Guilt

 We feel less guilty when we are personally exploiting something rather than indirectly benefiting from a systematic exploitation. 

For example, we dont feel guilty about utilising a hospital COVID ward, where HCW put their lives at risk to help you. But I feel so guilty asking for a personal attender to help our family as we are going through COVID, with concerns like what if he gets it? What if we cause him more pain than the benefit we offer him etc.

But logically its no different from a situation at a hospital ward, where its likely that the ward boys take up the job purely for money. it feels different when its institutional than when it is personal. Why is that? 

Social proof? Distribution of responsibilty?

Stolen focus

In the near future, one way to differentiate the rich from the poor will be to see who is immersed in their phones. The rich will have come out of phone addiction, with their meditation apps and retreats and Nir eyal led workshops. 

The poor meanwhile, will be caught in the spiral of free Facebook and glance and tik tok equivalents, whichever might come up. 

I dont know what the solution to this is. I suppose democratising meditation and philosophy is one way. But its not an easy one to implement. Who is solving for this problem?

When should companies think about Olympics 2024

 Around the time of Olympics we see a lot of think pieces on how we should become a Olympics superpower, how its a shame that the best athletes dont find sponsors, how they would love to sponsor some athelets, some paralympians etc. 

And then you dont hear from them about this until the next Olympics. 

Perhaps I have been reading too much Laura Vanderkam, but if you want to contribute effectively to Olympics 2024, the time to think about it is now. This year is when the finalists will likely be finalised ( unless its already done? I dont know). So this year will be when they need to train rigorously to ensure that they can make it. This year is when they will need the support of training facilities, coaches and everything else. Sometimes a great player comes through this and still needs support for the last leg, which usually goes viral. 

But if you want your very good athletes to become world-class, this year is when you should go after sponsoring opportunities. 

Everyone can congratulate PV Sindhu and do moment marketing after the Olympics, but few will work for it. 

As I wrote this I realised I must be missing out a lot this way in my professional and personal life too, until its too late. So much for advising people on Olympics!

Breaking the new year resolution

 Ill level with you- the time between making a resolution and breaking it - letter and spirit was pitifully short. 

I had resolved to deal situations with better attitude, but 24 hours is too short a time to change who I am fundamentally, it appears.  

A mini-crisis of sorts and I snapped at everyone involved. Not a good look. 

Lead me to think about how Iregress when I am back home. I am much much much more sorted in Bangalore. And its not as if I make more of an effort there, that just seems to be my baseline. Of course, it helps that there is relatively less that goes wrong there. Chennai, otoh is filled with stressors. 

Was thinking if meditation may have helped me deal with this better? Cant be sure. But it is something I am ruminating on today. I think Ill have to decide my 2023 resolutions today and spend the whole year planning for it. 

Turns out making a resolution isnt enough. Even for one day.

Reflection

 End of the year is always a good time to reflect. I love reflecting and end up feeling I do it as a sort of shallow intellectual activity rather than taking action. 

So here goes plan for the next year. Simple 

More of 

Reading, thinking, exercising, writing, working, ink pens, kindle, spending time being present, being a better friend, yoga, running, keeping track of money

Less of 

Phone time, scrolling, reading useless stuff, sugar, ghosting (work), not calling out non performance,anger, empty swiggying, spending 

And to take what comes my way in 2022 with better attitude. 

Conversation

 As a way of solitude and deep thinking. 

I remember reading an article long back about how facebook and other instant messaging media deprive us of real conversations and deep friendships. This was before "The Shallows" and before it was fashionable to deride social media. The article spoke about how important it is for us to cultivate solitude to better understand ourselves. Counterintuitively the article also suggested that conversation with a friend can also give you the same kind of understanding and richness, as solitude does. 

I could relate to it, since I have/had a couple of friends with whom those kind of conversations happen. With almost any good friend, conversations leave you feeling wholesome but with some people, conversations lead me to understand things about myself that I may not have been fully aware of. It is rarely anything groundbreaking, more like having a fuzzy idea snap into focus, or something hazy from the background coming to the forefront of my conscious. 

It is very rare for these to happen in group settings, on video calls etc, though I remain hopeful that we will soon develop tools that enable almost an in-person feel even through tech. 

Understanding the other

 Its really easy to bunch a group of people who disagree with you and label them as idiots. Thats what most of us do. Its far more difficult to understand why they have reached this stance. Maybe they dont have the in-depth knowledge of the subject as you do, maybe they have had an experience that has let them to believe that the un-truth is the truth. In a lot of cases it may also be that the information diet they consume presents a different world view than the one you consume. 

Mainstream media and liberals sometimes take a condescending view of trump supporters as racists and idiots. Partly from a desire to be contrarian and partly from curiosity I try to figure out why Trump supporters /anti vaxxers are the way they are. Surely they arent a group of low IQ individuals, surely the spread of good people and bad, super smart and super not-smart people is the same in that cohort as any other large group you take. What then leads an average person to be so rabidly anti-vaxx? Its personal experience or what they have heard growing up( that they havent found enough evidence against, to invalidate). 

I got a small insight into that recently. Anti-vaxxers strictly believe that pharmaceutical industry is out to get everyone. While that seems like standard anti-capitalist, I have always wondered where this mistrust stemmed from. And why just this industry? Surely every indsustry is out to get everyone? 

While reading Empire of Pain- the history of the most abused prescription Oxycontin, I got a vague understanding of why this perception might have built up. One of the most succesful pain-relievers, it ended up being the most abused drugs because it developed a dependence even with low doses/low frequency of usage. And the company continued to advertise and push the product even as evidence was mounting against it. Thousands of normal people with minor injuries who were prescribed a simple pain killer ended up addicts.

The company specifically targeted suburbs in certain areas where family physicians were common, where people tended to trust doctors and would not question them. This I suppose ties in nicely with the traditional Republican states, which tended to have more veterans, ( and thus more injuries,disabilities and pain) and were target areas for the company. 

In a small city, when anyone dies abnormally everyone feels it, as if it were one of their own. Oxycontin abuse deaths would have reached a level where everyone knows someone who lost their lives to addiction. The fact that the company exhibited no regret and continued promoting the products, is enough for everyone to decide that Big Pharma just does not care. A mistrust in one company extends to the entire pharmaceutical industry and the fear manifests itself as a general mistrust of everything they do. 

Of course, people with other agenda feed them misinformation that they beleive because it aligns with their world view, but the basic reason for this mistrust is not stupidity but simply that it is a different world for them than it is for us.