Solitary Soul

JESUS: Fact OR Fiction?   Mario D’Couto             For those of you who have read my article about Jesus – The Man (both parts, 1 and 2) you would have seen how I have tried to explore the humanity of Our Lord and Saviour. This article is a result of a ‘frustration’ that I had while reading a chapter from Joseph Murphy’s book, “The power of the subconscious mind”. With all due respects to the author and the power of the human mind, it would be unfair or a bit of an extreme to exaggerate what the human mind can do and in as much as I would like to admit the power of positivity, I think, in my humble opinion, that life is not like a vending machine where because I have positive thoughts all the time that my life is going to be perfect. Yet, this is not the point that I am trying to drive at but rather through this article, I intend to show who Jesus truly is. In the 4 th Chapter of the book, “The power of the subco...

THE BEAUTY OF CHAOS – PART 2 Mario D’Couto             For those of you who have read the life of Benjamin Franklin, he was a man who lived his life to the ‘T’. He was disciplined because of which he became successful. Although, he had one small weakness: he could never keep his place in order. For a man who invented the bifocals, the lightning conductor, the flexible urinary catheter, became the first US postmaster general, served as America’s ambassador to France and who was also the president of Pennsylvania, he struggled with this particular quality. He wrote in his autobiography, “My scheme of order gave me the most trouble, my faults vexed me so much and I made so little progress in amendment and had such frequent relapses, that I was almost ready to give up the attempt.”             This may sound a bit weird or out of place from one of the most determined m...

THE BEAUTY OF CHAOS Mario D’Couto             We all strive for order in our day to day lives and yet we find ourselves in the most bizarre, muddled up situation where we just don’t know what to do about. For those of you who have read my article on “Acceptance”, you will see that this acceptance is not something that is passive but rather it s about owning the situation and doing something about it.             I guess one thing we need to realize is that the rules of the world are not cut and dry as though out to be. Einstein’s discoveries about what was really going at the most basic level led us to believe that there must be something beyond the physical. The basis of this thought process lies on the fact that the particles that make up our universe do not just move in a straight line and react in a perfectly predictable way. In fact, if you get down to the mos...

IS RELIGION TRULY AN OPIUM FOR PEOPLE? Mario D’Couto             In as much as life is beautiful, it has its own challenges and sometimes the road may not be smooth enough. We may have to experience the occasional bumps and knocks or sometimes the situation can be so bad that we may fall down in a ditch and struggle to get back up.             The above title is based on a statement made by Karl Marx who said that religion is the opium of the people. If we go to dig into its meaning, the implications behind it could be a bit alarming. For instance, if you have examined or seen people into drugs or mental patients in hospital or even animals in a veterinary, whenever they become restless, a dose of injection is injected to tranquilize the person or the animal. In a similar way, Marx equated religion as a ‘drug’ that was used by religious leaders or priests (in parti...

ACCEPTANCE Mario D’Couto             It’s been a couple of weeks since I celebrated my 30 th birthday and it has always been at the back of my mind to share something of what I have been through. Of course, it is definitely not going to be about washing my dirty linen in public, but I guess we are all part of the same boat. Having said that, our lives is never one straight line. It is a line with highs and lows and yet that is what gives meaning to it. Just as a heart rate monitor in a hospital has lines up and down which means that the person is still alive, the ups and downs in our lives means we still have hope and that we can do something; we are still alive!             Worry is an emotion that we all face. In due moderation, it is fine as it keeps us alive and active and if used in the proper way, it can lead to a lot of ways of finding new and creative solu...

WHAT’S THE FUTURE GOING TO BE? HUMANS OR ROBOTS? Mario D’Couto             In recent times, there has been a huge debate going around about the future of many industries, whether will humans still be in the work force or would it be taken over by artificial intelligence and is as much as we may want to pride ourselves about the fact that technology has made our lives simpler, comfortable and easy, we may still need to think otherwise.             In his book, “MESSY”, Tim Harford rephrases  a famous quote, “To err is human but to really foul things up takes a computer.” Technology was made to help humankind, not to supplant its thinking process. Besides, it was the human person who created technology and not the other way around.             From the most complicated data systems to the most mundane t...