Against Anthropocentrism

 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is a society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more...
- Lord Byron

In the early 19th century, it did not take long for Byron, otherwise notorious for numerous love affairs, huge debts and scandalous incestuous liaisons, to appreciate an important aspect beyond his love for women.
In the post industrial era, when most parts of the world are governed by democracy and capitalism, there is an unconscious shift of humanity towards anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism describes the tendency for human beings to regard themselves as the central and most significant entities in the universe, or the assessment of reality through an exclusively human perspective. Time and again there have been movements started and sustained in raising the dignity, importance and relevance of humanity. Every man lives in a society cocooned by human relationships, man-made institutions, working towards ends benefiting humanity. The recent advances in the neuroscience, biology, genetics, psychology and anthropology, have made this point even stronger. Certainly we live in an era where only what is important is “Man” – to a large extent.
There is an urgent need for the society to start accommodating the thoughts on other very important and even bigger and more crucial aspect – the universe itself – its flora and fauna.
The famous American hitchhiker Christopher Johnson McCandless have been aptly shown in the book – “Into the Wild” as saying –
“...but you are wrong if you think the joy of life primarily comes from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It’s in everything and anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at those things”.

The book ends with a deep reflection by the dying Christopher all alone in the wilderness –
“What if I were smiling and running into your arms.
Would you see then, what I see now?”

Pretty profound! Yes, what he saw in his solitary deathly journey in the Alaska was much grander and more beautiful than what he would have seen doing his Harvard law degree and becoming a rich lawyer in Washington, driving a Ferrari, although the trek took his life.

How many among us working as so called professionals are even aware of the passing solstices and equinoxes to start with, leaving aside the Alaskan pristine beauty.  Our project schedules are run through calendar dates. We do not even know about the passing seasons; not to say in the cities like Bangalore, where the climate is almost the same throughout the year. Many among us are not even aware of dawn and dusks, being absolutely busy trapped inside our air-conditioned cubicles. Whatever time is left after working as automatons for the multinational companies, that are either spent watching TV, reading escapist novels, visiting malls, shopping, and trying to resolve complex predicaments in interpersonal relationships. Naturally, flora and fauna does not come into the scheme of things of the modern man.

This constricted way of being, hinders people to live life fully, to be aware of the grand beauty of nature. This separation of man from nature causes deep seated neurosis when dealt psychoanalytically. It is not a luxury today to re-establish the connection of man with nature. It is a necessity. Evolutionarily man has emerged from the lap of nature. If he does not re-establish this lost connection of his with nature, he will be unable to reach his full potential as a human. He will be stunted to live a constricted potentiality of his, in his journey of life.

Creativity, human ingenuity, novelty, and out of the box thinking, have all become such a clichéd today. I feel these are just accidental outcomes, out of addressing other totally orthogonal needs of mankind. One of those symbiotic needs is re-establishment of his connection with nature. The first step would be to start thinking out of the box of anthropocentrism.

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Standing in Love - Essence of being Creative

What is love? Shakespeare mused. The great bard was not the first to ask this. 

To most of the humanity love is something which “just happens”. People “fall” in love. It is considered something which is out of one’s control. Since ancient times, we have tons and tons of literature revering this casual numbing idea about love. It is considered as a powerful trance, when man loses his power to reason. Neuroscientists say love a neural itch. Evolutionary Biologists call it a powerful genetic urge. Psychoanalysts call it an expression of repressed drives. For poets it is an ecstatic state of being. For spiritualists it is communion with God. Since ages poets have gone in full length weaving a tapestry of magic around this thing known as love.
Percy Bysshe Shelley in his usual passionate style of writing beautifully sings about this magical feeling of love in the following lines of his famous poem – “Love’s Philosophy” –

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle -
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

There is an inherent passiveness in this paradigm of love; a mode of being a victim, a parasite. Love for most is tightly coupled with finding the right “object of love”. Love then, “just happens”. The trance continues till the object is able to fulfill one’s psychological needs. When that ceases, again the lover is in search of the next object of love. Or rather, is “stuck” by the cupid’s arrow, on the sight of another object. Love most of the times is considered as a reactive emotion, which is instigated by an outside agent – “an object of love”.

This traditional paradigm forces me to reflect about the ancient Egyptians in the 700 BC till a century hence. They took their thoughts and emotions to be the work of spirits and gods. Also the Mesopotamian cuneiform texts form 2000 B.C., for instance, refer repeatedly to the “commands” of the gods – literally heard as utterances by the rulers of society. Most of the ancient western world believed that the thoughts are something which is not created by man in his mind, but is put by an external God.

It was in 600BC when man for the first time started contemplating that thoughts are not casted by an external entity, but is created from within the mind. In India, Buddha attributed human thoughts to our sensations and perceptions, which, he said, gradually and automatically combine into ideas. In China, Confucius stressed the power of thought and decision that lay within each person. The signs of change were even stronger in Greece, where poets and sages began to view their thoughts and emotions in wholly new terms. The locus of control of the thoughts thus started shifting from outside to inside.

Unfortunately the emotion of love is still considered by most of the contemporary world from the archaic perception of the ancient Egyptians. It is the “object of love” - the beloved - who controls the button of the wellbeing for a man. Not only in romantic love, but also in other forms of love, it is assumed that if the object of love is worth, love happens automatically. Love is considered as a passive state, in which a person is seduced into with a magical spell, where he is powerless and tranced. This spell originates from the object of love. This spell continues till the object of loves behaves in a particular way. And then it ceases to exist, when the object of love fails to behave in that pattern. Slowly the emotion of love transmutes into hate. All the while man is paralyzed in the emotion of love and hate.

