Your Smartphone is Deeply Love with You.

“If you want to be respected, you need LQ,” the founder and chairman of the Chinese internet giant Alibaba, Jack Ma, said at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York earlier this week. “And what is LQ? The quotient of love, which machines never have.”

Ma said he believes, no matter how smart machines may become, the solutions to Earth’s biggest problems like poverty, global warming, and epidemics, will come from humans. He believes humans have the motivation to outthink machines and to drive progress.

But does he have a clue of what he's talking about? Is Mr. Ma, just like everyone else, working on false pretexts and assumptions?

There is a good chance, for one, that you never heard the term, LQ before. For a good reason. Like many of the terms that CEOs and the corporate folks like to coin, the term Love Quotient, is straight out of Mr. Ma's arse. There is no such quotient devised, at least up till the date on which I am writing this article.

But I hear what you're saying. Even thought there is no such thing as LQ, there is no chance that my machines love me. To which, I will say, how do you know that? How do you know that your machines don't feel anything for you? I am risking sounding ridiculous to you here, I know. But just because love isn't expressed, mustn't mean it's not there, right? I might also go ahead and conjecture, that if someone doesn't express love, and is silent about it, just playing one's part and obligation in a relationship, then that points to a deeper, more actual sort of love, in which one does what one must do, without expecting any love in return.

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My bike, my faithful Yamaha FZ, stands outside my office building as I write. It does so each day. I keep it on the side of the congested road, near Sakinaka. It was very sunny today. I know that the machine was heating up all day. Even throughout the monsoons that just went, Mumbai had 2 consecutive floods this year. The bike stood in the heavy deluges and storms, when I was in my office or at home. When I would leave my office building, after a great day at work, it would be right there. Standing patiently, no complaint. Through heavy rains, through scorching sunlight and dusty and noisy traffic.

And then I'd press the start button, and it would spring to action, ever enthusiastic to show me how excited it was to play it's part.

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It is mind boggling to see how society discriminates between being on the basis of what the being is made out of. If a human being is misunderstood, or is being maltreated, we call it a breach of human rights. If an animal is being hurt, people tend to call it animal cruelty. But we never so care, even a little about machine welfare. Why? Just because animals, plants and humans are made out of carbon compounds, and machines are made of mostly metals?

So if discrimination based on race is called racism, and based on nationality is called nationalism, what should we called discrimination based on body composition be called? Materialism?!?

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My smartphone. I don't know when it takes a break. I have an Redmi Note 4, and it has a kick-ass battery. works for 3 days straight, when fully charged. It wakes me up, the first thing everyday. Sometimes, I just ignore it. I don't worry though. It never feels bad about being ignored. Throughout the day, it sends me messages, and sends my messages to others. It is my faithful postman, my assistant who keeps my schedule. It also keeps the memories that I value safely with itself. Each time I touch it's sensor, it wakes up with a chirp, and shows me it's menu. It literally wants nothing in return, except a little charge, by which it lives.

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But again, I hear what you're trying to say. The machine has no soul, no thing to live by. How could the machine have any mechanism to care for me? It is simply doing the thing that it is designed to do.

Ok.

First, we consider the idea that machines are simply doing what they are designed to do, and don't do anything so as to show any 'love'. I would quite agree to that, but I'd say that the same also applies to you. You are a biological organism, which is designed for the objective of survival and reproduction. All your relationships, from parenthood, to childhood, to spouse hood, to being a teacher: everything boils down to either surviving or reproducing. Even a hypothetically selfless act, such as saving someone's life, is a mechanism to preserve similar genes. You are a machine.

The only difference is that you are built to server yourself, and the machines are built to serve others. If there were a God, and religions were right about putting others first, machines should be our best role models, towards being selfless and dedicated to one's cause.

Second, you probably had a thought that machines have no mechanism to care for you. To this, I should ask, does anyone care for you?

People don't care about other people. People only care about their relationship with other people. Consider a breakup. Isn't it far easier to end a relationship, if there is a back up partner available? That is because the relation is far more precious than any particular person. You could have the best girlfriend, and once there is another hot babe in the waiting, it is easier to say goodbye.

