The “Kindest” Chains

The real nuisance (yes, nuisance) of helicopter parenting lies in the gaslighting they often deploy on their children.

I take no pleasure in criticizing parents or respected elders. Yet, there are countless moments in the lives of their children, and even of adults, where they have confided in their parents and expected them to respond in a certain way. These children are often well aware of the risks and fully prepared to face them.

The gaslighting begins when these helicopter parents override the reasonable requests or choices of their adult children. The world rarely sees, or even believes, the trust, confidence, sensitivity, and consideration that some children extend toward their parents.

What society has unfortunately normalized, with only a few exceptions facing token reprimands, is the parents’ intrusive behavior masked as care. I am not talking about insecurity. I am referring to that attitude of “If I am doing something for you, it is for your own good.” This becomes an exhausting struggle for those children who have already proven their capability in the very fields where they now wish to pursue their own ventures.

Yes, the world is becoming more difficult and unpredictable. But if one still feels the need to helicopter-parent such children, then what was the point of dedicating one’s entire life to raising them? What good has come from all the priceless education if the end result is to treat your children as naïve for life? What good has come from the emotional support offered, if when the child wishes to be strong, you question the soundness of that strength? What good have all the prayers done if, after seeking your blessings and your faith, your child faces resistance to their own choices? What good can come from a child’s conscious effort to be wise and good when that goodness is always overshadowed by parental anxiety and irritation?

This is a serious problem, one that will grow even more vicious as the world continues to descend into chaos. The worst affected will be those children who truly possess the ability to discern between the real good and the real bad, not through hearsay but through reflective and contemplative minds.

I call them the Ekalavya children. Like Ekalavya, they have given their proverbial thumbs to the very people they respected the most. And they will suffer the most. Their genuine outbursts will be dismissed and lumped together with the noise created by those who have proved nothing, yet pose as “revolutionaries” among equally deluded peers.

I do not know the way out for these Ekalavya children, who will live in an eternal dilemma and drift into a paralysis of action, while their parents mistake that paralysis for obedience.

The Tyranny of Ambiguity

I recently came across some social media posts by bankers who were super frustrated with the workload and abuse they were dealing with. Within the comment section, most of the responses were deriding the banker on how useless most bankers are and why he should quit his job instead of whining like a baby.

With more than a handful of people I know being bankers, the banker’s side of the story was repeated by them as well. At the same time, many banks are operating at an equally awful level, where the customer is rendered helpless and is constantly under severe confusion and stress.

Social media, while allowing both sides of the debate, also made me consider something: we have entered a phase where a Rashomon-like world indeed exists, where the crime, the criminal, and the perpetrators are never fully established. Why? Because the circumstances never allow either side of the tortures to fully have a conversation.

Ask again, why does this happen? Does this have a common thread? Quite frankly, I think it does. The over-enthusiastic implementation of half-assed regulations with zero foresight and dictatorial compliance is at fault. This is the outcome of a centralized decision-making system imposed on an extremely complex and fragile structure. Each day it gets bazooka-ed with another set of regulations and compliance mandates. The result is zero clarity and even more ambiguity.

A very interesting video by Sucheta Dalal on KYC’s disaster is a must-watch for everyone. The nuts and bolts of that video: turning an entire population of over 1.4 billion into headless runners chasing compliance with something that even the authorities are not clear about. That is not even catastrophe; it is straight-up criminality. The difference is that a catastrophe might be an outcome of unintentional actions, but criminality is not. This is a way of creating an environment where everyone is forcefully made accountable by manufacturing ambiguity, with no one having the power to even ask for clarification. Chaos is the new order.

The same sentiment is echoed by other sections of society that simply want to conduct day-to-day operations without getting a “nudge” from the authorities. Chaos prevails there as well. Why? Because the more you remain confused, frustrated, afraid, and without access to clarity, the more vulnerable you are to making mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the more vulnerable you become. Virtue for thee, none for me.