The state of love had been a subject of immense contemplation and research in the field of psychology. There have been many enlightening discoveries done by many modern psychologists on this subject, which is generally un-known to common man. In general parlance, still the world stays in the outdated superstitions on what love occurs to them.

Victor Frankl in his book – Man’s Search for Meaning, had given a powerful and thought provoking definition of love, based on his research on Logotherapy. He says –

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true”

Erich Fromm in his book – The Art of Loving, goes ahead and clarifies; love is not a passive state, where people “fall”. It is not about “falling in love”, but about “standing in love”. He says love is an active process, where a person chooses to think and act in a certain way. He says –

“Genuine love is an expression of productiveness and implies care, respect, responsibility and knowledge. It is not an affect in the sense of being affected by somebody, but an active striving for growth and happiness of the loved person, rooted in one’s own capacity to love. To love somebody is the actualization and concentration of the power to love.”

He continues, “Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not towards one object of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism”

Now, that is interesting! The contemporary developments in psychology has a different outlook towards love. Love is considered as an art. The attitude can be compared to that of a man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. In the words of Fromm, “If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, I love you, I must be able to say, I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.”

Saying that love is an orientation which refers to all and not to one does not imply, however, the idea that there is no differences between various types of love, which ofcourse depends on the object which is loved. But the important thing is although nature of the love differs with respect to the object of love, but the essence of the state of being in love is the same. It is independent of the object of love. If by any chance it is being directed by the object of love, it is not love, but narcissism.

This realization of love is crucial in the contemporary world. It is important not just in the interpersonal relationships, but in the whole context of life. Being in love with life, its opportunities, its challenges, work, play etc, is at core of this realization. If this attitude is carried forward in our everyday thoughts and actions, it enables to bring about lots of creativity and harmony. Being in love is difficult, so is being an artist difficult. It needs patience, knowledge, creativity, understanding and above all, a zest to evolve and increase the sum total beauty in the world.

It is high time for humanity to wake up to the realization that it creativity and novelty does not come through a linear process of following one step to the other. But they are the fall outs of an attitude of being in love – an “active love” – “standing in love”. One has to keep in mind the following pillars of genuine love postulated by Erich Fromm - care, respect, responsibility and knowledge. I feel they are the essence of being creative. Only when you are genuinely in love, can you be genuinely creative.

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Being an Artist

An artist, whether a poet, a painter, a photographer, a singer, or anyone who is involved in a creative endeavor, shares a very special place in this world. She is involved in an activity (her work of art) which attempts to create something beautiful. In that effort, she tries to bring perfection to the physical world, which otherwise is non-existent. That perfect beauty, that divinity, that Godliness, that perfection which is otherwise invisible to the world of mortals, comes up in its full grandeur through the creativity of the artist, either in form of that beautifully written poem, or an impeccably carved out sculpture. An artist enjoys that very unique opportunity to be able to attract the divinity to the world of mortals. She contributes to increase the sum total of beauty in this world. Life becomes a beautiful journey, not only for the artist, but also for others who happen to observe and appreciate her art.

Certainly it is about creation of novelty, which gives a good feeling to humanity. Yes, it even has a utilitarian applicability. Yes it adds up to the aesthetics of existence. It definitely increases the happiness quotient and well being for the people who are surrounded by beauty and magnificent works of art. It for sure adds lots of meaning to the life of the artist even. But there is another more profound relevance of a work of art. Keats had beautifully put it in his famous poem     Endymion:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams and health, and quiet breathing.

Yes, beauty is eternal.

There is another very interesting aspect of beauty and art. It is fundamentally non-physical in nature. It belongs to the realm of non-form. For example the beauty of a flower does not belong to the flower, or the plant, or the petal or its color. It is a holistic arrangement of the petals in that golden ratio, which in its entirety conjures up a sense of awe and appreciation in the heart of the beholder. If the petals are taken up separately and analyzed under the microscope to look for the source of the beauty, nothing physical will be realized. The beauty of a well made painting cannot be analyzed and the individual aspects separated which gives the immense aesthetics to the painting. The work of art in its entirety is much more than its individual constituent parts. The process that went in creating the art, the inspiration involved in conceiving the art, the intercourse of the emotions, thoughts, skills and expertise of the artist and the materials involved, holistically creating the work of art in synergy, certainly belongs to a non-physical realm. All these go beyond the artifact of art itself. It is correct to infer that an artist cannot be judged just based on her work of art. There are aspects beyond the artifact.

It appears that this ethereal nature of a work of art was known to mankind since the earliest artwork excavated, which dates back to earlier than 30,000 BC!!! These were in forms of cave paintings. The later artworks from the Egyptians, the Greeks, and then those of the Renaissance, have time and again tried to bring forth this unique and special aspect of art. Art had always been an expression of perfection in this otherwise imperfect world, and artists – the bridge between that celestial perfection and the physical world. Aristotle has succinctly expressed this as –
“…All the arts always have in view some good that we desire to achieve.”

