Tuesday, September 16, 2008

God – an Individual or a Designation?

Administration

We know of the God-trio: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (Please append “Lord” ahead of each of their names incase they are particular about it :) ). Then we have lord Indra, Surya, etc etc. According to Indian philosophy, we have 3 crores, 33 lakhs, 33 thousands, 3 hundred and thirty 3. If we follow the structure of each Gods positioning in Heaven, Hell (are their Gods here in form of demons?), we will know it’s another governance system like our present government, lead by President, Prime Minister, Chief Ministers, Governors, etc. etc.

After having said all this said, on our other hand we have our mind-blowing mythology (I call it mind-blowing, because we truly don’t know how magnificent is our past, Mythology, Vedas, Upanishads, etc.) which say God is one. Aham Brahmasmi (I am God), Ekonaam Bahusyaami (One God called by different names), Sahasrasheersha Purusha, Sahasraaksha….. Here it gets perplexing. One end we say, there are crores of Gods. At another front we say God is one. Maybe we are not aware of things in complete perspective. One of the simple reasons being, we do not know our past.

It is said, give importance to the chair one holds even if you do not have any regard for the individual sitting on it. Respect an individual because of the designation he/she holds, if not the individual, at a personal level.

Thus, clubbing our earlier observations, if we fix God as designation, we always have a Supreme God (President) and the subsequent designations that follow it. This position of Supreme God can always be taken by any of the present ‘individuals’ and he becomes He. Implying there is only one God. Earlier Sri Rama took this seat, then was taken by Sri Krishna, Lord Buddha and so on. Thus we understand, Messaih, Allah, Christ, Rama all sat on the same throne and professed same principles. But man got caught with the person on the post than the post as it is happening in our country. We still talk about Atal Bihari Vajpayee, P V Narasimha Rao. But when it comes to all legal documentation, more valid is the designation ‘President of India has approved of Nuclear Deal’. Now if these different ‘individuals’ on the post of God have created hatred among masses, then these ‘individuals’ (idols – as they are talked about in their absentia) are anti-social elements.

Now imagine attrition in this administration. Even this aspect can be imagined and thought of, Privileges that one attains by claiming a particular post - recognition, responsibility. One example can be Person A was writing what an individual is doing on earth (post Chitragupta). From now on ‘A’ will be our Brahma (I mean post Brahma) where he will start writing what a person is expected to do on earth. The difference in these columns (of expected behaviour of a individual to the actual behaviour of the individual) is the difference in Karma that one has performed.

Retirement Plan

But one thing that is a dilemma is whether there is any retirement age for these posts? If yes, then what happens to the post-holders after retirement? The population of their village too would be increasing. Paapam, they don’t even have an option of dying! Do they have any retirement plan? Is there an option of Voluntary Retirement? I doubt. Or is there no concept of retirement?

Now that we have some idea about the administrative structure, let’s move to their creation – MAN. Ofcourse, I am not taking away any credit from them for their creation of remaining 3 crores, 33 lakhs, 33 thousands, 3 hundred and thirty 2.

Documentation

But one think that must be accepted is that there is no proper documentator within their organization. The Dos and Donts of Man should be a available as Rule-book or Instructions, for everyone and anyone whenever man needs to know at any time and any where. Like how we have ‘Help’ documentation for online available softwares and tools. But unfortunately, in this creation, there is no such documentation. Safely and cleverly, the administration passed this baton to MAN. “Boss, you document from your own experience and pass on your knowledge to others”. With this order, it was an obvious that there would be correct documentation and incorrect documentation. Now who was to validate these texts? God Himself had/has to do that. Vedas, Upanishads are the approved ones whereas Novels are rejected ones :)

After the above texts are authorized, many read it, another aspect we hear is that the documentation lies within you. You are the creator, you have the complete knowledge. So find it and you would know about it. But now the ‘bridge gap’ is in knowing how to access these hidden folders within, so that we get the knowledge (or should I say wisdom). The whole jugglery in life and the concept of Sages, Saints, Gods coming on earth is to let us know about this ‘path’ (do I mean ‘address bar’? in Windows Explorer) to these hidden folders. Yeah, we know, in command prompt, you need to know the complete path with the folder name; else you do not have access to them especially if they are hidden. The UI for these folders are these Sages, Saints, Gods, etc. who advent on earth with a certain validity period, after which their license expires and are back into their abode.

