Make it make sense

[aalapdavjekar]

An Open Letter to Money

First published Jul 29, 2019

Dear money,

Rarely do I find myself writing personal letters addressed to abstract concepts. Though civilisation has offered you the privilege of being quantifiable, you’re to be found on the same page as my understanding of non-quantifiable concepts such as knowledge, humour, status, art and creativity, courage, and love.

What that means is that I have never once paused to consider my relationship with you. So far I have only taken you for granted, living under the presumption that your companionship was a permanent fixture — an incorporeal extension of my being. But like the physical body, the mental spirit, social relations and accumulated objects I so devotedly give attention to, I’ve never looked at you as an entity worthy of contemplation beyond the meager concerns that peck away at my subconscious whenever my bank account drops below a certain amount.

Therefore, I’ve decided make amends and come to a better understanding of the nature of our relationship. I have felt gratitude to your presence in my life but I have come to realise that you more closely represent the qualities of a tyrannical master. You’ve always had the upper hand; you’ve been the one in perpetual control, restricting me in my pursuits, and condemning me to the belief that freedom and liberty are directly proportional to the quality of your abundance.

This is the only reason to pursue you.

But I’d like to change this relationship.

I’ve wanted the upper hand my entire life and it is due time for that change to take place. Here is what I think you should be: A tool. Machinery. A vehicle of empowerment not enslavement.

You should be a means to an end, and nothing more. You should not be the centerpiece of life, the sole rationale for a career choice, or an impetus for rethinking one’s core values and principles regardless of circumstance.

This is not to say that you have nothing to teach. Scarcity is one of the greatest teachers of humility, sensibility, frugality, and self-denial. Scarcity of money leads to an impoverishment in choice, denying society and the individual the means to change their environment. But the inverse is also true when a world with limited resources faces unlimited human desires.

No wonder many thinkers have had differing views about you. Depending on who you ask, you might find a distinct opinion: Arthur Schopenhauer described you as sea-water: “The more we drink the thirstier we become”; As something to be disregarded entirely, as described by Bob Dylan: “What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

Regardless of the opinions, you’ve successfully made yourself the cultural focal point of not only modern-day capitalist society but also generations past. Personified as a mythological deity from the Hindu Kubera to the Chinese Tsai Shen Yeh and the Greek and Roman Pluto, even through spirit, you’ve laid claim to the materialistic helm of human society.

You are simultaneously the liberator and oppressor of man. At the heart of civilisation, any large system of exchange of goods and services requires a common quantifiable metric: monetary cost. For people to live and function together as a group, you are their cerebral king; only you may pass judgement and evaluate the worth of entire nations. You are the economic thread that weaves together the very fabric of society, pivoting those fortunate enough to its crown, while the majority lay bare at its feet. You are the ball and chain that ties each and every individual to this system through debt or desire until they are either dead or unaccountable. Only the truly ascetic may slip through your grasp.

While your presence in my life has been a virtue and a privilege, it’s important to understand this privilege and what it entails. There has never been a single day that I have felt separated from the comforts you bring — the alleviation of mental and physical burdens, the empowerment of my individuality and personal freedom, and the potential to minimize suffering, material or otherwise.

This would all be for naught without some perspective: the relationship with society that you enable is the fundamental motivation that drives people like me to acquire more and more of you.

People hardly consider the fact that they don’t seek out money; people seek out power, control, certainty and security. You only provide the means to afford and acquire these things. You birth new pathways out of saturated spaces. You enable one to adapt faster, stay alive longer. You’re a filter for evolutionary success. Combined with your material twin: technology — yet another intellectual limb that seeks to satisfy the human impulse for certainty and security, your dominion grows. You seep into a thousand layers of reality, into every corner and crevice of existence.

But the simple act of accumulating currency would fall far short of achieving anything. The control that we desire comes from the intersection of knowledge, experience, and ability — the what, the when and the how to control.

What knowledge? The knowledge of the nature of existence and being; the shape of the cradle of reality.

What experience? The experience that teaches the transience of material reality, the ebb and flow of sensory information, the cyclical patterns in everything.

What ability? The ability to adapt knowledge and experience to shape reality.

When the dull, symbolic shell of currency — whether coin, beads, pebbles, ingots, livestock or weapons — is stripped away, we can come face to face with the true meaning of wealth. When you are carefully employed, used as a fine instrument to carve out control: command over physical well-being, opportunity, status, and time.

This is the relationship I now seek to foster with you. You are an instrument of self-expression and it saddens me to no end to realise how I, through sheer ignorance, have been so blind to your real value.

Like a man without any imagination, I’ve stumbled through life without intent nor command over its direction. I’ve gazed at the vast imprint of your nature on the world but like a man unable to decipher the meaning of letters, I’ve been unable to understand the virtue in controlling you. I’ve been a fool not to see all of the squandered potential. But I’m an optimistic fool. The cyclical relationship between knowledge, experience, and ability, begins with pursuit.

That is what this letter is about.

Yours truly. Xoxo.

[aalapdavjekar]

8 Lessons from Vipassana

2010 was a peculiar year. It was the year in which I found the great fortune of stumbling upon a book about the bizarre incidents and experiences of an Australian girl voyaging through the Indian subcontinent. The book — a 21st century rewrite of the lore of the hippie trail, offered little towards cerebral surprises, but made for a curious viewing of the life of someone who was brave (or foolish) enough to have gone through all the trouble that she did for the experiences she sought.

The author chronicled days spent discovering religion and spiritual heaven while avoiding hell — nosy neighbours, opportunistic rickshaw-wallas, and the odd would-be rapist. She portrays an all too familiar India — the world’s spiritual shopping mall serving food-poisoning on Tuesdays, vehicular accidents every Friday, and frightening latrines as a daily course. Not all of her pages carried so much drama, but they laid out a rough sketch of the trials and tribulations of the average foreigner in attempting to make sense of the country.

