An experiment in living

We are both fond of Henry David Thoreau. After all, we lived for decades in a house not far from where he did. One of his favorite quotes is his explanation of why he lived simply along the shores of lovely Walden Pond; in a cottage he built himself. “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.” In a previous Blog post (June 2011) I had used this quote to support my desire to simplify life. 

Now, inspired by this quote, we have upended our comfortable retired life in a leafy suburb of Boston to live the life of a nomad with no fixed address. We have sold our house and disposed off most of our stuff. What remains does not even fill a small container. There are a few pieces of furniture and a number of boxes containing some precious books, memorabilia and things we found difficult to part with. We want to “live deliberately” to see what we can learn from traveling the world and make sure that when we come to die we don’t feel that we had not lived. 

We are not pretending to be Thoreau, nor are we pioneers in this mode of living in retirement. There are others who have been doing it and writing on the subject. We draw inspiration from these folks. Also, we are not sure how long we will live this way. There is always the choice of stopping the experiment and planting roots. 

This experiment does not have a well-defined success or failure. It is the journey that counts. We feel that we have already learned a lot in the process of getting rid of stuff, selling the house and the first few weeks of living the nomadic life.

The list of tasks that need to be performed in order to successfully achieve this transition has been unending. We have worked on four parallel work streams over the past few months. The first was to decide what we wanted to keep and how to get rid of what remained. The second was getting the house fixed and selling it. The third work stream was related to putting our joint retired life in order (health insurance, estate planning and such), and the final, which we are deep into is planning for the journey ahead. 

We have decided to stay with family and friends where we have them and it is convenient for them to keep us. All other places we will stay in hotels and Airbnbs. We hope to travel lightly---one suitcase and one backpack each. The first major trip, to Asia for a few months, is more or less planned. After that we have ideas but they need to be implemented. We can more or less be wherever we want to be, assuming we keep good health or don’t get tired of living out of suitcases. That’s the beauty of this experiment. 

We plan to write a Blog that chronicles our journey. The purpose is not to describe what we did everyday. That would be too boring. We hope to outline the experiences we had, the folks we met, and insights we gained. We will sprinkle in a few photographs. 

So, here we go.

Quantum life

The world of the very small is bizarre. When you start investigating how do really tiny things like photons and electrons behave, you find that they exhibit properties that defy imagination. The field of study that captures all that is called quantum mechanics. This is not a new area; scientists have been studying it for over hundred years.

In my quest to keep my left-brain alive during my retirement, I study topics like quantum mechanics, theory of relativity and origin of life.  I must admit, sometimes I find it hard to fully digest even relatively elementary books on these subjects, but still I find them fascinating.

I also try to draw analogies between these theories and our human experience. I wrote a Blog post titled “Theory of Relatives” on how a similar sounding theory applies to our behavior. I published this tongue-in-cheek article in August of 2017. Now I cannot resist the temptation of doing the same to quantum mechanics. So here I go. 

A basic property of a very small particle, photon for example, is that it takes all possible pathsfrom origin to destination. That sounds creepy, doesn’t it? However, even more interesting is that if we make a measurement, it will make up its mind and be found in one and only one specific path. 

I have found many people exhibit similar property. They would not make up their mind on a controversial topic until youtake one. Then they decide. This could be agreement or disagreement with you. One person I know is so willing to agree with you, that her waffling on a subject comes to an end only when you decide. Then she agrees. Some others I know are confrontational and will always take a position oppositeof what you have stated. Quantum mechanics at work, I bet.

The world is composed of two types of particles, Bosons and Fermions. Bosons are the particle incarnation of energy (photon for light), while Fermions are what matter is composed of. Quantum mechanics says that Bosons are gregarious; they like to hang out with one another, while Fermions (e.g., electron) are antisocial; they resist encroachment by other Fermions. It is this property that allows us to have lasers, which are composed of photons marching together in a very disciplined manner. On the other hand an atom, which is mostly empty space, does not allow another atom to occupy the same space. That’s why you can’t walk through a wall.

I can imagine people in some cultures, say Asian ones, are like Bosons, thriving in their collective living, while those in Scandinavian countries are like Fermions. They like their space around them.  Of course this is a gross generalization. In such groups of Bosons, there would be isolated Fermions and vice versa. 

One of the most amazing aspects of quantum mechanics is entanglement, in which two particles, world apart, behave in a lock-step manner. The state of one particle immediately defines the state of the other. Further, if two particles are in an entangled state together, then neither of them can be entangled with any other particles in the universe. This is monogamy of quantum entanglement…passion at a distance.

I feel I have seen this movie before, yes and it is a Bollywood movie. A hero and heroine in a strictly monogamous relationship can be found singing different verses of the same song even though they may be world apart. What better example of quantum entanglement?

