Blissful Life

Category: self help

  • How the World Should Be and How the World Is

    There are two modes of thinking in society and social work. “How The World Should Be” mode, and “How The World Is” mode. There is a constant friction between these two. This friction explains hundreds of debates I’ve been in and many of my own moral dilemmas. Understanding this friction and being able to categorize arguments/politics into these categories helps in navigating the human world.

    Let’s start with simple examples.

    Examples

    Example 1

    Situation: Let’s say you’re driving on the road. You drive at a reasonable speed using indicators and avoiding sudden movements of your vehicle. Suddenly someone cuts lanes and jumps in front of you forcing you to break and swerve to a side. Another vehicle behind you hits your back.

    How the world should be: “Nobody should be cutting lanes all of a sudden. That’s dangerous. People who do that should face consequences.”

    How the world is: “People cut lanes. People drive unsafe. You can try to drive defensively, yet you can get involved in an accident. And you will face some or the other consequences.”

    Example 2

    Situation: You’re taking a sick patient to a hospital. You dialed 108 emergency ambulance service which is supposed to be free. After reaching the hospital, the ambulance team wants ₹₹₹ from you.

    How the world should be: “Ambulance service should be free. Healthcare should be free. People shouldn’t have to suffer from lack of money in accessing healthcare”

    How the world is: “There is a lot of corruption. People demand bribe in healthcare in many different ways.”

    Example 3

    Situation: It is election time. Politicians are using religion to swing votes. Issues like healthcare, education are being neglected.

    How the world should be: “People should hold politicians accountable and not let them get away with corrupted politics”

    How the world is: “People are voting for the corrupt politicians (for whatever reasons they may have).”

    Differences

    As might be obvious from the examples, there are several differences between how the world should be and how the world is.

    It is easy to see how the world is. One just has to live in it. Every day is a lesson in “the world as it is”. It doesn’t take much effort to understand and study it. It is accessible to everyone at all times. It is, in fact, unavoidable.

    The world that should be is an imaginary world. It requires us to think of something that doesn’t exist already.  It is set in the future. It is described using values, morality, and philosophy. It is harder to envision.

    The world that should be is controversial too. Different people believe in different futures. There is often mutually exclusive worlds that come up. You can’t have hyper-industrialized cities and clean air together. You can’t have an authoritarian state and a democratic state together. You can’t have religion and science together. Sometimes the imaginations aren’t that starkly different, but they’re still different in nuanced ways. It is those nuanced differences that leads to very many debates and fights within progressive groups.

    Implication

    The differences between the two ways of looking at the world immediately leads to the following important points.

    There is a vast amount of things to know about how the world is

    What’s happening in the world? How do human beings behave? What guides their actions? Is there any predictability? Why is there corruption? Why is there caste? Why is there religion? Why are people violent? Why is there inequity? Why is there gender? Why is there sickness? Why is there hate? Why is there love? Why is there harmony? Why is there peace? What is it that makes human beings tick? How do humans survive? What is the human spirit?

    There is a vast amount of things to know about how the world should be

    How might the world be? How would it be organized? What will be the weaknesses of that world? What would the strengths be? What challenges will we face? What human potential will we unlock in that world?

    There is a vast amount of things to know about how we can reach the world that should be from the world that is

    Knowing how the world should be is one thing. Knowing how to get from here to there is another thing. Any action we need to take towards the world that should be should start from the world that is. Firstly because that is the only world we have access to (by the laws of physics). But more importantly because it is the same people we are talking about. It is the same human beings. It is the same world that we want to transform.

    We need theories of change. We need experiments and examples. We need strategies, intermediary states/goals, milestones, checkpoints, and so on.

    Many dilemmas are manifestation of the friction between these stages of change

    I have struggled thinking about power. I hate hierarchy. And I see power as the core of hierarchy. In my “how the world should be” thinking, I used to constantly do things to give up power. But then, I discovered that without power it is very hard to do anything useful. This was very hard to accept though. I found even more reasons to not gain power. I said “Love is Enough“. But love wasn’t enough. “Love without power is sentimental and anemic” says Martin Luther King. 

    Here’s how the above framework helps in my dilemma.

