There was no choice

MBA made me like a stereotypical "aadmi" jisse koi bhi kaam karwa sakte ho - jhhadu, bartan, toilet clean, jhhaad ko paani daalna, ghaas kaatna, ghar ke jaale nikaalna, kutta ghumana, sabzi lana, mara chooha baahar phekna, jaam naali saaf karna, bahar ped se amrood kaat ke lana, bachaa hua khana khana, diwali mein jhhaalar lagana, holi mein rang milana, sabzi kaatna, bacchon ke baal kaatna, bageeche mein ghusi gaay bakri bhagana, baahar rangoli banaane ke liye gobar leke aana, jab jo kaam bolo phurti se kar dena... kya bolein, aajkal "aadmi" bhi itna nahi karte, oopar se choon chaan aur karte hain...

Khair apni jagah har insaan ek "aadmi" hi hai... angrezi mein isko 'resource' bolte hain... aur kaam ko hamesha isse measure karte hain ki kitne aadmiyon ka hai... (even Gabbar asked kitne aadmi they)... for example - Prime Minister ek aadmi ka kaam hai... mere office mein mera cubicle saaf karna bhi ek aadmi ka kaam hai... wo "aadmi" ek aurat bhi ho sakta hai... riksha chalana ek aadmi ka kaam hai... train aur plane chalana shayad 2 aadmiyon ka kaam hai, ek ko baaju mein sona hota hai... jo bhi ho, kaam ke nazar mein sab aadmi barabar hain... ya yoon kahein ki kaam ki nazar mein sab aadmi jo wo kaam karte hain, wo aapas mein barabar hain... aur jahaan ye maanaa jata hai ki kisi skill ki zaroorat nahi, i.e., unskilled labor, wo sab kaam barabar hain no matter what the task and what the difficulty and who is more comfortable in doing what... but bhagwaan ne hame barabar banaya nahi...

We are not created equal, so expecting equal things out of us is not fair. But the world offers enough diversity in the roles we can play to get it going. However opportunities to play those roles are not equally accessible to all. Right from school we have mechanisms to test and rank people on same skills, and these ranks largely decide the opportunities that open up for many kids. Kids are pushed by parents to try harder, to try and match that one kid who is ahead of everyone else. And this constant failure of all other kids is not just a rank on their progress report. It is constant torture and a perpetual reminder of their lack of skills that matter, to the level that matters, in this world we are stuck with. It screws with their mind and self esteem, and they tend to even give up what they are actually really good at, and which in many cases could lead to pretty good careers too. And about even the basic skills our schools impart and test, don't we all know how meaningless they are, most of them, in the jobs we do? In workplaces where relationships, smart work, communication are the key for success, why should competition on academics be so excruciatingly competitive, especially at tender ages? And besides, all the stress on the little minds has psychological effects that hinders the growth of kids' soft skills, and ability to deal with people and situations.

The world is changing fast each day. All my formal education seems a bit obsolete now and fails to help me with my career. One has to be constantly evolving with the world and position oneself in a manner best suited to his/her personalty. They should teach this in schools and homes. Enjoying life is also important - there is probably no better way to live life than to spend it happily with minimum pain. Somebody might have created us with some purpose and plan, and we might never figure that out.  What we can do is to make the best of what we've got. Not just be an "aadmi" and go on like a slave, pretending to have made a choice but knowing deep inside that there was no choice.

Information Asymmetry

Underlying most conflicts in this world in Information Asymmetry. And Ekta Kapoor has built an empire on top of that. Look at any of those Saas Bahu serials on Indian TV. In every scene you have someone knowing something the other doesn't, and vice versa. And that creates all the chaos these serials are about. And there is so much importance given by characters in the stories to protecting information that they possess, that it surprises me they are finally characters depicting ordinary people, not those from some secret intelligence service set out to protect good from evil or evil from good. And the information there is after all only of someone cooking something - not food - even food at times. Sometimes the crazy unrealisticity, which is not even a word, gets on your nerves. But a lot of people are bearing it, as they don't think they have other options. They're clearly lazy.

