Reflections: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Everybody is likely to be proud and content of at least one of their attributes... and possibly worried of losing it someday. I for one used to be quite happy with my memory. It served me well for a little more than two decades of my life and I basked in the glowering warmth of those who dearly wished I would forget a few things. Perhaps I incurred far too many curses, for now my ability to retain much in my memory has been rapidly dwindling, causing me to resort to reminders for reminders. As I have rattled on previously, one's memory is far too precious in defining one's identity. My recent fear is me waking up in another twenty years (if at all) and wondering who I am. With such a strained panic, if some wizard were to materialize in front of me and ask me if I would make a trade to gain an expansive photographic memory which would be in tact no matter how old I aged, wouldn't I love to jump at the offer? Absolutely. But that's what nerds like me ask for...memory. If a vain teenager were asked this question, what do you think she would like to retain no matter how old she became? Wrinkle free-skin, luscious hair, a perky body. Beauty. Youth. To many, beauty and youth are the definitions of their identity... things that they cling onto with a crazed unimaginable fear of losing themselves one day. So, what if such a wish did come true? Would she have the world under her feet? Would she be the luckiest person in the world? Would she be comfortable with such vanity and superficiality and not let them taint her conscience?

The Picture of Dorian Gray is an incredibly interesting psychological experiment on the depths of human vanity. Oscar Wilde deftly explores how we define morality and conscience and what shape we give to our soul. Dorian Gray is an extremely handsome man with perfectly chiseled features. He inspires a painter to give life to his beauty through an exquisite portrait. Just as how Eve was hypnotically deceived and "poisoned" by the snake, Dorian's mind falls into a trance due to a cunning influence of a friend, and in a moment of frenzy he makes a feverish wish to give anything to preserve his beauty, while the lifeless portrait of him would instead bear the signs of his old age. And the wish comes true.

I received this book as part of a surprise parcel from my exceptionally generous and sweet friend, who just woke up one morning and decided to send me gifts! I really am lucky to have such friends! And being the mind reader that she is, all the books she sent completely appeal to me! And this book hit the bull's eye.

All our scriptures insist that any pursuit for the satisfaction of the senses leads us to misery. But an accompanying view is that human beings live on instincts. Our ancestors survived because they heedlessly acted on their senses. It seems to be discordant with our nature to rebel against our instincts, to suppress them and contrive the necessity to act rationally and in concert with what we have been taught as good and virtuous. Dorian Gray represents a man who was convinced that man achieves his highest sense of purpose and integrity, if and only if, he were to focus on pleasuring his senses, with very little thought or suppression. He turns into someone who awakens the "evil Mr.Hyde" from within him, and feeds him with his vanity, materialism and callousness. The pleasure of sadism corrupts him. But something in him that represents him, deteriorates due to this hedonistic life. With every sin, every materialistic hoarding, his portrait turned ugly, evil and aged. The horrific transformation that Dorian could witness is shown as a metaphor, mirroring the deterioration of his soul. As much as Dorian derives pleasure from its atrophy, he couldn't completely be blind to it. Wilde hints at how our conscience, even if it be made separate from our body, cannot be ignored. It is sure to haunt us, no matter how much we isolate ourselves from it.

This, in essence, was Wilde's take on the philosophy of morality. Man's implicit conscience defines morality for him, no matter what religion, or era. Sins need not be categorized as applicable to the Victorian era, or the present era; the conscience always knows. As natural as it might sound to always act in tune with our senses, if the mind is totally cut off, our acts and decisions tend to run out of hand, and place us in scenarios wherein our senses can no longer help us, or benefit in any way. In a philosophical sense, Wilde seems to start with the hypothesis that the mind and the body need to be separate, but he crafts a clever tale to convincingly disprove the hypothesis, asserting that the mind (the soul/the conscience) and the body need to harmonize with one another. He also burrows into the ways and means through which man defines and values his identity. In reality, one's identity is deeper than what the body embodies. Personality is the result of the orchestration of many subtle factors emanating from our consciousness and self-awareness. It is difficult to give form, shape or color to them. But that is what Art tries to capture. A good artist is one who is perceptive to see through such ethereal aspects and is creative and imaginative to represent them through a physical, abstract artifact. In the context of such a discussion, Wilde also explores the meaning of Art and the role of an artist in capturing the abstract from a concrete physical form. Does Art mirror the artist or the inspiration? Or does it instead obscure the artist? What does Art truly represent? Or what should Art truly represent?

As dark and brooding as the book might appear, Wilde's masterful and contemplative writing is a treat. Despite the tragedies, the cynicism and the pessimism, the book encodes hope and optimism for humanity.

Beam me up...

Again, I have heard of this question before and I was beaming :)... Interestingly, I heard of this problem from the character Dr. Sheldon Cooper, from the sitcom, "Big Bang Theory". The original source is from "Reasons and Persons", by Derek Parfit.


The question is this - Stelios has come up with a teletransporter that can transport a person within minutes to Mars. Sort of like the phenomenon of Apparation, from Harry Potter. The teletransporter scans every cell of our body and brain and stores this information. Then it destroys the current form, and recreates the person cell by cell, in Mars. So you fall asleep and then wake up in Mars. The question is - is Stelios actually killing a person and then recreating their clone on Mars? Will you be the same person on Mars, or is it only your clone?
People who have used it, don't lose any of their consciousness. They still know they are themselves when they land up in Mars, and they could continue with their life as if nothing happened. But wasn't their physical body destroyed on Earth? For a few brief moments, they did not exist... so doesn't that mean death?


