Perhaps the most beautiful letter ever written

I have always been a great admirer of Nietzsche. For me, he was far more than a philosopher, the dimension of his writings puts us beyond the simple role of the reader. The best example of this extra dimension in his thinking is his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None.

Above all, this letter is a marvellous vision of friendship and love that was put down on paper decades ago and that retains its emotional, spiritual and philosophical value to this day.

This letter was written by Nietzsche to his friend Franz Overbeck in 1881.

Genoa, November 14, 1881: Letter to Franz Overbeck

"My dear friend, what is this our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize. Here we are, two good old boats that have been faithful neighbors, and above all your hand has done its best to keep me from "capsizing"! Let us then continue our voyage—each for the other's sake, for a long time yet, a long time! We should miss each other so much! Tolerably calm seas and good winds and above all sun—what I wish for myself, I wish for you, too, and am sorry that my gratitude can find expression only in such a wish and has no influence at all on wind or weather. [....]"

Murphy's Laws

I have been a devotee of Murphy’s Law for years now and I thought I would share a few of my favourites with all of you.

As an optimist, I try and embrace the good side of life and to persecute relentlessly the things that could make my life a living hell if I let them.

In this context Murphy’s Laws are at the absolute opposite of my optimism as they are all extremely pessimistic but, as in everything it is usually the things that we don’t agree with that make us smile, my post on Borats movie attempted to highlight the need to express and laugh about things even if we don’t agree with them at all.

Hence, after this preparatory speech here are the above mentioned quotes:

General Laws

“If anything can go wrong, it will”

“If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.”

“Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.”

“If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.”

“Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.”

“If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.”

Love Laws

“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”

“The amount of love someone feels for you is inversely proportional to how much you love them.”

“The qualities that most attract a woman to a man are usually the same ones she can't stand years later.”

“Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either.”

“If the effort that went in research on the female bosom had gone into our space program, we would now be running hot-dog stands on the moon.”

And remember “Smile, it makes people wonder what you are thinking.”

Until tomorrow,

Good night

Jagshemash!!!

I realised that I always post on serious subjects like happiness etc.
Since I've been a great fan of Sacha Baron Cohen (AKA Ali G / Bruno / Borat) for ages now, I thought this was the best time to tell you about my view of his unique humour now that his movie has been released worldwide.
As you might know by now, Borat jokes about everything from patriotism to women, gays and Jews, many find it offensive but most laugh terribly at his amazing humour and at the way he manages to bring out the worst in people. (In the movie he enters a weapons store and asks for the best gun to kill a Jew, the shopkeeper without even blinking recommends a .45)
I've always believed humour was one of those things that couldn’t be controlled and should be free of all censorship, who are we at the end of the day to say that something is or isn’t appropriate. Hiding racism and anti-Semitism, burying them as if they didn’t exist at all in our "civilised" countries fails at countering them because sadly many people are racists and anti-Semites. The best way to get rid of these demons is to show how ridicule they are and Borat does an amazing job at that. By portraying himself as a racist idiot he shows the ridicule of racism, the shear intellectual void that surrounds it, the imbecile’s vision of a world divided not by personal growth or achievement but by pure hate based on irrational, unscientific rumours where Jews have claws and black people are lazy thieves.
As a “vanilla face” that knows and loves Borats talent I encourage everyone of you to go and see the movie and sadly, you might realise that there are probably some of the stereotypes in it that you might believe in yourself and that you never thought where this unworthy of your intellect.

Good night and happy time!!!

Tomorrow’s happiness is today’s anguish

I’ve thinking about the future allot in my life and I realised sometime back now that I kept thinking that things would be better in the future that for many reasons tomorrow was going to the way today should be.

When I get that new computer, when I get that car I always wanted, when I have a house, a new flat etc. but really thinking that the future will bring us happiness just gives us an excuse to be unhappy or unsatisfied today.

This allows us to avoid taking the steps that would make our everyday life better now.

I like to call it the “live today, be happy tomorrow paradox”.

As we move along in life, as everyday appears to be a collection of small or big problems we waste our lives saving up to be happy as if the future was something guarantied to be better but as I see it, it only leads to bad days, terrible weeks and a shit life.

We focus on today’s problems when we should focus on the bright sides because at the end of the day that’s all we are going to get, however much money we make, and however successful we become.

Dr Frankl in his brilliant book “Mans search for meaning” demonstrates that we are all looking for meaning and that all our materialistic desires are deprived of it.

The question that naturally springs is hence, what is our meaning in life; sadly this is something we must each discover alone.