Great people and not-so-great people

All of us meet and talk to people all the time. Any such meeting may last a few seconds (e.g. passing someone by in a corridor and just saying hello) or much longer (e.g. hanging out with friends). However, most, if not all, meetings leave me with some kind of an impression - either positive or negative. Being a person who ends up spending a lot of time random things like this, I thought I would try to categorize the people I meet in two extreme categories. Of course, I do not think that only one meeting is sufficient always to categorize someone in either of these two buckets. Also, I must add that being extreme categories as they are, there will be many people who I will not be able to put in either category. So these categories are mutually exclusive but not collectively exhaustive. In addition to this, it might be useful to keep people in your professional circles out of this because their actions are prone to a lot of other things, such as, conflicts of interest, workplace politics, etc.

Great people and not-so-great people

1. Have a positive outlook towards life and society. They are more likely to focus on things for improvement rather than despairing about the sorry state of affairs or things wrong with the world.
2. Will always play down their achievements and take your achievements in a positive and encouraging light. NSGP will always try to make their (usually small) achievements look great, while ignoring or playing down your achievements.
3. Talk to you at your level vs. NSG will talk down to you from their "supposedly" elevated pedestal.
4. Will always encourage you to achieve more. NSGP will always discourage you simply because they feel insecure about their own position.
5. GP will talk about your great qualities and achievements. NSGP cannot stop talking about themselves (will constantly want to show how great they are).

Windows Live Services -- I'm not impressed!

Since writing my last post on Windows Live I have had a chance to run the downloaded applications on my laptop. Unfortunately, I'm not impressed. First, it installed programs that I did not want -- Windows Desktop search. This program alone slowed my computer tremendously. So it had to go.

Even though I do not have friends who use Windows Messenger, I gave this program a try because it works with Yahoo! Messenger as well. Again, this program is very heavy to run. It had to go!

Now, about Windows Live Mail. I liked the overall look and feel. But, application slows my computer down to snail's pace making it impossible to work with any other program running. It is much slower than Thunderbird 1.5 and even slower than Outlook. Of course, it does not even come close to Gmail's browser interface which is at least 20 times faster than this program. My decision, therefore, is to not use this program anymore and just stick with my good ol' Firefox browser and Gmail.

Another very interesting quote

“The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.”

- James Russell Lowell

Well, James Russell here succinctly put into words what I had taken a whole blog post to discuss in Hurdle to Free Argumentation. Many people don't like arguments only because they're afraid of changing their opinion at the end of it. I hope they change their opinion now! :)

Windows Live Services -- I wish they were alive!!

I was happy today because I was able to get a new MSN.com email address that I wished. Now, the only other thing I am looking for is that Live.com address as well, which unfortunately, some people have already gotten hold of using a script that has since been disabled by Microsoft. Anyways, coming back to the point. I am always interested in what is happening on the web - esp. relating to Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. Like Yahoo! and Google, Microsoft too has been working on a set of web-based applications combined accessible through a single login. They are making a big deal out of it and without doubt introducing many new changes. Given this customer-friendly approach (which unfortunately seemed missing earlier), I decided to check out all that Microsoft was offering.

The Microsoft mail blog did entice my interest. Apart from the usual yada yada, I was happy to see downloadable desktop applications -- mail being the most interesting -- which allows for downloading all your Windows Live mail to your computer and essentially offers Outlook Express like functionality with new and improved modifications. So, I decided to download this from http://get.live.com/betas and in my excitement also check on the other software available for download, for example, the Live Writer Beta that allows composing for your blogs. I downloaded this around 10:30pm and started to install all these programs right away. It is 1:11am now and I only see the Windows Messenger installed. The rest of the programs are just downloaded and are yet to be installed! And this has disappointed me! I was wishing cool new applications from Microsoft, at least this time, that would be light and will install in a flash. Google certainly has spoiled us on that.

Now, I have to get back to sleep. I am leaving my laptop running and am hoping to see all the applications installed by morning. I do want to give the desktop applications a try before writing MS off-- at least for the time being!

