The Green Party?

“For a vegetarian, you seem to have a lot of demands,” I told myself. 

I am obviously out of sync with what being vegetarian means these days. At an age when everyone demands rights, I guess it is the same for vegetarians (and vegans, too). Rightly so too. Everyone deserves their place in the sun or rather on Earth, the rich, the economically challenged, the disabled bodies and pretty much everyone else. 

From the things that I understood in my impressionable age, by sticking around erudite adults, I assumed that one needs to control his primal desires to be a better soul. By suppressing innate desires to attack, devour and consume fellow members of the animal kingdom, it is believed people would pick up more brownie karmic points in the repeating cycles of rebirth. Hurting the sentiments of their own kind with their uppity attitude does not count. 

Of course, some have turned green for health reasons. Perhaps they had a pressing need to care for the environment or just ethical judgment of killing a fellow being with no religious undertones. 

My impression of how a vegetarian conducts himself is perhaps moulded by looking at a vegetarian friend, GR, a Brahmin and a vegetarian from birth. Whilst caught in the annual floods in Kelantan on our tour duty, we were left with just rice to eat. There were no vegetables to harvest, no dry land for hens to lay eggs and, of course, no fishing due to the monsoon. Chickens were off the menu. They had probably drowned or could not be transported from the barns. 

So my Brahmin friend ended up sustaining life with just rice and soya sauce. It went on for one week till normalcy prevailed. The rest of us had sardines, anchovies or fermented shrimp paste (belacan).

After laying down the ground rules of who can consume what and the differentiation between vegans, ovo-vegans and lacto-vegetarians, the fight is not quite over. You forgot Jains, who avoid tubers and roots. Then you have the nuevo-riche with gluten-free, lactose-free, sugar-free necessity. Eggs of free-ranging chicken are a no-no for some ovo-vegetarians, as their eggs could have been fertilized; hence, they are technically live animals. 

Vegans have claimed that a plant-only diet offers a multitude of health benefits, is better for the environment, and is the only ethical choice. While some of them respect the dietary choices of others, some of them proselytize with religious-like fervor and are working to get their diet adopted by all of humanity.

What started as a personal wish to control animalistic behaviours in us as we are what we eat and a wish to protect the environment has morphed into something laughable sometimes. It has become a fashion statement, an elitist snobbish gesture. Bending backwards to be nice to animals, they have no qualms about abusing fellow human to meet their dietary need. They also selectively choose to close an eye upon the cruelty done to dairy cows and the indiscriminate culling of male calves. 

At the end of the day, it is economics, stupid!

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Money is never enough!

Money Explained (5 episodes, Documentary, 2021)

Netflix

Looks like the old adage 'there is no such thing as a free lunch' still holds true. The system is there so that the well-heeled is always at the top of the food chain at the expense of the poor. Whichever way one looks, the little man will always stay poor, and the rich man will always the last laugh. 

Money, wealth, luxurious lifestyle and aesthetically pleasing environment are dangled in front of those who can ill afford to own or even anywhere around it. Everyone wants to be rich as that is our measure of success.

The first carrot that is dangled upon us is the get rich quick scheme. Even as early as the time of the expeditions to South America, the designs have been going around. Gregor MacGregor, a professional trickster, managed to sell land and bonds of a supposedly heaven-on-earth kind of a paradise territory in Central America after their discoveries. The trouble is that such a place was non-existent. Gullible people wanting to be rich bought the story and bought stocks and got burnt. Such frauds never stopped and continue as we speak. Suckers are born every day. There are Ponzi schemes, Multi-level Marketing, info-commercial, pyramid schemes, and the list goes on.

Another way to entice people to spend and spend is via credit cards. Credit companies give the illusion, via their creative advertisements, that by possessing their cards, life will be so pleasant, leisurely and stress-free. They conveniently forget to tell that, unless the client is a serial transactor who does not bring forward any balance forward to the following month, the customer would be subjected to compound interest. This interest is high, and in the olden days, it would be termed usury.

It is said that the American government encouraged its citizens to attend college and delve into science and technology as the Soviets were making leaps and bounds in the space race in the late 50s. Private enterprises also joined the education race. College fees started escalating. School loans were becoming the best way to pay back after graduation. But then, the whole arrangement came to a tumble when the 90s crash came about. They had no jobs, and the students had to defer their repayments. Not only they had to pay compound interest to their outstanding balance, but they also had to pay interest to the interest. If it used to be that those who entered the labour force without attending college would be higher wages in the early stage of their lives, it is not so anymore. The low skill workers actually earn less now. 

Nobody becomes rich by gambling. Period. Despite knowing this, the enticement to give a go at gambling is becoming more difficult than ever to shake off. With flashes of advertisements flashing right in front of our faces ever so often and the ease of installing gambling devices apps, the one-arm bandit is literally at our fingertips. The system is rigged in such a way that the house never loses, no matter what the experts say.

