Boring Politics and Opinions

My life is mostly boring. I do research, and every once in a while something cool happens. I also have some other interests such as music. . .which are mostly of interest only to me. A narrative on what I did on a given week, in my blog is as a result. . .equally boring. Politics on the other hand is exciting, and controversial, and something that can be argued about. It improves readership, encourages discussion, and raises my blog in rankings with sites such as technorati.

So should I sell out and discuss my uncensored controversial opinions on various topics, and add to the hustle and bustle of political debate (or lack thereof)? Or is that boring too?

I figured, I think like someone in my demographic can be predicted to think. I am a graduate student in a scientific career path. Therefore articles such as this enrage me. . .and make me want to shout out to the world all the scientific arguments in favor of evolution. And you don't even want to get me started on how many loopholes. . .and the lack of predictions. . .and problems that "Intelligent Design" has. Nobody can argue against a healthy debate, which is what the statements appear to imply. Teach both as parallel, equally plausible, theories. But science is fairly good at encouraging and having competing theories battle it out in Journal publications, until at the end (hopefully) the truth triumphs. Like other human enterprises it is not perfect. But overall, the scientific system works. So I believe. Because I am where I am.

Which leads me to wonder. . .are my opinions boring too? They are so predictable. If we can lump the opinions of all those red-state, bible belt, evangelical potato farmers into one big pro-intelligent design demographic. . .then they can say the same for us. Us and them. I am sure some very well paid people do the math when they are trying to decide what their political parties should stand for. . .and what issues the media should hype so that the talking points during the elections, favor their parties chances of winning, by matching the majority opinion.

So there is a powerlesness in being a statistic like this, that I resent. I, we, have all been accounted for. Our voices have been used or drowned, and our consent manufactured by creating artificial boundaries of them and us. One constant in all this, is that we will always fight for "US", especially if we are threatened. We are driven by necessity. We are behaving exactly like how we would have been expected to behave. Everyone is.

We are born into a huge continuum of cause and effect, that is the world. At some point, it becomes a question of "Where do you want the your life/the world to go?" and how do we get there. It becomes all about acting towards that vision, which should be as global as possible. . .instead of reacting to the past. And in order to have as globaly a vision as possible, we need the truth. . .and science is a great human institution designed specifically to study these material truths. India's national emblem says "Satyameva Jayate"-- Ultimately truth wins. If that is true, it gives me great cause for hope and optimism. That can be the basis of real leadership.


In conjunction with the meaninglesness of my opinions, Amlan wrote a post on whether penguins believe in God. Which goes very nicely with this theme.

In other news, Anyesha's parents and I went to Luray Caverns this Saturday. The drive was amazing, and the caves were spectacular.

Our car is also having some issues. On Thursday it had broken down in the middle of Langley Park with Anyesha and her mom. We repaired the distributor, which apparently was the problem. . .but the mechanics must not have put the car back together right. After returning from Luray, we find engine oil splattered all over under the hood. I love my '92 Honda Accord, and I hate it when stuff like this happens. Got more fighting with the mechanic tomorrow.