हिन्दीं मॆं मेरा पहला ब्लौग

मुझे यह जानकर बहुत ख़ुशी हुई कि गूगल कि वजह से मैं आज हिंदी मैं एक ब्लौग पोस्टिंग लिख रहा हूँ। बचपन से मुझे हिंदी मॆं लिखना पसंद है लेकिन संगणकों (कंप्यूटर) के साथ हिंदी मॆं लिखना पहले इतना आसान नहीं था। खैर और समय खराब ना करते हुए या तो मुझे यह सोचना पड़ेगा कि मॆं आगे क्या लिखूं या फिर मुझे अभी लिखना बंद करना पड़ेगा। मुझे लग रहा है दूसरा ओप्शन (हिंदी शब्द नही मिल रहा) ही लेना पड़ेगा।

The Blind Watchmaker

In one of my earlier posts, I had expressed confusion over the fact whether Darwin's theory could explain evolution without any reference to an intelligent force that lends Nature a direction in which to evolve. Given the extreme complexity of biological species, I had argued, it seemed very unlikely that there was no driving force behind their evolution. What would explain the fact that species over generations evolved in order to adapt to their environments. They became more and more articulate in living and making their ilk survive and reproduce.

The instinct of survival can be easily appreciated in the case of humans and other large animals -- all of them are driven by emotions and feelings and want to protect their families from the rest of the world. But, I have wondered many times, what reason or instinct drives reproduction in smaller organisms like viruses. They do not feel anything, do not have brains, do not have emotions nor insecurities that are attributable to larger animals. What, then, prompts them to reproduce, to evolve? Why has Nature programmed them as such? Does it have a purpose? Darwin says it does not.

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins is a book that promises to answer all these questions convincingly. I want to be convinced, but am yet to be convinced. Interestingly, Dawkins has stated that anyone before Darwin's theory would either have believed the existence of God as creator of all beings or would have resigned with the inexplicable situation -- like the one I have described here and earlier. I am happy that at least I have reached this confusion -- if some others have faced similar conundrums, what I am not seeing is not very obvious. Hopefully, a reading of the book will convince me of the completeness of Darwin's theory. As I said, I want to be convinced, but so far I have not comprehended what Darwin came up with.

Hurdle to Free Argumentation

Argumentation sounds like a very negative word. I don't know how many times I would have heard the phrases "don't argue with me", "let's not argue on this", "you are very argumentative" and almost always (I certainly do not remember even one case to the contrary but I don't claim to know everything either!) these phrases are said to give out negative meanings. So just as I started to write this post and titled it "Hurdle to Free Arugmentation", I wanted to make sure whether the dictionaries out there agree with me or argumentation has in fact a definitive negative import, while I assumed it to be a positive word suffering with unwarranted notoriety.

Here is what I found from the two sources I normally refer to on the Internet:

www.m-w.com defines argumentation as:

1. the act or process of forming reasons and of drawing conclusions and applying them to a case in discussion
2. DEBATE, DISCUSSION
   

www.dictonary.com defines it as:

1. the process of developing or presenting an argument; reasoning.
2. discussion; debate; disputation: The lengthy argumentation tired many listeners.
3. a discussion dealing with a controversial point.
4. the setting forth of reasons together with the conclusion drawn from them.
5. the premises and conclusion so set forth.
6. argument (def. 5).
   

As anyone knowing basic english could see, the above definitions do not seem to give the word any negative tone even though dictionary.com does give an example with a slight negative tinge.
And the reason why I am discussing this simple word so much is precisely the same - people see argumentation as something negative. Instead of seeing argumentation as a "process of forming reasons and of drawing conclusions and applying them to a case in discussion", they see it as something that might lead them to change their stance. And this is what people do not want to do. Most people tend to know what they know and do not want to know something that changes what they "know" (if you know what I mean!).

Changing their views on something or rethinking what they know brings people out of their "comfort zone" (MBA-speak, but it does seem to fit here) and this is something which they do not want to do without resistance. And when prompted to do so, you again get to hear those fabled phrases I mentioned above or a careful distortion of their stance making it difficult for the argument to go ahead.

Well, I know I have rattled a lot - or beaten around the bush - whatever you prefer to call it but the main point I want to make is that arguing is not bad, it is good. So feel free to argue and if you do, do it with an open mind. That is, do not be afraid to find out you changed your stance. In fact, I would rate an argument to be great if I went into it with some stance and came out with a totally different one. Just reading a related post that I wrote sometime earlier, "Laws of Argumentation", I find that I summarized this thought in the very first "law". Seems like I have a habit of repeating myself or I have run out of things to say. So, I will just finish with the following piece of dialogue:

"Do you believe in the existence of UFOs?" Pat came the reply: "I believe in the existence of extra-terrerstrial intelligent life". End-of-discussion, or rather ... argumentation!