One final example of quantum mechanics that has found its way in regular living is called zero-point energy. That refers to the fact that even completely empty space has some energy. It can never be zero. If you want to be technical, this vacuum energy is suspected to have caused cosmic inflation after the Big Bang, which created our universe. 

I find this property resident in my brain. No matter how hard I try, I can never empty out my brain of thoughts. Now, this is where Indian gurus shine. They have developed an ability to achieve a thoughtless mind. I suspect, however, that there is some isolated thought lurking around even in their well-developed brains. One cannot fool around with zero-point energy.

So there you have it. If quantum mechanics is bizarre, we are equally so.

The Great Depression

In retrospect, it was inevitable. However, at the time we thought, or hoping, it would never happen. 

Almost exactly eleven years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the great recession, in the fall of 2019, the American financial institutions were under a major cyber attack by the Russian hackers. Overnight, a majority of them became insolvent and with that the entire machinery that kept this country going came to a grinding halt.

There were early warnings. The intelligence services had identified attempts by the known Russian hackers to infiltrate the American banks and investment houses. However, when they took that warning to president Trump, he responded by saying he will call Putin and make sure they were not up to some mischief. When Putin said that they had nothing to do with such attempts, and in fact, there were no hackers in Russia, Trump was satisfied. He told the intelligence services that they were wrong and the whole thing was a Democratic plot to stop him from being re-elected.

At first, Trump did not understand that an attack had happened and the financial system was in grave danger of collapse. However hard the economists and Federal Reserve Board chairman tried to explain it to him, even in a sixth grade English, the president refused to accept that anything was wrong. He explained that Sean Hannity did not think anything was wrong so it could not be. Besides he was a successful businessman and knew financial matters better than anyone else. 

Things got bad very quickly. It was clear that an international effort was required as was the case during the great recession. The Europeans, Canadians and Chinese were eager to work with US to align their policies so that the bottom would not fall out. Trump’s response was predictable. “We have America First policy and we don’t depend on Canada, run by a weak person Trudeau; or Europeans, because they sucked us dry; or the Chinese, because they are shifty people.” The only person Trump relied on was Putin, who was too eager to help. 

A large number of people became unemployed. Trump quickly attacked the illegal immigrants for taking away jobs. “If they had allowed me to build the wall, this would not have happened.” 

As he looked at the unemployment numbers climbing rapidly, he asked the economists to provide him the number of people employed. This he used for his next rally in Alabama. “See the number of people employed. It is larger than the number during Truman’s administration. I am the greatest job creator in the history of mankind.” The crowd of hypnotized followers cheered and waved Make America Great Again posters.

Then there were riots on the street as people desperate for food broke into grocery stores. These images were shown as breaking news on all the regular channels except Fox News, which maintained that the whole thing was a right wing conspiracy and continued showing a program on pet care. “All fake news being shown by the enemy of the people,” tweeted Trump. “I definitely saw Hillary standing on the sidelines, directing the whole operation.”

The next few days were chaotic. Trump was found one day by the White House staff, roaming in his bathrobe, shouting obscenity and nonsense. “It is all a plot. Nothing is wrong. I am the greatest president who ever lived. It is all Crooked Hillary’s fault. Obama is behind it. The Mexicans are coming after me. Muslim terrorists have infiltrated our economy. Sean Hannity is going to be my Vice President. The Democrats should be all jailed. Nobody knows anything like me. I am the greatest, THE GREATEST”

The 25^thamendment was invoked, and Trump was removed from the office for the reason of insanity. His whereabouts are unknown but it is widely rumored that he has taken residence in a small island in the Pacific Ocean and they have elected him their emperor. 

I hope you enjoyed my brief narrative. I now better get to my soup kitchen before it closes. I better get used to the chicken broth soup; this great depression is going to last for a while. 

Experiencism

Numerous wise folks tell us that one should collect experiences in life, not material goods. I have been an early convert to this philosophy. Having been brought up in a family that did not care much for collecting material goods, this is not surprising. Also, I live in in a town next to Concord where Henry David Thoreau conducted his experiment of living with bare minimum. His influence has further fortified my belief. 

This idea is now becoming mainstream. Call it the beginning of the post-materialism era. 

For example, the business world has started to capitalize on helping their clients “collect experiences” much the same way they would material goods. If you go to the Airbnb website, you can browse experiencesas a category along with homes and restaurants. In that category you would find bike rides, history walks, craft class or intimate concerts. Purchasing an experience will let you participate in an activity for a fee. The experience of meeting an interesting local person in a strange city no longer has to be left to chance; the seller of that experience will make sure that you domeet one, no matter how contrived the whole thing feels. 

Materialism is defined as preoccupation with or emphasis on material objects and consideration with a disinterest or rejection of spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values. I hereby coin the word “experiencism” as a similar obsession with experiences, bought or otherwise. Just as a materialist brags about possessing an exclusive piece of furniture, we experiencists will make a big deal out of the experience of having an exclusive access to an artist. 

