Category: Flawsophy

  • Privilege & Currency

    I read a remarkable set of tweets sometime back on the subject of privilege by @eveewing. She rightly pointed out that it is fairly easy to acknowledge privilege, but reparations are far more difficult. Writing about it, by that measure, is the easiest thing to do, but be that as it may….

    I had written about privilege a while back, and used the framework from Breaking Smart – socio economic, cultural and cognitive kinds. The tweets I’d mentioned above are related mostly to the first kind – socio economic – and this is indeed the most visible around. But a recent experience made me think of it a little beyond that. (more…)

  • Map making

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    In “The Case Against Cosmic Justice” I’d brought up how (IMO) randomness was the key driver of the universe, and that pretty much every other concept (God, karma etc) was a narrative fallacy. I think that requires a little editing. To use a phrase from “Sapiens”, these other concepts aren’t really fallacies, they are inter-subjective realities. That means it they are belief systems that a lot of people share and agree to. e.g. money, nations. This is different from subjective reality – my personal reality as I experience it or choose to see it e.g. Salman Khan should be in jail for killing people, and objective reality – one which exists irrespective of anyone’s belief systems e.g. gravity. (more…)

  • We, the storytellers (2)

    There is a quote that has found its way into many posts on this blog – “Judging a person doesn’t define who they are, it defines who you are.” I still subscribe to that. However, motivated by the daily outrage on social platforms on everything ranging from a Coldplay video to a newspaper calling the city by its old name – Bombay, to each other’s political or religious belief systems, and by the behaviour of people around, (and myself when I introspected) I decided to go further along that quote. The result was this tweet

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  • A new kind of privilege

    A couple of weeks ago, we visited a newly opened eatery in Bangalore. Something about the crowd made me observe it more. It seemed like this was a set completely different from the kinds I usually see during restaurant visits. It took me a little while to understand why I felt so, and when I did, I remembered the nuance I had discovered only a year ago.

    In the restaurants/pubs I visit, I usually see people like me. The ones who, irrespective of career highs they might have scaled, have to go at it daily with the business of life. They are curious for new experiences and/or are eager to climb a rung or two, and see such places through these frames. In both cases, they are ‘visitors’. But there is a different crowd I saw here –  a set of people whose body language – a certain kind of composed languor, and the way they behaved with each  other, reflected a sense of belonging. I consider them privileged. (more…)

  • Knew you, again

    Jon Westenberg wrote on a subject I too have been mulling over recently – It’s Sad When Someone You Know Becomes Someone You Knew – on people who have become footnotes in one’s life. I could relate to it, though I do think that many relationships have a context-based shelf life. I have written about this before – way back in 2007.

    My recent thoughts on the subject, however, are on a couple of tangents. It’s about how people change across time, and the way we react to it. I’ve noticed that I tend to ‘freeze’ people at the last set of close interactions we’ve had, and be very surprised to realise they’ve changed. Silly but true! In some cases, it seems I have expected them to remain as-is even after a couple of decades, and get annoyed because I find it really hard to relate to their current version! [posts in 2008, 2009 (3rd para)] In other cases, I come across a person’s published work, or opinion, and ‘refuse’ (in my mind) to accept the excellent thought/nuanced perspective because I find it to be incompatible with my view of the person I had known! Someone I know had become someone I knew. (more…)