The respect of 'why'

From Seth

"Because I said so," ends our inquiry, shuts the door and disrespects the questioner, all at the same time. 

Explaining what we need and why allows us to engage. It creates a connection of mutual respect.

When an authority figure refuses to explain 'why', he is showing fear (because he's not sure why) and contempt (because he doesn't have to care).

We'd prefer to engage with a human, every time.

La La Land

What a joy .......and such a beautiful title. A movie I really really wish I could have caught on a large screen.

Damien Chazelle actually brings out a la la land. The visuals, the cinematography...it was quite transporting.

It is a movie about love and dreams,  and how they the two talk to each other...at times in sync and at times walking parallel lines with wonderful intersections. A movie that lives as much through movement and rhythm, as words and actions.

There's so much symbolism in the movie that you know you've got but the half of it.

It starts dramatically. A flyover in LA, bumper to bumper traffic and suddenly everyone breaks into dance to 'another day of sun'. A city of dreamers....or a dreamers destination...of possibilities....and then we slowly zoom into two of the dreamers, who are also stuck in the jam.

Mia (Emma Stone) an aspiring actress and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) a serious and committed pianist, who dreams of having his own Jazz cafe.

Each of them holding onto their dream, also living the hard life of grounding and livelihood, compromising their art, their hopes....looking for that breakthrough....and they find each other.

The movie follows the seasons to show the highs and lows in Mia and Sebastian's seemingly idyllic relationship. As I read somewhere, 'Life may not pan out the way you'd desired but true love makes it worthwhile - this message lies at the heart of Chazelle's basic but soul-stirring tale'. 

The underlying conflict between hopes, wishes and reality never seemed so real, beautifully brought out by a sequence, triggered by just a strain on the piano, where they both drift into a world that could have been. Haunting and beautiful.

The movie left me with a smile on the lips, a tear in the eye and a  flutter in the heart........all la la land stuff.

Perspective is Everything

Lovely talk, especially so that quirky British sense of humour !

And of course the basic idea....'perspective is everything'

Sridevi - A little tribute

It's strange, but the news of Sridevi's death has touched a personal space deep within. It almost felt like losing someone I know, a friend who lived afar, the resonance felt that deep.

She feels like someone I've grown up with....like having been part of that journey..... movies which were bold, funny, thought provoking.......and above all else spontaneous. 

Some of my favourites which come to mind are Lamhe, Chaalbaaz, Kshana Kshanam, each of which I've seen more than once. 

There's a certain naivety, energy and spontaneity to her which even on screen made her so real....real enough to touch from so far.

May her soul rest in peace.

Know more about your brain

Interesting...

To Look Anew....

My latest obsession is this word game, 'word connect', a game where you make an x number of words out of a set of jumbled letters. As with any game, it's a progressive one, with levels of increasing difficulty, or maybe 'challenge' is the nicer word.

Vishakha, thanks for initiating me into it :)

While I whirled through the initial 300 levels (I did mention obsession right:), it's now reached a stage where I can't make the needed words at one go.

I've found something interesting. I can struggle for five minutes, ten minutes, even fifteen and not find the word. I'll shut down, and reopen a few hours later, and more often than not, this time round I'll get it. 

Old lesson I guess, but a lovely reiteration. 

Don't look through the same lens. Especially when you're trying to resolve an issue....it's critical that we get that other perspective, change vantage, clear lens. At times just space and time can give it to you, at times you may need to make a conscious effort to get in another perspective.

And this comes through so clearly even in something as simple as a word game.

To be able to look anew .....a pathway to being more fully there.

The Failure Of Success

A write up from Ideapod:

We are all born creative genuises and its the education system that dumbs us down, according to NASA scientists.

At TEDxTucson, Dr. George Land dropped a bombshell when he told his audience about the shocking result of a creativity test developed for NASA but subsequently used to test school children.

NASA had contacted Dr George Land and Beth Jarman to develop a highly specialized test that would give them the means to effectively measure the creative potential of NASA’s rocket scientists and engineers for use in specific problem solving areas. 

The test turned out to be very successful for NASA’s purposes, but the scientists were left with a few questions: where does creativity come from? Are some people born with it or is it learned? Or does it come from our experience?

The scientists then gave the test to 1,600 children between the ages of 4 and 5. What they found shocked them.

This is a test that looks at the ability to come up with new, different and innovative ideas to problems. What percentage of those children do you think fell in the genius category of imagination?

A full 98 percent!

Listen to the story directly from George Land, even his context building was fascinating.

Peacocks at KBR

It's such an exotic looking bird, that even if it's every morning, I can't but stand and gape. 

In fact yesterday the thought in my head, which I guess also inspired this post.......if you think God, it almost makes me wonder what kind of a mood he was in when he was working on the peacock. Like he not just used the colour palette in full, but used imagination to play around...and mix... and match and go fully overboard.

Like he was showing off just for me (the peacock I mean :)

Two peacocks amidst the early morning sunrays

The bare tree made such a lovely backdrop, or should I say foredrop

I could tell he was going to fly, and I waited to catch a picture in flight..... but it's like he just sat there figuring, and just after I started to walk he flew :)

A peahen by a little water pond

Peacocks on the rocks

Picture perfect profile

They're so used to walkers, they settle this close to the walking path

Five peacocks in one picture !

A feature that adds so much colour (pun fully intended) to the walk !

What A Story !

One of India's brilliant CEOS no one knows about - from rediff.com

The unknown architect of Balrampur Chini, Meenakshi Saraogi's biggest achievement lay in inspiring farmers to grow more cane.

