Social Capital

Sometimes Jasmine gets quite mad at us. Us – meaning Jispa and me. According to her we feed of each other and get worse.

Often I am accused of being too strong a personality for my child. One friend was chastising me for loving history and teaching it in a way that makes it interesting. She told me that what I was doing wasn’t fair. This was, thanks to me Jispa will love history and that I will be responsible for it. Oh come on yaar. Another day, quite recently one friend told me that its not fair that thanks to me Jispa won’t read fiction. Now what did I do? I hate fiction. I don’t read fiction but I don’t stop Jispa from reading it. Of course if she reads too much fiction I would ask her about it, hopefully learn from her point of view and understand her interests. I would get into debates about how fiction is a waste of time and effort and money, especially when there truck loads of non-fiction there to be consumed, and equally interesting. I may even win the debate but the final decision is for Jispa. She needs to know what she wants in life. And is it my fault that I am a personality, a large personality around the house with a  strong point of view. I read, I understand, I think and then I transfer. These days I have become less opinionated than before. I have become more circumspect. I ask questions to Jispa more than I teach her. She is free to think of her views and keep them but I am free to question them or ask her about another point of view. What’s wrong in that? I think not talking openly about views, counter views, questions and counter arguments is the most dangerous thing to do. The most dangerous question is not having one.

Many people will think that I am feeding Jispa opinions, debate and argument. They will think that I am feeding Jispa with my world view. What they fail to understand is that I am trying to merely instill in her a dose of skepticism. An irreverence of sorts. The ability to question everything. At one extreme it will give you no joy as you cannot trust anything. No love will be clean and unspoiled and unquestioned. But that is not the objective. The objective is to have the ability to question it and yet be comfortable with it. This is the essence of what I seek to teach.

These days picking a book to read has become a little difficult. Whatever book you pick up, there is a healthy dose of criticism in all of it. Every hypothesis that a book seeks to promote will have a strong and valid sounding counter argument. Today morning as I was sitting on the potty seat and was considering starting a new book sample  that I had downloaded on my kindle. It came recommended and had caught my eye but at the same time, had been critiqued. My thoughts flashed to another book sample that I was reading, just the day before. That one spoke about the ‘Wheat Belly’. That book’s premise is that we as humans should stop eating wheat as it causes all sorts of bad things, including making us fat. Ever since I was diagnosed as being lactose intolerant, food has become a bit of an obsession with me. I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading about food. One thing I realized was that Indians are pretty new to wheat in their diet. Only about the last 60 years or so, after the green revolution. But it became so widespread in our diet that we did not realize that our grand-parents itself hardly ate wheat. Including the granary of India – Punjab. It becomes difficult to read any book, or understand anything, or feel anything for that matter with a complete no holds barred approach and unbridled enthusiasm. I end up like today on the potty seat, smiling to myself. Ok – may this is interesting but also what are the chances of this being true. How time do I spend on book, trying to understand the author’s “POINT OF VIEW”. The same with people. A wise man told me that “don’t get close to anyone. You will find chinks even in God from a close distance.” This last one is a challenge. How do you relate to people, love them, be with them and not be close to them and not see their chinks? Possibly the answer is to acknowledge these chinks. To accept them, to anticipate them and smile when you find them. Because these deficiencies are just their but yours. These are the color of your eye glasses as you see them. I like seeing them and noticing them and smiling to myself. On a negative spiral I do get irritated with them. They have the ability to hurt me. But as Jasmine says, you love these people and you love spending time with them so just simply do that. Why think more. She is right. That’s the simple part of life, that co exists with the complicated part of life. One cannot let the presence of one interfere with the joy of experiencing the other.

These days, Jispa is coming to my lectures and giving me valuable feedback. She wants me to make these lectures a bit more interesting and wants me to be a little less strict when dealing with unruly elements. Sometimes I scold my kids just to keep them in check. I started this new thing of having a test in class basis some reading material I give them in advance that I want them to read and come. This created a weird situation. I had more than 100 kids attending my class. Oh dear me. I gave the test and gave an open offer for kids to leave. Some left but still a majority stayed. Teaching 100 kids is utter useless. An absolute waste of time. It’s like a TED talk. It becomes a monologue. No interaction, no joy. So, this time, I have made the test but the kids are free to access this online test from anywhere. If you have read the material and you are getting the test right, then you deserve the right to bunk class. That is the truth. So why should I be so fussed on attendance. Let’s see what happens today. I only want around 50 kids to attend. The genuine interested ones only!