In the modern world, every individual works for the nation and in return, the country will provide for its people, including those in the twilight of their lives. The retirement fund is set for that and never meddled with even at the worse of crisis. Slowly we realise that the money set aside for the sunset era is gradually becoming insufficient. The elders, it seems, have to continue working even at their post-retirement age. The cost of living has increased exponentially, and people are just living longer. The cost of keeping a person healthy is just too expensive. The returns that they hoping for from their retirement saving just did not materialise. 

This short presentation of five 20-minutes episodes shows in simple terms some of the problems with managing money.

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As long as you provide!

Metamorphosis (Verwandlung; 1915)
Author: Frank Kafka

A Tamil saying goes like this - செய்யும் தொழிலே தெய்வம் - your job is your divinity. Therefore, one is expected to perform his work to perfection as it is as if he is serving God, as it is divinity to serve. It may be his reason for existence.  

This is probably what Appa held close to his heart. Without taking a single leave from his bank job, which he worked for 40 years over, the same place of work after leaving school, he must have been an exemplary worker. But, with the ease of mobility and money jingling in his pockets, it must have been the freedom he missed so much in the latter part of his life when his eyesight failed, and body broke down after repeated strokes.

After reading Kafka's 'Metamorphosis, I realise that narrating a story is not just telling an event and shocking the readers with bizarre storylines and twisted endings. Instead, it matters that many untold nuances and symbolisms lie buried somewhere for readers to unravel. 

A short and straightforward story told in 50 pages but packed with moral and philosophical queries about life. In a gist, it is a tale of a travelling salesman, Gregor Samsa, who finds himself transformed into an insect when he gets up for work one morning. He just could not get up because of his altered morphology. He had been a diligent worker and perhaps also bullied by his employer for his hardworking attitude. Gregor has to work hard to pay the loan that he took from his boss when his father went bankrupt. He also wants to send his beloved sister to a music school to perfect her violin skills.  

On the morning of his metamorphoses, everybody in the house is getting anxious. Gregor had obviously missed his train for an outstation assignment. Even Gregor's chief clerk is pounding on his door to hurry up. 

Gregor is still immobile, not used to using his newfound torso and limbs. Finally, after finally opening the door, everybody goes scurrying. His mother faints. 

As time flies by, everybody realises that Gregor's condition is permanent. The only person who seems to empathise with his situation is his sister, Grete. The mother still faints at the sight of him. The father is furious. He hits Gregor with an apple which hits him at a tender area and causes a festering wound. The father, who appeared weak and old before, has to get back to the workforce as the financial coffers dwindle. Suddenly, he becomes springy and is proud of his newfound post as a bank security personnel. However, he resents his situation as he has to work hard to support his family at an advanced age. Secretly he is angry with Gregor for his condition. Mrs Samsa supplements the family income by sewing. Grete starts working as a salesgirl, and the family rents part of their house.

On one evening, Grete was entertaining the tenants with her violin rendition. Mesmerised with her playing, Gregor sneaks out to listen. The tenants, who made it clear earlier that they are fastidious about cleanliness, are livid upon catching a glimpse of a vermin wandering about in the house. They refuse to pay the outstanding bills. Mr Samsa, angry with Gregor for the hardship he had brought upon the family, locks him up in his room. It was Grete who suggested that perhaps 'something should be done about her brother'. 

Gregor, who was already very ill from his earlier injury, dies due to malnutrition.

Gregor's death coincidentally coincides with the beginning of spring. With the start of a new season, Greta and her parents, after a long time, take a much-deserved ride to the countryside to enjoy the beauty of nature. It seems that a new dawn had befallen upon them. With newfound freedom and independence, everybody has much to live for. The parents were considering a suitable match for their young daughter. 

It seems that the ability to work and bring home the bacon gives one the shield of confidence. But, at the same time, when there is no reason for a person to work, when everything is provided for, or perhaps with affirmative policies, the person will generally degenerate to a lazy slob and quite lethargic about everything. But, conversely, when the tide changed, when things are so rosy anymore, the will for survival will push him to work even when it used to be undoable before.

No one is indispensable. When one person is taken away from the job market, somebody else will quickly move in to take over. We all like to think the tears, blood and sweat we toil for the family will be eternally appreciated. Perhaps not. When our existence is troublesome, to maintain sanity, we may just be discarded. Life has to go on for the living. The old and the infirm have to make way for the others to act out on the stage.

[P.S. Thanks to MEV for the suggestion]

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Wake up to a living nightmare!