Every discussion of India's successful women entrepreneurs usually overlooks one name. A name that could be heading the list.

Meenakshi Saraogi, architect of Balrampur Chini Mills, the country's premier sugar company.

Until the late 1970s, she was an affluent Kolkata homemaker.

The locations of Balrampur Chini Mills factories. Map: Kind courtesy Balrampur Chini Mills

Saraogi might have continued to so remain, but for an unexpected development: A division of family assets could have divested the family's sugar mill.

With her immediate male family members unable to commit to active day-to-day management, Saraogi ventured to assume direct control of this mill in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

The implications were varied. Saraogi would not be the absentee maalik (owner) who would abdicate the company for munims (clerks) to run.

She would manage on-site and hands-on, nine months a year.

She would be up until 5 am daily through the sugar season, to counter a probable decline in night-time cane-crushing recovery.

She would live within the factory premises, the overriding molasses odour notwithstanding.

IMAGE: Sugar production at one of the Balrampur Chini Mills, Uttar Pradesh. 

A red light in her bedroom blinked, accompanied by a siren in the background, as soon as the crushing machine malfunctioned.

Every babu would have descended on the shop floor within six minutes (some in pajamas), as Madam would have already got there, demanding an explanation.

On the one occasion I sought an interview with her, she agreed to meet at 3.30 am.

On being asked whether it was true that executives often wet their pants when she yelled at them for performance under-delivery, she kept a straight face and said "Yes".

And yet, Saraogi's biggest achievement was not in-plant surveillance. It lay in inspiring farmers to grow more cane.

She created a '14-day rule', within which farmers would need to be paid irrespective of corporate profit or loss.

The receipt (parchi) became virtual legal tender within Balrampur's command area (a number of farmers not encashing for fear that the proceeds would be frittered).

She consistently invested in equipment higher than the available cane throughout only because this would enable the unit's crushing to be completed earlier than usual, at relatively high recoveries, leaving the farmer's plot vacant for a shorter crop.

Her ground-level understanding made it possible to accurately forecast cane output from her command area 9.5 times out of 10.

Her operational paranoia reflected in the deputation of executives to the shop floor of capital equipment suppliers, if only to report ke apna kaam ho raha hai ki nahi (to see if her work was getting done).

Her team was equipped with walkie-talkies before the days of mobile phones, to apprehend cane-carrying truckers who might have dozed on the highway.

A farmer removes dried grass from her sugarcane field in Shamli, Uttar Pradesh. Photograph: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters

Even as she never went to business school, her distinctive passion graduated the flagship unit of Balrampur Chini Mills from 800 tcd (tonnes of cane per day) to 12,000 tcd capacity (within a shrinking command area).

As an extension, it grew the company from 800 tcd to 76,500 tcd across 30 years, and created an index by which every single UP sugar company came to be appraised.

The irony is that at a time when it is possible to know what any corporate captain has had for lunch, there is almost no mention of this outstanding business leader in any business paper, magazine or Web site.

Mudar Patherya is a stock market writer, tracking corporate earnings and investor psychology to gauge where markets are not headed.

Emotionally Intelligent Friendships

I've recently read two write ups of Eric Barker on Emotional Intelligence, and she's like an EI 101. A level of detail that seems to literally spell it out. Here's another one......longish, but clear, straight and simple one from her:

Eric Barker - Emotionally Intelligent Friendships

"So what part of emotional intelligence is critical for friendships? 

Emotional intimacy.

So what is emotional intimacy?

Emotional intimacy is the experience of being deeply connected to another person who knows and understands your most important feelings and who shares his or her own with you.

Yeah, that sounds nice, but it's still at Hallmark Card levels of pleasant vagueness. So we can probably recognize the concept better by looking at its opposite.

If there were a label for this problem in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it might read something like “Emotional Intimacy Deficiency—a problem characterized by a sense of shallowness in one’s relationships with others, associated with a failure to recognize or express feelings, to reveal personal details about oneself, to be vulnerable or let anyone help you, to comfortably share attention, or let go of control, and to listen without having to solve a problem.

This won't shock you at all, but research shows men are far worse at this than women. Both sexes certainly struggle, but this is a department where men really lag behind.

And that causes a lot of problems for men. Serious problems. Not just unfulfilling relationships -- it's more akin to a chronic emotional illness that affects every area of life.

That said, women's friendships aren't perfect either. We're going to dive into the research and see the most common ways both sexes struggle with friendship, what they can do about it, and how they can learn from each other to improve.

So how do you increase emotional intimacy and build emotionally intelligent friendships? It comes down to six steps. Let's get to it...

1) “Know Thyself”

The thing everybody skips. Knowing yourself means you know what you want and need, and this is critical for both picking new friends, and strengthening existing relationships.

How many friends would you optimally have? What level of closeness do you need? How frequently do you want to communicate? You want to ask yourself, "What features of a friendship will be most fulfilling to me in the long run?"

So take some time to think about what you want and need. (No, that 2 seconds between sentences doesn't count. Really sit down and take a half hour and think. And write stuff down.)

Time to be a little more deliberate.

So before we go to work on developing emotional intimacy, let's find out what's been getting in the way of it. In the modern world, what's the biggest obstacle to adult friendships?

2) Make The Time

Actually, you can't "make time." We all have 24 hours in a day. The more accurate thing to say is "make time with your friends a priority." What friendships need to grow intimate and strong is hours.