WTF - Blogspot is still banned!!!

Even after a lot of noise from all over India, I am not able to access my own blog. Why? Because I happen to use Internet services provided by Government-owned MTNL. I wish someone told MTNL that the issue has been resolved and the offensive blogs have been removed and that they should allow their customers to access the other blogs.

Anyway, no matter what MTNL or the Government might think, the fact that Internet cannot be censored is a reality.

There are two ways, that I know of, of accessing blogs:
www.pkblogs.com/blog-name e.g. www.pkblogs.com/quotemeonthis (Thanks to Anoop for this)
www.hidemyass.com - allows access to all websites (Thanks to Charu for this).

I just hope that MTNL also wakes up and opens access to blogs in the mean time.

Darwin's Theory - Does it work without God? (Part 2)

This a comment I received from Paramanand (Pandy) on my posting Darwin's Theory - Does it work without God?:

My take on Darwinism is of course on the side of Darwin. And I find something confusing what you write here. You seem to think that Natural selection is actually some hidden force which actually selects life forms.

However this is not the case. If you have two organisms, then they are not alike in all respects and definitely in some circumstances one will be better at survival than other and it will be selected. There is no force as such as work (or the hand of God).

To take an analogy, you have a sieve and some particles of various sizes. if you throw them all in sieve some will be filtered out and some will pass through. Now the sieve here is the natural environment which includes other organisms like predators, and members of species competing for mate. And in real world the sieve is highly dynamic. So a property which might have been good for survival once in past might be useless in future.

So the selection itself is undirected. But the random mutations which add to survival are preserved and accumulate over the millions and billions of years.

It is this marvellous process of natural selection which integrates (remember calculus) the small luck at each stage and generates blogger.com in 21st century from lifeless matters billions of years ago. What a transition!! Almost unimaginable by the proponents of Intelligent Design.

You can read the works of Richard Dawkins to get further enlightenment on this subject.

Pandy has made some good points but at the same time, I feel, I can write more on what I meant in light of his comments.

The sieve example does model Nature to the extent that the fit survive in Nature, as the smaller stones pass through the sieve. But do the stones that have passed through the sieve carry any memory or information that they passed through the sieve because they had such and such properties? If so, how? In the same manner, the fitter might survive, very well. But how does one explain the fact that the survivors pass on the genetic code (or the information of what made them survive) to the next generation? Nature could have kept on experimenting like this without ever evolving into more complex life forms. Some forms of amoeba and algae could have survived one time and some other forms at other times. There has to be some inherent intelligence that gives a sense of direction to evolution and that prefers survival more than extinction. After all, Nature would not be affected if all life ceased to exist.

Let me take an example. Consider a moulding machine that is used to give a particular shape to molten glass. Each piece of glass that is moulded is of the same shape. Then each piece is pushed on to a treadmill one after the other at the end of which they are collected by a person and packed into boxes. Consider a situation in which the moulding machine has been programmed in such a manner that the glass pieces it makes are very fragile. So fragile that they break when one glass piece touches the other one on the treadmill. If we compare it to the sieve example, the moulding machine is working in the manner it is supposed to work - giving the shape as programmed. However, the glasses are not strong enough and break when they come into contact with each other on the treadmill. Now, in this case, the moulding machine is in no position to change the settings on its own so that the glasses coming out are thicker/stronger and do not break when they come into contact with each other on the treadmill. So, the glasses it produces will continue to break while the machine will never stop making the same glasses. This is something that does not happen. Why? Because there is no transfer of information from treadmill to the machine that the glasses it is producing are too fragile and it needs to change the way it produces them.

Coming back to evolution, if I try to ask the question why the "beneficial" random mutations are preserved by Nature when it does not have to (that is, it is not bound by the laws of physics to) create self-sustaining life, I do not find a ready answer.

Not only has Nature evolved, but it has evolved so much as to produce intelligent beings!! This is something amazing and again not guaranteed by Darwin's theory.

What I tried to say in was that if the existence of God (an invisible intelligent force, if God seems to be too controversial) is not assumed, Darwin's theory seems to leave an unexplained gap. Now, this does not prove that God is enabling evolution but it does mean that there might be something which Darwin and scientific theory has left unexamined.