The concept of God is also something that belongs to the realm of non-form. Through a work of art, which tries to portray perfection, God can be experienced. There is no way to really touch, see or experience God through the human senses. It solely belongs to the domain of experiencing that bliss indirectly though a vehicle of art and creativity. It might not be incorrect to conclude that the only way to appreciate, understand and know God, is through the eyes of an artist. Creativity and imagination appears to me the first step to know God. Being a psychological zombie, being drugged by material pursuits, being solely busy in the transactional chores of every day existence, lost in the world of sensual gratification, a person loses his opportunity to know God. It is simple. Having a limited psychic energy (attention) that we are endowed with as humans, and given the limited time we have in a day, when we allow ourselves to be totally occupied with things which are gross, we lose out the opportunity to experience something which is higher, finer and more beautiful. It is just that we have limited resource of time and energy.

When I call for being an artist, it does not necessarily mean that the person is occupied in a profession or a hobby particularly into fine arts. A person can be an artist doing what he does for his living. Einstein was a clerk in a patent office. He chose to be creative at his work being a clerk, which led to creation of things as profound as the Theory of Relativity. Same was the case with Pythagoras, Archimedes, Kepler, Euclid, and later Newton, and series of scientific creators of the modern world, who apparently did not have any creative vocation to start with. But they scooped out being artists in their own respect. Art and aesthetics was part of their everyday life, even when they were apparently involved in things which appear so very dry and “scientific” on surface. The problem is that, most of the post industrial society today feels art as a prerogative of poets and painters. If you want to do something to earn your living, and something meaningful or worthwhile, you have to give away being artistic, and start putting on the hat of analysis, rationality, scientific investigation, and a well defined sequential process to achieve something material. There is not much place left for imagination and creativity. The state of affairs appears more farcical when we see those “consultants” who come up with their superficial weekend workshops on “creativity and innovation.” It is similar to the new age hypocrite gurus, who promise you enlightenment if you attend their week long workshop, shelling out a big share of your hard earned money.

As society flocks more and more into instant gratifications, sensory adventures, one night stands, weekend nirvanas, more is the need to remind oneself of art and being an artist. 

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Remembering Veblen

Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement. Besides his technical work he was a popular and witty critic of capitalism, as shown by his best known book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).
Veblen is famous in the history of economic thought for combining a Darwinian evolutionary perspective with his new institutionalist approach to economic analysis. He combined sociology with economics in his masterpiece, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), arguing there was a basic distinction between the productiveness of "industry," run by engineers, which manufactures goods, and the parasitism of "business," which exists only to make profits for a leisure class. The chief activity of the leisure class was "conspicuous consumption", and their economic contribution is "waste," activity that contributes nothing to productivity. The American economy was therefore made inefficient and corrupt by the businessmen, though he never made that claim explicit. Veblen believed that technological advances were the driving force behind cultural change, but, unlike many contemporaries, he refused to connect change with progress.
Veblen, in his writings smashed the big lie of the theory of capitalism of Adam Smith, the idea of the “invisible hand” of free market. Classical economists inspired by the Smith’s school of thought, had always portrayed capitalism as a reflection of timeless truth and eternal laws. But Veblen had a refreshing perspective. He treated economics as a Darwinian cultural science. He found conflict, force and fraud persisting in a society supposedly harmonized by contracts, laws, and peaceful rules of natural exchanges.
Now certainly holding such audaciously different way of thinking speaks for the place from where this person was coming from. Certainly he was one of those rebels, who did not have an orthodox conditioning of the traditional education. He was born on the Wisconsin frontier in 1857 to Norwegian Immigrants. He embarked on graduate studies at the John Hopkins and then at Yale, where he received his doctorate in Philosophy in 1884. But as he disbelieved in supernaturalism, he disqualified himself from teaching philosophy in a God fearing college or university. (John Hopkins, Yale, Harvard – all these universities were born out of Protestant Christian movements, and had a deep belief in God and His ways). The next seven years he passed reading, unneeded and un-employed, on farms owned by his father. Eventually he found work teaching economics as a low level instructor at the university of Chicago, where in 1899, where he wrote his first and most famous book “The Theory of Leisure Class”. Nobody has attacked the strategic imperative of consumer capitalism – confusing personal worth with accumulation and display of commodities – with a more vicious erudition than Veblen in this great book.
The Roaring Twenties (around 1920s principally in London and USA, which was marked my extreme economic prosperity, materialism and consumerism), left him a defeated man. During his last years he lived alone, unemployed and impoverished, in a small cabin in the hills surrounding Palo Alto. He survived on the strength of donations from admirers.
The conspicuous in-attention given today to Veblen’s criticism of business cant conceal his broad relevance. The corporation, he said burst into the 19th century as nothing more creative than a collective credit transactions; it was an institution mobilized by business class for the purpose of seizing control of the industrial process from workers, farmers and engineers. Business enterprise was “a competitive endeavor to realize the largest gains in terms of price”. The point was to manipulate markets, to maximize profits, using methods of chicanery and prevarication against consumers. “Its aim and end is not productive work,” he wrote, “but profitable business; and its corporate activities are not in the nature of workmanship but of salesmanship”. He indicated that Industry made useful things for human needs, but business made money.
Veblen’s distinction between the Industry and Business reads like an advanced memorandum on the follies of growth as the tonic for our malaise. Against the barrage of pecuniary language directed our way by consultants, management theorists, self help gurus, venture capitalists, financial journalists and other vested interests, he said America’s enormous productive capacities suffered from a corporate form designed to make money, whatever the cost, while denying the workers a chance of meaningful participation. Business destruction of farming, handicrafts, and small scale production, combined with its plunder of natural resources, has left us – just as Veblen warned  - with ancestral memories of craftsmanship.
The best we can hope for; while our politicians wrangle of business’s debts and securities, is to return to the same stupefying jobs once held and to pay for the privilege of turning ourselves into brads. Liberals meanwhile make new idols of rapacious businessmen such as Steve Jobs, and Warren Buffet, and evangelical Christians make common cause with their natural enemies  - libertarians.
America, left and right, remains in thrall to what Veblen called the “business metaphysics” – a superstition deeply engrained in the classical school of Adam Smith’s economics, inspired by Protestant Christianity – “The market is not an impersonal, fallible mechanism for distributing resources. It is a source of spiritual values, and it is never wrong. The “invisible hand” distributes virtues and honor along with wealth. God wants you to be rich. But rich or poor you have what you deserve.”

