Immigrant guilt

 You've heard of survivor guilt. Immigrant guilt is the equivalent felt by immigrants who leave their home country for a better life.

The Beginning of Infinity

David Deustsch argues in "The Beginning of Infinity", published in 2011, that human progress is boundless and driven by the endless pursuit of good explanations through critical thinking and creativity. In order to pursue good explanations, you need a tradition of open criticism rather than blind obedience to authority. This was seen in the Enlightenment culture, and the dynamic, open societies it created in the West.

Deutsch (pronounced Doych) divides human cultures based on how they handle ideas and traditions:

- Static cultures: These societies rely on stable, unchanging memes. They forbid questioning authority or changing core rules. They reject error correction.

- Rational/Enlightenment cultures: These dynamic societies expect traditions to be criticized and improved. They view problems as normal and solvable through better ideas.

Two comments on this -

1. Indian culture used to be the most advanced civilization on the planet thousands of years ago. It's GDP was highest in the world as a share of the global total until and during the 1st millennium (1st to 10th century) and again for a bit around 1700 AD during the late Mughal empire. The Age of Enlightenment occurred in Europe primarily between 1680s - 1789. By the 1700s, India was more of a static culture. The caste system was entrenched, making meritocracy and social mobility non-existent. Even when there was merit in the ideas and the legacy knowledge left behind by ancestors that lived through the peak of Indian civilization (yoga, Ayurveda, astrology, vastu shastra), they were passed on as "stable, unchanging memes" and rejected error correction. The "source of truth" was the original text, and these traditions were not to be criticized and improved upon. 

2. In comparison, the Enlightenment culture in the West, and AI today embrace error correction. There is no "source of truth" with texts that were a product of the Enlightenment culture, only hypotheses and theories that were continuously to be improved upon. Copernicus replaced the geocentric model with the heliocentric model in the 16th century --> Kepler proved that planetary paths are ellipses, not circles, in the 17th century --> Einstein showed in the 20th century that the universe has no true center --> and Einstein's work has been corrected, improved and expanded upon in the years since. 

AI, and certainly AI in collaboration with human intelligence is going to be capable of even better critical thinking and creativity, and thus better explanations than humans alone. AI cultures will supersede non-AI cultures, just like the Enlightenment culture superseded static cultures.

Nostalgia and Imtiaz Ali films

Imtiaz Ali films have a reputation for growing on viewers over the course of multiple viewings, much like A. R. Rahman's music has a reputation for growing on listeners over multiple hearings. I have a theory for why. A part of our brain is always predicting the future - it's scanning for clues and trying to guess what comes next. While watching a movie, this part of our brain is trying to guess who the killer is, what the big reveal at the end will be, who gets the girl, or when our favorite song from the trailer will play. When living life, this part is wondering - will I be rich and successful? How long will I live? Will my kids like me when they grow up? How many grandkids will I have? Even when you have chastised yourself several times to "live in the present", it is just as hard to enjoy beautiful moments in the present as it is easy to treasure them in hindsight. Nostalgia is beautiful because you already know what happened after the moment. And with that part of your brain quiet, you can simply savor the beauty of the moment, or at least your memory of it.

And so it is with beautiful films. When you've seen it before and know exactly what happens next, your brain can fully focus on enjoying each scene and surrender to the emotions of the moment.

These musings are the day after having watching Imtiaz Ali's latest, "Main Vaapas Aaunga," a soul cleanse of a movie.

Outer and Inner Purposes

Martha Beck's "Finding Your Own North Star" is a good book. Martha defines one's North Star as a metaphor for one's right life. She tells us in her book how her clients followed their North Star to find careers, partners and even geographical locations most suited to them. Two terms that come up frequently in her book are 'essential self' and 'social self'. Your essential self is the essence of your personality, the self that knows where your North Star is. Your social self is the set of skills that actually carry you toward this goal. In simplistic terms, the essential self is like the doctor who knows what it will take to cure a patient, and the social self is like the nurses and other medical technicians who assist the doctor in executing the treatment. Martha Beck says that a navigational breakdown occurs when the social selves, or worse, other people, start steering our lives, instead of our essential selves.

How do you know if you are not following your North Star?

1. Energy crisis - You feel drained and exhausted on your way to and during activities you think you must finish.

2. Sickness - The farther away you get from your North Star, the more likely that your body manifests it by compromising your immune system and/or making you sick

3.Forgetting/making mistakes/socially awkward - Your essential self can conveniently make you forget things that help you go in a direction it doesn't like. It is also more likely to make you blunder or behave socially inept in situations it doesn't recognize as taking you closer to your North Star.
4. Addiction - Whenever you're headed away from your North Star, your essential self feels a constant sense of yearning emptiness. If you stumble across a substance or activity that dulls this feeling, your essential self may mistake the mood-altering device for your North Star. The result is often addictive behavior
5. Moody blues- If you are experiencing moods you can't explain (suddenly breaking down in tears or bursting out in laughter for no apparent reason, going ballistic with rage in light traffic or slogging your way through a surprise party feeling nothing but hollow ennui), you can be sure your social and essential selves are seriously disconnected.

Martha Beck has a chequered and controversial personal life. Without going into details, suffice to say that on the face of it, her life does not look like that of one who has found her purpose. I see the danger in making a judgement like that about someone I have not even met, but this is my essential self speaking, and I can't make my social self believe something that my essential self has already decided it knows.  Second, she reveals in the book that she still chronically suffers from some of the same problems the book is meant to help resolve, for example, her chronic backaches. Imagine getting treated by a doctor who admits he's been exhibiting for a while now the same symptoms as you, the patient! Let's just say, the principles espoused in the book, while quite admirable in theory, need to be taken with a grain of salt in practice.

The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

"To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people,or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease."

Slow down, simplify and enjoy!

What should you do if you have a lot on your plate? The answer is, remove things from your plate, not speed up so you can finish everything on your plate on time!

This is not a plan for retirement, it is a philosophy for life. It is not my advice to you, it is my advice to me. I don't practice what I preach, I preach what I want to practice.

They key to your happiness

The key to your happiness is to... own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't....Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.

-- Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese

A perfectly kept home is the sign of a misspent life

A perfectly kept home is the sign of a misspent life