I wish for me..and for you in 2012

i wish for you, in 2012.....

the forgiveness of parents

the humor of a comedian

the laughter of a madman

the vision of an entrepreneur

the intensity of a philosopher

the curiosity of a child

the friendship of a few cherished friends

the love of someone special

the stamina of a marathon runner

the success of a celebrity

love,

Amar

POML Revised

to question. to understand. 


to read. to write. 


to run. 


to groove to music. 


to laugh. to do anything for a laugh.


to love. 


to do all this everyday. 


like there ain't a tomorrow. like there wasn't a yesterday.

thoughts post the end of the 'K' Chapter

dil kuch udas sa hai
kuch dino se
shayad koi apna peeche chhut gaya hai

kuch kuch mana liya hai humne dil ko
... kehke, ke apna hoga to laut ayega.

jo laut te nahi hain
vo apne nahi hote....

to asani se tut jate hain...
dhoke hote hain
sapne nahhi hote

 

------------------------------------------

 

so basically when you don't understand why seemingly educated people go against their own happiness, mostly the reason is this- they don't have the balls to fight for their happiness, so they just capitulate.

 

---------------------------------------------

 

Incinerate the dead yesterdays
Plan for the unborn tomorrows in the womb of life
Today is born
It's here with you
Soon, it will be gone-forever
give it the best you got
make today your best day ever!

I consider it a duty...

'I consider it a duty to be happy. A duty to myself and to everyone I meet. I want 


to be an example of the postulate that it's good to be alive and I am willing to do 


whatever it takes to prove the theory. I promise.' - 




living through the highs and lows is a part of life

smiling through the highs and lows is the art of life.

'mai mannchala' and 'shadyantr vivah'

mannchala mai mannchala 

chala mai jahan mera mann chala

bavra sa mann hai

kabhi kuch chahe 

kabhi kuch aur...

maaan leta hu iski

to khush ho jata hai

phir kuch dinon baad kehta hai

bas ho gya

chal le lete hain mor...

bahut kuch dikhaya isne

bahut kuch sikhaya isne

kabhi pyar to kabhi 

dard ka ehsas bhi karaya isne

sunta to hun mai sabki 

karta hu apne mann ki

kuch dinon ki zindagi hai

jeele mere dost

nach, ga, hans, khel

zarurat pade to ro le

jab rah samaj na aaye 

to bas....apne mann ke sang hole

mai chala mai chala

jahan mera mann chala

mai manchala

----------------------------

shadtantr vivah

na tum hame jaano

na hum tumhe jaane

tumhare pappa ne di thi matrimonial ad

mere pappa ne mujhe sunayi

jab mai gayi thi nahane

gudiya dekho ye ladka zabardast hai

IT company me kaam karta hai

tankhwah 10 lakh

caste kayast hai

mere pappe ne tumhare pappa ko phone ghumaya

aur do family ayin milne

do ghante waste kare tumhari mummy bol

hum log madern hai,

ladka ladki akele baat karlen

ab tum bhi horny hum bhi horny

wait kar kar ke umr ho gyi tees

ab to shaq hone laga hai

ki hamme hai bhi ke nahi

apposite sex to attract karne wali cheez!?

ab shadi nahi karenge to baate karenge log

maro goli logon ko

chalo shadi karke khelenge sambhog sambhog

horny frustrated ladka ladki razi 

to kya karega kaazi

baat ban gayi to theek hai

varna divorce ke baad

keh denge maa baap ganwar the

kar gaye zindagi barbad

ao karle shadyantr vivah

Amar on Money

 2 metaphors to clarify my perspective on money:


1. Money is like health, the more you have, the more you can do with it. but it's not the reason for existence.


2. Money is like sex. If you are having it, you can focus your attention on other things. If you aren't, there is nothing else you think about.

Totd

Good Advertising!




1. 'Health is beautiful' in a chemist shop

2. 'When the belly rules the mind' for a restaurant

Silence

I can stand a million Nos. What I find difficult to stand is people who can't say No.

The cost of fear!

Keenan Sentos was killed on the streets of Bombay recently for standing up to a drunk man who molested a female friend of his. Reuben Fernandes later succumbed to his injuries. They were fighting injustice. They stood up to something that should have been opposed and paid an extremely heavy price. There were many onlookers who looked on when Keenan and Reuben were being assaulted and stabbed but they did nothing because they were fearful for their own lives.