Let’s see. Also I am impressed with Jispa’s ability to give me feedback on my teaching. She is not directly critical but suggests what she has seen as good examples and what she would enjoy. I like her style of trying to make her dad improve. Very very cool.

Coming back to the first point. According to Jasmine, Jispa and me feed off each other. I think that’s true. We tend to like similar stuff and we keep irritating mom with it. As of now, Jasmine thinks both of us are overtly anti social. Jasmine told Jispa that’ you are just following your dad without thinking. You both think that it is just cool to be anti social.” Anti social is loosely used here. We don’t mean we are anarchists and that we create unrest. Here it simply means that we are happier alone, without the really dumb people who we meet outside the confines of our home. I guess you can definitely call us arrogant, after that last statement. But I guess, when you meet so many opinionated people who don’t read and who don’t think its becomes difficult to socialize and mix with so many jokers.

Coming to another interesting point of view. Recently I heard of and read about a concept of “Social Capital” by Robert Putman. He wrote a book – Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community which was an extension of an essay he wrote - http://archive.realtor.org/sites/default/files/BowlingAlone.pdf . Wikipedia says “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital. Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active civil engagement, which a strong democracy requires from its citizens.”

This made me think and rethink. I have been in the past been critical of every one’s social instinct and every little social interaction. Especially when it is all centered around food. My gymkhana organizes it festive functions around food. Independence day, republic day, gudi padava and so on. My building also has a feast on similar days. To my untrained and arrogant mind, I saw it aa waste. An indulgence of sorts by people who just wanted to gather around and eat. And may be so. But now I realise - it is a valuable creation of social capital. If you organize a stupid get together, no one will come. But if you center it with free food, people come , interact, talk and create bonds. Food is a necessity and also a chore. It is a joy to have and a pain to create. Free food banquets attract people, help them open up and talk to each other. From here on, you create social capital. From social capital, you strengthen democracy. Local clubs, associations and groups of people coming together for whatever cause they want, fundamentally help create a sense of ownership and from there self-governance shall rise. Politicians have long understood this and created exploitable social capital by creating smaller groups for common purpose. The Shiv Sena in Mumbai organized itself through branches or shakas and established wada pav centres and reading clubs across the cities. The politicos organised cricket and kabbadi events and patronized clubs. Even the celebrations in my gymkhana and housing society are to my mind politically motivated – as in organized by the secretary with a view to keeping the population happy and fed.

Social Capital is important and one must be a part of it. I am guilty of not understanding it well enough and not participating in it whole heartedly. Possibly I can’t change now, possibly it’s not for me, but it is not right for me to sit and critique the formation of it. School and colleges have these clubs. Housewives have their kitty parties. Societies and gymkhanas function out of it. Shut up and use it, exploit it, encourage it, guide it.

One small thing – the author talks about the steady demise of social capital and one thing he blames is TV and internet. But I guess, he did not realise that Internet on mobile is giving us Whatsapp groups. Here social capital is again getting formed, and strongly so. Nice. Lets wait and watch.

morality from mortality

Inspiration comes when you are lest expecting it. There are so many exposures you come across in life. I use the word exposures, as learning comes from exposures. Exposures can be in the form of an article, a book, a statement, an experience, a talk, an observation anything. Exposures can change us in ways that we don’t think was possible. Exposures help us understand life and gain from perspectives. The internet for sure has helped us expose ourselves much more. But in many way’s it’s like a TV. You can choose what you want to be exposed to. Simply having the internet on does not in any ways mean that you are going to get smarter. Infact if I see the internet these days and see my Facebook feed then it’s pretty much a shit fest where you simply are trying to get to an opinion that you already have and then trying your best to get data that proves it, in whichever way. I think seeing the FB feed these days is the worst thing ever. It’s like the days when TV burst open in India. From two state run channels we moved to a 24X7 format and the world was being beamed into our homes every day. All the channels came in and we saw discovery and national geographic channels coming in and like all good meaning people, we thought that these are the channels that we will end up watching and educating ourselves. And like all god-fearing people (forgive the ridiculous use of an irrelevant adjective) we would watch everything else but these channels. After all how many times can you watch the leopard devour the cow. It gets monotonous after some time. I think I spent a large part of my college time watching TV. Then came a time when TV became crazy and there was nothing to watch. I remember in those days going through all the channels one by one and circling it again and again, bored and hoping for something interesting to watch. There wasn’t anything.

