Suicide

We resign from our jobs, we divorce our husband/wife because we think the status-quo is not something we want to put up with. Suicide is nothing but a resignation from life or an event where we divorce our life. The reason is the same - that the status-quo is unacceptable. And just as we move to a different job, different relationship, we move to a different "life" when we commit suicide. While no one frowns upon resignations, while Catholics and other religious people frown upon divorce, a whole lot more people including the legal apparatus frown upon suicide. An exception was in the case of Sati - a practice that used to exist a 100 years back among recently widowed Hindu women in India.

A close cousin of suicide is euthanasia which is legally allowed, I think, in Switzerland and in few other places but not in India.

Another cousin is the old Tamil practice is "vadakkiruthal" - when a person decided to "resign" he would sit facing the north (= vadakku) and starve to death in a peaceful manner, perhaps taking time to chat with friends and family during his resignation process which could last a few weeks. This is explained in an earlier post.

I am reminded of an incident where a man, a distant acquaintance, encouraged his wife to commit suicide. This, of course, is closer to murder than to suicide. I wonder whether the husband, the instigator, was more weird. Or his wife who acquiesced.

So long as the decision to commit suicide is taken by a person in his right mind - it is no different from a will written by a man. It's his right. Can we deny a man the  right to decide when to "resign" from his life?

Additional reading:
http://www.intropsych.com/ch10_development/suicide.html

Interesting Flight Routes

Couple of days back I was tracking flight routes and I took pictures of some interesting routes. All pictures were taken from flighradar24 app. And up is North in all photos.

Picture above shows route from SF to Dubai. See how the flight goes north of Greenland. This is a polar route. There are more polar routes shown later.

This picture (above) is that of Dubai to Washington DC. About 9 hours into the flight and 4 more hours to go. The flight is shown in red color in the top right of the picture flying over Greenland.

The picture above shows Dubai to Washington (or is it New York) route - note that the place was flying over Greenland at the time the picture was shot. And this is NOT a polar route - at no point in the route is the latitude above 67degrees.

See this picture above. The plane is flying from the east cost in USA to a place in Eastern Asia (Beijing / Taipei / Seoul / Hong Kong). And the route is way above Alaska (Alaska is in the center of the picture). This is a polar route.

Shown above is another polar route from NY to Seoul.

Route above is from Toronto to Hong Kong. Is it a polar route?

Shown above is the 3D picture as though taken from the plane - some place near Pennsylvania.

Shown above the LA to Moscow route. Is is polar?

Shown above is NY to a place near China (Taipei?) - flying east.

Shown above is NY to Seoul (I think it is Seoul) - flying west. Flying north of Alaska. Polar route. Another such route (shown below) from Eastern Asia to East Coast of North America.

This is an interesting picture showing 3 flights about to enter Greenland which are from NY/Toronto to East Asia (near China). How do I know this? Because I had gone through the flight details before I took the picture. The two planes going North/Northwest at the top of the picture are going from NY/Toronto to eastern Asia but taking the western route over international date line.

The pictures above and below show two interesting polar routes. Both planes are so close to each other. One is from San Francisco to Dubai going East and the one below is from New York to Seoul going West. The pictures were taken at the same time. Surprisingly both are Airbus A380-861.

Shown above is one of the few intercontinental flights that start and terminate in the southern hemisphere. Santiago (Chile) to Auckland (New Zealand). Because of the scarcity of such flights I doubt whether there are any polar routes in the southern hemisphere (say, Chile to Australia or Argentina to South Africa flying over Antarctica).

For some reason, part of the route from Santiago to where the plane is in South Pacific is not displayed. The boarding and destination airports are shown with a blue pin, though, as usual. 

This flight is going from Delhi to Vancouver (polar route). This site was used to combine two pictures: https://www.imgonline.com.ua/eng/combine-two-images-into-one.php

Here, below, are 2 flight routes juxtaposed. One is from Doha, Qatar to LAX, going by the polar route over Greenland while the route on the right is from Dubai to SFO going by the polar route easterly over Alaska. Incidentally both the flights, at the time I was watching, were both North of Russia and were about turn "left" and "right", respectively.

