Are we there yet?

Looks like the generation that enjoyed the “are we there yet?” clip from Shrek 2! are all grown up. Now that they are cooped up in lockdown, they complain that they are bored. They keep whining when the movement control order will end.

This is the generation that could not be left to themselves to interact and create games among themselves. Their parents had to arrange party games to keep them occupied. Some caregivers kept their kids glued to the TV for babysitting or kept them busy nibbling on junk food and gulping soda.

As if that the whole Universe was conspiring against them, in rolled the gaming devices and the world wide web network to quench the desire for instant gratification. Their wants, desires or any kind of squirms were met with a wave of fingers which almost looked like a sleight of hand.

The opposing forces of Nature, it seems, are fighting back. They want to impress upon the millennials that not everything can be fixed by their soccer mums. It is what it is. Even though satisfied that they would be left uninterrupted to their own digital devices, they yearn to hang around idly at the overpriced and overhyped eateries. 

The elders can tell them that it is a form of national service for them; that it is nothing compared to their grandparents who had to don military fatigues bearing artillery to scourge the tropical hinterland, it is all fairy tales to them.

They can be told of the single year without a summer in 1816 when Europe was frozen and how that misadventure created a brand-new genre which is incidentally one of their favourites. Without Frankenstein and Vampyre, their idol Robert Pattinson and Twilight would not have had their breaks. 

Meanwhile, are we there yet? Have we traversed the peak and descending path of the standard distribution curve of the Gaussian graph?

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“you don’t work for us, you work with us…”

Sorry We Missed You (2019)

During the infancy of my career, many a time, being the most junior of the team, I usually ended up having to see poor patients who just made it to the clinic at closing time. I soon came to know that they were living far from civilisation, deep in rubber or palm oil estate. Coming to the hospital meant getting up at four in the morning, preparing breakfast for the school-going children and being able to get on the first 6 o'clock morning bus to town. Invariably, they would be delayed. The transport out to the main road would not turn up. Perhaps, the feeder bus would break down or the bus that they had to change left earlier.

They would eventually reach the hospital close to noon. After getting an earful for not keeping to their time, they would have to seen by the junior most doctor of the team. The senior ones would have left the clinic for more pressing needs. Unable to make a definitive plan of medical treatment for them, these patients who would require most of the expertise from the medical team ended up discarded by the system. They would be given another appointment; the whole ritual needs to be repeated. On top of all these, as they are daily wage earners, absence from work meant the loss of a day's earning.

I thought all these slave-like working conditions would end as the world changed. With globalisation, workers were promised working conditions and preservation of unassailable rights of the workers. Marx's dream of working for sustenance and having leisure time to enjoy the reason for their existence, they thought, would of fruition with the gig economy. They do a gig when and if they want. The workers would be their own boss. They work for themselves; not for the bosses or company. They do not work for a company but with the company. What the company failed to highlight were the fine prints, the exclusion clauses and the penalty they were to be imposed if specific rules are not followed.

Fast forward, and workers realise that the whole economy is just a scam. The same old economic ideology is just re-packaged. The same plot of scheming the poor to feed the rich is in full force. The workers continue breaking their back until a new horizon emerges. Who knows what else would they promise the next time. Meanwhile, like Sisyphus, the unendowed have the find simple pleasures within their unending cycle of hardship, a flicker of hope, resolution, pain and the curse of repeating it all over again.

Still reeling with debts from the 2008 economic downturn, Ricky thought he found a sure way to end his financial woes. The promise of good returns as an independent despatch services provider, he felt his hard work was the only thing that separated him from economic independence. For that, however, he needed to purchase a pickup van. For its down payment, he had to sell off the family car in which, the wife, Abbie, a home care nurse moved around to meet her patients. 

Soon everyone realises that it is not all hunky-dory. Ricky has to spend long hours at work. Abbie finds it taxing to meet her demanding schedule. Their two teenage children are left to their devices. The parents are unable to meet up to their school and their children's emotional needs. Ricky's woes only accumulate. He has to pay damages for lost items which are not covered by insurance and to work despite his injuries after mugged.  

It looks like the dependence on others will spill over on to the next generation. Their dependency on their digital hand-held devices is not mere addiction. It has become their essential tools to do their school, learning, communication and more. The digital world is another platform that is manipulated by the economic giants to make people fall at the service providers' feet. This is yet another doublespeak and the dehumanising trap of the neoliberal economy. Instead of building an antifragile society that grows stronger with every stress that is hurled upon them, we will be left with a brittle one, needing support at the mere thought of pressure.