Speaking of lazy, I find it amazing that a lazy body can still have a very active and hard-working mind. It's a personal experience! Whenever the mind-tapping thing becomes a reality, and stuff of The Matrix and Avatar and all that shit becomes contemporary, lazy people will be in better positions to rule the world - but only the virtual one - if they can only dream of physical action. Extending that thought, if right now this world we live in is all virtual by any chance, then the guy who is dreaming me is dreaming me all wrong. How can I control my controller so he controls me better?

This reminds me of economists and their lazy ways.

And also coming back to Information Asymmetry, let me cite another example where it clearly screws up the world, and is yet not acknowledged in the true sense - Markets - stock market, bhindi market, commodity market, marriage market, fish market or the market of opportunities. Nobody has all the information, and yet the ideal models of our economists base themselves on all information being public and driving people's behavior and response. What's the point of an ideal model that is more than 90% away from reality? There is definitely a lot of insider trading, sentiment driven activities, manipulations and all the bla which can tilt the market access and control with respect to different sections and categories of people. All markets are imperfect to serious degrees and yet our economists don't think beyond their ideal models, coz that's all the mathematics they can do - laziness again - in fact trying to understand true economics through mathematics is laziness of highest degree in my view. What do economists control anyhow. The information asymmetry is created, managed and very smartly controlled by whoever can to draw the best returns, while the rest of the people just crib and go away.

I have begun to realize that Information Asymmetry is the biggest source of all power in this world. And if you look around you'll find that consciously or sub-consciously or unconsciously everyone is looking for information which others may not have. Look at work-places. What is office-politics? Taking pride and drawing maximum benefits from knowing information that matters. And one has to be smart in gathering it, coz the source has his/her interests too, and the truth or untruth of the information is always questionable. Timing of gaining possession of the right information - true or untrue - is very important, of course. If you are too late, you'll only be worthy of participating in a chaai pe charcha which is an information sharing/gathering exercise with limited scope of high-outcome-info.

With so many channels of information dissemination and gathering - formal and informal - information overload is a real issue. Diving into tonnes of dark shit and coming out quickly with a glittering diamond is an art which very few are masters of. And managing the precious diamonds - gathered or manufactured oneself - is also a dimension of that art which is inevitable for success.

Freedom to choose one's faith

This post is not going to be long as I've sat through half of my Bangalore-Pune flight doing nothing. Writing is such a boring activity at times and  it's impossible to feel motivated to do it. Thinking happens on its own, but expressing it is a lot of work, and not so exciting at times. Anyway, now that I've started it, let's see where this goes.

I was part of an interesting discussion today with two of my colleagues. One was an American devout Catholic. The other was an Indian devout Hindu. And I was an agnostic mostly non-practicing someone. The American colleague is a much older man with kids and grandkids. And the Indian guy is my age and has a kid. And my kids are not born yet.

The topic of discussion was freedom of religion - whether our kids have it. And I found people had quite interesting views, some of them surprised me quite a bit. That someone our generation thinks that kids have no right to choose their faith, particularly one that's different from his/her parents', and that someone at an age like 17 is not wise enough to make a choice of religious faith surprised me. It also surprised me, though not as much, that it was deeply hurting for an American person to see his kids choose a different faith than his. But then, over the years, he has come to terms with it, and has realized that one has a right to choose his/her religion, and any religion is good as long as it teaches the right values of life.

The argument of the Indian guy, my generation, was two fold - one, that kids have no right to cause pain to their parents by their actions like these; and two, that kids of 17 years and even (older) grown ups are not qualified enough to make choices of faith. They must basically follow what their parents tell them, and not use their minds and make other choices coz what those minds tell them is nonsense.

I agree one mustn't hurt anyone, more so the parents, but if the parents are not thinking right and are hurting themselves for wrong reasons, should the kid pay the price for it by continuing to live a fake life that's not his true self? Of course not. Fixing it once might fix it for all future generations, and would be a great service to a lot of people born and unborn.

And on not being capable of making the right choices... It's the right to choose that makes life more meaningful, rather than choosing right, which nobody knows for sure anyway. And remember, the kid also has only one life which he/she wants to live happily. He should not be denied his right to experiment and search for truth, meaning and realities of the world by making him feel guilty about it.