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Steve Jobs - A Heartfelt Homage.

An adopted child, Mr Jobs caught the computing bug while growing up in Silicon Valley. As a teenager in the late 1960s he met Steve Wozniak in HP during his summer job. But it was only after dropping out of college, travelling to India, becoming a Buddhist and experimenting with psychedelic drugs that Mr Jobs returned to California to co-found Apple with Mr Wozniak, in his parents’ garage, on an April Fool’s Day in 1976.

He once said, “A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions. His great rival, Bill Gates, he suggested, would be “a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger”.

In retrospect, Mr Jobs was a man ahead of his time during his first stint at Apple. Computing’s early years were dominated by technical types. But his emphasis on design and ease of use gave him the edge later on. Elegance, simplicity and an understanding of other fields came to matter in a world in which computers have become fashion items, carried by everyone, that can do almost anything. “Technology alone is not enough,” said Mr Jobs at the end of his speech introducing the iPad 2, in March 2011. “It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” It was an unusual statement for the head of a technology firm.

Mr Job’s on-stage persona as a Zen-like mystic notwithstanding, Mr Jobs was an autocratic manager with a fierce temper. But his egomania was largely justified. He eschewed market researchers and focus groups, preferring to trust his own instincts when evaluating potential new products. “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” he said. His judgment proved uncannily accurate: by end of his career the far outweighed the misses.

 Although his authoritarian streak was well known, Mr Jobs was nevertheless good at attracting talent. Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design guru, Phil Schiller, its marketing leader, Scott Forstall, the head of its mobile-software operation and Mr Cook, the firm’s new chief executive and former chief operating office, are all world-class managers. When he was asked how he chose members of his team, Mr Jobs said he always looked for bright and competent people. But more important, he added, was to find people who cared a great deal about precisely the same things that mattered to him.

The strength of Apple’s senior team is one reason that the firm’s share price barely flinched when news emerged last month that Mr Jobs was relinquishing his role as chief executive and becoming executive chairman. Another is that he left it in an extremely good position to take advantage of changes sweeping through the world of technology Under his guidance, Apple has developed not just amazing hardware, but also “cloud” based services such as its iTunes online music store and its new “iCloud” services, which allows people to store all sorts of contents on Apple’s servers and access it on all sorts of devices.

Another striking – and often underappreciated – aspect of Mr Job’s success was his ability to say no. At a company like Apple, thousands of ideas bubble up each year for new products and services that it could launch. The hardest thing for its leader is to decide which ones merit attention. Mr Jobs had an uncanny knack of winnowing out the wheat from the mountain of chaff.

It remains to be seen whether this disciples who are now running the show can make equally smart choices and whether Apple will be able to prosper without its magician-in-chief at the helm. The lukewarm response to this week’s launch of its new iPhone 4S should give some cause of concern. Without Mr Jobs, Apple suddenly looked much more like just another technology firm, rather than a producer of magical products that excite the world. With Google and its allies chasing it in smartphones, and Amazon’s launch of a bold new tablet computer, Apple faces serious competition for the first time in the new markets it has created.

I read much of the contents written in the paragraphs above in this week’s edition of The Economist. Most of these are already known to me as well as you, along with Mr Job’s Hollywood style comeback – creating Pixar Animations, Next Computers and then leading his own child – Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy to being the largest technology firm, even ahead of Microsoft! But it was a good way to pay homage to the master, by re-capitulating what he stood for in his life.

Yet another instance I see – this time in the life of Mr Jobs – someone who fought throughout his life, to bring down something divine to the world of mortals. As he rightly said, people will not believe something till they were shown that. Repeatedly he showed to the world how to design a computer, a tablet pc, a cell phone properly. Before the advent of iPhone, iMac, Macbook, iPad, world did not even have an inkling to what a properly made such equipments can be.

Many such masters have used their lives to create that inspiration from the precincts of the Non-Form to the world of mortals. From the ancient world were Pythagoras in around 400BC, and then followed by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. On the other parts of the world were The Buddha, and more recent were Mozart, Michelangelo, Jesus, Einstein, Newton, Fynemann and many more. All these humans were instances of inspirations, with varied experiences, each trying to bring into the world, which did not exist during their times. Generations have hailed them, worshipped them and venerated them saying that they were ahead of times – they were some Avatars. The sources of such phenomenon was the heart of creativity – Being holistically a disciple of life; about viewing life as a mystery, and oneself as a philosopher trying to investigate the same. In the process, such awe-inspiring creations fall out as side-effects.

Steve Jobs had been one of my Inspirations, who did exactly the same in his life – standing for a continuous battle towards perfection – towards creating something that never existed – in an effort to ascend humanity to the next level – closer to that Omniscience and Aesthetics of the Gods.