Again, our electron microscopic friend, COVID-19 has shown us the fragility of the gig economy. Being locked down for two weeks may be excellent for family time and bonding, but neither bring in the cash nor pays the bills.

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Truth, stranger than fiction?

Usual suspects (1995)

In this time and age, many conspiracy theorists are having a field day. They come up with so many mind-bending and mind-boggling explanations to drive home their point of why a particular event happened the way it did. Their story may sound incredulous, but they sure have an appropriate answer for the turn of events. 

Take the example of the genesis of Covid-19. One camp will insist that it was a Chinese bioweapon that went wrong. To support their assertion, they would show 'proof' of the Chinese Communist Party's secret laboratory in Wuhan and how a diseased bat landed in their market-place. 

Then the opposing party will say that the virus is actually US-made. To arrest China's seemingly unstoppable ascent for emerging as the world's largest economy, the US had to resort to such dirty tactics. A third party would then appear to insist that the virus was just a natural mutation, a sort of Nature's fight back to reclaim its territories.

When you turn around and tell them that their tall stories are too unbelievable to be accurate, they would turn around and tell you, "Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction!"

Then there is the New World, the Illuminati, the Cabal of Bankers with the Rothschilds, the Mossad and the list goes on who really controls all the wars, the economy and even tsunami and climate change.

'The Usual Suspects' has a sort of cult following. It is often quoted as a pop culture reference in many American shows including 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Family Guy'. The convoluted storyline told by a convict of an elusive mobster and twist at the end of the movie is a classic for many movie buffs. It also boasts of many memorable lines reminiscent of any good noir movie of the 50s.

As the signature of the film says, 'the greatest stunt that devil pulled was that he never existed' is precisely how the hidden forces of the controlling powers work. Work is done by proxies. The right-hand whacks, whilst the left applies the soothing liniment. The arms that break also embrace. That is the art of deception.

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The iconic ending scene (not to give anything away) via GIPHY

The top, below and the will to fall.

The Platform (El Hoyo, Spanish, 2019)

The recent shopping spree shown by the public before an imminent lockdown following the Covid-19 shows how self-centred and selfish our society is. Some people stock up toilet rolls by the trolleys full just because they do not have to worry whether there is money left to be used for other things. The last thing on their mind is the fear of creating panic buying or that his fellow human will be struggling to get his. 

Some will blame the individual for such behaviour, whereas others will say that the system created such monsters.

We should be the change that we want, it is easy to say. Unfortunately, we are worried about our survival that we care less for others. Perhaps, we should learn that the joy of being wealthy is not in spending capriciously but using it judiciously.

The change in a broken system does not start from high above but from the people lower down the food chain. The ruling class do not see anything in the structure as it benefits them. Those in the lower rung are too disjointed and entrenched in their miseries that they feel helpless the corrupt. A change within the system needs to be initiated by the middle class to send a message to the ruling class that their system is broken and needed to be amended. This is a revolution. For this, there are people on the top, in the bottom and people who would fall for their cause in their course of action.

This Spanish film tells us about the monster that capitalism, which exploits our primal desires, has created. Symbolically, it shows a vertical prison where food is transported via a platform from level 0 all the way down to level 333 (as we later discover. 2 persons per floor would make it 666 occupants. 666, being the devil's reference, show the demonic nature of Man to survive.). 

The problem is the people on the top floors gorge on the offering, leaving crumbs or nothing for the rest below. Sometimes, they had to resort to cannibalism. Every month, their levels are changed at random. The upper occupants of the jail feel it is their time to indulge as they may not be so lucky the following month. 

Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza
- symbols for politics, beliefs and identity.
(Much like Adishankara who travelled to the four
corners of the Indian subcontinent to unite the nation)

The whole set-up stinks to high heavens, but no one is willing to take the lead to change or want to improve themselves. At the end of the day, someone had to take the fall to send a signal to the top by influencing the occupants of the bottom.

Just like how Don Quixote who travelled around the Spanish countryside to write an account and to unite the people, here the protagonist goes through all the levels to send a message of change. His philosophies of life are heard loud and clear in this show. Maybe, there is a hint that religion that could be an unnecessary diversion. Somewhere in the dialogue, one justifies cannibalism for survival by quoting a phrase often linked to Christianity - whoever eats the flesh and drinks the blood will live for eternity. It may be a suggestion that religion only relieves with short-term problems, not in our long-term living situations. That needs a change of mindset, excellent leadership from the middle strata of society, one who is knowledgable (one who reads) and a revolution of thoughts.