This is the danger that a society aspiring to be antifragile should really be concerned about: self-inflicted wounds with zero benefits, long-term shocks, and very little incentives or progress. Unlike the aspired idea of a system where shocks build strength as they keep coming, this behavior of invisible hands creating chaos and commotion with zero accountability is dangerous. Another unfortunate angle is that this is spreading across various sectors of business as well. It further extends to facets like education, skill development, personal growth, lifestyle, love, marriage, care, and compassion. Someone is dictating these terms and creating a whirlpool of ambiguity, while some people, standing at the shore minding their own business, are forced to jump into it. The “why” for this behavior has its roots in societal chaos, which again is an extension of this invisible hand.

I keep asking people to read much more nuanced literature than the one that is fashionably shoved into their throats and up their asses, because the nuanced and the old ones tell the story of the age before, and presumably the age that at least gives us the semblance of what “order,” “harmony,” “progress,” and “accountability” look like. All together, applying to the same set of people, leaving out no one.

Another unfortunate extension, as well as a peek into an abysmal future, is that soon the world will have its first set of grandparents who have minimal idea of what the above-mentioned words mean, and how they once worked together in a functional society. The dilution will keep happening until these words, their effect, and their sentiments evaporate.

Preservation of knowledge is not just about books. It builds heads and hands that rise, not only for revolution but also for self-regulation, when the invisible hand wants to rule over the chaos it creates.

Points to ponder: if chaos is the new order, do you still believe you are a free citizen, or just a confused subject in someone else’s experiment? Are you brainwashed into believing that chaos manufactured by the apathetic and the braindead, bring order; an order that even they themselves cannot envisage or define?

The One On His Birthday!

…for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

-Plutarch, in Theseus (translated by John Dryden)

Image Courtesy: Ship of Theseus (2012)

It has really been a long time since there was a post on this blog which made sense! That being said, there are no guarantees that this one will. Hello to all the readers and also to those who have stumbled upon this page of obscurity while searching something meaningful. A lot has changed since the last post. There have been times when I was having an immense urge to share something, at length, but couldn’t. Life really sucks when things like that happen. The quote above comes from a very famous philosophy of Ship of Theseus. It is rather self-explanatory and will leave the deeper research and reading to the readers, once they are out, reading this mediocrity!

But why have I shared this quote? Over some time, I have been feeling a bit like it. Things have changed, piece by piece. There is a point beyond which a change breaks you down. Shatters the very thing that you recognize yourself with. Maybe one breaks down to just rejig himself and come out as someone better. It is a hope. I am not yet at that stage of hope though.

I have become that Ship of Theseus. No more am I recognizable to myself. While the flesh remains the same for the rest, the soul has turned inside out. I have all those planks removed and replaced. I have the existence and the clashes of my own identity. I am at the cross roads with my interests and compulsions. I am lost in my own ocean of thoughts while there are anchors all over me. While the water splashing on this ship tries to change its much-appearing stable course, the real direction still remains unknown to the sailor himself. Each splash taking away those planks, one at a time, and my consciousness replacing it with its own construct. I am not arguing with you, I am arguing with myself to why I am arguing with you. I am not loving you. I am merely arguing with myself that I do know how to love. Neither do I know things nor am I trying to be intelligent. I am merely arguing to where I stand in these winds of obsolescence. There are no shores for this ship and nor am I looking out for them.

The concept seems clear now that the concept is lost. The very foundation of this construct called life seems like a tedious exercise of self-acceptance and self-consolation. The constructs; talent, achievement, goals, hope, failures, limitations, etc. all seem to be nothing more than continuous reminders of why I am still the same ship, which I, actually, am not. There is no point in defining myself with those things for they have rather changed the entire thing without even me knowing it. Change is constant, hence, there is nothing like existence. The ship keeps changing to its core and not just the planks. The question whose answer I seek is, is this a conscious effort of change or it is so involuntary that it actually laughs at our idea of “existence” and “identity”? I have consciously tried to observe the changes that I feel I have undergone and it is horrifying. There are no good changes, there are starker realizations about what I really am. Some five minutes with myself, all alone and eyes closed, and I saw more than an ocean ready to take this ship apart. There is absolutely nothing that can stop it. It does not have any laws of the world. That deafening sound of those water droplets, leaking through those cracks of the ship. Each drop feels like a huge hammer hitting on every single vein. All alone on the ship and still I cannot hear my own scream. There is no option of jumping in the ocean as it does absolutely nothing to the ship. It may end the sailor but not the ship that has sailed along with him. What there is, is a chasm or an abyss, unimaginable. There is nothing where you can start from the scratch and feel good about it. There is nothing like a road not chosen for the one that has been chosen at that moment has not been the same ever after. How to define right or wrong choices is becoming annoyingly inexplicable to me.

