Saurabh's posterous

12 Jan 2012

On being human

You know one of the many things that separate humans from insects is empathy. Yes, empathy. You are said to be empathetic towards other humans if their pain or discomfort affects you, mostly negatively. This then 'should' drive you to take actions that help out the other humans in relieving themselves of that discomforting feeling.

As humans, we are gifted with tremendous mental and physical capabilities to effectuate such changes. We are able to think, communicate, and act, all in the guise of a super-intelligent life form called the human race. Empathy drives us to write great literature, make terrific movies, fall in love, develop new technology, explore new planets, and on and on, effectively enabling global change for all of us and the generations after.

Why then do we forego this basic human trait at times when we need it the most?

I wish I could answer this question with a modicum of correctness and without getting into controversial topics of theology and social structure.

One thing is for certain that prejudice plays a role here. We are all humans, full of emotions, and sometimes these prejudices make us dispose conventional wisdom in favor of our (and our elders') prior experiences in life. After all, to be prejudiced is also a sign of possessing cognition, which we humans have successfully demonstrated over the past multitudes of generations. We deplore disobedience towards parents, for example, because we are prejudiced against any act of defiance against parents by their children. Similarly, we are prejudiced against people who get willfully intoxicated in public.

Does this mean that it's alright to shed empathy towards others if we happen to be prejudiced against them? This is where most of us stop being humans. Empathy is not temporary. It is us. It is our #1 trait.

Here are examples of people being less humans:

1. Crowd in Afghanistan silently spectating, in fact participating, over the public stoning of a young girl who happened to commit the crime of loving someone from outside her 'community'.

2. Supporting any war that affects civilians and goes against all the rules of conflict.

3. Not caring about the environment.

4. Not feeling the urge to help out the unfortunate few in the world even when they're right in front of us.

5. Not giving up your seat for the elderly on public transportation.

6. Not staying up all night to care for the sick lover who is otherwise always with us.

The point is not to tell you what's right and what's not. We already know that. All we have to ask is - if we were in the same situation as that human/entity, what would we expect from the rest.

While everyone is born with the same levels of empathy, only a few are brought up in an environment where that trait is amplified and put into use for dealing with most of life's situations. Once you start treating everyone in this world alike, you reach the point of everlasting happiness, because even if someone is doing something wrong, you care enough for them to help them get back on track. This is what being human is all about, and all of us want to be happy without the burden of our prejudices guiding us towards anything other than how to collaborate effectively with other people.

So the next time you see something that is contributing to making this world a worse place for everyone, take action.

We are all capable of being humans.

1 Jan 2012

On beginning a new year

Today is the first day of the year. While I did allude to 2011 being a prime year, 2012 is rightly so. Who would have thought that 2011 would be so eventful in the beginning of the year? I certainly did not.

2011 saw major reversals in certain countries' autocratic regimes. We also saw visionaries die. 2011 was the year of the common man. While banking and investment careers remain quite lucrative, no one in their right mind would now brag about being 'that guy' who makes disproportionately more money than others putting in similar amounts of effort. The Occupy movement is a sign of things to come before the next predicted apocalypse. No longer is the common man 'down' with mediocrity at the highest echelons of politics, corporate governance, and monetary policy-making. Accountability is the name of the game, as also evinced by the anti-corruption crusades all over India, today.

2012 is going to be awesome. While I cannot predict the future, at least with a very high level of accuracy, I do see 2012 as the year of the resurgence of the east. The dollar would continue losing its most favorable currency status, and gold will continue being valuable. Online social networks are slowly getting as ubiquitous as email or SMS, and 2012 would only see this advance further. Not participating on these networks will (and arguably still does) seem like an anachronism. Personally, my last 3-4 jobs have been a result of using social networks rather than circulating my résumé mindlessly.

Online participation in exchange of ideas will make us honest, something autocratic and corrupt governments still cannot get a grasp of.

