In most post-modern business, economic and social circles ‘growth’ is a holy cow.
However consider what environmentalist Edward Abbey once said “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”.
Could it be that an unconsidered chase after growth has been the cause of dysfunctionality in many of our social, economic and business systems and organizations? Technology has enabled accelerated growth in almost all fields of human endeavor but has this growth been all in the right direction? Take the growing ability to cover long distances with the minimal of physical effort. The direction this growth has taken has produced among other things a sharp spike in lifestyle diseases, road rage, pollution and the corrosive and distorting politics of oil.
Let’s go a tad deeper into the realm of personal growth. Can the chase after more power, more fame, more money to the detriment of all other dimensions of growth could be viewed as a cancerous affliction of the human spirit?
What we perhaps need to revisit is the calculus of growth. Our growth paradigm today is differentiation. The rate of change towards a mad hurtle towards the ‘more’. Shift to integration in the calculus of change and we get back to the gestalt: the complete view. And then we perceive that there is constant beyond change that sums up to health and happiness.
Easier said than done. Nevertheless, good to remember and revisit, now and then. Like we revisit the child who once were.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Road to Reality
Roger Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.
That he is one of the world’s greatest scientists, does not stop him from being a skilled writer who has to his credit lucid books that take the lay person into the fascinating realms of high physics and metaphysics.
His book “The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe” lives up to the title while being within the reach of the intelligent and interested lay reader.
His two earlier books:”The Emperor’s New Mind” and “Shadows of the Mind” vividly bring alive the road that Penrose traveled before he could bring himself to write the complete guide to the laws of the universe.
There is a concept in “The Road to Reality” that continues to fascinate me and I go back to it often.
Penrose calls the concept “Three worlds and three deep mysteries”.
The concept is that mathematical existence is different not only from physical existence but also from an existence that is assigned by our mental perceptions.
And yet there are deep and mysterious connections between the three worlds.
Only a small part of mathematics has relevance to the physical world.
The vast preponderance of the activities of mathematicians today has no connection to physics or to any other science.
Implied, I think, in Penrose’s visualization of this connection as reproduced in this post is that the world of mathematics can explain the whole of the physical world.
The second mysterious connection is that the Mental World comes about in certain physical structures that are a small-subset of the physical world (most specifically, healthy, wakeful human brains- and to smaller extent the “brains” of other living things).
Think about the above two mysteries in conjunction with the third mystery which is that the Mathematics World is only a small sub-set of the Mental World and you get a cycle that folds on to itself and gives me, when I meditate on it, a deeper glimpse of reality.
If you don’t hate thinking, take the time to think about it. It could be worth your while.
That he is one of the world’s greatest scientists, does not stop him from being a skilled writer who has to his credit lucid books that take the lay person into the fascinating realms of high physics and metaphysics.
His book “The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe” lives up to the title while being within the reach of the intelligent and interested lay reader.
His two earlier books:”The Emperor’s New Mind” and “Shadows of the Mind” vividly bring alive the road that Penrose traveled before he could bring himself to write the complete guide to the laws of the universe.
There is a concept in “The Road to Reality” that continues to fascinate me and I go back to it often.
Penrose calls the concept “Three worlds and three deep mysteries”.
And yet there are deep and mysterious connections between the three worlds.
Only a small part of mathematics has relevance to the physical world.
The vast preponderance of the activities of mathematicians today has no connection to physics or to any other science.
Implied, I think, in Penrose’s visualization of this connection as reproduced in this post is that the world of mathematics can explain the whole of the physical world.
The second mysterious connection is that the Mental World comes about in certain physical structures that are a small-subset of the physical world (most specifically, healthy, wakeful human brains- and to smaller extent the “brains” of other living things).
Think about the above two mysteries in conjunction with the third mystery which is that the Mathematics World is only a small sub-set of the Mental World and you get a cycle that folds on to itself and gives me, when I meditate on it, a deeper glimpse of reality.
If you don’t hate thinking, take the time to think about it. It could be worth your while.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Our Government and Us
This Republic Day I could not but help meditate between the increasing disconnect between those who run the State- the politicians, the bureaucrats, the judiciary, the police etc – and we the ordinary people.
Is it only because we perceive most everyone in “Government” as corrupt and/or inefficient?
