Category: Flawsophy

  • Parenthesis

    Sometime back, I saw this relatively unknown Malayalam movie called ‘Calendar’, starring Zareena Wahab, playing mother to Navya Nair. Zareena’s character is widowed at 21 and she refuses to remarry since she wants to give all her attention to her child. The movie worked for me, despite it being built on the cliched “kid grows up, and gives more importance to her own life than her parent’s feelings”, thanks to a tight script and some neat casting.

    On the day I’m writing this, 3 works – one news item, one article, and one short story – appeared in my reading stream. The news was about a 107 year old woman left by her children, one of whom stays nearby, to fend for herself in a cowshed, the article centred around the topic of divorce and its impact on children, and the fiction work had to do more with marriage and infidelity, but with a neat twist in the end. Speaking of the end, I will link to them there, so you don’t escape this early. 😉

    I really didn’t need these prompts to write on the subject, since parenthood has been a source of constant debate recently, thanks to our parents aging and showing the first signs of serious aches and pains, even as we grow older and realise that the body also believes in keeping a low temperature of revenge for sins committed on it during the last three decades. 🙂

    Parenthood is one of those things that seriously lacks an undo feature, just like death, and is hence treated as a decision that merits serious thought. In general, the parents want the child to have a happy life and make choices on its behalf. Choices the child may not like/appreciate, but the parents believe to be the right one. They also make sacrifices for the child, in terms of time, money, and so on.

    But at least for debate’s sake, do you think these acts are always completely selfless? Isn’t brewing underneath it all a set of expectations? Sometimes parents see children as a way of fulfilling their own aspirations, sometimes they see them as support mechanisms in old age. Even if it’s none of these, or others you can think of, they at least get some pleasure out of seeing their child do well in life.

    But what blows me has always been that the parents get to make this considered choice of having a child and the child who is brought into the world and is the recipient of this and later choices, has zero say in the matter. It’s a serious product design flaw, and the only non-utopian remedy is for everyone concerned not to take each other for granted.

    As promised, the news, the article and the story.

    until next time, apparent traps

  • Thought Bubbles

    Compassion is a value I strive for, but that does not make it any less a strange thing. It doesn’t help that we are in an era where it has been simplified to a Like and an RT. But each time I mock that these days, I am forced to acknowledge that I have absolutely no right to get judgmental.

    In the case of personal relationships, where circumstances require me to show compassion, I have caught myself holding on to baggage, and playing judge on whether the people in question deserve to be the recipient of any compassion. I doubt whether it is supposed to work that way.

    With people I don’t know, I wonder if the miniscule I offer in terms of time, money, thought, energy will amount to any significant change in their lives. If it does not, how different is it from clicking a button and transmitting the message to an audience? Do they, after all, vary in intent?

    On both kinds of occasions, I have wondered why I am not able to go outside my bubble and do more. Perhaps I am afraid it will upset the careful balance I have created, afraid to tamper with the default detachment. One part of my mind cares, the other carefully weighs the pros and cons, shakes its head and moves on. I follow. Being unaware of the bubble is one thing, being aware of it and yet unable to do anything about it is quite another. Perhaps I have to first learn not to be judgmental about the self, but then I wonder if that’s what leads to apathy.

    until next time, kam passion 😐

  • More on the Uncertainty Principles

    Ok, so it’s not long back that I wrote about uncertainty, but in this real time world, I can’t blame myself for thinking of it on a regular basis. I wonder if it also has to do with the macro environment I grew up in – the typical 80s kid in India, whose ‘options’ across the board – from movie heroes to restaurants to soaps and television channels usually boiled down to one. (remember?)

    From my own experiences, I know it is possible even now, but it’s a choice and a very difficult one at that, and one that might be difficult to reverse later. An extended trip to Kerala sometime back- home, made me realise that there are those who have made that choice, or rather, have for some reason remained in a lifestyle with minimum choices. Belonging to an earlier generation, but who have refused to let the ever changing world rock their boat. It isn’t that the boat isn’t rocked regularly in their ‘small’ world, but the rocking seems to happen within a framework – as though there is some tacit understanding with the cosmos, a reward for not adding to the cosmos’ complications.

