Gun Control

We Indians seemed to have inculcated the characteristics of the average Americans, trying to poke our nose in affairs that does not concern us. While most Americans in the guise of respecting privacy does not bother their neighbours or does not seem to be concerned what goes on around them, they sure are meddlesome and intrusive when it comes to world affairs.

These days we seemed to be taking a lot of interest regarding the recent gun control laws or the lack of it in the US.

To purchase a gun, one must make a statement and identify oneself. The application is sent to the police who after taking their own sweet time would decide depending on their whims and fancy, whether the applicant may own a gun on the basis of him being a law abiding person, (in other words whether or not he obeys every law of the Power Elite).

In US, gun ownership is denied to criminals, thieves, offenders, murderers, illegal aliens, users of drugs, dishonourably discharged veterans, anyone under 21, et al. They are seen as prospective or latent elements showing antipathy towards the ‘Establishment’. The ownership of automatic, large caliber, silencer and other varieties of firearms is also absolutely forbidden to one and all except the State.

Even those who qualify to own a gun goes through total scrutiny of their records with the police and Federal agencies snooping around the buyers. In some states, constant harassment by the police on anyone possessing a firearm is never ruled out.

In Miami, the situation can be translated from a chapter from 1984, a dystopian novel, written by George Orwell - where society is oppressed, intimidated and tyrannized by the Party, Big Brother and its totalitarian philosophy.

To apply for owning a gun, the applicant must submit extensive personal information to the police. Maybe very soon we will have a the then Rhodesia {now Zimbabwe} like US, where blacks were sentenced to death for the ‘crime’ of possessing firearms, where anyone carrying a weapon without police approval gets a 6 month prison term or a USD 1000 fine or both and where people were encouraged to squeal on their neighbours for a USD 100 bounty for ‘firearms violation’.


So what is the goal of the power structure? Is it the total abolition of private {read as non ruling class} gun ownership? Is it that the minimum they will settle for is the absolute police control of all firearms as is the case of Soviet Russia?

The mass is made to believe that such laws diminish crime. Does it? Does gun ownership by the general population cause crimes? Isn’t it that if one wants to kill another, the absence of a gun will not deter him to do so? Is anyone safe if there is a dearth of guns in the hands of a private owner? In Japan where civilian guns are banned, is the murder rate with guns lower than that in the US?

Let’s look at the other side. Owning a gun by the vast majority of the public serves to thwart crime. Peaceful individuals who may be armed may give second thoughts to the criminals, who may plan to slaughter or plunder. Would the criminals hesitate when they are sure that their victims are vulnerable and devoid of arms?

In any case, some criminals will always have guns (criminals don’t register their guns, and besides there are always the so called ‘country pistols’ and ‘pipe guns’), thus necessitating potential victims to arm themselves to avert crime. In other words, private guns will ward off crime.

Is the goal of State’s gun control artificial? What could be the real reason for the power elite to leave the people defenseless and at the mercy of the criminals? Are guns not necessary for peaceful individuals to defend or protect themselves from criminals? Does it work on the same principal for a State when they declare that to achieve peace, one must prepare for war? The US government has the largest arsenal in the world. When it comes to the government, they trust themselves to store everything from napalm to H-Bombs, but will not trust their private, peaceful citizens with hand guns. Why does not this trust exist?

The people {non ruling class} want to be free. Is a laissez faire gun ownership feared for the same reason that Hitler was afraid of a gun owning Jewish population or Stalin of a bunch of pistol packing Ukrainians? Or is it that the State is familiar with Mao’s aphorism: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. The Rulers recognize that the only way to retain their control over the people is to monopolize firearms. The rulers realize that people can never exercise their RIGHT TO BE FREE if they have NO MIGHT TO BE FREE! This is how Big Brother achieves his domination over people. Soon there would be no guns in the hands of the mass, leaving the people vulnerable and at the mercy of the criminals.

Mass Civil Disobedience may turn out to be the only way to prevent Big Brother from entirely disarming his slaves.

