Category: Society & Culture

  • 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 🙂

  • Insignificance

    I remember writing this post about 4 years back, with an insight on why I didn’t particularly like to travel. Things have changed since then, and I do travel as much as possible these days. The odd discomfort of viewing masses of humanity still persists, but the reasons are more nuanced.

    What reminded of that post was this article that beautifully expressed the discomfort with the title “The Sad, Beautiful Fact that We’re All Going to Miss Almost Everything“. The article uses this in the context of books, films, music, television and art. But I relate it more to places and people. I still remember that the saddest part of leaving Leh was that it was perhaps my only visit to the place and I had not seen everything that had to be seen. In the case of people, the rise of the statusphere (Facebook and Twitter) has only added to the feeling that one is constantly missing something significant.

    It is probably going to get worse, unless of course, we manage to do the Matrix-USB type thing of instant information absorption. Even then, it would probably go the way things are headed to these days anyway- consuming without experiencing. The real time challenge of being updated about people would still exist. And perhaps it will end up the way the line goes, “we will increasingly be defined by what we say no to”. But, as the author of the article I linked to, above, notes,

    It’s sad, but it’s also … great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good………That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.

    If I had to adapt that to places and people, I could say that the creator might feel insignificant if we could discover all of it in a lifetime. However, the collective advance of humanity is not a complete solace when it comes to the individual’s existential angst. As one of my fave Calvin strips go

    until next time, insignificant choices too?

  • Integral Calculations

    The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ~ George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) “Maxims for Revolutionists”

    Now, I guess if i stretched that to Charlie Sheen, especially the last sentence you’ll think I have been swigging “Tiger Blood” too. 😀 But I did have this notion after I read Scott Adams’ post on him.

    Imagine if you stopped filtering everything you said and did. ….just try to imagine yourself living without self-censorship. Wouldn’t you sound crazy?…. Imagine you are so unafraid of consequences and the opinions of other people that you start sentences before you have a plan for how they will end……I think Charlie is fascinating because he’s living without fear. That translates into a disturbing degree of honesty……But I also think that a total lack of fear would look like insanity to the casual observer. And perhaps it is. But it’s a strangely great kind of crazy.

    When I read up about moral absolutism, I wondered what/who would decide the absolutes one would stand by, and were they really absolutes? After reading all of that, I guess moral integrity towards the self better explains what I had in mind.

    So, if Mr. Sheen has decided that no-self-censorship and no-fear are the integral parts of his self from now on, and lives the rest of his life by it, we might consider it bizarre by civil society standards, but he just might be in a better space than we are in terms of moral integrity. (not hinting at a goddesses irony 🙂 ) The alternate consensus that this is just the drugs talking is not as comforting as it should be, when I think of it from this perspective.

    Does our general dissatisfaction stem from our willingness to conform to society’s norms of moral integrity, and the lack of courage to show society the middle finger whenever warranted? The individual consciousness against the urge to belong? I’m still thinking.

    until next time, integration and differentiation 🙂

    P.S This is not sheenfluence

  • Sight, Insight

    One Saturday, when we were getting out of Forum Mall, we noticed a trio fumbling around the entrance barrier ropes. Turned out they were blind and had no idea how to get out. With two loud events happening there, I guess their requests for help might not have been heard. We managed to get them out and in less than a minute, I learned how hard it must be for them to navigate- from steps to people in a rush, everything was a potential obstruction/hazard.

    When we left them, I felt guilty, wondering how they’d reach their home/next destinations, and how I’d let my plans for the evening take precedence over the help I could’ve done them. I was also quite frustrated at the seeming injustice of it all. It didn’t help that I like perfect systems, which have a reason for being the way they are. D said that in the volunteering work she does, they are advised not to bond beyond a certain point with the people they work with. Apparently, when they get attached, it becomes difficult for both parties.

    The next week, for the third time, this book “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” resisted my advances. It’s not the first one, nor is it going to be the last that just stayed on the shelf and mocked my attempts to establish some contact. But it definitely had been around the longest so far.

    The signature says we bought it on a Gandhi Jayanti day in 2004. This time I got to about a third of it before I was completely fatigued. Perhaps it’s do with my inability to read multiple books simultaneously or the lure of the unread ones staring at me from the bookshelf, but I just couldn’t go on. It did give me a few interesting insights on life, death, transience etc, before we parted ways. In case it isn’t obvious, I quite hate not finishing books.

    Letting go of things is never easy, though the difficulty varies as per the ‘thing’ under consideration. And yet, we do manage to let go. Sometimes by choice and sometimes slowly moving on without even realising (like the death of someone dear). But it doesn’t come easy as a practice – it either takes an iron will or is an unconscious act. The middle path slips from the grasp easily, such is the wiring of the mind. Perhaps, when I finish the book, I will understand how, and will be able to let go of books, blind people and a fancy dinner with the same ease and understanding.

    until next time, in the dark..