I would not mourn saying Steve Jobs passed away. Yes, his physical self has ceased to exist, and that is a huge loss to humanity and to Apple for sure. But I would not mourn saying Steve Jobs passed away. He was much more than his physical self. The aspects of his that makes him legendary are immortal and ever inspiring.His audacious creativity, fearlessness, Never give up attitude, perfection at his work, his guts to dream disruptively big were part of what made him "Steve Jobs". These ethereal virtues will persist to eternity and beyond. Steve-You will be alive forever, in the hearts of mortals and Gods-for generations to come.

Till all the crowd of followers and copiers are in the search of a new genius to copy ideas from, and thousands of professionals being manufactured in the conveyer belts of stereotyped schools and universities, here I pay my homage to a short but intense life lived by an extra-ordinary person - pushing human race to evolve to a more beautiful world - the iWorld.
RESPECT FOR THE MAN - THE VISION - THE REBEL - THE PERFECTION - THE STEVE JOBS.

A side note – I was happy to learn that Mr Jobs had converted to Buddhism, and that he had spent years in ashrams with the Buddhist monks, before he started Apple. Certainly you need to re-establish that eternal connection, to do anything near to what Mr Jobs did in his life. 

I want to end this essay of paying my tribute and respect to this great soul, by quoting a favorite quote from Mr Jobs himself -
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I have ever encountered to help me make big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride,all fear of embarrassment of failure - these things just fall away in the face of death,leaving what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the traps of thinking you have something to lose. You already are naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

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The Shattering Dynamics

When a glass breaks and shatters into pieces, a unique thing takes place. The surface area of the glass pieces as a whole increases exponentially. More surfaces get exposed to the atmosphere and light. Repeated reflections, refractions and total internal reflections happening in this conglomerate of the broken glass  pieces gives a perception of glitter, sparkle and shine.

Yes that is true that the original shape of the glass article has been lost. But having lost that fixed shape the glass particles explore a new dimension of existence – having exposed to maximum air and light – allowing them to really experience the world better – if you would. I call such a process as “Shattering Dynamics”

On similar lines, if drawn an analogy here is a famous saying from Andrew Harvey

“If you're really listening...If you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world. Your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; Its purpose is to burst open again and again so it can hold ever more wonder!”

This concept of, “burst open again and again” is a dramatic expression of the process of breaking into pieces. The event of shattering down into pieces appears as an opportune process of bursting open into a whole new realm of being able to absorb, experience, feel and appreciate life and what it has to offer, in a more profound way.

This even signifies an eventual crushing of one’s ego; the state of being guided by Freudian “Id” - A way of life which was expressed by Dawkins in his book – “Selfish Gene”. 

Evolutionarily, humans were designed selfish. But then with millions of years of evolution, there has been an interesting attribute of cooperation and collaboration also imbibed into humans. Might be such a bent of mind was necessary for humans to evolutionarily participate in bigger and more complex Non – Zero games. Such a proclivity towards cooperation appears certainly the design of natural selection to proliferate more and robust genes through eternity.

Irrespective of what Natural Selection’s hidden agenda is, it is a fact that humans like to cooperate and collaborate. They – if given appropriate triggers – they would be ready to shatter into pieces – lose out their self interest and self forms – and be available to creation of a magnificent collage! Taking part in a “Shattering Dynamics”

Somewhere, something is hidden which overtakes that pride of self ego, and helps a person to be a meaningful part of a big picture! She is available to bursting open again and again so it can hold even more wonder!

When a lover transcends his selfish lust and desire for self gratification from his beloved, and sets her free – to be what she wants, to go where she would, to act what she likes, even does not care if she hates him, he creates a “Shattering Dynamics” in his life, and the life of his beloved. Here the lover has allowed himself to be shattered to pieces – abandoning his self ego needs and pride, and surrenders in his entirety to his beloved, and her whims and likings. Such a state of immense immersion in love probably has led to creation of magnificent works of arts from men in love like Shakespeare, Tagore, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, etc.

Such examples of “Shattering Dynamics” are very much visible in history of great and awe-inspiring creations like Google, Wikipedia, Open Source Revolution, Facebook, Android and many more! Classic illustrations of the shattering experiences are beautifully expressed by Kabir in his songs. 

The deep motivation under these shattering experiences might be given several names – love, devotion, likings, inspiration, awe, loyalty,  adventure, explore, creation, innovation etc. But it certainly is a unique virtue deeply engrained in humans. By design there is an un-selfish sheen created on human psyche – which yearns to be expressed. 

Designing a cooperative system – be it an organizational process, a legal regime, or a technical platform is immensely dwarfed if the makers rely on monitoring, rewards, and punishments. Their efficiency is limited by information gathering techniques. On the other hand systems that harness intrinsic motivation and self directed cooperative behavior don’t need to limit themselves to knowledge of what people will do. Every participant becomes his or her own monitor, bringing insights and initiatives to the task – whether or not someone is monitoring behavior.

I see it as a universal tendency in humans – to grow, learn, and create. This is what makes humans so special. Always there is an urge to break free – explore the un-chartered, experiment the unknown. This deep propensity to evolve towards a greater complexity is what makes humans to do different things. One such thing is to affiliate to the “Shattering Dynamics” – Shattering ones old self, in a desire to have a new collaborated self which is greater, nobler and awe-inspiring. Over millions of years, the genes of humans have observed it work. This assurance that two is always better than one, is hard-wired in the DNA of humans. This deep seated belief, allows humans to become a social animal. This infact is the reason humans are still alive in its excruciating journey of evolution in an ever increasing ruthless Nature.