The route below is from Delhi to SFO flying eastwards over Alaska. This is the first time I am seeing such a route.

This route is close to the South Pole: from Santiago to Sydney. Three pictures were merged.

Polar map:

These are images from the net.

This flight from Singapore to JFK takes 17 hours - the longest I have come across. It flies across the Pacific.

This is a LATAM airline flight from Santiago to Sydney. I have included both the Google Earth route and flightradar24 routes (the latter has 3 parts merged).

This is the Lufthansa flight from Tokyo to Frankfurt. Instead of flying west over Russia, because of the war the flight has taken the polar route, it's flying over Alaska and then down east of Greenland to Germany.

Adolf Eichmann, Simon Wiesenthal, Josef Mengele, Christian Wirth

Quotes, reproduced without permission, from a book by Alan Levy: "Nazi Hunter: The Wiesenthal File" (Protagonist is Simon Wiesenthal) - the quotes are about Adolf Eichmann, unless otherwise mentioned.

"At the time, Eichmann impressed his superiors only with his diligence in doing whatever was asked of him. Though one of his colleagues described him as a most colorless creature - the typical subordinate: pedantic, punctilious [and] devoid of any thorough knowledge."

"It was here [Palais Rothschild in Austria] that he [Eichmann] discovered his two true talents: he could organize ruthlessly and he could negotiate from a position of strength, real or illusory."

"'Anger got the better off me' Eichmann recalled in 1960. 'I lost my control, which very seldom happened. I don't know what got into me. I let myself go and slapped him in the face. It wasn't the kind of also that hurt, I'm sure of that. I haven't got that much muscle. But I never concealed that incident. Later on, when I was a commandant, I spoke of it in in the presence of my subordinate officers AND Dr. Lowenherz - and begged his pardon. I did that deliberately... because on the department I ran layer, I did not tolerate physical violence. That was why I apologized in uniform and in the presence of my staff.' Nothing is more important to a desk murderer than clean hands."

How feminine... [my comment]

"One of the Eichmann family's good friends, who had not been a Nazi, simply refused to believe the accusations against 'that oafish lackluster Adolf who never spoke up and often seemed to get stupidly stuck on one idea'. Wiesenthal said later 'The man didn't realize how well he'd characterized Eichmann - how right he was and how wrong'."

"Eichmann could have been a communist taking orders from Stalin or a Mafioso from his godfather. In every dictatorship, the appeal to such people is the same: 'Let the Führer think for you'."

Eichmann was a J (as in MBTI). Germans are (or were) largely J's. Is it possible that normal people can become murderers if their duties involved murder? is there a potential criminal lurking in SJ's? I had earlier thought that J's, especially TJ's were not capable of dastardly acts. I wonder... Was Eichmann T or an F?

I would assume Eichmann had a strong Mars and a strong Saturn (indicated by J) and poor Venus (an inability to decide what's good for him - no independent goals or vision). Looking at his horoscope (taking date of birth data from Wiki), his Mars and Saturn are both strong. Mercury is debilitated but in its own constellation. Surprisingly though, so is his Venus and Moon. Now, how come his Venus is strong? :( 

While he was found guilty and hanged to death in Israel, I can't help but wonder... Was he guilty? He did his job (exterminating Jews) as a duty. Just as the two soldiers in the Tom Cruise movie A Few Good Men were found to be guilty of conduct unbecoming a Marine and dishonorably discharged for having only executed a Code Red (=kill) ordered by the Camp Commander. The senior of the two soldiers explains at the end of the movie to the junior person as to why they were dishonorably discharged: Marines were supposed to protect the weak. Carrying out orders to kill the weak was wrong. Hmmm. Difficult to integrate duty and morality when the two are out of sync.

Another person the book describes is Josef Mengele, the Angel Of Death in Auschwitz, formally the chief medical officer of the extermination camp. Quotes from the book about him:

"He was a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Munich who had studied Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, but embraced the racist rubbish of Alfred Rosenburg, Hitler's philosopher."

"In front of the Auschwitz crematorium he was once heard to say 'Here the Jews enter through the door and leave through the chimney.'"

