Money as the metric

Someone just estimated me at 10x of where I was. And that made me feel small; have I achieved so little?

I started defending all my steps, and my journey.

It finally dawned on me that his maths was flawed.

And now I understand that all of us are flawed.

Why is money the metric for achievement?

I told my wife the other day, that I see prisons everywhere...

My 2 year old kid HAS TO go to school; and my 5 year old also sees that.

And until they are 18 or so, they dont see an alternative; that is just how lives are lived.

These same prisons allow for an unencumbered life, full of joy and love and anxiety and performance pressures.

They then move to "what do you want to learn, in order to be employable"

The college life is a lot more carefree, where personalities are formed and clothing is finally your choice! You finally get to meet real strangers and you start fending for yourself in the world.

What happens next after the age of 22 to 26 is astounding... You HAVE TO report to work. You dress a particular way, speak a particular way, and you HAVE TO show up everyday and put a smile on your face. Unlike school, you cant choose to be in a grumpy mood or plain refuse to speak to anyone.

And the sad reality is that a lot of people spend a huge chunk of their hours being at work, managing chores, and very simply, imprisoned by the daily grunt of being fit, looking fit, and showing up at work. 

And then, by the age of 55-70 there is another astounding change. 

People stop working, and start preparing for a life of 'nothing'. There is finally, no showing up at work, fewer pretenses,  and there is now a mad scramble to hope you are fit and wealthy enough to live a full life.

And all of this can be traced back to forms of industrial revolution and colonialism, where the school culture and the work culture began.

And this brings us to what they call the 30s crisis, where people have now started having kids and they are forced to assess their health and if this is the life they want to live. They quit, go freelance, and start their own business so as to be more free.

Just last month, when I was faced with absolute freedom, I realised that beyond books, TV, reading for work and exercise there was precious little to life unless we find ways to reconnect with people. I suppose that this is the current plight of the people - we would much rather doom scroll than face life. 

Avoiding the Mistakes

Humans are fallible and that makes us special because we can reason.

I'm watching Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey - and he said that, look... I've made mistakes, we all do...
Lance said that the word 'cheat' is for people who gain an unfair advantage over others. Based on that, he was not a cheat, he was playing on a leveled field... this is what he said.
To which Oprah said, but you are Lance Armstrong - you are held to a higher standard.

Isn't that unfair? Just because somebody is more popular, he/ she is not allowed to 'cheat'.
It's an interesting conundrum...

And this goes to the effects of popular behaviour... when many people do a 'something', does it become acceptable behaviour?
The broken windows theory - a run down house has its windows intact for a long time until one day, somebody comes by and throws a stone, breaks a window and walks away... Over time, as other people see the broken window, they believe it's OK to break more windows for fun. Eventually, all windows are broken.

We use this in our lives everyday.
Well, that guy just threw plastic on the street - I guess it's OK to do so.
My uncle told me that only fools pay full taxes - hell! I ain't gonna pay up...

We use reason from time to time and say that, 'Well, it's wrong to do so and so...But... just this once."
We succumb to group behaviour.
People are docile when alone and in groups, they can wreak havoc - think gang rapes, looting, rioting, protesting.



We play a game in our lives where we battle with elements much bigger than ourselves - based on that, it is difficult to win; the best that most can do is to avoid mistakes.

The slippery slope - we are all prey to it. We find ways to justify unacceptable behaviour; it may be unacceptable by your mind, your body, by the people around you or by some other barometers.

'Just this once, I am going to cheat on my diet" And there we go... we make it a habit.
Not paying taxes is acceptable behaviour justified easily by saying that the government does barely anything for us. It's as though we take a democracy for granted. Look it countries in Africa, look at Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka - most of our neighbours - many other countries. We have had a 60+ year democracy without military rule - that is an amazing fact. Very few countries make it.
The slippery slope is difficult to avoid.
We make a habit of exaggerations, white lies, falsifying data, self-adulation.

Humans are fallible and that makes us special because we can reason.
Sadly, most people stop reasoning. It's just too hard.