There is this omnipresent unified spirit in humans to collaborate, cooperate, and consider oneself as a part of the whole – as the broken glasses take pride in having got shattered, but belonging to an inspiring collage! 

Evolutionary Psychologists attribute such a strategy as another natural selection’s agenda to proliferate healthier and greater number of genes. That might be true. But more important than the root cause of this phenomenon, is the phenomenon itself! It gives an awareness of the prevalent “un-selfishness” and “un-conditionality” apparent in human psyche. It is of lesser importance whether the source of such un-conditionality is a deep seated conditioned self oriented ploy of the genes. 

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The temple of Human Potential!

I am an ordinary Engineer,
Working 12-15 hours everyday.
On Saturdays too I slog –
Either in the hardware lab,
Or with my laptop – coding, designing, testing!
Every morning to night,
With strict deadlines,
Am I expected to produce
“World class artifacts with the best quality”.
Relentlessly, with ever increasing complexity –
Both in challenges of scope and time!

They say I am creating a history!
Well, that might be true.
But what about my life?
I don’t have even 2 full days in a week
To relax and do what I like to!
Those were the lost days –
I had Saturdays and Sundays!
Dedicated to me, my family and friends!
Such a Paradise which I have lost!

I am an ordinary Engineer,
Sitting in the 10:00pm cab,
On my way back home,
Thinking about my Paradise Lost.
Was I astonishingly intrigued –
Why I still love to come here?
To the same office?
Day after day – years after years?
Why is it that I feel so proud about my work?
Why is it that I feel I am different,
I am unique!
Why is it that I feel
I am whole and complete,
In my beloved place of work!

I am tired, I am exhausted.
But why do I look forward to
Come to the same office –
My love – My Temple!

Then I realize –
They are the small, cute stories,
Those I am part of every day,
That pulls me to this place –
I call temple of Human Potential!
The valiant gestures of
Engineering ingenuity,
Young boys and girls,
And veterans as well,
Putting their minds into
Solving otherwise seemingly
In-conceivable problem –
Day in and day out!

The spirit of invincibility,
Of the newbie to make sense
Of that complicated task,
Trying to learn and make a difference!

That patience and care,
Of the expert,
Shaping the world of
The rookie – guiding him through
Unchartered avenues of Engineering Excellence!

With scores of hurdles every day,
I get amazed how people are being –
A true Engineer!
Fixing issues, creating amazing stuffs!
It is absolutely Inspiring!

The spirit of invincibility and creativity!
No matter what!
That beautiful interdependence –
Each doing their Best!
Creating a Whole –
A NON-ZERO game!
A BIG GAME!
A game that is making me grow,
As a better Man,
A better father,
A better friend,
A better professional!
Creating a better tomorrow!

I know – every moment –
I have a choice –
Either to be a victim,
Or be an invincible spirit –
Creating What Inspires me!
May be so they say –
I create therefore I am!

Salute I with heart filled with respect –
To the temple of Human Potential!

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The Illusion of Understanding