    How the world is: Power centered and hierarchic.
    How the world should be: Love centered and anarchic/anti-hierarchy.
    How do we go from here to there: Power and love applied as needed for the change.

    There is another dilemma that’s been with me since my childhood. That of religion. I am a rationalist. I do not even use the word “atheist” to describe myself because I don’t want to discuss the idea of god even for saying that there is no such thing. For a long time I stayed with the idea that religions should be rejected en masse. Then I realized that a very huge number of human beings are deeply religious. So as per the framework this is how it should be resolved.

    How the world is: Religious and intolerant.
    How the world should be: Rational and secular.
    How do we go from here to there: Infuse rationalism into and through religion.

    This is very much in line of how Gandhi uses Gita and Rama to make Hindus become better. Or how Ambedkar uses Buddha to make life better for many people. Religion has been used by them creatively. They infused modernity into religion.

    Conclusion

    If you find yourself in the middle of a heated debate with people who are politically aligned, or with yourself (dilemmas), see if you can categorize the sides into “How the World Is” and “How the World Should Be”. Then think about how you would strategize for going from here to there.

  • How To Talk With People

    It was just yesterday that I read a book on behaviour change through positive reinforcement. Today I put aside all work and read another book: How to Talk with People: A Program for Preventing Troubles that come when People Talk Together by Irving J. Lee. It was recommended by Parth Sharma in response to my sharing Marshall Rosenberg’s video on nonviolent communication in my WhatsApp status with this note: “This is an old video on nonviolent communication. It’s been instrumental in my first steps towards using language carefully.”

    Language has always been a problem for me. More specifically, language used in interacting with people. That is, talking with people has been a problem for me. In my extended family I was the “adhikaprasangi” (a word that’s surprisingly common in Kannada and Malayalam — meaning “the quality of having too high an opinion of your own importance, and being too eager to tell people what to do”). In school I used to get into quarrels with teachers. In internet forums people have gotten so angry at me that I’m used to writing “I apologize profusely”. Even many of my close friends have sometimes felt I’m rude.

    There are people on twitter I know who proudly wear such attitude and continue to be assholes. But I’m in no way indebted to my past. And so, I keep looking for ways to improve the way I interact with people. The challenge, though, is that I don’t buy the “respect” argument. I consider it dishonest to use language to show fake respect. At the same time I have seen excellent videos like “The Art of Semantics” and the nonviolence communication one above which all talk about using language to move towards a better world. So the missing link for me was the logic that connects respectful expression with social justice.

    And that logic clicked in my head when observing people I care about disagreeing with each other on the wrong things. In some occasions I was also involved, in some I was passively observing. Either way, it has become a felt need for me — using language for productive communication and getting our acts together for social justice. On Monday, I had a conversation with Akshay who is part of a very well run organization and whose experience I trust and admire. He also convinced me that using the right words is worth it.

    And that’s where this book comes in. How to talk with people.

    About three-quarters of it had become clear to me through my own life experience even before reading this book. But a well-written book validating our experiences is immensely valuable to our learning. And in that way, this book is a must read. It also means I have one less book to write myself. I’m thankful for this book’s existence.

    The first chapter itself summarizes all the different problems we have in our conversations and what to do about them. It is a very great tl;dr for this book. But the whole book is around 134 pages and you can read it in one evening (at least with speed reading). I will quote from the first chapter to pique your interest.

    So as to indicate something of the scope and character of what is involved in this interest, the major findings and suggestions are here summarized.

    1. Misunderstanding results when one man assumes that another uses words just as he does. People are so eager to reply that they rarely do enough inquiring. They believe so surely (and wrongly) that words have meaning in themselves that they hardly ever wonder what the speaker means when he uses them.

    Suggestion: Committee members need exercises in listening. They must learn not how to define terms but how to ask others what they are intending to say. Our advice: Don’t blame the speaker alone for the misunderstanding. The listener is involved, too. It takes two to make communication.

    2. Trouble comes when somebody contradicts somebody else without seeing what the first man was talking about. The speaker says, “You can’t trust the Abibs.” The listener says, “Yes, you can.” Then they go at it. When the Speaker was asked to specify, he told about Samo and Har and Myri. And, of course, they were untrustworthy. When the listener specified, he told about Mil and Janx and Car. And without a doubt they could be trusted. If the contradictor had asked first, the contradictee might not have had his feelings hurt.And the committee might have come to conclusions without that waste of time. The trouble mounts when nobody bothers about specifying. 