Angry people become stubborn. They create irrefutable arguments. They make their own decisions which may not make sense. They go through with them because ego rears its ugly head.

Avoid the mistakes.
Stay away from negative influences and use a rational head.
Keep a diary.
Question the norm.
Done. 

Do Nothing

Action Bias. It is a plague that has hit large swaths of humanity. The incessant need to do something. May be that's why I like walking alone because then I am not answerable to anything or anyone. Just like the time, recently, when I walked alone at this village in Ladakh called Stok and I stopped walking and I sat down for a half hour may be just because I wanted to.

An ad made me right this. I think it is write in the message it's trying to convey. Go nowhere. Do nothing.

It's your time
To waste time
Coz you'll never be young again
So go nowhere
And do nothing
Chat up the wind!
Kiss every frog
Stare at nothing
Waste more time
Coz you'll never be young again
Tick tock Tick tock Tick tock...
Waste away (Empty your head)
Float away...
Coz you'll never be young again...

There was a time not so long ago when people had time. It seems to me that people don't have time nowadays. Ok, will leave office at 6pm and go to gym and eat and watch TV and sleep. I will wake up early because it's the healthy thing to do, eat some food and watch a movie and go shopping and meet a friend and talk and talk...
What happened to not doing?

Ruminating yet again

I attended a dear friend's marriage in Agra. It was cold, I was surrounded by his IITian batchmates and I was happy to be there. 

I saw J. Edgar and got a peek into the life of a person who changed the world in a not-so-insignificant way.

I saw Coriolanus and wondered what Ralph Fiennes is made of. Wonderful actor he is.

I heard Michael Buble for the first time and I heard the mischief of Sinatra in his music.

Advaita, the band, is going to create some truly amazing music in the years to come. I know it.

Max Chandra is in Chennai right now (as far as I know).

Unfaithful made me question the concept of sanity.

The Selfish Gene makes me question the nature of human beings, reaffirms my belief in the insignificance of it all and makes me smile at the thought of our pursuit of the natural us.

And here I am waiting, while I see multitudes of people passing me by.

Often, and without effort, I see people through another eye; as though I am an alien looking at the human population engaged in activity. It scares me when I see myself functioning this way; detached, unemotional and yet immensely sensitive. And even though I am consciously engaged, I am alone. I am not sad, just pensive yet crazy. 

Who are we?

I have written about this guy before, here, and luckily, I came across another article on him. More of an interview. The guy is nearing Chennai - please do read this interview/ article about Max Chandra and The One Step at a Time Foundation. I liked this:

"Do you miss anything?

I cannot say that I miss much. I miss intimacy - not sex - intimacy in holding hands, in a kiss, in a hug... I miss having a friend to talk to when I am suffering or when I am excited. I miss sharing moments."

May be this speaks a lot about who we really are. And somehow it is at conflict with who we are genetically supposed to be - food and sex should spur us on, but it is not the same anymore. We, as living beings, have changed.
__________________________________________________________________________


Moving from one charitable foundation to another initiative: CancerFights
I was at Pritvhi Cafe with my friend who had come down from the US and at the tea/ snacks counter I saw a familiar face. AP seemed shock to see me; we were seeing each other after school (10 years ago!) and what followed was a flurry of words about what we are doing and how life has been. I knew she had been on TV as a presenter on a business news channel and I also kinda knew that she was doing her PhD in finance. And then she drops a bomb - she was starting a charitable organisation/ foundation. I was taken aback because a person who has been on TV, professionally, and who is pursuing her PhD is not expected to do something as 'altruistic' as this. However, this post is not about her.  
This post started with Max and is now at AP. It amazes me that there are still some of us who are capable of doing this - leave the line, care less about the material, care less about accepted norms of progress. Who are we if not willing to do something meaningful? Odd that I just wrote about this very topic some days ago. When I read a bit of what CancerFights had on their site, it disturbed me because... I was there, back from a lazy day of work, the purpose of which is to potentially live life with a better temperament and improving rationality and knowledge along the way. I managed to quit my job and stay away from the family business and I believe I'm doing a great job with my life; I also believe that I will soon try to teach a case study oriented course to undergraduates who could really use such a non-rote course. I wasn't disturbed because I am 'not doing anything meaningful', I think I am on my way to doing worthwhile things; I was disturbed because I envy such people.
To walk for consciousness.
To work closely with cancer patients - the quality not the quantity.
Here's to living a meaningful life. Congratulations Max and AP.