I was in college and must have been around 19 or 20 years of age then .. and was returning home after classes. It was a Haryana Roadways bus and I saw this conductor misbehave with a girl in front of everyone. I so wish she kept quiet and did not argue with the conductor who was an illiterate ruffian. The fact that I have not forgotten that incident is because I felt powerless to have done something about it. I felt sorry for that girl but could do nothing about it because it might put my own safety in jeopardy. 

I live in Gurgaon and many a times during growing up I have seen good people being beaten up by goons who would flash a gang at will and bash up anyone who would even raise a voice. Imagine the powerlessness women feel just because they are physically less powerful than the men who attack, beat, molest and destroy them. 

What can they do against the perpetrators of these crimes? Nothing.

If you happen to be in the crowd that watched Keenan and Reuben getting killed, what would you do? Would you try to stop the attackers?

Lets be fair. Very, very unlikely. The point is that we are helpless to the extent that we cannot do anything about these situations. 

All that we can do is report the incident to the police who may do something about it if they deem the incident of prime time value and significant enough. Like I did when I got assaulted recently by this goon on the road and  I have heard nothing from the cops yet and I do not expect to either. We are at the mercy of these policemen and the political machinery who seem to be human beings with a dead conscience. 

Imagine a city where a woman has been the chief minister for many years (Shiela Dixit) and crime against women are a daily affair. It's because she travels in a tight security cauldron and does not even admit that it exists. 

Big crimes happen because small crimes are ignored.

Rapes happen because a molestation is ignored.
Murders happen because assaults are ignored.
Genocides happen because a few murders in the name of race/religion are ignored.

If we can't do anything, where does that leave us? 

Imagine the fear with which women walk on Delhi roads because they have to accept that they can be attacked anytime. A potent, consistent, perennial fear, always for company.

Imagine the fear of a young boy walking with his sister. Imagine someone getting beaten up for speaking against a goon hitting a poor man.

It's fear which defines what we do. Fear runs the human race. We have to find some way to face our fears. If fear wins, we lose.

Keenan and Reuben paid an extremely high price for being brave. It is the responsibility of the Indian Government, the police and everyone who can do something to ensure that their killers don't walk free because if they do, many of us will never be able to stand up to a hooligan for fear of our lives.

The cost of not facing the fear is a cowardly existence. 

10 minutes of solitude

to walk

or to wonder

to get lost

or just ponder

to do nothing

just a brief interlude

i have always cherished

in the middle of a day

ten minutes of solitude

The fingers that fill the spaces

the transient you
seeks riches
wherever you travel on this land
and you ought to consider yourself
incredibly wealthy
for the fingers
that fill the spaces in your hand

The Mighty Scourge of Arranged Marriage

Disclaimers to the note: 

I may be wrong//Absolutely personal views.

Someone close to me got divorced recently. A lot many people in the extended social circle seem to be getting divorced or separated post a gung-ho USD 60,000-80,000 (every random f**** invited) marriage. Now, India is perceived to be a country where relative to the developed world, the divorce rates are low. They are low because of the great institution of arranged marriage. Continue reading; I will tell you why the divorce rates are low. 

What gives rise to arranged marriages? 

The caste system-where parents match religion, caste, sub caste, sub-sub-sub caste and horoscopes and any other random thing they can latch on to, to justify the absurdity of the decision. The other day I read an article where the writer said that the major problem facing the country is not corruption (with due respect to Mr. Hazare) but it's the caste system! I completely agree. 

Coming back to the subject of arranged marriages. They are a product of a hypocrite and lopsided mind. Imagine! I mean seriously, imagine! 2 people, seemingly educated in the context of urban India decide to get married for whatever reasons of theirs, although that makes for another commentary. Their parents now have the job of finding a partner for them! For heavens' sake, why?! Your parents are not YOU! They don't quite understand who you are irrespective of claims to the contrary. You are the only person who knows who you are. So now, the parents would probably release an ad in the matrimonial column which would perhaps read like this:

Wanted well educated Hindu-khanna-kayast-whatever bride for our handsome son. We are a well settled educated Brahmin family (please excuse me if I got some castes wrong here, I don't give a damn!).  He is a manglik so the girl should also be a manglik. Horoscopes will be matched. Kindly contact socallededucated@mail.com

Now, what this idiot does not understand is that he has already filtered out a great population because of the caste and religion criteria’s. And I think manglik means 'manhus (jinxed).'  Secondly, the point is that this son of his does not have the confidence to find a girl by himself and that's why this route is being taken. 

