Boredom is uncomfortable.

Boredom is uncomfortable. It breads impulsivity. It can also bread creativity. That’s what science tells me. What science doesn’t tell me is that boredom is tough business. I am not alone when I am bored. I am with myself. The self I do not like much. The self that I detest. It has my anxieties, my worries, my ambitions, my failures and my longings. All my vulnerabilities cohered together. This self is too loud and frightening.

Boredom is uncomfortable because I do not get to choose the noise I want in my head. The most boring thing for me is eating by myself. Such a mundane activity. A basic repetitive task. Yet the very idea induces anxiety and there is no escaping it. This anxiety is sharp and piercing. So, I find my escape in my earphones.

I choose my noise. I want this in my head instead of the one that comes without my consent. Once its in, it takes over. My ultimate emancipation from the tyranny of boredom. Yet the noise of my choice comes at a hefty cost: Time. Once it takes over it refuses to give up control. Some say it is engineered that way. Others tell me that it all about the comfort zone. Whatever the reason, I am no longer in the driving seat.

Once the noise of my choice is done with me, it presents me with anxiety. This one is of a different kind though. It’s slow burning. Its perpetual. No matter how much I suffer there is still some left. Hence, I require more noise of my choice to escape this anxiety. The anxiety never ends and the noise never ends either.

I have grown tired of the noise though. I have a longing for boredom in my heart. Eating alone is still a daunting task. Even with all the anxiety that boredom brings, even with the unwanted noise, I still have a chance with it. I had my meals alone today and it was uncomfortable. I reminded me of the fact that I have no one to share my meals with. It reminded me of the times when I had someone to share my meals with. I stayed with it none the less. In return, I had the whole day to myself and a little less anxiety.

The Pandemic Induced Natural Experiments | What I’ve Learned

Scientists studying the ocean and life there in have always eagerly looked forward to silence in the ocean. Ocean can be a noisy . Cargo ships to tourism and a bunch of other human centric activities contribute to these noises in large proportion. At best, the scientist had to make do with a couple of hours of silence in the water. The pandemic changed this. The unprecedented breakdown of the machinery of the world has put a stop to much of the movements on the water bed. In these dark times lies the stub of creativity and exploration. While it is a time of inactivity we have much to learn from these times. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Air Pollution in Delhi:

India has 12 of the top 20 cities with bad air quality. Delhi is the poster child air pollution in India. Its not that the government never made an effort to amend the situation. The famous odd-even experiment was commendable (though unproductive) effort. The root of the problem is the finger pointing. Some say its the unchecked and unruly influx of vehicle ownership in the city. Others believe it is the fumes from the old rusty factories. Maybe poverty itself is the culprit. The main contender in the past has been the burning of stubble in the neighboring state of Haryana. This made sense, if the problem was outside the jurisdiction of the city authority there is hardly any blame that can be placed on the government.

These assumptions and speculations came to an end with Central Government induced lockdown across the nation. One of the inadvertent outcome of this was clean air. The research institute named Urban Emissions in the capital city are making the best of this situation. The findings till date points towards the irrefutable fact that if Delhi wants cleaner air, cars will have to go.

This insight matters. Not just for the formulation of future pollution control policies in the country, but because this gives a choice to the people in no ambiguous terms. Beijing was one of the most polluted countries in world. Then it hosted the Olympics games. The air quality was now more than a health problem, it was an embarrassment to the nation. So the government imposed strict sanctions against fume emission and made the air cleaner for the games. These sanctions were subsequently lifted and the air quality deteriorated. However, this time the residents knew what was possible if the government showed enough will. Outrage followed, so did some much needed changes.

Will we something similar in India? Well, hope is non-negotiable especially when it comes to environmental justice.

2. Boredom:

I have already written about boredom and why it is indispensable in our lives. Most people eludes this emotion (and yes it is an emotion). In one experiment, people had the opportunity to either sit with their thoughts or shock themselves. One fourth of the women and two third of the men choose to shock themselves. Its important to know that boredom as an emotion is not good or bad in itself but a signal from the body to us.