Chicken Soup for the Soul

Chicken Soup for the Soul - the first thing that came to my mind as I cursorily glanced over the book's title was - it must be something to do with cooking recipes. But, wait, the title says something about the soul... so there must be a spiritual undertone to the book. On reading the book, I found that it contained short stories about normal people going about in their lives. Each story had someone helping the other person showing kindness of the kind that is isn't very common these days. (Not that the people earlier were any kinder!)

Each story about hope and kindness was meant to be some kind of a soup for the soul. Just as a chicken soup makes your body feel good, these stories were meant to make your soul feel better. This was a well-intentioned comparison but it irked me a little. What about the chicken that was killed only to be put into the soup? Didn't that chicken also have a soul when it had life? What about that? Or is a chicken soul so low in the hierarchy of things that it can be sacrificed only to provide some moments of pleasure and a little nourishment to the human body?

Please don't think that I am some kind of a propagator of vegetarianism or one of the founding members of PETA. I am neither. In fact, I enjoy eating chicken (and without feeling guilty, if I might add!). Then, why, you might think, am I making such a big deal of the issue? Chicken Soup for the Soul makes me think about the larger issue of how human society divides things into moral and immoral, ethical and unethical. Most people in the West are non-vegetarian and chicken forms one of the items of daily consumption. So, in the West, there is nothing wrong per se with killing a chicken to eat it. It was always meant to be this way. And in that sense the book conveys its meaning pretty well. However, in India, there are many vegetarians. Most of these people do not consume meat because it comes from killing an animal (that has a life and a soul) and is therefore considered a sin. Now, try explaining to any such vegetarian in India that Chicken Soup for the Soul is a book that is meant to make you feel good by teaching good morals and you will get weird looks. The title would be so contradictory. Something like - Adolf Hitler's Essays on Benefits of Non-violence!

So the dichotomy is clear. While most people in the West easily understand the meaning the book's title delivers, the same is not so obvious to a large number of Indians who are vegetarian. In general, in India, I do not think such a title would strike a direct chord with the people. The point is that there is a difference in the way different people consider what is ethical and unethical - even when living in the same age. Now, let me make things dirtier. Morals and ethics, to most people, are ways of walking the path that God has told them to walk on. It is the right way of doing things. Most people in the West and in India believe in some God - I can't cite a source right away but I read somewhere that a survey concluded so. Also, in most religions, not doing something that God preaches brings you one step closer to hell. This means while Indian vegetarians do not eat chicken so as not to disobey their ethics (and their God), many in the West do so regularly without ever feeling so -- implying that their ethics do not consider it wrong. Now, how can one God consider something wrong (punishable by hell) while the other choose to remain neutral, if not positive?

I guess there is something wrong somewhere. Either morals are not given to us by God or most people in the world are deliberately committing sin each day of their lives by consuming meat! If the latter is not the case it means morals are man made. And they might have been conceived by "wise" people who have already thought of the consequences the society would have to face in the absence of these morals.

Darwin's Theory - Does it work without God?

Before going through this post, you might want to go through my earlier related post How God Makes Lives Easier...

Charles Darwin seems to be the ideal victim of all religious philosophers' ire for proposing the Theory of Evolution. Such people believe that, by proposing the theory, Darwin went against the premise that God created the Universe, the Earth, all life on Earth and so on. Before taking sides with Darwin or God (or more important to find whether they actually form a part of opposite teams!), let us see what the theory says:

Darwin's Theory of Evolution - The Premise
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor: the birds and the bananas, the fishes and the flowers -- all related. Darwin's general theory presumes the development of life from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic (undirected) "descent with modification". That is, complex creatures evolve from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time. In a nutshell, as random genetic mutations occur within an organism's genetic code, the beneficial mutations are preserved because they aid survival -- a process known as "natural selection." These beneficial mutations are passed on to the next generation. Over time, beneficial mutations accumulate and the result is an entirely different organism (not just a variation of the original, but an entirely different creature)
Source: http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/

Notice the use of words "beneficial" and "preserved". The first question that comes to mind is who decides what is beneficial for the organism's genetic code and what is not? Who "preserves"? The process is conveniently called "natural selection". Now, what is nature? Does nature have a will? Is nature intelligent? After all, if, as Darwin proposes, mutations occur randomly AND nature did not have a will (or intelligence) sufficient to decide whether a particular kind of genetic code is good enough to be passed on to the next generation, we could find in nature a large number of organisms with different genetic codes - both beneficial and non-beneficial and that too in varying degrees. However, that, clearly, does not happen. Nature controls the number of bad or non-beneficial species by eliminating them - by blocking that genetic code from passing on to next generations of the same species. This means, there is a force that works behind the scenes to increase chances of survival of a species and helps life to evolve!!! This force might be something that is commonly called God or Nature. So, Darwin's theory may need the presence of God to work as it does.

