Do you view life as sacred? Something that should not be violated at any costs? On a related note, what do you think about suicide — is a person allowed to take his/her own life? And what about abortion? Or even euthanasia?

I generally regard the phenomenon of life as a miracle, and hold it in the highest of esteems. And therefore it generally pisses me off when I see life being treated as a “thing” — I mean look at places like Iraq or Afghanistan; you’re not even sure if you’ll live by the next half hour or not; life’s value is so degraded in these places; its such a small, puny and matter of fact thing.

I’m not saying that I am able to empathise with the hundreds (or even thousands, I don’t know the numbers) of people who lose their lives for no reason the world over. But I still do feel that we should value life for what it is and not play around with it like a toy. Then one day Asim and I got into a discussion, and Asim said, “how does all this matter in the big picture anyways?”. A deep question, and mostly rhetorical. But it still begged some elaboration.

He said that in the grand scheme of things (life, universe and everything), did it really matter what we thought or not? Whether we lived or died? History (and nature) will take their courses, and people live and die all the time — that doesn’t change things. Or rather, it keeps changing things, but thats how things were meant to be right?

Its the same thing with wars. Most people will agree that wars are not good, but history will tell you that they have been necessary. And in a war (from the movie “China Gate”), soldiers die and people lose their lives, no matter who wins. So in the cause for “greater good for all” human lives seem much less important, don’t they? In the recent movie Hero (Jet Li), the director explored a similar issue. Jet Li wanted to avenge the death of his people, but in the end let the emperor survive because he realized that for the greater goal of China’s unification, sacrifices would have to be made — it will be his people, or someone else’s — it didn’t really matter in the end.

So how does one measure the sanctity of life? In the face of humanity, human life seems small (which kind of makes sense). Men may change the course of history, but they still can’t “make” life, they can just “take” it. And how about the war on Iraq — needless lives were lost, but was it for a “greater good of humanity”? Or just the greater good of a few vested interests? We might never find out in our lifetime, but it still demands some consideration I think.

Continuing on from my last post, I had left off at the question of what exactly is our perception of a hero? What makes a hero? This actually goes back to my first year at IIT Kanpur, where during our mock interviews for the Aditya Birla Scholarships, we were asked the questions: do leaders need to have followers? In other words, is “leadership” a pure, abstract concept or does it have meaning only in the context of some “following”.

After much deliberation over the years with many a people, I’ve concluded that leadership is a contextual term, and has no meaning on its own. But this another question, as to the extent of the context. For instance, if we say a leader cannot be a leader without gaining **some** acknowledgement, one can immediately question just how much acknowledgement is required to make that claim? 1 follower, 10 followers?, 100? 1000? millions? Its hard to say.

Its the same thing with heroes I guess. Someone **has** to acknowledge the “heroic-ness”, it just can’t exist in thin air. I could go proclaiming all that I want that I’m a hero, but if __no one__ backs my claim, what meaning does it have? However, there is no dirth of examples where people have demonstrated extraordinary courage, leadership or other heroism in their own little worlds — within families or their close friend circle etc. But, even in that case, there is some acknowledgement involved, if only from among the members of that small circle.

I had quite a bit of discussion with Asim on this yesterday. That heroism is not a “pure” concept may also derive from the fact that “moral values” or “beliefs” themselves are not pure. Well I’m not saying that they are or they are not — but there is sufficient debate on this issue to cast doubts on either claim. While I would certainly like to believe that there are some notions of “good” and “evil” that transcend time, space and cultures; that are pure and exist on their own; that have meaning despite any “context”, there doesn’t seem to be sufficient evidence or convincing arguments to support this.

Asim says: “Over the years I’ve developed some notions on morality/goodness etc., what I call the “grander scheme of things” and according to that, nothing really matters! I mean, frankly, if people are murdered, how does it really matter on a cosmic scale? The only answer I’ve come to counter that is that we may not yet “know” the cosmic purpose of things and till such time as we do, being “nice” is a safer route. If some day we discover that things truly don’t matter, we can wreak havoc then” I agreed with this general sentiment.

But like I said, I would like to believe that the situation is not so bad; and that society’s morals and values are something deeper than simply “convinient rules” aimed to avoid chaos. I mean the fact that societies DO tend to get organized into fairly similar fashions across centuries and cultures must have some underlying current to it. :asim: pointed out that these are two separate questions actually: a) do such pure notions as abolute “good” values exist? and b) do they matter?

However, I think b) is not a fair question to ask, because it immediately brings in context — matters to whom? Perhaps to other intelligent races, perhaps to the ONE, perhaps to the whole universe some billions of humans going about their business on a tiny blue planet in a corner of the galaxy it might not matter. But to me, it sure as hell does. And so long as I’m not aware of the bigger picture, or the advantages in looking at things from that point of view, I’m definitely going to make it my business to think about whats good and whats bad for me and for humans as a race. All that talk, and it doesn’t leave you anywhere. Is this debate futile? Or we just dont have enough information to reach a conclusion yet? Time will tell.