His remark seems more like that of a tourist guide who extols someone else's virtue. (I doubt whether he designed the crematorium. - That the statement is in extremely poor taste is not worth mentioning.)

"Pedaling blithely along, the doctor in his early thirties seemed seemed immune to the dirt, dust and grease of the misery around him - none of which was [was, not were!!] permitted to smudge his attire...He might be humming or whistling a melody - maybe Mozart, sometimes Wagner, but invariably with perfect pitch, for there was much that was musical about this man..."

"He liked cryptic dialogues  in which he understood the subtle nuances, but the other person didn't. "

Was he an N (iNtuitive as in MBTI)? This guy prided himself on his work while Eichmann did his work conscientiously and ably. How come both have strong Venus? It is worth noting that Mengele had strong Mars and Venus and a debilitated Saturn. Is weakness of Saturn more important than the strength of Venus in this case? Incidentally, Saturn and Rahu are in the 8th from Moon which point to a different conclusion about his marriage.

"Of the millions he met in the eternal chill before the chimneys of Birkenau (Auschwitz), Dr Mengele reserved a special welcome for those who had not been created in "God's image", for they were laboratory animals for his diabolical pseudo-scientific experiments."

This man was different from Eichmann. He was more akin to Hitler.

"In the Auschwitz memoir appropriately titled Anus Mundi, Polish survivor, Wieslaw Kielar characterizes the anthropologist Dr Mengele, who was also camp doctor as 'an exceedingly elegant and good looking SS officer who, thanks to his attractive appearance and his good manners, conveyed the expression of a gentle and cultured man who had nothing to do with selection, phenol and Zyklon-B. What he was like in reality was something we were to learn soon enough.'"

"As a matter of fact, Dr Josef Mengele was no evil mastermind, no ancient dybbuk, no devil incarnate but a dumb intellectual, a dilettante, a dabbler who used human beings as his guinea pigs. Though better educated and endowed, he was as much a loser in life as Eichmann or Stangl, a bungler whose failures bred failures, aborted starts and abrupt ends that, almost without design, carved a trail of blunders and false clues leading only to Simon Wiesenthal's greatest postwar disappointment. Even Mengele's drowning in three or four feet of water - which cost the world and Wiesenthal a chance to confront him in court - was banal and stumbling, as befits the man's mediocrity."

I am not able to agree with the opinion expressed in the para above. 

"There [in the camp] he came into his own - found expression for his talents, so that what had been potential became actual. Intelligent but hardly an intellectual giant, Mengele found expression and recognition in Auschwitz beyond his talent. The all important Auschwitz dimension was added to ... create a uniquely intense version of the Auschwitz self as the physician-killer-researcher.... In Auschwitz, Mengele was 'the right man at the right place at the right time.' His energies no less than his ambition were galvanized by this Auschwitz synchronization of all his faculties."

"[As per Dr Martina Puzina, a University of Lemburg anthropologist] 'He [Mengele] believed you could create a new super race as though you were breeding horses. He thought it was possible to gain absolute control over a whole race. Man is so infinitely complex that that kind of strict control over such a vast population could never exist. He was a racist and a Nazi. He was ambitious up to the point of being completely inhuman. He was mad about genetic engineering.... In the end he would have killed his own mother if it would have helped him.'"

"If gypsies were his fetish, twins were his forte. 'Scientists,' Mengele once gloated 'have always been able to study twins after they have been born together. But only in the Third Reich can Science examine twins who died together.' Sometimes he would even dissect them while still alive."

It is usually thought that psychopaths or criminals who are "unfeeling" are of Thinking (as in MBTI) type because Feelers would be empathetic. Mengele is an example to disprove that notion perhaps. Being "F" is not sufficient for a person to be decent. Just as being J, as I realized, is not sufficient for a person to be decent.