Spending time with someone is a sure indicator that you value him; no one likes to feel undervalued.

Unsurprisingly, in adulthood the biggest thing that takes away friend-time is family-time. And while no blogger in his right mind would ever type, "You should spend less time with your family," he might be able to get away with saying something like the far more acceptable, "Balance is critical."

Okay, so you know what you want and you're making pals a priority. But which of your friends do you need to focus on building emotional intimacy with?

3) Must, Trust, Rust, And Just

Looking at the research, the types of friends that men and women have fall into the same four categories: must, trust, rust and just.

"Must" friends: The inner circle. The closest of the close.

"Trust" friends: Not inner circle, but people you trust, share confidences with and know are there for you.

"Rust" friends: They're pals simply because you've known them a long time. (If it had more than that, they'd be "must" or "trust.")

"Just" friends: Closer than acquaintances and you may see them regularly with a group, but you're not tight with them.

What's critical here when it comes to emotional intimacy is those "must" friends. And "trust" friends are important because they can, with work, be promoted to "must" friends.

First and foremost, you want to work on strengthening those "must" friendships and devoting more time to them. And you want to evaluate which of your "trust" friends meet with your "know thyself" criteria and might be worthy of elevation. "Rust" and "just" friends are good for rounding out your social circle but should receive less attention and investment.

What's the first step in strengthening those "must" and "trust" friends -- or finding totally new ones?

4) Be Proactive

You're going to need to do some legwork. You need to be proactive and initiate contact.

And you need to make concrete plans. I live in Los Angeles and in this city saying, "We should get together sometime" is pretty much synonymous with, "I have no intention of ever seeing you again."

Specify places and times or your friendships will be determined by serendipity, which is the euphemism lazy people use for "dumb luck."

The optimistic angle here is that if you're being passive you can pretty much be certain other people are being passive too. So if you lead, some will follow.

And what should you look for when meeting new folks who might become future "must" or "trust" friends? All the research agrees: similarity is key. Not only does it draw us to people, it also makes friendships more likely to last.

Similarities also occur when tastes and interests match up, and similarities make friendships easier to maintain. And, unless you are interested in hanging out with people who make you feel bad about yourself (not a good interest to have), finding someone who conveys that you are likeable to them will be very reinforcing to your self-esteem.

Beyond similarity, you should also look for people you want to learn something from. Since you took the time to sit down and "know thyself," think about the person you want to be. Your best self.

Who do you want to rub off on you? To make you a better spouse, parent, worker or human being?

Okay, you know what you want, you're making time, and you're proactive. So what's the real key to developing emotional intimacy with your friends?

5) Communication

Yeah, you hear "communicating is vital" constantly from experts but few ever break it down so you know how to actually do it. 

You want to focus on four primary elements: creating safety, vulnerability, emotional expressiveness, and active listening.

Creating safety: Is my friend going to feel comfortable opening up to me? Am I being too judgmental? Or, at the opposite extreme, too nosy and pushy?

Vulnerability: Are you sharing personal thoughts and feelings with them? Reciprocity is powerful and this is vital to helping both of you. Quick litmus test: are you scared to talk about the subject? Then you're being vulnerable.

Emotional expressiveness: Don't just talk thoughts. Talk feelings. Yours and theirs. (Guys, if you're recoiling at this, you're proving the point that you need to work on it.)

Active listening: Good listeners don't just hear; they make the other person feel heard. Nod, acknowledge, and summarize what your friend said for confirmation. As former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss advises, if they respond "Exactly" -- you're doing it right.

So you have the tools to build emotional intimacy. But once you have it, how do you keep a solid friendship alive?

6) Upkeep

Friendships require upkeep, like a plant. Yes, some friends are succulents that require little watering but you’re probably forgetting all the ones that turned brown and ended up in the trash.

Women maintain friendships largely through communication and staying in frequent contact… In contrast, only 10% of the men maintained friendships through frequent contact...

But ladies face problems as well. Due to the amount of communication and openness, women are more likely to damage their friendships than men. Survey results show women were more likely to say they lost a friend because of something they said or did.

That said, women are more likely to make efforts to repair damaged friendships, while men are more likely to let the relationship dissolve.

So women might want to put more effort in to not getting offended. And given how difficult it can be for men to make "must" friends, they should learn from the ladies and make more attempts to fix a troubled friendship rather than just moving on.

(To learn how neuroscience can teach you to be more emotionally intelligent, click here.)

Alright, we've learned a lot. Time to round it all up and see how all this leads to a more meaningful life..."

A Magical Moment

While it gave me a 'magic moment', the context is a bit awkward....... anyways, here goes:

Couple days back, I walk up to Diksha who's in the middle of something, stand to attention and say "deech, look up.....there's times when I look in the mirror, and feel that one side of my face is wider than the other... tell no"

She looks, and she's looking keenly at my face.  I start to laugh, and then to smile.... uncontrollably, the nervous kind. And she's just continuing to stare. And I'm like "wait, it's making me nervous, and you can't make out when I'm smiling"

She's like "Then it's okay no amma, you're anyways always smiling".

It was like magic, what it did to me inside.

Not because I believe I'm always smiling, no...... but because it was a space so worth touching. 

A Curious Mind....

Sunday morning walk to my parents' place includes taking idli and wada for breakfast.

Coffee and chit chat done, I walk into the kitchen to find mom seriously straightening out the wada wrapper, oiled newspaper wrapping notwithstanding....and she's looking at it so keenly. She kept reading even as I stood there waiting, getting curiouser and curiouser.