Let me tell you why arrange marriages work. They work because they are arranged. Don't get it? They work because the entire point is to get married for the heck of getting married. They work because most people are cowards and don't have the guts or the confidence to seek out a partner on their own. They work because people get into marriages to please the society, have children and then stay in marriages because they have children! They work because the point was not to be happy. 

It is a bloody scam! Yes, there are exceptions but exceptions never dispute the law! There are charlatans out there who make up personalities just to get married and screw lives because they feel that once you are married, the bird can't get out anymore! To an extent, they are right. The divorce laws and court proceedings scare people away from seeking divorces considering the emotional and financial investment already made, especially for the women! 

So, what should be done? Seek out love for heavens' sake. You may just get lucky. You may not, but then that does not give you the right to destroy your life by marrying someone you don't even know! It is a different debate if love marriages are more successful and if monogamy is a natural human state. I just hope it is if you have the opportunity of falling in love with the same person again and again (wow!). Seek out someone who complements you. Opposites repulse. Congeniality attracts.

Yeah, well. So, who the hell am I to talk about all this?! I am not married. Yeah, I am not. But then, I don't live in a close world. I know the pain of living with someone you don't love at all. I am quite an idealist which makes me wonder how and why people reconcile such a decision in their minds. 

This is the most important decision of your life. Don't waste your life on a person you don't know, you don't like and you don't love. At least give yourself a shot at finding love. What the heck, don't get married if you don't. This country has produced enough children already for there to be quite a mob wherever you go! WTF! You have got one life to live. Who knows if you will be a pig in your next birth :P

May you find love! 

Amar on happiness!

khush rehna ik ada hai yaaron
kisi kisi ko aati hai
koi bahut kuch pakar bhi udas rehta hai
kahin kisi apahij ki hansi gungunati hai

khush rehna ik ada hai yaron
bas kisi kisi ko aati hai

Why?

We behave the way we do because we are who we are and we are who we are because we 


belong to where we belong to. we don't know why we belong to where we belong to. 

Understanding Life

Life can only be understood backwards. However, it must only be lived forwards.

and then.....I said no

and then I said 'no.'  A 'yes' could have led to a different direction, who knows where! Now, what happens will be a consequence of this choice.

I don't know what will be the consequence of saying no to NJ today. I was pursuing this for about a year and a half and now it happened at a time when I have just taken up a role at Nielsen!!! Of course it would have meant more money and travel for now but I was not sure about the work and the industry!

Again, I was led to this decision. This choice was determined. The circumstances in which this decision has been made were determined.

every damn fucking thing is determined.


“The human mind,” Lincoln wrote, “is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.”

Back to Pivots and Trifles!

Sometime back, I wrote a post about pivots and trifles.

The only 2 pivots are:

1. Work
2. Family and Friends.

Everything else is a trifle.

for happiness!-

EYD F EID

Enjoy your destiny for everything is determined

"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." - Albert Einstein


The point is that everything will turn out to be the way it's meant or determined to turn out. That's how it's been and that is how it will be. So what we need to do is to  accept whatever happens and make every effort to enjoy what almighty hands over to us. The almighty has his own purposes and we will not be given answers as to why things are turning out to be the way they are.


So, do not fear the future. When you look at your past, know that it was meant to be exactly the way it turned out to be. Everything will turn out to be the way it's meant to turn out.


We are here on a sponsored ride, a ride sponsored by the almighty. There will be ups and downs. Make the best of both. Have fun!

stroke of luck!

Life is a stroke of luck
Sometimes it's a punch
Sometimes it's kiss!

and my friend, that's all there is.

Questions worth a lifetime!!!!

http://www.helium.com/knowledge/3568-why-we-make-bad-choices-in-life

why do we make bad choices in life?


http://hubpages.com/hub/What-is-Thought-and-Where-Does-It-come-From

http://www.youaretrulyloved.com/enlightenment/where-do-thoughts-come-from/

What is thought and where does it come from?

everything is a miracle!!!

"Man's mind stretched to a new idea,
never goes back to its original dimensions."

Oliver Wendell Holmes

My mind seems to have gone in directions that it may never come back again to what it used to be. I complete believe in what Einstein said:

"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." - Albert Einstein

completely.  He also said:

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

I now believe that everything is a miracle. everything. like the call I just got from Jimmy :) Things are happening the way they are meant to. 