"A letter of recommendation from the SS garrison commander at Auschwitz: Dr Mengele has been here since 30 May 1943. Dr Mengele has an open, honorable firm character. He is absolutely trustworthy, upright and direct. His mental and bodily hygiene is outstanding. His appearance indicates no weakness of character, no inclinations or addictions. His intellectual and physical predispositions can be designated as excellent. In his function as camp physician at Concentration Camp at Auschwitz, he applied his knowledge practically and theoretically while fighting grave epidemics. He seized every every opportunity, even under difficult circumstances, to improve both his theoretical and practical knowledge. He uses his spare time to search for further opportunities and unused anthropological materials."

I am amazed by this recommendation. Was it written by Mengene himself? Could his nature be so skilfully masked and reputation cleaned? Wonderful. A classic case of strong Venus (and Mars) and a weak Saturn.

"Simon Wiesenthal points out that this is a very common paradox: 'From Eichmann and Stangl on down, ninety percent of my 'clients' were - sometimes before the war and certainly after the war - solid family man and women, devoted to their children, loyal to their relatives, hardworking, taxpaying good citizens and good neighbours who did their duty, tended to their gardens and seldom made trouble for anyone. But when they put on under uniform, they became something else: monsters, sadists, torturers, killers, desk murderers. The minute they took off the uniform they became model citizens again."

"'The trouble with Eichmann' writes Hannah Arendt, 'was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.' And Stangl, says Gitta Sereny, had an infinite capacity to manipulate and repress his own moral scruples which, she insists, unquestionably existed."

"'In countries where the church is a controlling or dominating factor,' said the La Vista report, 'the Vatican has brought pressure to bear which has resulted in the foreign missions of those Latin American countries taking an attitude almost favoring the entry into their country of former Nazi and former fascist or other political groups, so long as they are anti-communist.' LA Vista added that 'the justification of the Vatican for its participation in this illegal traffic is simply the propagation of the faith.'"

The Catholics and Muslim institutions are primarily feelers (not thinkers) - power hungry.

"During her stay in Düsseldorf, Theresa Stangl visited her husband several times a week. 'What was strange,' she says 'was that often he would hardly talk to me. He'd sit opposite me at the table... But he'd chat with the guards, not with me. He'd talk to them about their leaves, their outings, places he knew, had been to. It hurt me and sometimes I'd say, ' Don't you want to talk to me?' Of course he didn't. To talk about his work from 1940-43 would have been to confess his infidelity to her values and upset the delicate equilibrium of his relationship with her and his family. She, more than he, had long looked the other way. His way crimes were like a mistress that everybody knows the head of the house has, but to openly acknowledge her existence would disturb the harmony of Sunday dinner. So it is perhaps fitting that the only time Stangl ever acknowledged his guilt, in private or in public, was to another woman, Gotta Sereny on Sunday, 27 June 1971, the day before he died."

"Sereny comes to this conclusion: 'I do not believe that all men are equal, for what we are above all things, is individual and different. But individuality and difference are not only due to the talents we happen to be born with. They depend as much on the extent to which we are allowed to expand in freedom... A moral monster, I believe, is not born, bit is produced by interference with this growth."

"Unlike Eichmann, however, he [John Demjanjuk, Ford Motor Co mechanic], denied everything, including, that he, Ivan Nicolaivich Demjanjuk, born 3 Apr 1920, in Duboimachariwzi in the Ukraine, was the same person as 'the other Ivan', whose name he (and later, others) said was Marchenko. But Demjanjuk performed the ultimate abstraction when he told the  US Marshals escorting him to Israel: 'If I was in Treblinka, then I was just a small cog. There was a war on, and there was no choice but to follow orders. But I was never in Treblinka.'" Wonder how his Venus is...

"'The trouble with Eichmann' writes Hannah Arendt, 'was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.' And Stangl, says Gitta Sereny, had an infinite capacity to manipulate and repress his own moral scruples which, she insists, unquestionably existed."

The book also talks about Raoul Wallenburg, who apparently was a gentile Swede and whose contribution to the Jewish cause is indicated to have been great.

Shown below are recent photos (shot by a friend of mine) of old houses in the southern part of Poland where I understand Jews used to live around 1944 until they escaped or the Gestapo took them away .

