Being Digital

The human soul. It is a meme that for centuries has driven philosophy, spirituality and religion. In science, along with the concept of quantum uncertainty has entered the concept of a human consciousness that collapses probability into a state of existence. And if human consciousness has entered science, the soul in all probability will follow. Is the soul explainable in terms of our everyday reality? In the Bhagwad Gita, the soul is the indestructible entity that incarnates in various forms. Advait Vedanta goes a step further. There is just one soul that incarnates into all things. On the other hand religions like Christianity and Islam believe that every individual in this world remains a distinct entity. That is I will remain I and will be rewarded with heaven or punished with purgatory or hell. In perpetuity, one has to suppose, in the absence of the possibility of reincarnation. I believe in the power of the metaphor to explain the seemingly inexpiable. And here is, I think, a neat metaphor for the concept of the soul that could tie everything together. Think of the soul as a piece of code - a digital entity so to speak. Now think of this digital entity that is the soul as an operating system that supports the creation of various applications. You are just an application created on top of the operating system that is your soul. Simple enough. But the metaphor goes far, I think, in resolving seemingly conflicting requirements. The essence of being digital is that a digital entity can be copied endlessly and there is no distinction between the original and the copies. For the Advaitists, the original digital entity is the Brahman, manifesting endlessly as the operating system of the collection of countless applications that is the universe. When a person dies, a "copy" of the application that he was goes into heaven, purgatory or hell satisfying one sort of theology while to satisfy another theological conception, another copy of the application system undergoes a transformation, governed by the "karma" (the accumulated usage history of the application), into another application sitting on top of the same operating system. And for believers in the Matrix, that entirely digital Universe as conceived by the Wachowski Brothers,the concept of the soul as a piece of code is digital manna for a digital heaven. I strongly suspect that the metaphor of the digital soul can explain, without contradiction, all existing theological or metaphysical stream of thought. Try me. Happy new year. Remember humanity's way of accounting for time - seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years are essentially digital. Does that indicate that deep down time itself is just a digital stream? Now that is another thought.

Mythos and Logos

My friend Rahul Kalia writes a very popular blog (www.coachrahul.com). His posts are lucid anecdotes about stuff that happens to him, delivering sharp insights into the business of everyday life. Besides his posts being better written than mine, there is a fundamental difference in the outlook of his blog and that of mine. Rahul's blog takes the "logos" view of life - "here and now", "what, where and how" while mine tends to take the "mythos" view - "past and future", "why and why not". The relationship between the "logos" and the "mythos" views of life is illustrated by the following anecdote. A husband when asked about who takes the decisions in his household replied "My wife takes all the decisions about the small things - for example on what to spend to money, the upbringing of our children, where we take our holidays et. etc. while I concentrate on the big decisions - for example whether Greece should quit the Euro Zone, when Sachin should retire, whether India should attempt a manned moon shot etc. etc."

My Father's Son. My Son's Father.

As yet another year of my life draws to a close, it is time for some self-contemplation. It has been a "comme si comme sa" kind of life in terms of fame and fortune. More "si" than "sa", to be honest. But in essence, I feel it had been a good journey thus far. Last evening as I sat ruminating, this side of substance abuse, it occurred to me that the journey has been good because it has been at a gradual reconciliation of my idea of my past and my future. Our concept of our past and our future, I believe, is a product of the culture we live in interacting with our personal growth. A culture's concept of the past and the future has deep, almost atavistic, roots. The Tuvan tribe that inhabits a region in the Siberian steppes at the edges of the Russian Federation have a unique way of looking at the future which is codified in their language. In the Tuvan language the word "songgaar" means both "the future" and "go back" and the word "burungaar" means both "the past" and "go forward". The Tuvans believe that while the past is ahead of them the future lies behind them!Did Spielberg know this when he titled his movie "Back To The Future" or was he just being kind of clever. But seriously the Tuvan's concept of time governs and produces a unique culture and world-view. To read more about it see the July 2012 issue of the National Geographic. So what does my own language and culture say about the past and the future. "Kal" is both the future (tomorrow) and the past (yesterday)! It has been taken me more than five decades to understand, absorb and,over the past couple of years,celebrate this concept of time. In the past Indian culture was signified to me by things outside me. Philosophy, religion, literature, music, dance, dress and so on. Over the past couple of years the true locus of the culture that I live in has shifted inside me. And that is a very happy place to be because it allows me a vantage point that submerges disappointments and triumphs, fears and hopes,into one encompassing sense of being. I can go on but blogs are not the best place for excessive navel gazing, so I will stop here. Perhaps I will indulge myself a a little bit more, same time next year and file a fresh report from the battleground.