Boredom is studies in two fashions. The attention model which states that we get bored when we do not have something intriguing to put our attention on. The meaning model in contrast illustrate boredom as an absence on meaning in the activity we are engaged in. In my opinion, it is mostly a combination of the two.

On an average people get bored 30 minutes per day. These 30 minutes are not consecutive but rather spread far and wide throughout the day. That was till the pandemic took over. Now the numbers are high. How high? We do not know yet. There is a positive correlation between boredom and novelty seeking. This phenomenon is being studies by a professor Erin Westgate. People are voluntarily putting in the inputs of their day and the data is pouring in fast. If you want, you can participate in her experiment at erinwestgate.com.

3. Vaccinations:

Well of course everyone wants to know when the vaccine for COVID 19 will materialize. There will be one that’s for sure. As a thought experiment though, the world we are living in, locked up in our own homes, is an illustration of what normal would be had there been no vaccinations.

I do not know much about the ideology of anti-vaxxers but in light of the judgment of US Supreme Court in Jacobson v Massachusetts, there will probably a great debate of public health and private liberty.

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis| Book Review

This book turned out be an emotional roller coaster for me. I won’t get into what the book talks about but rather what I experienced while reading this book. There are no stars or ratings here. I find that to be an absurd practice to be avoided at all costs.

I bought this book thinking it would serve as crash course for Thinking Fast and Slow, a book that basically explains that humans are dumb and there is nothing we can do about it. While this book do explain the biases and heretics, the spotlight is not on behavioral sciences. Instead, it is a voyage into the lives of two exceptional beings who have changed the world as we see it.

The book is about Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who managed to win a Nobel Prize in Economics. At age 7 he survived the world war but lost his father to it. A man with a survivor’s instinct and a constant fear of the worst. It is about Amos Tversky, a man with such insouciant intellect that he could defend his work with a rigor that would equate to a beheading by ISIS. Except it was done by a hammer. He went to war (literally) as joyously as a kid to a candy store.

This book is about their friendship, brotherhood, bromance. How it started in an ordinary room, with the two of them sitting there loosing the track of time. Laughing their hearts out. One of them would propose an idea and the other would run with. They would tackle and wrestle with their insights like two blacksmiths striking iron to forge swords. It was impossible to credit the work to any one person.

We see them grow old. We witness a fail marriage. We witness the Egypt and Israel war with the two of them in it. They fight beside each other and then fight for each other. Then the friendship falls apart. It dies a bitter and slow death. Riddled with mistakes and misunderstandings, they grow apart, just like in a failed marriage. Until Amos’s death brings them together, even though momentarily.

One of the first thing this book taught me was that humans cannot think in number, we are no born statisticians. Instead our brain think in stories. This is one story that I would like to remember. Not because of the psychological insights that it offers, but because Michael Lewis has managed to pen down what true friendship looks like. Its a tale about work, friendship, war and life. One reading does no justice to this masterpiece. It needs to be revisited.

Focus With a Computer Science Professor | Discover Prompt | Day 28

How do you develop focus in a focus deprived society? The same way you assign meaning to life in a nihilistic society, by adopting a philosophy. This is not my first time fanboying Cal Newport on this platform, nor will it be the last. My last post about Cal (Link Here) focused more on how I came across his work, adopted it to the best of my abilities and how it has helped me.

This post is an attempt to bring forth some of the important messages that Cal gives and is not meant to be a substitute to his original works. He has authored 6 books, with the seventh on the way and has been blogging for over a decade. This article is heavily inspired by Cal’s interview with Rich Roll and I encourage you to give it a listen. However, this is not a mere transcript to the podcast, it is a cumulation of different ideas and philosophies that I’ve come across over the years.

This is what I’ve learned:

The Virtue of Boredom and Solitude: A decade ago boredom was unavoidable. Now it is an emotion facing extinction. From podcasts, social media to music and games, we are always plugged in. Descending deeper into the labyrinth of algorithm recommendations. How do we reflect when we are always tired, wandering from app to app like zombies on a hunt for the next dopamine hit. Humans need boredom to relax and to reflect. Boredom is to the mind what sleep is to the body.

