Growth and Inequality

The world is based on an economic model which drives everything that goes on here, including what we do and how we act, and not just from the work standpoint. And it obviously determines the share of the world's resources that each one of us has the right to claim. There is of course the all-powerful thing called "money", and to earn it within the economic boundaries is all there is to life for almost the entire human race of the day. And the model is designed to grow all the time - prices have to rise, people have to keep earning more than before, entities have to increase in size or volume - basically everything is made to behave like a living creature - a human, to be more specific. Even the denial of death is not uncharacteristic. Why should growth be a given in a world which is fixed in size and the resources it has to offer?

Before I go further, I must declare: I've started reading the book - "Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity" by Douglas Rushkoff, and the thoughts above are influenced by the first 70 pages of the book that I've read so far. I couldn't wait till I completed it before expressing my thoughts, so here I am.

There is also a fundamental reason, in my view, behind aspiring growth which is not entirely just about crazy pursuit - it is the gradual uncovering of the mysteries of the universe by us, and which has continuously led to new possibilities for better life for us. And in principle the entire machinery of the world economy is after enabling that better life using whatever resources and knowledge we have, while also constraining its distribution with a parameter called affordability. While it can still be argued that the standard of living has increased even for the lowest of the affordability layers, the benefits increasingly get concentrated at the top. In other words, people grow at different rates.

The dominant economic thought promotes boundary-less pursuit of self-interest by individuals as a way of achieving overall prosperity, and thereby recognizes the fact that there will be unequal achievement by individuals, leading to different classes of human beings, although it claims that every class would experience net improvement in its living standard (or perish?). As even if everyone was brought to an equal level and made to run, there will always be someone winning the race and someone far behind struggling to catch up - as abilities differ, and we're born with pre-decided levels of most of them. There may be more cozy tracks to run now than in the past or better shoes to help the feet - and that's the overall upliftment achieved. But our unfair models still allow the strong to get more food than the weak because of their corresponding inherent ability to compete for food, resulting in the strong getting stronger and the weak getting weaker. We whisper of equality, but we cannot have it in the current economic model. We talk instead of equal opportunity, which is also not really a fair offer as unequal individuals do not have an equal ability to convert an opportunity. In a way we have extended God's 'natural selection' into the way the world is run, so that we can discard individuals competing poorly. If God could do this with every life form, why can't we do it with ourselves? But whoever is playing God in this model we have made for ourselves is one of us, and is also the highest beneficiary of this economic natural selection. And that's the conflict of interest which screws with the world order.

Musical Sunday morning... Gulaabi aankhein...

Sad

9 people died by falling from the top (12th floor) of a building under construction near my home. A few others are critically injured. A slab broke off, apparently. It is extremely sad and unfortunate indeed. Just a few days back, a guy died at the same site in a similar accident. This is a reflection of the poor safety norms in most work places in India. The culture of jugaad leads to too many compromises in safety, quality and accountability. We live with that as the rich/powerful get away without being held responsible, the poor risk their lives as they don't have any other option, and the middle class just accepts without knowing enough and becomes a victim when things go down. And probably, contrary to what we generally believe, we are also somewhat reckless folk, and more adventurous than one in his/her right mind should be. We are like that only!

Oratory

Oratory, especially that at the most watched platforms, in the current times, is a skill that is less of what it used to be once upon a time. Good speeches still generate some euphoria, but it's less the skill of the speaker and more a lot of other factors that make public speaking so easy now, especially at the topmost platforms where the speakers have all kinds of tools which help them deliver content; and in the end all they do is just that - deliver, without putting much of a brain to it. And even the content is not written by the speakers... so basically all they do is stand on stage and act like they mean what they say. And then these news channels analyse that bull-shit for hours, as if it really mattered. A lot of time and energy can be saved if the content is directly made public, and we avoid all the unnecessary drama. Unless, of course, the speech is supposed to have an immediate psychological impact on the audience - like creating some sort of ecstasy about something and they go and do something they otherwise won't in their right minds. I guess Gandhi's and Hitler's speeches had such impacts on people. Perhaps Obama's speeches did too to some extent - in making the people vote for him - and he delivered them well in spite of just reading stuff on teleprompters; stuff written by someone else, of course. And one may say that every speaker would like such an impact if he can manage. And therefore, there is a strong argument in favor of live oratory in any case. And if we separate the content - read or rehearsed - from the delivery, the latter still requires the human and personality element so as to be really impactful... so we can't really replace the person with a robot that blurts out the content in the best possible manner as per the intended impact. But for people to be impacted by a read-out piece even by a human will increasingly get difficult as they become more and more aware of the fact that it is just acted out by the speaker and is not coming from deep down his mind, especially with more technology getting used - and technology has a turn-off effect in speeches. Teleprompters, for example, are designed to give an impression to the audience that they speaker is looking at  them, while he actually isn't. And the moment you discover that first time, you do feel cheated somewhere deep down. Given that, if someone can manage conventional oratory, he can sweep the crowds away still and have a competitive advantage too. Perhaps Donald Trump is managing that to a significant degree.

Brexit and Trump

Like all minds, mine also keeps working and thinking all kinds of crap, which most of the time is worthy of being posted on this blog - given the kind of standards I have set for it - but typing those down in a way that I also sound smart and literate requires a lot of mental preparedness which we call mood, which I get very rarely, although even when it comes, it is debatable whether I really sound all that.

That was a really long British kind of a sentence, which reminds me of the hottest gossip of the world at the moment - Brexit. What a funny term it is - I can launch a biscuit with this name that is also a bread, the brown one, and also has some x - my secret ingredient - to make a delicious yummy and tasty Brexit. I don't know what I need to do to copyright this idea... but like those idiots do on facebook to protect their privacy - I hereby declare the above mentioned idea as mine, and anybody who copies will have to pay me money of the order negotiable based on my mood during negotiation.