The Big Bucks School of Advertising's Coming Big Test

A US Supreme Court judgement has opened the doors for Big Money to spend big on political advertising (albeit marginally disguised) leading up to November's election of the US President. Groups supporting Romney,the Republican nominee, are likely to outspend groups supporting Obama by a very large margin. I think of Romney as Retroactive Romney given his penchant to re-arrange everything in his past to suit the present and his notion of the future. And I am thunderstruck on how the Republicans are trying to sell a blatantly pro-rich agenda to the toiling masses. There is no guarantee that the groups supporting Romney will come up with good advertising but the bucks will definitely be big. This will put the Big Bucks school of advertising to real test. The Big Bucks school believes that advertising works mainly through media pressure. Whether or not the advertising is good matters only marginally. Even if the product is bad, high-pressure advertising can get a very large number of people to try the product. Therefore when movie studios feel that a movie is a dud they increase the pre-release advertising pressure. The Big Bucks school of advertising has come to dominate advertising circles. Does it work? The ones who know are not telling. Advertising and media people have, quite obviously, much invested in this school and will not admit to the inconvenient truth even if they know it. The marketing and corporate bosses will not own up to mistakes that have cost them big bucks. The US Presidential campaign grips me for various reasons. One among them is that it will be a very public, undeniable test of the Big Bucks School of Advertising. If Romney wins the Big Bucks school of advertising wins and we can all spend the next four years watching a really bad movie unfold. If he loses will marketing and advertising circles reconsider and re-evaluate? Let's wait and see.

Et Tu Mr. Rajan?

Mr. Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, is a much admired man. He has a broad bandwidth and is known to speak his mind. Back in 2005 in a symposium held to honor the then Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the much lauded Alan Greenspan, he had put out the thesis that financial development had made the world a much riskier place. It is reported that scorn was poured on his thesis by the other worthies participating in the symposium. 2008 and its aftermath has seen Mr. Rajan's stock rise while the stock of almost everything in the world fell. Mr. Rajan remains as candid as ever. On the 14th of April this year, to a gathering in New Delhi of some of the most powerful people in India from the world's of business and politics, including the PM, Mr. Rajan said “India’s star has dimmed in the last few months, as our governance is besmirched by corruption scandals and our macroeconomic health has deteriorated. Alarm bells should sound when domestic industry no longer wants to invest in India, even while eagerly investing abroad.” Bravo. Mr. Rajan has been appointed to take over as the Chief Economic Advisor from Mr. Kaushik Basu. I for one look forward to more of Mr. Rajan's views on India and its economic policies. Which is not to say that everything he says is the gospel truth or even half-way there. For example, recently Mr. Rajan wrote an article (http://www.livemint.com/2012/08/08205612/What-money-can-buy.html?d=2) presenting his views on the book "What Money Can't Buy - The Moral Limits of Market" by Micheal J. Sandel, a Harvard philosopher(http://www.amazon.com/What-Money-Cant-Buy-Markets/dp/0374203032/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345111228&sr=8-1&keywords=what+money+can%27t+buy+sandel) which has me wondering. I haven't read the book yet but Mr. Rajan's summation of the book's thrust an the thrust of his article on it is as follows "Michael J. Sandel points to the range of things that money can buy in modern societies and gently tries to stoke our outrage at the market’s growing dominance. Is he right that we should be alarmed?." Mr. Rajan analyzes some interesting examples of the use of money from Sandel's book including the rather emotive of sale of human organs. The conclusion that Mr. Rajan comes to at the end of his article is that whatever that money buys is, by and large, fair and square as long as the guy who has the money has got it through hard work and deserves it. That is a point-of-view that I am sure many would disagree with but Mr. Rajan has the right to hold this ultra-conservative view. But worse follows. The concluding lines of Mr. Rajan's article are as follows: "But if people believe that the moneyed are primarily those who are well connected or crooked, their tolerance for monetary transactions falls. Rather than focusing on prohibiting monetary transactions, perhaps a more important lesson imparted by Sandel’s examples is that we should work continuously to improve the perceived legitimacy of money’s distribution." Does Mr. Rajan seriously believe that the view-point that a large share of money in the world is in the hands of the well-connected or the crooked is not a reality to be addressed but a perception to be corrected? If yes than Mr. Rajan is better off in the shaded offices of a Wall Street bank than teaching and influencing generations of students or for that matter helping governments take policy decisions affecting millions.

