To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Friday, January 31, 2020
 

I have started dabbling a lot more with sociology since going the academic way. I always had an interest in philosophy—might be interesting to think about how that came about—but it is only now that I have started thinking more about phenomena at an earthy plane or physical level rather than on an abstract or metaphysical level. Not to say that my interest in philosophy is in any way diminished at all, quite the contrary actually. Even in sociology I am drawn to authors who take something of a philosophical or idealistic perspective.
I was reading a bit of Marx the other day. It made me think about the nature of work especially since I have worked in the corporate setup for a number of years and over the years I realised that I needed to do something else with my life. I couldn’t really put my finger on what about it dissatisfied me really… I mean it wasn’t that I couldn’t see my contribution or that I wasn’t allowed to make decisions or that I was not valued or that I did not enjoy certain aspects or that I wasn’t getting a good pay or that I couldn’t have some work-life balance… for a lot of people it might be these things and fixing these rather practical things but for me there was just a sense of restless angst… when the alarm rang in the mornings I just couldn’t see the point of waking up and dragging myself to do what I typically did at work…. There was this sense of my work lacking meaning in the larger scheme of things… a sense of not fulfilling my potential though I couldn’t say what this ‘potential’ was… I couldn’t see what I was contributing to in a larger rather than instrumental sense… If I looked back on life I couldn’t really say what was the purpose of it all… though why I needed to have a purpose or whether human beings even have a purpose beyond actually living moment to moment, day to day, year to year, till they die I couldn’t say… most people at least seem to live a life whose purpose is to live itself or to do everything that makes this living a comfortable sensory experience … there doesn’t have to be a larger point to it or at least they don’t think about this point which makes it easier to do the day to day, year to year thing I guess… 
Marx’s view of how we are all in a sense slaves in a capitalist system except that some of us are better paid makes me think about my earlier angst in the work world. It’s as if we are no longer able to define the meaning of our lives because the very imperative to exist forces itself upon us, and there is no way to exist outside of giving ourselves up to it. All our thoughts, all our minds, all of our consciousness is directed to this question of existence which existence is not possible without opting into or buying into this system and once one has bought into this system, all of one’s consciousness is directed at surviving in it or making a success of it. We start defining the meaning of our lives by the successes or wins or accolades that the system provides us with an opportunity to earn never stopping to think if these are the successes or accolades that really matter to us or intrinsically have any value for us. It is as if we give up our time which is the same as giving up our life in exchange for life itself or subsistence or comfortable living which is paradoxical because the life we get in exchange is only to be given up. We cherish our weekends because that is perhaps the only time or life we have in between the time that we do elsewhere… our life is just made up of sleeping hours and weekends and not even that because we think about our day when we are asleep and we think about work on weekends… when do we have the time to think about the meaning or purpose of life and even if we could somehow muster up the time where is the ‘life’ to which we may shape a meaning or purpose? Our time or our life is not our own. In fact, it seems to me that time and life are the same or coextensive; your first breath is your first second and when you breathe your last, it is as if someone says, “Time’s up!” 
The following extract from a speech by Bill Watterson, known for his Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, broods on similar lines… 
“Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you’re really buying into someone else’s system of values, rules and rewards… Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success… You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. …To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.”

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:14 am 0 comments
Friday, January 24, 2020
 

Do you notice how some days or weeks you get the feeling that anything that can go wrong will go wrong? Because one thing goes wrong you feel a little down and then another thing goes wrong and you feel downer and then a third and then you don’t know if things are going downer and downer because you’re approaching them half-heartedly or if there is actually something wrong in the configuration of stars during this period that even if you are your normal self—which usually works very well—people or situations are just not responding the way they usually do. The opposite is also true. Some days or weeks things go so well that they couldn’t go any better… of course, you just enjoy the good run then rather than turn to your blog ;)

It makes one wonder about the power of the mind. If you have a positive jumpstart mind-wise you already have a much higher likelihood of success and if you have a negative jumpstart, a much lower likelihood. This I would think is the reason I don’t end up doing very well many a times on standardised tests or formal presentations. My anxiety kicks in very bad when I am put under time pressure in the former and under the public gaze in the latter. I guess the fact that I am a bit (maybe a lot?) of a perfectionist and the thought of failure seems really dire to me that the anxiety and stress exacerbates. The conditions of my mind and of these sorts of situations come together to pretty much set me up for failure.