    Suggestion: Both leaders and members need to learn how to spot temperature-raising contradictions. They must ask, ever so politely: Are you differing on the details or on the conclusion? Does your generalization refer to what his does?

    […]

     

    And so on it goes till 14 points. Each one putting into words the troubles that we see around us all the time. It makes a fun read for those who are tired of the debates on twitter.

    The only disappointment I have with this book is that it assumes the presence of a leader to solve many of these issues. The frustration I have with all the groups I mentioned above are that there is no clear leadership structure. Perhaps this book thereby unearths a critical challenge that anarchist systems face. Perhaps my disappointment is for me to resolve.

    Nevertheless, the leadership traits that are written about in chapter XIV (On Preserving Human Warmth) was particularly useful. It talks about our own leadership styles. There is The Director (like a movie director), The Councilor (an egalitarian participant), The Parliamentarian (the one with the “the Rules of Order” at their elbow), The Quiet One (who is just there), The Good Host (who sets positive mood), and The Chief Clerk (who’s the guardian of the group’s virtue). It was quite fascinating to see various people I interact with and myself showing many of these traits in many meetings.

    The book is from 1952. The language of “man”, “him”, “his” is quite striking. At the same time, it is very interesting to note that many of the problems that we see today where exactly the same then as well. In a meta way, therefore, this book teaches more than what it talks about.

    A modern counterpart of this book might be Adam Grant’s Think Again. But unlike Think Again, HTTWP is focused more on the practical methods of the conversation than about the larger reasons behind it. It might be good to read this book after Think Again if you’re planning to read both.

  • Asking For Help

    Many days ago, in a discussion with some of my colleagues, I realized two things. I trust less on others (compared to how much I trust on me – even in things I have no clue about) and I rarely ask for help. It probably is also true that the latter is because of the former.

    I had made a resolution that I would start asking people for help thereby building trust in the process of trusting others.

    Life sent me a reminder in the form of a tweet.

    A lawyer friend taught me how to network and cold email people. Another friend who is a financial consultant reads most of my emails before I hit ‘send’. Another friend taught me that your network grows by sharing.

    — Umme H. Faisal (@stethospeaks) November 4, 2021

    I had to do something. I did make a start this week.

    DM me if you want to apprentice with me in the space between health, education, and technology.

    You get to do some or all of
    – writing
    – grassroot organizing (internet based)
    – video editing
    – website building
    – software building

    — Akshay S Dinesh (@asdofindia) November 7, 2021

    Okay, maybe it doesn’t really count as “asking for help” because I’ve still framed it in a way where I am in control. Nevertheless, I believe it is a good start.

    I got four people responding to that. I got on a phone call with three of them. One of them helped me finish a project that was pending for 9 months and I could also connect them to two other opportunities. Another person has very many shared interests and we’re looking at several academic collaborations.

    One of the myths I had in my mind was that I am selfless and everyone else is selfish. That people won’t respond to my call for help – unless I can give them something of great monetary value.

    There are many things wrong with those thoughts. One, people are inclined to help rather than reject requests for help. It’s in human nature to help others in need. Two, many people find many things other than money valuable.

    Note to self: I should give the world a chance before judging the world.

    Considering I know very little about the subject of using help to advance causes, I decided to get a bit more scientific about this. I did a YouTube search for “entrepreneurship”. The second video was this wonderful talk by a person named Ankur Warikoo.

     

    The 3 rules of life Warikoo mentions are:

    1. Spend time with people who are nothing like you
    2. Don’t feel entitled at any moment of your life
    3. Don’t get comfortable

    I understand all 3 of them. I think I’m good at #2. I’m trying to make a difference in #1. I suck at #3.

    And that’s where “asking for help” comes in.

    Asking for help is uncomfortable for me at the moment. It helps me break out of comfort zone, and it also increases my chances of finding new people with different stories and experience (“diversity” as RK Prasad puts it).