This conclusion is perplexing to me. It really makes me think if Darwin actually did presuppose (even though unknowingly - I do not know of his actual stance on the existence of God/Nature) the existence of an intelligent force in order for life to survive and evolve on earth.

This further prompts a look at the theory of Intelligent Design that proposes: "while evidence pointing to the nature of an "intelligent cause or agent" may not be directly observable, its effects on nature can be detected."

Even though the theory of Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory because it is not based on experiments, we ought to keep our minds open to the idea that the currently accepted scientific theories of evolution might not be sufficient to explain the evolution of life on earth.

How God Makes Lives Easier...

The Blissful lives of God's own children
To someone who believes in God, natural phenomena - the concept of life, death, evolution, natural disasters, disease, and so on - are very easy to explain. There is a God who is omnipotent and omnipresent. He* has a will that determines the destiny of each individual. You keep God pleased (in whatever manner your religion preaches -- a contradiction considering God imposes his will, but who cares?) and God keeps you pleased. Everything in Nature is creation of God - disease, earthquakes, other natural disasters when He is unhappy (Nature's wrath) and the beautiful weather, meadows, warm weather, sunlight when He is happy. God protects you if you're good. God punishes you for sin (refer your respective religions for specific ways in which you can commit sin. If you're too lazy to do that, just do whatever you want to do. You're sure to commit one sin or the other in the book irrespective of your religion). So, life is in this manner so simple and well defined for followers of God - God's own children.

Enter Muddled Non-believers
Most (not all) of these guys are mathematicians and physicists - who've spent their lives trying to understand how Nature manifests itself (without assuming God created it one monday morning). They find it difficult to explain how the world (and the universe) has come to be what it is today. Astrophysicists delve into the beginnings of the universe at time of the Big Bang to present time. Geophysicists study rocks, tectonic movements, etc. to explain earthquakes, mountain formations, etc. And so on and so forth.... Though lots of things are still unexplained in these fields, lots of things are explained quite well using the tools available to these guys (calculus, quantum physics, relativity, et al). Most of the natural phenomena seem like they're just following the forces of Nature. Let me take an example to put this in perspective. The earth has an atmosphere that came into existence when these gases were released by rocks that were beginning to cool. The oceans were formed in a similar manner when water was released. The temperature ensured some portion remained as water, other as ice and rest as water vapor. The motions of the molten lava moves landmasses and results in mountains, gorges, etc. etc. So, a lot of things do seem to be explicable.... If asked, anyone from this team would explain the present by a series of events that happened one after the other. But there is something that science has not been able to explain so far...

*A note to feminists, or anybody else annoyed by this pronoun: I don't know whether God is a He or a She or a combination but I'm just using this pronoun as it is the most commonly used. So, just following convention here!

Great quote

"Nothing comes out of nothing" (Ex nihilo nihil fit - René Descartes)

-- one of my all time favourite quotes.

Laws of Argumentation

I must confess I like getting into arguments. Not of the violent, virulent kind. Just pointless (or sometimes with a point) debates that keep both sides entertained during the time they last. If it provokes further thoughts and leads to further arguments, even better. Thankfully, it is surprisingly easy to start one. Whenever I'm in the mood (for an argument that is), I just have to throw a harmless stray comment on anything and there would be someone in the audience ready to take up arms against my "stand".

I generally prefer that useful arguments should lead to a conclusion - a set of ideas agreed upon by both sides and possibly another set on which they have agreed to disagree (Ideally this set should be null if the brainstorming has been sufficient and egos are not involved).

1. It is not jihad. So take it easy and do not involve your egos if you want to have fun!
2. An argument is valid if it does not contradict what you have agreed upon earlier. OR. If the new argument contradicts a previous stance, you choose to forgo the earlier argument in light of new knowledge.
3. Disagreement without valid reason is not allowed. If you have an opinion, you have a reason. No opinion without reason.
   

