Digging for Meaning

Just read this - ‘I want to help humans genetically modify themselves’ So a guy is obsessed with a certain technology, feels he can be a pioneer to a brave new world and justifies it to himself in bad faith by thinking - " This technology that I’m trying to do is for all of us. Whether you’re a big corporation or somebody in their basement, you have access to this stuff – everybody does. People respond very positively to that." This, I believe is a dangerous belief - that tech can 'level the playing field' in a sense. It never does. Internet was supposed to be the great leveler. And for a while with Yahoo anonymous chat and early days of mushrooming internet cafes, it really did feel that way. But soon enough, the powerful people have turned it into a tool that is more advantageous to their interest at the expense of common people's. Governments use it for surveillance and propaganda. Companies use it to brainwash people into buying things they don't ne...

Things turn into cash once they are stripped of their lives - their breath, their freedom, their dignity or their joy. A fish on the table and a cubicle dweller.. both are united in their solvency, their ability to be stripped of their lives and turned into money. This solvency is our own making Hold up your hands against the sun and your favourite gods Do they dissolve?  Hold up your heart and see if it beats for them Hold your joys in your hands and fling them towards the system, does it stick? For a better world first we need to walk away from this world.

If I were a king, I would declare it a birth right & a duty to look up and feed one's soul with the beauty of sky. Every soul deserves to feel the majesty of the great above -  The ominous greys rolling whites serene blues or the orange blue kisses of the setting sun... There is beauty in every sky. Every sky is free of our smallness, our worries, our angst. All hopes, dreams and realisations converge upwards above clouds and above satellites in the great beyond that our gazes seek and find above us.

China's vision is to dominate the world's economy with its strategic investments and past currency manipulations : It is foxily forcing indebtedness on smaller countries like Pakistan & Sri Lanka; It is retaining and leveraging technology that it gets exposed to in trade (even as India spends billions in technological purchase but doesn't insist on comparable transfer of technology. Idiots) It is is doing everything possible to remain the factory of the world - either with currency manipulation in the past or by taking control over strategic global resources (read about what it is doing to corner global supply of strategic mineral resources - lithium in australia, canada & africa ; cobalt in Congo ,etc)  ... Essentially, CHINA has a vision. However repressive and terrible for others or its own people, it has a vision to win in the new zero-sum game of global power. (It need not have been a zero-sum game. But right wing assholes across the world are hell bent...

Ctrl-tab Ctrl-tab... Scroll Scroll Scoll.. Alt-tab Alt-tab... Catch yourself slipping away. Deep  breath.  Close the browser. silence the mobile and turn it away. Open an offline-real-paper diary. Stop your thighs from lolling impatiently. Stay still.  Pick up a pen awkwardly. ahh, the fingers are stiff. It will take a  while for them to get used to holding a pen. Quick finger exercise - open the palm, stretch finger outwards, close into a fist, dig the fingers in. Repeat. Ok now.. about to pick up the pen again, but eyes dart towards the screen. Tempted to check email. Shut up. The last consequential email came two months ago. Nothing of consequence is online.   Pick up the pen. Don't fetishize the object now. Get on with it. Put it on paper, write a word and start it already. If I get to a sentence, perhaps I will get into a flow and won't have to look up from the paper at all.  One sentence later. Ahh. That was good. I am feeling g...

We, the people, are gullible idiots. C'mon, admit it. We have all been bullied into bad deals by powerful charlatans at some point or another. Governments are no different. The current one is getting away with our personal data and going about distributing our public resources and monies to its favourite cronies.This is no exceptional government. This happens all the time, in all the countries - to varying degrees. The varying part is important. I would much rather be in Norway where the leeway for such giveaways against the interest of public is small, compared to Angola and Nigeria where the oil bonanza instead has become oil curse. One of the important ways for moving towards Norway and away from Nigeria is for the public to become aware and educated about power. Education is a bad word now - what India creates in not educated people, it creates literate minions. By educated, i mean people who can reason, who can think critically, who can see the world from different perspect...

Reasonable people are a rare species. very rare. The world overwhelmingly is unreasonable, always has been. 20th century was a great experiment in trying to institutionalise reasonableness. But alas, we failed in that experiment. and what that messy utopia of rationality has spewed out is a 21st century that is dangerously globalised, unipolar and susceptible to selfishness of a few. If by chance, i meet someone who is, i feel like hugging him/her and somehow ensuring that the person remains a part of my life in some measure through conversations, ideas or projects together.