There is a deep need hard wired in us humans to be loved, understood, accepted, and appreciated. Of-course it helps being loved, cared and respected, as these create positive emotions, triggering most of human creativity, originality, ingenuity and wellbeing. Due to this obvious significance, natural selection probably has favored the sustenance of this need over eons of evolution.
Thinking from the perspective of a brain scientist, or an evolution biologist such a deep craving to be loved and understood by others looks like un-called for. This is because, in entirety, our perceptions of life, people and events are based on what tale our brain tells us about them. The way the brain responds, is dependent on many factors – starting from pure genetic aspect, to the developmental stage of the brain cells at a point of time, to the way the cells are morphed based on the impacts of the culture, and experience of the subject.
Due to these varied pivotal points, obviously the brain of a person is vastly different from that of another. Each of them carries its own physiological and memetic idiosyncrasies. This immediately leads into immense variety of perception, outlook and capacity of understanding. Even a particular brain evolves in a life span. Hence the understanding and perspective at one point of time of a particular human might markedly be different from that at some other point of time.
Given that the sense of reality is what is carved out by a human brain, each person has a different world of reality for her. So, every human being is like a carrier of genetic and memetic expressions in their brain – giving them totally unique perception of life. This as a result, makes it very difficult for a person to really understand another in its entirety.
Given this vast diversity in cognitive abilities, it is a misplaced expectation on the part of a person that she might be loved and accepted by others – no matter how close or far they are related as per any sociological constructs they are involved into, what society generally terms a relationship.
Given this state of affair, no wonder most of the relationships humans enter into – either with another human, or with an organization or with a vision, are deeply conditioned with mutual needs. Till one or more needs of both the parties involved are met, the understanding is found. The moment there is a non equilibrium of needs, the relationship starts losing its sheen. Darwin explains such a phenomenon as normal in the animal kingdom. One might be seduced to accept the same logic for evolution of humans. But I feel it might be oversimplification of humanity as such to extrapolate Darwinian Theory to human evolution. By the way, Darwin had no mention of mankind in his entire book – Origin of Species.
Is the situation that hopeless? Is there no way in which there can be a sustainable understanding and bond created among humans, or institutions, which are un-conditional, and the probability of understanding and love are heightened?
In an effort to bring into some order into this confusion of diversity, probably various man-made interventions are put into place. For example in corporate world, these interventions are placed as standard operating procedures, roles and responsibilities, vision and mission statements, goal settings, etc. This attempts to bring some form of commonality in which the issues at hand can be interpreted by the work force. In case of wider social contexts, such interventions are put in place by traditions, culture, religion, mythologies, folk beliefs and rituals.
Ethnologists and evolutionary biologists have experimentally proved that human mind is like a basin to suck in any sort of external influences. A context created by such interventions help the mind to think in a particular direction, and develop a particular cognitive perspective which empathizes with people of similar beliefs. So, in the stage of a corporate world, where there are well defined context created – in the form of various interventions of organizational behaviors – management of human relations are easier.
But in a bigger diverse group which is not homogenized by a common belief, organization goal, ritual, religion or a vision, it becomes highly difficult to maintain a homogenous perspective, which can help further understanding and love. Every individual of such a diverse group thinks and judges things differently, causing deep differences in perceiving the reality.  This makes it daunting to create faith, bond, trust and a lasting relationship.
In the absence of such a formal discipline it is highly probable that a person is not understood, and is not loved in return. Even after prolonged effort, any attempt to make one to be understood, and loved mostly turns out futile.
Given this as the way humans are made, I take it as a useless enterprise to make people love you, or even expect people to understand you fully. In the name of social compassion and tolerance, I might be tolerated by others with a smile, but it is absolutely a lost war, if I work towards making others love me at their core. The creation of strong and deep bond between individuals cannot be forced on. It can however organically grow between people if there are common grounds discovered and appreciated mutually.
Sometimes deep bonds do get created as one partakes her journey of life. But most of the times this happens because a similarity in the perspectives of the mind – either due to similar cultural impact on the mind, or a similar genetic makeup of the physiology of the brain. But generally speaking such a deep mutual bond, love and faith is difficult to be created in general.
Given this dilemma of life, at max a person can do her part best to her knowledge – deriving happiness by using ones signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. At the same time, using these signature strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness, the person creates a meaning to her existence. All these are done without any expectation to win over anyone else’s affection.
Life becomes a solitary journey undertaken as an opportunity to learn, grow, explore and express. It becomes like an enterprise undertaken by Michelangelo – 12000 sq feet paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel for 4 continuous years – no way bothered about what any art critic will opine about his art, when he is finished with it. Life becomes like a Mozart being in FLOW, working on his prodigious compositions least worried about how many applause will be conferred to him when he performs it on the stage.
Being in this steadfast journey using ones signature strengths, doing something one is proud of, at the same time leaving behind a legacy, with a work of beauty, creates a fulfilling life.
It might be worth keeping in perspective that one cannot force others love and understand oneself. But at least, the person can love others to extremes of her ability. This understanding might start with a person and her ways, but it transcends beyond her – to life’s purpose, vision, a meaning of existence – to probably life itself, or might be beyond life – to multiple lives – continuing through eternity.

Life therefore probably can be perceived as an endeavor of solitary engagement into something that adds to overall beauty of creation.

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Being Responsible - A disciplined mind

As proposed by Viktor Frankle and many other psychologists, the most optimal way of being is to be responsible in one's thoughts, and action.
But, "being responsible" is something which is role-based.
What is being responsible for a person being in the role of a friend, might be something very different when the person operates being in the role of a boss in a typical corporate setting.
A human in its constant dynamic state of changing roles from one to other, must eradicate the way of beings which are not appropriate in one role, and gradually consolidate a mode of behavior that is appropriate for the new role.
This ability to think in a particular way based on what is currently functionally needed, is termed as having a "disciplined mind" by Howard Gardner.
For an optimum functioning of an institution, its members should keep graduating to different thinking hats based on what is needed by the current role the person is playing.

Here are some illustrations as described by Howard Gardner, where humans fail to graduate to a new behavior as demanded by the new role (un-disciplined minds). This inability of disciplining the mind leads to the person as being irresponsible -
1. Beginning law students, for example, insist on reaching a decision that is morally satisfying; this long-engrained way of thinking clashes with their teachers' insistence that decisions must be based on precedent and on process, and not on one's personal moral code.

2. Rookie journalists prepare a coherent, well rounded story, as if they were trying to hold the interest of a captive audience. They are unable to think backward, writing a story in such a way that it will immediately command the reader's attention while also surviving the blue pencil of the editor or the sever space limitations of the new front page layout.

3. The worker who has just been appointed to a managerial position attempts to retain earlier friendships as if nothing had changed; she does not understand that her new job requires that she listen, be listened to , and be respected, rather than that she win a contest of popularity or continue to exchange gossip or intimacies with former peers. The new board member fails to understand that he must now behave in disinterested manner vis-a-vis the very CEO or president who courted her for months and then invited her to join a select, prestigious group.

The point here is not just about being context specific, and act as per context. But having a disciplined mind calls for something even more profound. It is about using the mental faculty to apply already learnt concepts from different contexts, and use them optimally to achieve a given result in a new context. According to Howard Gardner, "It is about attempting to elucidate a discovery or phenomenon with which a person is not familiar but which lends itself to explanation in terms of a concept or theory that has been already studied."

In today's workplace as well as in the academics, there is a dire need of having a disciplined mind. I agree with Howard Gardner in which he boldly states that the survival of mankind in the coming ages depends among others, how well we can discipline our mind.