    Uncertainty has a permanent live-in arrangement with most of us, and now dictates the relationship so much that we take it as a given. I am not a comfortable partner, but for various reasons, can’t do much about it. I wondered what the future would hold. As is becoming a practice with me, I found interesting perspectives in the book I was reading – ‘The Mammoth Book of Short Science Fiction Novels’.

    Asimov’s “Profession” had a world where a person’s station in life, and life itself is dictated by certain tests he undergoes at 2-3 points in life – Reading Day, Education Day and every individual is slotted basis the result of these tests. (not exams, mental examinations which figure out the natural aptitude of the individual’s brain) John Jakes’ “The Sellers of the Dream” has a world where companies sell a ‘fashion’ for a season, which includes physical and mental changes done to an individual and changes his/her personality. But in Larry Niven’s “Flash Crowd”, one of my favourites, I sensed the best summation of our current status “For each human being, there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt.”

    I wonder if this is timeless, and am not too certain that the last sentence on losing the ability to adapt is very encouraging.

    until next time, certain tees I can’t live without

  • A People Person?

    Scott Adams’ post titled “People who don’t need people” (via Surekha) reminded me of Asimov’s Spacers, the first humans to emigrate to space, and their life on Aurora, the first of the worlds they settled. Scott Adams predicts that “we will transfer our emotional connections from humans to technology, with or without actual robots. It might take a generation or two, but it’s coming. And it probably isn’t as bad as it sounds.“

    In the huge canvas that Asimov had created, the Spacers chose low population sizes and longer lifespans (upto 400 years) as a means to a higher quality of living, and were served by a large number of robots. As per wiki, “Aurora at its height had a population of 200 million humans and 10 billion robots.“

    These days, as I experience the vagaries of the cliques and weak ties – not just Malcolm Gladwell’s much flogged social media version, but even real life ones, I can’t help but agree with Scott Adams that it won’t be as bad as it sounds. I probably wouldn’t mind it at all.

    When I feel like a freak
    When I’m on the other end of someone’s mean streak
    People make fun I’ve got to lose myself
    Take my thin skin and move it somewhere else

    I’m setting myself up for the future
    Looking for the chance that something good might lie ahead
    I’m just looking for the possibilities
    In my mind I’ve got this skin I can shed

    Scott Adams began his post noting that humans are overrated. Sometimes, I wonder whether humanity is, and whether losing our current perceptions of it would actually make a difference. (earlier post on the subject)

    Lyrics: Invisible, Bruce Hornsby

    until next, bot.any

  • A clocked up life

    Time has always been one of the most important constructs for me. In most of my actions, it is probably the first parameter kept in mind. The debate on whether it’s a human construct or a dimension that exists anyway is still not resolved in my head. But I still swing more towards a construct because in the words of one Julian Barbour, “Change merely creates an illusion of time, with each individual moment existing in its own right, complete and whole.” He calls these moments ‘nows’ and further postulates that “Time is simply the measure of the space between two separate and unrelated ‘nows.’” Unfortunately, this seems to take us further away from any possibility of navigating that distance beyond the linear flow we experience.

    I was reminded of this because of an article I read in TOI and from my own recent experiences. The article was about an Amazonian tribe called Amondawa that had no concept of time. They live in a world of events and had no words for ‘next week’, ‘last year’ etc. Also, no one had an age. Instead, when their position in life changed, they took on a new name!!

    For a fortnight in May-June, I was in Kerala, spending most of my time in a hospital waiting room. My entire routine had been changed. Nothing can be more disruptive for a creature of habit, but it did gave me a chance to observe time and my relationship with it. I noticed that time played an intrinsic part in my life because of associations – from mundane things like when I had to take a bath/ go online to things like when I would see D next. The associations make memories and our visions for the future, and those make up our navigation mechanism. If the associations did not exist, time’s importance could be reduced to a minimum, if not completely.

    On those starlit nights, it was easy to remember Dr.Manhattan’s  line from Watchmen, though in another context ” I am looking at the stars. They are so far away. And their light takes so long to reach us. All we see of stars are their old photographs.” But for us, it’s a now. So which really is the now -the stars’ now or my now or both? But then again, if not time, what would be my main narrative?

    until next time, anti-clock-wise 🙂