Simplify!

I am sure I am not alone in my desire to simplify life. Most people, whose lives are equally cluttered with things accumulated over time and activities that are without much purpose would yearn for achieving the same goal. What I am not sure is why we have this yearning to simplify and how to resolve it.

Perhaps the root cause is nostalgia. We always look back at the past and think of it as “good old days.” For most of us, we had fewer things in life in the past and hence simplification gets equated with good times.

May be it is in our DNA. I read somewhere that going back to nature is like going home. It is where we came from and within ourselves there is a strong desire to get back. Living in a cottage surrounded by nature is probably the closest we can come to going “back home” according to this theory.

Talking about living in a cottage in a forest away from people of course brings us to Henry David Thoreau. His reason for doing what he did is very well articulated in his book Walden, written when he lived near Walden Pond in Concord, some five miles from our house in Acton. He says,” I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and when I came to die discover that I had not lived.” So perhaps, we desire to simplify because we believe that in doing so we will be able to learn what life has to teach.

That sounds like a really strong reason. However putting it to practice is another matter. For most of us, giving up everything and living in the woods in not practical or may not even be advisable. Only hermits like the mad man Unabomber would opt for such a life these days. Besides if all of us decide to do what Thoreau did, we would end up destroying all the woods and quickly starving to death.

However, that does not mean that we can not reduce the clutter. We can downsize from our large dwellings, generally without suffering much pain and reduce our possessions quite drastically. We can reduce many unnecessary activities and interactions without becoming a hermit or misanthrope.

Even that is easier said than done, but I believe it is necessary to at least make an attempt. I believe in Mr. Thoreau’s philosophy. I too do not want to discover that I had not lived when I came to die.

OK, so which ones of the twenty five magazines I subscribe to right now can I stop getting?

End of Exploration?

April 12th this year was the fiftieth anniversary of one of the great events in human history. On that day, fifty years ago, Yuri Gagarin blasted off in his Vostok spacecraft and became the first human being to venture into space. For people around the world it was a very exciting event which led to even more adventures and “firsts” in space. The first woman in space, the first multiple person team in orbit, the first space walk…..

The culmination of these early days of space travel was the Apollo program. I clearly remember the day when Apollo 8 and its crew of three Americans (Borman, Lowell, and Anders) left earth’s orbit and headed toward the moon. For a teenager growing up in Rajkot, India, I could not think of anything that could be more exciting.

Of course, there was something more exciting on the horizon---the actual landing on the moon. I was studying in IIT during that time and was hoping to catch the live radio broadcast of Armstrong stepping on the moon. However, he decided to step outside earlier than planned (he was too excited to sit inside) and so by the time we returned from our classes, the event had happened…and the mankind had taken a giant leap.

And, it all began on April 12th 1961 with Gagarin’s flight.

However, one would not have guessed the importance of the anniversary given the complete lack of excitement about it. There was almost no mention of it in the news papers and no one I met talked about it. My broadcast email about this or posting of a video of Gagarin’s flight on Face Book was generally met by a big yawn.

I am puzzled by such lack of enthusiasm, not just by the people that I interact with, but by our society in general. I guess we are all so tied up with the current affairs that we do not have time for such frivolous activities as space exploration. After all, there is no financial rate of return on adventures like this---they only fulfill our innate curiosity to explore.

What puzzles me is that we have always financed such explorations in the past, even when the economic conditions were worse than what we have now. So, what is different now? Are there other ways by which our desire to explore being satisfied?

Maybe I am all wrong and someday there will be a manned space flight to Mars or we will establish a colony on the moon. Those will be the adventures that would captivate human beings once again and set the imaginations of then teenagers to fire.

However, given the current lack of enthusiasm for anything like this, I doubt that I would live to see that day. We have probably already arrived at the end of the days of exploration.

Authority, Responsibility, and Accountability

I work for a management consulting firm. One of the tasks we often perform is to evaluate the way a specific process is working in a company. We are asked to recommend changes if it is not working well---and often the issue it is the way it being managed.

