On Authenticity

Humanity arrived at our present day status, because of iconic events in the second half of the 18th century.  

We learnt the value of mass quantity during the advancement of the Industrial Revolution. Later, we acquired our desire for materialism and the aspiration to rise above the prevailing state of being, through the American and French Revolutions. The phenomenal success of the Industrial Floor meant many things were eventually designed based on it. Today, schools, offices, factories, warehouses are all designed as the Industrial Floor.  Man understood how large volume was imperative for critical mass, which in turn led to great material success. This understanding drove our growth and we reached for more. Thus, Man ended up consuming more and more.

This sustained need to grow ushered in the mega corporation, accentuated all the more, through the excesses of the stock exchange system. To facilitate the drive for mass quantum and growth, along came the HR revolution and humans became pawns. Humans needed to be mechanical and focussed on performance. We were subjected to the Bell Curve and our lives at work were now designed through it. Welcome to the machine like existence of the present day. This living, breathing, functioning machine is supposed to follow an optimum career plan and last out forty years for the benefit of the corporations. That is the HR optimisation vision.     

As it so happens, we are actually not machines. We are humans! Our DNA, our retina pattern, our voice print and our finger print are all unique. All 7.4 bn of us on this planet are truly unique. So why should we not be living unique lives, rather than cloned mechanical lives? There must be more to life than clocking up hours for forty years, living a programmed corporate existence, taking retirement and going to the grave. Our corporate card cannot be our identity; we are a name, a human of value and purpose.     

So we need more authenticity - i.e. we need to live lives which are real and owned by us. It should not belong to a corporate, or a government, or an army etc. We need to contemplate and find our 'very own reason to be' - raison de'tre, ikigai. 

Before individuals can find their 'reason to be', they need to know 'who they are inside'. They need to look inwards, find their personal vision and value system. Once found, only then can we proceed to live 'our reason to be'. There is no point in hiding behind a facade. Why would you live life as someone else or replicating someone else's values and desires? Unfortunately, we accomplish only this, when we go hammer and tong trying to deliver corporate vision and targets. After all it is only one existence and it passes by in a jiffy, so let's use it.   

So once you have discovered yourself, then you need to find out what is it that will actually satisfy this Real You.  What is your passion? Is it social regeneration, is it impact on the world eco system, is it simply to touch the senses through art or sport, or it could be more than one calling. Once you find what really appeals to your passion, you then have an answer of 'why you want to do something'. That something becomes life's purpose, your essence; you live and breathe that purpose. You love your passion and you OWN why you do this work. If you own that work, you will eventually find your way to achieving success. It will actually be easier to live this sort of life.  In our present world, almost all of us are doing something, because it is available at hand, we need to do it for money and we end up not loving it. Over time we lose our authenticity through attrition, and we become a cloned machine. 

You will only get to the end of life once and when you do get there, you want to look back and say I have lived this one life doing things which are important to me.

*free picture from dreamstime.com 

Modern Day Pillars of Ambition

In the old days, power through authority was the biggest pillar of desire and ambition. Kings could change the world. The Pharaoh even had the arrogance to think he could reach for divinity. He was rudely corrected and put in his place, but in the end Kings dominated the world. Power told! Alexander climbed mountains to conquer, Hannibal crossed seas to challenge Rome and Muhammad Fateh dragged ships across land to subjugate. 

Along came Magna Carta in 1216 and the authority of Kings was fenced. You can influence, but you cannot make rules without 'Us' (Us can be various segments of society at different times). The French Revolution in 1789 dealt a fatal and final blow to Kings and the future definition of power changed totally. From a throne, to a series of chairs debating in a hall. In various forms, for the last century this has been a constant. Though there are recent signs that a change is coming soon, in the power of authority, but for the moment 'Power is exercised via cliques and interest groups, while individual authority has receded'.   

Throughout history, money also had its place in individual ambitions. In earlier times, money could be substituted by land, or gold or flocks of livestock. In the Industrial Age it became factories, stocks of goods or commodities, plus paper. Paper which could translate into gold, shares or money. Today it need not be in any physical shape at all. Simply, a digital entry may be worth billions. Facebook, Uber, Google are just such examples. But money always had its limitation. It need not translate into power. Hence, Shylock had to concede to a judge and Qarun (in the Quran) was shown his real place, though he was richer than rich. And hence, China can shut out Facebook.

Nevertheless, ambition for money is a constant drive through history. For some it could be greed and for others it is that elevation of status which is another part of man's ego. We love to be admired and unfortunately this world admires money. So despite its limitation money attracts. I hear someone saying what about comfort and luxury? Comfort and luxury can be achieved with reasonable amounts of money and does not need billions of dollars. That extra bit of money ambition is placed at the door of ego. 