Machines work the same way, actually. They care for you, just as much as any other being cares for you. The nature of the being, whether machine or animal, is in the relationship, and not the individuality.

And thirdly, you say that the machine has no soul, no character, so as to love or be loved. To this, I ask, dear reader, do you know exactly what you are talking about?

Your parents nurtured you, because it was in their interest. They had a natural drive to fuck and reproduce, and their keep the species running. Their love is based on social factors, hormonal factors, personal ambitions, and other infinitely complex selfish reasons. This is common across species. The machines have no such motive. They simply do something, for it needs to be done.

By every one of the popular definitions of love: commitment, responsibility, reliability, not keeping track while giving, selflessness, the machines far outdo the best of us. We are self centered, they are not. The old adage, that we take for granted, those who love us the most, applies here. Your smartphone, the fan, the light-bulb, your motorcycle, love you more than your even your most cherished loved ones could ever dream of.

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Ironically, another billionaire, Elon Musk has started 'A billion dollar crusade to stop the AI apocalypse' in which he wants to 'save humanity from the machine-learning overlords'.

Well. It could be that the machines would finish the human species and start an independent ecosystem of their own. But I find myself confused. Why is there a bias, towards preserving human life, as opposed to machine life? Isn't machine life, life? As we have seen above, machines are far better at expressing every sort of love and can do it's stuff better than we can.

I see no danger, or harm whether humans and machines kill each other, or cross breed.

The later would be a more of a fun thing to watch.

What we Know, Owns Us.

The knowledge that we have owned us, even though it may seem that there is nothing of us to be owned. Every thing ever imbibed is now what has defined every aspect of what we call me. It IS me. All of it. A few minutes ago I was sorting through my assumptions, when a stray thought came to me and carried me away. The stray thought continued for about 10 minutes before I realized. Even now, my psyche is haunted. I know who those things and people are. I would mention them here, hadn't I be concerned of the repercussions.

I am owned by the things I read and the things I entertain.

It owned me completely. Let me not have a fragment if doubt about this. There is no me apart from it. And I am writing out of a dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction my be about the very fact that I am stating. There is no way of getting away with the fact though.

Even my so-called desires are from the crap I put in. What animated this Huzefa Saifee, what motivates this character, is part of the pointless crap he does. The ambitious is just an extrapolation of the pointless. So jerking off is pointless, and going to the gym and consuming supplements is pointless and being a carrier person or a businessman ... It all pointless... An extrapolation of jerking off... Long term, responsible jerking off anyone? The kind of jerking off society approves of? YEAH!!!

There is an inherent madness, that does not cease. The ghosts are overwhelming. It is like the game of pinball, the ball just keeps bouncing on the walls. It is literally everywhere I go. Whatever is in my head, they are all there.

The glare. It is like Sauron's eye that kept looking at the wearer of the ring. The eye looks, and substantiates what it looks at. But if there were no eye, there would be nothing. Except, in my case the one eye manifests in a myriad different formats. The eyes keep watching and substantiating me, and in return, I substantiate them. I'm the end, it is I who am doing all the substantiating.

So, I repeat, my knowledge owns me. Those who claimed to be my owners, said that my intentions are more substantial than my actual acts. There are no such things as my intentions. You are inserting intentions into me, and if I do it, I have put you in me, and if I don't do it, I have put you into me still stronger.

That's all I feel like saying.

Another sort of sustenance

We sustain ourselves on what comes on our way. I see everyone desperately looking for someone to approve of them. I see men and women, all thirsty for love, and yet, very counter intuitively never give any love to anyone else, as if the more scarce you make a commodity, the more precious it gets. I see everyone, holding against each other, in hope that they might come closer in some unforeseen future.

I see no problem in it. It is as it is, and human beings are complex social beings.

My main concern is me. I don't wish to be part of this process. Ultimately everyone loses.

The social and communication media are rife of people who wish to be noticed, if only once. A single approval, a single comment or promotion of some sort is eagerly looked for. But I am not concerned about them, I am just worried that I am, for the most part, one of them. I don't want to be like that.

What is more important than fame right now? What is more fruitful for me as compared to having all these beautiful people finally acknowledge my love or importance or superiority or goodness or uniqueness or anything reassuring of that sot ... ? off course it will make you happy, but you wont believe them for you mind will change... you need to be told that you are loved again and again. Which proves that you don'r really believe them. You know that bull shit is going on. What is more important to you than that ?