And then she looks up with "do you know what saabudana is made from?"

I didn't.

And funnily enough I've also wondered about it in the past, just never got till knowing

Now I knew. This is what the paper had...even if you don't read telugu, just the pictures tell. And more than that, a reiteration of how 'learning happens just about anywhere'.

All it needs is a curious and open mind :)

What Do You See?

From Seth

A better question might be, "what do you choose to see?"

If I take four professionals to the Whitney:

The architect sees the building, the sight lines, the way the people and the light flow.

The framer notices the craftsmanship and taste in the way the paintings are framed and hung.

The lighting designer can't help but comment on the new LEDs.

And the art dealer sees the names of each artist and marvels over career arcs.

When you read a blog post, or see a successful project or read about an innovation, what do you see?

Do you see the emotions and the fear and the grit of the people behind it?

Do you see the strategy and high-level analysis that went into it?

Or do you see the execution and technique?

Some people are willingly blind to metaphor, viewing each example as a special case. Others manage to connect the dots and find what they need just about anywhere.

You might not need more exposure to the new. Instead, it might pay to re-see what's already around you.

Astrophysics For People In A Hurry

A podcast from Big Think

Big Think calls itself an  'online think tank,with big ideas from some of the most creative thinkers on the planet'

Hosted by Jason Gots, he says 'we visit these ideas in new and different ways'. This is in conversation with Neil Tyson, Astrophysicist, and spiritual heir to Carl Sagan, who got us all involved, and worked up about the cosmos. Neil is the author of several books, with his latest being 'Astrophysics for people in a hurry'.

Jason Gots introduces the book, saying it is a succinct and wryly funny book, with the informational density of a black hole. I've just touched three of the concepts covered, but there's a link at the end for those interested.

They start with how there is a long history of conflict between Science and Religion, and give as example a case from the 1920's which protested evolution being taught in schools, as at that point, the beginning was only biblical creation.

Jason starts by asking Neil to describe 'the beginning, like from the big bang to say planets' and the talk starts there...about 14 billion years ago...

Jason:  At a very early point is 'the planck era', where stuff formed.  Can we dig a little bit into that"

Neil: If a photon, which is a particle of light gets hot enough it will spontaneously become matter and anti matter and they will pair and completely annihilate, and there's no matter left....and as it cools, the photon can no longer make matter anti matter pairs..... its in one in a hundred million that will actually make a particle, without the antimatter. "

Jason: Why?

Neil: Just happened, we don't know what caused it, but we know that it happened

Jason: And this is governed by the theory of relativity, E = mc² ?

Neil: Yes. It's when the symmetry breaks that creation happens. Had the symmetry not broken, this universe would have been filled with just photons and nothing else.

Jason: Is the 'why' an investigative space in Astrophysics?

Neil: Yes, there are phases when this symmetry breaks occur, and its called phased transitions, and it's not a mysterious term, we experience it in life all the time. Think about it. When a guy in the deserts of Africa is given a glass of water, and by some chance you bring the temperature down, the water would freeze and if he's never seen that happen, it would be like magic. He'll completely freak out. Where is my water?

Phased transition means everything that is going on completely reorganizes itself into something else. The transitions happened when the forces governing the universe split.

Jason: So the first one is Gravity?

Neil: Yes, Gravity would have been the first to split. Prevailing philosophical bias tells us that early in the universe there was only one force, one coherent force, and as the universe expands and cools, this force splits. So Gravity splits off first. And then the others....the four familiar forces we have today: Gravity, The strong force, Electro Magnetism and the Weak Force

Jason: Ok. And the other thing I simply do not understand, So we all know nothing can go faster than the speed of light....and I wanted to ask,  And we know the universe is expanding, and at the fringes, it's accelerating, and the galaxies are moving, and from our perspective they are going faster than the speed of light, so they disappear, and we can't see them anymore....and that's not a problem under Einstein? though we say nothing can go faster than the speed of light?

Neil: No, not a problem. 

Jason: Please. Why? How? I don't get it, how?

Neil: "in 1905 Einstein advances what we now call the 'Special Theory of Relativity', he describes phenomena wholly unfamiliar to our senses and our research apparatus. He describes what happens to Time, Mass and Length, and the odd things that happen when you are in motion. 

In the Special theory of Relativity you cannot go past the speed of light, you cannot accelerate beyond the speed of light.

The General theory of relativity, that is quantum mechanics, says, I can explain to you the fabric of the universe, and in the expanding universe it is not the galaxies moving through space, it's the very fabric of space , the fabric in which these galaxies are embedded that is stretching.

So if something is moving through space at any given speed, nothing is moving through space, it is space itself that is expanding and you can expand space faster than the speed of light.

Jason: So space can do that?

Neil: Space can do whatever it wants.  It can bend, stretch, twist, stretch, and it can stretch faster than light, and that's what happened at one phase in the universe. It expanded faster than light"

Jason: You could trip on that. It's tricky. How? It's a little hard to wrap your mind around the universe itself expanding. What even is that?  Is that what we call dark matter, energy, what? 

Neil: That's why we have Math. 

Our brain have evolved for thinking about the lion in the brush, but is not equipped for thinking about the space time continuum.

So the Math enables us to represent what is going on, and math is very logically constructed,  and then when you manipulate the Math, it is tantamount to manipulating your understanding of the universe..... in a way that you don't drift, making things up, and math can contain all those explorations.

