Thought crucible

Even as the title itself suggests the intent of the writer in describing the darkness of more than one kind, Joseph Conrad's novella goes beyond portraying the harsh rainforests of Congo or the morbid depths of human psyche or even the tyranny of imperialistic rule. What was most impressive about the book was how Conrad explores and describes situations and experiences in the Heart of Darkness that is Africa. His contemplation on the cannibals' restraint in a certain episode or his narration of the sighting of the wild primeval men and his appreciation of their raw humanity like yours and mine or his facetious comments on high-handed Imperialism or describing Kurtz's 'Intended''s mourning a year later - an entire gamut of human expression is traversed. One of the most striking features of this book is how the author describes the life-like quality of the wilderness and the almost phantasmagorical description of his crew's trip down the Congo river into the ...

Ever since the advent of Wikipedia, it's variants and more importantly the idea of Web 2.5ing, there was always this sub-conscious effort from my side to be relevant in the accumulation of the most obscure of facts about the most obscure of places and people. Not only has my active participation been a rather interesting phenomenon, but the idea of a person who I would never have even imagined that I would meet, hooks up and we end up spending hours fighting virtual Mafia wars, the concept kind of starts getting a little trippy. These phenomena no doubt exhibit characteristics that are so profoundly impacted by time - just like the supposed maturity of a person or the understanding of the world or the more and more compact stuffing of switches and devices in a tenth of a micron square. But this particular aim of 'world knowledge' and a 'single consciousness' no longer begs but commands our attention as more and more rapid progress is being made in all fields concern...

It is with great pain and with little repentence I question beliefs that have become so ingrained in our society and way of thinking today. It is still so shocking to see babies thrown from atop buildings and burnt in bonfires in the name of black magic. But lets just take a step back and analyse what we have called black magic - an attempt to achieve ends my means that have no justification or reasoning, but are based purely on the whims and the divine afflati of old men witnessing mescaline sunsets and perhaps having necrophilistic tendencies. They say that the scriptures that were and are studied with such great veneration is really a description of the held ideas of those days and it is despicable that even today we decide to judge people and ideas based on our ability or even our willingness to shower that same veneration. The concept of God is a fundamentally personal one. It is just as bizarre to think of an old man looking at us from the sky as it is to bank on divine interfer...