

So what do we do then? Just stand by and watch? No way. Do something. My parents are one of India’s greatest environmentalists (please don’t tell them I said that), and have played a crucial role in saving Goa from destruction. Truth. My brother is one of the most knowledgeable natural scientists I know, and has been educating people about the harmlessness of snakes for several years now (don’t tell that asswipe I said this either). I have reared the most awesome cat in the world. He’s been bred to be soft, sissy, good looking, and a good internet marketeer apparently. Do something for sure, something selfless that will prolong the life of this planet as we know it.

The problem with this “Save the Tiger” bullshit, is that it makes you feel like you’re doing something by not doing anything. As long as you don’t kill any tigers, and maybe have your kid draw some shitty paintings of happy tigers, you’ve done your job. It’s as fake as using a fleshlight to jerk yourself off. The real problems are swept under the rug, because (a), they’re not glamorous enough to sell a story to the public, and (b), it requires major effort and lifestyle changes on part of the public. The Ganges has turned into one filthy flow of sewage, the mountains are being hacked by people who can afford to pay bribes; we’re not worried about frogs killed for their legs, or indigenous primitive trees being hacked to make way for teak and other desirable wood, or that forest mushrooms hardly grow these days. Our priority should be to create a sustainable environment for the natural ecosystem to thrive. We need cleaner sources of energy, better laws and administration at from our government, and we need to understand that the last link of the chain is not nearly as important as the first. Make that happen, and tigers will most certainly take care of themselves.

A rare red and white tiger, spotted in its natural habitat.