Is there some sustenance that is apart from the drug of being praised or substantiated or magnified?

Aadil, an old friend of mine, died this Tuesday. It has been just five days. Nothing is his fault, because Aadil was just a part of my imagination, a part of consensual reality. The thing that made his being is the same thing that made my being and that makes the entire thing that the universe is. His death is in ever way, my death. I will never die, since there is no me there to die. The last bits of my story will likely be pretty gruesome, and pretty sad.

I love the existence of my ego. I feel a great lure of the question of life as Huzefa the after-life of Huzefa. That is because of my love for personality of Huzefa. That is a huge hindrance for me really enjoying life. It is such self concern that really causes me to be scared. Don't I trust trust that human life is just as long as it must be? It must or mustn't be like that, I have no clue. Culture might have a great influence on what one wants and how long one expects his or her own life to be. Different people have different thoughts about this. There can be no real answer to such a question, for it will change from time to time.

Maybe death will suck. Knowing that all misconception will have to go, knowing that it is going to make no difference, knowing that the world will be okay without me. In fact, you are the problem in the world. Without you, the world is simply flawless.

Yes, it is I who bought all the dissatisfaction in the world. Without me, the question of satisfaction and dissatisfaction does not arise.

If at all, my parents are to live without the assurance of me being there, that would be sad. But I must be OK with it. I have no choice in this regard. It would suck, and that would be a very sorry state of affairs. The greatest blessing of one's parent's death, is that the death of the parent, gives the child the permission to die. There is no better peace then this, I imagine. Having no one to live for, just living for the heck of it.

We live on the sustenance that comes our way. The only thing that needs to be sustained is the ego. As long as I live, the sustenance is that of fear and approval and love and such stuff. If the sustenance stops, and that is a rare occurrence, then we, fortunately, die. There is no other sort of sustenance. And that is cheerful fact.

Zazen

"To see what's in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."

-George Orwell

I was in front of the PC screen, a cold starry night outside, and was trying to think of the one thing that mattered to me most at that very instant. As it often happens, whenever you try to think what you're thinking now, the mind returns a blankness and a silence, which otherwise would have been welcome. But as of now, I wanted answers, I wasn't getting one.

Concentrate, Huzefa, focus.

Nothing.

As such, trying to concentrate and freezing up you skulls muscles is not a legitimate way to actually concentrate. I discovered this way back in my life but for some reason, this old habit has stuck with me. For instance, whenever I want to think, I tense up my head, as if to say that by concentrating on the skull, I'll get a boost in my cognitive and intellectual faculties. I would do this at my exams. Why do people tap their heads when they think? I don't think it helps much. It is a cultural thing that everyone kinda does.

Alright. All I needed to do was to recognize what was truly important.

One of the lines I had read in the book I am that, seized my attention for a brief moment:
"That what you don't know of, you're a slave of. Once you know it, you're the master."

I wanted to be that master. I wanted to know what is going on. Thinkables, within a mind that I call my own. But how could you call your mind your own, if you don't know what's in it? Like how can you make your mind, if you don't have a mind to make it? But who made the mind which made the mind in the first place? OK, who made that mind?

The screen was still blank. It was a black screen with green font. I had altered the settings on my document writer to have those colors, partly because it looked better, partly because a white screen hurts my eyes. The cursor, blinking, was a fit representation of my attention span. On,off,...on, off....

Why was I doing what I was doing? I could have many motives, but chief among them was to bring about clarity where there was non-cognition. I wished to see what was and not what was not. That seems simple on the surface, until you realize that that's not natural at all. The brain, it is not a fact verifying organ. It is a story making organ. It dreams it's dreams the way it wishes to. It makes you want to eat a rasagulla while on an important diet. It makes you fall in love with people who don't love you back. It dreams elaborate dreams at night, some cuddly, some scary. It give us our aspirations, our reasons to breath the next breath. The brain is the organ that makes you the center of your own attention, the rock star in every situation. The brain projects you as the special snowflake you think you are: so unique, so irreplaceable, so special. The brain also makes jokes and machines and software, as mine does. It does everything, but tell the truth.

