Inner peace

Working on a project that is tagged as 'social impact', I often think whether you can do good without being good yourself.

For instance, can you do charity without having any expectations? Are you good to people who beneath you in the pecking order?

If not, then you are doing it for the wrong reasons. People don't WANT your charity if you are doing it to massage your own ego.

This TED talk called "Shut Up and Listen" therefore struck a chord with me. It says any social work that is not aligned with the interests of the people you are trying to help is doomed to fail. But it also talks about the patronizing nature of the 'giver' which forbids him from 'listening' to the people he is trying to help.

Without being good yourself and without eliminating the ego you can never do social good.
A personal transformation is required before you set out to transform others. You have at peace with the world and more importantly with yourself.

That is a journey I want to begin.

Frictionless Serendipity

This article lamenting on how social media tools like Facebook make us miserable struck a chord with me.  I have been noticing the same for the past many months. What was a tool to share ideas and personal news has turned out to be a competition to capture attention.

But my take is that this experience is but a speed bump to the future. Where, it is not only sharing that is frictionless but also serendipity.

Clearly, we are creating more information about ourselves than we ever have. The photos we take, the places we visit, the songs we listen, the ideas we have, the books we read, the movies we liked, are all getting logged in some database. And a lot of this sharing is already frictionless. Maybe even a little too much (privacy).

The next problem is to make serendipity also frictionless. Currently, I need to visit my Facebook page to see what I am missing out on (fear of missing out). But instead, if serendipity was pushed when its needed, it would be more useful. If I search for a book, I want to see what my friends felt about it. My playlist should also weigh what my friends have been listening.  

Google Social Search is promising in this regard but it doesn't have the social data from Facebook. iPhone's Siri is another potential interface for frictionless serendipity.

So, until the serendipity engine is built and calibrated correctly, hold on to your seat belts. oops. News Feed.

The Left is Right

The recent survey that listed most Mallu cities as the best places to live in India, while echoed my own assertions, is not something Keralites need to be proud of. Yes, we are better than the rest, but we were a lot better in 'the good old days'.

It could be argued that poor infrastructure, overcrowding and traffic conditions in Tier 1 cities, elevated the Tier 2 cities to a higher level. But the example of Chandigarh, which is a planned city, shows that the reason might be something else.

If the survey shows anything, it is that higher incomes do not necessarily lead to higher life satisfaction. With greater wealth, comes greater responsibility and I suspect most people are ill equipped to handle their high disposable incomes. 'Keeping up with the Joneses' is hard when everyone else is also at it.


The wrong kind of growth
Kerala is fast losing its charm and greenery thanks to excessive commercialization of Real Estate and ever increasing consumerism. It has been well known for a while that the Gulf money and the IT coolies are ruining the state. Whatever few playgrounds and empty pockets of land there was in this  densely populated state is being eaten away by the apartments and shopping malls. Ofcourse, it is unreasonable to expect the Govt to provide a decent standard of living while they are co-conspirators along with the Land Mafia. But it has always amazed me that shopping malls have become an obsession and the favorite time pass of a populace that is living in what is one of the 50 most beautiful places to visit in the world. (Fort Kochi remains one of the few places  insulated from the perils of urbanization). I can also never understand how people can accumulate so much junk without even considering for a moment the impact of it all.




It is in this light that ideas like Gross National Happiness in favor of GDP although they sound whacko, seem to  be in the right direction. Not only as a country but also as a society and an  individual.

But you need transformational leaders for that kind of change which is a shame to think in a state whose Kings shunned lavish lifestyle and put away wealth for future generations.

So, the other alternative is to undo whatever damage that the commerce has brought to the state. And what better way to do it than elect an ideologically heavy Left govt. that is anti bourgeoisie?

It is all there is

The New Yorker has an interesting piece on the void that secularism creates in the pursuit of a purpose driven life. While it explores several ideas from Darwin to religious texts, I think Einstein offered a better perspective.

What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow-men--in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in
the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

To inquire after the meaning or object of one's own existence or of creation generally has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view.

 And yet everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavours and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves--such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. The ordinary objects of human endeavor--property, outward success, luxury--have always seemed to me contemptible.

Its time for change

Manmohan Singh probably realizes this. The economic reforms of the 90's, that he gets so much credit for, unleashed the aspirations of a sleeping elephant that India was. Now, this elephant has woken up in musth and wants more, right now!

For the past many decades, we have been very forgiving.

We have tolerated bad roads, lack of basic infrastructure, lack of city planning, the red tape, the fact that millions go hungry despite rotting food grains in Govt go-downs etc. for a very long time. Indeed, we are probably the only third world country that called itself great. 'Mera Bharat Mahan'.

But the 90's reforms that created a lot of wealth for many Indians and widened the middle class belt has also created an insatiable appetite for more growth that needs a different kind of leadership.

Not one where millions of tonnes of food grains are burnt while millions die of hunger.
Not one where the size of corruption is Rs. 17,60,00,00,00,000.
Not one that shames India by bidding for a Games and doing a poor show of hosting it.
Not one where the number of large scale scams are so much that there is no room for covering all even in the era of 24/7 news channels.

Behind Anna's anti corruption movement, are people not below the poverty line but people who have 'roti, kapda, makaan' but want better 'roti kapda and makaan'.

Middle class Indians have seen how developed countries look. How the Govt works for the people and not for itself. That life can be a lot better. That we can get rid of our poverty. We even almost believed Obama when he came here and told us how great we are.

But our crop of 'leaders' have always let us down. And the recent spate of corruption scandals has proved to be the tipping point for a movement that has now swept across the country.

Fanning the flames of this movement are 24/7 news channels and frivolous internet apps like Twitter and Facebook where sentiment flows in real time and snowballs rapidly.

When the bomb exploded at Norway, its PM said, "The answer to violence is more democracy". To our PM, the answer to a non violent protest was jail.
That perhaps characterizes best where we are and where we want to be.

It will be interesting to see how the movement takes shape with Team Anna entering its 7th day of fast. Will the movement be able to sustain popular support during the next work week? Will Parliament be able to pass the bill risking the prospect of sending a lot of its members to jail?

Polyculture

In California, someone asked me whether I liked people watching. We were at a mall somewhere in Sunnyvale, CA and I was out shopping with an American colleague and his wife.

I don't normally observe people and I looked out to see whether I liked what I saw. And there it was - too many people of different races, wearing different things, buying different things, differently. There was too much diversity.

Of course every person is unique and race is not an identity. But your race still says a lot about you - the color of your skin, your diet, your religious propensity, your family values and so on.

There is beauty in the uni-cultural settings of Kerala, conservative Japan, communist China, even cosmopolitan Mumbai. But too much of diversity is not my taste.

Better off this way

There is always this topic most people are ambivalent on whether innovation is worth it. Whether we suck by not being like the Navii's in Pandora. My take is that there would not have been any other way. Our brains are such that even if we were to set the clock back to a few ten thousand years, we would still have become the way we are. Humans would have always invented the wheel, traveled across the seas and created the impossible. We are predisposed to innovate. The fact that civilizations like Mayan to Mohenjodaro took off in totally disconnected areas reaffirm this.

Ofcourse, there are still tribes that are afraid of the dark. But you have to read 'Guns, Germs and Steel' to know why they didn't evolve.