Professor Thomas Sowell, the 90-year-old veteran economist and social theorist from Hoover Institute of Stanford University, is still active on social media. He is quick to give his opinion, backed by statistics and historical events, to run down ongoing national policies. He is an opinionated person and at one time was drawn to the idea of communism. His rationalisation for gravitating toward the left is that it is just human nature. He wants to share when one has nothing; conversely, he does not share when he tends to lose his 'hard-earned' possession. Sowell hails from Harlem, working as a postal worker as a young man and pulling himself up by his bootstrap to his current stature.

He often campaigns against affirmative action and minimum wage. He asserts that the Black American community had a better quality of life when the aforementioned policies were pinned upon them. Another recurrent theme in his rhetorics is the importance of the family unit in the upliftment of society. He does not justify the 'Black Life Matters' movement. Instead of blaming mistreatment of the blacks in the hands of a white-centred government, he puts the blame of disparity of the community on the 67% black families that have a single parent to manage their home. Between making ends meet and fulfilling personal needs, the parent has no choice but to leave their kids to the unsupervised influence of members of the neighbourhood. 

On the future of America, he sees a very bleak future. He pinpoints a decline in values like honesty and a sense of entitlement towards this end. To illustrate his point, he compared the black-outs in New York in 1965 and 1977.

During the 1965 power outage,  the incidence of crime was the lowest, whereas, in 1977, it saw plenty of looting and arson. Sowell posits that the 1965 society was one that saw the destruction of WW2 and the hard times that followed. Hence, they had some common decency to protect property and practised traditional morality. The later generation feels that by their existence, they feel entitled. Everybody owes them a living. If they fail, they quickly recoil to blame history, ancestry, and how the earlier society had oppressed them and continue to do so.

That is the mantra of the woke generation - every moment awake is a living nightmare.

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A full circle

Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Documentary; 2019) 

 Based on the book written by Thomas Piketty.

We started in the pre-Industrial Revolution with a significant disparity between the haves and have nots. Under the feudal system, there were the extremely wealthy landowners and the dirt poor peasants. The inequality between the two was phenomenal. The poor simply cannot work their way to become rich. It is humanly impossible. One has to be born with a silver spoon to own capital. Alternatively, one has to be married into one, like in the many fairytales and novels of the yesteryears. 1% of the world population owned 70% of the world's wealth.

The divide between the affluent and the impoverished became more apparent. This triggered the exodus of people from Europe to newer lands like Australia and the USA and took them over. The emigrants replicated their master's strategy of wealth acquisition. They used slaves, a form of movable property, as collateral and capital to generate more land and wealth.

When machines rolled in during the Industrial Revolution, people were just replaced, creating the same kind of impoverished people as they had before. Businesses flourished. Mass production of goods by machines needed a market. Fashion designing, haute culture, gift-giving, splurging during festivities was popularised. Businessmen accumulate wealth.

Nationalism reeked in as inequality reared its ugly head. People forgot about their poverty and stood steadfast behind the banner of nationhood. Industries fanned this by churning out weapons and starting military competition amongst nations to start wars. Now the elites are also the one who controls the narrative at the international level. Again, the same schism morphed between the rich and the poor, the 1% owning 70% of the wealth.

The world wars that came about were actually equalisers that jolted the inequality. Capitalism was held accountable for the catastrophe. It seems that on the cusp of death, humanity appeared more critical. Everyone is equal in fear of death. In rolled in heavy State involvement in nation-building. Cradle-to-tomb benefits were handed out to societies. The working class and women demand their place in society. For the first time in human history, an individual could climb up the social ladder through education and hard work.

Anti-capitalist protesters - St Paul's Cathedral, London, 2011. 
Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe

Actually, during the wars, capital was only marginally lost. Some were used to finance the war, whilst some were retrieved later. With the euphoria of peace and the push to spur economies, many manoeuvres were put into place to help big corporations be in the role of what the aristocrats used to fill.
Resentment grew again. Wage did not expand in proportion to the increased cost of living. The increase in union strikes and demand for entitlement did not help either. Labour was no longer an asset but the expense of doing business. The welfare state was just too costly.

We are now in a world where greed is good. The poor are handout loans for which they are not creditworthy. The lust for luxurious, opulent and decadent lifestyles lure the ill-prepared to dream of the impossible to plunge them into more misery than mired in. On the other hand, the wealthy has the four corners of the world to hide their treasures. Using creative accounting and the intelligent use of international off-shore banking, 85% of the world's wealth is just floating around without generating any benefit to the needy.
On the other hand, it generates more income for them. Tax evasion manoeuvres are helped via cash-strapped tax havens in banana republics. The problem with these havens is that their local populace does not benefit from these transactions. They remain poor. They do not have to fear economic downturns as history has shown that bail-outs can be arranged.

