Purpose of life

What is life? What is the goal of life? Is it just another natural process like rotation of earth? If it is, why do we consider it different? Life is a struggle. Form of struggle can vary. Creatures in deep oceans struggle to find food. Creatures of arid regions struggle to find food and water. Human life is also a struggle. Struggle to find food, struggle to build/buy home, struggle to get more and more money, struggle to find success and struggle to find happiness. But, planets also struggle to maintain their orbit. So, is life just another natural process?

Life is complex. It has a real part and an imaginary part (x +iy).  Real part represents our existence and abilities. Imaginary part represents our dreams, aspirations and desires.  We feel hungry because of real part. We get food because of real part. But the imaginary part defines what food is. Just the real part is not sufficient for survival. Similarly the imaginary  part is also not sufficient. It helps in defining what food is, it helps us in finding food. But the real part defines how to use food.

Actions taken by living being are also complex. The interaction of life and actions transforms life from one complex to another. This can bring imaginary part to real part. Purpose of life is to choose actions in such a way that can bring imaginary part to real. This essentially means we choose actions which can make our dreams, aspirations and desires a reality. Success defines our ability to tramsform our dreams, aspirations and desires into reality. Success can be defined by ratio of real part and imaginary part. Higher the ratio, greater the success.

The principle of Uniformity

We find chaos everywhere. When a bus arrives at a bus stop, ten people get into the bus pushing each other. Some manage to get in and rest have to wait for another bus. When a local train arrives at the station, many try to get into it and many  others try to get it. By looking at the people at the station, it is impossible to tell  who is going where. We never know what will happen to us in the next moment. If we pick up ten random things around us, they are likely to be made of ten or more different materials.   Chaotic behaviour can be observed in all the objects and events around us.

But, we can still observe uniformity in this chaotic universe. We find chaos in bus stops and railway stations. In-spite of all the chaos, people manage to reach their destination. Each object we see can different, yet all of then are made of same building blocks (electrons and protons). Everyday, the sun rises and sets in an uniform way. The planets move around the sun in an uniform way. If the motion of planets were chaotic, definition of day, year or any time period would have been illogical. In science we learn many formulae which represent uniformity in this chaotic universe. Can the processes of nature be represented by simple formulae? If so, why there is chaos? Is there chaos or uniformity or both have independent existence?

I believe there is uniformity. Chaos lies in our understanding. The goal of human life is to find the uniformity. When we are born, we do not understand anything. Everything we see around us is chaos. As we grow, we learn new things and begin to understand things around us. Generations come and go,  adding their bit to our understanding. Today we can claim that the understanding of our past generations was wrong. Yesterday's knowledge can be today's superstition. But it was an important step towards today's knowledge.  Many scientists spend their whole life in finding the ultimate formula:- A single formula that can encapsulate all the events in the universe. They believe in the uniformity of universe. The principle of uniformity drives all scientific research. Development of mechanics, quantum mechanics, theory of relativity and string theory is based on this principle.

What kind of work should we do?  Should we work to add more chaos to existing chaos or work to find uniformity in chaos? It is upto us to decide.

Truth about truth

What exactly is truth? Dictionary defines it as 'the true or actual state of a matter' . But is it possible to know  'actual state of a matter'? Or truth is dynamic as state of matter? By the time we observe the state of the matter and comprehend it,  the state itself can change.

Let us take an example. Initially the truth was the earth  is flat. The sun, moon, stars and all other heavenly bodies used to revolve around earth. Slowly this truth changed. Earth becomes round. It starts revolving around the sun. The moon starts revolving around the earth. Is it possible the massive bodies like sun, earth and other heavenly bodies to change their paths in thousand years?

Or the truth is bounded by our knowledge? The ancient people observed the sun rising everyday, and reach the conclusion the sun revolves around the earth. They assumed that all heavenly bodies move in a uniform circular motion. Later observations violated this assumption which could not be explained logically. So we switched to 'helio-centric model'.

Then what is knowledge? Dictionary defines it as 'knowing the truth'. If  truth is bounded by our knowledge and knowing the truth is knowledge, then we can never know the truth and we cannot have any knowledge. Plato defines it as 'justified true belief.' . But humans are very talented species. They can justify anything. The khap panchayats in Haryana executed young couples and term it as 'honour killing'.  This is their belief and they can go to any extent to justify it. There are people we believe the can reach heaven or 'Jannat' by killing people. November 26 2008, ten such people started firing randomly at Mumbai killing many. They only can explain their experience in heaven. Should we accept their belief and justification: Should  we term these people as knowledgeable?

Truth is bounded by our knowledge. Our knowledge is bounded by our perception and experience. Perception and experience varies from person to person. So there can be variations of truths. Each one us can claim our version to be correct. Should we keep fighting for our claim to be right and everybody else  is wrong?

The greatness of human race lies in its ability to adapt to new and unfamiliar situations. Have we lost this ability? If not , why would a student scoring 92% marks commit suicide?   Each moment brings new experiences and facts and revealing truth bit by bit. But we are not wiling accept it. We try to impose our version of truth on others. Some start firing indiscriminately and call it 'Jihad' and some others sabotage mosques and churches to establish 'Ram Rajya'. Leo tolstoy rightly said 'Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.' We forget that role of religion is not to threaten and enforce but to guide and enlighten.

Truth is something that we can never know completely. It is dynamic. It reveals itself each moment that comes. We just need to keep our mind open to know it as it comes and adapt to what it reveals.