Category: Social Commentary

  • Brood Mode

    [The title, while in context, is also a Hi to an old blog pal]

    The last week of November gave me a chance to engage in one of my favourite pastimes – people watching. No, I wasn’t stalking anyone, it was just that I got a chance to watch more and diverse masses (different occasions) of humanity than my regular outings.

    So gawk I did, at famed dancers, musicians and celebrities, at their tantrum-throwing best, egos in full display. I watched people standing in long queues, eager for a glimpse of them, so eager that they were ready to trample the folks ahead of them, or cheat the line. Even after they sat down, they changed chair locations and occupied empty aisles that had been kept for easier crowd movement, angering those behind. I also had an argument with a guy who had a differently abled child, clearly in no state to enjoy the show. He had a regular pass, but said the child’s condition warranted his family being shifted to the VIP class. He said he was from the army, and when I refused entry into the VIP class, he questioned my humanity. I bit back a comment about what business he had bringing that child to a  free entry event, which was bound to have unruly crowds, and how human he was while doing his duty at the border. I observed acquaintances at work taking advantage of the trust I had in them. In essence I watched a lot and learned a lot, again, on human behaviour, and myself.

    After I shared the last post with her, Mo had asked me why I was brooding these days. While I told her that I was reserving flippancy, wit and wordplay for the 140 character world 😀 , I thought she did have a point. A later conversation with Surekha gave me some insight, when we talked about social media and specifically Twitter. I had thought that the seeming transparency of that world would imply more fairness in our transactions, acknowledgment of other people’s efforts and a refinement in the way we deal with people. But no, the talkers still rule, popularity contests abound, and the meek still wait to inherit. These days I can hear some of them grumbling too. 🙂 On hindsight, this is the same mistake I’d made with blogging too. Something I thankfully corrected.

    What’s the connection? Expectations. Of others and from others. From the celebrities, from the people who came to see them, from acquaintances, from relationships on the web and so on. On how they ought to behave and interact. Expectations I set based on my concept of fairness. “It’s not about what I want, it’s about what’s fair!”, Harvey had said, in The Dark Knight. But while I try to be as objective as I can, there is a limit to that too. When the expectations are not met, I get judgmental, which is not something I like to do. Let’s just say I then don’t meet my expectations of myself. 🙂

    Earlier I used to be bitter about all this, and be rude to people, but now I just brood. I brood on how to get out of this cycle. How can I not expect, either from myself or from others, or ideally both. Does brooding help? No. Can I help it? No. Does that make me unhappy? No again, because like those processes that run in the background while I work on the computer, this is a question that’s being worked on too. 🙂  No, that doesn’t make it a pseud brood :p

    And every now and then, I am reminded of the words of Harvey Dent Two-Face (again), as he flips the coin, and I wonder about the truth in them “The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.”

    until next time, happy Dent? 😉

  • Aftermath…..

    ‘Intrigued’ might seem an insensitive word, but as the nation observed the first anniversary of 26/11 last week, I was intrigued by the reactions of different segments towards it. Bloggers, microbloggers, all forms of media, brands, everyone had a take on it, and their own ideas. Yes, nobody forgot, but this is year 1. Doesn’t count.

    I got few mails asking me for my opinions on everything from government apathy to the twitterverse on 26/11 – the POV of a blogger. I hardly had any, and whatever I had, I usually share here, like this. (my views haven’t changed) But I had been thinking about my feelings on the day, and what, to others, and perhaps even a part of me, might seem to be apathy, until I read this well written post. (thanks to Balu) And that set me thinking on standards and ‘Who decides?’, and then on to a tangent.

    Who decides what is to be done and how?

    A nation is formed. Its popular leaders, elected by the people, decide the way the country should be run. From sectors that should be open to private investment to tax slabs and from infrastructure to relationships with neighbouring countries, a few individuals, representative, some would argue, steer the fate of the country. In a few years, the policies and processes set up to aid the smooth functioning of the conduit – between the representatives and the represented- starts to work against this desired objective, because the balance of power between the objective and the processes have shifted. In a few more years, even the objectives which should have perhaps been reviewed, have been taken a step further, and promptly forgotten.