    I went ahead and started listening to Warikoo’s podcast. He puts immense stress on “cold emails”. Connecting to people and asking for help is very powerful indeed, even if the person whom you’re asking help from does not know you. In one of the episodes titled “How May I Help You” he talks about how information, advice, and help are three different things. I highly recommend you listen to that episode.

    It is a similar aspect of asking for help that Derek Sivers pointed out which makes it such a powerful instrument. When you ask for help, you are forced to think clearly. You put an effort into finding what exactly it is that you need. Sometimes, all you need is information and you’re able to find it on your own. At other times, the act of asking for help advances your thinking to a large extent. And often, you end up receiving help which is useful on its own too. 

    Help will always be given at Hogwarts on this planet to those who ask for it.

    PS: I track the project opportunities that people can engage with in the opportunities gitlab repository. If you feel particularly kind, feel free to check out some of those ideas and offer help. (I know, this doesn’t count as asking for help)

  • Fixing the World is Whose Responsibility?

    This week I attended a session on quality improvement in healthcare practice. The definition of quality is subjective. What may appear to be “high-quality” to me, may not stand up to external scrutiny. There could always be room for improvement. But this is not a big problem. Some level of objectivity can be attained in measuring quality by using tools like standards. We can easily figure out areas that are below par and areas that are good enough. Identifying problems and areas to work on is not a problem at all.

    The real challenge is in identifying responsibility. Whose responsibility is it to fix the problems? Sometimes fixing a problem is much easier than figuring out who the right person to fix the problem is. Most often it is not. Most often fixing problems require persistent effort and continuous follow-up. It takes time, energy, even money. And depending up on the scale of problems, these things can easily blow up. There are also some problems which have quick-fix solutions that are less sustainable than the proper but energy-intensive solutions.

    After some months of joining Vivekananda Memorial Hospital, there was one evening when I was in the reading room. Dr Kumar who is now the CEO of SVYM walked in and asked me how things were. The conversation somehow came to my anger at the medical education system and how there was a lot of corruption in medical colleges. I was furious about my own alma mater and told him how I would never want to step foot in that college again. Dr Kumar, incidentally, had done his post-graduation in the same college and could relate to what I was talking about. But then, he told me the story of how he worked with, through, and for the system and made it better. He told me how he would challenge and oppose, yet be dear to the administrators. He told me how he could improve things at least by a bit while he was working there.

    The transformation in my mind was instant (similar to how MAB once made me rethink the way I look at a disinterested audience). I, who was seething with anger at the system, suddenly saw possibilities. I could see the difference between productive contributions and blind criticisms. More importantly, I learned the concept of agency. I was no longer feeling helpless or like a hapless victim of the system. I was feeling like a person who could bring about change but was not yet utilizing my full powers.

    The stories of Ananth Kumar, SVYM, Taru Jindal, Lalitha & Regi, and every other inspirational stories I’ve heard in the recent past demonstrate that simple principle. That if you put energy and effort, things will change. That even one individual matters.

    I think the question of whose responsibility is it to fix things can arise of two things. One, the feeling that I cannot fix something because I’m powerless. That is a logic consistently proved wrong by many of these people I mentioned in the previous paragraph. But there is a second, more difficult reason people might choose not to fix problems. That is when I choose to not fix a problem because I don’t have the time/energy to because I devote it elsewhere (in a place that I think is more important to focus on and solve problems in).

    This second reason, is in my opinion, the bigger problem. This is the reason why even talented people can fail to deliver. Changing the system through innovation or persistence requires dedicated effort. It requires someone to show up regularly and stand up for the cause. It is the same as making a successful startup or raising healthy young children. It requires a lot of smart work. It requires productivity.

    It all should start from the realization that every great person who has walked on this planet has had only 24 hours in their day – the same number of hours everyone else has in their day. What really matters is how much we can draw out of those hours. And for various reasons, not everyone is equally privileged to draw the same value from their days.

    But what is really worth thinking about, is whether we are drawing the maximum value we can. Because if you can find a way to cut the cruft and get more work done, you might find just enough time to fix the world too.

  • On (Not) Judging People

    Human beings have an in-built sense of “morality” that they routinely apply against everything that they come across. There are multiple ways one’s sense of what is moral and what is immoral emerges – including religion, upbringing, exposure, rationality, mental health, and so on.

    Is morality necessary?

