Tab 3

A friend asked me recently if I still post on my blog. He was surprised that I still keep at it after 6 years but his surprise was perhaps not more than mine. I mean, really, what's there to say which could not be said in 6 years? There are no arguments to be made, absolutely none. Not about religion and not about evolution, neither about politics and nor about sports. All those subjects on which serious people can get together and have solemn important discussions are strictly off-limits for me. Personal finance, international geopolitics, economics, the environment and many other such subjects come in this category. Not only do I find these topics dreary but I know that I understand just enough about all these topics to know that I can't contribute to a discussion in any constructive way. In fact I tend to think that there is really no such thing as a constructive discussion. Nobody, to my knowledge and experience, has ever come out of a discussion with a meaningfully changed viewpoint. Either we agree with other people, in which case there is no need for a discussion, or we disagree with them, in which case there is no point of it. Young people who stand to learn the most from an adult discussion should really be the ones to avoid them like the plague because they would either learn all the wrong things or come out confused.  I completely agree with Wilde's statement that one should avoid learning from those who are older than oneself. And Feynman catches the same spirit in a very tongue in cheek manner when he says that 'you go through life, make your own mistakes, learn from them if you like and that's the end of you'. Calvin actually hits the nail on the head when he says that anything which cannot be explained to me in 10 seconds is not worth thinking about. Why am I saying all this? I don't know. It's a long weekend and I'm a little bored. Also, I feel that there is a conspiracy by those who know more than me (or perhaps they know less than me, I cannot be sure. They may even know exactly as much as I do but I rule that out on probabilistic grounds) to project life as more serious and more noble than I think it is. It's serious business, they say. They get together and discuss important stuff and when I jump in with a funny/sarcastic observation, I'm met with searing stern looks of disapproval. And meanwhile a supermassive black hole in a far away galaxy gobbles up a few more stars. Sometimes I wish there was a real time counter which would show the number of stars gobbled up by supermassive black holes. Then when people would be smugly discussing about their atheistic positions or giving me a hard time because I don't separate my trash in 7 different kinds of recycles or boasting about how their 1 year old has already started walking, I'd be able to direct them to that rapidly changing counter and politely point out that nobody cares.

I see that I have digressed a little but then all the interesting stuff in life is made of digressions. Meanwhile, in the spirit of this post, the title is completely unrelated to the subject matter. It has to do with the fact that at the time of writing, this post was open in the second tab of my browser.