Or does it go deeper and also have to do with what we perceive the government’s role in our lives to be?
I believe the perception of Government of our intelligentsia is shaped by a Western world view.
A view that is shaped by a desired primacy of the individual and hence Government as a necessary evil constantly to be watched and kept in check.
This paranoia results in everybody in government to be seen, by the ordinary man, as ‘alien’- somebody outside and separate from us.
But is this the only possible view of Government?
Consider what Martin Jacques, author and China expert, writes in this week’s Newsweek:
“Government is seen by the Chinese not as an alien presence to be constantly pruned back, as in the West, especially the US, but as the embodiment and guardian of society. Rather than alien, it is seen as an intimate, in the manner of the head of the household. It might seem an extraordinary proposition, but the Chinese state enjoys a remarkable legitimacy among its people, greater than in Western societies. And the reason lies deep in China’s history. China may call itself a nation-state (although only for the past century) but in essence it is a civilization-state dating back at least two millennia. Maintaining the unity of Chinese civilization is regarded as the most important political priority and seen as the sacred task of the state, hence its unique role: there is no Western parallel.”
Is there an Indian parallel? Should there be one?
The Hindutva mantra of BJP has a ‘guardian of civilization’ ring to it but suffers from very poor branding fundamentals that unnecessarily limit the appeal.
We all instinctively know that there is an “Indian” identity that is not defined by religious or ethnic identities. Amartya Sen in his brilliant book “The Argumentative Indian” makes a well-researched case for it.
Is it then possible that India could be the first great society that marries democracy, capitalism with an uniquely Eastern view of the State?
More pertinently is that our only way to achieve the greatest good for all our people?
Do we need a political revolution that begins not with the form or function of our State but in our perception of the role of our State?
Could it be that the rot in our system is because of a counterproductive fusion of the worst of the Western framework of Government and the basest of Eastern instincts of individual and narrow interests?
Questions with no easy or simple answers but worth posing, I would think, as another 26th of January passes by and we wonder what the next 60 years of being a Republic holds for us.
Is it only because we perceive most everyone in “Government” as corrupt and/or inefficient?
Or does it go deeper and also have to do with what we perceive the government’s role in our lives to be?
I believe the perception of Government of our intelligentsia is shaped by a Western world view.
A view that is shaped by a desired primacy of the individual and hence Government as a necessary evil constantly to be watched and kept in check.
This paranoia results in everybody in government to be seen, by the ordinary man, as ‘alien’- somebody outside and separate from us.
But is this the only possible view of Government?
Consider what Martin Jacques, author and China expert, writes in this week’s Newsweek:
“Government is seen by the Chinese not as an alien presence to be constantly pruned back, as in the West, especially the US, but as the embodiment and guardian of society. Rather than alien, it is seen as an intimate, in the manner of the head of the household. It might seem an extraordinary proposition, but the Chinese state enjoys a remarkable legitimacy among its people, greater than in Western societies. And the reason lies deep in China’s history. China may call itself a nation-state (although only for the past century) but in essence it is a civilization-state dating back at least two millennia. Maintaining the unity of Chinese civilization is regarded as the most important political priority and seen as the sacred task of the state, hence its unique role: there is no Western parallel.”
Is there an Indian parallel? Should there be one?
The Hindutva mantra of BJP has a ‘guardian of civilization’ ring to it but suffers from very poor branding fundamentals that unnecessarily limit the appeal.
We all instinctively know that there is an “Indian” identity that is not defined by religious or ethnic identities. Amartya Sen in his brilliant book “The Argumentative Indian” makes a well-researched case for it.
Is it then possible that India could be the first great society that marries democracy, capitalism with an uniquely Eastern view of the State?
More pertinently is that our only way to achieve the greatest good for all our people?
Do we need a political revolution that begins not with the form or function of our State but in our perception of the role of our State?
Could it be that the rot in our system is because of a counterproductive fusion of the worst of the Western framework of Government and the basest of Eastern instincts of individual and narrow interests?
Questions with no easy or simple answers but worth posing, I would think, as another 26th of January passes by and we wonder what the next 60 years of being a Republic holds for us.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Lost and Found: One Number Happiness Touchstone
I was a happy kid.