On the other hand, solitude has been placed on a pedestal beyond the reach of us mortals. Solitude get a bad name, mostly cause we imagine Bill Gates and his week long sabbatical in his cabin in the woods. Solitude is just a freedom from input. We need not be billionaires or own a cabin in the woods. Just standing in a cue without the distraction of our devices will do. A drive to and from the workplace without the radio or music on, even sitting in the comfort of your bed sipping a cup of coffee without any screens or audio does the trick. It works, I can vouch for it.

2. On Social Media: Cal is on an absolute abstinence mode when it comes to social media. In fact, his TED talk is titled ‘Why you should quit social media’. While talking about it with Rich Roll, he explains that how most knowledge work in today’s society is no different than endurance sport. Just as there is junk food for the body for the athlete, there is junk food for the brain of a knowledge worker and that is social media.

Originally social media was not addictive or even time consuming. People used to log in, check whats new and then return after a week or two. The original iPhone was supposed to be an iPod that could make calls. The making of calls was the killer feature. Internet was just a side dressing in the sale pitch. This was cause Jobs was a minimalist and loved music (especially Dylan).

Then the platforms were re-engineered by the third party apps with the arrival of the like buttons, the ultimate social approval in the twenty first century. The stretch down to refresh mechanism draws it working from the gambling slot machines. At the same time the red notifications exploit the vulnerabilities of our brain. The attention was monetized by making these super computers a little slot machines in our pockets.

On a side note, please don’t take the YouTube motivation cult seriously. You are not lazy or unmotivated, its the engineering.

3. Mindfulness with Tech: In his book Digital Minimalism Cal explores how the Amish people embrace technology. Contrary to popular beliefs they are not technology averse. Instead, once the Amish find a piece of tech they put it to use and analyse it objectively. They will use it for a couple of months and then ask themselves one simple question “Does it add value to our lives?” If the answer is no, the tech is not introduced in the community. They value importance over convenience.

In her last video in the series Internet Analysis YouTuber tiffanyferg talks about her screen time. She talks about how the lockdown has increased her screen time to an 8 hour average (on her phone alone). I couldn’t help but connect it to one of her podcast (Previously Gifted) where she talks about her love for books. She has always loved books but struggles really hard to find time for reading. I relate to that.

We need to be more mindful with the tech we use. After all, if something consumes day 3 hours of our day, don’t we want to reflect on the usefulness it provides us? If we are unhappy, can these 3 hours be the trigger? Will our live’s story be a collage of momentary bliss instead of being a coherent tale of a pursuit of meaningful life? We surely cannot blame tech for everything bad in our lives but a case can be made that it has become our preferred mode of escapism.

4. Digital DeCluttering: There is no good or bad tech. There is a good or bad relation with the tech though. For his book Digital Minimalism, Cal ran an experiment with his newsletter subscribers. In the experiment, people had to quit a social media account (or any other tech related stuff) for a period of 30 days. At the end of the 30 days people had to write him back about their experience. What he found was that Gen Z had an especially hard time quitting these services. One of the reason can be that they never experienced a time without tech in their entire life. Their anxiety jumps off the chart, most of them relapsing. On the other hand the older people in the experiment face the same discomfort in the beginning but later they rediscover things they liked to do before tech was introduced in their lives.

I won’t give you a list ten things you can do to increase your focus, this is no life hacks blog. The point of me writing this is that we require a philosophy for our digital lives. We need a why in our lives. If we take a step back from tech, what are going to do with the time in our hands? It takes some grit, guts and gumption to curate a life that is deep and meaningful. As Cal says, a deep life is a good life.

End-note: Although this post talks about Newport and his work, I would highly recommend the book Irresistible: The rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked by Adam Alter.

The Boy and The Dog | Discover Prompt: Team | Day 27

They were kids when they met, the puppy and the kid. He came in a box, small and fragile, eating only baby food which the boy found funny. There was a debate in the house as to where would the pup sleep. The boy couldn’t let this opportunity pass. “My room is big enough” he claimed (it wasn’t). The adults thought otherwise and so the pup slept with an adult in the family.

The pup grew faster than the boy, as if he was governed by a different hourglass altogether (which he was). It was clear from the beginning that the pup was a Nietzsche disciple. He was incorrigible. A free spirit. He wouldn’t be leashed, neither would he sit when he asked him to.