On hindsight, one should wonder whether that appalling, grotesque, monstrous, atrocious, gruesome, heinous and horrendous crime against that 23 year old woman in a Delhi bus would have occurred, had that lady possessed a small gun in her vanity bag.

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So what if two or more roads diverged in a yellow wood?

During your juvenile years, you probably had the same set of questions in your mind:
If god was so powerful, influential, prevailing, authoritative, potent, then why didn’t he confront real problems? Why didn’t he stop wars? Why didn’t he eradicate hunger in Ethiopia? Why didn’t he cure cancer?

These and a set of whole bagful of questions popped out.

Shredding those infantile years and as one went ahead in life, one couldn’t just buy their reasoning. They had their sets of answers in their bags – which ranged from anything to “God’s Will”.

Let me explain what I meant when I said 'they/their'.

Recently I discovered a new word.

How do you describe a person exhibiting retention of juvenile characteristics even though he is an adult?

He is said to be ‘neotenous’. While this may relate to the physical aspect, I might be tempted to use this against cerebral characteristic. Let us say psychologically neotenous traits in humans could be: inquisitiveness, mischievousness, friendliness, sociality and an intrinsic desire to cooperate.

It I stretch this a little further – I would dare to say that most humans haven’t been able to shred their psychologically neotenous traits.

Otherwise how am I to explain the inability of man to shred their ‘neotenous’ years and go ahead in life, not buying those reasoning about a supernatural?

Anyways - then one day you realize:

It does not matter if two, three or even four roads diverge in a yellow or green wood. It does not matter if you are able to trek all the routes. It does not matter if you take the one less travelled.

“IT DOES NOT MATTER WHICH ROAD YOU TAKE OR HOW YOU TAKE IT”

Because nothing is going to make a difference

No matter what you say or do – all roads lead to the same end.

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Delusion - Insanity - Religion

First let as recall the meaning of delusion.

- A false belief or opinion.

- A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence, especially as a symptom of mental illness, as in schizophrenia.

- Something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated.

- A persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs.

Synonyms:
chimera, conceit, daydream, fantasy, dream,fancy, figment, hallucination, illusion, nonentity, phantasm, pipe dream, unreality, vision

Antonyms:
truth, verity

Other Psychology Terms:
fetish, hypochondria, intelligence, mania, narcissism,neurosis, pathological, psychosis, schadenfreude, subliminal

Now the Question :

Can one be sympathetic to the American writer and philosopher, Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila: "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity, when many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion?

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Look At The Paradox !

Religious believers are often exempted from laws that infringe the code of belief of their religion. By contrast, non-believers claim of exemption on non-religious grounds have a propensity to receive less consideration.

Here is an example. The other day I visited Andhra Bank. There was a notice that except for Sikhs, non are allowed to bring in any weapons including knives no longer that six inches long.

While Sikhs are allowed to carry ceremonial dagger authorized or consented by their religion, a secular citizen who may claim that wearing a dagger was an integral part of his lifestyle would almost certainly not receive the same consideration.

A devout Sikh has an obligation to wear a kirpan. It is too serious and important a thing for establishing and acknowledging the integrity and identity of this religious believer. He cannot relinquish it even though others would see the kirpan as a weapon and a danger to Bank safety.

Now suppose here comes a non Sikh, carrying a family knife which may go back to many generations and which he always carries with him as a symbol. Will he be allowed to carry the knife inside the bank’s premises?

Why is this disparity in treatment a paradox?

Maybe false beliefs are necessary conditions for the sustenance of life?

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The Uselessness Of It All_6

15

One of the most predominant purposes of man’s existence is his search for a deity.

The search for a divine being does not emerge from reasoning, but from the heart. It is the feeling of fear, orphanage, isolation and a hope of help from some kind of higher force that urge us to search for divinity.