Say, we are shown the correct ‘path’ and we do reach the hidden folders, texts, visuals (‘In Mahabharata, Vishwaroopa Darshans’), audio files (remember ‘Akaashvaani’), etc. From now onwards, we learn these lessons and imbibe the teachings, and thus we become the all knowing. All-knowing meaning, one who knows the path to the hidden folders, texts, materials available within them and have also imbibed them. So far so good. Thus, we have knowledge which is same as the ones who came down to earth (Sages, Saints, Gods, etc.) to teach them earlier. Thus we become God. In other words, these are few designations (Technical Officers) who are sent by the Developers to the Client to help them out with these little little issues. Pre-requisite for the client is to understand what the sent Technical Officers convey or want to convey. Gods had Sanskrit as the mother tongue. But, these Technical Officers have improved their versatility over a period of time by becoming multi-lingual. Apart from that – MAN, also has been bestowed with ‘Language Tools’ to overcome these linguistic troubles. To put it, Client-side browser is upgraded (with upgraded Java Engine V8) to handle heavy processing and improve the overall performance of the transmitted data.

Maintenance Plans

There are these periodic reviews on the progress with a threshold limit for defects. Whenever there is heavy loses (in their stock market), the higher decide to take up the Annual (‘annual’ term as defined by them) Maintenance Plan. There is restarting of Servers when the whole world is stopped for a brief period of time. Before Restart, it is made sure that all the connections are handled, that’s when the follow-up of the clients is taken up. Multiple officers (Sages, Saints, who knows maybe even Gods) are sent to this Client, where they try to finish up with connections so that no data is lost, and backups are taken…After this a new Yuga starts.

Interestingly, this client wants to know its vendor’s other clients (Possibly, the other clients too might be in this pursuit). Mars Rover, is one such endeavour. This search for life on other rocks (called planets) has been going on, and is on. Not that the vendor is not aware of it, but they may not get panicky until we catch their other clients and compare our performances with them.

In conclusion, we have a group of developers who continuously are working for this site called Earth, buzy creating multiple projects (species) as experiments…and if it was anywhere closer to Google then surely Man was part of that weekly one hour project! :)

7 comments:

  1. Hullo

    You did not (dis)cover one very important (integral) aspect in development, what else, BUGS, of course!. Like reptiles, insects and mosquitoes which mar the User Experience with a series of p(st)ings. Earth, like some of Google's products, seems to be in Perpetual Beta. And Man, seems happy to keep it that away so that he can always attribute outages to 'under development'. Who knows, some bugs might have been planted just to safeguard and keep secure the jobs of the (de)buggers !

    My guess on why documentation was not done is that, no one would read documentation even if it was there. Or having read it, they would still do straight the opposite, as if the application or the developer's patience or both still need to be tested !. I think, the experience in the earlier projects/kalpas would have led to the logical conclusion that Extreme Programming or Rapid Application Development suits Man's frivolous mentality the most. One can imagine the pain of reams of PDF documentation which are unread across civilizations in one Kalpa, so the next time you want to try some Windfall model instead of Waterfall model !

    Good read.
    Best Wishes
    Namaji

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  2. I agree to the wisdom of radical and out of the box thinking. May be there is some meaning in no documentation because as all good "administrators", he could not document his own deeds.
    (Man was created in HIS own image)... On a lighter vein.

    Seriously, You could document only that which has an expected behaviour. HE wanted all the decisions to be dynamic and so, the thoughts were given a sort of infinite permutations. Each could dynamically choose from one or other at one point or other... I leave the rest for intellectuals to debate on!

    :)

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  3. Yeah Naams,
    I did miss out on that. The thing is this post has been in my mind for almost an year...Once I even remember mentioning to Venky, that something different is going to come...but it had to come out only now, and I just wanted it to be there...in final moments it was more of some 'internal' push (one can call it frustration) for the post to be posted

    and Cakes, that was really well thought off..."infinite possible permutations" defines non-documentation quite well...

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  4. Okay I will just focus on the title. Had to read the post almost three to four time before the technical stuff approximated to any sense to me.

    1. God an individual or designation? - Does the post give an convincing answer to this conundrum? To me it seems to be drifting into what I would compare to metaphysical comparisons which at the end of the day gives us very little to sustain on.