There are other situations where the anxiety and pressure of performance actually allow me to do a better job than usual. For instance, when I have to submit a paper or an essay and I push my writing very close to the deadline. I generally tend to write much better when the deadline looms close even though I am under considerable anxiety and pressure to deliver it by the deadline. I guess it might be that I feel far more in control of the situation in this instance than in the ones I mentioned before. Though I do have something of a time constraint it’s not like a clock actually ticking over my head; I can work overnight (which I sometimes do when I have less time) or I can break the task into mini steps and plan their completion. Come to think of it, the nature of the test in most standardised tests is also generally technical or mathematical which is not exactly my area of interest whereas papers or essays are of a more creative or argumentative character which is right up my alley. That might actually make a big difference to my anxiety levels because I approach the two types of activities with a different mental attitude too. I guess I wouldn’t experience the same level of anxiety or pressure if I had to write essays or papers with a clock ticking over me!

Formal presentations on the other hand bring out my fear of public speaking to the fore. I am afraid of going blank, I am afraid of losing my train of thought, I feel too self-conscious (do I sit, do I stand, what do I do with my hands), I think of all the things that could go wrong, if I fail I would fail publicly…It’s difficult to pin point what exactly it is but all these things put me in the mood for getting it over with rather than doing it very well. A defeatist rather than an enthusiastic attitude. I have tried many a times to change my mental mood and sometimes I have been successful too but the tremendous unnecessary work I have to put in to orient my mind positively to the task makes me not look forward to the task and that means I don’t do it that often and that becomes a vicious circle…

Reminds me of the two lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost that I love—

The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 7:40 pm 0 comments
Sunday, January 19, 2020
 
I am feeling quite weird as birthday eve approaches. This is unlike any birthday I remember purely for having no family around me. I knew I might feel a bit odd on or around the day because all these years I have managed to be with family on this day no matter where I was in the world. This year is perhaps the first exception. Guess I want to reassure myself that this is not the exception that will break the rule for I had made it into some sort of a rigid rule... that is the only way it had remained unbroken for so long. The fact that I was able to do this also cemented my belief that if you really want to do something, you can. No matter how difficult it is. And I could have done it this year too... except that it would have meant giving a higher weightage to a rule than to a work ethic for one, and it would have also meant that I was not ready to make some of the sacrifices that I needed to make for what I dearly wished to accomplish this year. Well, I feel like I made the best decision under the circumstances but it nevertheless doesn't make me feel less blue today for all that. Though feeling blue before and on my birthday is something natural for me (as my readers perhaps know by now!).

An observation I have been making recently is that in modern times festive occasions be they Christmas, New Year's, birthdays tend to generate anxiety and pressure to have fun to actually be fun. If I like nothing more than curling up on the sofa, eating great food, listening to nice music, having good conversations while the clock ticks into the new year, I somehow feel guilty for 'not having fun' or not 'doing something fun'. It's almost as if what I really like to do is simply a poor excuse for not knowing how to have fun; the fact that I actually enjoy my kind of fun is immaterial. This artificially constructed or imposed upon guilt doesn't allow me to enjoy my kind of fun either. I might then force myself to comply with other people's idea of fun because I am anxious about missing out on this mythic 'fun'. The occasion becomes not so much about having fun itself but about proving to all and sundry that I had socially desirable 'fun'. I can even participate in the 'who had more fun' picture contest on social media...which adds a bit of a competitive element to the ‘fun’. No wonder it’s stressful to have fun! 
I was asked by someone if I was excited about my birthday. I didn't know how to respond because I am not excited about growing older and I have nothing specifically to be excited about as I would likely be at home doing nothing. This question itself put me on the defensive for afore-mentioned reasons. When I celebrate my birthday at home I have the usual fun-appropriate 'going out with family' response but saying I was just going to enjoy by myself at home is to pretty much ask for a 'you must do something fun' response. It seems to me that festive occasions have lost all their spontaneity and charm and been stripped of all fun because it's no longer about what you would like to do or not to do if that's what you would like to do. It's about conforming to society's ideas of what you should do or be seen to do if you want to fit in as someone who ‘has fun’ or ‘is fun’, and that doesn’t sound like much fun. Which is why we probably heave a sigh of relief when these high-pressure fun occasions are gone and we don't have to answer to anyone about how we are having fun. We are free to actually have fun on our terms.
Well, I'll be having my version of fun (or none—no pressure!) tomorrow.... and hoping that I don't have to miss out on a key aspect of what makes up my fun next year and beyond... may this year's exception to the rule only prove the rule :)

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:07 am 0 comments
Thursday, January 16, 2020
 

I was recently discussing this company, a large online retailer, with a group of youngsters in an academic context. It seemed like we all knew and agreed that this giant retailer did not treat its employees in the most humane manner be it in terms of working conditions or work expectations. However, most of these youngsters did not think this made any difference to their decision to buy from this company. Moreover, the company’s treatment of employees at the bottom rung didn’t make any difference to their own aspiration to work in the company either because they didn’t see themselves as ‘pushing carts’…or in other words…they couldn’t relate to these employees at a personal level. I couldn’t detect any empathy let alone indignation for the plight of the employees. The general refrain centred around cheap and efficient as if they were the most significant considerations.
 