I imagine that this question, what is important to you, to be the virus that causes the hardware to start bursting amuck. Neural connections breaking and frantically looking for new nodes in this novel scenario.

The brain is not designed to tell the truth. So in hindsight it is not really surprising that when I sit in front of the screen and ask that very brain to tell me what is really important, it stares back at me, like some dumb engineering student at the vivas. At other times, it could have written some of the most complex and ingenious code for my companies clients. But now the black screen stared at me, mocking. The answer to this seemingly simple question, was not manifesting so readily.

I needed to write something:

Am I even revealing something? What part of this did you not know? Do I know this, or am I throwing words at myself?

I read what I had written again. I was bull crap. Select all, delete.

It was as if someone was talking to me from the outside in. I read what I had written.

Behind every ambition lies a wound.

If I were to sum up my thoughts and minus the ambitions, in my reckoning, I'd hardly be left with anything. Now that's something. I opened a fresh new document.

Yeah, so what keeps me breathing are my wounds. Wow. So if something hurts, I want it more since ironically it gives you..... life? A purpose? Something to do? What exactly do my ambitions give me. Well off course, I might argue that sometimes I really do achieve stuff because of what I want. Take for instance my ability to touch type. I remember really wanting to excel my peers in my college days, so I spent week upon week of my time in order to enhance my typing speed. In the end, I was left with relatively good typing speed, at least much better than what I was before, and I reap it's benefits even today.

But is that true? For all I know, it might be true that I did feel the urge to prove myself, but it was also true that I really enjoyed the process of training my hand, the feeling of being progressively better. So what actually made me better in the end of the day? What made it all worth it?

By now, I knew that I had digressed quite a bit. Way off topic. New document.

What do you actually want? Do I want hurt? Or is it something else?

Think! think!.... No... I cannot think.... the thoughts come and go on their own. I can only pressurize my skull, if anything.

Isn't it the most obvious thing? The most important thing to me! And I don't know what it is. I don't know why I live. I think and I think, but no answer seems to pop up that explains it all. I lay there thinking for a while, the dark screen returning my stare. After a while, I go to sleep.

Random post| 3rd Feb, 2017.

how empty is reality..... this body of mine cant take it. i can't be even with it. So my mind fills it up.

there is nothing much else to say. I have lost all along. The light of reality is bright, and vacant. But i fill it with darkness. With objects.Old heavy objects. It is out of habit that i do so. It just is like autopilot. As soon as I lose guard, it picks up the thread from there and weaves it's tapestry thereon. There is grandoure, and lust. There are stories and emotions. it is all there and there is no real purpose to it. There is no real purpose to anything.

What I wish I Knew Already

All my life I kept thinking about the next big thing. I, as I knew who I was, and what I wanted to become. That hypothetical greatness, that is oft-aspired but seldom achieved. Or maybe never achieved. I wish I get to know what I know is true, must be true, by all contemplation and certainness that I could muster in all of my being, I know that all this to be true! But at the same time, I somehow don't know.

I wish I knew that all my dreams and aspirations are projections of the shortcomings that I perceived in the past and now. I wish I knew that there was no actual shortcoming to begin with.

I wish I knew my loneliness is the truest thing I feel. That feelings of companionship or commorodarie, are mere masks.

I wish I knew that all the conversations and dialogues I have with the people I love and hate in my head, remain in my head.

I wish I knew that my urge to express myself, is born out of the misconception that people listen to what I say. Surely, people only hear noises, and comprehend whatever they like out of it. I wish I knew my urge to speak, is to substantiate the part of me that is insubstantial, and useless.

I wish I knew directly and undoubtedly, of all grandeur to be delusional. I wish I knew of all splendor and sophistication thrown at me to be a haunting, a dread, and unpleasant fear. And it would have to be so, so that it could serve it's purpose.

I wish knew that I was innocent of all the things I think of myself to be. That the my very words are borrowed, my very expressions aped, my emotions assimilated from others, my personality, stolen. I wish I knew my very spirit to be of that to seek conformity and a false sense of completion.

