Sentry Tower

What is society? Studies have shown that; evolutionarily; animals that live in social structures tend to have a ‘memory of acquaintances’ i.e. a maximum number of individuals that each individual is directly interlinked and related to. This number within a group varies according to the need for cooperative survival as well as with the intelligence of the species in question. In a pack of wolves, while the alpha male is recognized and deferred to by all the pack members, however among themselves, the relationship between two individuals may be limited merely to their hierarchy in the pack order. Chimpanzees, after humans, have the largest social recognition memories of up to twenty five individual relationships. The number for humans is estimated, based on the cognitive capacity, to be somewhere near twenty -thousand.. Even today, in the information age, there is a need for the individual to be part of a larger social network to meet and satisfy al...

It is getting dark. S stands on the porch of the tea-stall where he is idly swirling the last dregs of his cup. His cigarette smokes away by itself in his other hand. He flicks it away. The lit tobacco detaches from the filter and falls to the ground still smoking. Idly he observes that the butt looks oddly headless. The ash is still smoking. Like the last breaths of a dying man. A headless man. Shaking his head he walks away. The road is bleak and has little sign of life. It is a chilly winter evening. The dogs are shivering, even curled up in their cozy nooks. His breath steams out in front of him. He remembers blowing it out like a cigarette as a child. To feel like he was smoking. It was a short term pleasure. Oddly like smoking. Every child does that. He blows out to see a stream of his breath fogging over. It gives him some satisfaction. He lights another cigarette. Why substitute when one can have the original, he wonders, his thoughts wandering. Smoking is oddly cathartic. ...

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely my personal opinions and deductions, I do not mean to offend the sentiments of the members of any religious community. Let me first examine the premise: religion. What is religion? Let's go back to the basics, the How. Religion began when cave men saw the Sun. A magnificent ball of fire that gave warmth and if too hot, killed. Also they saw that the plants that grew where sunlight reached and the barren patches where it didn't. All early religions worshipped the Sun and in turn the earth whom they venerated as a Mother. Later these primary forms developed and expanded and consequently, more complex representations evolved. Having an initial monotheistic origin i.e the Sun or the Earth, later evolving to polytheism and finally back to monotheism (i.e Judaism, Christianity, Islam) religion traced a full circle. Now the Why. Humans are evolutionarily adapted towards information. This can be confirmed by examining two of humanitie...