The smallest chapter in the book spoke to me the most. There was a tiny passage that depicted the joy and punishing solitude of the type rarely considered as thrill — monastic rituals, austere and rigorous routines, distress and hardship — it seemed a bit too much for anyone, let alone a solo adventurer. And yet, it seemed like just about the only thing she really enjoyed during her trip.

That was my introduction to Vipassana. That first memory is still fresh: the desire to confront this awkward specimen of a situation for myself, only because, at the time, it seemed so bizarre. To my ignorant mind, I could not have comprehended the result of ten long days (and nights), sitting around without the utterance of a single syllable. If nothing else, it would just be yet another substance: to taste, chew on, spit out, and rave about having conquered yet another mountain of sensory input; spin it all into a tall tale of profundity and wisdom.

Thankfully, the taste was sweet. To me, this became pretty important. It felt like a gigantic discovery and I often found myself proselytizing like a broken record for days after the first course. I eventually stopped for being seen as a bit of a nuisance, however, my fascination with the practice only grew with time. In those ten short days, I had experienced a deep, resounding change from within. As difficult as the journey had been, I only knew I had to keep going.

That was all ten years ago. 2010 was peculiar, but a dozen Vipassana courses later, life only became weirder.

It’s the stark contrast that gets you; the juxtaposition of life inside a course, and then witnessing the world outside. It is hard to illustrate and is not really the point of this post, but I mention it only because I’d like to warn you that many of the lessons I’ve learnt are all experiential truths. Simply engaging the intellect is not enough. You can’t describe the taste of salt to someone who has never experienced it before, and you can’t learn to swim simply by reading about it.

With that said, understand that even though I have been practicing for a while, it does not mean I have achieved any form of mastery over my practice. I still consider this as the just the first step in a very long path. I share these insights, all of which have broadened and enriched my understanding of not only myself, but of all-encompassing experience existence in itself. My only hope is to encourage you to sit down and focus on your breath.

1. Relaxing meditation is more like aggressive deconditioning…

The mind is a big ball of accumulated, tightly-knotted habits. Habits are not merely mundane proclivities like picking your nose, or a preference for K-pop. Habits are the set of all unconscious tendencies, picked up over the course of one’s life and through generations past, resulting in present thought, action, or both. Natural instincts such as the struggle to survive and the urge for sexual gratification are among the densest of elements residing within the mental landscape.

Mental forces are easiest to imagine when you think of them as analogous to Newton’s Third Law: each action has an equal and opposite reaction. As the mind sees, the mind does. Cause and effect. Through millions of years of evolution, the mind has been shaped to recognize and react to patterns. Certain emotions may result in specific thoughts. Certain thoughts may result in specific behaviours.

When you sit down to practice Vipassana, you essentially train yourself to observe the mind without reacting. The process may not seem like much but, with time, the simple act of observation decreases the rigidity and impulsiveness of the mind. Gradually, the simple act of watching it unravel before you, unveiling its knots until they loosen and eventually fade away, brings about a significant change. This does not mean that after ten days of meditation you will deprogram your mind and achieve liberation. It is a very gradual process. Believe me. Even after all these years, I’ve only scratched the surface and, so far, I’ve managed to adopt a slightly better diet. But I have better focus, more clarity of thought, less anxiety, and things that used to drive me crazy don’t annoy me as much anymore.

Meditation will change your brain. Thoughts included.

2. You are your mind’s weak, pathetic slave.

At any given time, you have very little conscious ability to overrule your genetic programming, emotional state, and natural surroundings (many have even argued that there is no such thing as conscious control and free will is an illusion, but that is a discussion for another time). The goal of meditation is to break free from the mind’s thrall: it’s patterns of thought. That’s the liberation that meditators keep referring to time and again.

If you find it hard to believe how little control you have over your mind, try to focus continuously on the breath just for a few minutes and notice the amount of thoughts that manage to pop up. You’ll quickly see how easily the mind is carried away. It’ll drift away, either to the future, or to the past. Bringing it back and keeping it in the present is a constant, seemingly endless struggle.

Our toxic addiction to our own thoughts creates the biggest hurdle. Over the course of our lives, we have been conditioned by our parents, school, society, even language, to think a certain way. Like the words we associate with objects to learn the alphabet in kindergarten, we continuously associate abstractions — words — to ideas; to the way things work. Our names for objects, people, places, feelings, situations, etc. are just names. They are concepts that are formed in the mind. In other words, our brain holds maps to reality which are drawn and redrawn over the course of our lives. But the map is not the territory, yet we are constantly under the delusion that the map is real.

Our fascination and attachment to our artificial concepts of what is real, important, and urgent is what hinders progress— the practice is essentially training the mind not to identify with one’s thoughts. In other words, to heal trauma, you need to learn to dissociate with the feeling which triggers the trauma. Trauma comes in many shapes. It may take the form of the stories that we forge for ourselves to make sense of who we are. The story we tell ourselves turns into the very bondage that keeps us in indefinite servitude to the mind.

The mind is a slippery serpent, as dangerous when untamed as it is powerful when mastered. Most beginners often find it frustrating how difficult it is to ‘control’ their minds. But therein lies the effort. It is a skill to be cultivated like any other. Exasperation and the desire to stop is a natural byproduct of the conditioning described earlier. There is an inertia to progress that needs to be continuously overcome. With time, it gets easier.

Meditation is simply a tool to harness and rein in the unruly mind.

3. Everything is connected. Every action has a consequence, and it matters.

This can be argued as a simple scientific principle. Richard Feynman in his lecture, “The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences,” describes the artificial divisions we create, forming a myriad of distinct models of understanding to comprehend and explain to ourselves aspects of the same reality. Brian Cox takes it even further.

My understanding leans towards the philosophical side, but bear with me. Most religions and spiritual traditions preach purity of mind, speech, and deed. Whether through scripture or ritual, they teach compassion, loving kindness, mercy and wisdom. I’ve realized that there’s more to this than mere morality.

