invention of inventions

Jispa has to write an essay on the greatest invention of mankind. I guess the idea here is that this is going to be such a  widespread contest that the best bet would be to think completely out of the box. I asked Jispa what she thought would be the greatest invention of man. She said it would be the light bulb. Then I asked her to think further. She thought about – fire, wheel etc. when prodded further she even mentioned air conditioning as an option. I think this is her mother’s side of the family gene showing up. AC!? But its ok, I asked her to think further. I spoke to her about great stuff like, the printing press (Guttenberg) or the internet. She spoke about newspapers and others. We also spoke about democracy.

I then explained that in my mind the greatest invention is possibly a philosophical one – the invention of the rights of man after the French revolution in 1789. The concept that all men are born free and shall remain free, equal in the eye of law and are free to do what they choose (limitless) as long as they don’t harm anyone else or take away other people’s rights. This to my mind was a fundamental concept that allowed men to have freedom of speech, thought and action. This is such a simple concept that is so critical in our thinking and for what we take for granted. Democracy, free speech, ability to hold property and various different concepts that we hold dear and for granted come from this simple declaration. It also inspired millions others to think similarly. It seems this was a work that took forward the American declaration.

It contains such simple stuff like as - all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty; Law is the expression of the general will; Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

Everything that we take for granted was not so as man progressed. I would even think that the reason that man has progressed in the last 200 odd years at this rapid pace is because it essentially democratized speech thought and action. I find these lines extremely powerful ‘liberty consists of in the freedom to do everything’. It is so amazing. Instead of telling what man could do, it simply gave man the right to do everything. It frees man to think on anything. It only restricts a few things. I think this is such a valuable lesson that we as parents or as bosses must take up.

In office we have things like KRA’s – key result areas. These define things that I must do. they in many ways limit my role and responsibility to do things that ensure I get my monthly pay check and that I am rewarded for it. just imagine if a KRA said – you are free to do anything that doesn’t harm the organization. Of course it’s unthinkable. As a parent also it’s unthinkable. Can I tell Jispa you are free to do what you want to do? Everything is allowed unless its expressly forbidden. As I read this charter again and again in a bid to explain it to Jispa I am forced to thin further and internalize it. as ai write about it , I am forced to think about it. It is so important to teach and write about what you think and learn. That is the only way to study! The right way to study. SO I am thinking of how I must  translate this charter for my child or for my office. Everything is allowed unless expressly forbidden. I think here my dad’s formula was right. till you are in tenth standard you will be told what to do and to study. After that you are on your own. No pressure no compulsion. I remember he would not want to interfere till Mom would really egg him to. You are man after you are 15 and then on you are free! Completely free as long as you don’t harm anyone else.

That is so bloody interesting. I hope I am able to keep Jispa free after 15. I hope to release Jispa from the clutches of her parents and the envelope of their warmth and love.

At eth end I was telling Jispa you must close your essay with something like – this was the framework that allowed man to think, in essence it was an invention of inventions. She looks at me and then asks me “you are saying that for drama, nah?” Yes sure. Nice drama nah? But yes since it allowed men to invent stuff and laid the bedrock of free thought – it is basically the invention of inventions!

Bonus video – somebody was asking me why I thought the Mendeleev’s periodic table was so sexy. I researched this stuff and I found this lovely video. You will love it.

Freedom

We spend the first year of a child's life teaching him or her to walk and talk "and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down."

I read this somewhere and its really true and so truer than now with respect to Jispa. Jispa is suddenly becoming a big girl. She understands stuff, is able to argue back and is broadly able to resist. So whats wrong. Nothing – just as parents now we have to be all ready to handle a different child than the one we were handling six months ago. The nature of adolescence is now panning out. Neither she nor we know if she is an adult or a child. Should we treat her as if she knows nothing or should we treat her as if she knows everything. We have to get after her to do her stuff and she says she knows what to do. Jasmine is letting her peel and cut cucumbers and I baulk at the approval. That’s not done. I don’t think she is ready yet but then many girls younger to her do this and much more.

