Template for a religion

A young man brought up in difficult conditions seeks to change the society he sees around him. He is supposedly a revolutionary who rebels against the injustice being practiced in society around that time. His acts earn him a dedicated group of followers. Soon, the powers that be are threatened by his growing influence and supposedly torture & kill him brutally. After his death, a lot of people begin to associate themselves with him to gain people's trust. They see how mesmerized the people are by the dead man, and soon make up stories about his divinity. Casting him as a Messiah, they prepare texts making them out as words of their Messiah straight from God. In them, they insert commands & rituals to fit their own personal needs. This group grows & the powers that be now seek to reconcile with the agitated people. Seeing that the majority has now turned over, they switch their allegiance from the old religion to this new one. And after handsomely rewarding the "leaders" of this new religion, they create the official version of the "word of God", taking lessons from the leaders, and tailoring it to their own selfish needs. The leaders & their successors in turn are granted unquestionable moral authority for centuries to come. Together the powers that be, & their moral "advisors" enjoy a  continuing reign where they feed off the ignorance & subservience of their people. This template is followed by others, and twisted & concocted even more. These other Messiahs don't  even need to be good men. He can be a charlatan or a murderer, yet as long as he commands influence over a group and says the magic words "I heard the voice of God", he becomes a Messiah & a new religion is born.   Also notice how its always a he never a she. The words in their "Holy books" are used to command them to fight & kill for their respective religions. The powers that be sit back & plan out new regions to conquer with their brain-washed armies. Some of the religions are then forced to give up their violent ways. So they try silent brain-washing to influence people to change the laws of the land, so they can continue to rule. 

And there you have it, a template for creating a religion, that continues to be used to this day. 

If religions stopped fighting over who is right, and think over where they have all gone wrong, the world would be a much better place

Mars & Beyond

[Curiosity hi-res photo of the Gale Crater: Image courtesy: NASA]

Let me start off by saying how much I'm loving the attention the latest Mars mission is getting. Ever since NASA released it 7 minutes of terror video in the build up to final weeks of Curiosity's landing, the news & social media has been buzzing about it.

And now that Curiosity is on the ground on Mars, the possibilities seem endless. If the space enthusiasts among you recall, it is very much like the first few weeks of Spirit & Opportunity. We are getting newer photographs of the surface of another world: so much like ours, and yet so different. So what is different about the Curiosity mission then? First off, the rover is much bigger & has a lot more gadgets on-board. Its a mobile Science Lab, that will analyze rocks on Mars. There were limitations to what the previous rovers could do, and Curiosity will now fill the gaps. It has landed within the Gale crater, and will continue to drive to its rim, using its powerful lasers to cut off sedimentary rock from multiple layers along the sides of the mountain. Scientists hope to find glimpses of the history of Mars in these layers, much like we do on Earth. Curiosity is on its own for the most part, roaming the lifeless planet, picking up rocks & studying them, as long as its solar-powered batteries hold up.

NASA has already gone ahead and decided on its next mission. They will be sending another space-craft to Mars in 2016, aimed at drilling through the surface to learn about its core. It won a vote over two other missions: one, to explore the methane lakes on Titan, and another to land on a comet. Personally, I feel disappointed that NASA is down to picking & choosing missions. I'm not exactly sure its a direct result of budget cuts, or just a logistical problem of doing several missions simultaneously. I do suspect the budget cuts have a large part to play in this. I would personally be thrilled at the prospect of an actual mission to Titan in the future. Along with Europa, it is one of the two potential places to look for the possibility of life within our solar system.

Is there any help for NASA? Private companies have come forward for low orbit launches, but long-term missions need government help. Other countries like India & China are taking positive steps for this. India is preparing for the Chandrayaan-2 mission that will involve landing a rover. China is planning an orbital mission to Mars some time in the next decade. Its clear that NASA continues to remain the one best equipped to expand the frontier of space travel. Here's hoping the powers that be can take notice of the interest the Curiosity mission is generating and spare a penny for NASA.

The Requiem

We swim against the rising waves
And crash against the shore
The body bends until it breaks
The early morning sings no more
So rest your head, it’s time to sleep
And dream of what’s in store
The body bends until it breaks
Then sings again no more
’Cause time has torn the flesh away
The early morning sings no more

- Final verse from 'Until It Breaks' by Linkin Park from the album Living Things

Big things have small beginnings

After two decades, Ridley Scott returned to the genre he shaped with 'Prometheus'. Being a big fan of the Alien films, and of the director himself (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) I was naturally delighted to watch this movie. 

