Bits & Bytes of Philosophy!!

Today, while coming back home from office along with some colleagues, one of them raised this quite "interesting" topic - What do you think Philosophy is? Is it required for the software dudes? Is reading books essential to know? If so, what are the recommended books..??

Quite a lot of questions - especially when two very interested people are there in the car, I'm one of them, but a silent observer and listener.. I'm the Huck Finn.. There was the passionate colleague of mine who launched headon into it - I'll refer to him as Tom (a.k.a Tom Sawyer, since Huck admires Tom)..

He started off with Vivekananda and went till Osho via Ayn Rand.. He said that doing ones work in a whole hearted way without expecting the outcome but with right and honest intentions is the best way to approach a personal philosophy without reading any books.. A way of understanding Karma Theory..

Easy said than done.. How will you associate man's base nature of acquisitions and profit motive with this..? How will you go from this to a capitalist theory.. how can you associate a software offshore job with this theory.. How will you say you are contributing positively to the material output of the society..??? A whole lot of new questions arise...

Especially how can we accept this as a truth in the light of Objectivism as preached by the Shrugging Atlas..

Then we found a way out for all these by saying that what ever you do without harming anyone knowingly and not causing any pain to others knowingly, in other words keeping mind off any feeling of guilt will help.. Just live a common man's dream of leading normal life going to the church or temple when you want and confessing to your sins..

That brings us to the crucial questions - God and Religion..? What role do they play in deciding the personal philosophy..?? What role do they play..??

Somewhere I read that education makes people atheist.. I'm surprised that the average joe software guy these days is more disillusioned with god and religion.. especially the general trend is that religion-as practiced today by the populist religions- is not the way to reach God.

Guys, who want to be politicians riding on these general religious sentiments, beware.. you are losing your base in Techies..

My feeling, for once was very happy, that this is a positive sign.. but then that worries me.. will this disillusionment in religion, will in any way make people more cynical and lose the positivity in life..? Will they become more pessimist since it is very difficult to believe in a personal God without any kind of faith..

God survives on faith.. how will you instigate faith with out a commonly accepted method of imbibing it..???

Last question for the day.. if God becomes a surreal image what is the position of Love..??? I always thought Love is the image the shadow of God that falls on us, if God becomes so unreachable how to believe in love.. the pure and unabashed love for the other person, for your neighbor for the society.. where will it go..?? How can you whole heartedly say "Sarveh Janaah SukhinOBhavantu"... This brings us back to the square one..

Is Mr. Gekko right in saying "Greed is good, greed is right and greed works.."???

Wish some guruji is also blogging and reading my queries.. :-)