Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Two little dickie birds Peter & Paul

After yesterday's prediction regarding the World Cup winners, I suddenly found I had greater ability to stay awake until 2 AM. After all, I wanted Holland to win, considering I had placed them 2nd after Spain this year.

Bleary eyed, this morning I walked over to You Tube and found a video where Octopus Paul had picked Spain for tonight’s match - hey we are now in sync! Am I happy or what - if nothing else, it's proof that my brain is at least as small as Paul's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJYv5rul11M

Paul has only been picking the winner where Germany is one of the teams playing - so, if we are right this time around, I won't have a colleague for the finals...

But the deeper, more philosophical note that the psychic Octopus points us towards is: that events are pre-destined. Every time, a prediction comes true - is a time for us to realize that we are puppets in the larger scheme of things. After all, there is something to it, when an Octopus has gone wrong only once in the last three years - he has been predicting since the last Euro Cup. And there have been several occasions when Paul has contradicted popular opinion on the outcome. That’s the advantage of not being 'rational'.

I think somewhere along the line, we homo sapiens have lost the ability to foresee - to just look ahead so we know where we are heading - and then focus our efforts on not getting there!!! For instance, on the morning of the Tsunami, thousands of animals instinctively ran towards higher ground, while many humans were driving / diving downwards...
I like to think that there is still a lot we can learn from animals - for instance not to shoot at our own kind.

Viva la vida Espana! And a big Red Card to the way we look at life!

Arun Peter
http://www.namemylife.com/

2 comments:

  1. Hey Arun, really very thoughtful views. True, animals are indeed much closer to the nature as compared to the human beings. Time and again, we can see instances where they foresee events. Even a pet dog in the family possess these skills, we just need to observe.

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  2. Hi Shreya, you are right! Thank you for taking time to comment.

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