To greatly simplify this, let’s imagine the world as a closed, finite system — something like a small swimming pool. Any kind of movement results in ripples that gradually extend across the body of water, affecting everything in their path. Eventually, given enough time, those ripples will bounce right back to whence they came. Sooner or later, your actions will meet their maker. But don’t mistake this as a need to be nice out of selfish necessity. The picture is bigger than this.

The world, much like our hypothetical swimming pool, is a melting pot of events resulting from simultaneous interactions causing countless, spontaneous consequences. It’s a chain reaction and an ocean of chaos, with the ebb and flow of individual currents that mingle, coalesce and form waves, crashing into one another to give us the great churning of the wheel that Buddhists speak of, and the agitation that we are almost too familiar with.

The turbulence, in essence, is the mind being washed away with the tide, engulfed and drowned in the vicissitudes of a constantly changing life. To remain steadfast and solid in such stormy waters would require nothing short of supreme mastery in the art of mindfulness. A cornerstone of such an endeavour requires the cultivation of a conscious effort to sustain complete awareness and acceptance for the present moment.

When one remains vigilant of thought, speech, and deed, and acquires a resolute and unwavering focus, then all the torment the ocean can muster will be but powerless against this tranquil state of mind. But even beyond that, tranquility will give way to reflection, understanding, and empathy. In other words, when you respond to anger with love, you cast water over the fire.

With practice, each action undertaken will arrive with more effort, more purpose and consideration. That is the delicate insight to be gained — that every action, every moment, every breath is sacred. Every bit of conscious presence is a gift to be treasured.

4. Nothing matters as much as you think it does…

Vipassana meditation is an exercise in cultivating insight through self-observation. You watch your breath and the sensations across your body as they arise and pass away, each time acknowledging their transient and impermanent nature. That, you come to realize, is the truth of all reality.

You realize that suffering is a form of mental attachment, not to any external object, but to the sensation that object has on your mind. This attachment is sometimes so subtle and imperceptible that it is impossible to witness it without a mind that is steady and calm. These attachments are what cause dukkha or suffering. Attachments are not limited to sensations that feel good. Any sensation that makes you feel like had more of it or less of it — desire and aversion — is attachment. The mind runs after pleasure, runs from fear and pain. These are attachments and they are a hindrance to the practice.

As you grow into your practice, you will gradually slip out of your old patterns of thought, replacing them with a more open, willing, and fluid presence of mind. What once bothered you may gradually dissolve into nothingness. What once seemed as part of you, possessed you, caused emotional havoc when you didn’t get what you wanted, might simply vanish from existence. No, you won’t turn into an emotionless robot. No it won’t make you give up everything in life, turn into a vagrant and move to the beach, unless you already desired those things. Meditation will only help sort out what you really want.

Practice will help you detach yourself from your thoughts until you realize that your thoughts are not you. Feelings come, feelings go. They are impermanent, and they don’t matter. All it requires is time and the simple act of observation.

5. You are not an experiential bubble.

For many beginners trying to embrace the many forms of mindfulness, one of the toughest obstacles to overcome is doubt. It may be doubt in oneself, doubt in the practice, doubt in one’s teacher, and so on. But it’s a natural response to something new, especially to those completely unfamiliar with these types of practices. Imparting trust is a transactional habit. Unless one is certain of attainable benefits and can measure their worth, they may find an unwillingness to take even the first step.

Couple a doubtful mind with the myriad of mental encounters one may face during meditation and the result might just kill the desire for practice. People have reported everything from swirling lights, out-of-body experiences, synesthesia, to demons. This is not unusual. Meditation is a gateway into the unconscious — a surgical procedure as S.N. Goenka, the person who brought the teaching of Vipassana back to India, describes. Through the process of Sankharupekkha (observing mental formations with equanimity), the practitioner encounters dormant impurities in the unconscious that rise to the surface of the mind, and manifest themselves as physical phenomenon.

Juxtaposed with modern-day culture, the meditative experience stands out like a sore thumb, often causing its students great confusion and mistrust in the very quality of what they are learning. It doesn’t help that the ideas and general philosophy presented by spiritual traditions are outright antithetical to “western” schools of thought.

Concepts such as avidya, anicca, dukkha, shunyata, samsara and nirvana are like salt. These are concepts that are almost impossible to understand through mere language—one must personally taste them. They are often horribly misconstrued and usually thrown out, replaced by a far shallower understanding that barely skims the surface of the teaching, conflating meditation with stress reduction and labour productivity. After all, these are the values our industrial societies can easily relate to.

We often make it harder on ourselves by letting our experiences fester. Remember to talk about them, discuss them, debate their true essence, and let them be out in the open. Let these ideas, however alien, achieve coherence and solidity. Give them a better chance to struggle and survive. There are many people out there experiencing the same reality, watching the same movie, feeling the same thing. The emotional outlet, especially when you are starting out in this practice is immensely valuable. It’s a small thing but it matters.

After my first ten-day Vipassana course came to a close, as the new students could finally open their mouths and start speaking with each other about their ten days spent in silence, we could all see the benefits this strange new thing had given us. I was in a room full of fifty-odd people that seemed to have had a similar experience in the course as I did. They all seemed calmer than on the first day, happier for having made it through; in the process, they had visibly changed. That’s what brought forth trust in the system; not only because it seemed to work across a diverse set of people, but because it made me realize that we are all in the same boat.

6. Compassion takes practice.

There is no absolute right or wrong. Understanding which is which requires not only context but patience. An impulsive and ignorant mind does not have the capacity to form correct judgement. An angry and intolerant person cannot be trusted to make rational and thoughtful decisions. Why do you need to develop proper judgement? The simplest possible answer: to progress in your practice. Hence, while Vipassana may bring insight, on the last day of each course, students are taught a slightly different type of meditation.

Metta, meaning ‘loving-kindness’, is a type of meditation that involves concentrating on directing love towards ourselves and others, even those (especially those) who may have hurt us. A daily practice of metta has its benefits, but most significant of all, is the way it complements insight meditation and brings out lasting, positive changes in mind and body.

