Our flawed reasoning

How we depend on our faith -

When we do good, we say - its all His blessing.
When we do bad, we say - its all His curse.
When we are inflicted pain, we pray for His mercy and pray for punishment of the perpetrators.
When we inflict pain, we say we are doing justice, as per His wishes.
When we die in conflict, we say we attained immortality and bliss in heaven ruled by Him.

What really happens -

We are actually good at passing the buck at someone, without taking responsibility of our actions. We are weak inside!

When we do good, we have worked hard to achieve whatever we do.
When we do bad, we have actually not done justice to our capabilities.
When we are inflicted pain, we allow those to inflict such pain. We become weak ourselves!
When we inflict pain, we are blinded by rage, by envy, by greed, by ego and we attribute it to a "cause".
When we die in conflict, we are bruised, hurt, injured before... we are in pain and yet, it gives a mental satisfaction to think we will have something better in another world. Ironically, we are imagining a world that no one alive today has ever seen.

My research and experiments on past life regression does give ideas on happiness and peace, but in no way, conforms to the detailed accounts that people world-over believe in.

Albeit faith is strong, but faith alone is not sufficient...

May the uniform ability of mankind to question scenarios be ignited indefinitely with an end to his blind belief!


Image source: Internet, no copyright infringement intended.

Social Networking - Security and Privacy - Part 1

People often ask me about the best ways to achieve optimum privacy on a social networking site like facebook. You know, friends, I am an avid Facebooker and I do get a lot of inspiration from interacting with friends and also from my daily philosophical intake. But there are a few things I feel each one should follow.

What is a profile?

Think of an analogy. Let a Facebook profile be a real image of yourself. You stroll in a market full of strangers. What do the strangers see? You! Your face, how you look, some may notice. Others may not.

Makes sense to give a profile snap. But wait, there is a difference. People who hit your facebook profile are deliberately checking you out without you even knowing it. But in real life, we can sometimes get to know when someone checks us out. So why take chances?

To do - 

1. Make sure that the photo is visible to public, but not clickable. Advantages - You are preventing downloads of your photo on someone's personal machine, which further lowers the chances of the photos getting photoshopped or worse, misused. 

2. Watch out for posts that you share with "public"... posts like - "I bought a diamond jewellary from zaveri brothers" could be tracked by someone stalking you. Do not take chances! Facebook has wonderful custom setting. If you wish to tell someone something, will you go and shout on a loudspeaker? unless it is an announcement? Probably not... Share stuff only with those who need to know. That way you are minimizing information overload on friends and also refraining from blurting out information to people who could do without it.

Followers?

Hmm... welcome to the age of publicity! That I am writing this post may mean I am expecting some likes? Well, not really, I feel, so I write. If it is helpful to someone, I'll feel good. Off late I have come across non-celebrity profiles followed by thousands of people. I was puzzled by the reason as seriously I did not find any worthwhile "content"... but wait a minute. Two things - 1. The profile belonged to a girl, 2. The profile had attractive snaps! Bingo! Thats the reason for likes! It is understandable that people wish to become leaders. But unless you are a celebrity like Aishwarya or Hrithik, trust me you would not wish for that kind of publicity. The hard fact is - sharing and download is rampant for Facebook photos. Anything you post on internet today stays there forever. Take care of what you post! 

To do - 

1. It feels good to get some publicity. But it is even better to know why you are famous! If it is looks that people are after you for, well, unless you are pursuing a modelling career, watch out! You are being stalked with thousands recognizing you and following your every movement!

Know your friends

There was a time when I took pride in the number of friends on my friends list - not any more. What matters is quality, not quantity! Unless you know the person in real life or have interacted enough to know that the person is genuine, please do not add him / her. Might feel bad, but you are asking for trouble, otherwise!

That's all for now.. ciao!