He loved the couch and the adults hated him for that. While still young he would slyly sleep on the couch when no one was around. His slyness didn’t get him far, for he left a trail of evidence on the couch. He was scolded. At such times he would go to the boy.

There were more than one occasion when the boy scolded the dog but that didn’t bother either one of them. There was a mutual understanding that they both had each others back. The dog would seek the boy’s company when he got scolded and the boy his. There bond grew deep. One day the dog refused to sleep with adult. He scratched the door with his paws, howled and barked at the adult. The adult gave in and opened the door and the dog rushed to the room where the boy slept. The boy was asleep. The dog gave a bark, as if to let the boy know of his presence and then went to a corner and slept. The dog would always sleep next to the boy thereafter.

Once, in an act of excitement the dog hunted down a bird. He carried it in his mouth for a while and then kept it down. He looked at it, then nudged it with his paw. He must have realized what he had done cause he howled as if to moan the dead. He howled and wept for an entire day. Refused to eat anything for a week. He never hurt a soul after that, as if scared by the deed of innocence.

No power on earth could separate them, except for the school. The dog knew that the boy had to leave for school. So he would rush to the gate before the boy got there. He would make a sly attempt to escape but was almost always outsmarted by the boy. The dog would then rush to balcony and bark his lungs out. Then when the kid returned, he would be there, waiting in the same balcony. He would be look at the boy, wave his tail in excitement and joy and then bark to let the adult know. The adult would open the gate and the dog would rush to the boy. That was their daily ritual for a decade.

Time passed, the boy went to college. The dog grew older and sick. The vet said the dog was beyond help. The dog grew sicker and sicker, the boy tried his best to make him happy. He refused have treats he once adored. Eating food was a struggle in itself. He was in pain, struggling to breath. He still slept next to the boy, in the morning he would go out and sit in the balcony.

The sickness took turn for the worse. He got paralyzed waist down, unable to walk. The boy would carry him to the balcony every morning and then carry him inside in the evening.

It was the same routine that Saturday. The boy sat at his desk to study and the dog was out in the balcony. His mother came into his room with tears in her eyes. She told him that the dog was no more. The boy went to see. There he lay, in the balcony which served as the stage for so many goodbyes and welcomes. He lay there motionless. There was sunshine all over his body. That was good for he loved the sun.

The boy and his father dug a grave, taking turns. He was laid next to the house beneath a tree with leaved red and green. The boy didn’t cry. Not even a tear. There was no pain in his heart, no sorrow to be felt. That would come later, over the years. As he would realize the magnitude of his loss. In his lonely moments he would go and sit in the corner where the dog once slept. Sometimes he would go beneath the tree with the green and red leaves.

Hidden | Discover Prompts | Day 26

As you walk away from the bustle of the city, its a norm to feel discomfort. The emotion stems from departure from the known, as well as the fear of the unknown. Don’t confuse the unknown to mean something that lies ahead. No, its what you’ll miss out when you venture forth into the journey. Very few people fear hardships, but they all dread guilt and regret.

You realize as you walk on the desolated tar road that you don’t mind missing out on a few things. As moments pass you feel the sense of belonging taking over. You start noticing things. Along the sides of the road are trees that stand tall as if boasting of their existence. Silence can give you solace but an absolute silence can bring havoc. Its humbles you to see that you are not alone, there is an abundance of life around.

The backpack gets a bit heavier as the shoulders get tired. You are not used to this. But you’ve been here before. You cannot help but be amazed by the newness of it all. That’s what a forest can do to you.

So you quit the tar and walk the dirt. Your steps make a different sound. Sound of the feet. In the city you never thought about it, every moment being a declaration that you are alive. Its easy to drown the sound of life in the city. Here, you cannot escape. Unless you actively choose to.

You are still walking, now in tall grass. Hearing the wind wrestle with the grass and the trees. There is a stream near by. Its water has nourished every inch of the land that you walk on. Everything green and clear. Maybe this is the moment that it strikes you, all is not meaningless. In fact your life at this moment is overflowing with meaning.Then you see it. The old cabin. Covered in vines. Unlike the city, the dirt is doing something unusual. As if conscience of its existence it has decided to add a dept to the beauty of the scene.

