Category Archive: Uncategorized

I came across a BBC article which made me go back to an earlier time when I was having a similar sort of conversation with a friend in SD. I was about to move to Chicago and that friend was telling me how great it would be since I would be moving to a real city now. My reaction was one of utter incomprehensibility and instinctive dismissal and they arose from reasons which remained mysterious to me for a long time. But those reasons have become clearer as time has passed.

There are certain people who move to cities like NYC, Chicago, LA, and SFO because these places offer them the employment opportunities that they won't get at places like SD. Those people I can comprehend. Then there are those who move to these places because they would like to enjoy the many entertainment options that these "real cities" offer and it is these people who should not be taken very seriously be reasonable people. I consider it important for an individual to strive to be happy and to take decisions which would enable that in his/her own way. However, it is exceedingly hard to achieve because of how shortsighted we tend to be, how ill equipped we are at evaluating the impact of our decisions in a complex system, and how easy it is for us to get influenced by others who appear to know but who are also merely winging it in exactly the same way as us. This utter lack of discerning talent that is shared by us all is reflected in the relentless string of decisions that we have taken throughout our lives which leaves us increasingly more tied up, more stupid, and more miserable. The only people who manage to avoid this fate to a minimum degree are those who are bound by religion and custom. In this case the accumulated knowledge of custom acts as a cushion for the poor decision making capability of the individual. It is the long range wisdom that the individual does not possess. The wisdom is most certainly flawed but for something designed to be universally applied, it ain't too bad.

But lo and behold, we now have a population which wants to move to a real city not because it provides it with a better means for subsistence but because of all the extras. There is in this case a subconscious application of choice which free of custom or necessity; a choice which, in my opinion, is hard not to mess up. Big cities most certainly do offer a lot of options but they come at the cost of a more lonely existence with more superficial relationships. The cost is severe but it would still be bearable if an appropriate transaction was made in lieu of it. What would be an appropriate transaction? In addition to the monetary benefit of a good job, the transaction should include definite steps which take advantage of the extra resources found in a big city and which lead to personal growth in some meaningful way. This is a complex choice which most people would never make properly. Instead they would move to a real city so that they could hang out at bars longer than usual, for the nightlife as they call it, or for other similarly pathetic reasons. They make, in essence, an out and out bad choice and are curiously proud of it. These people enthusiastically move to a real city which has real culture, perhaps even believing in their hearts that they would really use it. But in all probability the culture that they would find themselves limited to would be that which merely constitutes a distraction. They are essentially proud of a place which makes them more lonely, which dilutes their individuality among the other teeming millions, and in return consumes their entire existence in trivialities! That's a real city for most and they are proud of it. 

So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also requisite to that complacency which we call self respect. In any community where goods are held in severalty it is necessary, in order to his own peace of mind, that an individual should possess as large a portion of goods as others with whom he is accustomed to class himself; and it is extremely gratifying to possess something more than others. But as fast as a person makes new acquisitions, and becomes accustomed to the resulting new standard of wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciably greater satisfaction than the earlier standard did. The tendency in any case is constantly to make the present pecuniary standard the point of departure for a fresh increase of wealth; and this in turn gives rise to a new standard of sufficiency and a new pecuniary classification of one's self as compared with one's neighbors. So far as concerns the present question, the end sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the rest of the community in point of pecuniary strength. So long as the comparison is distinctly unfavorable to himself, the normal, average individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his present lot; and when he has reached what may be called the normal pecuniary standard of the community, or of his class in the community, this chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a restless straining to place a wider and ever widening pecuniary interval between himself and this average standard. The invidious comparison can never become so favorable to the individual making it that he would no gladly rate himself still higher relatively to his competitors in the struggle for pecuniary reputability.

-Thorstein Veblen

I cannot think of one show, TV or radio, which was more interesting and funnier than NPR's Car Talk. They don't make them any funnier, smarter, and nicer than Tom Magliozzi which is why it's a sad day for anyone who listened to the show and to NPR.