Additional reading:

1. Auschwitz extermination camp (Near Krakow)
2. Treblinka extermination camp (North east of Warsaw, Lublin)
3. Riga concentration camp (Latvia)
4. Dachau concentration camp (Southern Germany)
5. http://Calmisc.blogspot.com/2015/04/best-of-world-war-ilse-koch.html
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Wirth

Logical Puzzle - Chery's Birthday

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32297367

What Is Pride

Pride is the inability to accept that you produce a shoddy output. That you would be willing to rectify it at your cost than be known among your "customers" that you produced a shoddy product. 

Pride is process focused.

When you focus on an output, you usually dilute the process.

What Is N?

What Is N (= "iNtuitive" as in MBTI)?

While reading the book "Future Shock" I realized how "N" the author, Alvin Toffler is. 

While many of us have gone personally through each of the examples cited in the book, few or none of us would have been able to recognize a pattern behind what is happening in this world. Just like most of us watched an apple fall, only one person found and explained the underlying theory, Toffler is one person who has explained the underlying theory behind what's going on this world. And this is N.

A quote by Toffler from here:

“In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life — the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city's economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools — even universities — are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave.” ― Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave.

I was watching the movie Drishyam. The following is a dialog from that movie. Tabu says about Vijay (Ajay Devgn):

"Vijay teen taareek ko panjim mein tha. Vijay teen tareek ko bhi panjim mein tha." For those who have watched the movie and who remember this scene - this ability to figure out what must have happened which explained all the events (the equivalent of looking at a crime scene and saying "the butler mus have done the crime")  is Ne. It is not possible to logical deduction. Only through Induction.

Beautiful induction. 

Additional reading:

1. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/02/intuitive-or-sensing.html
2. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/03/intelligence-types.html
3. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/04/sensing-vs-perceiving-and-intuitive-vs.html

Difference Between Extraverted And Introverted Stuff

To see the domininant, inferior functions etc for each MBTI type look here (look at the red colored cells in "Determine Functions for MBTI Ty" tab. To see the percentage of people with each MBTI type see the same link above and look at the red cells in thee "MBTI Stats" tab or click here


Difference between Fi Vs Fe (MBTI)
http://introspective-to-a-fault.blogspot.in/2014/05/revisiting-introverted-feeling-and.html

Difference between Ti and Te

http://personalitycafe.com/cognitive-functions/147142-te-vs-ti-real-life-example-how-they-differ.html

Difference between Si and Se

• http://personalityjunkie.com/extraverted-sensing-se-vs-introverted-sensing-si/ This is an excellent reference. Quote: "Extraverted Sensing (or what Jung called Extraverted Sensation) occurs by way of the five primary senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste). Introverted Sensing (Si), by contrast, relates to inner bodily sensations such as pain, hunger, thirst, internal temperature, numbness, tingling, muscle tension, etc."... "While all personality types rely on vision for everyday functioning, Se types seem especially attuned to visual input. This is why they (SPs) tend to be more concerned about their appearance, as well as appearances in general, than Si types (SJs) are. SPs seek pleasure and Se takes great pleasure in perceiving both physical beauty and sensory novelty. Their penchant for sensory novelty is why SPs are commonly described as thrill-seekers or hedonists. Se is also engaged by physical action. SPs love perceiving and physically responding to environmental cues. This why they often take up work as first responders, athletes, mechanics, chefs, and the like." While I personally had the same belief about SP's I had not understood the theory. (Stuff in Italics is my opinion.) "For Si types (SJs), in particular, the things that are most prominent and cherished in this Si perspective are those which are most routine and familiar. There seems to be a quantitative factor at work in Si. The more times something is done—eating a certain meal, hearing a specific song, etc.—the more preferable it becomes. It was probably an Si type who, in noticing how his tastes changed with repeated exposures, coined the phrase “it will grow on me.” In many cases, if you can get an SJ to keep trying something, there’s a good chance they will come to enjoy it (or at least better tolerate it). SP types, who are less attached to past experiences and generally seem to have a broader palate, are more apt to like something the first time around. SJs, by contrast, prefer that extraverted sensations remain within a familiar bandwidth. Novel or extreme external sensations can even seem intrusive to SJs (especially ISJs)"
• http://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2015/09/22/what-type-of-sensor-are-you-the-difference-between-extraverted-and-introverted-sensing/ Quote: "Those with inferior Se, like the INTJs and INFJs, are extremely sensitive to the sensory world and are easily overstimulated." This seems to relate to HSP's (see book on HSP by Elaine Aron). "Extraverted sensors live life in the moment and love surprises and spontaneity. They often are excellent in a crisis, because they can think so well on their feet. "
• https://www.reddit.com/r/mbti/comments/4aznkm/does_this_sound_more_se_or_si/

