Category: Life Ordinary

  • The constraints on freedom

    The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber & David Wengrow was in my long list of favourite reads in 2021. It would have been in the top 10 if it weren’t for my Arundhati Roy bias, because it gave me at least a couple of fundamental perspective shifts.

    The first is at an information level. The book is primarily a rebuttal of what now looks like a simplistic and linear way of looking at human history. The two Davids go up against the Goliath of the contemporary civilisation narrative that comes out in practically every book that even briefly touches upon the evolution of our species. This popular narrative can be (simplistically) summarised by three of my favourite books – Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and the two-part Political Order series by Francis Fukuyama. We were foragers until wheat domesticated us (as Harari would say), which led to societal hierarchies as we now see it. To massively paraphrase Fukuyama’s books, from various kinds of states (governance styles), we then evolved into preferring liberal democracy through the interplay of the state, rule of law, accountable government and social mobilisation, idea legitimacy, and economic development. Both Harari and Fukuyama have been instrumental in helping me understand what we could call ‘the system of the world’. (borrowed from a Neal Stephenson trilogy).

    But in this book, Graeber and Wengrow use archaeological evidence to show how these broad strokes don’t do justice to the experiments and trade-offs that many societies played with in farming, property, democracy and thus civilisation as we know it. It is far more nuanced, and in doing that, bring up the freedom that our ancestors had.

    Which brings me to the second shift. This insight, while was stated in a broad human context, also hit close to home. Has civilisation, they ask, caused us to lose what they see as our three basic freedoms – the freedom to disobey, the freedom to go somewhere else, and the freedom to create new social arrangements? It’s something to ponder over at a personal level. Liberal democracies might tom-tom freedom as a non-negotiable and enshrine it in their constitution, but ‘civil society’ and its economics would probably crumble if we actually had these freedoms. As I tweeted, The book made me realise even more that the freedom the individual needs and the structure that society wants will always be at odds. The differences are of degree not of kind.

    It’s when I think about it that I realise how much we have normalised the loss of these freedoms at a societal and an individual level. Why is anyone obliged to obey anyone else? I realise I’d be ok with an answer that has some emotion as the primary reason, but the most likely answer is power – physical or monetary. Between state and corporations, a duopoly exists on this. But the tyranny is rampant in daily lives too. House help, people being turned away from public parks, expectations of service staff everywhere. The list can go on.

    Why can’t we simply go anywhere else? Beyond money, the lines that we have drawn on paper get translated into checkposts and immigration counters, and crossing them is now a privilege. The lines aren’t natural, but try crossing them without the necessary paperwork. And even if you manage somehow, you will live in constant fear of being thrown out. It’s not that easy to go someplace else.

    Between these two losses, the freedom to change one’s social arrangements is pretty much taken out of play. Who one is (identity) and what one does and where, are very difficult to change. Wake up, go to work, get paid, use the money to add to cart, travel, entertainment. Rinse, repeat. Yes, we all have choices, but society’s choice architecture also bias our decision-making.

    How the hell did basic freedoms become a privilege? How did the ‘civil society’ we traded it for go rogue and become tyrannical? I hope to get a better understanding through the books I read this year. How does this manifest in my own life, and what can I do to help myself and at least a few others become a little more free? That’s a life’s work, and a different post!

  • Reflections on my OS – Part 2

    Continued from here.

    A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how the book “Behave”  gave me insights on the ‘why’ behind the mindsets I have in life. Since mindset isn’t something you can leave at home, there is some impact on the professional front too.

    Work

    As I had mentioned, my OS has a few known features (uncharitably, bugs) – the scarcity mindset, a low regard for familial bonds and (until recently) friendships, and a belief that in a crunch the only person one can depend on is self. This has led to some obvious implications and some not-so-obvious ones at work.

    (more…)

  • Reflections on my OS – Part 1

    Alternately: Internal Pattern Recognition: IPR? 😉

    If there’s one thing that Stoicism has taught me, it is that the good fight is not with the world, but yourself. Many of the books I read and observations I try to make on family are to get a better understanding of the ‘why’ behind my thinking. Among the many things that “Behave” gave me insights on was this, and an explanation for how siblings can be very different in terms of mindset and behaviour, despite inheriting not just ‘nature’ but sharing ‘nurture’ too.

    ‘Another dogma was that brains are pretty much wired up early in childhood – after all, by age two, brains are already about 85% of adult volume, but the development trajectory is much slower than that. …the final brain region to fully mature (in terms of synapse number, myelination, and metabolism) is the frontal cortex, not going fully online until the mid twenties.‘

    “…the brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. Because it is the last to mature, by definition the frontal cortex is the brain region least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortex from genes.” 

    (more…)

  • An incognito good life

    For a particular generation, Wet Wet Wet’s “Love is all around” from the soundtrack of “Four Weddings And A Funeral” is a special song. And thus, catching Andie MacDowell (yes yes, Sex, Lies, and Videotape too) in Maid was a pleasant surprise. She plays Paula, mother to Alex, played by her real-life daughter Margaret Qualley, and grandmother to Maddy, Alex’s daughter.