Sometimes, I look at an anchor and start feeling good about its ability to protect ships in the middle of the storms. But here, the anchor, that appears to protect you, drags you in a direction so sporadic and inconceivable. You see a few more ships which appear happy in that direction, but they are no more what they were when they left the shore. They have survived the storm by taking that proverbial anchorage and kept themselves afloat. They have accepted that their ships are no longer what they started with. Ironically, they do not even care what they themselves have become. What has driven them to such a great and happy place? Is this the same thing which I am consciously refusing to accept to lead a better life? Have I become so adamant for my ship that I cannot leave it even if it gets torn apart? Am I hurting the ship too? Yes, I am hurting it. Why? I have seen all those happy ships that have changed their courses just because the anchor made them to. I have seen those happy ships that have accepted their new planks to be better than their older ones, which the ocean makes them appear to be damaged. Shall I give in for a newer better ship for something that I hold dearer? Maybe I am doing it. Maybe I should not be doing it at all. But then, would that be the existence of that ship I came with?

What do such questions do? They have made me question myself at all levels. Those damaged planks are no longer the question since the removal of one of them will actually diminish my own existence. An existence, myself, have not been very certain about but sure enough to sustain it in the same form. I am not being obstinate. Again, I see at all those ships sailing at a cruising speed, away from the direction, they thought they had etched. So, I decide what I need to do. Those ships have accepted the methods that work and have moved past their destined shore, cleverly. My ship sways under my own conflicts and those stormy winds that are compelling me to change. This is what I wish to do. Without those internal conflicts, I cannot get out and fight with the external and natural forces. I wish to accept everything aloud that I am not the person that people are seeing. Maybe I was, but now I am not. There is not an inch of talent left in me. There is nothing left in me that is worth for anybody. There might be unintentional but assured acts of disappointment from my side. There will be actions which will appear disturbing. There will be thoughts that would sound horrifying but thoughts that will keep this ship intact in this storm of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual storm. Without the existence of this ship, I am not even the right ship that reaches the right destination. But why should I do all these?

To keep this Ship of Theseus, the way it was meant to be!

Signing off

*dump*

Free Knowledge: Something We Deserve

Education is the key

To unlock the golden door of Freedom

-George Washington Carver

The true sign of knowledge is not intelligence

but imagination

-Albert Einstein

It has been a really long time since I had a moment to pen down my thoughts and share it. Practically, there were no issues that didn't catch my interest but weren't as strong as to share my opinion on with all of the readers of this blog. Greetings!

P.S.: Knowledge in this blog has been accepted as a misnomer to information just the way our weight is measured in kgs in our routine which should be actually N (newton) ;)

Certain things happened several days ago. A very famous peer-to-peer file sharing site, or in layman's term torrents' hosting site, named KickAss Torrents went down. A very predictable incident of a chor-police drama where the alleged chor mistakenly revealed his identity via purchasing with valid credentials on iTunes and so on. Suing the person for almost $1 billion dollar for infringing copyright and probably various other DMCA complaints. There are a million online pirates who do such things but when the FBI and a billion dollars are involved, and where a huge user base is affected, the news turns into a thriller-story, everyone needs a bite of.

(Source: https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/20/12243592/kickass-torrents-artem-vaulin-founder-arrested-domains-seized)

Certain things happened several months ago. Dubbed as the PirateBay for research papers and journals, Sci-Hub.org was shut down with a complaint filed by one of the leading research journal publishers Elsevier.

(Source: https://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-complaint-shuts-down-sci-hub-domain-name-160504/)

Certain things happened several years ago. Considered to be the cradle of knowledge and learning of the modern human civilization, Harvard University officially gave a statement that with the rising price of research journals, they cannot afford the subscription, especially for Elsevier.

(Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices)

So what is in these incidents of piracy and copyright infringement? Why is it such on rise? Is it really cool to pirate someone else's work? The answer to the last question may seem an obvious NO. But as I am not really asking you, so my answer is a YES. It is cool to pirate stuff, especially journals, papers, articles, news, advancements, INFORMATION.

All the file-sharing sites, dubbed as piracy-encouraging business, were not practically "pirating". If a person, well acquainted with the internet jargon, would read then they are just torrent "hosting" sites. Not going into the technical definitions of such, a simple example can be cited as that of a courier boy handing away the parcels at requested and corresponding addresses. Most of the torrent sites and sites like Sci-Hub.org do not encourage piracy but believe in free knowledge. Taking a bit of a philosophical turn here, we can never "acquire" knowledge but what we can really do is be well informed. Information is the part of knowledge. Information can be true or false, which is for the curious to find out. But can something exist if there is a void? Can something exist if the thing isn't even initiated or born yet? So, those banned, shut-down, disputed websites were the part of the process of gathering information, be educated and filter out the nonsense and ultimately lead to a path of knowledge, corresponding to that field.

The reason for starting this post with those two quotes was that although we know that such a gem of an idea exist, we cannot implement it. The entire world is running after a newly-invented business of Big Data, wherein huge corporations will practically invest in knowing its user-bases' activity a.k.a knowing about us a.k.a being informed about us. Ironically, they will create services in which the user will pay for the so-called facilities they provide and in turn, give away their precious data or information to them. Why? Because that information is power for them.

Now, let's come back to the line of a normal user or a common man. How does one know about things? The probable answer would be using devices involving our five senses and brain. What if the information is not palatable to one of those five senses and hence, inaccessible to brain? You lose having that information. So what? Not everyone needs to know everything, isn't it? No. We need to know EVERYTHING or atleast try to be informed about EVERYTHING. The pandemonium happening around us is the result of such misinformed or less-informed people, who probably have not accessed situation and read about it because they fall in the "no-need-to-know-all" category. That creates a huge problem. Every now and then, I come around few people who are impressively well informed and are difficult to shove illogical arguments to but at the same time, there is a mass that hardly is concerned about what one talks and maybe, rest the argument with an absurd remark that the stuff does not concern them.

People and government see piracy as a bad thing because it does not give credit to the owner or its distribution is not righteous, which actually means they cannot be profited. I am going to give an example of myself which most of us will relate themselves to. I like reading and I am also a movie enthusiast. A few days ago, I started watching Joaquin Phoenix's "Her", then went to watch my favorite series of "Mr. Robot", and at the end of the day, I was reading an e-book version of "Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Kapra and then, before going to sleep, had a quick look at the latest New Scientist magazine. Do you think, I can afford them? Frankly, I laughed at myself on asking that question and No, I cannot afford them. So what should I do? Ethically, I should work hard, earn money and spend it later on such magazines. That's a great plan. What if I need to know a few things now like reading about say this, "You are junk: Why it’s not your genes that make you human" or "Internet 3.0: How we take back control from the giants" or "Collapse: Has quantum theory’s greatest mystery been solved?". Ethically, I will have to wait for my curiosity to be satisfied.

Piracy, although a criminal concept in a bureaucratic society, is a boon which many people fail to acknowledge beyond watching movies. Believe it or not, your genius friend is not subscribing to each and every article he knows because an $800 p.a. subscription of a single science magazine out of many of his liking is not financially possible for him. He has a knack for economics but cannot purchase a $500 p.a. the magazine yet possesses information about the same and probably, will guide you in investment too. He loves tech but cannot afford another $200 p.a. for a tech magazine. He loves philosophy but cannot afford books of those great people, who once mentioned knowledge is free, because they are long gone and their "heirs" are now minting money on those philosophical writings. An average avid reader would have to spend at least $1000-$2000 or more, depending upon the interests, on acquiring those information rich magazines and books. An average per capita income of an Indian is just above $1300 p.a. Which means, an average Indian can never afford to have a good source of information or to pursue his liking is financially and economically impractical. So, the only barrier of that impracticality is overcame by the so-called criminal piracy websites, which do not charge a thing for their services. Maybe show ads for their revenue generation and service providing expenses. 