A thought-provoking one but not for the faint-hearted.

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Get out of your comfort zone!

Antifragile - Things that gain from disorder

Author - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012)

This is a thick book written by a mathematician, a hedge fund manager, a derivatives trader, a businessman and polyglot, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He reads ten languages.

People, like things around us, are of three kinds. They are either fragile which crumple or break with pressure, robust which can withstand stresses or the others which actually grow stronger with strains. These are the anti-fragile. The analogy of a fragile situation is like Damocles in the palace of Dionysius standing precariously under the sword held on by a strand of horsehair. A robust person is like the Phoenix who, despite defeats, come from the ashes to fight back. He can fight, but he is as durable as before, not stronger. The perfect example of an anti-fragility is Hydra, the mythical Greek creature who grew two heads every time one of its heads was cut. In other words, it grew with adversity.

The author suggests that Nature, over the years, has a recurring demonstration on antifragility. Whatever does not kill us will make us stronger. Our civilisation turned us into 'fragilitas'. We have been shielded all through our young age, thanks to immunisation, protection from diseases, helicopter parenting by football mums and or education system which paves a smooth path into adulthood. 

Take the example, the story of Agrippina, Roman Emperor Nero's scandalous mother. Knowing a bit or two about poisoning, after allegedly killing her husband earlier, she suspected Nero of trying to poison her. To make herself resilient against possible poisoning, she started consuming minute and incremental doses. This is the basis of homoeopathic medicine, administrating highly diluted substances for the body to heal itself. Pharmacologists coined the word 'hormesis' when a small dose of harmful material is actually beneficial for the organism, acting as medicine.

Just like how carrying weights increases the bulk and endurance of our muscles, intermittent stresses encourages post-traumatic growths (as opposed to PTSD). Randomness in life also strengthens people against Black Swan events in politics and economics.

Humans are emotional creatures. When the going is good, we are lulled to believe that everything will be alright forever. Like a turkey, we will be thankful to the farmer for feeding promptly, not knowing that come Thanksgiving it will be culled. What makes the species stronger is not peace but adversity.

Modern society reduces variations. Taleb brings in the example of Procrustes who cuts the legs of his travellers or stretching them to fit them into the beds. Modernity is the Procrustean bed that tailor-makes its occupants.

Our ancestors probably were right with their age-old practices which were handed down to them from people before them. After looking at the ups-and-downs of the environment around us, they must have thought, of our grandmothers' remedies and advice that should logically stand the test of time. And we do not need double-blind controlled studies for everything. Especially when it comes from the pharmaceutical companies or physicians who have vested or economic interests in its outcome and usage.

The book goes on to discuss in length into many subjects related to antifragility, making oneself secure in facing adversities. Procrastination may not be all bad. Many creative thinkings materialised when thoughts were pushed aside, let to simmer in the hidden crypts of the brain. Even Darwin's last book took 38 years to be published. Creative juices sometimes flow after long procrastination. Perhaps, it is not wise to practise this during an emergency situation.

Lernean Hydra

Degrees are not the sure way to solves every of world's problems. Many getting their hands dirty in the field would realise that people who work their way up from scratch are more adapt to handling work-related uncertainties. It is like riding a bicycle. No amount of theoretical knowledge of physics can keep a rider balanced on two wheels. We cannot lecture birds on how to fly.

Sometimes people who are passionate about a subject bring more knowledge to a topic than those who are paid to do it.

On a related note, modernity has made us creatures who have to be fed continuously. Our overindulgence in food has strained our internal systems which had caused many metabolic diseases. To reduce overconsumption, intermittent fasting and food deprivation are suggested ways for our body to economically burn fat efficiently.

Everything is gained from volatility, time is a test of unpredictability and innovations come from uncertainties. Intermittent jolts in life will help us faithful to our intended path in life.

"Perhaps being deprived of poison makes us fragile, and the road to robustification starts with a modicum of harm." – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

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We are all that we got!