The feeling is hard to describe, but all I can say is that (at the risk of sounding cliched), through the course of one’s life, pain is an inevitability, but suffering through the pain is a choice. With regular practice in metta, instead of being swept away by one’s emotions, one learns to consciously bring awareness to the suffering being experienced and replace it with compassionate and loving thoughts. Suffering is simply a negative reaction of the mind to any form of pain. With practice, mental aversion to pain gradually fades. Like mental ointment, compassion can heal the deepest of wounds.

But compassion takes practice. Think of it as learning a new language. Even if you have no prior experience reading the script or pronouncing the words, with time, you might just achieve fluency.

Compassion towards all beings, regardless of the situation, is an important goal for anyone serious about walking the path. When you emanate a constant stream of loving thoughts without ever missing a beat, then you might definitely consider yourself having changed for the better.

7. It’s all just glorified play.

By the time children reach the age of 3 or 4, their ego begins to form a cohesive identity — a map of themselves: I am this, I like that, I want to be so and so. Whether through nature or nurture, the child learns to take on a role for themselves depending on what the situation may bring: during interactions with their parents, with other children, and with society in general.

From an early age, children are engaged in play. Their games may be diverse, but are usually a form of role-playing: tea parties, dollhouses, make-believe — simulations of the adult world, to test its boundaries and see how things react. Fueled by curiosity and the joy of discovery, they rehearse and solidify their understanding of their surroundings, finding their place in the greater familial and societal picture, and simultaneously strengthen their masks of identity.

The masks we carry, birthed from the ego, may be necessary for our survival, but they are simply roles — the games we continue to play even as adults, with ourselves and with others. When the student of Vipassana comes to notice their own desires and attachments to the world, the identity of the self is often seen as the greatest attachment. It is the great epic; the story of ourselves that we’re so engrossed in writing and reciting— and madly in love with.

This story never ends. It lies permanently in the state of becoming: I am like this, I like that, I want to be so and so. The attachment to a false idea of oneself is the most difficult thing to witness and understand. It is the biggest delusion of the mind, and the greatest hindrance to one’s liberation from samsara — the endless cycle of birth and death. Whether you choose to believe that is unimportant, but recognising one’s tendencies to cling to one’s beliefs, one’s masks and identity, is a crucial process towards self-discovery and insight.

Recognising the mind for what it is — a constant stream of consciousness always in flux — will bring you a step closer to deciphering it.

8. You Know Nothing.

I know nothing. For knowing involves being certain, but if everything is impermanent and things are constantly in flux, then nothing can be certain.

To understand how truly inept we are at comprehending reality, consider the incredibly narrow spectrum of perception our brains provide. Our sensory organs: the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin offer only a slice of all the information that they come into contact with.

The eyes, for example, see only a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, which we call visible light. Similarly, our hearing is restricted to frequencies of sound that fall between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. In the same way, we carry only a limited cognitive capability and intelligence.

It’s a humbling thought. At the very least, reminding oneself of the fragility of one’s understanding is a way to minimize cognitive bias. Further, since no one knows anything, knowing you know nothing will actually put you a step ahead of most people.

“I am wiser than this human being. For probably neither of us knows anything noble and good, but he supposes he knows something when he does not know, while I, just as I do not know, do not even suppose that I do. I am likely to be a little bit wiser than he in this very thing: that whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know.” — Plato’s Apology of Socrates

Similarly, from the Dhammapada:

“A fool who knows his foolishness is wise at least to that extent, but a fool who thinks himself wise is a fool indeed.”

Lastly, Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Zen Master calls the state of knowing nothing the “beginner’s mind,” the constant prerequisite for progressing in one’s practice:

“The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” — from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

May all beings be happy.

[aalapdavjekar]

Law of the Blockchain

First published in April, 2018.

“Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Law, Miss Granger?” asked Scrimgeour. “No, I’m not,” retorted Hermione. “I’m hoping to do some good in the world!” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Almost ten years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto released a paramount document that blueprinted a strange new concept and currency called Bitcoin. Unlike traditional currencies, Bitcoin has no physical form, but is entirely digital, decentralized, and relies upon the mathematical principles of cryptography. The nine-page report evaluates and critiques orthodox systems of finance and goes on to lay a framework for a system of trust-less digital transactions.

Satoshi theorised a world without banks, and Bitcoin was his proof that this was possible.

However, what many failed to predict at the time was that this whitepaper would soon serve as the foundation for the emergence and proliferation of online services utilizing and combining cryptographic and decentralized technologies under the banner of blockchain protocol or decentralized ledger technology.

The public debate as to whether blockchain technology is mere hype or possesses genuine productive merit is a distinction that will ultimately be settled through the emerging possibilities and solutions emanating from the cryptosphere — this newfound, burgeoning tech has introduced many new concepts and words to the technological lexicon, pushing new and potentially disruptive ideas to the verge of global significance. Perhaps we are at the horizon of a swift and necessary evolution of the archaic arms of industry all the way from finance, real-estate and healthcare, to transportation and government.

Here we focus on one such possibility surrounding the implications of decentralization: the upcoming convergence between traditional and newer systems of jurisdiction, all of which center around the blockchain.

Taking Out the Middleman

The Paul Bergrins, John Merritts, Joseph Caramadres, and Jeffrey Wertkins of the world have made a radical series of headlines using the criminal justice system as a basis for publicity and notoriety, largely because between criminal action and judicial consequences exists a chasm of sluggish bureaucracy, permitting these scandals to carry on for months, and as in the case of Bergin, sometimes years. The cracks in the old model only encourage the opportunist with intimate knowledge of the system to take advantage and remain in the shadows until fate says otherwise. And then there are many others like them, the rusted cogs in the machine, invisible due to circumstance, perspicacity, or both.

The grimacing thought of a justice system rife with irony has established a popular desire to bring about changes that may lead to a shift in arrangement between commoner and practitioner of law that is less opaque, arcane, and lethargic, or in the case of blockchain and smart-contract-based legal processes, completely unnecessary. Smart-contracts may be thought of as an agreement written in code (if so-and-so conditions are met, then execute so-and-so instructions), and enable parties to pursue business interests, proffer deals, receive payments, settle disputes etc., without the need for a legal intermediary.