While living in California I was only dimly aware of the reach and extent that religion has in vast swathes of America. I knew that its influence extended from the midwest to the deep south cutting through the very heart of the great plains. However, I was aware of this fact only in a very theoretical sense. I had a few friends in SD who were practicing Christians but only after moving to Chicago did I really realize how much of a sway religion has here. This experience has more or less affected me in a positive sense, making me more intimately aware of what I had always suspected, that religious people tend to be rather friendly and helpful, in contrast to what the raucous atheists would have us believe. I am an atheist myself (or agnostic with an asymptotic expansion to atheism) but I prefer to look at the debate from a different view point and through a more muted discourse.

I see the debate between religion and atheism as one which is lost as soon as it is begun. The arguments may appear new to the debaters but they have been essentially the same through at least a 100 years. What has happened over these 100 years is that either side has honed up their arguments by supplying more of what they see as irrefutable evidences and have roped in larger and larger armies to shout in ever higher volumes. None of those arguments matter and they have never amounted to anything. The debate is absolutely futile in convincing people from the other camp. The people who do end up changing their belief systems never do it because they have been convinced by good arguments in this debate but because there was some desire from within them to do so. Even though the debate is futile, it is still interesting to understand why it doesn't work. The most important reason it doesn't work is because the two sides approach it from the only directions they have at their disposal. The religious people, at the very very heart of their argument, make an appeal through emotion whereas atheists try to present their arguments in the light of reason. Religious people get away with appealing to emotion because reason hasn't yet provided all the answers that emotion and personal revelation supposedly has. Problem that atheists have is that reason, in all likelihood, will never provide convincing answers to the questions which are most important to human beings (purpose, meaning etc.) However, what religious people never seem to understand is that no explanation is better than a bad explanation. On the other hand, all too often I find atheists trying to convince themselves that there are believable humanistic and evolutionary explanations to all these questions. Just goes on to show that there are feeble minded people in either camps.

So is there a form of this debate which is still worth having? I think there is but not many people seem to be interested in having it in that form. I think it would be rather fun to converse with someone who isn't simply somebody else. Let's begin by assuming that everything that we cherish is wrong and that absolutely nothing is sacrosanct. Let's begin by throwing away what our teachers, parents, friends, religion, society, and idols have told us. Let's not pollute the discussion with dim-witted and medieval passages from scriptures. Let's also not just regurgitate thoughts, ideas, and dictum from the "leading lights" of the field. Let's especially not use them to hide our own imperfect understandings. I think it would be rather nice to have a discussion with someone who can begin from such a point. Someone who is completely alone and utterly fresh in this intellectual sense.

Now there are many facets of human behavior which rub me the wrong way but one whose dislike is harder to justify is a curious disease which primarily afflicts the 'upwardly mobile' yuppie urban classes. The disease, of course, is one where the patient suffers from an acute need of donning tight fitting clothes, wrapping an ipod or an iphone around his/her arm, inserting fashionable earplugs into their ear canal, and running aimlessly for miles on end. My instinctive aversion for this particular disease is harder to justify because it is often explained under the guise of trying to keep oneself fit and really, what can I possibly have against people wanting to be fit. I understand that this affliction cannot be criticized from an easy vantage point. Still my dislike is well and truly there and explained it must be. If not from an easy vantage point, then from a more complex one.

I think there exist various different levels and complexities of stories that one can aspire to in life. There is much to be learned, many different experiences to be had, personality developed on several different fronts, and the time to do all of it is very limited. The hue and color of the final story are dependent not just on the choices made but also the attitude with which those choices are made. For instance, there are many who read but very few who read because every new book contributes to a structure of thought and understanding which is much larger than the book itself. There is a drive towards something bigger, more coherent and lucid, more nuanced and interesting. Similarly there are many who run but very few who do because it adds something meaningful to their self and helps them grow in some important, fundamental way. All activities which when pursued with the right attitude result in some deep development, can just as easily be pursued embarrassingly superficially although this superficiality can be hidden from plain sight in some cases while it is very apparent in some others. At this point I am reminded of those women who try to look half their age by having painted their faces with too much makeup. There's nothing wrong with trying to look better than one does and, yet, the whole effort comes out as sad. Not least because they are trying to run from an inevitability and while they are completely consumed by this effort, life with all its fine potential slips by. And this is really the crux of the matter from which springs my instinctive dislike. My dislike is not for the activity per-se but for the choices made, or rather those which are not made. People who run for hours on end just so that they can postpone by a few years the day when they are not physically attractive anymore are not in a much better situation than the women with painted faces. They seem to be spending an incredible amount of time being uninteresting and learning nothing. Oh well, at least they keep me amused just like the faces with too much mascara.