Ad Astra (To the stars; 2019)

The people around us are the only ones we have got. Nothing more, nothing less. We should forget all our singlemindedness to look out for that special friendship or that unique utopia where we hope to find happiness. There is no one out there looking out for us or anyone calling out for us, dying to make contact. We are all alone perched in this cold place called Universe. Deal with it.

We are stranded on this big (or rather small) blue marble floating in space with no intelligent life forms for light-years away. Rather than building a wall around us, between our family members, between nations and diversions that divide us, we should concentrate on building bridges. 

This science-fiction adventure film is supposed to be set in the new future, but my guess is that it is not going to be that close. The movie is set at a time when space tourism is mainstream. Travelling to the Moon is akin to flying on a low-cost flight - passengers pay for their face towels!

Major Roy McBride is an astronaut who lives in a world troubled with frequent power surges. The Space Command (Aeronautical Agency) thinks it is related to an abandoned space mission which is stranded in planet Neptune. The said spacecraft was led by McBride's father. Even though he is hailed as a hero, his whereabouts are unknown. McBride is sent on a secret mission to Neptune to explore the 'empty' capsule. Insider information reveals that McBride Sr may still be alive.

Roy, a loner throughout his life, grew up in the shadows of his father's laurels but without his presence. Perhaps of the longing for father issues and his single-heartedness in excel in space exploration, Roy was never close his now estranged wife.

The journey is a soul searching expedition of sorts for Major Roy McBride, especially now that he is a passenger. He looks at the 'world' around him, the life that he had led and about life generally.

After slashing and mutilating all the resources on Earth, humans had already turned Moon into another touristy spot. With so development and concrete buildings, it just looks like another colony in the Wild West, even complete with moon mobile highway robbers, just like how the trains were robbed during the Californian gold rush era. 

In the movie, religiosity seems to have made a comeback. The question of the dead, being stranded in space, being part of the cosmos, like going back to the Maker, if the Maker was indeed out there, is accepted in everyday life.

The answers, as the protagonist soon discovers, are all here on Earth. It lies with us and amongst our loved ones. We are all that we got, for each other.

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A peek into the human psyche...

100 humans (Netflix, 2020)

This could be one of the series which one can skim as he undergoes house arrest during these trying times of combating Covid-19. Even though the show brags of trying to answer all of life's questions on humans and their behaviours through its social experiments, it is, by no means, cerebral. 

The Guardian labels it as one of the most worthless reality-experiment-pseudoscience show in history. Perhaps, it is a bit unkind to label it such, but some of the experiments that the show do are quite outlandish and their conclusions simplistic. 

Some of the life questions that the show asks include 'What makes Us Attractive', 'Best Age to be Alive', 'about the Battle of the Sexes', 'Biasness of Society', 'Happiness', 'Pain versus Pleasure' and 'Distrusting our Senses'.

One of the bizarre assumptions here is that the ability of a male to dance is indicative of attractiveness, hence, potentially fertile. And the fertilising ability is deduced from a seminal analysis. Someone who has the grooves on the dance is supposed to be teeming with swimmers. Of course, one does not develop two left feet once he undergoes a vasectomy. Clinically we know that sperm count is not indicative of virility. 

Besides that, there are a few interesting discussions with their guest psychologists and psychiatrists. Do uniforms make a person more desirable? Maybe a person in authority but definitely not in the lower rung of the society. Does a symmetrically balanced facial cut give one a get-out-of-jail-card free? It apparently does. And being comically funny melt hearts?

The schism between the sexes is discussed. The classic stereotyping of ladies not keeping to time is said to be debunked. The guys are, however, quite economical with their words. The graph of happiness is convexed at either end of one's lifespan. The young look at the life ahead of them of zest while the silver-haired are happy doing what they like at a leisurely pace. The concepts of fluid and crystalline memories are discussed briefly. 

Whether we like it or not, people are biased. Their opinions of people are made from a composite of the colour of their skin, their previous experiences and prejudices, gender biases and accents. (maybe religion too but it is not discussed here.)

To a certain level, we are all social animals and are prone to conform to society. Herd mentality is prevalent. 

Money makes people work harder. However, when it comes to creativity, passion supersedes financial remunerations to create that Van Gogh or Mona Lisa. Music has shown to affect our moods and even increased our boldness to take risks. The idea of a person with a surname that starts in the earlier part of the alphabet list tends to do better in life may not really true.

Overall, when you are quarantined in the house in the company of your loved ones and start questioning the purpose of your existence on Earth, this may be a precursor to the journey of self-discovery.

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