To understand how this might work, let us take the example of a worker, Bob. Bob’s client, Alice, has asked Bob to deliver 12 boxes of goods to a warehouse 200 miles away. Once Bob completes the task, he will be paid. Alice has stipulated a time of 2 days for the delivery but offers a bonus if the delivery happens within a day.

Due to Alice and Bob’s newfound interest in programmable smart contracts, Alice quickly writes a program that will release a payment to Bob upon completion of this task. A simplified version of this program might look like this:

1. IF the 12 boxes of goods have reached the desired location AND 2. Delivery has occurred within 24 hours of signing contract, THEN release Payment + Bonus ELSE 3. IF delivery has occurred within 48 hours of signing contract, then release Payment

The contract is then added to the blockchain and signed by both parties. Alice uses GPS technology to track the shipment. If all things work out, Bob receives his payment automatically once the conditions have been met.

In the same way Bitcoin has eliminated the need for banks and middlemen, smart-contracts do away with the requirement for legal entities such as lawyers; however, we must also consider the fact that smart-contracts are prone to violation. Despite all the attention and hype, it is important to acknowledge their limitations present within the smart-contract and blockchain model. In their present state, smart contracts represent a more sophisticated way of forming incomplete contracts, meaning their terms and conditions, much like traditional contracts, may not necessarily be programmed to include all possibilities arising out of a particular situation or agreement.

For example, what if Bob has a problem while delivering the boxes? What if the delivery location provided by Alice turns out to be incorrect, or the GPS system used by Alice fails to work? What if Bob’s delivery truck meets with an accident preventing Bob from finishing the assigned task in time? Suppose Alice refuses to pay Bob for his failure in achieving the desired outcome, however genuine Bob’s excuse may have been, would there be a way for Bob to receive any sort of justice without resorting to a traditional legal system?

As far as the execution of smart-governance is concerned, an electronic system of arbitration or a system for the resolution of disputes through a trust-less medium seems of utmost importance and almost central to the idea of reducing transaction costs in an organization, market, judicial system, or broadly speaking, the global economy.

In our example, Bob had the knowledge and foresight to add an additional clause to Alice’s contract stipulating an arbitrator that may handle the case if things did not go according to plan. Such a clause for arbitration enables Bob to electronically issue a small bond, or payment, to leverage the help of a predetermined anonymous arbitrator (a person, or service) who goes over the case and selects a winner in whose favour the smart-contract would ultimately execute. If either Alice or Bob are not satisfied with the outcome, they may issue a further, more expensive bond to seek another session of arbitration.

What’s the verdict?

Services such as Kleros and Aragon offer “a decentralized court system allowing arbitration of smart contracts by crowdsourced jurors relying on economic incentives”. A very specific service dedicated to decentralized jurisdiction may eventually witness its applications in a variety of fields ranging from social networks to insurance.

The word blockchain is often construed to be synonymous with transparent. To that effect, many industries whose survival and success lay intertwined with such a characteristic will naturally gravitate towards it. The Industry of Justice, much like its counterparts in commerce, transportation, entertainment, government, and so on, would benefit immensely from the value brought forth by the blockchain.

With all that said, we must always keep in mind that the survival of old institutions depend on the survival of old systems. To paraphrase Planck, no progress may come without funerals. The disruption to hegemony won’t leave everyone happy, but Hermione will have at last had the opportunity to do good.

[aalapdavjekar]

On Identity

First published in October, 2020.

At the age of fourteen, I found myself in my first online chatroom. "Asl," they asked — early Internet slang for age, sex, location. It was never self identifying information. No one was interested in names. No one cared about what you looked like. You were free to be anonymous as long as you provided a small token of details from which the rest could be inferred. Your interests were apparent from the room you were in and your avatar dropped other crumbs of personality. The concept of anonymity was still years from making sense to me yet the obliviousness to physical identity was real. The idea of a fourteen year-old from India soon became dull. So, I decided to get creative.

Some days I would be a 75 year-old living in rural Mongolia who had just purchased his first computer after selling 25 of his favourite sheep. On another, a divorced mother of three, fresh out of prison, looking for advice on everything from makeup to homeschooling. Each day was a blank slate, a new role to fill, a fresh start. Identity on the web is as literal as fiction. It could be as entertaining as you wanted it to be.

Regardless of how you chose to portray yourself, your personality was a central component to how each story was laid down. Regardless of how out there you wanted to go, to an extent, most would assume you were giving out correct information. In theory, you could be the Pope pretending to be the Queen. Not many would care but most would find it funny.

No one can judge the unknown. On forums such as Reddit, getting a new identity is as easy as coming up with a new username. There’s no one to question your motives, judge you by the colour of your skin, or ban you for being too young.

You have no age on the Internet, no gender and you have no country. Your username might change, your writing will mature over time, new subreddits will be found, some will disappear.

Yet, like real life, people can and do judge you based on certain criteria. Online, credibility is based on reputation — call it Internet points, karma, the number of followers, likes, etc. To some online services, these signify your commitment to your role. Like seniority in a real life occupation, Internet points signify how long a profile has been around. The Reddit karma system which was primarily developed as a reward mechanism also serves as an easy way to distinguish between credible profiles and inflammatory and digressive posters — trolls. If you post worthwhile content, you get upvotes — points! On the other hand, if people don’t like what they see, you get negative points. Unlike the virtual world, physical age plays a very important role in real life in determining your credibility. It gives people an easy excuse to ignore your opinions depending on how old you are while giving way to cultural cliches such as respect your elders or tradition is sacred. One of the harshest — kids are stupid might almost seem like a mathematical axiom but ignores certain aspects of the child that are seldom found in adults such as the ability to quickly master languages or adopt new skills.

