opinions and intutions

the other day, i was busy having an argument with a friend. there is nothing strange in the act of argument, especially among friends. the art of argument dates back to the gardens of eden - the results of which prohpecied the fate of all arguments and arguers. numberless friends have numberless arguments and drunken bawls daily around the world. the novelty in our argument was its subject. it happens that there is a circular road by which our apartments are located. diametrically opposite, on the same road is a place that the charitable would call a restaurant where we suffer to take our meals. i shall not undertake the gory labour of describing the hotel to you but it is sufficient to understand that the quality of food there was vulgar enough to instigate a foul mood in anyone who comitted the cardinal sin of consuming it. so, in such a mood, we found ourselves arguing on the shortest way to our quarters from the hotel. i guessed that the right way was the right way while my friend swore that the left was the way to salvation. now, it is equally evident to both of us that both ways are equivalent but the pride of each person's belief in his intution threw us into a challenge. we agreed to take our favoured ways, travel at a constant pace and see who reached home first. needless to say, intent on proving our intutions right, both of us ran for our lives. but here, i had the disadvantage of a corpulent constitution. besides, i had exhibited a greater tolerance for the nauseating stuff which we had consumed and i was full of it. consequently, i was greeted by my friend at the entrance of my room. refusing to accept the defeat of my judgement, i called him a cheat and swore at him. returning similar compliments, he left me alone to meditate over the novel experience.

this sordid incident though of little entertainment is to be treated as a philosophical experience. it throws open to us the power of random thought and human ego. these two combined have crafted some of the most powerful organisations of our times, namely the government and religion. in the former, the hand of the forementioned two forces is easily seen. some bored voters amble to the polling booths and cast their votes to a random candidate. it is purely an act based on pot luck and random thought. there is little sense nowadays in keeping track of political policies. a skunk in any other name would smell just as sweet. similarly, any politician, irrespective of his superficial specifics is a politician, there is ideologically little difference between being swindled by swindler A or swindler B. however, the wise method i use for casting my vote is this. if the candidate is a particularly pleasing person from the neighborhood who is unfortunate enough to possess any of the cardinal virtues, i never vote for him. this is partly out of sympathy (for i am saving him from the mutilation that political success bestows) and partly out of concern for his lack of qualifications for the applied position. on the other hand, if one is loud, crass, violent and stupid, it is best to vote him to power. put all the rats in one hole, goes the saying. thus, he can give company to the multitude of like minded gentlemen in the infernal rat hole that we call the parliament.

a much more subtle application of cockney rationalisation is in religion. the religions of today having successfully ousted paganism from the scene have hence exterminated the only practical form of worship. people may raise eyebrows over devil worship, but it has a great underlying logic. no one worships his father or mother nowadays. in the rare case of not being thrown into institutions for the senile and aged, at best they are loved. on the other hand, a man's employer and a schoolboy's principal (who are inevitably draconian) are worshipped with total fear and unquestionable devotion. so according to modern practice, god is to be loved and the devil is to be worshipped. instead of adopting such straightforward logic, it is amusing to see a majority of people unnecessarily pretending to comprehend a religion that is necessarily centred around an incomprehensible figure. whenever intellectuals get overly curious about the logic behind the actions of gods, devotees either declare that it is beyond the enquirer's intelligence (as the established truth that two and two make four is beyond a street dog's understanding) or more commonly and with less trouble, stab the questioners. what religion is based on, is intutively clear but unfortunately what intution is based on, is woefully unclear. the fact is that intution is one of the few structures that evades searches for a root for it is a cycle. it is based on nothing but itself. experience has nothing to do with intution in the purest sense of the world. i find the idea of educated intution hilarious. the very fun of intution is based on its uneducated nature. nobody is raving to vote for the intellectual who through his educated intution guesses that the outcome of the toss is going to be a head or a tail. it is in this sense that one must compliment the inventor of religion for his intutive genius in coming out with a totally different product. full credit must be given to him as he has , for thousands of years unified the elements of ignorance, superstition, ego and stupidity into a relatively harmless channel. on a maturer reflection, it will be clear that but for religion, we will have hordes of housewives and priests on the streets, who having been deprived of their pastime of devotion to the many gods on offer presently, will clamour for even bigger roles in the social structure with disastrous consequences. all those critics who accuse religions of provoking quarrels would do well to understand that it is human nature to quarrel. if not religion , people will be anyway regularly slaughtering each other over other issues which they are ingenious enough to invent(like politics and entertainment).

it is hence, a sad fact that today, the art of successful intution is dying out. from the american president who has an uncanny hunch about the presence of atom bombs in abattoirs to the pathetic denizen who intutively believes that the scenario is rosy for indian cricket, there are innumerable examples of intution embracing fiasco. as for my own, i have to blame my forefathers for their poor use of the resource as i can clearly see that my intutive capabilities have atrophied by disuse. for instance i have a strong intution that this article is going to be a big hit......