But what is the end result? One gets the latest issue of New Scientist (July 30) from downmagaz.com or one would get a bunch of assorted movies of one's liking from torrent-hosting websites or one would get J. Krishnamurti's book of "The Impossible Question" from libgen.io. All in all, much needed and much loved information is being transferred. That priceless information is getting a priceless dissemination, which it requires the most. It is not only satisfying the interest of the avid but also generating an audience, viewers, readers who will start appreciating the material or start recommending it to others. The current swarm of conspiracy theories and their acceptance in every other field is the result of an uninformed mass. The first step of knowledge is to accept that one knows nothing and the second step is to start knowing and observing. There are blessed souls in the world who have taken the first step in that direction but cannot move ahead because of such restrictions and inaccessibility of information, judging and knowing which, they may be awakening themselves and the others. Patents, copyrights, loyalties, etc. are the hindrances for everyone. Unfortunately, the near future does not seem to limit them so, people will need to "steal information" and garner "stolen knowledge" and lead a life of "stolen intelligence". It reads ridiculous in your mind, doesn't it? 

The more I thought about this, the more I felt great for our sages and scientists of the past. It would be a great thought experiment if every scientist and saints of past, would have put a cost on their piece of parchment. What if Galileo would have started cashing in for his theories which have been the foundation of our modern day science? What if saints and sages would have put up a price-tag or copyright infringement notice on their books? What if Ayurveda would have been exclusively available to the ones who would have been able to pay? What if the polio vaccine creator Jonas Salk would have taken a patent for his drug or Ray Tomlinson would have done the same for Internet? What if Aryabhatta or Al-Khowarizmi would have patented/copyrighted their invention of zero and algorithm, respectively? The world would not have existed in the same way as it does right now. Think about not knowing the Law of Inertia or what f=ma would mean or of Adam Smith's principle of economics or Chanakya's philosophy or Ayurveda or Homepathy and so on. It would be a simulation of what was universe like before the Big Bang. It is unimaginable not knowing things but steadily, we are approaching such a reality, thanks to ideas like copyrights, patents, intellectual property rights, credits, prior art, etc. Every single piece of paper, in any format, must be free to everyone. That would be the first step for the human kind to eliminate issues like global warming, terrorism, extremism, lack of empathy towards each other, scientific dumbness, miscommunication, etc. Think about these problems and you will realize, all of them exist because of an uninformed individual. Ekalavya had to learn and master archery without the blessings and presence of Guru Drona. If that's the thirst for knowledge and if we have learnt anything from that epic story of Ekalavya, let's pledge that we support free knowledge dissemination as a tribute to Ekalavya.

Towards the end, I am going to recommend something I really love and has always cheered me up, the Laurel and Hardy. I could not afford their box-set, so you know what I did? Of course you know what I did! ;)

Let me know how much you liked/hated this post. Good to have a few words from the audience too, isn't it? ;)

Auf Wiedersehen

*signing off*

*dump*

Traversing into that Pathless Land!

Namaste!

After a long time, this page is going to see some activity. It had been a dry spell and a lot of things have happened. No, I was not busy. I had numerous thoughts and ideas that I had penned down to write them here. But there is always a sense of such things sounding irrelevant and obscure to a greater mass. Though a following of some tens of people may not be considered big, I do sincerely consider it to be more than what I had ever expected. Let’s be realistic, no one likes to read about the thoughts of a layman by taking pains to visit his blog and read through his tedious writing. But that is an option available to the audience whether or not they choose to participate, but not to the mind which is responsible for exhibition of those thoughts. Throughout this entire dormant state, I have been travelling places all over the virtual world. With an increasing curiosity in the idea of deep web, I had been in a state of continuous searching and researching about the life and its versions, available to us on this very Earth. This particular post is one of the many ideas, my serious notes, about delimiting Truth.