She fights and fights aggressively for freedom and responsibility and on giving she promptly screws it all up. She would  then proceed to just not do what is expected of her. Its not that she doesn’t understand. She does but just something happens and …. And it just creates more confusion in our minds. Is she old or is she young. Every phase gets tougher and tougher. Now that she is in the fifth grade the pressure of homework and studies have cranked up dramatically. There is a lot more to study and with her swimming schedule the time that she has is dramatically less. Time seems to have been condensed these days. So much so that we are now constantly on her case. Jasmine gets completely done in by the stress and then it gets to me. I try and understand and allow but then Jispa will simply mess things up and make me wonder whats going on. I allow her leeway in the morning to relax and not rush – the consequence is that when we are to leave she will not be ready and there is a mad rush for the bags. I allow her some time to read  a magazine at night – the consequence is that she remembers in the morning about the home work to be done and there is a mad rush with unfinished home work. We let her see a movie and project will remain unfinished or she will be ill prepared for her reviews.

Oh dam me. I always maintained that I will not put pressure on her to study. She is free to enjoy her life and do as she pleases. Studies will not be the main focus of her life like what my parents did. Studies they knew was the only way out of a life of struggle. They were right in their era. Time shave changed. I maintained always but then it lasted only till I became a parent of a 10 year old. So now I have changed to from studies is not it to only studies is not it. You need studies and something else. Or you have your something else and you have studies as well. Earlier when Jispa was born I was a complete ass. I even thought that great it’s a girl, at least the pressure on her to grow up and study and become an engineer is not there. But dam… that’s not the thing. We know she is smart and we know that she can do well. She has a great brain that is able to memorise as well as reason. So what’s my job as a dad? Is it to give her a great and happy childhood that she will remember for life (and not blame me like how I sometimes blame my parents) or teach her to study, make her study for now and then hopefully she takes a call later on what she wants to do in life.

I really don’t want to pressurize her. Yesterday as well I had to take the school magazine from her and get her to study and finish her homework. She obviously did not like it. It showed on her face. Later on I asked her about it and then I spoke to her. I told her I was sorry. She had to finish her stuff, I hate being a  mean dad much more than you hate having one. But I am sorry. She understood. At the end as was sleeping I told her “I am sorry and I promise you that it WILL happen again”. We laughed. It’s a tough one. And it’s not as simple as ‘let Jasmine do the irritating discipline thing and I will do the fun thing’. That’s not on as well. That’s unfair to one parent. So we both have to be mean and sweet. The thing is to alternate. But it’s getting freaking tough on both of us. We are constantly being pulled in by our true nature, our role as parents and our desires to see our child do well.

So what’s the answer to all this? its difficult. The way I see it right now and the way I explained to Jispa is simple. I have no option but ensure that you have a great base. She is around 11 right now. I have another 5-6 years at best to hound her and get her to study. If this base is well constructed then she can build it from there on.in fact she can then even decide to chuck it all and do something else altogether. But to have the freedom to choose you need to be able enough to get the choice in the first place. If you want to reject an admission in a college you need to get the admission to start with. That leave sus with very little room to play with. And that little room is gobbled up with her swimming. If she swims so many hours a day, she is eating into all her time for everything else. Plus we have to ensure she plays a bit and movies and relax and read… wow. I keep explaining to her that if she was a simple fun kid then she would have had time for a lot of simple cute fun. But is choosing to be a champion. Representing Mumbai is no mean feat, there are choices to be made and scarifies to be done. It is up to the athlete to choose. But she will need to.

On this a bit of philosophy that I read might help. It’s quite an interesting story. I have read this story as a kid, but I never did figure that this is an interesting and deeply philosophical construct. Read on. How limiting Jispa’s choices now we are actually giving her the freedom to choose! Sorry Jips, I think you are not going to find this one inspiring. Atleast for now.

http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/odysseus-nudged

Odysseus Nudged: How Limiting Our Choices Can Give Us More Freedom

by DAVE NUSSBAUM

According to legend, the Sirens were beautiful women whose voices were so alluring that when sailors heard their song they could not resist approaching and were drowned on the rocky shores of the island where the Sirens sang. No sailor had heard their song and lived until Odysseus, who, on the counsel of the goddess Circe, had his crew tie him to the mast of his ship. When he heard the Sirens’ song he begged to be released, but his crew, their ears plugged with beeswax, would not unbind him and saved him from his own desires. Odysseus was lucky – he knew that he would be unable to resist the Sirens and had himself bound – but people often have difficulty foreseeing their weakness from a distance. Sometimes they need help.