Have you noticed the general trend of massive consolidation and differentiation which is coursing through various facets of society? Consolidation of ideas, beliefs, habits, and thought into simple to understand 2 byte slogans adequately garnished with generous servings of irony, smartassery, and vitriol; into bigger and bigger groups of people with more and more homogenized thinking, behavior, and belief system. Differentiation between these vast groups of people is now more severe than when these groups were smaller. There is an ever decreasing gray area where people can have a complex world view and still be seen as reasonable by the majority. This phenomenon can be witnessed most easily on online forums such as Reddit where a truly large number of people participate in debates on all kinds of issues. But while it seemed to me that such a free flow of ideas must lead to a diverse and fruitful exchange what I find is often exactly the opposite. Discussions which once appeared to me to be fresh with their irreverent bent now just seem bland and repetitive. The irony which once appeared inspired has aged very badly. But that's the biggest irony with irony. You can only stand so much of it. What is true of Reddit is also true of other large gatherings of 'similar' minded people. Such gathering inevitably drown away dissenting voices and contrarian ideas and this has, of course, always been true. What is different now is that aided by the internet these groups of 'similar minded people' have become larger than ever resulting in massive splits of thought, large armies of more or less irrationally driven individuals who are less and less unsure of their positions. Why do I think of them as irrational. Well that must obviously be true in  a world which is clearly colored in shades of grey. Anyone too sure of himself must, therefore, be irrational. This irrationality is the price we pay for trying to belong to something larger than ourselves and there exist good reasons why we find ourselves so ready to pay that price, over and over again. However the repercussions of this simple human predilection appears to become nastier by the day as technology brings us all closer together than ever before. It's easier than ever to cling into bigger and bigger lumps and it's also easier than ever to influence those who would have been too far removed from us just 10 years ago. And as we become aware of others whose ideas appear to threaten ours, especially in the knee jerk kind of way that the relentless march of technology supports with its 140 characters and 10 second sound bytes, I feel we find it natural to wither away into our shells, in the refuge of those who agree with us. And the process of consolidation is thus reinforced.

It would be hard to argue against the benefits of technology even though the benefits are often trumpeted in those same black and white, simple to digest tones which I mentioned before. However, in this one respect technology, at least to me, has been a bit of an unmitigated disaster. It has made our societies homogenized on bigger scales than ever before and also divided it across longer faults than ever before. At the same time I must say that this is a very natural course of events. Perhaps even inevitable.

Three books which immediately come to mind when I think of especially enjoyable works are Proust's in search of lost time, Nabokov's Lolita, and Joyce's Ulysses. As it happens these three books also represent entirely different styles of prose which, of course, one would expect from writers of the highest calibre. It also goes on to show how much a writer of brilliance can mould and manipulate and create within the close boundaries which he or she may have chosen. I read not for the story or the plot or the moral or in search for some kind of identification with the characters of the story. I read to be enchanted by the novel experiments which the masters of the art perform through words, phrases, allusions, references, similes, metaphors, details, and patterns. And in my opinion nobody experiments better than the three writers I mentioned.

