Toys

Here’s an open secret, every man worth his gonads watches porn and in the minds of a majority of these patrons pops a question when they see those beautiful women exploiting their most intimate of body parts, ‘Why does she have to do this?’. For most men the belief is that a beautiful girl could find a caring partner with whom she could have a fruitful relationship so why indulge in an activity that disqualifies her from being someone he could have proposed to? There are a great many other professions that women take up, like bar dancing, stripping at clubs, escorting men ending with sex or just dinner, even simpler jobs like modelling with their clothes on, which make different categories of men ask the same earlier question.

Disreputable and morally wrong some say, but I don’t see it that way. Morality is subjective and there is no right or wrong, only comfortable and uncomfortable actions exist. So what if a woman wants to use her body to her advantage to meet her needs or even greed? What is disgraceful about it when she is comfortable doing it. I don’t think anyone has a say so long as she is not physically harming someone. Barring the moral brigade, many people come to terms with this with the justification that such women are in dire need of money and are doing it for a meal. They make the assumption that these women are inherently ashamed of what they do but they have no choice due to a lack of skill sets in pursuing other ‘respectable’ careers. No they're not ashamed. While some such women may fall into that category there is a vast number that do it in order to maintain a lifestyle. It is easy money and we all need money to fulfill our desires.

Children love toys and we as adults are just grown up children. We never lose our desire to own toys. They just change form into materialistic possessions and a fancy lifestyle. Whereas a person from the Masai tribe would want to own more cattle we in the city wish to have the mobile phones, the designer bags, the branded clothes, the luxury cars and those exotic holidays. Except for those who inherit great wealth, the rest of us men have to work hard to get our toys but women have an edge over men. Men love sexual titillation and pockets run deep when an itch has to be satisfied. There will always be rich men who would love to buy women toys in exchange for intimacy and irrespective of how rich a woman is she will always find richer men who desire her. Once a woman makes the choice to exploit her body she very easily acquires her toys. Take this angle into consideration and the net widens to include women from different walks of life, who don’t mind bending the taboos of society to achieve what they want. From here on its only a degree of how much bending is comfortable to acquire one’s desires. This is what will decide if she ends up being a porn star or white collar employee with a secret life.

Step out of the discreet virtual world of porn consumption and you will suddenly encounter an uproar in society from many members of both sexes. Men do it for one of two reasons. Either he has no access to such women or he can’t afford them, for if he had both access and money, he’d be indulging in them. Porn is almost free but a real life lady lover is costly. Women do it when they are incapable of such actions either due to inhibitions or the lack of charm to be someone’s lover and feel it is an unfair advantage where beauty wins over brains. Of course they will want to sound superior and will brand these women as sluts and whores. They will also tell you that it is morally wrong and I’ve already mentioned what I think of morality. End of the day don’t forget that we are all salespeople, selling ourselves. I sell my services as an actor, some sell their intelligence and yet others their bodies. The underlying aim for us all is one of acquiring a certain lifestyle. So the next time you see a woman you think should be leading a lifestyle that you approve of, get her the toys she wants and then talk or else shut up.

Opium of the masses

The internet caters to almost every fantasy known to mankind so it is no surprise that there are websites dedicated to man’s ultimate fantasy – god belief. About a year or so ago I was egged on by a few rationalist friends to join a website dedicated to this fantasy so we could keep abreast on how new marketing techniques were being developed by religious salesmen targeting those who have grown up taught to believe that a spiritual leader is a necessity. I became a member of the Speaking Tree.

I had lost interest almost instantly akin to someone walking into a lunatic asylum where the immediate threat to one’s sanity was far more pressing than the desire to connect with someone. The place is filled with self styled swamis and gurus. People calling themselves Double Misters aka Sri Sri Ravishankar to those titling themselves with grand sounding names like Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. In the real world we’d have to earn titles from institutions based on our prowess in a particular subject like in engineering or medicine to call oneself a doctor for example but these people are in the wild west of a fantasy world and can self title themselves. If Karl Marx, the man who said, ‘religion is the opium of the masses’, were to be alive today, he’d refer to the Speaking Tree website as a drug store.

Out of the numerous alerts that fill my inbox from this website, one in particular caught my eye. It was titled ‘Whether God Exists OrNot?‘. I was curious, read it and was terribly disappointed. The write up was terribly flawed and after a long time I felt the need to make some noise to warn unsuspecting people that there was bovine excreta in their path. I continued to read through some of the other comments subsequently and found most amusing the degree to which believers will bend in order to protect their delusions.

Through the various posts that these self styled gurus are posting there, the one thing you will notice in common is the arrogance with which they speak. Without a shadow of a doubt they know there is a supernatural force, a power that can interfere with your life, either positively or negatively. They will repackage and define it back to you in many ways where one moment the god is within you and then contradict it soon after by asking you to bow to a deity but at the end of it all they are convinced that this power is responsible for everything. Rationalists on the other hand are the opposite. They admit that they don't have answers to so many things unknown and don't claim to know the answer to how everything came into being. Rationalists are in a quest to find answers based on observable and verifiable evidence and never assert anything till they can backup their claim.

By this yardstick no evidence has yet been found to support the deluded beliefs offered by these so called swamis and gurus and yet without a shred of proof they arrogantly assert that there is an almighty that is responsible for everything. Of course the 'absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence' but then the absence of evidence does not give us a reason to blindly believe in something either. All it does is to leave us without the knowledge to assert anything. I cannot assert there is no god just as much as I cannot assert that there is no Santa Claus. Popular folklore provides us with detail on where Santa stays and how he travels. I have no evidence for this but that does not mean it cannot be true. Every fantasy story in the world is like this but as you can very well see there is no practical application in believing in something that has no evidence. It is wise to believe in phenomenon and claims that can be verified and all else is just a waste of time.

The hapless addicts hang around the website for their dose of spirituality from the spiritual drug peddlers. The website automatically grades these people based on the number of followers they have. This is where you find the wannabe gurus who shamelessly ask you to follow them, those who throw scientific jargon at you in an apparent bid to claim that they are scientifically literate and cherry pick on scientific discoveries to bolster their deluded conclusions, to the compulsive folk whose purpose is to comment on anything that contradict and threaten their delusions. These people claim to be seeking the truth as well but they have already closed their minds. How will they ever find the truth when they believe they already have the answer to everything in their god?

I know I am trying to compete with belief systems that have taken thousands of years to filter itself and plug all the holes of logical reasoning. A single point answer to all questions will be that it is god’s will. The theist does not search for answers except for in his scriptural books and on the guide lines offered by the book where you are required to hallucinate in the belief that you are experiencing a god. Personal experiences are meaningless to a rationalist. They may fool the gullible but a real truth seeker will not buy into their dream where a god spoke to them. Such phenomenon can be observed in all the world religions and can also be seen at rave parties where people are high on drugs while listening to psychedelic music. Next time watch a bhajan or stasang or a religious gathering of any religion and you will notice the similarities with a rave party. The dynamics are the same.

I feel sympathetic toward theists. They have spent their whole lives building their beliefs on fantasy stories offered by earlier generations. Stories written in an era when there was no knowledge on most of what happened in nature. Stories written under the illumination of oil lamps and not electric bulbs, in an era where they had to go to a pond to wash their orifices after natures call as piped water supply was still eons away. It is quite obvious that those who have grown up fed on a diet of 'surrender to the supernatural' will fall into depression at the realisation that they have wasted their whole lives believing in holy versions of superman and spiderman?