Hidden from anyone and anything its worth keeping hidden from. You are here. At peace with yourself and the world. Safe.

Home.

Christopher Nolan’s Prestige And Self-Sacrifice | Discover Prompt: Magic | Day 25

Note: This post has spoilers.

If you have seen any of Christopher Nolan’s work you probably would have noticed that his work has layers of themes imbibed in them. On the surface of it, Prestige (2006) is a movie about magic and magicians. Dig a little deeper and it becomes a story about revenge. Dig further, you have two individuals (Hugh Jackman and Christina Bale) striving for perfection in an intertwined web of faith where their successes become mutually exclusive.

One such layer in the movie is Self Sacrifice. This is not a movie review. This is an attempt to dissect one beautiful scene from the movie that depicts what constructs a good magic trick. In a nutshell, it is about magic and what it takes to create magic in Nolan’s world.

The scene in question is thus:

Jackman and Bale’s character go to see a Chinese magician perform. They are here not just to enjoy the show, but to see through the trick of the magician. They want to learn the secret of the ‘fish bowl trick’.

The old man walks across the stage to an empty table. There is a struggle in his movements. He is a cripple. He veils the table from the spectator’s eyes with a piece of cloth. There is a drum roll. A moment passes. Suddenly, he takes off the veil. There is a fish bowl with a fish and water on the table that was empty just a few seconds ago. The crowd is speechless. There is a thunderous applause. The old man slowly walks away.

Jackman looks at Bale, dazed in amusement of what he has just witnessed. All this while, Bale has a smile on his face. He never takes his eyes off the stage, not even to acknowledge Jackman’s amusement. Its as if, Bale noticed something no one else does.

In the next scene the two of them watch the old magician walk to his horse cart.

Jackman: You’re wrong. It can’t be. Look at the man!

Bale: THIS is the trick. This is the performance right there. This is why no one can detect his method. Total devotion to his art. A lot of self-sacrifice. You know… it’s the only way to escape (Bale looks around disappointingly and gently punches the wall next to him)… all this you know?

Bale believes the trick is the magician’s gait. His fragile bent structure encased in loose robes moving cautiously as if to one would if he was carrying something fragile. The trickery is the act of being a cripple. Everything, every moment of his life is part of the act. That is the self-sacrifice.

In the very next scene, Jackman’s character says to his wife: “Borden (Bale) saw it at once. But I couldn’t fathom it. Living my life pretending to be someone else.”

And that is exactly why Bale’s character is the better magician. His self-sacrifice in hiding the fact that there had always been two them, the twins. He hides it from his wife who commits suicide, his love who leaves him, his associates, his master, and above all, even his daughter.

Self-sacrifice is the price of true magic in Nolan’s world of magicians.

Chapter Review | All Things Shining | Chapter 1

Why A Chapter Wise Review?

Over the years it has become clear to me that just reading a book won’t do. In order for stuff to make sense and stick, we need to put in the work. Either we read a number of similar books in succession or we read one with active engagement. This is an exercise in the latter. I have taken the ideas from the first chapter of the book and have tried to engage with it by adding my own observations and learning from the past. This is what I’ve learned:

The Idea:

This chapter in a nutshell deals with choices. Choices both big and small, and how crippled we are in making them. There is a reason for celebration that we are culturally developed to a point where we have a choice in almost everything. There is a paradox that comes with the bliss which is our inability to make these choices because of an absence of intrinsic motivation.

As per the book, there are two sets of people who escape this decision making fatigue:

The man of confidence: History is filled with these. People who carry a vision. Their vision is not just for their own selves but extends unbounded. They strive to align the world to their own vision. Like the mad scientist building the Frankenstein. Just like the mad scientist, they too are dumbfounded when their creation (or their failure to create) wreaks havoc. Their fanaticism is a by-product of arrogance fueled by ambition and a restricted world view. Indulged in their grandiose ideas of self, they get lost in the lands of self-delusion offering little, if anything, to the society.