Of these three Nabokov is most definitely the most surgical. He writes in impeccably measured and exquisitely adorned sentences which have the compositional perfection of a brilliantly conceived and performed scientific experiment. It comes as little surprise that that is what he does so well, given his own scientific bent and training. There is something proud and snobbish about his writing. Something which makes you aware of the immense chasm that separates his intelligence and sensibility from mere mortals. Once you accept the existence of this chasm as something which must necessarily crop up in this world which plays host to all sorts of random possibilities, you can really enjoy that which lays forever outside capabilities of mere writers. Proust, on the other hand is amazingly observant and sensitive. He derives his strength not from the surgical dissection of language, which I'm sure he's plenty capable of, but from the various connections that he is able to illuminate in the world of his experiences. His writing strikes at a deeper level than mere intelligence. It strikes straight at the heart, the gut, and the soul. Through the words that he lovingly assembles to describe his own emotions and the world around him, he's able to make his experiences immediate to the reader so much so that the reader becomes unaware that the medium of words is at work. His art is so immersive that I forget that the art exists. He's able to take my imagination, hand in hand, on a stroll along the fertile green shores of his memories, through the mighty dense thicket which clearly reeks of a moist decaying undergrowth made up of layers upon layers of archaeological mnemosyne. Out of the three Joyce is the most mercurial. His writing is full of literary, historical, and popular allusions. His characters are complex and flawed and exceedingly intelligent. His sentences are brilliantly constructed so much so that each one of them is an exquisite piece of art. He doesn't seem to care so much for the compositional perfection that Nabokov goes for in his sentences. Instead he's supremely experimental and evocative. Reading every other line in Ulysses is like learning something new. It's like standing in front of a master trickster and feeling amused and amazed at the seemingly endless card tricks which he seems to be able to perform. Of course, Joyce is not just a trickster. He's a true magician. His stack of cards must have belonged to the devil himself who lent to them the kind of sorcery and sinful magnetism which seem to permeate his writing. In my limited experience as a reader I cannot think of a greater master of the language than Joyce.

Over the last so many years I have witnessed my interests, hobbies, and passions go through multiple transformations with the dominant change being that of pruning. At several of those 'turns' I have tried to answer for myself as why did certain things become less important and certain other, by the same effect, relatively more important. One example would be sports, especially cricket, which I used to be quite fond of but which I have lost interest in, except for a very specialized form of it: one that is played over 5 days. Another example would be movies of the kind that Bollywood churns out with embarrassing efficiency but such examples abound in different areas. On the other end of the spectrum I have grown quite fond of the thoughts of those who appear to me to be significantly more intelligent than I am and this respect and this fondness exists beyond the confines of any specific field. It includes great writers, scientists, philosophers (in a limited sense), actors and comedians, individual sport performers, musicians to a certain extent among others. It does not include, which is to say that I feel no respect for, those who are in certain professions such as finance and politics among others. I have grown neutral towards religious leaders as I have towards those who profess to be the leading lights of atheism, which is to say that it appears to be a waste of time to consider their point of views. I say this because these people appear not to be very smart and as a consequence what one always gets from them are tired old arguments which have been made and heard zillions of times already. I have stopped being so opposed to social work and have accepted it as being necessary and beneficial although the smugness which is often involved still foments some old flames.

So is there a pattern here which emerges? There is a spectrum which colors the various aspects of the world. On this spectrum, right about in the center and with a broad spread lie the general ideas which get repeated ad-infinitum. The kind that one hears on the 24 hour news channels although it is certainly not confined to them. These general ideas are characterized by their simplicity and easy relatability. There's a very prominent us vs. them angle to them and there's an over-emphasis on those instincts which get easily excited in us. Instincts like fear, sexual urges, ideas of survival disguised in different ways. It is this broad spread that I have found myself increasingly getting tired of because of its sheer monotonicity. I don't think my dislike for such ideas ever started from elitism but I have found myself scratching my head and wondering how many others I know can seemingly appear to be continually entertained by something which is such a blatant copy of itself, done to death. I understand that not much is really new in today's world but the circularity of the spread that I am talking about has such a small radius that it is stunning that it can still hold such a sway. It's a bit like watching someone slip on a banana peel. It is arguable whether that is inherently funny but I can see myself laughing for the first very few times. Metaphorically speaking, the sight of a man falling over a banana peel has been on repeat since ages and it has kept a surprisingly large number of people very entertained.

Over the years then I have seen my interest naturally shift as a result of a search for new ideas, things that I haven't heard or seen yet. There is no guarantee whether there is any inherent merit to such a search or whether it is worth the effort but it most certainly is fun and filled with a constant sense of youthful wonderment. This has inevitably meant drifting away from general ideas but I have not had a problem with that for a long time. I find myself truly happier for doing so time and again.