TV definitely did not make me too much smarter.

Internet and now mobile internet is the same. It’s not going to make you too much smarter by itself. You have to learn what to search for, what to read through and what to take and what not to take in. That’s why I talk about exposures. You have to structure your life around exposures and learnings if you want to bring greater intelligence in your life. Though of course not bring in intelligence can also result in happiness. The two are definitely not co related. In fact, sometimes I think a strong argument can be made in favor of the two being inversely proportionate till a point after which it could again flip and then flip again. But still, for me learning is as important as eating and the internet as a device has contributed immensely to my learning. I envy Jispa and her ilk for they have internet before they were born. The internet has been a useful ally in her studies and in her life. Thanks to this the world has come closer to her than ever before and so has the vast depository of knowledge as it makes itself accessible to the child while growing up. She needs so little of me for teaching her stuff; she gets what she needs from the internet.

A few weeks back, I was addressing a class of teachers, who had to come for a refresher course. The college tried to organize the course by having industry faculty as well. My topic was the advent of digital in our lives. I had to teach this to the teachers and explain to them on the possibilities that this has for all of us. At the end, one question was how could teachers bring digital into the class rooms. I gave my daughters example of how digital has already entered the class room. Long back I had learnt of a technique which I have often applied. You first give the topic in advance and the reading material. People read on their own and understand and come to class. At the start of the class you take a 5 minute test and then start the class. This way there is no real teaching left to do but you can spend that time on discussions. Discussions that take the topic forward. So I was telling the teachers that they need to simply send the links to the kids beforehand on reading / watching material and then from there on you start with an online test which the kids can take on their phones itself and then you can start the discussion in class, now that the kids are well prepared. While I was explaining this to them I realized that I have to start doing this myself and this time in class I explained that from next time they will get reading material and a test to do in class. Cool nah! In return they can come to class 15 min late without any repercussions and they can have their cell phones on while attending the class. No questions asked. Let’s try this experiment. Have an open classroom with lots of interaction and complete freedom. So now to try all these things from the next class onwards. This puts some pressure on me to do the preparations, but I think it will be worth all the effort. At least we will know what price freedom extracts from us.

Coming back to the topic of exposures. I have learnt that the best learning comes from a variety of exposures. It is very difficult, almost impossible to predict which exposures lead to the most amount of learning. Small small things in your life that happen to you or those around you, help you unravel your life and give you lessons you are not likely to forget. Once my boss came to me and said that he had the most amazing experience with the COO of the firm. He had gone to him with a complaint and the COO called on the employee, ascertained the truth and then castigated him in front of my boss, reprimanding him for the lacuna in service. My boss was impressed that justice was swiftly delivered. I have kept that in mind whenever someone comes to me with an issue as regards my team. If my team member is not delivering the service that he should, he is pulled up and immediately told that he needs to shape up and that I wouldn’t tolerate any shortcomings.

Another one that recently changed an important part of me, was an app called Blinkist. It basically gives a summary of book every day that one can read through. I think it doesn’t do a great job, but is an interesting app for those wishing to read fast enough. I got it from a friend’s recommendation and then promptly recommended to a friend. The friend then took the paid version that allows more than one “book of the day’ read. She then sent me an interesting book summary, which at the right time and the right context completely tipped me over to one side. It was on Mortality by Hitchens. While most the summary was ok, one aspect of it just blew me away. He was a committed atheist and after being diagnosed with a terminal illness he refused to let that affect his belief, or rather disbelief in God and religion. That made me think about my own belief. I wasn’t religious as I have already written about in previous blogs and I wasn’t an atheist. I was ambivalent. I was middling. I did not know how to describe my views and I tried creative solutions like – pantheist. After reading this passage (as below) for some reason I cleared my mind. I decided for myself that I was an atheist, through and through. I did not believe in God. There is no such thing such as God and definitely organized religion is a complete farce. I do not believe in it one bit. So yes, now, I call myself very clearly an atheist. If I believe in logic and reason, I cannot believe in the notion of religion and it various offshoots and practices.