As one would expect, any complex process involves multiple people; each with his/her own authority, responsibility, and accountability---authority to make certain decisions and take actions, responsibility to make sure his/her part of the process works well, and accountability for the end results. For a process to work well, these three elements have to be in alignment with each other. So, if you hold a person responsible for a process, and accountable for the results, he/she has to have the authority to make decisions affecting the outcome. These elements not being in alignment is often a reason for the breakdown of the system.

Such a misalignment is the reason for why many systems we encounter in our daily life do not work, both at a micro and macro levels. Take healthcare for example.

If the government has the responsibility for providing free or subsidized healthcare for older people or people of limited means, it has to have the authority to make decisions and impose regulations that would affect the cost of providing such service. That is the way to achieve alignment. And yet, when government tries to suggest, let alone dictate, how to live healthy lives, the staunch advocates on the right start screaming.

When Michelle Obama talks about providing healthy school lunches, the dim witted firebrands start arguing that we are becoming a nanny state and a child has all the rights to eat Twinkies. Of course, when the child becomes obese and develops health problems, it is the government’s responsibility to take care of him. Responsibility but no authority.

Along the same lines, if you want to have the authority to make all the decisions, then it should be you who should be held accountable if something goes wrong. If you want to live a criminal life and get shot, you should not expect the government to pay for fixing you up and send you out so you get shot once again. Authority but no accountability.

Authority, responsibility, and accountability. They need to be in alignment at all times.

Leaderless Democracy

A brilliant article in the Economist a while back analyzed the financial crisis of California and identified reasons for it. One reason that has stuck in my head is that Californians have perfected the art of using Propositions in the way they make rules. For those not familiar with Propositions, these are questions included in an election ballot asking public at large what to do about certain issue---say, providing a new type of service, changing a law, or taxing something. These votes are binding, and can not be changed unless there is a judicial decision or passage of another Proposition overturning it.

Every time, some propositions pass, some are defeated. Not surprisingly, the Propositions dealing with increasing taxes get defeated and those for providing new services pass. Equally, not surprisingly, the Propositions are thus a major cause for budget deficits.

The reason we elect representatives to go and make laws is that they are empowered to make tough choices on our behalf. They are suppose to lead the way by doing what is right not what is popular. Changing this long accepted way of running country into that run by propositions inevitably leads to a disaster.

Stretching this further, I look at the revolution in Egypt. Enabled by the new social media technology, this was the first instance of a leaderless way of changing the government. The population was able to do what would have required a charismatic leader in the past. It was an electronic equivalent to pushing a binding Proposition.

However, now I wonder what comes next. How will this new found power be wielded? Will the same leaderless population decide to reduce the tax rate? Increase social services? Will they ever be able to make tough choices? Do people ever decide to increase tax or reduce expenses without a leader?

Or will a leader emerge out of this, curtailing the power of the population in order to take unpopular decisions and make changes? I hope so, because in my opinion, a leaderless democracy does not work, because the population at large can not make tough choices.

Flying a Kite

India celebrated the festival of Makar Sankranti on January 14th. One of the only festivals in India that is tied to the Western calendar, Sankranti always falls on the 14th of January and for people in Gujarat, the area I come from, it only means one thing---flying a kite. It is a joy to be in a city like Ahmedabad and see hundreds of kites in the sky.

Although most people can learn to fly a kite---sort of, being good at it is not easy. On the surface of it, you need to learn only two actions--- (i) hold and tug the string, and (ii) play it out. However, a key thing to learn is when to do what. If you hold the string for too long, the kite does not fly---if you just let it go, it does not fly either. It is well synchronized switching between the two actions that would make the kite fly.

Good kite flyers develop an intuitive feel for when to hold and when to let go in order to get optimum performance out of a kite. Further, they learn to read the wind and know how to adjust their actions. Theirs are the kites that fly the highest.

Kite flying is a perfect metaphor for many things we need to learn to do in life.

