Things I've Noticed

Fortuitous Domain Naming - The Noticer and Andy Andrews

A while ago, I had bought the rights to the domain name thenoticer.com because I was considering changing the name of my blog to "The Noticer", (that would be me).  Then I decided against it temporarily, but held on to the domain name.  As good fortune would have it, motivational/inspirational writer/speaker Andy Andrews happened to decide to name his latest book The Noticer.  I had never heard of him but he is a New York Times Best-Selling Author who has also been on PBS.  The nice folks at the publishing company contacted me to see if I wanted to sell the domain, but I thought it would be best to hold onto it and leverage their referral program to help fund my web operations.

I should also mention that the company gave me a copy of every book, (signed by Andy Andrews), CD, and DVD that he has published.  That was really nice of them.  I'm almost done with The Traveler's Gift which is hard to put down due to its mix of poetic language and life lessons.

What's also interesting is that Andy Andrews has started a site called "The Noticer Project", (thenoticerproject.com), which allows people to write notes to the five most influential people in their lives. Those notes will be delivered in the regular postal mail and published on the The Noticer Project website.  If you're interested in buying some of Andy's books or multimedia materials, please click on the ad to the right to buy them.

+ Atul
(The Original Noticer)

Quick Quote on Problems

"He who seems to have all the answers often has the most problems."

+ Atul

Quick Quote on Greed Number Two

"We become slaves to our greed."

+ Atul

Quick Quote on Saying Things

"The less often you say something, the more meaning it has."

+ Atul

Nature and Animals Aren't Evil

It’s somewhat timely that I’m writing this post which has been in the Word document hamper for quite a while. With the tsunami in Myanmar, (which is pronounced myun-mar not mee-an-mar by the way), the earthquakes in China, floods in the Midwest, and the tornadoes all over the U.S., the unaffected sympathize and offer help to those in need. It’s admirable, but nothing we can do will make up for the suffering that people encounter when they lose their family members and possessions. I know this is intruding on religion and philosophy, but why do these things happen to some people and not others? Sharon Stone would have you believe that the Chinese treatment of Tibetans fed some bad karma that led to the earthquake. I’m not sure I buy that. Ultimately, these are natural occurrences that are somewhat random. Such events only happen where the conditions and geography are right for them to happen. And some people happen to live there. If they choose to live there, then they should understand that there’s a chance that they’ll be affected. I think of nature as impersonal and random unless you’re dealing with how God impacts individuals’ lives. But in the case of a large natural catastrophe, many people who live in the same area are drastically affected to a certain. Then it seems more random. However, if you delve further, you see that some people lost everything or died while others lucked out. Is this karma? Nobody knows for sure and it harkens back to that age old philosophical question of why do bad things happen to good people? Regardless, natural disasters aren't evil. They just are, and we unfortunately have to deal with them.

In a similar vein, I often notice that when bad things happen to humans as they interact with animals, the animals are characterized as horrible or evil. They simply are not. A lion or alligator may kill a human because it feels threatened or hungry. It’s nothing personal. The same thing applies to deer, insects, rats, or cockroaches. They were put on this planet for a reason and they are just trying to make a living, so we shouldn’t take it personally if they eat our food or intrude on our property. Humans can have compassion for other beings. Our caring for pets shows compassion that transcends survival instincts. We could just as easily eat these animals when we're hungry, but we care for them like members of the family. But they're not humans. Pets are often characterized as “bad” because they don’t behave the way us humans want them to behave. They’re actually just doing the things that they instinctively do. They are being normal animals and we shouldn't fault them for that. (This reminds me of a prior quote I wrote that "The smartest pets are the ones that don't do tricks.") We are the ones that are trying to fit them to our needs. Sure we try breeding them to be more domesticated, but they still retain instinctively wild behaviors and urges.

So remember that nature is just natural and seemingly evil things have to happen. The earth has its ecosystems and animals that serve a purpose. For there to be birth and life, there must also be death and destruction. I don’t mean to dismiss how horrible a catastrophic experience can be from a human perspective, but perhaps if we all adopted a more detached objective outlook on such happenings, we would be able to handle them better and not take things so personally.  But that doesn't mean we can't try to stop natural occurrences from happening or destroying our body/house/city/country/planet.

+ Atul

Quick Quote on Time

"Time is the one dimension in which you always know the direction you're headed."

