The Passionate Act

[This short essay was written for Desipundit originally.]

Foreplay
Consider a city you know. Bangalore, for instance. The city looks congested and filthy down on the streets but looks remarkably different and even pretty from the 30th floor of a tall building. The city, of course, is still what it is. What changed is our understanding about it. Understanding why something is the way it is; how it got to be that way; and why the hell does it or should it bother us is empowering. To understand is to take the lift to the higher floors. As we move higher and higher, features that were invisible earlier become visible and we move from being the proverbial blind men to those who can actually see the whole elephant. Keeping an open eye for elephants and staying away from the big angry ones are effective ways of staying alive. Touching the elephant's nuts blindly is not.

Squeezed that last ounce of metaphorical wisdom from the paragraph above, haven't we? Let us remind ourselves of what we are really talking about. We are not talking about buildings and heights, or elephants or even nuts. We are talking about an unnatural act - the act of understanding something. The act that makes you come alive and helps you stay that way.

A city can also be understood by wading through the city sewers down below the ground. So far as cities go, this may prove to be a better way to understand them than flying over them. Where we go to understand depends on our circumstances. What matters is that in the end we emerge wiser. Perhaps filthy, but wiser. I hope, not clean and still stupid.

The Passionate Act
To understand is to have passion, then act, and hopefully reach climax in the mind. Without understanding nothing good is ever born. Understanding is the only goal which is also its own means. I blog to understand.

Afterthoughts
I wanted to draw out the idea of understanding a bit more but I think we are done already. Quicker than I thought :-). Let me quickly come to the point before all that dopamine runs out of our brains.

What a society considers important is manifested in its institutions, culture and people. Personally for me, as a child, as a youth, and then as an adult most of these manifestations turned out to be temples, religious celebrations, television programs, movies and movie-star turned politicians. That is rather unfortunate because what is popular can sometimes be very superficial and bogus. It is a loss and squanders precious resources. There is a term for these resources. Cultural capital. Cultural capital is what you've got going for you as societal institutions, public discourse, political past and present, scientific heritage, and more. Cultural capital is fluid but real.

Cultural capital is not created by committees. It is created, modified and mashed-up by people who want their everyday lives to be a bit more fun. The cultural capital that engrosses me, thrills me and keeps me awake at night is science. There is nothing quite like 'Science as a way of life', except maybe sex.

I am fortunate to have found passionate people in India and all over the world through blogging. It is incredibly enriching and I thank you for generating this particular cultural capital through your clicks, blogs, comments and more. Your thoughts and efforts are wonderful.

When we take stock at the end of the day, what matters most is whether we have been having fun. Fun may sound like a trivial goal. But, you must remember, we cannot and will not sustain something that we do not enjoy doing. If we continue doing an unfun thing against our own judgment, it'll most probably end up as a mediocre effort that is only fit to be forgotten. I very much hope that you are having fun doing all that you do, especially understanding. If you aren't, you are wasting your time.