I wasn’t sure how to take this. On the one hand, practically speaking, I can’t say that the knowledge of these things has stopped me from buying from said retailer. I may come up with excuses for why I still buy from it but the brutal truth would certainly boil down to cheap and efficient. I may not want to work at this said retailer in any capacity but I guess if I was really young and aspiring to be a manager at a huge corporation, I would probably not rule it out either. Which makes me wonder if the empathy or indignation I feel or presume I feel for the employees of this retailer is genuine at all. Empathy or indignation cannot just be latent or passive emotions from which no action springs because then they would simply be convenient cosmetic emotions not emotions that guide moral action… which in this case at the very least must surely mean giving up using that retailer or never wanting to be associated with it? That being the case, how could I make these youngsters think from an ethical perspective, or ask them to think beyond the instrumental values of ‘cheap and efficient’, when I myself couldn’t lay a claim to nobler action?
 
There are those for whom knowledge of the retailer’s people practices would matter and who will act on it practically even if it costs them some comfort and cost in the process. And then there are those for whom it wouldn’t matter at all, as long as their own lives are made more cost-effective, easier, and convenient. I am not quite sure what makes people have the former stance or the latter, and it seems to me that if people do have the latter stance, there is no rationale or logic that can ‘convince’ them to take the former stance. If they are not moved by a fellow human’s suffering, how can you ‘move them’? If they don’t experience discomfort in being a beneficiary from the suffering of fellow humans, how can you make them ‘experience discomfort’? It seems to me that you cannot emotionally move someone or make them experience moral discomfort if they are not wired to feel these emotions or conflicts at a deeper level… you certainly cannot move them with reason and logic.
 
It perhaps relates to how you’ve been wired as a person through life and what you cherish as your end goals. For some the goal can be to lead a life that is harmonious with a good society in general and for some it might be to lead a personally or individually successful and rich life. It is of course not as simple as that as the wiring may take its own course and goals can conflict with each other. But clearly, the more your end goals incorporate larger values, the more you would be inclined to take decisions that incorporate a consideration for the community as a whole, and the more your end goals are of a narrow self-interested kind, the less you would be so inclined. It makes sense then that some are affected by ethical problems in society and take actions, and some do not see it as an issue at all as long as it doesn’t personally affect them. To convince one who is not affected at all in this sense would also mean convincing them to change their end goals… which would essentially mean convincing them to change a large part of who they are as a person… which relates to the life they have lived and what it has taught them…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:20 pm 0 comments
Tuesday, January 07, 2020
 
Well, it's my last day in Dubai with family. I feel like I am in a different universe when I am here. Anything that can be different is different and that gives me something like an out-of-body sensation or as of watching a spectacle in which I am an actor too.

I live an intensely mental life in Lancaster (which is home at least for the time being) and in Dubai I barely use my mental faculties. I have very little emotional people connections there and here it is my closest emotional connections. There I am surrounded by nature and here I am surrounded by concrete. There hardly any sun, here one cannot get away from the sun. There it is a quiet and peaceful town, here it is as noisy and buzzing as city life can be. There I have to do everything on my own, here I don't need to lift a finger. And so on...
All of this makes my other life seem unnatural rather than just life in a different place. The more time passes, the more distant the other life seems... makes me wonder whether I would ever be able to adjust to it again. I usually take about 2 weeks to settle in into my other life after this experience, or to get into my somewhat new skin. 
This time my trip is much shorter than usual. I will not be spending my birthday with family as every year. I am entering a crucial phase in my studies and I need to bring all of myself to it, sooner the better. I am trying not to feel so bad about this even though I wish it didn't have to be so because I know it's a wiser decision, all things considered. I see 2020 as something of a landmark year for me but I feel I need to be prepared to meet it half-way...let's see...hoping for the best for myself, and for you, my dear readers.... may you all have a very Happy New Year! 

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:10 pm 0 comments
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