At the onset, its a given that you would appreciate this movie more if you are familiar with the Alien franchise. There are several subtle & blatant references to the mythology, and the director has made it clear that it takes place in the same universe but is not a direct prequel. The visual effects were mind-blowing, and it is recommended for IMAX 3D. It is not exactly like the Alien films. More of an adventure-cum-horror film, rather than a pure horror film. The script is pretty good, although the film lacks those 'moments' for the general audience that you expect from a film of this monumental scale. I did had a couple of awe-inspiring myself, seeing the panoramic view of the universe in a few shots. A particularly breath-taking one was seeing the shots of supposedly the early earth: cooled down, with land, water, yet a lonely, desolate place. The film has an amazing, haunting soundtrack as well. Scott has attempted to create a new mythology with this film, & its clear he would like to make at least one sequel. The film raises quite a few questions, and leaves most of them unanswered, or more like open-ended questions, since the sequel is not guaranteed.

Its these questions that I immediately started to dwell upon, as I began to absorb the experience of the movie. At the beginning, through the explorer & 'believer' Elizabeth Shaw, we are given hints about a supposedly contradictory idea to the facts of evolution that we know. An idea of beings akin to a "God" that engineered us, and therefore referred to as 'Engineers'. Even Scott in an interview, to my disappointment showed more than a hint of ignorance when he said "Both NASA & the Vatican agree that we could not have come this far without a little help". Yet, the open-ended conclusion of the movie gives you the feeling the director has left it to the audience to connect the dots, in terms of their own interpretation, & also their beliefs, or the lack of them. For me, the opening shows the inherent self-centered tendency of humans to believe that "its all about us". The opening sequence actually shows an earth at its very primitive stage, when there was no life here. When the 'Engineer' drinks from the vial he is carrying, he begins to disintegrate, right down to his DNA. If we come back to the real world for a bit, life itself began out of the primordial soup that would form when a planet cools down. I say planet, since scientists think the life we know of, may not necessarily have been formed this way on Earth. Maybe Mars, maybe some distant planet, and just piggybacked here accidentally on a meteor as an aftermath of cosmic collisions between planets & comets. The film does a cinematic take on this to move it a step further. So the Engineer does not directly create humans, he sows the seed of life, which to this point has come up with the humans as we are today. I interpret it as the director first giving us a picture of the idea of 'Creation' as a lot of religions understand it, and then smashing it. As the movie goes further, we find that the 'Engineers' are not the benevolent, serene beings that we pictured as our Creator, but just an alien race of life-forms that has developed the ability to create life in the laboratory, and doing this for no particular reason except "because they could". And from the look of the meeting that takes place between the humans & the lone surviving Engineer at the "manufacturing facility" that is the moon of the system that the ship Prometheus lands on, our makers are pretty disappointed at the results of their experiment. And to smash our misplaced sense of self-importance further, this is, by no means the only experiment. As the movie unfolds, we see a myriad of life-forms being created out of the engineered primordial organic soup, and its 'interactions' with the life-forms it encounters. The Engineers themselves are hardly Gods, being overwhelmed by their own creations and the manufacturing facility itself has been almost destroyed even before the humans arrive. And our creators have also decided to dismantle their Earth experiment, by carrying the vases of the same disintegrating fluid that created us, possibly in the hopes of better results.

The character of Elizabeth Shaw does have an adequately conflicting personality, despite a rather unconvincing performance by Noomi Rapace. For me, Michael Fassbender as the android David stole the show. Charlize Theron wasn't as noticeable as Meredith Vickers. And I was disappointed by the small part Guy Pearce had as Peter Weyland. But there is a very special guest appearance right at the end of the movie, after one of the life-forms created after the Shaw is impregnated by her 'infected' lover. The foetus is expelled surgically by Shaw, yet survives and grows in a matter of hours. The surviving Engineer runs into its tentacles and it grasps him, and its revealed to be much like a giant "face-hugger" that people who have watched Alien would be familiar with. Then, as expected the Engineer's stomach begins to burst open, and out comes another vaguely anthropomorphic figure. As it stands up and you are given a full view of its structure, it is clearly a predecessor/early ancestor of the legendary Xenomorph, or as it is called "the Alien". 

I do hope Scott comes up with a sequel and expands further on this mythology. Hopefully, it will follow a more scientific than a mystic/religious path, but I am not averse to a vivid imagination that incorporates elements of the very imaginative mythologies of Indian & other ancient civilizations, such as the one present in the legendary Star Wars mythology. It should be something that broadens, not stifles the imagination of the audience. I haven't really checked but I don't think Prometheus will challenge the might of the "Avengers" at the box-office, or the expected one of "The Dark Knight Rises". But it has certainly opened up the prospects of a very interesting franchise. As David says in a scene from the film "Big things have small beginnings".

