in thoughts...

30th August 2003 - I had a talk with a few friends yesterday... in fact they were talking about religion, choices and all those philosophical stuff when I joined them... One of them was a Buddhist, so we started asking her about karma and the works... My mom's a Buddhist too, so I'm not exactly new to that... Then Q started wondering if the gods knew exactly how many beings there are in the world... I felt that wasn't important... Mathematics and the counting of numbers is, after all, just a human construct… We started asking Q why numbers are so important… He felt that for the supreme being to be able to know the system, for a perfect system to operate and balance out, the supreme being should know exactly how many creatures there are in the system… So we talked about whether numbers were that necessary… We drifted to whether Mathematics as we see and know it is really crucial, for aliens from Mars may call as “Blah” what we term as “one”… So Q said that no matter what we call it, the basic idea is there… One pencil is one pencil, whether you call it “One Pencil” or “Blah Blah Blah”… So I asked him, even if we have this same idea with Martians about numbers, what good will that do us? Q replied that it’ll make exchange fair… That’s when A, our friend doing Economics, blurted out that that was totally economic theory… Still I felt that numbers were just numbers and did not increase our morality or anything like that, and so was beside the point… Yet I could see Q’s point, because if we have a system to govern creatures by “counting” how much karma they accumulated, and to balance life and so on, we need to have a clear and fair system of keeping these numbers in check… I went away to refill my bottle with water as our discussion came to a stalemate…

And that's when part of the meaning of The Matrix Reloaded came to me... I told Q: There is a system. The system works or at least it governs our lives. Whether or not we understand the system is not important, because the system continues regardless of our understanding or the lack of it. If the system fails, it is due to human error. When the system fails, the world comes to an end. When it ends, the Engineer, Architect, God, whoever, corrects or tries to correct something, then runs the system again.

I'm not even sure I subscribe to whatever I said to Q. But it seems that for that moment when I realised what the idea was about, it felt really true... Maybe that's how religion is like... you believe because it seems true...maybe that's why so many people believe in Jesus... Because he's in history... Because we state time according to his birth - B.C and stuff... But somehow I’m not convinced to become a Christian… I’m pretty sure he lived… I won’t be surprised if he died and then resurrected himself… But even if those are facts, it does nothing to increase my wanting to become a Christian… Facts are just facts… The fact is that I’m facing a computer screen as I type this in, but this fact does nothing to me… It stirs up nothing in me…

Yet sometimes I feel like wanting to know for sure, which Gods really exist… which boils down to wanting to know the facts… I recall reading a Calvin & Hobbes comic, where I think Calvin was refusing to eat his dinner, which I presumed contained chicken, because he said to his mom, something to the effect of “What if we died and realised God is a chicken?” That brings to mind the question of, what if we believe in the wrong god? What will happen to us then? So wait… maybe facts do convince people to take up religion…

I think I feel angst towards some religions because of the suggested lack of control by people… If I can’t choose how to live my life, if some God has decided how my destiny is going to be, what’s the point of letting me live out a predestined life? Why make me think that I’m making my own decisions if some God has already decided for me? Sometimes to make myself feel better, I convince myself that this God has be benevolent enough to do a Matrix like thing for all of us… That there are a few choices I can make, and when I choose one of them, it brings me to some more choices I can make… So this God is restricting me a little, but I still have some control… And each of my decision may lead to changes in some of the choices of some other people in my life…And this smart God would have taken that into consideration and formatted all that into the Matrix designed for us… I think I’m a control freak at times…

But I felt very happy after that discussion, though it doesn’t seem to have brought me anywhere… it felt good… as if I was reaching deep into my soul for answers… and for a while I felt that inner enlightenment was possible… that the answers I need are not hidden in a specific place somewhere… But that I just need the chance to be “triggered” by intriguing thoughts, and I may find my answers, perhaps with the help of some people… Or is it just a matter of being convinced by the people involved in the discussion or argument?

“It is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.”
“Lord Goring”, Oscar Wilde in "An Ideal Husband".

ADDED IN NOTE: found the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, but can't post it here, cos picture posting is not supported... darn..so gotta provide the website for this comic strip:

Calvin and Hobbes Cartoon, 15 July 1992