ASL in the offline world is very much like the Internet. The major difference is that it’s much easier to catch someone lying. As an Indian teenager, I could never pretend to be a 75-year old Mongolian even with the best makeup advice. Yet, there were other ways to pretend. At the time, I thought of myself as shy but I could still stir up some confidence when I had to talk to strangers. I only had to pretend to be charming, smart, and interesting. Society even had my back. “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up,” they told me at school. “Always dream big,” they proudly added. Years later, I realized all these statements only translated into, “get a bigger salary.” So, yeah, they were pretending too. Eventually I came to the conclusion that everyone was pretending. Everyone I interacted with had a story to tell. They all had a big bag of words that they used to confidently describe themselves. Most interesting of all, they all took the story they told themselves and others very, very seriously and would happily clock you in the mouth if you merely hinted at anything otherwise. Like calling someone out in the chatroom for their alleged fakery, painting someone as a liar in real life was akin to assault. But my conclusions weren’t based on some impulsive thought. They were carefully considered observations. The wall of pretense we erect is not even a conscious decision. Almost always, it is based on years of cultural indoctrination.

Who are we?

Culture is a weird one. The typical North American and South Asian of the 1950s could be considered living centuries apart from each other. The Indian, most likely an illiterate farmer barely making ends meet, could not dream of life in the American Golden Age — minimum wage that could pay for two cars and a mortgage. He could not conceptualise the existence of luxuries such as refrigerators, ovens, swimming pools and shopping malls, hospitals and discotheques, or the ability to travel the world on tips earned while bartending. The average Indian farmer desired healthier bulls, better harvests, regular rainfall, obedient wives for his sons. But then, as much as now, drastically different cultures still overlap in certain ways. The Indian farmer, much like his American counterpart, looked to his neighbour to understand himself. If the Jones next door bought a fancy new car, everyone living in the neighbourhood wanted something better. If the Kumars next door threw a huge wedding for their son, inviting everyone from the closest twenty villages, the Chopras dreamt only of throwing a larger party next year. The collective psyche of each culture is only a reflection of the desires of each individual. But cultures, homogeneous or otherwise, are an echo chamber. They consciously or subconsciously produce edicts, rules and regulations that individuals integrate and pass on. Whether it’s capitalism good, communism bad in the American psyche, or India good, Pakistan bad in the Indian, from economic policy-making and government initiatives to television programming and pop art, everything must adhere to cultural norms and traditions. Unless it fits the identity of the collective and follows a cultural narrative, it will be discarded.

Take the never ending list of Indian god-men and celebrities who are routinely treated as infallible figures worthy of worship. Devotees are often so unflinching in their faith that they are willing to overlook overwhelming evidence of rape, murder, exploitation and extortion. This is not unique to India. Charismatic personalities have sway over swaths of people all across the world. Whether it’s Trump, Duterte, Bolsonaro or Modi, the ability to pander to the masses and speak to the cultural norm is more important than competence at one’s job. Trump gave voice to a collective that was scared of immigrants taking over their jobs. Years later, his ineptitude would lead to one of the worst administrative failings in American history and the death of over 400,000 people in the course of the pandemic. The actions of the Indian government during the second wave need no mentioning.

In many countries, questioning one’s cultural norms is akin to treason. Similar to questioning a person’s opinions, questioning the integrity of a political ideology often leads to terrifying consequences. The BJP’s rise to power in India has been followed by the arrests of intellectuals, academics, students, poets, and doctors for voicing opinions against the party. This is quite the routine for authoritarian governments. In the 1950’s, Mao Zedong’s government in China persecuted and killed half a million of its educated populace before launching the Great Leap Forward, a project that aimed at transforming China from an agrarian economy into an industrial power. While it looked great on paper, it led to the greatest famine in history and resulted in the deaths of at least 20 million people. This failure politically weakened Mao. In response, he launched another program to weed out and eliminate dissidents, killing another million in the process while leading to the destruction of thousands of Chinese historical and cultural artifacts. What was the outcome of this violence? It only strengthened Mao’s hold over the masses. His personality was now a cult.

To call humans sheep would be unfair because sheep are never pushed off a cliff by their masters. Human societies, on the other hand, are rife with power struggles, deep hierarchies, discrimination, and violence. Yet, each of us identifies as a good person. We can rationalize why we are good, therefore we must be good. No country in the world would ever think about labeling itself as a force of terror, cruelty, and animosity, but we can easily call “the other” any number of names. We look to our family, friends, and society to support and reinforce these views — call them nationalism, patriotism, freedom, equality — regardless of how accurate or even relevant these views might actually be.

Oscar Wilde said, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

Our identity does not quite work in favour of our individual or collective happiness. We associate a feeling of national pride towards statistics, numbers, and symbols. Rising GDP is popularly correlated with the “wealth” of a country, but many forget that this number just smashes together a country’s total economic output over a period of time without distinguishing between “good” and “bad” economic activity. Even the man who came up with the concept, Simon Kuznets, was of the opinion that the number had nothing to do with individual well-being.

We look to our history to understand where we came from without realizing we have many incomplete pieces to an enormous puzzle. Many contemporary Indians would associate themselves with the iconic Indus Valley civilization and think of the core of their cultural and religious identities as unchanged for thousands of years. However, the morals and the values carried by the average Indian today — monogamy, marriage, vegetarianism, holidays and celebrations, rites and rituals — all stem from thousands of years of mingling with the outside world. What we define as violent invaders and conquerors today have played an important role in shaping our culture into its current form. Not only did the Mughals contribute to our aesthetics and our lexicon but they also brought with them mathematics, science and philosophy. Global trade helped carry the Indo-Arabic number system (the numerals 0 to 9) to Africa, Europe, and eventually to the rest of the world. The British brought their own legal and judicial systems, passed down from the Romans, the railway infrastructure, and a bizarre penal code which sought to divide the subcontinent culturally, morally, and geographically according to their own prudish Victorian attitudes.