If this post sparks a sense of wonder, here's link to the conversation: http://bigthink.com/think-again-podcast/neil-degrasse-tyson-nil-the-only-ist-i-am-nil-think-again-podcast-100

Nibbles & Sticky

Another one of Diksha's adventures, or should I say 'rescues' of doggies. This time round, it was a little overwhelming (atleast for me it was)

There were eight. Eight little puppies abandoned by the mother. And she's not only doing the looking after since a couple of weeks, where she goes and feeds them everyday, but actually brought two of them home for three days. This was between their vaccinations, as part of the process of readying them for adoption.

The two straggly puppies

Cleaning them up for their three day stint here

They seem to be enjoying their shower. 

 We know why she called that one 'nibbles'.

The havoc they caused.....slippers and bean bag visibly chewed beyond use

 Them leaving (can't deny I breathed a sigh of relief)

Sticky, all dolled up for the adoption drive at Puppy Cafe

Deech, I'm all over again amazed....your level of commitment to what you do with stray animals is quite something else. I tried full support for three days and all, but I know just how tough it was, and to see you stick it out....not just in terms of effort, but the way more difficult space of letting them go. 

Take a bow (and a hug) girl !

Words

This song came to me through some magical moments, all of twenty years ago.....

Vantage is Paramount

What we see, is what we do, is what we get.

What we see depends on the vantage we view from. We can spend a long while, maybe even a whole life time viewing things from one vantage, and nothing will alter what we see.

Almost like 'hole with a mint' or 'mint with a (w)hole'. Which one?

To alter your experience....look at changing vantage.

It's finally a choice.

1000 th Post

Why miss an opportunity to call out,  why let go of a moment that matters, why miss a chance to say thanks.

I just realized I'd done my 1000 th post, and I couldn't but pause to reflect.

What started August of 2014, from a perhaps casual and in retrospect, providential conversation. I was in a district bus, on the road from Mandya to Bangalore. It was my first week at SELCO, and I was out on a visit to one of their installations near Mandya. I was so taken in and amazed by the work they were doing, and I was telling a friend about it. 

He said "you sound so excited, and it's so momentous, you should write about it....better still, why not start a blog".

I was like, "me? and write publicly? no way, what would I write"

He said "You could write about anything, maybe your experiences with SELCO, just start, and try to maybe do one post a week".

The seed was sown.

I got home and wrote about that visit. I sent him a draft. He said "looks great, right from the heart, go ahead, post it". 

Not a single correction. 

I now know it was not one of my better written posts, it was sketchy, no pictures, no formatting......but I know I owe my biggest thanks there. A single word of criticism, or even suggestion might have derailed it for me...I would have set it aside. I doubt I would have ever got back there. I was that scared.

Today I convey my deepest gratitude..... for enabling me to embark on one of my life's dearest and most cherished of journeys.

The blog has become not just my favouritest means of expression, but also my connect into myself. Thanks pal !

The Psychology Of Self Righteousness

Krista Tippett in conversation with Jonathan Haidt:  from  'On Being'.

The surprising 'psychology behind morality' is at the heart of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research.

While the talk was really interesting, I'm putting here a few points which stand alone also seemed interesting enough.

Jonathan Haidt is a professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s School of Business. He’s the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

“When it comes to moral judgments,” he says, “we think we are scientists discovering the truth, but actually we are lawyers arguing for positions we arrived at by other means.”

"Psychologically,  people who identify as conservative tend to like order and predictability, whereas people who identify as liberal, they like variety and diversity. 

I have one study where we have dots moving around on a screen. Conservatives like the images where the dots are moving around more in lockstep with each other. Liberals like it when it’s all chaotic and random."

Tippett:  So a premise is that morality “binds and blinds.”

Haidt: This is the one I’m most excited about. This is the one that I feel unlocks so many of our hardest problems.

Jonathan Haidt describes five primary moral foundations that are held across individuals and cultures. People who are liberal and conservative, he says, value two of these in common, compassion and fairness. But conservatives simultaneously juggle three other moral values — of loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

Tippett: And you also point out that when you talk about intuition, that our behavior is not primarily consciously driven. And that’s the same thing that Buddha said, and it’s the same thing that St. Paul said, and Moses and all of these people.

Haidt: One thing that you find in most of the great wisdom traditions is the idea that reality as we see it is an illusion. It’s a veil, it blinds us, and enlightenment is taking down the veil, seeing things as they are, transcending dualities. 

When you get people to actually understand each other, and they let down their guard, and they learn something new, and they see humanity in someone that they disliked or hated or demonized before, that’s really thrilling. And that, I think, is one of the most important emotional tools we have to foster civility. 

Haidt: from what I’ve learned, here are a few pointers. One is, what I was saying earlier about how our reasoning is driven by our intuitions, our gut feelings, our emotions, that’s just why you cannot reason somebody to — once there’s a conflict, you can’t use reason to change their mind. So don’t even try the direct route, which is, “Let’s just discuss it.”

Once you accept that, then you say, well, OK, what does change reasoning? And now relationships become absolutely crucial. This is why it’s so hard to influence people just by putting a message up into message space.

Haidt: Diversity is generally divisive, and it has to be managed. There is some interesting research showing that when you celebrate diversity and point it out, you split people, but if you drown it in a sea of commonality, then it’s not a problem. So anything you can do to emphasize how similar we all are is good. Anything you can do that celebrates — “Look at how different we are.” — that tends to make it harder to have any group cohesion and trust.

Tippett: Drowning things in commonality can also make everything superficial. Right?

