Oops...

In hindsight, I should have probably introduced myself and this blog before I dove into my first post, possibly scaring the reader with strange and possibly incoherent insights that I thought sounded cool in my head.

Sorry.

My name is Neelav Dutta. I like to think I am a bit of a lot of things, but in reality I'm probably only a bit of some things. I like video games, so much in fact that it is my goal to relate most of my blog posts to video games. If you have read my first two posts, then you know I am currently failing in that regard. Again, sorry.

But I also like art as well. I like it because it represent something more than mathematics or science to a certain degree. It represents the fruits of the human endeavor, our drive to enact our will upon the world. It represents what was, is and will be, but even more importantly it shows us what can be; and ultimately through art we can move past our own perception of the world, move past the world we create for ourselves and be able to know Truth. We need art (and when I say art I'm counting literature) because the Truth, as John Green said, resists simplicity. The Truth can never be reached by our own perception alone, rather we must realize that our world isn't the only world, that everyone creates and inhabits their own world by virtue of perception, and only by seeing these worlds so different from our world can we overcome ignorance. That is why we need art.

That's why I have created this blog. Sure, I'm getting a grade for this in English class, but it would be easy for me to simply write entries that satisfy the requirements of the assignment, nothing more, nothing less. But that's not what I'm going to do. Ultimately, what I'm interested in is overcoming ignorance, which is why on this blog I will write about what truly resonates with me in class, and I will write about what resonates with me in life.

You may want to know why my blog is called "Material and Metaphysical", or you may just want to know why there's so much purple on my blog. Let's start with the easy question. I like purple because it has the potential to be a dark, muted color or a vivid and strong color, or both at the same time, and while other colors can do this to a certain degree, I like purple more than the rest. 

My blog is called Material and Metaphysical because there are two worlds. The material world, the one we inhabit, the world as it is. And the metaphysical world. the world of our perceptions, the possibilities we see for our world, essentially us as people and the perceptions that make up the world around us. The metaphysical world is juxtaposed on the material world and by understanding both the material and the metaphysical world, the natural world and the various worlds that we as people create, we can attain a higher understanding, by this we become better, we make progress.

Welcome to Material and Metaphysical. I don't have cookies, or cake, but I have ideas, and I have a lot of them.