Extract of the summary -

After Hitchens’s diagnosis, he explored his convictions about atheism in the face of death.

Hitchens valued his commitment to the concept of atheism. And despite outside pressure, he stuck by his beliefs through his illness until the very end.

Many friends and companions pressured Hitchens to find faith as he neared death. Although he appreciated his friends praying for him, he didn’t believe it would make a difference to his situation.

Even strangers would try to convert him. People callously made bets online about how long it would take him to accept God.

Hitchens also received much criticism from people who told him he’d “burn in hell” if he failed to convert before he passed away. Some even had the audacity to tell him this while he was on his deathbed.

Despite the pressure, Hitchens believed that changing his mind about religion would be dishonest, and certainly wouldn’t help in the face of divine judgment. Becoming a Christian at the last moment wouldn’t exactly absolve him from being an atheist most of his life. Surely he couldn’t prove his faith was true if he only accepted God just before death?

Hitchens never understood why organized religion is so exclusive when it comes to the afterlife. What if he converted to Christianity, for example, only to discover that Judaism or Islam was the true religion?

The prospect of death made Hitchens realize how important it is for people to stand by their convictions. Ultimately, nobody knows if there is life after death. Nobody knows what happens to the “soul” when a body dies.

Hitchens would have been lying to himself, his loved ones and his fans if he were to back down, just because he was afraid of death.

“If I convert, it’s because it’s better that a believer dies than an atheist does.”

---

That helped me in another way as well. Linda Goodman. The famous astrologer who has written and sold millions of her book called Sun Signs. Here she writes about various people born under their sun signs and she describes them in great detail. To me, I have always found it difficult to refute her truth about the sun sugns. They seem so right and they seem just appropriate about people according to their Sun Signs. Possibly there is something to it. Surely sun signs cannot predict my day to day actions (that’s too primitive) but surely  they predict the core behavior of men. Recently someone asked me about it. I took inspiration from my new found belief in atheism and said that if fundamentally, I do not believe that stars can cause any change in me, then fundamentally I do not believe in the book. Yes, I do admit that when I read the book, I too feel that it does accurately describe the people, but then I must reject the cause and the effect, as I do not believe in it. So hence in spite of it being seemingly true, it is false. I gave the analogy a magician, who suddenly might magically make a bird appear or disappear. I know that it is false despite my seeing it as true. It is a clever ruse. I must dismiss it no matter how real it gets. Similarly, no matter how real the description, it is false. If I don’t believe in the roots of it, then it is false, in spite of what I think. Hence Linda Goodman is a false story line. Possibly the way it is described every man or woman would read it and see themselves in the description, possibly being fooled in it. Possibly a taurean description could also be equally appealing to a Leo had he been explained as such. Possibly the truth is what you make of it, and now Leos are possibly supposed to behave in a certain manner as people expect them to behave thus! I am ready to take in any other wild hypothesis but I will not believe that a star on top has the ability to change my behavior or influence it. You either believe in it or you don’t. You are either an atheist or you r a believer. Simple.

This little exposure of an app and a link that a friend sent is just one of the small examples of me not knowing which exposure will get me where. This was a valuable addition to my moralities and my beliefs. I wouldn’t have ever thought that it could have helped me in so many ways.

Jasmine and me have been quite practical in our thinking. We just bought a new car and when we went to collect it, we did away with the traditional coconut and garland ceremony that the dealer had organized for us. We even implored them not to burst the confittee and spread more litter on the road. At the end the sales girl practically pleased with us to at least click a picture of us getting a delivery of the car. “sir atleast this much”. As soon we got the delivery, I got rid of the ribbons all over and got the entire emotion thing over and done with. It’s a logical extremity.

Exposure define us and influence us. We don’t know what’s going to hit us. Hence we must try and get the maximum possible. Look for new and varied exposures at all times. It could be in the form of books, travel, hotels, people, anything. Keep looking, keep exposing yourself and keep an eye out for any new thing coming your way. You never know wat you will learn from it. Even an old thing for that matter. There is a time for everything. The same exposure at a different time will possibly give you much more meaning than what you have anticipated.

Bonus Video on Hitchens. Very interesting