EVERYTHING IS A MIRACLE. THE FACT THAT SUN SHINES IN THE MORNING. THE FACT THAT MOON GLEAMS AT NIGHT. THE FACT THAT A MAN AND WOMAN CAN MATE AND CREATE A NEW LIFE. THINGS JUST HAPPEN. WE ONLY LIVE IN THE ILLUSION THAT WE ARE CREATING THEM AS IF THOUGH NOTHING IS A MIRACLE WHILE WONDERING IN OUR MINDS 

'HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!!!! ALWAYS SURPRISED.

ENJOY WHAT HAPPENS. IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT'S MEANT TO HAPPEN. DON'T FIGHT DESTINY. ENJOY IT. ENJOY YOUR DESTINY. 

IT'S LIKE WHAT THE GREATEST HUMAN BEING WHO EVER EXISTED ON EARTH HELEN KELLER SAID:

"EVERYTHING HAS IT'S WONDERS-EVEN SILENCE AND DARKNESS'

AMEN!

Nelson Mandela

some inspiring quotes by one of my greatest inspirations: Nelson Mandela

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/367338.Nelson_Mandela

"Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." 

I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death." 


you give me hope, you give strength to hold on. Thank you.

lets take a break!

lets take a break from job search! relax. calm down. quite now. keep talking to consultants

everything is determined. things will only happen when they have to.  let's finish 'why things happen the way they do' first.

The great Einstein

thoughts by Albert Einstein

"Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none."

— Albert Einstein

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."- Albert Einstein

When asked how he came up with the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein said I asked myself childish questions and proceeded to answer them. ~ Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/9810.Albert_Einstein?page=2

I do not believe in Free Will

I choose hereby my opinion and conviction on this subject from the belief of two of the greatest men human civilization has had.


Let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life.... I claim credit for nothing.


Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." - Albert Einstein


Albert Einstein

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness (not perception) of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.


"I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense…. Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,’ has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in part, gives humor its due." 

— Albert Einstein (The World As I See It)

Einstein wrote, "In God's eyes, man cannot be responsible for his actions any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes."





Abraham Lincoln


The Almighty has his own purposes. “The human mind,” Lincoln wrote, “is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.” Our choices thus are predetermined though we may appear to be making them consciously. (the illusion of free will)


Reference Material
http://callmeamar.blogspot.com/2011/06/everything-is-predetermined.html
http://callmeamar.blogspot.com/2011/06/einsteins-credo.html

The illusion of free will is essential to rational decision making. Accepted. But it does not change the fact that free will is an illusion.

                                                                                                                                                            Amar

Albert Einstein

“A spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort.”


Einstein’s belief in something larger than himself produced in him a wondrous mixture of confidence and humility. 


http://einstein.biz/quotes

Einstein's Credo

This is one of the most beautiful, divine, sublime and surreal collection of words I have come across in my life. Not surprisingly, it is the Credo of Albert Einstein:

My Credo

[Part I]
"It is a special blessing to belong among those who can and may devote their best energies to the contemplation and exploration of objective and timeless things. How happy and grateful I am for having been granted this blessing, which bestows upon one a large measure of independence from one's personal fate and from the attitude of one's contemporaries. Yet this independence must not inure us to the awareness of the duties that constantly bind us to the past, present and future of humankind at large.

Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here, involuntarily and uninvited, for a short stay, without knowing the why and the wherefore. In our daily lives we feel only that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own.

I am often troubled by the thought that my life is based to such a large extent on the work of my fellow human beings, and I am aware of my great indebtedness to them.

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.

I have never coveted affluence and luxury and even despise them a good deal. My passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as has my aversion to any obligation and dependence I did not regard as absolutely necessary.

[Part 2]

I have a high regard for the individual and an insuperable distaste for violence and fanaticism. All these motives have made me a passionate pacifist and antimilitarist. I am against any chauvinism, even in the guise of mere patriotism.

Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as does any exaggerated personality cult. I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I know well the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual have always seemed to me the important communal aims of the state.

Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice keeps me from feeling isolated.

The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is."

Jeffrey Archers advice for writers

I always go to my home in Majorca to write, because it’s quiet and there are no distractions there.  I have a writing room that I use which overlooks the sea, and I write in two-hour blocks every day, from 6-8am, 10-12noon, 2-4pm, 6-8pm with a break in between each two hour session to eat or go for a walk.