Modernity is shaping out in a different direction. Fame seems to have overtaken money and power. I have no research to justify this statement, but it is what I observe. People are dying to be famous. It can be through stardom, but it can be as big through social media. It need not translate into money, but it definitely translates into power.  

The Twitterati, Facebookers, Instagramers, Whatsappers, Bloggers can move governments and societies today. Remember back to the Arab Spring and see the devastation it caused. And then there was Obama, moving opinions and grabbing the biggest job in the world. It was all done through the power of connectivity and social media. Lately, so much of Brexit and Trumps power and success have come via online connectivity fame. 

This fame and power equation has been further accentuated by the use of 'fake news'. Just a decade ago, it would have been inconceivable that non-existent events could drive power. Today, if I am clever enough and skilled enough, I can create a false event on the net and get it accepted as truth. Based on this acceptance, I can then drive public opinion, my own popularity and eventually acquire the power to influence. Unfortunately, presently there is no defence against such an eventuality. We see that regularly, when totally false and illogical facts are being retweeted a dime a dozen.

We are entering a new age of power. More than anything else, ambition in our children will be connectivity and its trappings of power. The consequences of such a social change is mind boggling. More than ever, the up-bringing and value system of our children is an imperative. With no boundaries to truth, only values deeply set in the mind can keep this world on a fair and decent road.

*from the 1939 movie Gulliver's Travel

The sun might as well burst - mans environmental story

In Surah Rahman it mentions Meezan, "balance". Man is to live in a balance; the world was built in a balance. Mans footprint in this world should maintain neutrality.

For the age of Man, the ancients kept this balance, Whether it was self taught, gained through experience or just plain luck, it happened through thousands of years. The population was generally maintained below 500-600 million and man was sustainable.  He plowed the land, lived in localities, wasted little and was happy to be at one with his environment. Man never cut useful trees, or made large dams, stored more than his needs and ended his life more or less as he was born. Maybe 0.1% of the population, the Lords and the Ladies, lived it up. They had large castles, scores of attendants, many clothes, lots of food. They even aspired to travel to large towns to meet others like them and also were greedy enough to try to grab more. But this small proportion of population did not effect the balance of the world.

Sometime between 1750-1800, this changed. Three specific events changed us.

The Industrial Revolution came home to create mass production, storage and movement. Then the French Revolution taught the common man, he has as much right as the Kings, Lords and Ladies.  Lastly The American Revolution taught the same common man the route of how to get from the bottom of the pile to near the top. The story was complete and man went after his right to live an independent and good life with all speed and strength. He now consumed as much as he could, science provided him the wherewithal to do so - production, movement and storage. The large city was born. Population multiplied and consumption increased further. This never ending spiral of the good life, hence more consumption, more need, therefore better science, and with better living come more people (better health and longer lives) and eventually more consumption, continues till today. The population which was a steady 600 mn, will peak at 9 bn in 2045. And the earth is operating at more than one earths level and that is not a sustainable model. We have lost that balance, which was maintained by our ancient forefathers.

So did we know about it? Well back in 1872 they discovered acid rain and therefore had an idea that they were doing adverse things to the environment. But we soldiered on. Through the radiation discovery of the Curies, the two World Wars, when Oppenheimer blew the bomb and the ensuing carnage of testing, the baby boomers love of gas guzzlers, the travel boom, the digital age and now the nano technology age. We have continued to use more, more and more and despite all the hue and cry, we still every year continue to consume more.

Now what is really happening out there to show things are changing. Continuously we keep getting hotter years, but we brush that off. The unusual weather patterns, like freak tornadoes, cold waves, hurricanes, floods and untimely weather are all the signs of change, but we look the other way. The oil & gas, consumer  and airline lobbies are too powerful to allow change to happen. Sometime in the 50's a sadhu at the foot of the Himalayas, who saw change, started photographing himself against the snow line every five years. Eleven pictures and a lifetime later (55 years), this same sadhu had traversed up the mountain side and the snowline had receded rapidly. The satellite pictures comparing Arctic and Greenland in 1970 and 2010 show a massive change, the ice is fast disappearing. Film crews have captured live huge chunks of ice pack, some 50 sq miles, breaking off in Greenland. Similarly whole lakes are seen to disappear within less than an hour, as the ice melts and a hole created at the bottom, allows the lake to flow below the ice pack, grease the bottom and make the flow of ice pack to the sea even easier.

Once the ice pack disappears in the Arctic and Greenland, our goose is cooked. This is the premier reflector of suns rays and it will cause a huge jump in the heat. The sun might as well burst and hit us. It will be faster and quicker. We are consuming our endowment for living, and unless we stop, think and reverse this process, the legacy we leave our children will be a legacy of heat and lack of resources, like food and water. We don't really want to do this surely? We love our children too much, to allow this to happen. Do something.....