The Versus Series: Beginning and Brainstorming

A Philosophical Start:

The clock screeched with its alarming beep at 3:00am reminding me I had to finish some pending work. I was wide awake, the alarm was just to pull me out of my unpredictable thoughts.
I snatched my phone from the grasp of the gap between the table and the wall. The alarm read, “Plan Theme,”
I smiled because I just had a perfect idea. At least according to me it was perfect.

Look around you, you see matter. Your brain is constantly interpreting, finding meaning basically translating reality according to what you know and have experienced, forming your so called perception.

You see different quantities in different positions, in simple words, table, chair, desk and what not.
But if you see that from the microscope vision, you’ll see everything as a single moving body.

Why am I suddenly being so philosophical?
Well, this is how I came up with a theme.

We, humans, are so habitual to interpreting that we lose the essence of just being. Our brains constantly find meaning, which leads to us comparing. Even though I strongly feel, this vision is for us to differentiate not compare.
When you compare you discriminate. To differentiate is to identify.

So now that’s just a philosophical speech right there. I thought, let’s see how far I can understand the nature of differentiation, let’s experiment on our online lab, THC Labs!
Of course first, I experimented on myself and found myself dividing things in degrees. Later realized how beautiful and perfect the world appeared to me when I differentiated and not compared.

That’s how I thought let’s see how writers compare and we came up with the theme, ‘The Versus Series.’

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Of course, once the theme was decided – we lab rats had to experiment the entire theme among ourselves as a wonderous community we prided ourselves to be.

As it happens with most intellectual people – be it in the coffee houses of the Victorian era or the offline and online base of THC Labs, our conversation started with some hilarity and simple bouncing front and back of ideas.

We actually came up with combating teams enough to start a tournament.

Now, that would be glorious! The THC Labs championships!

Here is a glimpse of some of the topics we came up with:
Jiffy vs. Trimax
Cinderella vs. Snow White
Wristbands vs. bracelets
Pouts vs. Smiles
Braids vs. Ponies
Crowns vs. Tiaras
Trigonometry vs. Algebra
Blue eyes vs. Green eyes
Watches vs. Grandfather clocks
Pani Puri vs. Pizza
Chocolate vs. Nutella
New York City vs. London
.
.
.
And the list went on.
Of course, through it all, there came up some quite elaborate differentiating topics, like:
Corporate Writing vs. Novel Writing
Traditional Publishing vs. Self Publishing
Distance Learning vs. Online Learning

But the question arose in my mind, from the most trivial things to the great things that affect our lives in different dimensions – why do we compare and differentiate?

Why do we have a great comparison list within moments we start thinking about it?

Comparing and contrasting is when we look at an object, situation or person and look for similarities, dissimilarities, advantages, and disadvantages.

Why do we compare and contrast?

Simply put, to evaluate the situation or object. This happens almost unconsciously as we appraise a fight or flight situation where we are assessing both aspects of the situation. Also, comparing and contrasting is important to explain the preference of one condition over another.

Comparing and contrasting is such an important part of human life that we do it almost subconsciously in several circumstances that we come across – be it for choosing an apple over butter or making some life changing decisions of our life.

In reality, this comparing and contrasting is subjective and thus, from a general perspective a conclusion might not be attained but still, from a personal point of view it is inevitable for us to compare and contrast.

So, what topics would you like to compare and contrast?

Image Sources: [1], [2], [3]