Human Nature

The above title may be considered an oxymoron. The picture below is partially the reason why.


The low-hanging fruit were plucked by humans before the middle of the 20th century. Most of our recent advances have been innovation-related - nothing wrong with that. It seems to me that until the age of 21 or so, when people start working for money, humans are rather natural; they are animalistic and constantly developing. And suddenly, as soon as they are thrown into the 'corporate world', something in them dies. I spoke with RS recently about how work done as an employee is usually mechanical, whereas work done when self-employed or when leading a team is raw, fruitful and exciting. Another friend works for a consultancy, one of the best, and says that all he really does is get things sorted and pretty looking - the answer to a client's problem is quite straight-forward but this dogma of mechanical or process-oriented work is slowly chipping away at human ingenuity. I had written about this in an earlier post but I felt the need to elaborate here. The prevalence of 'financial firms' is disturbing because their contribution is minimal relative to their potential of ruining the way modern societies function. Why are more engineers moving into finance and consultancy? And why are scientific brains rotting away in non-research oriented fields? Where have the artists disappeared?

160911

I quit my job at Ladderup Corporate Advisory yesterday. I have now incorporated a Company. I am ~25 years old and circumstances are conducive for creating a long-term vision based on my temperament, life desires and my competency. Of course, all of those are beliefs. But we have to start somewhere and at times get out of our comfort zones.
The plot seems very promising. Monetary rewards are quite assured. Intellectual and emotional rewards are also quite certain. My competency is not. Therefore, I am confused. But I am a firm believer that intelligence is incorrectly calibrated and enjoyment is overlooked. This is the next phase of my life. Cheerj to that. Let the crazies be unleashed. 

Being Human

Humans have been quite the same for the last 3-4,000 years or so. Am saying this because when one looks at sculptures or archaeological evidence one can see that we functioned in very similar ways to how we do today. The last 100 years have changed things drastically. I refer to the definition of 'success' and 'work'. Work used to be labour-oriented and success was based on sustenance. A society's success was at avoiding conflicts or winning conflicts. A woman never really 'worked', it was usually the man, and when we look at other fauna we see that life is based on sustenance, security and survival. The male is usually stronger than the female.
The computer-age and the evolution of sciences changed the divide. The mechanism of currencies changed what work needed to be. A farmer needs strength and hence is usually a man... he grows stuff and barters it for other stuff; this makes the woman reliant on the man. It's a crude assessment but this is what things used to be like.
But now, let's say a girl is creative, she can make more money than a man in some advertising field or so. The mere thought of a creative mind making money through the work 'field' of advertising or marketing or film-making would've been laughable at some decades ago.

Things have changed in a way that has changed the course of evolution as I see it. Never before had natural resources been unnaturally 'processed'. As an analogy, evolution allowed humans to endure dust but will evolution ever allow humans to adjust to new substances like microscopic pieces of brick, or artificially enhanced foods?

The natural instinct of a female of any species is usually to have an off-spring as is the intent of any species - to  propagate. It is odd that so many humans now choose not to create children; it is extremely unnatural but perfectly understandable. The meaning of 'survival' has changed.
It used to mean getting through life by physically searching for food, finding/ creating shelter and fighting/ escaping conflicts. Now, as humans, we 'study', 'play' in an artificial environment - take the notion of video games, quite absurd - we study to become engineers who are supposed to know 'engineering' who eventually work as consultants and then move to private equity... along the way, they get ahead of other people largely due to circumstances or intellectual capabilities.

The natural world did not function this way for the longest time but something has changed. Humans have changed the face of this earth and we have changed the mammals we were, may be, meant to be. It is all very intriguing when we look at ourselves from an alien's point of view. 