So, what are my new resolutions? Absolutely the same as last year - to continue living life to the fullest, to pursue new and old passions in life, and to travel whenever presented the opportunity.

A new year symbolizes mere turning over of the frame of reference of time we call a 'calendar'. Every day is part of the continuum called 'getting older and wiser'. What makes all the difference is the perception of a new beginning. New beginnings are always optimistic. 2012 ought to be full of optimism. The human race is a wonderful race to be a part of. I am proud of that!

Here's to another year of being awesome.

10 Dec 2011

Winter fun

(download)

4 Dec 2011

On growing up

This is my cynical post for the weekend.

Someone pointed out to me yesterday (in jest) that European kids grow up fast as they exhaust all their partying desires by the time they reach adulthood. Then, life's totally different when they get to the 20s and above.

I just thought about it. It makes perfect sense. This is THE reason for the state of global affairs at present.

Allow me to extrapolate the European kids curve to also touch the rest of the Western world (pun intended) and you see where I am slowly treading towards! You see, growing up in India, our image of the kids in Europe and America was that they partied hard and basically had fun all the time. Then, when we arrive in the US for higher studies we see that we weren't wrong at all! All those college students with their impression that university is basically a place to get drunk, have fun, and 'mingle'. The rich-parent-kids were slightly better off than the rest in the terms that they generally chose more lucrative majors (like business, finance, etc.) and used their party time to also include early-age network building, aka the fraternity/sorority ecosystem in the US university space.

These kids had parents who grew up in a similar fashion. The thing now is that when the parents actually stepped out of the cocoon, they realized that the world is a competitive place. You have to not just be good, but considerably better than the rest to succeed. So, they worked hard...harder than they ever had. All that fun and partying was now converting into real hard work, long workdays, and weekends full of business trips. It's brutal.

Allow me to explain further - a lot of these parents started looking at shortcuts to success. Why be better when you could cheat the system? Also allow me to state that by cheating the system, I am not really talking about large scale corruption prevalent in most countries. This is about someone redefining finance as the redistribution of wealth from one living entity to another. Get a job in one of these finance companies and then get wealthy by finding loopholes in the system. This way you don't have to be better - you just work 'hard'. This also meant that passion suddenly had no place in the system. You just went after the money. Those who didn't, had to contend with ever increasing income disparity.

Since they had never worked very hard growing up, these shortcuts were enticing, to say the least. The side effect was that the system slowly got crowded with people who were just good at networking and counting money. And, we can actually see this. Sure, there's a lot of technology companies and growth and what not, but all this is not merely driven by banking money, but it's almost akin to indentured servitude. You believe you're free, but you aren't. And, as my brother-in-law says, it takes more than a generation for this wealth to fully redistribute, leaving us with the status quo in, at least, our lifetimes.

Contrast this with how rest of the world grows up - we see our parents lead considerably humble and balanced lives. The message is always that you work hard NOW to make your future better TOMORROW. We are forced to work hard in our early years, to recognize our true calling (although more often than not, this just happened to me 'money' fields like engineering or medicine), and then build life long careers in that field. The 'real world' is very often an easier place to live in than the academic world. If you don't believe me, just look at the number of Indian kids who end their lives due to stress even before they enter the real world.

Surely, with access to easy money everywhere, all this is changing and trending towards the status in the Western world. For good or for bad, I'll let time tell.

28 Nov 2011

On living in the moment

So many people spend the precious moments in their lives living the lives of someone else, idolizing someone else, preparing for the future they haven't seen, yet, spending money they haven't earned, yet, pursuing someone they haven't met, yet, and so on.

Wouldn't life be much better if we just lived in the moment? The only planning you need to do is to make sure you live a life without regrets, and I am hard pressed to agree that planning/speculating for anything you cannot reliably predict is a wonderful thing. In a world where we accept risks at their face value, why not risk living a wonderful life where you are in peace with everyone and everything?

Here's to realizing all our dreams and potential.