Difference between Ni and Ne

• http://personalityjunkie.com/10/extraverted-intuition-ne-vs-introverted-intuition-ni/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/mbti/comments/310asy/whats_the_difference_between_ni_and_ne/
• http://personalitycafe.com/cognitive-functions/34859-difference-between-ne-ni.html
• http://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2015/09/08/what-type-of-intuitor-are-you-understanding-the-difference-between-extraverted-and-introverted-intuitio/ - shows differences in keywords associated with N and S 
• https://funkymbtifiction.tumblr.com/post/121996500900/how-does-ne-and-ni-differentiate-each-other-in
• https://funkymbtifiction.tumblr.com/post/68512751960/there-are-two-kinds-of-intuitives-which-are

Difference between Ni and Ti (Seems a little self deprecating with respect to Ni): https://www.quora.com/Myers-Briggs-Type-Indicator-Whats-the-difference-between-Ni-and-Ti




Difference between Ni-Ti and Si-Ti: https://funkymbtifiction.tumblr.com/post/108027521645/whats-the-difference-between-ti-si-loop-and-ni-ti - Nice article. Quote: "Si-Ti loops get involved in analyzing and re-analyzing (or reliving) a negative past experience (“The last time you did this, you failed!”). Ni-Ti loops get hung up on analyzing and re-analyzing an ideal, a future vision, or a concept until they become so crippled that they never work toward implementing it."

Difference between Thinking (T) and Feeling (F):

• https://debiyazbeck.com/2010/05/15/thinking-vs-feeling/
• http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/conflict-and-jungs-thinker-feeler-struggle-in-relationships-0220144
• http://www.oursmallhours.com/thinking-and-feeling/ : Shows example
• http://www.dunning.ca/blog/mistyping-is-your-natural-preference-thinking-or-feeling/ - shows example

Additional reading:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/heidi-priebe/2015/06/if-youre-confused-about-your-myers-briggs-personality-type-read-this-an-intro-to-cognitive-functions/: All extraverted and introverted functions defined.

Sensing Vs Perceiving And Intuitive Vs Judging

The definitions of sensing and judging seem to overlap as do those of Intuitive and perceiving. See this page. Sensors are defined as "jumping immediately to the task", "overly factual and resistant to change" while intuitives are defined as "unrealistic and impractical", "difficult to pin down". Are the definitions of S, N correct? Probably yes. Do these also define J and P, respectively? Maybe, yes. "Overly factual" does not refer to J but "difficult to change" may be does.

I keep thinking. Each of I, S, T, J draws a boundary and tries to keep the activity or thoughts fenced while each of E, N, F, P does the reverse. 

While there is perhaps no overlap between E and I, between S and N, T and F, J and P.... there seems to be a good amount of overlap across the 4 parameters. If this is true, not only does it make typing difficult, it may even make the model incorrect because of the overlap.

Matter of fact I think there is a quite a bit of overlap among E, N, F and P. I think I have mentioned this earlier.

This is a good article on the difference between judging and perceiving.

Quote from http://www.humanmetrics.com/personality/type: "Sensing means that a person mainly believes information he or she receives directly from the external world. Intuition means that a person believes mainly information he or she receives from the internal or imaginative world."

Additional reading:

1. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/02/intelligence-and-personality-disorder.html
2. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2014/10/einstfpj-mbti.html

Krishna And Kalyavan

Today I was watching Mahabharata on TV. Today's episode was about Krishna guiding Kalyavan towards his (Kalyavan's) death. For dummies like me who are wondering who Kalyavan was.. He was a bad man. 