Is there a way to prove the existence of god? One sought for god during one’s teenage years. One hoped that one would find him. One had by then developed a habit of praying. One sought but could not find god. One argued within oneself that there must be a cause for one’s existence. One asked within oneself : What is the cause? What is one’s relationship with god? What and where is that force? One got a reply – He is the creator, the originator, the architect, the designer, the builder, the inventor, the preserver

The reply did not satisfy. One felt one was losing something which one needed for one’s life. One became terrified and the prayers became more intense. One sought and begged for his help. But the more one prayed, the more apparent it became that he could not be heard. It was becoming obvious that there was no one to whom to address. That there was no god, one cried out with hopelessness, gloom, anguish and misery: Lord god, have mercy on me, save me, help me, guide me! No one had mercy on me, no one saved me, no one helped me, and no one guided me. One felt one’s life was beginning to end.

This did not happened once, but time and again for a considerable period of time.

Then it ended.

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The Uselessness Of It All_5

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Do people live in ignorance or don’t they understand the absurdity of life? Are there people here on this earth who realizes that life is doomed to failure and they try to make the best use of it by eating, drinking, singing, dancing, sleeping, apprehending fully well that there is no work, no money, no luxury, no knowledge, and no wisdom after death? Is life inadvertent to them?

Does being positive or for that matter being negative obliterates the inevitability of sickness, old age and death which today or tomorrow will engulf and destroy all the pleasures and pains?

Maybe there are these four ways to deal with life:

1. Don’t try to comprehend the senselessness, the ridiculousness and the absurdity of life – Live Life!

2. Don’t think of the future – Live Life!

3. Understand the meaninglessness, vanity, uselessness and stupidity of life -
Leave Life!

4. Understand that life is accidental and a dim joke has been played upon us and
go on living – eating, drinking, singing, dancing, washing, dressing, dining,
talking, writing, learning, sleeping!


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13

Is anything higher than reason? If not - then reason accepts that life is absurd. But it is the reason that that makes us aware of our life. Without reason, life does not exist. So how can reason deny life when it makes us aware of our life?

Let’s try the other way. If there was no life, reason would not exist. Now reason having existed and having accepted the uselessness of life, reasons us to go on living. We have all lived and continue to live. How is that? Why do we all live when it is possible not to live?

Maybe only I and Schopenhauer are wise enough to understand the uselessness of it all!

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14

Maybe people are cleverer and have understood what life is all about. Otherwise why is it that they all live and have never thought of doubting the insensibleness of life? They all lived and still live. Possibly there are things that I do not yet know. Maybe I am stuck with ignorance. Maybe I am indeed an ignorant man. When an ignorant man does not understand something, he will term it as stupid. Maybe I do not understand life. Perhaps this is the reason for thinking that life is stupid and is devoid of meaning

The human mass lived and still lives on as if it had understood the meaning of life. Can man live life without understanding the meaning of Life? I say that life is absurd. Then why don’t I go ahead and end it? Nothing prevents me from denying life. Why do I go about discussing it? If life offends me then why do I go on living? Why don’t I end it?

I live life and claim that I do not understand the meaning of life. I fool about in life, asserting and writing that I do not understand it. I find it dreary and nauseating – but I do not go away! I crib about life but I do not remove myself from this earth.

Mankind has sustained life – billions of them – but they do not doubt the meaning of life. Since time immemorial people have lived and have squabbled about the absurdity of life. Yet, I fully having accepted the meaninglessness of life – continue to thrive on life.

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The Uselessness Of It All_4

11

There are no answers to life’s questions. Try to jump into the vast ocean of knowledge to look for those answers. Chances are that you may not discover anything that you already do not know. It’s like trying to look for your house from a space shuttle. You know that the house is there, but you do not know where. I have stopped looking for answers to questions like “What is the meaning of Life?”, “What will become of my Life?”, “Why does everything exist that exists?”, “Why do I exist?” The answers are simple: There is no meaning of life / Nothing will become of my Life / Everything that exist, exists because it exists / I exist because you exist.

Stupid questions on the origin of the world, the origin of species, the movement of the sun, the chemical components of the stars, the existence of the universe, the life force, the birth, the death, etc have only one answer. The answer is ‘YOU’. You are but a mere transient, suspended, constitution of atom, a structure which you call LIFE that will last for a short time and the next thing you know, you will cease to exist. So will all your stupid questions! Socrates, Camus, Nietzsche, Kant, Chekov, Sartre, Aristotle, Hume, Kafka, Buddha, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, Plato, Schopenhauer, Descartes and others have one time or the other and from time to time, have all asked more or less the same questions. The answers have always been the same. The only difference is that they all give them some new, difficult to pronounce and obscured names.