I would suggest starting with a short story before attempting a novel.  I didn’t write my first book until I was 34.

One life to live!

You've got one life to live, make it count!

EVERYTHING IS DETERMINED! ENJOY THE RIDE :)

There are 2 important questions.
1. What makes us make the choices that we make? Or How do we make our choices?
2. What determines the consequences of our decisions?


how did I make these choices?


consequences of choices
although the debate on free will is still undecided. this one is clearly closed. We don't determine the consequences of our choices. No one does. Things happen randomly and our plans are put to tatters again by forces we don't understand. 


If the forces are controlling the consequences which teach us that we are not in control of our lives, they would logically be controlling our thoughts and desires as well. Else, we can't conclude anything.


Below is some of the finest available matter on the subject available online:

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."

Soren Kierkgaard

http://www.thenaturalrecoveryplan.com/articles/Do-We-Have-Free-Will.html

Everything that has, will, or can exist is already determined - 
So get happy and enjoy the ride!  


everything is destined from the beginning of time- Heisenberg and his apprentice
"You fool! Don't you realize that the lumberjack is himself formed by the same elements as the tree? The tree grows and sprouts green, the lumberjack lumberjacks, but both do it by the same cause-and-effect domino fall. If he cuts down the tree then he was always destined to cut it down! If he changes his mind then he was always destined to change his mind!" - Heisenberg


"But sir!" Squealed Hans from the floor as the leather strap lashed across his shoulders with a sound like a gunshot. "My brain is made of atoms and atoms only react to other atoms and energies present in the world! They cannot be changed! It was destined from the beginning of time that I should talk back to you just now!"

"So be it!" Screeched Heisenberg. "And so it was also destined from the beginning of time that I should thrash you for it!" 




The Illusion of control http://zenhabits.net/control/

Patience is understanding the settled reality that we are not in control.

War and peace by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy's major work, War and Peace, appeared between the years 1865 and 1869. The epic tale depicted the story of five families against the background of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical, others fictional. War and Peace reflected Tolstoy's view that all is predestined, but we cannot live unless we imagine that we have free will.


If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected incidents.- Tolstoy


If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely, that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that man's in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy the possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of humanity. If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will cannot exist, for then man's will is subject to that law.


"In historical events great men - so-called - are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity." (from War and Peace)



Free will-The Indispensable Illusion (I thought I was the first one to coin it!!!)
Laplace

Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free but are just as causally bound as the stars in their motion."

"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." - Albert Einstein


 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants,' 


Schopenhauer


Proponents of free will say that if I decide to go an have dinner is my free will. Malayesh decided to have dinner (free will to have an enjoyable evening?) Not true. That dinner led to his death. If he had known by any way that this could remotely happen, he would be alive today. (So that decision of his was guided by the divine will that he was to die that night) for many others like him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00z5y9z/In_Our_Time_Free_Will/

An essay by John Byl:

Given our best scientific theories, factors beyond our control ultimately produce all of our actions . . . we are therefore not morally responsible for them. 


http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwVariousPereboom.htm
                                                                                                                           Derk Pereboom


Clarence Darrow's closing argument saving 2 teenagers who pleaded guilty of murder


Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood. Mr. Savage, with the immaturity of youth and inexperience, says that if we hang them there will be no more killing. This world has been one long slaughterhouse from the beginning until today, and killing goes on and on and on, and will forever. Why not read something, why not study something, why not think instead of blindly shouting for death?


Nature is strong and she is pitiless. She works in her own mysterious way, and we are her victims. We have not much to do with it ourselves. Nature takes this job in hand, and we play our parts. 


Your Honor, I am almost ashamed to talk about it. I can hardly imagine that we are in the twentieth century. And yet there are men who seriously say that for what Nature has done, for what life has done, for what training has done, you should hang these boys.



There is a large element of chance in life. I know I will die. I don't know when; I don't know how; I don't know where; and I don't want to know. I know it will come. I know that it depends on infinite chances. Did I make myself? And control my fate? I cannot fix my death unless I commit suicide, and I cannot do that because the will to live is too strong; I know it depends on infinite chances.

These boys, neither one of them, could possibly have committed this act excepting by coming together. It was not the act for one; it was the act of two. It was the act of their planning, their conniving, their believing in each other; their thinking themselves supermen. Without it they could not have done it. It would not have happened. Their parents happened to meet, these boys happened to meet; some sort of chemical alchemy operated so that they cared for each other, and poor Bobby Franks's dead body was found in the culvert as a result. Neither of them could have done it alone.