    Humans get together and aggregate, communities are formed, communities agglomerate, society is formed (in the original usage, not the housing kind :|) The society builds in conformation. Even with the non conforming kind, there is an understanding. Belief systems evolve, religions are formed, and rules are made. Do’s and don’t s are established in societies and sub societies. Popular culture is created and social ethos are formed. In a few years, the reasons for why things are done, and in the way they are, get forgotten, a mindless following ensues. Non conformists emerge, but then, we’ve been there before. Trading one system for another.

    A few people get together and form an organisation, knowing that they can create a better product/service than the places they have been working in. The founders have a vision for their work place, they set up systems and processes to achieve this, they hire more people, who can implement these. In a few years, a conglomerate is formed, the founders are at the top of the heap, there is a new breed that manages daily affairs, the process diktats are in place…. you know where I am going with this  🙂

    In all these cases, there would probably be a disruption at the end, and the start of a new cycle. It is what seems to be expected. In general, nations will sit up and take collective notice only when they are themselves under attack. The travails of another city, much less country are viewed only through the prism of how it would affect us. Society will take up cudgels when they feel a threat to the status quo. Those in power will want to retain it. Organisations collapse when they are unable to see macro changes and lack the foresight to adapt. When they begin to get affected, and they react, in many cases, its too little too late.

    The common factor is the LCD, no, not the screen kind, the kind you learned in primary school – lowest common denominator – the human. Recently, when taking some personal decisions, I tried watching my own mind work, drilling down from the seemingly obvious reasons to the unstated ones, and from there, down to the foundations of why i thought the way I did, and therefore did the things I did. Belief systems, created and maintained by experiences, peer metrics etc, and thought structures, the changes to which were only superficial with time (contrary to expectations), they were all there, with the reasons buried under multiple layers built over time. My experiences, my perspectives, so I decide, on hindsight, objectivity was perhaps impossible.  Autopilot. This is perhaps what gets reflected in everything that I am part of – organisations, society, nation.

    The realisation was pretty simple. Standards and decisions are on auto pilot, though they seem otherwise. Humans. Us. Living in bubbles, deciding objectives and setting up structures to get there, and then forgetting why.  Even when I think I am deciding, what is deciding for me is the baggage of the past.

    I thought of the poor souls in Leopold, Taj, Nariman House on that fateful day….who till then had built a structure and process to their life. Is that what it takes to get one out of autopilot? A cataclysmic moment – the moment when beliefs and structures scarily slip away, and the illusion of control becomes exactly that – an illusion. In the aftermath, calculated scenarios mostly don’t count.

    until next time, deciding the questions

  • Progress report

    One of the most memorable parts of the Andaman trip was the conversation I had with D, on the day we went aimlessly walking on the promenade. The conversation also seemed to understand the mood and was in its own way, aimless. As i wrote in one of the posts, I am fascinated by night lights, especially by the sea shore. It reminds me of Cochin, and sends waves of nostalgia at me.

    The entire trip had also made me wonder about human ‘progress’ and the motivation behind it. In a few minutes, the conversation that began there navigated itself to individual motivations. The comparisons with the Leh trip that I’d made  a couple of hours before at Corbyn were still fresh in my mind. I had set expectations for this trip even before i started out – expectations not based on any previous trip to Andaman, but on previous vacations. I thought loudly on what these expectations were – the beauty of the place? the feelings the place and people evoked in us? a getaway from the daily grind? A new setting and a scope for ‘discovery’? Comfortable stay, good food? Probably any or all of these. Anyway the expectations were set.

    And then D brought up one unacknowledged aspect – our projection of how wonderful the trip was, best characterised by the photos we share on FB and other private albums. (earlier, family gatherings and conversations) Isn’t that an expectation in itself – a proof of good times? Sometimes for ourselves, sometimes for others. I thought that was a good place to start understanding our motivation.