Relationship between per capita national income
 and the degree of inequality in income distribution

Capitalism started out unequal, flattened inequality 

for much of the 20th century, but is now headed back

towards Dickensian levels of inequality worldwide.

Only 15% of the world wealth is spent to create a beneficial trickle-down effect to the not-so-wealthy 99%. The 'baby boomers' had it good. With the post-war prosperity and ability to acquire wealth, they can enjoy the fruit of their labour in their twilight years if they had done so. Meanwhile, the Millenials has it bad. With the rung of the social ladder getting wider and having had to finance their own education, they may spend their whole life in debt. They may not afford to own a roof over their head like their predecessors. The gig economy that they find satisfying puts them in a precarious position. They are not provided with a safety net against accidents, sickness and opportunity for holidays.
The author suggests that there should be a comprehensive tax revision. The ultra-rich needed to be taxed progressively the more they earn. Invasion of taxes by clandestine methods needs to be looked into. As inherited wealth will dominate wealth made form a lifetime's labour by an exorbitant margin, he propose an inheritance tax. His argument is that one cannot start the game of life with different terms, the have and have nots. His analogy is a game of monopoly of two players where one player starts the game with more money and has the chance to play with two dices. He will pass 'Go' more times and buy more properties and earlier in the game, hence collecting more rent. Well, one can say this is a Marxist or leftist view of the distribution of wealth.

A friend once told me this. Even if all the world's wealth is equally divided among the world's inhabitants right to the last penny, creating an ideal egalitarian society, we just have to give ten years. After ten years, wealth distribution and inequality will revert to their previous pattern. Some people are just good with money. Others have different priorities. One glaring thing that is not taken into all these systems is the human innard qualities. As quoted by Gandhi, the Earth has everything to fill our needs, but not our greed.

History has shown that everything in life happens cyclically. Man will create an economic model. It will be a good, best thing since forever. Then slowly, one by one, its shortcomings will surface. Then more. Suddenly it will be the worst thing Man ever thought of. Then more calls for reform, a revolution maybe. A new system will be proposed - the best thing since sliced bread. And the cycle will continue.

Whatever said and done, the idea of utopia on Earth is a piped dream. The dream of eternal fairness and equality is as real as seeing a pink unicorn. Even the Universe is not kind to its dwellers. They have to endure thunders, typhoons, volcanic eruptions and asteroid collisions and their devastating effects. The presence of a large middle class is essential to form a buffer between the haves and have nots, to narrow the division in wealth inequality. Transformation and modification will happen, but we will keep on looking for the ideal elusive economic model.

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The art of not giving a rat's behind!

Is love enough? Sir (Hindi; 2018)

Netflix

The question is this. What draws two souls together in a romantic bond and possibly in the union of matrimony? Is it physical attraction or the ability to see things through the same lens, have the same madness or perhaps share the same dream of how life ought to be?

There used to be a time, perhaps even now in certain circles, of these types of unions being arranged by elders. There are no unique qualities looked for by the involved parties. There is minimal interaction between involved parties, and the marriage is more of a contract to continue the circle of life. One takes what one gets and tries against all odds to hold the fort against time's uncertainties. Come what may, the union of the Gods stand the test of time; only to revoked by death.

Now, is it necessary for the uniting couple to be compatible? After all, it is a biological union for continuity of species of which Nature can make the natural selection. Society determines every offspring of these unions be accounted for and the responsibility of caring for them is cast in stone. Biology encourages the male species to sow their wild oats but the female to be stringent with gametes' choice in a competitive selection of the fittest. Unlike their counterparts in the animal kingdom, Man is expected to provide for his partner and kind. 

Man has also put in another criterion to be locked in matrimony, compatibility.

The romantics in you want to believe that the highly acclaimed movie characters will have a happy ending. The logical mind, however, drills upon you this association is doomed from the word go. A barely educated young widow from a remote village coming to town to work as domestic help is no compatible match in hand for a US-educated architect/writer who has been cradled in luxury throughout his life. The widow may have a chest full of zest and big dreams to lift herself out of poverty with her bootstraps, in reality, unicorns cannot be pink and invisible at the same time.

Ashwin returns to his apartment, heartbroken, after leaving his bride at the altar after finding to be adulterous. Ratna, his helper, over time, tries to cheer him up by telling her miserable life as a curse with early widowhood and being the breadwinner for her family, even though they look at her as a burden. 

The acting is so nuanced, filled with subtle body languages and unspoken dialogue. Despite being a simple story with an ending which is anybody's guess, it managed to maintain its viewers' attention till the end.

The ghost of one's social past will haunt him until and unless one uproots and starts life afresh away from the encumbrances of the web of societal mores and pressures. Alternatively, one can live a reclusive life, giving two hoots to people around him, come hell or high water!

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