It is not that simple to discipline one's mind. Howard Gardner says, "My formal discipline is psychology, and it took me a decade to think like a psychologist". He further says, "Today when I encounter a controversy about the human mind or human behavior, I think immediately about how to study the issue empirically, what control group to marshal, how to analyze the data and revise my hypotheses when necessary".
To be able to discipline one's mind, one needs to be thoroughly trained in a specific domain, and it requires immense "deliberate practice" (as proposed by Geoff Colvin).
Hence all of us - scholars, corporate leaders, professionals - must continually hone our skills.
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CK Prahalad passes away

A bad Sunday to start with. Read in the newspaper, Prof. C K Prahalad is no more. A very shocking news to me. CK has always been an ideal to me. His soul certainly might be resting in peace in the fulfillment of having had a life well lived.
Here is a chronological snapshot of Sir CK's career -
1. Born - 1941 to a well known Sanskrit scholar and a judge in Chennai.
2. At the age of 19 he joined Union Carbide, after he does BSc in Physics at the Loyola College, Chennai.
Works in Union Carbide for 4 years.
3. Joins IIM-A and does in post graduation.
4. Joins Harvard Business School for Doctorate program in Business Administration. Gets his Phd in 1975.
5. Returns to India, and teaches at the IIM-A
6. Later he returns to the United States, where he held position of the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business in the University of Michigan
7. C. K. Prahalad is the author of a number of well known works in corporate strategy including The Core Competence of the Corporation (Harvard Business Review, May–June, 1990). He authored several international bestsellers, including:
"Competing for the Future" 1994,
"The Future of Competition," 2004 and
"The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits," Wharton School Publishing, 2004.
"The New Age of Innovation."
He was co-founder and became CEO of Praja Inc. The goals of the company ranged from allowing common people to access information without restriction to providing a testbed for various management ideas.

8.  Prahalad has been among top ten management thinkers in every major survey for over ten years. Business Week said of him: "a brilliant teacher at the University of Michigan, he may well be the most influential thinker on business strategy today." He was a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission of the United Nations on Private Sector and Development. He was the first recipient of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Award for contributions to Management and Public Administration presented by the President of India in 2000.

My introduction to CK was through his book - "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid". I read this book in the year 2007. This book was a major inflection point in my outlook towards business. This book discusses a revolutionary paradigm of creating business value, working with the poorest communities. Prahalad coined the word - "The Bottom of the Pyramid". Since this book was out, there had been innumerable research and papers written on this aspect. A book which is worth reading.

Prof Prahalad has not only made India proud with his works, but also the entire community at the bottom of the pyramid, through out the world. It is rightly said that the words of a teacher impacts world in many ways, through eternity. Sir - Although you are not there around, your life, your thoughts, your insights will continue to inspire the world.

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Gender Equality - A Myth

A lot have been written, talked about and debated on gender equality. Coming to the ground realities of the way the society works today, in the entire world, one really gets disillusioned on this aspect.

World might have been swept with the ideas of free market, equality, globalization, democracy, etc. But, if you get into the every day working of most of the corporate houses, big and small alike, lie the dark patch of gender inequality present.

Sometimes we hear the politicians, sometimes head of big public sector corporations, and sometimes department heads of big corporations – all expressing their bias towards male community for getting things done. A lady is always taken appropriate as a thing of beauty – to be adorned when you want to make something charming, or eye catching. Be it advertising, public relationship department or the front office desk. It looks like that the fairer sex has to hit the glass ceiling beyond these roles.

The proponent of the male camp has various instances to prove that their bias towards male makes lot of business and economic sense. They say after all a women need to go for maternity leave, she cannot work late at nights; she is very emotional, she cannot travel, etc etc.

Having a woman in the team makes it dicy. You never know when she needs a very long vacation. And then the fate of the project is uncertain!

The other day there was some “big guy” proclaiming in one of the news channels how much business sense it makes not to have a lady pilot for the Indian air force. It looks like having a lady as the pilot does allow the Indian Air Force to do a break-even for the investments done on the pilot’s training!

Unfortunately many among us approve the idea of having equal opportunities for women just on paper, to sound good, and be politically right. When most of us are on that decision making chair, we prefer to have a guy for the post, not a girl.

Unfortunately most of the enterprises – mainly the small and medium scale industries in India as well as abroad, do not give the fairer sex its fair share. Somehow most of the management fraternity is not sensitized about the gender equality. Infact the issues like these and other of its genre – like corporate social responsibility, global warming, etc always takes a back seat. The most important agenda for most the corporations is – short term gain.

Well, it might be unjust to expect a for-profit business organization to have the social welfare on its primary agenda. But, labeling gender equality as yet another social welfare scheme, is blasphemous.

It not only is utmost social responsibility of the corporations to maintain its gender diversity, it certainly makes lot of business sense.

It is really questionable to think that if a couple of months of vacation taken by a person in his entire career in an organization would impact the bottom-line of the organization. Certainly the organization has to create back up plans to support its lady employee needs.

In many cases, the gender inequality goes completely unnoticed. With all good intentions decisions are taken without even thinking about this aspect.

Mostly in the technological companies, it is very hard to find woman in top positions. It is an urgent need for the corporate heads to un-learn their superstitions of male superiority and surrender to the fact that female representation in the company makes the workforce well rounded. In the long run, it has a major impact on the company’s culture and organic development. Certainly in short term, going through the economic objectivity, the male camp might win. But, going into depth, looking towards the long term future, it makes real business sense to have gender equality in an organization.

The best way to mandate gender equality in corporations is to link it to the performance report of the organization. This might help giving the issue its legitimate importance.

Today big corporate houses like PepsiCo, ICICI Bank, BioCon, to name a few, are all headed by lady CEOs. Gradually the male dominance on the management bastion is losing up. It is nice to have this well rounded picture. But it is certain that we have miles to go before gender equality is taken seriously.

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