I love watching my not-quite-two-year-old son learn about the world from his mistakes. I look on with sympathy at his falls and bumps and spills and I try to restrain myself from interceding. But when he’s about to tumble down a flight of stairs I step in. It is difficult to balance preserving his freedom to explore and make his own mistakes with the desire to keep him safe. There’s a lot to be said for giving kids autonomy and letting them learn from experience, but sometimes you have to behave paternalistically and tie them to the mast (or at least install safety gates).

When you start treating grown men and women like you’re their father, though, the charge of paternalism becomes a more serious one. There may be cases in which a heavy-handed approach is necessary (particularly when people’s actions harm others), but we should be careful about using it. A more circumspect approach is libertarian paternalism, described by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in Nudge (and re-articulated more recently by Sunstein in his Simpler) as a way of influencing people to make decisions that they themselves would consider beneficial, without restricting their freedom.

Here, we are not tying Odysseus to the mast – the more appropriate analogy would be to the beeswax that Odysseus had his sailors put in their ears. The wax prevented the sailors from hearing the Sirens’ song and saved them from being lured to their deaths, but it also left them free to remove the wax if that is what they wanted to do. This sort of intervention is an acknowledgment that the sailors’ freedom is important, but also that people are not always perfectly rational. As Carnegie Mellon economist (and psychologist) George Loewenstein recently explained to me, “When people have problems exercising self-control, restricting their choices can, in some cases, leave them more freedom to choose.”

On its face, Loewenstein’s claim may seem paradoxical – isn’t a person most free when presented with all her options and allowed to choose among them? But as the mythical Sirens make clear, there are some options that we are not truly free to resist. Without beeswax in their ears Odysseus’ crew would have been doomed; the wax gave them the freedom to choose.

letter to you.

Hey jippy. Some day you would read this blog and wonder, mera baap pagal tha. If he had to write something personal why did he choose something so open like a blog to write it. the point is that you are right. Teara baap pagal hai. ai!
I like the concept of open book. To tell a lot to a lot of people. I like to be more open than closed. I like more and more people to be aware of things in my brain and in my heart. The more people see what’s in the more they hopefully learn at my expense. Well its my bit of contribution to ‘world peace’. Ya sure. Well I duno. I just hope that some one some where is getting some little pleasure reading my blog. Sometimes reading even simple personal letters to you my dear. I love the relationship I have with you and I would love the world to know of it as well. And its not that the bloody blog has amassive readership in any case. I am not sure how many people you will meet in your life, that have read this blog. I certainly don’t think the number would be material. But the benefits of a public blog may be many. For one, since I know some friends read this as well, I try to have a little variety. Some random articles, some funny one, and some faltu fart (philosophy). And I sure hope you don’t grow up to be a pain and wonder what an ass of a baap you had, who told the world of the small silly, potentially embarrassing things that you did as a kid. Yaar, I think it’s kinda cute. But sorry if you feel bad about it. The risk is worth taking as I write. The flip side – no blog. And yes I sure sure hope that you find the blog some where worth your while. Full tragedy if you hate it. Even if you do, let me know fast enough. I hope to be writing this well into the future.
Hehehehe. And what else. I hope all is fine with you. Hopefully I am not dead by the time you are reading age for this. But then life is tough. Grind hard and dig hard. No body has it easy. Don’t take solace in other people’s miseries. Learn to have an internal locus of control. Take all what you can on your chest. Take blows and fight on. Don’t make the same error twice and use EVERY opportunity to learn. Every body , every thing teaches. Be smart. And above all – be nice.
I have been reading Satyagraha in South Africa. I cannot explain how bloody profound and brilliant Stayagraha is. The difficulty is in its simplicity. So simple and yet so bloddy difficult. I am trying to use some of its principles somewhere. Some blogs in the future would have some reference to it. Simply put – the truth shall set you free. FREE. What an outstanding feeling. The freedom glow from being above it all, the freedom glow of knowing more. The freedom glow of inner peace. The freedom glow.
Jyada ho gaya nah! Thoda tone down karna chaiye tha. But whattodo? Fart is also free!