You can't take my soul

I have had trouble accepting myself for many years now. My thoughts have been questionable and my questions have been thought-provoking. There was a time that I felt I was smart, that time has now passed me by. I now see that I want to see a lot of what humanity and nature has to offer to me; not just visually but also emotionally and socially.
For a long time now, I have questioned people's behaviour in various circumstances and I truly believe that we as a kind are becoming overly superficial in our approach to our lives. I was reading about Charlie Munger and came across a statement he made about how his endeavour is a lot about learning and growing than about much else.
I like the word 'iconoclast' and I like the word 'contrarian'. Why can't there be a global war around the corner? Why can't Indian G-Secs touch 10%? Why can't more of us leave the clutches of capitalism and the spiral that ensues? There are possibilities everywhere and even then I see us following, largely, a single file.
I am about to embark on my next phase knowing fully well how hopeless my prospects might be and how woefully inadequate I am (that's what she said, sorry... bad joke), but I also want to embrace the knowledge that time is on my side unless something untoward happens. Alas.

I am immensely hopefully and a part of me is joyous. There is little that I remember, but I kinda remember the child I used to be and I am happy to say that the same child is within me now. Now, after a very long time.

Deviations

Normal people lead normal lives and go through very small deviations. Contrary to fairy tale beliefs, normal lives are quite alright and can be quite fruitful, however a normal American life, is different from a Japanese life is different from an Indian life. The problem is not with the normal life or the outlier life, the problem is with the inconsequential, uninterested life that is more passed through than lived. It's a thought that recurs often and disturbs me seldom. Enjoyment is a subjective experience and one that can't be explained well.
I crave to have my niche and my share of the un-normal. It's a pursuit I say!

Bottles and Corks

There is a very strong post by a guy whose blog I read quite regularly.
The reason I am saying this is that for the past few days I have been thinking of working towards something concrete.
I have an immense passion for global financial markets but I cannot find a way to dedicate a large portion of my intellect and time to it; I also hope to make this society better, be it for selfish reasons... Buildings lack planning, safety and common sense, roads are narrow and flyovers or highways take too long to take physical shape, we live in a dirty dirty city where people seem agitated at every moment and relaxation is an endeavour.
I hope to find the courage to leave this race and do something meaningful.
I would really like to join an organisation that actively does some intelligent and decisive work at tackling issues that we face.
Meaningful? "Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted." John Lennon said that and well, I just love travelling and meeting new people and old friends. What's stopping me from just taking in a bit of this one life that I have (Yes, I don't believe in rebirth and rebirth, if true, is quite inconsequential as a belief in this 'present' life).

Carpe Diem: Robin Williams made it popular... but what follows these 2 words in the original statement is important;
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero – "Seize the Day, trusting as little as possible in the future". I don't think this is a cynical statement, I take it to be a opportunistic and rude statement that hits you just once in a while.

Allow me to cite my Nick Drake here..."So I leave the ways that are making me be, what I really dont want to be."

The industrialized world coined the term 'giving back to society' - I say 'Let's give something to us, coz we barely have much.' And don't start citing poorer nations... I don't care about them as much as I do about me and us.

Age

I was listening to Elton John today morning on the radio and the RJ said something about he's 63 years old and still belting out music :)
And I - idealistic and stupid (not) - thought of how we tend to while away our time without due consideration given to our smiles and to the pursuit of something that has no real end...
I thought of my friend's friend, the dude, supposedly, just jams with his amateur band every (other?) Saturday. He's just one example.
But what I see clearly missing in India and in Indians is passion... Need to find it.

What lies ahead for humans...

"For the first 2 billion years or so , the rate of increase in complexity (of DNA) must have been of the order of one bit of information every hundred years. The rate of increase of DNA complexity gradually rose to about one bit a year over the last few million years.
But then, about six or eight thousand years ago, a major new development occurred. We developed written language.
This meant that information could be passed on from one generation to the next without having to wait for the very slow process of random mutations and natural selection to code it into the DNA sequence."

Stephen Hawking is trying to say that evolution - because of this development - has just become a whole lot faster.
I love the guy's candor.