'It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while'

- Don Marquis

16 Nov 2011

On education

I constantly hear people without degrees go on about how education really isn't serving their needs, or how education is useless, or how education is a bubble that has lost its meaning in today's highly dynamic and connected world. While true to an extent, the proponents of these ideas fail to understand what constitutes a proper education.

The Random House Dictionary defines education as - 'the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life'.

As such, a well rounded education entails elements of systematic personality development, a carefully crafted curriculum of subjects that motivate the student to develop critical reasoning in topics well beyond the confines of their hobbies, a prolonged discourse on ethics and values, and most importantly, builds confidence that no problem is big or complex enough to be solved with the assortment of tools in hand.

Education is not topical mastery. That would fall under a much higher level of instruction/research (think PhD and above), which is indeed a bubble, but not because of diminished returns. Rather, it is a bubble only for a few people that get into higher education with the ulterior motive of making more money rather than the aforementioned goals of discovery and self-development. For some people, education is nothing more than vocational training, but at an expensive school which validates the amount of money they're aimlessly pumping into taking some courses that only lead to a diploma in the end.

These people have it all wrong.

The only reason education isn't working in today's society is that no one is taking it seriously.

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I could go on and on about this topic, but I think the last statement sums it all quite well.

13 Nov 2011

Are you...

Brutally honest, even with people you only interact with occasionally?

Available at all times, especially for people you call your friends?

Uncompromising towards your ideals?

Compassionate towards one and all?

Eager to help everyone?

Concerned about the plight of humanity in the long term?

Interested in making the world a better place for the future generations?

Upright?

Open with people you consider your friends?

Sincere?

Eternally optimistic?

If you answered yes to ALL these questions, then -

Congratulations! These and more related personality attributes make you one among the most sought after humans on this planet. Keep up the good work!

11 Nov 2011

Food for thought

What is it that drives some people to settle in socially awkward relationships just for the sake of residency in one country? Are things *that* bad where you come from?

I have had this discussion with many a people and quite a few of them justify doing this quite vehemently. Some even go as far as saying that it is the *only* way to lead a better life. And, these are people from some rapidly developing European countries, too.

Who am I to judge others?
I can only vouch for the will to succeed on your own terms, and those terms involve no compromises.

22 Oct 2011

Festive pick-up season at Schiphol

(download)

18 Sep 2011

Saurabh's Cardinal Rules for Throwing a Party

We love parties. We love people who throw good parties.

Here is what defines a good party:

1. Fine tune your guest list. Don't invite people just to make it a big gathering.

2. As a host, it's your duty to make sure you have good music, plenty of good and assorted food, and to keep the drinks flowing.

3. When it comes to music, always have a party playlist ready, rather than trying to engage your guests or yourself while the party is in progress. At the same time, give your guests some freedom with choosing music.

4. When it comes to food, don't put out something that you don't already know your guests would enjoy eating. Nothing spoils a party more than people drinking on an empty stomach.

5. When it comes to invitations, don't invite single people whose purpose is just to meet other singles. They are detrimental to the spirit of a good party.

6. Move your furniture and show pieces out of the way. Your guests will also appreciate if you stow away everything that gets in the way of good partying.

7. Set no rules. It's a party, not a prison cell.

8. Unless the entire guest list is the druggie type, don't do/encourage drugs at parties. It's never a good thing to indulge in exclusive activities at parties (refer to point 5).

9. Games go really well with drinks. Include a game element to keep everyone hoping that the party never ends.

10. Move around and mix up with your guests.

11. Speaking of moving around, the party should always end at the party venue. Do not move it somewhere else on a whim. The guests might not appreciate it.

12. This comes from experience - unless it's a college party, never ever try to collect money for drinks or food.

13. Don't be that host who is interested in taking photographs of every moving object at the party. It's annoying, frankly.

14. DO NOT allow anyone to drive anywhere drunk. You invited them, you need to make sure they return safely.

And the biggest rules of them all - be humorous and have a splendidly good time!

It's been years since I threw a real party. I need to get back in the game (of throwing great parties).