Philosophical Inquiry of a Colloquial Phrase

பிறந்து வரணும் டா / புறந்து வரணும் டா 

(Rough Translation: One has to be re-born to beat the sayer (or) None is there to beat the sayer; Used to emphasise supremacy of the sayer; )

This is a dialogue that you might hear, when some one wants to tell you that he can't be beaten in a particular field / art, and he is the 'supreme' guy in that subject and to beat him, some one is yet to be born - meaning, nobody is there yet, to beat him.

Of course, this is a very colloquial phrase, and I believe this is not being used these days, that frequently. However I have heard several times, when I was in school, probably due to the influence of a movie.

Now, let us leave that aside and do a quick philosophical inquiry.

Though, it gives a sense of the sayer's arrogance in display, it also means that the sayer acknowledges that he/she is adept/best only in the current time frame, and over a period, there may be some one who will emerge better than him.

Let me throw some few arbitrary examples.

When we all watched Kapil Dev in awe, there came another greater player - Sachin Tendulkar, after many years, and then when we believed that there can be never be another player like Sachin, we discovered Dhoni, and then Virat Kohli - all in overlapping and close time frames. Though the styles are different, almost everything is different, our beliefs on the best player changes over time.

If you like Ramayan, here's another: When everyone thought that Ravan was simply unstoppable and unbeatable, there came a Ram, in a different (but overlapping) time period, who destroyed Ravan and that too in a very unconventional and different style (Ram did not have the powerful armed force of Ayodhya with him, and he was not even a king, when he defeated Ravan).

Moral: There is always going to be a bigger force or person, than the current one, but only away in the time frame.

What kind of systems will pass the test of time?

My immediate answer would be almost nothing, probably for time itself,  but then we shall restrict our length of  'time' to few generations, and then analyze.

An inflexible system that does not allow change to happen, and therefore being rigid cannot with stand the test of time, and eventually will collapse, however strong it may look at a given point in time. Here, I am using the phrase 'test of time' in a very abstract sense, as it is very difficult to predict what time will throw at.

Only flexible systems, that allow change, and therefore adapt and evolve can potentially pass the test of time. Let us look at few examples. Take the case of language, English as a language is able to stand for centuries now, not only because it has been the language of the rulers of the past centuries, but also it ability to assimilate (absorb) words and constructs of other languages, and evolving continuously with new words getting introduced from various fields, including science and technology.

We all know the fate of various systems of governance practiced in different countries across the world. The testimony of non-democratic systems of governance had shown us that a rigid system will eventually collapse one day, while a democratic system that has an inbuilt mechanism to accept change and evolve with it will survive for long.

Therefore one can safely conclude that, only a system that has tolerance and acceptance for change alone will survive for long, which shall make the system flexible and adaptable. A system that does not allow for adaptability will eventually shrink in its mass before eventually collapsing under its own weight.

However, this does not mean a completely arbitrary and flexible system will survive the test of time. It will not only lead to chaos, but also will come up with a random order, thanks to the 'incentive mechanism' and 'herd mentality' that will get automatically inherited into most of the systems.

So, the conclusion is that a system has to be well-balanced between rigidity and flexibility, so that it can produce the desired (or even wonderful) results and has more probability to survive the test of time. This again points out to my concept of Art of Delicate Balancing.

The Biggest Abstractions

Abstractions are the models of either real or notional entities. One abstract way to define abstractions is: "Abstractions can be defined as representational transition of  concepts/objects of one form to another."

Abstractions, may lead to simplicity. Though all of us may not like all of the abstractions that we may encounter, in our lives, generally speaking, we as a human society have always cherished the idea of abstractions. If you do not believe this check the list below. Abstractions though helped us to overcome the complications, but have limited our thoughts, behaviors and actions. Assume that if one abstraction has been accepted by everybody - which is a model of something, then we are limited by the preciseness of the model, and for that sake everyone knows that a model is a model and not the exact entity itself. Well, now let's start with the biggest abstractions that we generally encounter.

The first biggest abstraction is God - who has created this Universe in the first place. Though this may be arguable for some, the next biggest abstraction is - Time - which has been accepted by everybody!. Humans have modeled a clock, a calendar to model this important phenomenon!. I also consider time to be the real taskmaster that drives all of us. The next biggest abstraction, that I could think of is Numbers, that lead to Arithmetic, and of course the entire subject of Mathematics. Adding to this, without experiments, even Science, is only of abstractions. The entire concept of Money and Finance is also an abstraction, which had been evolved out of the abstraction of Numbers!. So, we live in a world embedded with multiple layers of abstractions!.

Ofcourse the list can go on and on, with simple abstractions to complex abstractions built on multiple layers, but I would like to stop here, and wonder about the most basic and elementary abstractions, which may throw some insights and spark new thoughts, and after all the world will call you as an 'intellect', if you work with higher and higher layers of abstractions!

Superior Evolution

I had an opportunity to visit the Birla Science Museum, while I was in Hyderbad last week. The Birla Science Museum had tools for scientific demonstrations, and also portrayed real dinosaur fossils. Apart from that there was a replica of the now submerged city of Dwarka near Gujarat. The thing that struck me most was the mention about the origin of life, in the dinsosaur part of the museum.

"The earth is old by 460 million years and if this is shortened into one day, then life began at the 7th hour. Dinosaurs came at 22:30 and disappeared at 23:40. As far as man is concerned, he was born in just the last minute of the day. "

That harped my mind, whether the man is really the so- called evolved creature!. That opens a possibility that there may be superior creatures evolved at some later point of time. Also, if you look at the other creatures that were around, the first living being were unicelled, then followed by multi-celled, vertebrates, mamals etc... So, there seems to be a superior evolution happening. But ofcourse, dinosaurs, the giant creatures that ruled this earth are no more now. But few million years later, man the creature is seeming to be master of earth. But how far it lasts is an interesting question!!. Again the possibilities seems to be too many to think of - whether man will be replaced by another superior creature or he evolves himself into a far more superior creature or he just sits there, while another superior creature evolves in the years to come are matters of interest, and would lead to inconclusive debates (atleast in our life time, until man does some thing foolish to destroy himself!!)

And to end, an Australian aboriginal proverb in today's newspaper again struck me. It says 'All of us are visitors to this point of time and to this place'.