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.