Take the rabbit running through the woods; a fox meets him at a certain fence. If the rabbit had not started when it did, it would not have met the fox and would have lived longer. If the fox had started later or earlier it would not have met the rabbit and its fate would have been different. 

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We are merely puppets in the hands of  the Master Puppeteer-anonymous


http://www.the-highway.com/freewill_Byl.html

Either determinism is true or it's not. If determinism is true, then my choices are ultimately caused by events and conditions outside my control, so I am not their first cause and therefore...I am neither free nor responsible. If determinism is false, then something that happens inside me (something that I call “my choice” or “my decision”) might be the first event in a causal chain leading to a sequence of body movements that I call “my action”. But since this event is not causally determined, whether or not it happens is a matter of chance or luck. Whether or not it happens has nothing to do with me; it is not under my control any more than an involuntary knee jerk is under my control. Therefore, if determinism is false, I am not the first cause or ultimate source of my choices and...I am neither free nor responsible. 

Some of the greatest human beings who ever existed on earth believed in predetermined lives.

SPINOZA JOHN LOCKE VOLTAIRE DAVID HUME THOMAS JEFFERSON ABRAHAM LINCOLN MARK TWAIN
CLARENCE DARROW JOHN STUART MILL BERTRAND RUSSELL ALBERT EINSTEIN


"There is no half-way house between random and correlated behavior. Either the behavior is wholly a matter of chance, in which case the precise behavior within the Heisenberg limits of uncertainty depends on chance and not volition. Or it is not wholly a matter of chance, in which case the Heisenberg limits...are irrelevant." 
(The Philosophy of Physical Science,, MacMillan, 1939, p.182)


http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/standard_argument.html

Whatever happened till here was predetermined. Whatever will happen from here is also predetermined. Everything is predetermined.

Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen do what you may to prevent it. everything is predetermined. The past was predetermined. The future is predetermined.

Ramana Maharshi


"Our freedom, then, consists in knowing that everything that is, must necessarily be and everything that happens must necessarily happen."- Spinoza

From Mark Twain's what's a man...

Y.M. PERSONAL merits? How do you mean?

O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its
own performance?

Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.

O.M. Why not?

Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the
result of the law of construction. It is not a MERIT that it
does the things which it is set to do--it can't HELP doing them.

O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine
that it does so little?

Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the
law of its make permits and compels it to do. There is nothing
PERSONAL about it; it cannot choose. In this process of "working
up to the matter" is it your idea to work up to the proposition
that man and a machine are about the same thing, and that there
is no personal merit in the performance of either?

O.M. Yes--but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense.
What makes the grand difference between the stone engine and the
steel one? Shall we call it training, education? Shall we call
the stone engine a savage and the steel one a civilized man? The
original rock contained the stuff of which the steel one was
built--but along with a lot of sulphur and stone and other
obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old geologic
ages--prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which nothing
within the rock itself had either POWER to remove or any DESIRE
to remove. Will you take note of that phrase?

Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; "Prejudices which
nothing within the rock itself had either power to remove or any
desire to remove." Go on.

O.M. Prejudices must be removed by OUTSIDE INFLUENCES or
not at all. Put that down.

Y.M. Very well; "Must be removed by outside influences or
not at all." Go on.

O.M. The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the
cumbering rock. To make it more exact, the iron's absolute
INDIFFERENCE as to whether the rock be removed or not. Then
comes the OUTSIDE INFLUENCE and grinds the rock to powder and
sets the ore free. The IRON in the ore is still captive. An
OUTSIDE INFLUENCE smelts it free of the clogging ore. The iron
is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further progress.
An OUTSIDE INFLUENCE beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace and
refines it into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now
--its training is complete. And it has reached its limit. By no
possible process can it be educated into GOLD. Will you set that
down?

Y.M. Yes. "Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be
educated into gold."

O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and
leaden mean, and steel men, and so on--and each has the
limitations of his nature, his heredities, his training, and his
environment. You can build engines out of each of these metals,
and they will all perform, but you must not require the weak ones
to do equal work with the strong ones. In each case, to get the
best results, you must free the metal from its obstructing
prejudicial ones by education--smelting, refining, and so forth.

Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?