The parallels between materialism and experiencism are striking. A materialist will compare himself/herself with the others based on what he/she owns. “My car is better than your, or this dresser I got from my grandfather is far more valuable than the IKEA thing you have.” The experiencist will boast about the authenticity of his experience compared to yours because he went to Venice in 1970’s before the hoards of tourists arrived. “My experience was better than yours.” Just as a materialist will gloss over the fact that he has to worry about his expensive car being stolen or grandfather’s dresser being totally unusable because the drawers are falling off, the experiencist will not tell you about any unpleasantness associated with the acquisition of his experience--- atrocious weather or being fleeced by a waiter.  

In the end it is all about ego. Even though gaining experiences is a better way to enjoy life than acquiring material goods, at least according to people like me, we can turn even that into a way to establish our superiority over others.

How they justify Trump

One of my classmates from long time ago, a Trump supporter, forwarded me an article in London Times written by Mathew Parris who used to be a Conservative Member of Parliament in UK. In it, Mr. Parris defended Trump by saying that his ways may be crude, but he tells it the way it is and the end justifies the means.  Here is the response I wrote to my classmate:

“Let me state upfront that there are some issues that Trump is focusing on that indeed need to be addressed. That list includes, for example, illegal immigration, crumbling infrastructure, our trade imbalances, and the presence of American troops overseas.

I also understand that sometimes the end justifies the means, as the article in London Times says. For example, if you find that one of your friends or family members is becoming dependent on alcohol or drugs, and gentle reminders don’t work, you should take away the offending substances even though it may seem rude. In that case the end does justify means. 

However, the way Trump has gone about addressing some of the justifiable “ends” has been outrageous for most parts. For example, branding all illegal immigrants as “rapists and murders” and blaming them for increase in crime, when all evidence is to the contrary, is unacceptable, even though something needs to be done about illegal immigration. The collateral damage he has caused by raising the level of hatred toward minorities has grave and devastating consequences. It does not take a leap of faith to expect that a white supremacist who is not stopped when he goes after Mexicans will go after Indians, or any other non-white person someday. 

Similarly addressing trade balances or overseas troops in a civilized manner is all right, but going in like a gangster, threatening and bullying our allies and friends is not justified. Would you like to live in a country that has no friends and is hated? Do you think our friends (or ex-friends) will take these punches today and not return the favor tomorrow when we need them?

Then there are situations where the only “end” I can think of is preserving his monumental ego or wealth. The actions being taken cannot be justified because the country derives no benefits.  The feud he creates with whoever says anything against him falls in this category.  If he has thin skins, he should not be in business of running this country. Calling every news item that does not pamper his ego as “fake news” or insulting everyone, including women, handicapped persons or war heroes is not a sign of a mature person but a pampered child who has not grown up.  It poisons the well and threatens the civility that is the foundation of any society.”

What do you think of my response? Does it make sense? 

Pack rat of mementos

I am an organized person when it comes to recording and preserving memories.  

I have taken or acquired (primarily from my father’s collection) thousands of photographs. They are in form of physical prints, slides and more recently digital format. Over the past several years, I have had a large number of slides digitized and also many prints. The digital versions reside in my laptop as well as on external hard drives. In addition, several thousand are in the cloud, accessible not only on my laptop but also on the iPhone. So, I can find and show a photo of, say a trip to South America we made in 1980, or that of my grandparents, to anyone anywhere as long as I have an Internet connection. 

I write a travelogue of every major trip we undertake, replete with pictures. By now, they occupy several three ring binders, and their digital versions are available on my laptop, on external hard drives and in the cloud. Many physical mementos from these trips (e.g., ticket stubs) are carefully filed in additional three ring binders. 

The record of my academic life is well preserved as well, starting from grade records (“Pragati Patrak”, as they say in Gujarati) of high schools, all the way to the doctorate diploma from MIT. They are all digitized and stored in various places. That is also the case with my work life that extended almost four decades. Although I have thrown away most of the paper reports I generated, some still remain. When I retired a few years ago, I wrote down a short description, along with pictures, for each of some one hundred of the most interesting projects I had worked on. The memos and letters I received from my clients and senior manager praising my work are also preserved in both physical and digital formats. The clippings form newspapers and magazines that quoted me are stored away in a safe place. 

This habit of recording and storing of professional work continues in my retired life. A description of the recent work I have done for non-profits and for science teachers in a middle school is preserved. Then there is a binder that contains the record of my photography achievements. Every photo that won some accolade is copied, printed and filed, and so are commendations. 

Finally, as if all that is not sufficient, I have started writing my autobiography. I have outlined my life in India, to be elaborated later, and written down what happened during my first seven years in US. Of course, this will be illustrated through pictures that I have digitized. Important letters from friends and relatives, many of them long gone, will augment this autobiography.