They say Brexit will lead to the next recession. And it will be real bad, I hear. And looking at David Cameron's face these days, I can tell he's sitting in an exam he hasn't studied for. The vibes are all negative if you hear world news. I don't know how big a dent one bunch of countries - a 'kingdom' it is called - ruled by a queen who also doesn't seem to have a clue on what's going on - can have on the whole world. But history tells us they are really capable of screwing everyone for their own survival. Anyhow, if I lose my job because of all this shit, I will start calling myself an entrepreneur to sound cool. And tag myself a CEO for some time, so that whoever hires me (after the Brexit is poop) considers me in higher league and makes me top management - a VP or something.

There's another mess waiting to spread all over. It's called Trump. Now although Trump sounds to me like an underwear brand - for males - this is really a guy, whose face resembles those fat dogs who look like they are smiling like humans do, but they are really just trying to spit out all the shit inside coz their ass is so choked and constipated.

This guy - Trump - talks nonsense like it makes sense, and sometimes it does. I am not the one to worry too much about sense, though, as long as I am getting entertained...  I bear Bhalla parivar in ye hain mohabbatein, for example, and never complain. But please don't judge me... I have a right to get entertained by any crap. For your information I did stop watching Sasural Simar ka when it became too meaningless. So I too have some limits you see.

A lot of people say Trump will screw the world. And like Brexit, he will also be chosen by people. How ironic! But if he indeed makes it to the white house, and if the world really gets more messy, especially for Indians in IT like me, I will have some more time as the CEO I plan to become if laid off. I may make it big too if I persist enough. My pani-puri thhela will be my office and assembling plant. And the product shipped right into customers mouths through steel carriers - with onions and sev - in customers' hands. And customer takes over the product logistics after it's shipped to the plate. FOB price of Rs.20 for 6 units. Again - I hereby declare this idea as mine, and anybody who copies will have to pay me money of the order negotiable based on my mood during negotiation.

this moment... is gone

Imagination - an interesting ability that we humans have, that enables a beautiful world to reside within us and also outside. So much so that it is hard to tell which is real. Dreams are another way of enjoying a presence beyond the waking reality. If you never wake up, then in your mind, is the dream all there is? I don't have a strong enough recollection of my dreams to say whether in one sleeping session I have one dream end to end, or a set of smaller independent ones. I think it's the latter, but don't feel confident in telling for sure. Why don't I? Am I lying somewhere with a deeper-than-natural sleep induced somehow, dreaming all this I call my life, like they show in the Matrix movies? While it doesn't seem like we have control over our dreams, we certainly have a handle on our imagination, although it can be argued that at some end of the chain of causality, we don't really know where thoughts and ideas come from. Without going that far, if we choose - like we do - to picture our thoughts in more video-like fashion rather than snapshots, we can take them to an end where scenarios plays in our minds in their finer details. That requires us to have enormous control on our minds, given all the disturbance they're subjected to. An awareness that the situation is imagined, yet living it in the mind like its happening for real - it's closer in nature to virtual reality of the technology world - and dreams in our sleep. And like in a dream, it is sometimes possible to forget the unrealness of it and get so immersed in it that one forgets his/her real identity which is outside the dream or the imagined state. Is someone's illusion someone else's reality? Within layers and layers of imagery, am I just an image? Am I dreaming? Am I imagining? Am I being dreamed? Am I being imagined? - this person that is me at the moment. But wait, the moment's gone...

Digital

Every IT company is talking about focusing on "Digital" these days. I've seen lots of these 50-60 year old leaders in large IT companies saying in one breath that they'll focus on Digital, IoT, AI and Cloud. Even the younger ones talk all this shit but I won't accuse them of stupidity as they are closer to my own generation. Even the older guys are not stupid for sure - I must say - as I am an Indian, and I should respect old people and Gods. I figured that sometimes when they say Digital, they mean and include IoT and AI as well. May be something else also. I am not sure whether Cloud is also implicitly meant. Perhaps it is. Perhaps when they say 'Digital, IoT, AI and Cloud', they actually mean 'Digital - IoT, AI and Cloud'. The hyphen is lost in all Indian English accents.

The first thing that irritates me about Digital of today is that the word 'Digital' is used as a noun, while it is actually an adjective. Remember Digital Watch, Digital Washing Machine? But what the hell does it mean to say - XY% of our revenue will come from Digital; or - we are very upbeat about Digital; or - We will invest in Digital. Digital what?

Here's a definition of digital (adjective) from dictionary.com
...pertaining to, noting, or making use of computers and computerized technologies, including the Internet: 'We are living in an increasingly digital world.' 'Digital activism uses social media to achieve political reform.' 'His blog is a great example of digital journalism.' 'Digital technology has revolutionized the music industry.'

This brings me to the second thing that irritates me - what the hell is this stuff that is newly tagged Digital now? Doesn't everything done through interconnected (is that even necessary?) computers come under Digital technology? What the hell is new here?

Probably newer applications are emerging due to internet becoming more ubiquitous and accessible through means never imagined before, and that has opened a whole new world of applications and possibilities in doing things. That can be seen as an expansion of the whole Digital arena. Why this separate fuckin' term called digital - the way it's used - which doesn't even talk about all things digital and is not even grammatically correctly used?

Or may be it's just me... I need to do some googling to understand if I'm missing something but am feeling too lazy... you can use that to your advantage and call me stupid, I don't mind :)

Note: The image in this post is copied from the internet without noting the source.