O.M. Yes. Man the machine--man the impersonal engine.
Whatsoever a man is, is due to his MAKE, and to the INFLUENCES
brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his
associations. He is moved, directed, COMMANDED, by EXTERIOR
influences--SOLELY. He ORIGINATES nothing, not even a thought.

He did not make the choice, it was made FOR him by forces which he could not control. Free Will has always existed in WORDS, but it stops there, I think--stops short of FACT

Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance. 
Democritus 


Live Surprisingly, living in the moment, accepting whatever unfolds, whatever it is. It is the universal will that causes things to happen including thoughts and actions.


 “The human mind,” Lincoln wrote, “is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.”  Our choices thus are predetermined though we may appear to be making them consciously. Ironically, Lincoln cited the specific example of Brutus and Caesar, and said Brutus’s decision to murder Caesar was simply the mechanical result of laws and conditions over which Brutus had no control.  Disbelieving as he did in free will, Lincoln consciously swore never to act out of revenge, deciding he would literally have “malice toward none.”


Even Mary Todd Lincoln acknowledged that her husband had been guided by the conviction that "what is to be will be, and no cares of ours can arrest nor reverse the decree."¹ What this meant in practical terms, as Herndon discovered, was that Lincoln believed that "there was no freedom of the will," that "men had no free choice." Lincoln, according to Herndon, was inclined by his fatalism to soften or excuse what appeared to be the most obvious examples of human guilt or responsibility. He "quoted the case of Brutus and Caesar, arguing that the former was forced by laws and conditions over which he had no control to kill the latter, and vice versa, that the latter was specially created to be disposed of by the former."²⁶

In the face of great tragedy and sorrow, national or private, it is always good to recall in our grief the phrase of Lincoln:  


The Almighty Has His Own Purposes.  


Abraham Lincoln


As Spinoza and Lincoln tried to teach us, when we discard free will, we are discarding hatred, anger, envy, malice, guilt, and anxiety.  So the next, and very practical question is this: Can you run a society without hatred, anger, envy, malice, guilt, and anxiety? Lincoln did. 


Each of us is free to do what we want.  But we are not free to want whatever we want. The divine will causes things to be the way they are.


"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." - Albert Einstein


"The enormous value of the concept of free will in relieving parental shame and guilt is the only and overriding reason, in our opinion, that the lie of  free will is well nigh universally taught to all children. If and when we can convince parents of total determinism, so they are freed from their own shame and guilt, they will no longer need to teach the vicious lie of free will to the world's children. A new world will be born." -- Peter Gill 

The initial configuration of the universe may have been chosen by God, or it may itself have been determined by the laws of science. In either case, it would seem that everything in the universe would then be determined by evolution according to the laws of science, so it is difficult to see how we can be masters of our fate." -- Stephen Hawking 

"You will say that I feel free. This is an illusion, which may be compared to that of the fly in the fable, who, upon the pole of a heavy carriage, applauded himself for directing its course. Man, who thinks himself free, is a fly who imagines he has power to move the universe, while he is himself unknowingly carried along by it." -- Baron d'Hobach  

"Whether or not we have personality disturbances, whether or not we have the ability to overcome deficiencies of early environment, is like the answer to the question whether or not we shall be struck down by a dread disease: "it's all a matter of luck." It is important to keep this in mind, for people almost always forget it, with consequences in human intolerance and unnecessary suffering that are incalculable." -- John Hospers  

"Everything, including that which happens in our brains, depends on these and only on these: A set of fixed, deterministic laws. A purely random set of accidents." -- Marvin Minsky  

"The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will. It seemed to me that all notions of matter were determined by the laws of dynamics and could not therefore be influenced by human wills." -- Bertrand Russell  

"A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills." - Schopenhauer  

"A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies." -- B. F.  Skinner  

"In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity." - Baruch Spinoza  

"Punishment as punishment is not admissible unless the offender has had the free will to select his course." - Clarence Darrow  

"Everything happens through immutable laws, ...everything is necessary... There are,  some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason." - Voltaire 

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More:

Clarence Darrow: "Every one knows that the heavenly bodies move in certain paths in relation to each other with seeming consistency and regularity which we call [physical] law. ... No one attributes freewill or motive to the material world. Is the conduct of man or the other animals any more subject to whim or choice than the action of the planets? ... We know that man's every act is induced by motives that led or urged him here or there; that the sequence of cause and effect runs through the whole universe, and is nowhere more compelling than with man." Quoted in Lecture Notes on Free Will and Determinism by Norman Swartz.