Haidt: Well, what do you want? Do you want authenticity, or do you want peace and harmony?

Tippett: I don’t want to have to choose between the two.

Haidt: I think you might.

Tippett: you’re really talking as a social psychologist about “conservative” and “liberal” as two ways of being human.

Haidt: That’s right, these are psychological traits. That’s right. There are dimensions. So openness to experience is the main psychological trait that has been found to correlate with the left-right dimension. 

We’ve got a lot of sociology working against us here. Part of becoming more modern and individualistic is that we make our life choices based on what we like, what appeals to us. 

Well, it’s freedom. The more you are free and have the resources and have a society based on markets and businesses that will cater to what you want, and those are generally good things — well, if people choose where to live and who to associate with, they get ever more segregated.

Tippett: So progress leads to incivility.

Haidt: Of a sort, but again, progress leads to peacefulness, non-violence — but also to being shut off from each other, yes.

Jonathan Haidt has written this: “To live virtuously as individuals and societies, we must understand how our minds are built. We must find ways to overcome our natural self-righteousness. We must respect and even learn from those whose morality differs from our own.”

Power of Language to Transform and Redeem

Excerpts from a write up by Maria Popova: Ursula K. Le Guin on 'The Power of Language to Transform and Redeem'

“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them,” - Emerson

Hardly anything does this for us more powerfully than art — it unsettles us awake, disrupts our deadening routines, enlarges our reservoir of hope by enlarging our perspective, our grasp of truth, our capacity for beauty.

This singular function of art is what Ursula reflects on

"The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said.

The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.

The paradox, of course, is that words are both our instrument of truth and our weapon of distortion. We use them both to reveal and to conceal 

As a writer, you want the language to be genuinely significant and mean exactly what it says. That’s why the language of politicians, which is empty of everything but rather brutal signals, is something a writer has to get as far away from as possible. If you believe that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

We can’t restructure our society without restructuring the English language. One reflects the other. 

What literature does, Le Guin points out, is enlarge our understanding of our own experience by enriching its container in language:

There are always areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist’s job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say. It’s one reason why we read poetry, because poets can give us the words we need. When we read good poetry, we often say, ‘Yeah, that’s it. That’s how I feel.’

Clouds

There's stuff that can make you speechless.

It's been cloudy for a while now, and all these are pre-dawn, rather pre sunrise.......different forms and hues of cloud........each so momentary. 

While all others are from my balcony, this ones at the park, on my walk

This one's from today, inspiration enough for me to go back and find the ones I'd caught over the last couple weeks.

Whisps of nature.......fragile, silent and beautiful

Mom's Innovative Idea

Last month, a casual conversation, and mom said something about hiring someone to come once a week to do cleaning, of what doesn't get covered as part of daily household cleaning.

I simply loved the idea.

While she was talking for herself, (and she's still contemplating :), I came home and implemented straight off. Spoke to Faizan, and we agreed to an additional hour every Sunday, separately paid for and exclusively devoted to the beyond usual.

It's subtle. It's stuff that's not in your face, not very visible, easily ignored. But now, because I pick one room per Sunday, I'm finding so much more that can do with cleaning, even buying new material and implements to reach places earlier not easily accessible, or even thought of.

It's been three Sundays now, and it's quite amazing how good it feels. Almost like the house has a new gleam and sheen to it.

Thanks ma !

The bigger takeaway: we mostly function by set patterns, by habit, by what's already known....do what is considered necessary per our own set standards. Key here is 'set'. They get too set. So set that we can get stuck inside that space, it becomes comfort zone. And to know it's not easy, cleaning brings out muck, deep spaces....settled muck, it can muddy the space. It's tough.

This could apply everywhere....at work, our physical health, mental well being, our relationships, our learnings .....anything. 

What would it take to shift things to the next level? Whichever chosen facet. Can it become a rite of passage.....clear the pathway for better energy flows.

A bigger thanks ma !

New Habits

From Seth

I bought a CD yesterday.

That didn't used to be news. I used to buy a CD every week, week after week, year after year. It adds up.

Hi-rez streaming changed that habit for me, but it took about a year before the itch (mostly) subsided.

Old habits die hard, and it's entirely possible that your customers are on fumes, buying your old stuff now and then, down from often and on their way to rarely.

You can live on old habits for a while, but the future depends on investing in finding and building some new ones with (and for) your customers. Or your family. Or yourself.

The most powerful insight is that you can do it with intent. You can decide that you want some new habits, and then go get them.

The Evolution of Medicine

While I've done lots of reading on the 'Mind - Body Connect', this podcast kind of took it to a whole different level.

It's a conversation between Krista and three others working in the field.

1) Dr Mark Hyman, a pioneer in functional medicine, founder and director of the UltraWellness Center, and a best selling author
2) Dr James Gordon a professor in Psychiatry and an expert in using mind body medicine to heal depression, anxiety and psychological trauma and
3) Dr Penny George, a philanthropist of integrative medicine, who converted after she experienced cancer in mid-life.

I've put in lines from the conversation, which were telling the basic story, interspersed by some actual conversation. It's kind of long, but it's an area which touches every one of us, and deepened awareness could help us implement in small ways right away, for ourselves, our families and anyone willing to listen :)

Opening remarks from all four:

MS. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: A transformation of medicine is underway — a transition from a science of treating disease to a science of health. Part of the integrity and depth of all of your work is also that you — it’s grounded, actually, for each of you, also in an experience of a health crisis.