    Morality is necessary. Not just because it allows people to live together without killing each other. But also because it helps an individual answer their own questions about what to do in any particular situation. It is the moral compass that often shows the direction to forge.

    Should we use morality to judge others?

    A distinction needs to be made before answering this. When “judging” someone, are you judging the person or their action? The answer matters a lot.

    When you judge a person for a particular action, you are labeling that person as “good” or “bad” based on that action. For example, if you see the CEO of a company scolding an employee for a “small” thing and judge the CEO to be a bad person, you may be making two mistakes.
    1) You do not know the reasons why the CEO is scolding the employee. It may even be for the good of the employee in the long term.
    2) By labeling the CEO as a bad person, you have created a barrier between you personally and them which might make it difficult for you to work with them.

    There are several cases where reason 1 does not apply at all. For example, say the CEO is actually doing something, say, being corrupt, which they themselves might not be able to defend.

    But reason 2 is more important for someone who is trying to get things done. People are not dispensable. Human resource is hard to come by. If you start judging people by a few of their actions and dismiss them as “bad”. If you make it impossible for you to be working with them. Then you have one less person to work with. And when we are all humans and everyone will have some or the other “follies”, especially when you are viewing them through your sense of morality (which, having been formed by your own unique experiences in life, is going to be different from anyone else’s sense of morality), judging people will soon leave you with nobody you can work with.

    In other words, every human is different. If you keep looking for people who think, walk, and talk exactly like you to forge teams, you will never be able to move forward.

    But, does it make sense to judge actions? Yes. As long as the judgement does not spill over to the person as a whole. In fact, judging actions is natural and direct consequence of morality. But extrapolating that judgement to an entire person is human bias.

    But what if someone is wrong in all areas of their life? I think it is quite right to be mathematical here. The total value of a person is the sum of all their individual values and the added value that interaction of values give them.

  • If Childhood Could Not Influence You

    I am going to take you through a very unfamiliar ride. You will have to trust me completely and prepare to be thrown around. The idea I’m about to give is going to shake your fundamental beliefs and core values. And that is invariable owing to the nature of it. So, if you have your seat belts on.

    Let’s start with a complicated question.
    How much of her skin can a woman expose?

    You might have an answer to that question. But that is irrelevant to me. I’m asking you to think of how many answers that question can have.

    Men and women will have different answers. Those answers will vary from country to country, region to region, culture to culture. And within men or women, the young and the old will have different answers.

    No, we are not here to resolve human morality. We are here to observe. Why do different people have radically different ideas about something as simple as clothing?

    [Think for a minute]

    I am going to propose an answer very soon. Before that, let’s explore one more question.

    What do you eat? Fruits and vegetables? And milk? And eggs? And meat?
    Why do people have preference for different food based on where we get it from?

    [Think for another minute]

    Here is the answer.

    Your childhood.

    Not as ground-breaking as you thought? Think again.
    All your biases, all the unconscious decisions you make, your intuition, and emotion –  everything is a learned response. Your brain which was more or less like dough when you were born has been getting remodelled and shaped ever since.

    And anything that you do, is only an output of all the existing logic gates the stimulus has to pass through.

    You have now begun to question. You are now claiming that all your decisions are built upon carefully weighed out reason.

    Ah, now you realised the folly of that argument too. Even the way you reason depends upon how you have learned to reason, when a child.

    Any statement that you make now is a product of the neurobiological circuits already in place in your brain. There is no way you can escape the clutches of your past.

    Or, wait, is there?

    Is there a way by which you can get rid of all the unconscious influences on you and think with purest reason?

    There is, albeit a difficult one. All you have to do is revisit all the assumptions that you have made in your life. Go back and recheck each and every “fact” that has been thrust upon you when your guards were down. Meet the defences of your own mind with the spearhead of question. Persevere in eliminating all those contaminant ideas that have occupied your brain/mind without a reason. Challenge all existing presumptions. Keep questioning the integrity of every single thought that comes to your mind.

    “Have I thought about the validity of this thought, or is it seeming naturally true for me?“

    If the answer is the latter, you need to think, examine, dissect that thought. Make it answerable to all the assumptions it thrives on. Do not let it survive if it does not have strong pillars of undeniable logic supporting it.