People who know me from back then recall a quiet somewhat taciturn boy. My memories are of years filled with wonder and discovery.
Someone said the child is the father of the man. In that sense, I feel born again and have re-discovered the secret.
The secret is in three realizations.
Realization One: Human situations, like time and space, are relative. The same situation can be read very differently by different people and each one of them would be true and right in their reading (the classic Kurosava film “Rashoman” illustrates this meta-truth with breathtaking impact).
Realization Two: In every situation that any person faces, there is framework of perception available to that person that generates and supports the feeling of ‘all is well’.
Realization Three: If you practice perceiving whatever situations you face through the ‘all is well’ framework it gets easier and easier to do so. It is almost as if life itself is responding to and harmonizing with your happiness.
Actually the secret is no secret.
It is just hidden in plain sight as we struggle with ambition, greed, envy and all sorts of other, as my physics professor back in IIT Bombay would have called, ‘inappropriate frameworks’.
Watch the visceral recognition that audiences greet the “all is well” anthem in the movie “Three Idiots” and you will know what I mean.
People who know me from back then recall a quiet somewhat taciturn boy. My memories are of years filled with wonder and discovery.
Someone said the child is the father of the man. In that sense, I feel born again and have re-discovered the secret.
The secret is in three realizations.
Realization One: Human situations, like time and space, are relative. The same situation can be read very differently by different people and each one of them would be true and right in their reading (the classic Kurosava film “Rashoman” illustrates this meta-truth with breathtaking impact).
Realization Two: In every situation that any person faces, there is framework of perception available to that person that generates and supports the feeling of ‘all is well’.
Realization Three: If you practice perceiving whatever situations you face through the ‘all is well’ framework it gets easier and easier to do so. It is almost as if life itself is responding to and harmonizing with your happiness.
Actually the secret is no secret.
It is just hidden in plain sight as we struggle with ambition, greed, envy and all sorts of other, as my physics professor back in IIT Bombay would have called, ‘inappropriate frameworks’.
Watch the visceral recognition that audiences greet the “all is well” anthem in the movie “Three Idiots” and you will know what I mean.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
High Places
I spent some time this week at the Garudmaachi campus of High Places (www.highplaces.co.in), a company that offers outdoors based management development programs.
High Places is run by Vasant Limaye
Garudmaachi is breath-taking. This 19 acre spread nestles at one end against a camel’s back shaped peak of the Sahayadris and at the other end a peak that Vasant likes to call the Phantom Head.
Vasant has taken care not to disturb the natural habitat.
Accommodation within Garudmaachi consist of dormitory tents which while proving all creature comforts blend in unobtrusively ( for the “senior boss” types from the corporate teams that frequent Garudmaachi want more ‘conventional’ accommodation, High Places has ‘four-star’ kind of facilities just across the road from Garudmaachi).
Even the rappelling tower and the Burma bridge seem camouflaged so as not to offend the animals.
The quietitude of the place goes beyond a lack of noise to the silence of fulfillment.
Vasant was at IIT Bombay with me. I always knew him as the outdoorsy type and the original conservationist decades before the whole green hullabaloo started.
He missed scaling Kanchenjunga by a few hundred feet and his concern for preservation of nature reflects in every inch of Garudmaachi.
To my pleasant surprise however, on this visit, another facet of Vasant was revealed to me.Vasant the writer.
Vasant, I now gather, is a published writer with a compilation of his columns for a Marathi newspaper in its third edition, as also a couple of highly appreciated short stories.
And his fondest future project now is a book he is contemplating writing over the next year or so.
Vasant adding to the quietitude of fulfillment a note of mystery, narrating a story of his as we sat around the burning embers of a stove on a chilly night, is a memory that will stay with me for a long time.
High Places is run by Vasant Limaye
Garudmaachi is breath-taking. This 19 acre spread nestles at one end against a camel’s back shaped peak of the Sahayadris and at the other end a peak that Vasant likes to call the Phantom Head.
Vasant has taken care not to disturb the natural habitat.
Accommodation within Garudmaachi consist of dormitory tents which while proving all creature comforts blend in unobtrusively ( for the “senior boss” types from the corporate teams that frequent Garudmaachi want more ‘conventional’ accommodation, High Places has ‘four-star’ kind of facilities just across the road from Garudmaachi).