    Paula is an artist, reasonably disconnected from reality. Probably her way of coping with the unpleasant things that happened earlier in her life. In Episode 3 (Sea Glass), we see her preparing for an art show. (Minor spoiler ahead) When Alex (who did a lot of heavy lifting literally and otherwise) drives her to the gallery, it turns out there is no show. Paula had completely misread some charitable comments made by the curator! She might have been a flavour at some point, but is now middling, at best.

    At dinner on the same day, Paula and Alex squabble, with Paula delivering a low blow. But the next day, when Alex returns to her (temporary) home in the evening, she finds that Paula was there earlier, and had painted a wall mural for Maddy. Maddy gets all giggly and excited.

    And all that was one part of the context. The second part is what I have been reading in ‘Lives of the Stoics‘, around the same time. ‘We naturally care what people think of us; we don’t want to seem too different, so we acquire the same tastes as everyone else. We accept what the crowd does so the crowd will accept us. But in doing this, we weaken ourselves. We compromise, often without knowing it; we allow ourselves to be bought – without even the benefit of getting paid for it.‘ 

    I thought about it in the context of Paula’s exhibition vs mural. Exhibiting one’s expressions (art) to a crowd which is seemingly interested in such things vs delighting her daughter and grand-daughter. I understand it does not always have to be an either-or, but I think we subconsciously optimise for one or the other, and neurons wire together etc.

    As I have written before, when the ‘why’ of creation changes, so does the ‘what’. And there are many slices to this. For instance, doing something because it gives me joy vs doing it for validation from ‘Instafam’ or Tweeps. And not just validation, but validation at scale – ‘We have created a world where we reward the manipulation of quantities more than the appreciation of qualities.’ ~ Roger L. Martin. There is another slice, more on that later.

    For some time now, I have consciously tried to avoid this direction, and instead, focused on a different path. From experience, it is a matter of training one’s mind, and being mindful of the distractions. Easier said than done, especially when a staged presence has a direct implication on things like employability. But possible.

    ‘For me, success is not a public thing. It’s a private thing. It’s when you have fewer and fewer regrets.‘ ~ Toni Morrison. For instance, something I am grateful for is the ability to make people laugh. Not a prepared standup act, but something on the spur of the moment, with a bunch of contexts built in. These days, when I am able to make D laugh, I consider the day a success. I also find the opportunity to make friends and colleagues smile rewarding.

    Not that I don’t share random wordplay on Twitter, or don’t find validation pleasing, but I am increasingly becoming ok not getting it either. Just being able to do it makes me happy. ‘To have but not want, to enjoy without needing.’ 

    And then there is the other slice. The work on this continues, but that’s another post.

  • Ex-communities

    One of the pleasant side-effects of the pandemic in Bangalore is the (relative) reduction in time to get to places. That meant I didn’t grumble much when we had to make a trip to Jalahalli. The original plan was to use the Metro but thanks to the reduced time, we took a cab. Typical tourist behaviour! (For Whitefield residents, Jalahalli is practically tourism)

    Our destination was somewhere inside the HMT kingdom and on our way back, as the sun began its descent, the backseat of a car was a great place to reflect on folks spending their Sunday evening. Using HMT and time together is predictably Facebook meta, but there is a poignance in the vestiges of a once thriving community. A cinema, an officers club, an auditorium, a playground, a hospital and even a museum, all centred around a factory. Someone’s vision of a self-sufficient ecosystem.

    And like all ecosystems, it has a shelf-life. But parts of it persist, and the crowd in the playground, where two cricket matches were being played simultaneously, was proof of that. It reminded me of the university campus, and a phrase I had used for it almost a decade ago – islands in time.

    I am probably biased because I am an 80s kid. Technically 70s, but hey, what’s a couple of years in a few decades? I think the ecosystems that I experienced in the 80s gave people a shared identity. And I could not help but juxtapose this with apartment life. Yes, we call it community, but how many really are?

    I also believe we have been moving relentlessly towards a more individual-centric was of living. Technology and specifically mobile internet has accelerated it. Ironically, the pandemic was a speed breaker that made us realise our shared existence in isolation, but the lesson, I pessimistically believe, won’t stick. Algorithms ensure that our digital consumption is a warped version of reality tailor-made for the individual. And when everything from food to self actualisation is a swipe away, community gets played differently.

    One shift is from real to digital. I am old enough to remember the first years of the consumer internet (in India, at least) and the online communities then. IRC, anyone? 🙂 And the early days of Web 2.0 – from Google Reader to Del.icio.us to Twitter. Yes, these ecosystems too have a shelf life. The internet has matured, and by definition, that is a loss of innocence. And likes and ‘fams’ simultaneously reveal and exacerbate the malaise within. I happened to be reading Behave, and found this paragraph relevant here –

    …neighbourhoods readily communicate culture to kids. Is there garbage everywhere? Are houses decrepit? What’s ubiquitous – bars, churches, libraries, or gun shops? Are there many parks, and are they safe to enter? Do billboards, ads and bumper stickers sell religious or material paradises, celebrate acts martyrdom, or kindness and inclusiveness?

    Look around, across real and virtual neighbourhoods, and think about what you see. Maybe it’s me, but it is indeed ironic that the era of hyper-connectivity creates an inherent sense of disconnectedness. Not just from others, but from the self too. That, is a dangerous place to be.