Arjuna is perplexed at Krishna, who instead of fighting Kalyavan, actually withdraws towards a cave.

Krishna explains to Arjun why he maneuvered Kalyavan into a cave where a Rishi was doing Tapas completely covered by a cloth. Kalyavan, who has sworn to kill Krishna, thinks that it's Krishna who is hiding under the cloth and kicks the person inside the cloth cover, thus waking up the Rishi who, in his wrath, kills Kalyavan.

Krishna explains that this is fate, that Kalyavan was fated to die this way. True, perhaps. God of course created all of us and is omniscient. He knows what has happened and what will happen to every thing and living being in the universe(s).

If I wrote a software program, I would probably know the meaning of each statement and perhaps even know how efficient each part of the program and which part would consume a lot of resources and so on.

But then if I start ascribing piety and evil to each component of the program, it is weird. I created the program - I am responsible for how each part of the program performs. I cannot distance myself and say "this is evil".

If destiny is true, how can we ever ascribe good and evil to people around us? We are destined to behave in a particular way. People are not responsible for what they are destined to do. Our behavior itself, good or bad, is an "Act of god". 

How do people believe in destiny (and hence, in absence of free will) and also simultaneously believe that some people are good and others are evil and that they are responsible for what they are? 

I am surprised - how does Krishna believe in this fallacy? He is supposed to be knowledgeable, if not, an avatar of God.

I am shaking my head. Some things don't seem to make sense.

Quote from http://cicn.vanderbilt.edu/images/news/psycho.pdf: 

"Gage’s story became a classic of neuroscience because it revealed that behavior, which seems a matter of personal will, is fundamentally biological."

Quote from http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/intro.asp#.VSE5ltyUdrw: 

"Everyone emerges from childhood with one of the nine types dominating their personality, with inborn temperament and other pre-natal factors being the main determinants of our type. This is one area where most all of the major Enneagram authors agree—we are born with a dominant type. Subsequently, this inborn orientation largely determines the ways in which we learn to adapt to our early childhood environment. It also seems to lead to certain unconscious orientations toward our parental figures, but why this is so, we still do not know. In any case, by the time children are four or five years old, their consciousness has developed sufficiently to have a separate sense of self. Although their identity is still very fluid, at this age children begin to establish themselves and find ways of fitting into the world on their own."

I had shared these thoughts with BR, a friend of mine about a month back. I got a reply today. I am posting the same here..

The other day i did not answer 2 or 3 of your questions. (1) Destiny and Freewill. (2) The very first creation by God. (3) Our actions - God's or ours?

(1) What you meet in life is Destiny. How you meet it is Freewill. Destiny may or may not be subject to change. It is the choice of the individual but however it is, it is predestined only. An illustration-In a temple, people receive "prasad" at the end of their prayers Irrespective of its taste,it is consumed by one and all WITHOUT COMMENTS. The reason being that it is considered as God's Blessing.Similarly,our experiences in life are 'prasad' only. Whether they are favorable or unfavorable to us, they have to be consumed (swallowed if they are unpleasant) WITHOUT COMMENTS. They are His Blessings only, some in disguise, for unknown reasons. For one with a correct understanding, a life full of sorrow will not anger him/her because he/she knows that whatever happens IS for their ultimate good. (2) As followers of Sri Aadi Sankaracharya who propagated Advaita philosophy, we all are part of (Ansh, in sanskrit) The One and only Reality. According to this philosophy, the Reality or Truth is only One Consciousness or Awareness. There is no duality meaning creation, world etc. is only a myth. Even the Trinity- Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are CREATED because of the will of The One Supreme Being. This Supreme Being is beginningless and endless, birthless and deathless. Hence, the question of the first creation does not arise at all. But even then, we have been given the names of the first couple in Brahma's creation as Manu and Satrupa. It can be taken that our presence here is because of them who were the first couple after creation to beget progeny.
(3) Whatever are one's experiences in a lifetime is according to the doctrine of karma.The law of karma is the application of cause and effect in this world. One's happiness or suffering are the inevitable consequences of actions in a previous life. Similarly, actions performed in this life determine those of the next. Hence, the pains of this life are self-inflicted, they have to be accepted with calmness and resignation.Thus one is free to rise or fall in their evolution.If we learn to live rightly here, we are spared grievous suffering in a future existence on whichever plane we may land. The rewards and punishments are not by the whims of God, which most of us believe to be.". I reap what I sow." It applies equally to one and all without even a trace of partiality. God is not responsible for our actions, He gives results to actions governed by the law. Hence He is responsible for the results of actions.
Another clarification;
Sri Krishna is considered to be 'Poornaavataar' among all Incarnations, meaning, A complete Divine Incarnation-human +divine at its fullest. He also behaved in compliance to the Supreme, not according to His wishesJust as we worship our own religion but respect other religions as well, just as we love our own mother but respect others' mothers as well, we must adore our favourite deity without an aversion for other deities (of other religions too)..