Even the rappelling tower and the Burma bridge seem camouflaged so as not to offend the animals.
The quietitude of the place goes beyond a lack of noise to the silence of fulfillment.
Vasant was at IIT Bombay with me. I always knew him as the outdoorsy type and the original conservationist decades before the whole green hullabaloo started.
He missed scaling Kanchenjunga by a few hundred feet and his concern for preservation of nature reflects in every inch of Garudmaachi.
To my pleasant surprise however, on this visit, another facet of Vasant was revealed to me.Vasant the writer.
Vasant, I now gather, is a published writer with a compilation of his columns for a Marathi newspaper in its third edition, as also a couple of highly appreciated short stories.
And his fondest future project now is a book he is contemplating writing over the next year or so.
Vasant adding to the quietitude of fulfillment a note of mystery, narrating a story of his as we sat around the burning embers of a stove on a chilly night, is a memory that will stay with me for a long time.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Gandhi and Tagore
Gandhi & Tagore were contemporaries. Though they openly admired each other, their views on many issues differed dramatically.
Gandhi was an arch conservative and a nationalist. He believed that India’s progress lay in going back to our traditions and rejecting most Western mores and practices.
Tagore was a liberal and an internationalist. He believed that the essence of India and its progress lay in its assimilative nature that incorporated and harmonized influences from all quarters of the world.
Gandhi was a man of action.
Tagore was an artist who created out of thoughts, words, music and paint.
Tagore gained quick recognition and admiration in the West and then as quickly became a figure of derision and is internationally almost forgotten today.
Gandhi gained international recognition slowly but remains a much admired and cited world figure.
Paradoxically Tagore endures in the culture and daily life of Bengal and Bengalis while Gandhi’s influence in modern India’s culture and its daily life has faded away almost completely.
Tagore and Gandhi. The contrast, I believe, is multi-dimensional, fascinating and archetypical of the essential duality of life, nature and civilization.
Gandhi was an arch conservative and a nationalist. He believed that India’s progress lay in going back to our traditions and rejecting most Western mores and practices.
Tagore was a liberal and an internationalist. He believed that the essence of India and its progress lay in its assimilative nature that incorporated and harmonized influences from all quarters of the world.
Gandhi was a man of action.
Tagore was an artist who created out of thoughts, words, music and paint.
Tagore gained quick recognition and admiration in the West and then as quickly became a figure of derision and is internationally almost forgotten today.
Gandhi gained international recognition slowly but remains a much admired and cited world figure.
Paradoxically Tagore endures in the culture and daily life of Bengal and Bengalis while Gandhi’s influence in modern India’s culture and its daily life has faded away almost completely.
Tagore and Gandhi. The contrast, I believe, is multi-dimensional, fascinating and archetypical of the essential duality of life, nature and civilization.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
The Politics of Technology
The cop out at Copenhagen should surprise no one.
It was a confabulation of the Establishment, by the Establishment, for the Establishment.
The Establishment is invested heavily in oil, coal and all other dirty technologies. You would not expect them to get to solutions when they themselves are the largest part of the problem.
It will be, as always, the innovators and the entrepreneurs who will solve this problem. They will do so by treating the carbon emissions problem as an opportunity. To the entrepreneurs and the innovators, the bigger the problem, the bigger is the opportunity.
The next two decades will see the coming of a new order, an order invested in renewable energy systems, ultra-efficient batteries and smart energy management.
The real action is in the trenches where this new order is fighting the Establishment, inch by bloody inch. Not in talk fests like Copenhagen.
It was a confabulation of the Establishment, by the Establishment, for the Establishment.
The Establishment is invested heavily in oil, coal and all other dirty technologies. You would not expect them to get to solutions when they themselves are the largest part of the problem.
It will be, as always, the innovators and the entrepreneurs who will solve this problem. They will do so by treating the carbon emissions problem as an opportunity. To the entrepreneurs and the innovators, the bigger the problem, the bigger is the opportunity.
The next two decades will see the coming of a new order, an order invested in renewable energy systems, ultra-efficient batteries and smart energy management.
The real action is in the trenches where this new order is fighting the Establishment, inch by bloody inch. Not in talk fests like Copenhagen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)