"Because we claim to be intelligent, though perhaps without much ground, we tend to see intelligence as an inevitable consequence of evolution. However one can question that. It is not clear that intelligence has much survival value. Bacteria do very well without intelligence and will survive us if our so-called intelligence causes us to wipe ourselves out in a nuclear war."

He also posited that advanced life-forms have already found us but are just chilling and looking at us. But then, if they are so advanced why have they not destroyed us - for example, we don't think twice before killing a bug. :D

I had a thought. What if there were more advanced life-forms but similar to what we might do in the future, they destroyed themselves some million years ago on Earth? May be they managed to destroy themselves so well that they left no trace of themselves or their subordinate beings...

7 minutes to write this post...

As an amateur and largely ignorant human it's quite grounding to read about the universe.
The nearest quasar, for example, is at the least 780 million light years away.
A light year is the distance that light would cover in one year which amounts to approx. 10 trillion kilometers.
A distance such as this is almost impossible to relate to.

Another thought: Everything we look at is the past. Because light takes a finite amount of time to reach the human eye, whatever we see has happened in the past.
It is insignificant in daily life but, for example, the sun we see is as it was 8 minutes ago. Similarly, when we look at the oldest quasars in the universe - approximated at 28 billion light years away - we are looking at that which existed a really long time ago, probably at the beginning of the universe (if the universe did indeed have a 'beginning').

The hypothesis behind the existence of a blackhole is quite intriguing. Earth is a small planet and therefore has a very small escape velocity - 11.2 km/s. The sun has a larger mass and therefore its escape velocity is estimated at 617.5 km/s. The hypothesis that Feynman came up with was that there could possibly be a large enough mass (or gravitational force) that would not let even light escape. Escape velocity higher than 300000 km/s.

Information from Wiki and from 'Universe in a nutshell' - Stephen Hawking. Why do these things intrigue me? Because once in a while, I like to take a step back and look at humans. Hawking said something to the effect of: We should not try to find extra-terrestrial lifeforms because the odds are that they will be more advanced than us and possibly hostile. The future for humans lies in space because the Earth will one day be too small a place for humans.

I just wrote about quasars being 780 million light years away. We can confidently say that humans have developed themselves quite rapidly in the past 2000 years. It is not plausible to discount the existence of other lifeforms even 10000 years ahead of us, let alone millions of years ahead of us.

Calling time a dimension puts a new twist to all that we worry about because in the grand scheme of things everything is quite irrelevant.
What is also questionable is that which we assume to be real and why reality should even matter to us.

With this post I can say that I have come a full circle. Questioning reality has been my most fruitless pass-time. Questioning purpose and daily illusions can also be added to the prior sentence.

Passing Thoughts

When will pleasing your boss annoy you?
When will you stop floating through life?
Why don't you go out and eat good food or try something new?
Are you really scared of the next morning because it's as mundane as yesterday's?
How much will you regret things if you were to die right now?
Do you want to push away things that make you smaller?

A smile hidden by a mustache

My day started off with a smile. As I neared my house the sweeper outside the building opened the gate for me even though it wasn't his job. When I stepped out I went to him and said, "Boss, thank you haan." I was greeted with an odd simple smile nestled under his thick mustache followed by a gesture with his broom.
A wise man once said, "People wear clothes."
This statement is quite hilarious as soon as we juxtapose man against other species. Clothes provide protection against the elements and also serve as ornaments, possibly to attract mates :| however society has restricted mating through the creation of 'marriage'.
Let's go back a couple of thousand years and we note that man used to be simple. Hunting, farming, eating, procreation, sleeping and miscellaneous chores. It is around this time that the capitalist system or the need to earn, multiply, preserve and spend wealth was created.
What we call technology, innovation and ease of life may be termed futile by another species - which brings me to an earlier post where I mentioned :
Prime Minister Lyonchhen Jigmi Y. Thinley once said, "We are losing our humanness to become robots programmed to be productive through endless labour so as to earn to consume more and more without satisfaction."

Where is the simplicity to life? Is it just a farce? Or are we just doomed to follow this ritual laid out by present-day humans believing this to be the only meaningful way of passing through life?