Hinduism, a major global religion today, has its roots in the Vedas, a collection of manuscripts believed to have been written by ancient sages at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ. The Vedas described the lives and spiritual pursuits of the priestly class, the Brahmins of ancient India. Before being written down, they were orally passed on from teacher to pupil. The Vedas described the lives of gods, rites and rituals, spells and incantations, all of which have their roots in even earlier animistic traditions, or the worship of animals, plants and nature — a theme common to the birth of nearly all religions. These texts were central to the agrarian communities that inhabited the Indus Valley. However, one might be hard pressed to call this Hinduism. These ancient traditions later branched out into numerous schools of thought such as Samkhya, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Yoga, Mimamsa, and Vedanta, each with their own unique set of philosophies.

Due to the geographical scale of the Indian subcontinent, the diversity in language, culture, and race, the ideological descendants of Vedic traditions were in the hundreds, if not thousands, and were regarded as a way of life by those who practiced them. The word ‘Hindu’ was simply used to describe people living near the Sindh, a river that flows through the northwestern part of the subcontinent. The word had nothing to do with the individual beliefs of these people. The modern form of Hinduism developed in the 18th century through reformist movements started by Ram Mohan Roy who wished to rid Hindu traditions of superstition and promote rational and ethical ideas about the religion. Thinkers such as Dayananda Sarasvati, Paramahamsa Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekanada, would develop the idea of a unified Indian continent and seed missionary movements that brought Hinduism to the shores of Europe and later, the United States. Savarkar, who used the term hindutva to describe ‘the quality of being Hindu’, brought on a politically-charged connotation to Hinduism. This was further fueled by the Indian Independence movement that promoted the idea of ‘India as a Hindu nation’ before the eventual partitioning of the subcontinent along religious lines.

It is a topic of much debate whether an organized and unified Hindu nationalist identity that brought the sheer variety of the subcontinent under one banner to overthrow colonialism would have naturally evolved without the presence of the British Raj. More importantly, the idea of a ‘Hindu nation’ starkly contrasts the cultural openness of the early inhabitants of the subcontinent, and their acceptance of hundreds of cultures and different belief systems, which is ironic considering the foundation of Hindutva is based on the myth that India has always been a country for Hindus.

What are we?

Does my cat know he’s a cat? Do animals know of themselves? What about viruses and bacteria? You might say no to all of these questions and state that the ability to know oneself is unique to homo sapiens. The correct answer is debatable but not really the point I am trying to make. What if I asked you what you made you believe you were human, or conscious, or even real? There is good reason for you to believe in all of those things because you might think it’s ridiculous to believe we are just deterministic machines running on genetic code. Surely, we must have free will. Surely, we must be the most intelligent byproduct of evolutionary pressures. Surely, we must be the only creatures capable of stewarding the Earth. Surely, we must be correct about the things we know and accept as fact.

How comfortable would you be if none of these were true? I won’t attempt to answer these questions here because these are an entirely separate discussion but my point is that we believe we are a number of things only because we have identified with these beliefs for a good portion of our lives. Like the Ptolemaists who believed the Earth was the center of the Universe, or Creationists who believe ‘the Earth is 6000 years old and dinosaur bones exist only to test our faith in god’, there may still be numerous misconceptions of reality that we accept as common fact. Regardless of what these beliefs are, it’s critical to understand that our beliefs are our identity. Through many years of indoctrination, people on opposite sides of the Korean Demilitarized Zone still identify as human beings, but their world views are starkly different. One might defend the ideals of capitalist society while the other might think his leader is god and gladly give his life to protect this belief.

There is no distinguishing between one’s beliefs and oneself. Our beliefs form our habits, which in turn form our personalities. We live our lives from the point of view of our beliefs; a home forged from our own subjective interpretations of the world. We hold ourselves accountable to our identity; define ourselves with tokens of adjectives, layers of tradition and symbolism, while in the meantime, we fight to preserve every shred of it, and live the rest of our lives in a struggle to cultivate it. We try to keep it sacred, unique, and immutable. Otherwise, we ask ourselves, what is the point? We work tirelessly to make sure we’re not just another cardboard cutout while raking in trophies, certificates, photographs, children, exclusive club memberships, Internet points — anything to expand our fairytale legacy; anything to suppress our natural mortality and increasing vulnerability. We judge ourselves not through the motivations, beliefs or struggles of others; we judge others based on ourselves. Identity is a relational web. It is a comparison sheet we use to analyse our place in the world. It helps us weave a meaningful story to answer difficult questions such as: What am I? When did I begin? What will happen to me when I die?

No one is born religious. No one is born to identify with a particular piece of land. No one is born to identify with a particular political party. No one is born as a specific identity. We are all simply products of indoctrination. Every single day, from the moment we are born, our education begins — not towards an ideal of truth but towards survival. The agenda of the education system is only a reflection of the cultural landscape it inhabits. Perhaps only science can claim the ability to course-correct and steer its way towards better models of the universe. Humans, meanwhile, are not so flexible. Between years three and four, most children start forming opinions about the world and themselves. I am this. I like that. This young identity is shaped through an education system whose primary objective is passing exams, failing which the child is immediately labelled as stupid. The child is routinely compared with their classmates, labelled any number of things — shy, honest, hardworking, problematic, unmotivated. Their place in the world begins to solidify. The child, in most cases, assimilates these assessments as accurate characteristics about themselves, never questioning their validity.

Over the course of a lifetime, many layers of identity are crafted and worn, each accentuating every other. Our identity has an appetite. It must consume knowledge and meaning or risk starvation. Some may be consumed by this hunger, turning into narcissists and megalomaniacs. Others might see through the illusion. Yet, most people never manage to leave their opinions behind, not enough to provoke a different perspective because the need never makes itself apparent. Most people internalise their self-beliefs themselves to the point where they are defined by them. People tend to stick with people who think like they do. They fall into a loop of self-compliant views and confirmation biases. Eventually, this simplistic view of the world and the self becomes hardwired and impossible to outgrow. Anything that challenges these hardwired beliefs is first ignored as fake news, but eventually, it brings forth an increasingly agitated response. The stronger the hold of identity, the greater is its tendency to fight back against change. People might call themselves vegan, neo-marxist, jazz aficionados, liberal, Muslim, pan-romantics, Indian first, Maharashtrian second, [enter artist’s name]’s biggest fan. They might have good reason to suspect these words as truth. Regardless of their accuracy, these are just layers of identity, to be worn as per the demands of the situation, like seasonal clothing.

