of love and other thoughts..

I wouldn't be overstating it when i say that one of the biggest concerns a gay man learns to grow up with is one of instability of 'love' as a concept and relationships practically. Of course, not being just in the purview of gay mind space, this concept must'ave been belted out of sanity by any number of self help books, written by anyone who has gone through one relationship; and often not. Thus the disclaimer that I don't think i am attempting to be producing original thought. And since I have not been able to read those books, owing to some personal 
prejudices; i can only say that this is jus once chewed, at the best. Anyway, Was basically thinking about why 'love', and relationships often don't last, while we are perfectly capable of having sexual contact with the same partners 
or the same kind of people for long. Well, i think it is basically that the basic needs of sex, security & food (maslow or whatever..), are essentially driven by the older parts of the brain (limbic cortex), and are thus emotion driven. While the ideas of 'love'(which may just be a learned emotional response..like pavlov's dog's salivation. that i find incredibly funny, the frontal cortex salivating for love.) and relationships, may be the colours put together by thoughts which are the babies of our 'newer' frontal cortices of the brain.

Essentially that 'love'(pardon me, its just a convenient word) is a thought driven process, often associated with learned emotional reflexes. And this could explain why love is more specific than the urge to have sex, thanks to the frontal brain. And being the fragile little urn carrying the ashes of sanity, coccooned by thoughts, we are able to keep it under our wraps,either in letting go; or in holding on to it with our dear lives. Well, the point is just that I don't think we can have a spontaneous process of love (unlike the stupid usage 'falling in love'), but one which needs to be steered through all sort of muck and beautiful monsoons. And much as we might be able to discredit the power of thought as 'rationalization' one can't go through with 'love' without thoughts.. words.. communication. of course, in limits.

And of course there are people who go their entire lifetime without much thought
about why they are in a relationship; i jus don't know how they do it, but I suspect
it happens when there is shared & learned emotional reflexes. or nothing..

in an orgy of 'rationalization'.

aswin.

Spa(m)sms..

I had just got around to finishing work today morning when the spate of messages from Airtel started. I get a whole round everyday from astrology, to ring tones, cricket news, and new kannada songs(all of it useless, needless to say). And a regular evening call which i have blocked, thanks to the consistency of the numbers used by the nefarious beings at airtel, who by now, i'm convinced, take great pleasure in doing this. I assume they have inane lives and attempt to decrease the angst of being shouted, yelled at and kicked around by their 'superiors'; by taking it out on some other soul. By and large, i think that's one explanation which holds good for most rude people on the road. Of course, some are habitually and temperamentally rude, but if u think of it that way, one wouldn't be able to sympathise with them, and thus feel more angry and bugged with the whole world, resulting in worse days for yourself. Anyway, since sympathy is the worst i can offer to a human being, thus there is some satisfaction in it for me too.

But things could be a lot worse, if these are the machinations of an evil server on airtel which manages this, which i suspect it is. Well, the same reasoning holds good. One cannot sympathise with a chip, so u try and assume that it is a human brain behind all this. At least at the conceptual level. Anyway, suffice it to say that it is rather frustrating to think that there is no way(which i've found) to unsubscribe and since it is the service provider per se who's the culprit, there seems to be nobody to complain to. Was thinking about the general futility of beliefs that life's fair and that one can get our rights, unless u go to a court. Which in itself is a laughable idea, considering the long waiting lists and the fact that I might not even be having the connection when it comes up for hearing. (Wonder if this sort of thing can be tried at a consumer court). Anyway, even the less cynical children grow up thinking that Justice is a joke in india. That seems to be rather dysfunctional, since it is essentially the most important function of the government. Redistribution of resources anyway seems to be done shoddily. And my consultants wonder why we want to get out of the country. Not that we think it is a lot different else where, but few democracies should be worse than this.

deleting them.. (technically called 'learned helplessness')

Osho

MoKA for the jobless mind.

It all started with another lazy evening (my brain cells have gotten accustomed to 
not doing anything worthwhile after the evening work out; i seriously wonder if its true that one's neocortex is inversely proportional in size to your biceps. Some preliminary observations at the gym seem to suggest it. But then,it maybe that the sample is skewed thanks to a large majority of straight people at the gym). I digress.. ah lazy evening. Was nursing my triceps after work out, with my brain cells slipping into near comatose inactivity and musing on the general futility of natural selection for not having eliminated people who think it appropriate
for a thursday evening psychiatric movie club to have a movie on anterograde amnesia. Much as i like the production idea of Memento, it seems to be the product of a convoluted mind to have inapporpriate editing antics to add to the confusion of a movie with multiple sub-plots and a protagonist (albeit cute)with little short
term memory stores. Eternal sunshine was so much better that way. Anyway more
joblesness would get you to imdb movie search with psychiatric key words and voila, there u have 'the cabinet of dr caligari', 'Kira's reason' and a few hundred
others. Interestingly, there are more search results for 'hypnotic-regression'
(I have no idea what that could be) than 'facial expression'. Maybe a little search program is laughing away at the current movie standards. At some stage I couldn't be but impressed with Imdb for being so savvy as to have multiple categories of each mental disorder classified neatly and the movies sorted 
with it. Turns out that its all the power of MoKA (movie keyword analyzer). But it seems a tad bit too much to have games with it. But of course, like reality TV,
people who crib about it are those who have had time to waste watching it.

hail MoKA.. and the jobless minds

osho.