+ Atul

Dedicated to My Father - Please Donate for Leukemia Research And My 100 Mile Bike Ride

For those of you who don't know me well, my father passed away in July of last year due to complications from treatment for a relapse of his Acute Myeloid Leukemia.  I've been wanting to do something in his honor, preferably something that would help others.  I'm also a bicyclist who is far from a professional. 

So, I put the two together and decided to join the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team In Training.  I am training to ride my Specialized Allez Sport bicycle 100 miles at their event at Lake Tahoe in June.  (The most I've ridden at one time is 25 miles).  More importantly, we are raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives.  Hopefully, by donating money for research, scientists will be able to develop a cure for these diseases.  My goal is to raise $3,600 and I will have to cover whatever I can't collect.  I have to raise close to $1,000 by March to keep training with the team.

Please make a donation to support my participation in Team In Training and to help advance the Society's mission. Anything you can contribute will be appreciated.  My donation webpage takes credit cards and of course, donations are tax deductible.

Thanks for your support!
+ Atul

Regarding the Ad on The Right: Official Debate

My friend, "The Boss", (but much younger than Bruce Springstein), has created a new site which I find quite interesting.  It's called OfficialDebate.com.  It's just starting up, but it has lots of neat topics that are at times controversial.  Every good debate needs lots of debaters so click on the link and register if you like to argue with people on topics that you know you're right about.  I did.  Please argue respectfully and soon the site will add other interesting features including debates in which the users get to vote to determine the winner.

Oh and tell "The Boss" I sent you there.

+ Atul

Tackling Some Religious Commonalities

I'm going to try to write about religion in a hopefully non-controversial way because what I'm writing about is equally offensive to all religions, (but not that offensive).  Many people say that all religions originated from the same roots.  But that's not true to most people because if it was, all the religion-following  people would be of one religion and live in peace.

What I find interesting about many religions is that the description "God-fearing" is supposed to be a good thing.  Why is it good to fear what controls the universe or pervades the universe?  That would mean you would have to live your life in fear.  Or it just may mean that it's assumed you're going to do something wrong so you better be afraid of the implications.  Why not put a positive spin on the "consequences of believing"?

Another common thread with all religions is that we must continually praise God and  repeat God's name over and over.  If God is so wise and powerful, does God really need affirmation from us?  If I believe that God is great and that I am appreciative of God, wouldn't he know it?  God is omnipotent after all.  Why does anybody have to tell God overtly?  These questions may have "by-the-book" answers, but I don't know enough about all the religions for a satisfactory answer.  One other question for which no religion has given me a good answer is "why do babies die?"  Every religion has its own excuse, but no justified explanation.

Some religions like to convert people to their way of thinking.  I can understand that if you think your one way of worship is the right way, you want to share that with whoever you can.  But what about all the people that existed before the religion did?  Are they damned for not having known?  And if not, then one would hope that a forgiving God wouldn't hold it against a person living today in the middle of a rainforest who hasn't learned about the one true way.  The way I see it, if God wanted there to be one true way to believe, God would not have allowed all these other religions to exist.  And shouldn't the first religion be the most valid?  I would think that the direction to the one true faith would be obvious and heavily favored by events that occur courtesy of God.

The last area where I see religion pushing similar agendas is with their views on detachment from worldly possessions.  If God put us on this worldly planet, why would he want us to detach ourselves from the nice things that are available to us?  I guess you could say it's a test, but that's a bit mean.  One theory I have on why religion tells us to detach ourselves from our things and money is so that the temple/church/mosque/synagogue and its clergy can have more of them at our expense.  As far as I'm concerned, God doesn't need money because God already owns all the money and God should be able to move it around at will.

When people refer to God as "my God" or "our God", then they are supporting the idea that if I start a new religion tomorrow, that I will be creating a new God.  That would mean that man created religion instead of God creating man.  But then, who says there's only one God per religion?  Monotheistic religions tend to look down upon the idea of polytheism.  Perhaps it's because that concept does open the door to the creation of new religions and resulting new Gods.

Even though I'm a Hindu who's more philosophical than religious, these questions I have make me believe in religion with a grain of salt.  I believe in God mostly because I feel this universe is too well thought out to be just random, and karma makes sense to me in the way it explains the balance of the universe.  I apologize if I have offended anybody and I would hope that many people comment below so we can have some good philosophical discussion.

+ Atul

Quick Question on Nature

"If everything originates from nature, is anything really artificial?"

+ Atul