Nick Carter - Live in NYC

It is surprising even to myself that despite being a music lover, I have never been to a live concert. The major reason has been my aversion to crowded places. However, it has been one of the important things on my checklist recently. I missed out on the Dream Theater concert in San Francisco while I was there. I'm still hoping they do a second US leg of their ADTOE tour. So, when Nick Carter decided to have a concert at Irving Plaza in NYC, I immediately got my tickets for the show.
This was a pretty modest-sized hall, and the concert was more like a House of Blues show. The doors were gonna open at 8pm, so I came there by 7.30, and the line had already snaked around the block by then. I have to admit I stood out from the beginning, being one of the few guys among an ocean of girls. It was past 9 pm before the opening act came out, some female pop singer named Guinevere. She looked hot in her flashy outfit, but was mostly lip-syncing, and I had to bear through her mini-setlist of around 4 songs. Then, the curtains came down while Nick's band set up their equipment. Finally, around 9.45 the curtain (more like a projector screen) went up and the crowd let out a huge roar. To the background of radio transmission excerpts from space flights, and some epic entrance music, the band members came out wearing white space-suits and settled in their places. Then Nick came, out with a full space-suit and helmet, standing in the center, back to the crowd, a band member equipping him with his guitar. As the lights came down, he turned to the audience as the screams grew louder, approached the mic and launched into "I'm Taking Off", the title track off his new album, followed by "Blow Your Mind" from his 2002 debut album Now Or Never, and "Not The Other Guy" again off the new one. He then paused to thank everyone for their support, and exhorted the crowd to be his 'aliens' he is visiting, and then sang "I Got You" from NON, which is my favorite solo song of his. I was naturally singing along, eliciting a few curious stares from the girls around me. Nick later did an awesome mix of "The Great Divide" (another fave) with U2's "With Or Without You". Later in the show Nick picked up the guitar again to do to BSB's "Larger Than Life", with his guitarist nailing the solo part perfectly. His drummer was exceptional as well, Nick mentioned he was with him during his first solo album tour. After the second break, Nick came out alone with an acoustic guitar in hand, dedicating his next song to his sister Leslie Carter, who had passed away just two days before with the words "I've not done his before and never thought I'd ever have to. I wanna dedicate this song to my sister". And he did an acoustic rendition of "Falling Down", and choking towards the end, he rushed to the corner of the stage as soon as he finished, to compose himself. That was a pretty intense moment, and the crowd went quiet for a while before starting a "We Love You" chant to cheer him back on to the stage. Nick came back, taking the mic and saying "Lets celebrate her life Goddammit" and went on to perform the last two songs of the show, the eternal BSB hit "I Want It That Way" and his new single "Burning Up", pumping up the crowd and ending the show on a high note.
To sum up, it was an incredible night. Nick was amazing throughout, and though I already know this from the countless live videos I have seen, I could witness in person that he (and also the other Boys) know how to deliver an amazing show, most importantly with amazing vocals.  And I am looking forward to checking off the rest from my list: Backstreet Boys, Metallica & Dream Theater. Sadly, I would never be able to see the Eagles live.  (Picture courtesy: user fsquared87 on Photobucket)

Who are we saving again?

Some of those ads about nature conservation & reducing pollution are certainly very powerful and emotive. But  in recent years, I have come to see a fundamental flaw that prevents them from having any lasting effect on the psyche of people and make them actually do something. A lot of it has stemmed from all I have learnt about the universe since childhood. But what made me think about it more is the philosophy of Ian Malcolm, a character in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park series. 

We as humans are often fooled by this illusion of grandeur. Some religions preach about the 'special' place of humans in the scheme of things. It comes from the technological advances as well. While the scientists responsible for them generally have a sense of nobility towards the cosmic forces, the end-users of the technology are overwhelmed with a misplaced sense of invincibility. So, when they see a slogan like "Save the Earth", they will inevitably have a laid-back attitude towards it. It makes it seem like an act of philanthropy, which it most certainly isn't. Moreover, if you think about it a little more, that slogan itself is false. Yes, we are disturbing the delicate balance in various ecological systems throughout our world. We have caused extinctions of several species, and are still pushing more species towards it. But lets look at the bigger picture. A few hundred years down the line (or probably much, much sooner), we may have caused enough irreparable damage to cause a whole bunch of species, including ourselves, to be extinct. Now step back to see this from the Earth's point of view. For the Earth, this will be just the latest addition to the many extinctions that have occurred in its near 4 billion year history. It is quite likely that in the next few millennia at the most, a fresh batch of ecological systems will replace the ones that were wiped away. As a species, we have achieved a lot, and made phenomenal progress since the first Homo Sapiens appeared 200,000 years ago. If we stretch it to our entire genus, it will make us about 3 million years old. But, take for example dinosaurs, who were the dominant genus for well over 100 million years, and how easily they were wiped out and forgotten. So its funny that people think its the Earth we are saving from being doomed, and that if the worst happens, somewhere in the future, we will fly off to another habitable planet in a ship. Going by how scientists struggle for funding to even look at habitable planets elsewhere in the Universe, I wonder if anyone would have the foresight soon enough for us to develop a reasonable plan of action for that. So, if its a gradual extinction from the extremities of shifting weather conditions, or an instantaneous wipe-out from a nuclear holocaust, its our species that is at stake. The Earth and most certainly the Universe will go on without as much as a hiccup. 

So boys & girls, next time you put that can of soda in the recycle bin, remember, you're not saving the Earth, you're saving your own sorry ass!