The man who makes no choice: A person who makes no choices at all. Not because he is caught unaware as to the existence of choices, but because he is enslaved by obsession, infatuations and addictions. Their indulgence is curated by a culture which encourages, if not downright demands of us, to indulge in escapism. Emotions are segregated on a spectrum. On one end the spectrum dictates those emotions which need to be avoided at all costs (pain, suffering, anxiety, and sadness). On the other end are the emotions that must be embraced all the times (laughter, escape from boredom, thrill). We are told that it is okay to escape the feelings of discomfort. A culture where stimulation is the norm. We borrow sub-standard happiness from our future selves believing there will be no cost to pay.

Making choices is a heroic action. Heroic actions must not be confused with habitual actions. The former is based on the complete awareness of our surroundings. The later exists because of an absence of such awareness. This heroism is found sporadically in our society, which is plagued by indecision. The reason such decision is mass spread is because we do not know what to base our choices on.

This is where nihilism comes in. In the medieval ages, our lives’ purpose was whatever the church clergymen dictated it to be. It was assumed that it was god himself who had designed our lives. There was no requirement to spend time pondering over the meaning of life; it was designed to provide us with meaning. In present times we have come to be more secular. The establishment of god is in crumbles. Nietzsche said that these are the times of nihilism.

But why in the age of freedom are we concerned with culture? Why does it matter whether the clergyman dictates our fates or Nietzsche’s nihilism pops his head out of the rubble of desolated ecclesiastical society? It is because culture teaches us the way to live our life in the same way as family and peers teach us language. No matter the age, the idea that one can choose one’s own identity is inconceivable.

Take minimalism for example. It makes no sense that the haves of the society are throwing away their possessions. In any other age this would be a symptom of mass hysteria and insanity. The minimalist culture has imbibed in our heads that ‘less is more’. Thus normalizing what was absurdity in the past.

The Book:

The book is really well written and thought out. The sentences are simple and are not burdened with philosophical lexicons or redundant prolixity. The first chapter itself is commendable in its efforts to draw examples from the likes of Dante’s Inferno, The Matrix and Fredric Nietzsche.

It will be fun to see where this book will go from here.

Elixir | Discover Prompts | Day 24

On any given Saturday he was to be found in the library. There was something about the place, an old familiar comfort. It was the only sanctum sanctorum he knew of. With an unwavering, unflinching and unhesitating attention he inspected the words of men greater than him. It was no easy work. Some prolix and some with a taste of radical magniloquence, he found himself unable to assign a coherent meaning to their work. With grit and gumption he read on, fomenting the perpetual thoughts of unworthiness and incapability. About to give up on the task, he encountered the familiar old face looking down at him, smiling. Slowly the fragile old body examined his work. There was moment of hesitance. The old man walked over to examine the titles on the shelves. With a frown on his face, he slowly ran his finger trough the hard bound titles. A minute passed followed by a whisper of exhalation. The old man took a book out and handed it to him, an elixir to his doubts and tormenting thoughts.

Books and Judgments

I love books. They are probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. This year, and for the past couple of years I’ve been witnessing a declining trend in my reading. It’s not that I have stopped procuring books but rather that I have developed a habit loop of quitting books midway. I know that some books are just not worth the time and others just repeat stuff what you already know, causing us to be stuck in a rather vicious torpedo of confirmation heretics.

However, it should not be denied that underlying the habit loop is a brewing escapism of boredom. Shane Parrish advocates that we must be willing to pay a hefty interest on the things we escape today, cause escapism is nothing but an act of borrowing from our future self.

So setting aside the philosophical facet, I am here to make a commitment to reading. From today I will specify the books that I am reading. In order to curb my over commitment syndrome, I have decided to put a bar on the number of books that I am going to read. The mantra is ‘3 at a time, rest everything is FOMO’.

I will not start new books before I complete the triad. In order to commit myself further to this task, I will aim to review these books as I go, rather than reviewing them in one go, which I have find a Herculean task. Apart from that, I will also be reading and writing about judgement from Indian Courts. It’s an indispensable skill that every lawyer must have and I strive to be a good lawyer.

To cut to the chase, here is the list of three books that I am currently reading:

All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

2. The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

3. Bulfinch’s Mythology Stories of gods and heroes by Thomas Bulfinch