Proud To Be Indian

I was all of four years old when I first heard Mukesh sing "Jis Desh Me Ganga Behti Hai". Every time the song played I felt an unreasonable amount of joy. But then what is joy if not unreasonable. Since then much water has flown through the Ganges and both India and I have had our ups and downs. But even today when the song plays my spine straightens up and my eyes moisten.The love one feels for one's roots is atavistic and eternal. I celebrate India with all my heart. A note for my non-Indian readers: The song from a 1960 movie celebrates the Indian values of simplicity, open minds and welcoming hearts. As we celebrate our independence day,my thoughts turned to this beautiful, beautiful song. Listen to it. Whatever your language, it will sing to you.

Downshifting

I hereby pledge to slow my life down a gear, for the benefit of my health, my well being, my environment and for those around me whom I dearly love. —Tracy Smith, The Downshifting Manifesto The sixties had the hippies who were but a minority but whose lifestyle and values defined an entire generation. In the nineties and the noughts there was beginning to emerge in the affluent world "Downshifters" another minority whose appeal could have again defined a generation. Then came 2008 and the recession has pushed all other socio-economic and socio-cultural phenomenon firmly into the background as far as media and popular culture are concerned. However "downshifting" quietly continues to gain it adherents. The essential core of downshifting is when you shift to valuing making more time for yourself and your family than making more money. You get off the tread mill, quit the rat race and smell the roses not just the coffee. The necessary condition for one to downshift of course is to be successful in the first place. To give up making money, to paraphrase Swami Vivekananda, you must in the first place be making money. The downshifting culture in India is most evident among returning NRIs. With dollars salted away and an American citizenship to fall back on, they practice the art of downshifting in the heat of dust of India. Some combine it with efforts to reconnect their children with their roots before it is too late. Speaking of roots, the Vedas have recognized downshifting and its role in the evolution of an individual. The Vedas stipulate four asramas or stages of life - Brahmacharya, Grihastha, Vanaprastha and Sannyasa. Brahmaharya: It refers to an educational period of 14–20 years which starts before the age of puberty. It supposes the practice of celibacy Grihastha: Refers to the second phase of an individual's life It is often called 'the householders life' revolving as it does around the duties of maintaining a household and leading a family-centred life and is recommended to cover the age period of 25 to 49 years Vanaprastha: This is a stage when a person gradually withdraws from the world and gives up material desires. Ideally this covers the age period of 50 to 75 years Sannyasa: is the life stage of the renouncer within the scheme of āśramas. It is considered the topmost and final stage of the ashram systems and is traditionally taken by men or women over fifty or by young monks who wish to renounce worldly and materialistic pursuits and dedicate their lives to spiritual pursuits As an aside, why did the Vedas, formulated many thousand of years ago, contemplate life stages that examine a life lasting up to 75 years when life expectancy must have been sub-thirty? Just being visionary or was life expectancy much higher in certain circles in the ancient world than is generally supposed?

Coming back to downshifting, is it a life stage or is it a life style that one can adopt at any age? In an age when everything is on steroids and most boundaries are blurred, life stages can cross age boundaries and everything, even Vanprashta asrama, come early to one's life. According to some downshifting is not just an alternative lifestyle or a natural life stage but a phenomenon that heralds the coming of a new age. Deriving in part from the cult arising from James Redfield's nineties books "The Celestine Prophecy" and "The Tenth Insight", the theory is that more and more people will "downshift" to bring about a more peaceful, prosperous, ecologically sensitive era. Nobody,as far as I am aware, spoke of the hippies in the same vein.Or did Jack Keoruc have a similar theory about the hippies? Must re-read his "On The Road" one of these days.