In colloquial American English, a “pack rat” is a person who acquires and hoards stuff, and does not throw anything away. I have no interest in stuff, but records (diaries, commendations, certificates, photographs, letters, clippings) that jog memory---mementos---that’s a whole different ball game. 

I am a pack rat of mementos!

That having been said, like the other type of pack rat, I wonder sometimes why am I hoarding all these records? 

I hope that we will check them out when sitting on rocking chairs after we enter the next phase of retirement and slow down. We will re-live the experience and say, “remember what happened to us in Bolivia?” Maybe reading praises from family, friends or clients will cheer me up when I am feeling low.

I also want to leave a record of my life for the next generation. Perhaps my granddaughter will find my school records from India and say, “Look at these…grandpa was a good student!” Not that I am rich and famous, but my progeny may be interested in the person who immigrated to the United States and started a family. That is my hope.

Perhaps nothing of this sort will happen. All the paper records will get dumped the next time we move or when we are no longer around. The electronic records will survive but become inaccessible because of forgotten passwords. Except for mild curiosity, there will be no incentive for my present or future family members to dig out the lost information. 

Along with the atoms that constitute my physical being, the electrons that organize my records will find an alternate purpose. And that will be that.

The pleasure of Abstract Art

I have been using Adobe’s Photoshop products for quite some time. I have both Lightroom and Photoshop Elements that I use for enhancing and cropping the pictures I take.

A few years ago, the possibilities of manipulating picture using Photoshop Element’s layering and filtering capabilities started to intrigue me. Initially, it was to cut and paste elements of one picture into another. Then I learned how to create digital images using superimposed pictures. The next was creating abstracts, with no element of reality. 

When I post these creations on Facebook, some of my friends are not too happy. They advise me to stick to conventional photography. However, a few praise them. Not only that, one member of my photo club bought one of my creations. 

More important then receiving praises from others, or selling one, is the fact that creating these images gives me pleasure.  A different type of pleasure than what I get in regular picture taking. 

So, I ask myself why is it so. Why do we (at least some of us) enjoy looking at and creating abstract art? I found the answer in an excellent paper “What does the brain tell us about abstract art?” written by Vared Aviv, Faculty of Dance, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, which was published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, 28 February 2014.

Vared says, “Abstract art frees our brain from the dominance of reality, enabling it to flow within its inner states, create new emotional and cognitive associations, and activate brain-states that are otherwise harder to access. This process is apparently rewarding as it enables the exploration of yet undiscovered inner territories of the viewer’s brain.”

“In contrast to the processing of daily objects, art is free from the functional restrictions imposed on the visual system during our daily life. This places abstract art in a unique position within visual processing—far from the natural (“survival”) role of that system.”

In describing what happened when the brains of subjects looking at artwork were analyzed, Vared says, “Different categories of painting—landscape, portrait and still life—evoked activity at localized and category-specific brain regions. In contrast, abstract art did not activate a unique localized brain region. Rather, brain activity related to abstract art appeared in brain regions activated by all other categories as well. To put it differently, it seems that we know that we view abstract art by realizing that what we view does not belong to any other specific category of art. Namely, we recognize abstract art by exclusion.”

“Increased brain activity in response to representational art was mostly attributed to the process of object recognition, and the activation of memory and associations systems. In other words, abstract art introduces us to unfamiliar (or less familiar) situation. While analyzing abstract art, the visual/perception system is less engaged with focal and converging gaze but rather to a more homogeneous gaze.” 

“Of course, being man-made for no immediate practical use, art in general enables the viewer to exercise a certain detachment from “reality” which, so it seems, provides certain rewards to the art-lover. This frees us, to a large extent, from (automatically) activating object-related systems in the brain whose task is to “seek” for familiar (memory- based) compositions.” 

“To conclude—abstract art is a very recent (100 years old or so) invention of the human brain. Its success in attracting the brains of so many of us suggests that it has an important cognitive/emotional role.”

So, now I get it. My hunch that I am exercising a different part of my brain while creating abstracts is valid, and my urge to create it is based on the important cognitive/emotional role that it plays.

 Sharad Gandhi, a writer and thinker in the field of Artificial Intelligence says, “Our mind is an amazing collaborative teamwork of our emotional and rational capabilities. Our intuition is a key outcome of the emotional mind. I believe that humans are fundamentally intuition machines and our rational (and conscious) self are just a simulation layered on top of intuition based machinery.” He reminds us of a quote by Albert Einstein, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Now that my basic question seems to have been answered, I am moving on. Just as in the representational art, some abstract art is more appealing than others. The rules of shapes, colors, textures still apply. So far my effort has been seat-of-the-pants. I “feel” if the output is attractive or not. I hope to learn some basics and observe what the well-established abstract artists have created to further improve my sense of appreciation.