My thoughts - I have wondered what the difference between sleep and death really is. Death is when someone never wakes up, and probably doesn't dream when they don't wake up, and continues to "sleep". In addition, the physical body degenerates. BOTH these criteria need to be satisfied to call a person dead.... their consciousness is dead and so is their physical body. I know for sure that the teletransporter destroyed the body, but the consciousness seemed to be intact, for the person "woke up" remembering who he was. Or was consciousness also destroyed and recreated?


Our clone is not the same person that we are. A clone may physically and biologically be identical, but not mentally. If you're psychologically "the same person", then you're not a clone. So far, Baggini's views resonates with mine. But for those brief moments, I don't know if the person's consciousness also ceased to exist. What was the person going through when he was teletransported.... did he have visions and dreams or did he have nothing? Well... some people don't have dreams when they sleep, so what is my rule to understand if consciousness did exist when the body was destroyed... can consciousness exist without a physical body or a brain?


I don't think the teletransporter can scan the "mind and consciousness". They are not physical entities to have shape, or structure or properties to be stored. Yet the person on Mars did not lose his consciousness, which lends me to think of two possible explanations for his consciousness to have been retained:


1. "consciousness" is indeed a property that emanates out of the unique composition of our physical brain. When a jar of jasmine perfume is opened, one smells the scent of jasmine and not rose. So, when the chemical structure of jasmine is scanned and recreated, it will emanate the same smell, although the scent by itself was not stored. If we were to imagine the brain to be a hard disk, and the transporter scanned the hard disk, then the data is preserved and hence the "program behavior" is preserved. If this is the case, then, when the brain was destroyed, the "scent" or program was also destroyed, because it doesn't exist without the physical structure. And hence the person was dead for those brief moments. The person on Mars is not a clone... just a recreation of the person. Sort of like waking up from being dead, like we've heard of some patients in surgery whose heartbeat stops for a few seconds and then revives.


2. "consciousness" is probably the soul. A soul exists without body or mind. If this is the case, despite the physical body being destroyed, the soul was not destroyed. Since this soul took up the same body and remembered everything and retained the identity of the same person, the person was not technically dead. In Hindu beliefs, when souls take on another body and lose their memory of past life, it is called Re-incarnation of the dead. Here it is not re-incarnation.


I don't know which of the two explanations is true, or rather which one I tend to believe more :). "Logically", 1 seems more appropriate to me at this point, for 2. has a lot of unaccounted questions themselves - what is the soul, is there a soul, is re-incarnation possible? I don't have answers to 2., but I tend to not dismiss it just because I don't have the answers. So I'm undecided between the two....


Baggini argues that the person is not dead, since by the theory of "psychological continuity", the consciousness was continued, and as long as consciousness was intact, the person is the same person, not a clone. Hence he was never dead, for the dead cannot come to life.

Stranger in the Mirror?

Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and wondered who the reflection was? Maybe not. That’s good… it’s a sign that you don’t hallucinate and see things. But the next time you do catch a glimpse of yourself, do look into the reflection’s eyes and wonder if that’s you. Would that reflection be the definition of who you are? Would that suffice?

What sound is to an instrument, is what life is to a body; just as sound defines the instrument, it’s that life within you that defines you. What is that life within you? What is that fleeting speck of life that you experience when you dream? With all your senses fast asleep, you still feel the velvety rainbow on which you walk, smell the magnolias from a far away tree, see the bright green grass, taste the soft berries, and think of it as real – and still remember the people in your life, and the exams you need to take. Scientists name it as the Subconscious. But none have been able to even fully understand consciousness, leave alone sub consciousness. Is it a term to classify those aspects of the mind that can’t be explained? A classified part of the mind that can borrow on all the senses, the consciousness and cognition to understand, reason and remember – sounds complex, almost as if explaining a little part of yourself, within yourself.

Two schools of thought exist on where thought and cognition arise from – some say it’s the “brain” and some say it’s the “heart”. What is the mind then? Supposedly, the mind is that collective expanse of consciousness and cognition that the brain supports. All average healthy adult brains are physically the same. They stimulate the same neurons that activate similar reactions stimulating the mind to mature. Then why don’t all people think the same? Environment they say. Hmm…. What about brothers and sisters? Difference in gene pool combination they say. So would it mean that how we think and what we are, is nothing but a jigsaw puzzle of various bits of genes from a multitude of ancestors, exposed to a certain type of environmental inputs? The permutation of it all is what makes us different?? Maybe so, but how we act on those acquired genes is unpredictable, and that brings about an element of uniqueness.

Isn’t it boooring to get to the bottom of so many details to know about our inner-self. In the end, it is more of an anti climax to know that our originality is but a fraction of our genetic framework and the environment in which we are brought up. What is that little fraction? It is that part of you that is truly unique, truly the definition of who you are. It is that energy which defines your presence, and makes even a tiny creation feel your presence, and distinguish you from a million other energy bundles similar to you, and it is that essence of you which people remember long after you leave them. Science has tried its best to define us. But doesn’t it become much more meaningful and far simpler when you are asked to feel your soul, when you look into the eyes of your reflection...