Tolerance-ism

History is precious and makes us smile ever so often.

"
I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: "As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me."
"

-Swami Vivekanand, Chicago's World Parliament of Religions in 1893.

May be we should send out this message to regional fanatics threatening violence at the rustle of a peaceful leaf.
O wait, I have something for the stupid Sainiks...

Mughal historian Khafi Khan: Shivaji "made it a rule that wherever his followers were plundering, they should do no harm to the mosques, the book of God, or to the women of any one. Whenever a copy of the sacred Quran came into his hands, he treated it with respect, and gave it to some of his Mussalman followers."


The problem with religions is that as time progresses religions, or rather, the idea of religions is metamorphosed to something that suits a particular set of people. The people who decide are the people whom other people look up to. Power is desirable and through the medium of religion people can contort a fundamental idea such as 'tolerance' to something akin to 'fighting to maintain our identity and pride'.

Special thanks to Shashi Tharoor

OMG!! It's soooo beautiful!!!

There is an infantile joy in travelling. Even though I have been to many places, I remember only a few. In the recent past I have seen London, Paris, Hong Kong, Chicago, Red River Gorge, Murud-Janjira and Korlai Fort (rather magnificent); may be this is more than what most people might see even in their lifetime and more than many people might have seen in their recent past but I don't want to stop.
I have friends in Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Greece, South Korea and I want to go to these places even if for a few days, but more than these places I want to go to nature. Being from Mumbai, nature is rather elusive and getting away from the city is pleasurable.

I wish to visit Patagonia, Antarctica, Hawaii, East India, North India, South India, New Zealand, Scandinavia, South Germany and may be I will. May be I will find my treasures in other locations...
The structure of society is such that soon I will want to 'be' with somebody. I hope that that somebody likes travelling (at least almost) as much as I do and the odds are that she will.
What does bother me (yes, I can't sleep at night because of this thought!!) is the wresting away of my independence for I wont be able to just leave my home on a whim... Life is beautiful :)

Fear

Fear of that which is not but which may be.

Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not. - Epicurus

We face it everyday and it shall not cease to amaze me :)
We are afraid of that which has not yet come by and that fear moulds each one of us differently.

Disgust

When we hear of ill-equipped hospitals, cramped localities, discontinuous or non-existent energy supply, atrocities committed by people with unbridled power or apathy towards a better whole who do we choose to blame?

Is India just too large a populace to be cared for properly? Are the capitalist tycoons answerable towards uplifting sections of society around them? Are the bureaucracies of various systems to be blamed?
Today, I choose to blame the untouchables.

The untouchables of the past were determined by lineage.
The untouchables of today are determined by their lineage and their decisions. They decided to act in their own interests during their ascent to their respective positions.
The IAS officer, the police inspector in a faraway village, the customs officer, the tax inspector, members of political parties - particularly those related to religious propaganda, the 'babu'.

These people are rarely 'touchable' or accountable. Of course, generalizations are evil but generalizations are based on a clear majority based on hearsay and actual experiences.

The capitalist system is such that it makes a richer man richer and in turn, more powerful. I see that, as a man becomes richer he drags or rather pulls towards him, directly and indirectly, sections of society.
What the aforementioned people do is, most of the times, beyond the scope of the system and beyond the reach of the law. A lack of transparency and the continuous focus of people towards their own lives are the root causes of such 'distance' and power.

Because I am a product of the capitalist world, it pains me to see power concentrated in the hands of people who are unwilling to share it or distribute it.
If a business tycoon has amassed a fortune it is his call, whether or not to disburse his riches because he has legally (for the most part) created his personal wealth.
If an official (the list of people I mentioned earlier) has amassed wealth, it will largely be illegally, immorally and laden with guilt (I hope).

The larger effect of the 'babu' is his domineering demeanour and conversely, the inability of a subject to voice concern or opposition. I call it helplessness... which is why even I have to succumb at times to being a part of the system. It is also because of my illiteracy regarding my rights and my selfishness pertaining to my free time which I want to be as hassle-free as possible.
I disgust me and I am a part of the people - for now.