Charles Darwin:  “…one doubts existence of free will [because] every action determined by heredity, constitution, example of others or teaching of others.”   “This view should teach one profound humility, one deserves no credit for anything…nor ought one to blame others.”  From Darwin’s notebooks, quoted in Robert Wright, The Moral Animal, pp. 349-50.

Baron D’Holbach: “The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power. You think yourself free, because you do what you will; but are you free to will, or not to will; to desire, or not to desire? Are not your volitions and desires necessarily excited by objects or qualities totally independent of you?”  From Good Sense Without God.

Albert Einstein:  "If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all.  So would  a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will." From a piece written as a homage to the Indian mystical poet Rabindranath Tagore, quoted here.  

Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free but are just as causally bound as the stars in their motion."

And:  “I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.”  From "My Credo" .

And: "I agree with your remark about loving your enemy as far as actions are concerned. But for me the cognitive basis is the trust in an unrestricted causality. 'I cannot hate him, because he must do what he does.' That means for me more Spinoza than the prophets." From a letter to Michele Besso quoted here.


"I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense…. Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,’ has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in part, gives humor its due." 

And: "Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion."  From his address to the Spinoza Society in 1932.

Thomas Jefferson:  "I should . . . prefer swallowing one incomprehensibility rather than two.  It requires one effort only to admit the single incomprehensibility of matter endowed with thought, and two to believe, first that of an existence called spirit, of which we have neither evidence nor idea, and then secondly how that spirit, which has neither extension nor solidity, can put material organs into motion."  From a letter to John Adams  on 3/14/1820.

Samuel Johnson: “All theory is against free will; all experience is for it.” 

Abraham Lincoln:  “The human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.” from Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity.[1]   “We often argued the question, I taking the opposite view.... I once contended that man was free and could act without a motive.  [Lincoln] smiled at my philosophy, and answered that it was impossible, because the motive was born before the man.... He defied me to act without motive and unselfishly; and when I did the act and told him of it, he analyzed and sifted it to the last grain. After he had concluded, I could not avoid the admission that he had demonstrated the absolute selfishness of the entire act.” From Herndon, "Analysis of the Character of Abraham Lincoln," Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 1 (Dec. 1941): 411; Herndon and Weik, Abraham Lincoln, 2:148, 306,  quoted in Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity by Allen C. Guezlo (a most interesting, well-referenced paper).

Friedrich Nietzsche: "The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Münchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness."  Quoted in “The Buck Stops – Where?”, an interview with philosopher Galen Strawson.

Bertrand Russell: “When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behavior is the result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth, and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination…  When a motorcar fails to start, we do not attribute its annoying behavior to sin, we do not say, you are a wicked motorcar, and you shall not have any more gasoline until you go.”  (Richard Dawkins takes exactly this line at Edge.Org in his case against retribution.)

Arthur Schopenhauer: “You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.”

Baruch Spinoza: “The mind is determined to this or that choice by a cause which is also determined by another cause, and this again by another, and so on adinfinitum. This doctrine teaches us to hate no one, to despise no one, to mock no one, to be angry with no one, and to envy no one.”

Mark Twain: “Where are there are two desires in a man's heart he has no 
choice between the two but must obey the strongest, there being no such thing as free will in the composition of any human being that ever lived." - in Eruption.  See also and especially “What Is Man?” for Twain's completely naturalistic view on human nature. 

Voltaire:  “Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will….The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.” From The Philosophical Dictionary. 


http://www.naturalism.org/celebrities.htm


Darwin in The Descent of Man doesn’t directly address the consequences of his account for free will and personal responsibility. He was more open in his in unpublished notebooks. There he wrote that “the general delusion about free will [is] obvious,” and that one ought to punish criminals “solely to deter others”—not because they did something blameworthy.⁴ “This view should teach one profound humility,” wrote Darwin, “one deserves no credit for anything… nor ought one to blame others.” Darwin denied that such a fatalistic view would harm society because he thought that ordinary people would never be “fully convinced of its truth,” and the enlightened few who did embrace it could be trusted.   


http://www.discovery.org/a/9581
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now that everything is predetermined, how should I live from here? 


 Work as if everything depends on you.
Accept whatever unfolds calmly knowing that nothing does and that everything is predetermined.


Live on the assumption of free will while believing 100% that every thing that happens is preordained/predetermined.


The assumption is free will. The world cannot act otherwise. The truth is determinism.