    Keep doing this for a while.

    “Why do I feel my country is better than any other?”
    “Why do I feel my culture is better than any other?”
    “Why do I feel passionate about this particular job?”
    “Why do I have faith in this?”

    Keep questioning.

    Slowly, you’ll evolve into a fully grown man.

  • The Difference Between Interesting Things and Useful Things

    How many times has this happened in your life?

    You’re travelling in a bus, and the person sitting in the first seat at the front suddenly puts his face outside and looks at something. Within milliseconds, people sitting in the window seats in the 5 rows behind him do the same. And in the next few milliseconds, others who can’t just turn their head and see outside, stand up and do so.

    Sensing and responding to changes around them as quickly as possible, gives monkeys a survival advantage. And there’s a monkey carrying out its survival trick hiding inside all of us. He guides our senses towards all stuff that’s different from the normal – a cool new gadget, random shit facts, photoshoped images uploaded in facebook, utterly useless questions on quora, the gap that a broken tooth leaves, a friend’s new haircut, uncovered body parts – any stuff that’s new. These are the interesting things.

    Unfortunately for us, interesting things most of the times aren’t useful things.

    Books, subjects, exams, practice, revision, exercise – things that happen everyday, the normal things. They are what turn out to be useful in one’s life.

    It’s only been a fraction of a second since that first person turned his head. You still have a choice – whether to turn your head or not.

  • New Year, New Heights, New Directions

    It’s often good to be resolute even if it doesn’t last in you for more than a few days, because you end up doing something rather than waste your potential.

    I’ve made a few impossible resolutions which will let me have fun for the next week at least.

    I’ll be getting a mountain bike from Schwinn or Giant tomorrow. That’d be in line with a resolution I made last year.

    And I’m gonna be blogging a bit more frequently thanks to my resolution to quit fapping which was more or less a daily practice.

    And then I need to think of some project to be done for ICMR STS.

    Then in the self improvement sector, I should break out of my addiction to routine. (If anything irregular happens, I get disorganized badly)

    Should learn English. It so happens that since I’m an Indian, a lot of words would have wrong pronunciations associated with them, in my little brain. And I’ve decided to look up the dictionary wherever a doubt arises.

    And I recently noticed that Ubuntu is indeed an African word meaning “humanity to all” and that the operating system was named after the concept.

    Still making up resolutions. Are you?

  • Faults that are Nobody’s

    More often than not in life things go wrong because of nobody’s fault.

    But the trouble is when we try to find someone to be blamed.

    With the realization that some shit happens because of cumulative errors that cannot be stashed upon a single person, comes the inner peace of not having to argue over split milk.

  • Are You Cool if You Perform Bad in Your Duties?

    It is not cool that you don’t touch your textbooks.

    Seriously.

    I’ve hundreds (literally) of friends who when asked how studies are say "Who cares?" maybe because they actually don’t care, or maybe just to appear cool.
    But it’s just painful. To think that not studying properly, having fun all the time, makes one cool in a degree college, is like thinking not practicing in the nets will make Sachin a cool cricketer. It’s just wrong. You’re cool when you do it all.

    You are cool when you play carroms till midnight and then learn till you sleep. You are cool when you text your girlfriend "I love you" and then read your books with the same amount of passion. You are cool when 5 or 10 years later you still remember what you study this year in your college. You are cool when you are the most awesome professional in your field inside a 10 mile radius. You are cool when you can stand up in an international crowd of colleagues and speak for 10 minutes without losing attention. You are cool when you just don’t give up your integrity and sincerity for the sake of running with the crowd.

    It might be something about our classrooms too. Maybe we do not have classrooms where active, interactive, and amazingly creative learning is promoted or encouraged. Maybe we do not have students who are willing to learn what they are not required to. Maybe we do not have down to earth professors.

    But that doesn’t prevent us from changing it all.

    We can direct our classroom story in any manner we find fitting.
    We can choose to have lively, enthusiastic, energetic, amazing, persevering, smart, creative characters in our story.

    Talk to the professor in the classroom, search all over the world for the derivation of that formula on the board, learn the nuances of your craft, embrace success, be willing to be a master in your art.

    And then they’ll tell you, you’re cool! Only that this time it’ll be honest.