I believe these rules should almost always result in arguments that end with some common ground. Of course, if you don't agree with the rules, we can sit down for a lively argument :D

Agnostic or Atheist

This Friday evening while waiting for Raju to finish his work, I got into small talk with Indraneel who was the only other person in office still working. After the initial rattle, the conversation changed as follows:

Me: Indraneel, do you believe in God? (I like asking this question to people. This almost always results in an interesting conversation when I am not able to find something else to talk :))
Indraneel: No. I don't.
Me: So you're an atheist? A non-believer?
Indraneel: No.
Me: So what are you?
Indraneel: I'm agnostic.
Me: What does that mean? How is it different from being an atheist?
Indraneel: Well, an atheist is someone who does not believe in the existence of God. An agnostic is someone who does not know whether God exists.
Me: So, in this sense, he is someone sitting on the fence -- neither a believer or a non-believer.
Indraneel: True.
Me: And why are you confused?
Indraneel: Because Fred Hoyle once remarked "........" (I've forgotten what Indraneel exactly quoted but it meant that Hoyle was confused about the existence of God... and since he, being a great physicist that he was, was confused, so was Indraneel. And that justified his on-the-fence thinking. A fairly logical explanation indeed - if you don't completely understand something believe someone who you know knows more about it.)
Me: Hmm... So what do you think of all the people who believe in God? What do you think of religion?
Indraneel: Well, people are free to choose what they believe. I have no issues with people following one faith or the other. I am a Hindu by birth but not by practice.
Me: So you don't participate in rituals like the Durga pooja?
Indraneel: I do. But, to me, that is more of a social gathering than a religious one.
Me: What purpose do you think religion serves? Does it help if people believe in God? (Another of my favorite questions :))
Indraneel: Religion does serve an important purpose. If you tell a layman not to do something because it is wrong, he isn't likely to follow you. But, if you tell the same person not to do something because if he did that, he will surely go to hell... as God had forbidden it. He won't.
(Hmm... why would anyone want to go to hell... that too after suffering life on earth! Nothing's worth paying for with a visit to hell... a bad bargain always!

I liked the way the conversation was going. This guy had really thought out the whys and wherefores of religion and God.)
Me: Great....! So you too believe that religions have been conceived by our enormously shrewd (or wise, in the positive sense) ancestors who came out with a set of rules for ordinary mortals to follow. Each rule was conveniently attributed to God (or one of his messengers). Compliance with them promised everlasting happiness for yourself and your loved ones. Non-compliance was a confirmed ticket to hell.
Indraneel: Yes. We have so many wars in the name of religion. So many people die. But, if there was no religion, there would be more conflicts.
Me: Sure. Religion does serve a purpose. It oppresses a large number of people for their own good. Think of what would happen if "thou shalt not steal" wasn't one of the commandments. There would be anarchy. Not that people don't steal anymore but the number of people stealing would be a lot more without this commandment for they would fear no God. So religion contains anarchy. Religion fights nature and natural desires of human beings. It differentiates humans from animals and puts us on a different plane. Animals don't have to go to hell... and they have no chance of making it to heaven either.. so they can do whatever they want without worrying about anything or feeling guilty. Not so for humans. Religion tries to make us forget the cardinal rule that nature follows - survival of the fittest. But that is what civilization is all about. We no longer have to fight like animals. Though fights are there on different levels now. But that's another story.....

Yearning for equality....

Quest for equality has become one of the most predominant virtues of modern society, a founding principle of democracy. The Americans and the French pioneered the idea after great revolutions in their lands. Others followed suit as and when they were able to... that is, when they were able to come out of the clutches of colonialism themselves. But has any society achieved it? More pertinently, is equality achievable at all? Or do we simply need to confine equality to a fixed boundary and leave the rest to, well, nature...

Let me put some questions that come to my mind when I think of equality in a society.

• Are all new borns equal?
  
• Does a government, and its agents, avowed to the principle of equality, act in a manner that befits equality in its letter and spirit?
  
• Can the Marxist dream of a classless society ever be achieved?
  

The answers to these questions should have been in the affirmative but one does not have to be Einstein to see that this is not the case. What is the solution then? Or rather, what is the problem, with the society or with us? Is the idea of equality too utopian for human society to enforce? Or is the ever benevolent Mother Nature against the idea herself?

I will try to ponder over this, as I request anyone reading this blog to ponder as well...

Looking for your comments...