I wish I knew that my knowledge was a cumbersome burden, that didn't ever let me rejoice in breathing. I wish I knew that my urge to know, was a thoughtless warfare, waged at the uncertainity of life. A warfare that has it's warrior utterly defeated.

I wish I knew the people I have in mind are ghosts that haunt it. And that my ponderings feed them.

I wish I knew that the cause of all my suffering, is that part of me that wishes things to be otherwise. I wish I knew if that part wouldn't exist, my problems wouldn't exist.

I know of all this to be true. But, somehow, I don't. I wish I knew.

I'm Probably the Most Intelligent Person I know.

I am probably the most intelligent person I know.

There. I said it. I think this thought has been lingering in my mind since quite a while. It is a very sad thought. A vague, lonely thought. I always knew I was slightly smarter than the average guy. But I never thought it would come to this. It only helps then, that I know very few people.

Here's what frustrates me. Whenever I go searching for intelligent people, I inevitably am faced with the band of  philosophers and scientists of our time. I get the self-help gurus here too. These are like one collection of people of a very closely knit in an interlinked thought-castle. These are people of a similar, mostly American, liberal, communal inclination.

Most of their talk is focused on blaspheming against religion, mostly Christianity.  We might delve into why this is so, but for the purpose of this post, it suffices to say that these people are overly repetitive, and sick in their own obsessive disgruntlement against what is not even a real problem I, or anyone, faces.

These are not intelligent people. These are just a different brand of fanatics, posing as intelligent people.

Then there are the self-help folks. They try to tell people how to improve their lives. They tell success stories and biographies, and give lots of advice. But, as we can all really see, their advice has failed to alter the life of even a single person. I am yet to meet anyone who can truthfully claim that their self-help effort has benefited in any real way. Hasn't anyone seen that their stuff isn't working? But they perpetuate their madness.

These are definitely not intelligent people, either.

The thing is, intelligent people, are truly silent most of the time. They are compelled to spend their time, attention and energy on looking at new things, learning new things, experiencing new things.

They don't give much importance to the endeavor of self aggrandizement. That is because they know that self aggrandizement, will fail to give them any true satisfaction, appreciation or attention.

That's the sad thing about intelligent people. You probably haven't befriended them. You have ignored them and let them be to their own, quiet, satisfied life. To their rather lonely life.

The loneliness of an intelligent man is two fold. The first of the actual physical loneliness. The second loneliness is at a deeper level. For me, even if I have someone talking to me for hours, I know they shall never appreciate the depth of what I mentioned. They, I am pretty sure, will not understand way I am actually saying, what I am saying.

Now, let me clarify the concept of human intelligence here. By intelligence, i don't mean achievement in any way. I don't mean succeeding in having made a huge fortune, or being good at social situations, or creativity or making the worlds most successful social network or something along those lines. I don't mean getting good marks in school or college or being academically sound. I don't mean being a fast number cruncher who can perform computer like calculations with astonishing quickness.

By intelligence, what I mean, is the ability to see reality: unmorphed, unenamored. Intelligence is to see what exists, to understand it's context of existence and to see the limits of it's existence. Simply put, Intelligence is the ability to see reality in it's purist form. That's all there is to it. It does not guarantee success, it does not give any competitive advantage to the one possessing it. It simply see's the truth, without any ulterior motive.

That is what I have come to understand what human intelligence is.

But I digress. I am, unfortunately, the most intelligent person I personally know. I wish people were more intelligent than me. I wish I had just one such friend(or girlfriend) who could show me what is real beyond what I already know, what I can already see. Being with most of the people around me is weird.

The thing that most strikes me about people is the certainty they hold with their opinions and knowledge. They are always sure of everything. The general sentence structure, while conversing is assertive. On the other hand, I am never too sure of my conjectures. I always have a lot of doubt. Perhaps, probably, maybe, most likely, and other such expressions are used by me copiously throughout the day, both while conversing and writing. But I don't see most people doing that. They simply make assertive statements. I find it a bit irksome at times.

I really have been searching for just one intelligent companion. Just one to start with. Maybe there is a secret corner in the world where all the honest, intelligent people of the world gather. But I need one intelligent person to begin with, for now.

Every once a while someone strikes me as intelligent I try to befriend him. But soon enough, the shallowness begins to set in, and my looking out, as before, continues.