    From childhood, when we had richer cousins/friends flaunting their better toys, or showing us snaps of places they’d been to, or talking about the wonderful food they’ve eaten, a kind of motivation existed – to match better that at some point in the future. A driving force that dictated the choices made in life, which justified the ‘sacrifices’ made. Study hard to get better grades, to get a better job, to make more money and to finally get all the things that the cousins/friends had, even if it was a couple of decades late,  all the stuff that can be a justification for what is (in a sense) euphemistically called the rat race. And then to look back at the proof of achievement and let out an audible sigh of accomplishment.

    The problem arises perhaps not from being a rat even at the end of the race, but probably the realisation that a personal motivation got subverted into a generic rat race, which then became a motivation in itself. The rest of the life story would depend on the stance towards the original motivation. In many cases, the race stops, the baggage is dropped and a path of ‘self discovery’ is started.

    In my personal map, this is the place where I see a ‘You are here’ sign. I would’ve been happy with this, if I hadn’t realised that it has the same ending as the rat race. The path is different, and because there are no obvious indicators like the rat race, I have to evolve my own set of indicators. But the desired end is the same, simplistically put, personal growth, with previously decided benchmarks. The consolation offered is that it was reached on one’s own terms. I wonder, is it really one’s own terms if the destination is no different?

    Ayn Rand said “Man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress”. Human progress, not just from a humankind perspective – the places and things he builds, but a deeply personal one too, as the ‘ego’ would indicate. I was conscious of this when I shared the Andaman photos, conscious that somewhere, someone was setting a benchmark and the beginning of a race, just like I had, and continue to do, even outside the rat race. And I wonder whether I’ve really replaced one rat race with another in my case. And I still continue to wonder about ‘progress’.

    until next time, progress cards with my own signature :]

  • Life…streamers

    Sometime back, I read an extremely interesting post by Chris Messina – how we’re now hit by a plethora of data and information on the real time web, which our brains have not adapted to, and how, in order to process this, we’d require an augmentation of our existing abilities.

    The information overload has been happening for a little while now. Between reading blogs, writing them, microblogging, Facebook and all the shiny little tools that keep coming up, it’s a constant juggling act. I’ve been on Twitter for over a couple of years now. I can see a drastic change in the relationships there already, as compared to the banter of the initial days. New people, new thoughts, old people who’re changing with time, old thoughts recycled.  A simple @ tag connects lives. Meanwhile, its not just relationships and thoughts that change, but also behaviour – the need to share an experience, attention deficit, and so on. These would obviously vary with an individual’s usage of Twitter, facebook etc, but I’m sure there are more like me.

    While I’ve been dimly conscious of the vastness of the Twitterverse, I had a more tangible realisation only after i came across a tool (from an article shared by Shefaly). As I sat watching the pictures streaming across the screen on Twitcaps, I felt I was somehow connected to all of them across the world sharing images – from parties to churches to landscapes to death to raunchy stuff to coffee mugs and so many many other things. There are multiple images being shared every second, and I had an acute realisation of the magnitude of change happening, in terms of connectedness and sharing. The population of the world, the population of your own city, the number of people working in your office/living in the apartment complex- as the numbers come down, the people slowly change from a blurred intangibility to a focused person. But as we get more and more networked, the number of persons who become tangible are increasing, the arguments about their relative importance to self notwithstanding. As Chris says in the article, can human beings cope after a point?

    Sometime earlier this year, I remember writing a post about speciation – the evolution of the human species, and how replacement of body parts and advancement might finally end up in a being that may not match our current concept of human, or even living, like the Cybermen in Dr.Who. In that post, I had also mentioned Homo Evolutis, one of whose characteristics was networked intelligence.

    As the information deluge gathers momentum, there may be those who choose not to be part of it, who are comfortable not being part of this vast stream of consciousness, while there may be others who use their abilities and the augmentation to embrace this. These are obviously two extremes, and its quite possible that humans would figure out a middle path. But I already see this divide happening – some leaving it by choice, some left out by circumstances. The learning curve is becoming so steep that after a few years, it might be difficult or even impossible to catch up. And that’s how I begin to wonder whether we’re rapidly approaching the point when the species will diverge. Maybe not in my lifetime, but within a couple of generations?