Truth, like the Light, has always fascinated me. When someone talks about a person telling truth, the thoughts that come to my mind are about the perception of the listener/believer, the point as well as frame of reference he stands and puts the speaker into, and the force of acceptance, which the listener/believer wants. These were “my” methods of listening to anything that was marketed as Truth and was sold for monetary or spiritual or emotional benefits. It is definitely easy and reliable to assume that The Truth can be twisted and it might even lose its meaning when retold with some inconspicuous lies but my question always was “Was this really The Truth or somebody just mirrored something, I  expected to hear?” There will be umpteen instances in our lives where one single sentence or even a single word or even a mere Yes or No will be accepted easily as truth. Probably, that was what you and I wanted to hear. It is simple science. The path of least resistance is always chosen and preferred. And so are our perspectives, bounded with so many assumptions and eternally denied limitations of ours. How can you tie your hands and legs and still expect to swim into a vast ocean? So what do we do? We make our own swimming pools and bath tubs and criticize the ocean for having a thousand dangers. So, I tried to sort things and then jumbled them once again about my thoughts on Truth. Yeah that’s right. We can’t leave things sorted just because that sorting follows our logical mindset. We need to scramble them a lot to generate different possibilities of our logic and its validity.

Truth, maybe, is like an equation. An equation which may become more and more bizarre if you keep adding variables to it. Now, one cannot keep adding a thousand Xs and Ys just to get an answer. So we draw limits. We restrict our equation with several assumptions. For Truth our assumptions are our memory, our physical prowess, our senses, including the mysterious sixth sense and all the hidden ones about whose existence, we are currently unaware but have somehow mingled amongst these limitations. Now adding to these assumptions and limits, we knowingly/unknowingly add our expectations. If I am having a hundred variables to determine one particular Truth, I will try to, first of all, contain the weirdness to my five senses. I will add a sixth sense factor which will give me a let out if my version of Truth does not hold true. And at last, I will add my expectation variable, which, actually, is a constant! Now think this. Am I really going to find The Truth? Will this method really work for all the possible scenarios and inconsistent behaviors? Is this foolproof? Does this method have a variable that will be able to limit the influence of my senses against knowing Truth? Will this equation hold true even if the Expectation variable becomes redundant? And several more questions which will lead to the similar discussion. Even two persons will see a beggar differently. One may be using his senses to judge him of being a true beggar deserving sympathy and help whereas the other person might dig deep into his logical train and come up with an idea of the beggar being phony and the antisocial purposes for which he might use the money. Which one of them is right? Both? None? Did anyone of them dig deep enough to satisfy their curiosity and coming up with ultimate Truth? No.

Am I going to offer a method to know Truth? Absolutely, not. What I may offer is a thought of not following any cults or religions for knowing Truth. Why add more limitations to our already set limiting factors? They set up with an ideology or a path or a process which it says to follow for knowing their versions of Truth. Much of the religious philosophies are only as old as we humans are, still we fight for our survival and existence. Keeping that thing in mind, one should adopt the philosophy of viruses which have been in the Universe since the first molecule came into existence. Aren’t they the ultimate Truth of survival? People who follow science will get the point that there have been numerous incidents where a well-established method is challenged and overthrown to pave way for more accurate method, which in turn gives us more precise results. No one can offer Truth or even a foolproof method of knowing it because it cannot simply exist. There is nothing like an absolute Truth or an absolute Lie, unless we confine ourselves with boundaries. Something that gives result, which may explain the condition of that time, isn’t Truth. It is mere our logic. We need to accept that we are definitely trying to refine our logic but it is nowhere near the perfect Truth or even the perfect Logic, something that is infallible, irrespective of space-time or the versions of Truth.

Religions and cults are pathological and to some extent pathetic. They all tend to sermonize us to restrict our lives in one way or the other to achieve The Truth. Does that mean that The Truth is so condensed that it cannot remain valid under myriad conditions? If that really is the definition of The Truth, there is no point in wasting our time. Truth is out there somewhere, with all the burden of our limitations!

Many of my points might be arguable and won’t be coming up easy with most of us. We all have been taught how to “know” The Truth ultimately by a bunch of people whose knowledge is impeccable on the literature which profoundly restricts our thinking. That is really amazing and depressing at the same time. But there cannot be achieving without refining, isn’t it? Who said that this write-up is The Truth? Comments, thoughts and criticism awaited.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

*Going Offline*

*Dump*