When people communicate, it is a specific identity that does the talking. When I am speaking to my boss, I wear the mask of a loyal employee; when I am speaking to my son, I wear the mask of a loving father; with a stranger, all the politeness I can muster; with a foe, skepticism, mistrust, anger. We carry countless and distinct identities, only to utilize a specific ASL — a condensed and limited disclosure of the ego based on the situation and circumstance. These are like webpages which hide the underlying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code while only showing you what you wanted to see — a funny cat video. The individual’s relational web grows with every new encounter, every new discovery about the world. It begs to answer only one question — Where is my place in the world? The relational web offers a map to reality; a model that seeks to understand and tailor itself based on experience. This is an intrinsic biological mechanism without which the ego cannot survive.

Our identity is life itself. It is the very antithesis to death. These are polar opposites: creation and destruction. Identity forges meaning while death snatches it away in an instant. While the pursuit of meaning is a lifelong endeavour, ageing is a paradox. Ageing in the modern world is the contradiction between wanting a longer life as well as infinite youth. A trillion-dollar anti-aging industry that only seeks to postpone the inevitable, is testament to this fact. In the meantime, all we are left with is the pursuit of polishing our individual story. Some might cherish the annual event that signifies the day they were born while others might hate it, resenting the lives and achievements of others associated with a smaller number while casting everyone else into a basket of irrelevance. Perhaps this is why the shadow of anonymity offered by the Internet is such a comforting place to live. But whether offline or online, my ASL is whatever I want it to be as long as it gives me the joy that I seek and the comfort I need to go on.

There is no point in living in a cage of dubious and limiting self-beliefs. I am not suggesting you could fly simply by identifying as a bird. I am merely suggesting identity is an emergent phenomenon. It is a continuous carving and remodeling of the ego. It evolves in response to experience of an immediate environment because it is essentially a tool evolved for survival. With that knowledge, at the very least, it might bring you a step closer to staying open to new ideas and possibilities. Just don’t take yourself too seriously.

[aalapdavjekar]

Vegans need to add some intersectional theory to their diet

Veganism is almost always taken to be nothing more than a restriction on one’s dietary choices. To the newcomer, this might seem to be the case.

In my case, I dipped my toes in, thinking it’s a mere puddle, but the bottom gave way and I was left submerged in an ocean of interwoven relationships and narratives. As i tried to swim to the surface, i was instead thrust deeper into a never-ending quest to transform myself and the world around me.

What does all this mean?

It means that while I became vegan when I realised cows can only give milk when they are pregnant - a fact that leads to the exploitation of their reproductive organs for the production of milk - I stayed vegan only because I realised I had been socially conditioned to think of cows as “for the use of humans only”; as walking milk factories; as necessities to satisfy our nutrition.

I realised it was similar to the conditioning my grandparents’ generation went through when most Indian women were expected to marry and pump out babies; their labor a necessity for our survival.

It was similar to colonial beliefs that suggest the colonised have no ability to govern themselves and must be ruled by white men who were naturally superior by virtue of being white. Exploitation was a necessity for the good of the empire. If they didn’t rule us, surely someone else would.

It was similar to cultural beliefs that led some races or castes to see others as so different than them that they needed to be governed by a different set of rules altogether (as was the case with Jim Crow laws in the US or the Manusmriti in India).

Such social conditioning led my grandparents’ generation to celebrate the birth of a son. The dairy industry today sends its sons straight to slaughter.

Veganism has never been a question of species, sex, race, religion, or caste. Veganism transcends these ideas of compartmentalised hierarchies by looking for structures of violence and then rejecting them in favour of something better.

Organisations promoting veganism are called anti-Hindu or Islamophobic for the same reason witches are burned alive or atheists are shot dead - because structures of power fight back against any form of reform. Lincoln, MLK, Harvey Milk, Chico Mendes, Marielle Franco and Avijit Roy - all went against the grain and ultimately paid for it with their lives.

Opposition to reform can take far more nuanced positions as well.

Non-vegans (out of good intentions) bring up the question of the unethical treatment of farm labourers or the lack of workers rights in a certain polity as a critique of veganism but one cannot justify the enslavement of non-human animals simply because human exploitation exists.

Some say there are bigger problems out there and that the lives of farm animals aren’t important - but this is a straw man. The assumption here is that the violence against farm animals happens in isolation, cut off from the rest of the world, when in reality, there is a great overlap between the conditions that lead to patriarchy, psychopathy, violence against women and minorities, the destruction of the environment, and the treatment of farm animals.

We’re conditioned to seeing the world as a fragmented collection of isolated incidents, when in reality, it’s all the same great, big, tangled mess of existence.

Veganism offers the lens of anti-speciesism to see the world as an interconnected and interdependent web of life, as opposed to a binary, human-centered, and male-dominated world.

It took us thousands of years to understand the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around. It’s taken us many more to understand the world does not revolve around humans.

Most vegans I know don’t try to go beyond a simple change in diet. Many vegans eat plant-based for their health for the same reason most meditators I know meditate for better emotional resilience or higher productivity at their job, not total liberation from Samsara.

To each their own.

The point is not to discard an entire philosophy because the majority are satisfied with the puddle.

The opposite is also true - one cannot look up to veganism as a one-size-fits-all solution to all of the world’s problems. I’ve often found that the cultish flavour of certain vegan circles goes hand-in-hand with the inability to look past the diet.

But I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

There are many more intersectionalities worth exploring and I’ll keep bringing them up. For now I’d highly recommend reading the works of Carol J. Adams, especially The Sexual Politics of Meat.