    2. Secondly - implicit in both 'individual' and 'designation' is the aspect of distancing. In this otherwise logical analysis, this remains an element of concern. I remembered this book Mister God This is Anna which explores the dynamics of a sweet relationship that Anna shares with God. We believe what we choose to believe coz it seems to be working for us. So we have the discretion to consider god as a friend, teacher guide whatever or sometimes just rest happy with the feeling that he is there. Now would it be possible if the dynamics is given the framework of a project and if god is invested with some kind of an authority which makes him a kind of a 'superior boss?' All our interactions would be dictated by transaction. This implies that there is no scope for progress coz logically once the needs are satisfied, the transaction ends. And that disturbs me.

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  5. Yeah, I agree. There is no proper conclusion to it. One of the reasons being, there is no one who can certify it :) These are thoughts which can help one to profess, conclude that the term 'God' can most probably be a 'Designation' in an hierarchical system than being an 'Individual', of the term being a common noun than a specific, particular individualized proper noun.

    About going through the post for 3-4 times to understand it, I again agree that it is not one of the well organized stuff. As mentioned earlier, its out earlier (like Sony's High Definition Handycams, which were released early to overcome the fear of losing market for Blu-Ray Disc players. Video recorded from these cams is a difficult thing to edit for there are no proper softwares which can edit them inspite of one having best of the available hardware) than it should have been. Thats why, it doesnt get into us in one read. Especially when it is not '...and then there were none' of Agatha Christie, we should not be forced to read it again :)

    Distancing: hmm...I think nothing rational can explain this, otherwise where would be an aspect of awe and wonder, which is always associated with God. But one thing that can probably do it is by thinking of embedded chips into this cabinet of human being that transmits data to the server, wirelessly.

    About answers to our prayers, yes, this aspect was not dealt in it. Let’s look at the petition placed in front the Highness to be resolved. The job description of the Highness post expects one to resolve any issue that a living being has. So irrespective of ‘who’ holds the position, our prayer should be answered.
    Another way of looking at it can be this – explanation of logical assumption why people say that ‘Bhagawan ke paas dher hain par andher nahin’ (God may delay but will never deny). May be the ‘person’ (say, Lord Shiva) holds this position in August (if they have such calendar months!). A devotee of Lord Shiva prays in September, after the tenure of Lord Shiva is over. So, one has to wait till he comes back and resolves the issue!

    I know it can get a bit confusing, and inter-jumbled up. But, that might simply explicate
    why everyone cannot be Chanakya to write an Arthashastra! Ha ha ha

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  6. Hey relax, when I mentioned that it took me quite sometime to understand the stuff, I was not referring to the organization of the stuff. I was referring to the content. And that was an honest admission for a person who is only on the fringes of the kind of technology that you are making a reference to. Honest, it takes a lot of time to understand metaphysical poets as well.

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  7. Fraught with too many assumptions I should say. 'The job description of the Highness post expects one to resolve any issue that a living being has. So irrespective of ‘who’ holds the position, our prayer should be answered.' On closer reading don't you think that this opens a Pandora's box? You have used a sort of an escape hatch when you say that 'God delays are not his denias.' But then, if each and every prayer of each and every individual in each and every part of the world should be answered, don't you think chaos would reign supreme? Another instance is the attempt to categorise in terms of calendar months. [God forbid!] The point is we all know that form that we pray to depends on the occasion [as in festivals] or in terms of need, or it may just be the form that we feel close to. For example Shelley identifies himself with the West Wind [for the romantic poets the forces of Nature approximated to the Divine] and implored the West Wind to lift a him as a leaf or a cloud so that he could escape the thorns of life and instead accompany it on its journey. Coz at the end of the day as he sees, he too was a 'wild one' with a spirit that was 'uncontrollable.' And thereby you have the affirmative note 'If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind.' More as an aside, it would be interesting to see whether this ode was actually written during the said season.

    My problem, in case the point has been missed, is that the analysis above tends to give a frame by frame representation of how God probably works in the environment described.[ready to stand corrected if proven otherwise] From that perspective it seems to be quite contrived. Coz at the end of the day, for all the theorising that we do, we know that the relation encompasses both the heart and the mind. Mebbe for Anna it was the heart and mebbe for Lucifer it was the mind. [Mind you I am not talking about the nature of the interaction per se, we all know that it is dynamic, right, as all things in the world are ;)]

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