Hmmm. BR, What do I make of this?

Additional reading:

1. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/03/criminals-who-are-they.html
2. http://Calmisc.blogspot.com/2014/10/krishna-villain.html

Intelligence Types - Sensing And Intuition

I used to think intelligence has got to do with iNtuition. True, but this is abstract intelligence - meaning an ability to infer, figure things out through induction or deduction about abstract things.

Solving problems effectively can also be through Sensing. Today I was watching a movie "Shanghai Knights" where two guys try to get into a closed house by picking the lock - supposedly a difficult lock. The third guy in the group throws a stone on the glass door and helps all of them get in. It started me thinking.

I am also reminded of an incident in one of Asterix comic books. Asterix is probably N while his dear friend Obelix is, well, not so. Once while in Rome, incognito, searching for a person, Asterix keeps thinking trying to figure out a way to determine where the person could be. Obelix meanwhile gets hold of a guard and shakes and slaps him up and asks him where that person is and the guard blurts out the location. Asterix watches this incident dumbfounded.

When you want to get a done, you can use your senses and figure out an effective solution instead of trying to do the abstract theoretical way.

A friend of mine has a son and a daughter. The son is an S and the daughter (I think is) an N. When my gave a problem to her two children, the daughter thought for some time (using her N perhaps) and decided she couldn't solve it. And stopped making any further effort. The son was confidence personified. He knew he would get it. (Granted, I don't know whether the son or the daughter solved it finally.)

Being intimately aware of the environment through his senses, an S has immense information to solve the problem. Many an N perhaps is incapable of solving small problems which is a piece of cake for an S.

While S and N are called perceiving functions, perhaps they are problem solving functions also. Each one provides a different kind of method to address problems. Perhaps the S way is unsophisticated. And perhaps the N spends a lot of time trying to solve simple problems. 

There is a story in Hindu mythology. Shiva and Parvati hold a competition for their two sons Ganesh and Kartjik. The one to go around the world first will be the winner. Karthik had a peacock as his vehicle. And he climbed on it and got going fast. Ganesh had only a mouse as his vehicle. He remembered that a person's world is his parents. So he circled his parents and declared himself the winner. His parents couldn't fault his way.

There are 2 ways to get get hold of an invention. 

• Invent it yourself, the hard way, the way Hank Rearden did in Atlas Shrugged. 
• Or blackmail the inventor to give it to you - as the antagonists did in the same novel. Rearden was an N. The latter were S.

S is good at finding an informal shortcut using his senses. An N is good at improving efficiency using classic rigor. An S may make a better lawyer than an N.

Problems can be solved using either of S or N. People use whichever comes easily to them.

I can't help but wonder whether the points above could be attributed to P and J instead of to S and N.

Additional reading:

• http://www.celebritytypes.com/blog/2013/06/8-common-typing-mistakes/
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/02/intuitive-or-sensing.html
• http://personalitycafe.com/myers-briggs-forum/44315-reversing-stereotypes-smart-sensors-dumb-intuitives-2.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2014/10/einstfpj-mbti.html
• http://www.slayerment.com/which-smartest-mbti-type
• http://www.slayerment.com/blog/becoming-attorney-game-life
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/03/feeling-or-thinking.html