DR. MARK HYMAN: I think one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the last 30 years is that food isn’t just energy, that it’s actually information that actually provides instructions in a literally minute-to-minute, bite-by-bite basis to everything that’s going on in your body.

DR. PENNY GEORGE: The standard of care really looked at me as a body part, and a disease, and it was clear to me even then that I was so much more than that. And what I found was it was the experience of taking charge of my own return to well-being, more than just health. And I ended up at a place that was so much better than where I had been before I started that I thought, everybody should have access to this.

DR. JAMES GORDON: We’re looking to create the opportunity for people to heal themselves and to create that environment...and that’s what we do.

Dr Hyman:

I realized that I sort of reached the limit of what actually we could do with the kind of thinking we have in medicine. And I was invited to hear a talk by a guy named Jeffrey Bland, who’s a nutritional biochemist who worked with Linus Pauling, and he was a big thinker. He was a systems thinker. And he painted a picture of medicine that was completely different than what I learned in medical school, which was not disease-based, but based on systems thinking. 

And I said, either this guy’s crazy or he’s a genius, and I have to figure it out.

So I started to just imbibe everything I could about this, and try it on myself, and try it on my patients. And I kept seeing miracles in my patients, that people are getting better from things that I never would have imagined.

And it’s as big of a paradigm shift as the Earth is not flat, Earth is not the center of the universe. It’s huge. And it’s basically dismantling our concepts of disease as we speak, and yet it’s completely absent from most medical institutions and thinking in medical schools.

So as we’re beginning to shift out of it, we have to sort of reorganize our thinking, and it’s tough. It’s tough.

Krista: What are the ingredients for creating a healthy humans?

DR. GORDON: 

I think what’s important also is that we’re really going back to what’s basic to all the great, ancient systems of healing. Now we have the modern science so that we can test more accurately for these imbalances, but understanding exactly what Mark is talking about, about the basic functions, this takes us back to Hippocratic medicine……Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, it’s all there. 

And I think one of the things that’s crucial in this transformation, though, is the transformation in consciousness. 

And, with that change in consciousness, it becomes possible to use all the modalities, but even more important, you become open to seeing the incredible power that each of us has for healing, and to creating the context, whether it’s a small group or a whole community, in which people can come together to heal themselves. And to me, that’s the most fundamental and the most difficult shift to happen…

…more than that. Altruism, for example, the doing for others has tremendous physical benefits......we should probably prescribe that for people.

DR. HYMAN: Yeah. It stimulates the same receptors in the brain as sugar 

MS. TIPPETT: Wow.

Hyman -

I think that one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the last 30 years is that food isn’t just energy, that it’s actually information that actually provides instructions in a literally minute-to-minute, bite-by-bite basis to everything that’s going on in your body. So, literally, you change your gene expression with every bite.  And we don’t, in medicine, know how to use food as medicine. 

We use drugs, we use surgery, but we have no insight that food is connected to health in most cases. And yet it’s the most powerful drug, and it works faster, better, and cheaper than any drug on the planet. I mean, I’ve had people change their diets in three days, they got off 50 units of insulin. There’s no drug that can do that. People have autoimmune disease, they can be pain-free in weeks simply changing their diet and that — and get off very expensive medications. 

MS. TIPPETT: I’d like to talk a little bit about spirituality, which has been, certainly, a suspect word in science or medicine. But it is also, certainly in medicine, inescapable, right? So let’s talk a little bit about the words we can put around the integrity and the validity and the substance that this thing called spiritual life — which has as many interpretations as there are people — how this is part of this new vision, this new consciousness about illness and healing.

Penny, you wrote some really beautiful things about this, that “serious illness or disability is as much a spiritual crisis as a physical one,” and that healing is sometimes possible on a spiritual level, even if it is not always possible on a physical level.

DR. HYMAN: when you think about what happens in that space with a doctor and a patient, or a healer and a patient, it’s a very sacred moment.

MS. TIPPETT: It is. I mean, I was going to say I feel like doctors are godlike figures. And there is a sacred trust, and we trust what doctors tell us, whether we should or not because they have this …

DR. HYMAN: Yeah. I mean, there’s that aspect of it, but from my point of view as a physician, when I’m in a room with someone, and they open their heart, and open their soul, and tell their story, that’s a sacred moment. That doesn’t happen in real life, right?

We are privileged to be able to be in that sacred space with someone, where you can say anything and talk about anything, and be in that little window where magic happens. And doctors don’t talk about it, they don’t think about it, but if they let themselves feel that, it’s powerful. 

Dr GORDON: Number two is that the work of healing is the work of transformation at its base, where you’re not just treating symptoms. It is all about spiritual transformation, and that’s, potentially, what comes to people. Another important aspect is that when — what I have seen, whether the illnesses manifest in a physical way or a psychological way, that the sense of meaning and purpose and connection to something beyond ourselves is critical to healing, almost always, and even in the most dire situations.

DR. GORDON: The experience is so deep. As Mark said, it’s a sacred experience. So we just happen to be people working in a number of different cultures, and they’re our teachers. I think it goes as deeply as each human being is willing to let it go.

DR. GORDON: And I think, the other thing is people are afraid. They’re afraid of looking at themselves. And that’s why all of our work is more challenging than perhaps it should look like it should be. 

...people will come and they’ll say, “Well, I want to learn the techniques, but I really don’t want to work on myself.”

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. And I think what you just said — spiritual life is that place where we work on ourselves.