    There’s another aspect of all this that I wondered about. With the increasing amount of information and the speed at which we’re forced to process it, will we have time to acquire more perspectives, or continuing that cycle, accumulate more baggage? Will that change the way we behave with people, and the way we live life? Will we become more objective? Or will we become more biased, relying on notions we don’t have time to change, and behaving accordingly?

    As I write this there is a stream of thoughts running in my head – of times, friends and relationships. Poignant moment as I realise the vast yet connected nature of the universe and its inhabitants. In the miniscule amount of my lifetime that I have spent on Twitter, I realise that people and relationships have changed, perhaps irrevocably. The lifestream will be an interesting read for me later, if I do manage it. Meanwhile life flows, faster, faster, until each second and beyond is accounted for, with streamers in between, so that we might remember…just..

    until next time, you’re here..now..reading post #700..thank you 🙂

  • A flaky post

    Paperweights. The ones with either a dancing girl/couple or a snowman at the centre. Turn it upside down, and the ‘snow flakes’ come floating down. Long trips away from routine make me feel like those flakes. I float for as long as I can, but i can’t defy the gravitational pull, there’s no way but down. All my floating is restricted to the confines of the paper weight, I can only wistfully look outside. When the upside down movement happens, I know that I’m in for a ride. I know it will be wonderful while it lasts, I also know the inevitability of the descent. In the initial moments of the floating, I am able to forget the ending, and enjoy myself, but towards the end, I end up counting the moments left. It is time to land, the journey is over.

    Remember Forrest Gump? Through the movie, there’s a white feather that floats around. A while back, I read somewhere that it represents destiny and luck, which is why it is shown to appear at opportune moments. Its free, unconfined and goes where the breeze takes it. Sometimes it gets stuck on to things, and then a gust of wind helps it resume its journey. Does it keep track of its journey, or does it just enjoy the ride?

    I read a piece by Fred Wilson recently, which talked about failure, and making mistakes, and learning from them. It led me to thinking about the words and their connotations. Both the words signify an end result that didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. It made me realise that these days I have to figure out destinations before i start. And I’m not talking about trips or vacations, its about daily life. There are expectations set – about how the week should go, how the work should be, how the weekend should be, how the movie should be, what i should write, how it should turn out, and so on. The expectations are about people too. When it doesn’t happen the way I want it, there is a disappointment.  This might sound obvious, but I don’t know how conscious each of us are about our dependency on the plans we make, the expectations from life and what we do, our version of ‘what should be’.

    And as this happens day after day, the habit and the conditioning gets stronger, till we don’t even pause to think where this is all leading to. I realise that the more the conditioning is allowed to settle, the more the pattern for the journeys will be set, and the more it will limit the journeys that can be had. So its not even about work or entertainment or even a way of life, it is about the way the mind has begun to function, the thought processes, the walls and the defense mechanisms that  increasingly seem to have a will of their own. Somewhere along the line, there’s also the concept of ‘hope’. Hoping for a better day, a better way of life, all within the structure that I have brought into being.

    What if I let go? One of Forrest’s lines go “I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floatin’ around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it’s both.”

    Destiny, these days, raises a paradox for me. I could say “That is my destiny”, and work on something and perhaps achieve it. Success gives satisfaction and then I move on to the next objective. So its a bit like the destinations and the traps there. Or I could say “I’ll float and let destiny take its course”. But if I did that, can I be sure where I land and what I will be is my destiny? The best destiny possible for me. Heh? Ah there, control again. In either case, it seems a retrofit. Can i un-expect, not ‘control expectations’, just un-expect? Is that getting closer to objectivity?

    It is written. The post has to end. Did you expect it to end this way? Did I disappoint? 🙂

    until next time, nishkama karma points 🙂