Chicago has a really nice art museum which has a significant collection of the Impressionists. Some Van Gogh, Renoir, Gauguin,  and Pissaro, and a decent Monet collection. It is this part of the museum which is also very often the most crowded, impressionism being one of those movements which has made such a lasting impression even on people who aren't that interested in art in the first place. Names like Van Gogh have entered into the popular consciousness like Einstein's has, transcending the boundaries which separate a student of art from a mere novice. On this artistic gradation my quiver is, unfortunately, more empty than full and I lean heavily towards the side of being a novice. However, that doesn't prevent me from experiencing a pleasure from art whose origins are very hard to find and whose essence harder to describe. I have a sneaking suspicion that that pleasure is somewhere connected to the idea that artists like the ones I mentioned (and many more whom I don't even know about) created something exquisite out of nothing but their own curiosity and passion. Those works are not diluted in the way that general ideas are diluted and they stand as testaments, within the small bounds of space and time, to the excruciating efforts that the artist took not just to make that one piece but to cultivate that talent which made it possible and to cultivate that 'go-away' sort of rebellion which seems essential if one ever wants to do something whose legacy can last beyond one lifetime. There is a childlike simplicity to those endeavors whose fruits are these works of art which are definite mileposts signifying those who let their imaginations fly free. There's also the ever present subtext of a seductive intelligence in all of this, an intelligence that was patient and scrupulous and extremely careful as it painted every single brushstroke, even the one which became the last diminished thread of the curtain flowing aimlessly in the dark, in the corner, in a place which almost no one ever notices. The allure of these pieces, therefore, is the same as the allure of a really great book, in that it emanates from the tireless effort of an individual who poured long hours into perfecting every little part with his only motivation being his inability to give to it any less. And this is a rather universal impulse which speaks a general language understandable even by those who may not necessarily 'get' the nuances of the particular craft. It's also an impulse which can be all too easily branded as being elitist and snobbish because it stands at odds with the very useful utilitarianism which seems to permeate everything. And there's something to be said about that argument. However, I often find myself being moved by Watterson when he respectfully disagreed with John Stuart Mills referring to utilitarianism as being overrated.

It's very strange, the world. In how it responds elastically to your inputs and provides you the image of exactly what you want from it. There are infinitely many gradations within which it can be queried and it distills itself into murky brown shades of prejudices and preconceptions. It can be analyzed with great care and dexterity or it can just be left alone merely taken for the ride. And it's amazing that it will tell you what you want to hear. There appears to be a fractured narrative, one which is made of very dissonant parts whose edges don't quite match up and there are broken shards of non explanations on the ground. And the mind flies from one part to another and completely forgets where it had been or how it has come to where it is and becomes very unsure of where the next stop. And it thinks in bare gasps of half remembered states and tries to put it all together and looks around and sees that it doesn't seem to matter at all. There are jobs to be done and money to be spent and politics to be cared for and sports team to be mad about, dresses to buy, children to bring up for another cycle, decide again, for one last time where one stands on issues of all sorts. There's the cacophony of the unbearably shrill voice of accumulated custom and then there is the world beneath the toes of the self, unopened oysters and unique snowflakes sort of deal. And there's the immense cycle which continues unhindered and repeats itself nauseatingly ad-infinitum and everyone has essentially the same issues that everyone else has and yet they are always unique in someone's eyes. And one can intellectualize these and feel superior and useless at the same time and one can intellectualize the process of intellectualization and come to the conclusion as to how confusing it all is. And then some schmuck comes along and wonders with a chuckle as to why bother. Why indeed, but for a second one sees, with more clarity than ever, distilled in a persona is the whole incredible reason, the immense machinery which is puffing and grinding and belching dark ominous smoke as the wheels of life grind along and take another turn exactly the same as the previous one. It's a vast universe out there where there existed a galaxy far far way, bigger than the one we live in with billions and billions of stars just like ours, and it just vanished into nothingness and nobody heard a thing. One can look from a vantage point and see the immensely mundane homogeneity where unnamed and unrecognized faces move about until they stop or one can appreciate the tumultuous storm that is each one of them. Sort of like UGK and Chekhov I suppose.