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The Uselessness Of It All_3

10
I frequently wonder whether I missed out something in the process of living life. Did I get the wrong end of the stick? I summed up that knowledge was important and that it would get me some answers. So I started digging in the world of knowledge and absorbed whatever I could clutch on to. I hounded doggedly, but I found nothing. It was like a quicksand. The more I dug, the more I sank.

Those great men bewildered me and I got myself sore and more confused. All those great men acknowledged the outrageousness, the senselessness, the futility, the absurdity, the pointlessness, the worthlessness, the hollowness, the vainness, the ridiculousness, the preposterousness, the meaninglessness, the futility, the silliness, the emptiness, the purposelessness, the insignificancy, the madness, the uselessness of life.

I dedicated my life to learning. I hunted everywhere. I could not comprehend that life’s question had the same irrefutable answers. I began to ask what will happen to whatever I did, or whatever I am doing now, or will do tomorrow. I began to question the astuteness of hauling myself to go on living, yearning for something, or doing something.

I discovered that things were in duality, like the magnetic poles, one negative and the other positive. I began to understand that neither the positive pole nor the negative pole answered life’s dilemmas. The replies were opposite to each other. Neither of these poles helped. I got no answer. I am beginning to believe that there is no answer



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The Uselessness Of It All_2

6
We humans die, having lived a life not comprehending why we lived or had not lived. We lived, not understanding why we die or have to die.

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7
A good way to asphyxiate all questions pertaining to the meaning of one’s life is to get married. This life deflects and repels the mind and thwarts life to rummage around the universal meaning of life. A married man orbits around the family – the wife, the children, the mother – father – brother - sister in laws and has his attention amplifying and inflating his economic state if affairs


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8
You eat, drink, breathe and sleep. Is this what Life is? What do you crave for in life? If a genie appears and you have this great opportunity to realize you ambitions – would you actually know what to ask for? Would you be able to buy time knowing that there is nothing in front of you except nothingness? Have you ever thought of ending you life? Have you thought of travelling on the road of self destruction? Has it ever occurred to you how inanely and sadistically someone may have played a joke on you by picking you up and placing you here on this earth and abandoning you? The verity of it all is that it has been known to all of us that we all fall sick and in due course die. So why does it take us so long to comprehend this? Will that day ever come in your life when one day you will realize that life is the most idiotic thing to have happened to you when you discover the cruelty of life?


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9
Ages have gone by and still man cannot understand the meaning of life. So now man should stop thinking about it. One should just live life – which is easier said than done.


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The Uselessness Of It All_1

1
“The uselessness of a money making life”
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2
When I was young I remember those lessons being taught in my school. A lot was also taught during my childhood and those days while I was growing up. Now all those teaching and sermons have long been discarded. I have long before stopped believing in any of the things that were taught to me.
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3
Today as I reflect back, I have understood that all those talks about god were sheer creation. I grew and I found out that there was actually no god. Along the way, I picked up Camus, Russel, Hume, Kafka, Chekhov, Kant, Turgenev, Sartre, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Gorky, Voltaire, Puskin and Tolstoy. I realized that I woke up from a coma. I began to reject and isolate myself from religious dogmas.
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4
I began to notice that those who believed in religions and gods thought that only they possessed kindness, ethics, love, honesty, uprightness and other such human uniqueness. They thought that those who did not believe did not have any compassion, sympathy, moral principles, affection or sincerity. Religious beliefs taught during childhood continued to influence adults. People still bend their knees, bow their heads, make signs, chant mantras and talk to god. Only when one comes to realize that these are pointless, they might then stop doing these actions
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5
When I was young, I thought that the world was a mad place. I thought that everyone was mad, except me. Like a true mad man I began growing up. Not much has changed. I still think that the world is a mad place, and like all true lunatics I still think that all men except me are mad

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