MS. TIPPETT: So we’re talking about a shift in consciousness, and an evolutionary shift, and the issues and the clusters of issues are correspondingly complex. But I just want to close, and I’m not actually sure how to form this question. But just to say, as much as we’re talking about health and healing as the point of medicine, there’s also an aspect of this realization that illness is not only inevitable, but that illness also is a gift, right? That illness somehow is part of life’s wholeness, and life’s trajectory, and that it is transformative. 

And, Mark, you’ve said illness tells us things, right? Illness is our teacher. illness as an opportunity for personal growth and transformation. So it seems to me that this is also a truth to name as part of this shift in consciousness. 

As you say, in traditional medicine — death was failure. It was defeat, and illness was a problem. So, again, I don’t know what the question is, but I wonder if you would reflect a little bit on that as part of this transformation, and also, again, if there’s anything else you want to say based on what arose here. So, I don’t know, Jim, would you like to start?

DR. GORDON: I’m speechless.

No, I mean, you said it so beautifully. We were just — in working with the Lakota elders, they understand exactly what we’re saying here. They say, in order to heal others — and this is a deep aspect of shamanic healing all over the world — you have to have been through the fire yourself.

Otherwise, you cannot know what it’s like. You cannot know how to help others with the respect and the deep personal knowledge that’s necessary for that. I think it’s really so important going forward. This is not our enemy. Illness is not our enemy. Death is not our enemy. This is part of life, and all of life is our great teacher, if we’re open to it. And the more we are open to it, the more we can be open to helping other people also open themselves.

DR. GEORGE: I would just add to that the idea of, what is the invitation in this illness? Which — you have to be careful, because it’s not to imply, what did you do to cause your illness? But I think there is an invitation in any illness, and part of it is recognizing that life is short. This is not a dress rehearsal. And what is it for you? And, for me, it led to this. I didn’t intend this. This was not a logical conscious thing, but it was like — it unfolded as I sort of became the agent of my own health. And I would wish that for everyone who has any kind of illness, even if it’s not life-threatening, is to see what the invitation is to a fuller life, and greater well-being.

DR. HYMAN: Yeah, I echo what Jim and Penny said but what sort of came up in my feeling, my body, was the sense that we’re dealing with the downstream effects instead of the causes. And it’s the thing that really keeps me up at night — is how do we, as a society, begin to grapple with that? And the only way I can come up with is really to sort of — to begin to create these healing circles, these talking circles, these small groups, the things that Jim does where we rebuild community, and connection, and meaning, and love in communities where people can begin to transform and own their lives and own their communities, and transform the food system, and transform their behaviors, and transform the schools. 

It has to happen, but it can happen not in a big kind of global way. It has to happen very locally, essentially as local as your own kitchen, as local as your workplace, if you’re a part of a school, it can be a very small space that it starts in but, really, it ripples out and it’s really transformational. And everybody in this room has that capacity to create that change in their own life, in their own body, and in their community, and that’s where it really has to start.

Learning is so continuous...

A humbling, yet uplifting story right from my kitchen.

Diksha walked in for her lunch and found me toasting bread on the tavva. She noticed the plate with bowls of milk and sugar, and asked "you not well, ma?" (that's our staple unwell time spread).

I was like, "No, it's not for me, it's for Faizan, she's feeling unwell".

I saw the look in Diksha's eyes.....but before I could feel good about it (appreciative one...for doing the exact same thing I'd do for her or me, when unwell), I heard something that grounded me well and proper.

Diksha was eating by then, and I'd given Faizan the plate of 'wellness' and said "चेयर लेलो या मोड़ा लेलो , जो भी" (take a chair, or moda, whichever), and Diksha, very gently, says "why moda or chair ma, why not at the table?". 

Deech, humbled, and proud, in the same moment.

A 2nd Metro Ride

A second metro ride, because mom had not been able to join us on our first ride. Plus dad was full enthu to check out the other line. 

So this time we did Ameerpet to Miyapur, and back. 

The touristy crowd has thinned, and it's now more to regular life for the metro. We went at odd time so it was fairly empty, no queues or mad rush for seats and stuff. That said, you can still see the sense of curiosity and wonder in most folks. Plus the pride in the city's first metro.

Mom preferred standing - better view both sides she said :)

Some crazy tall towers, which were looming over the Malaysian Township. Didn't even know Hyderabad had such tall towers :)

At Miyapur station, the train goes further down, does a U turn and comes back in.

At the Miyapur station, where we need to get off, exit and buy tickets back.

Both of them keenly taking in the sights around. I believe I was happier watching them, and to see how much they can chat up on life's little and big details :)

Miyapur station has a nice smart cycle stand that lets out cycles...nice

A welcome cup of chai

Waiting for the train back

 And there it comes

On the way back

 At Ameerpet, both of them so seriously searching for their house. And we actually found it, (couldn't on the way out) and that made it even more exciting !

And there it is...that's their beloved balcony too, visible in the zoomed in picture :)

That's a view of the station from that balcony. 

And there's reason why it's become part of life. They've watched the station come up over the years, the trial runs of the trains, and now the regular movement of the trains...they can even see the passengers embark and disembark, that's how close the connection is. Dad even uses his binoculars for closer views :)

And there used to be days during the period when dad would wonder aloud as to whether the metro would come up in his lifetime. So this ride is almost like a consummation of that relationship. Made all of us that much happier for it.

Ma and daddy, it's so wonderful to see the interest and enthusiasm you both still have for the world around, so beautifully symbolized through the metro experience.  Sooo inspiring !!