Blogathon 1: Part 1

Hmm. I'm in the mood for my first Blogathon (taking a leaf out of Rashmi Bansal's blog).

The idea is to
* post as often as the desire to do so pops up in my head
* post raw and uncut, without too much polishing up
* post even about things which might be relatively insignificant (waise bhi, what else do you expect when a post is labelled 'random musings')

So, here goes....



I was reading about Plato's 'Parable of the Cave' today morning.

From Wikipedia:

Plato imagines a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of the cave entrance, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to seeing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not constitutive of reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.

During the course of the morning, my thoughts wandered a bit. I realised that it can be argued that a human being is a sum-total of thoughts and ideas. What he / she experiences during the years of their lives just adds to the bank of ideas floating in their head. Hence, each one of us is nothing more but a vessel of ideas. The body is just an instrument which carries out experiments through daily living which enriches our 'idea-bank'.

PS 1: This is just a train of thought which ran through the mind of a 26 year old sales executive who had nothing better to think about during a taxi ride. (Nobody dare bring up 'Taare Zameen Par' here.)

PS 2: Shouldn't the theory of an 'idea-bank' also be applicable to animals, since they too experience, learn and adapt (although at a much slower pace)? Hmm...