A perfect example (at least to me) is child rearing. Like kite flying, one needs to do two basic things (i) hold on to the strings (discipline the child or set boundaries) and (ii) let go (let the child explore on his/her own). If you hold on too often and for too long, the child remains highly disciplined but does not progress or take wings. If you let go all the time, the child goes haywire---undisciplined and rudderless. I am sure you have seen examples of both types.

The key again lies in knowing when to do what and acting accordingly. Good parents seem to have developed an intuitive feel for when to hold and when to let go.

Then there is the question of wind---in this case externalities like the prevailing cultural climate and social norms. Different wind pattern requires different actions. Good parents, like good kite flyers are able to read the prevailing winds and adjust accordingly.

Their kites end up flying high.

God and Black Swan

‘The Black Swan’ is an interesting book written by Nassim Taleb. If you wade through the pages of somewhat pompous writing, you would find several good insights. One of them goes like this---In our normal life we only see white swans and you may be tempted to assume that all swans are white. However, this may not be the case. A black swan may exist and be seen by some ornithologist someday. So, the word ‘certainty’ can be applied only to indicate the presence of black swan, if one is seen. One can not be certain that no such swans exist if only white swans are seen.

There is an asymmetry here that applies to many situations.

Take, for example, the question of the existence of God. For many of us, we have not seen evidence that would indicate his existence*. So, we conclude that he does not exist. However, if the above logic is used, the absence of evidence implies only that he may not exist, not that he does not exist. The only time we could be certain is when the opposite happens---an irrefutable proof is found.

So, by this argument, we can not be atheist and claim to be rational at the same time. The only rational position is that of an agnostic.

I am troubled by this. In our daily lives we, the doubters, are given more leeway.

Take for example the court of law. You are innocent until proven guilty. So, the absence of an irrefutable proof that you murdered someone is taken to indicate that you are innocent, not that you may be innocent. The onus is on the other side to prove your guilt.

Why can’t the same logic apply while discussing the existence of God?

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* The purpose of this post is not to question the faithful who are able to see the evidence of God in many events and things around us. It starts with the position held by many of us who do not see the evidence and argues for the validity of atheism as a rational position.

Personal Branding

Branding is an important element for a product. When you establish brand of a product, say a car, you determine which ones of its many attributes are worth highlighting-- those that will differentiate your product from competition. So, for example, Volvo has branded what it builds as a ‘safe’ car and so those obsessed with safety will consider it when shopping for cars.

We also use branding to differentiate ourselves from the others. This personal branding is a natural thing to do unless and until we have gotten rid of our egos. We select one or more of our attributes and try to highlight them. This is done through how we project ourselves, what we do, what we say, and how we interact with people. The arguments we make, the subjects we select to discuss, and things we purchase are often meant to support the brand image we are trying to create and sustain.

The problem comes when people’s image of us does not agree with the one we are trying to portray. Again, thinking of cars, GM’s Pontiac was branded by its tag line ‘Pontiac brings excitement’. Well, the customers did not accept that branding. The car failed to differentiate itself from the ‘non-exciting’ brands and the whole division was shut down. (To be fair, perhaps it brought excitement in the 50s but not in the new century, so it was more of a problem of sustaining its brand.)

So it is with personal brand. We might want to brand ourselves as the rugged outdoors type by driving around in a Jeep. However, our other attributes and actions may leave the people we interact with not thoroughly convinced.

Thus, personal branding has at least two dimensions: (1) what we want people to think about us and (2) what people really think about us.

Another dimension is --- what really is the truth. We may not really be rich but want people to believe that we are. Even more interesting is the fourth dimension----even though we really are not rich by any measure, we think and truly believe that we are. This is the scary stuff, and often thought of as delusional.

I think of all this because soon I am off to India for my 40th reunion. I will meet people who I have not met for four decades. Most of us will see this as an opportunity to re-brand ourselves. The snotty kid of the past would re-brand himself as the savvy globetrotter. Efforts will be made to provide supporting evidence, leading to his brand becoming credible. Or, it would be seen as delusional diatribe by all but the most gullible.

In the end, it would not really matter. But, it will nevertheless be interesting to see how it all plays out.