Gaijin Philosophy

Sunday, October 16, 2016

The Written Word

Facebook is predicting the end of the written word (http://qz.com/706461/facebook-is-predicting-the-end-of-the-written-word/) on its platform and otherwise. Is it even possible?

A quick search of the history of writing shows us that the earliest form of writing with symbols came about around 6600 BC and the earliest script came around 3400 BC. Of course, some would be quick to point out that our ancestors had no Facebook or other social media platforms. But what they fail to realize is even in that day and age, people felt the need to communicate what was important by writing. Whether it be for the sake of posterity or merely expressing themselves, they chose to do so using the written word.

That tradition continues even today. Our most important documents are the letter of the law, legal contracts or binding deals. Whether it be the declaration of independence, the constitution or an agreement, none of these are left in pictorial format. They are represented in great detail in the written word. Why? Because the written word matters. The written word is powerful. In a world where everybody is expressing themselves using video or photography, it matters today more than ever.

It was Confucius who is known to have said, "Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more." Referring back to Facebook, they believe that the written word will soon be lost due to the amount of video / pictures that people are using on their platform and Instagram. But they seem to have forgotten one important fact; these same people post their videos / photos, but any further communication on that happens in the written word. People in a certain sense are eliciting responses by their media in the written word. I would even go so far as to characterize the 'like' and other reaction buttons as ready written words. I wonder if they are counting the number of comments that people are posting on their platform or otherwise, for i'm sure that they would far outnumber the photo / video posts.

Wittgenstein said, "The limits of my language means the limits of my world." I believe that the day we lose our ability to engage with the written word is the day we as a species would lose any value to give forward and therefore our existence. And since the very precept of our species is based on communicating using the written word and continuing to give value forward through it, i believe that the written word is far from done. Even when we say we are at a loss for words, we still find words to express ourselves. Because in a certain sense our very world is defined and limited by the limits of our spoken word, communicated in writing.

But how did we get to this place that some would believe that the written word is dead (albeit based on skewed analysis)? I believe it is because we have become too busy for our own good. The joy of writing is an art that is being lost. People today have a much better platform to communicate using the written word than they have ever had in any previous generation. Yet people seem to be content with consuming content in media rather than expressing themselves in writing, because they seem to have energy left only for writing. Writing seems to be reserved to make comments alone.

But even in this, the written word is not dead nor going to be anytime. If anything, it is more precious and valuable right now. It just requires a set of people who will once again set alight hearts and minds to remind people of the joy of writing and reading.

It is time that we got back to writing for the joy of it. Here's calling out all those who enjoy it! Let us garner our energies into expressing ourselves in the written word. Let us write to engage, to encourage, to prod, to tickle imaginations, to express and to give hope. Are you in?

Sunday, May 25, 2014

The Search for Relevance - 2

2. THE RELEVANCE OF DISCOVERY

Discovery [dih-skuhv-uh-ree]

Noun

The act or an instance of discovering.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain is known to have said, "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." Yet most of us would tide through our lives not allowing ourselves to give too much thought to why we were born at all. This is an interesting fact in the light of Mark Twain's statement. Because an evaluation of the same would mean that many of us have never realized the 2nd most important day of our lives.

The problem with the search for relevance in our lives is that we do not want to have to engage in this search; yet our innate beings push us, even beg us to answer this question. It is a paradox of sorts because we can't seem to bear to live with the mystery; yet find it almost impossible to find an answer that is truly satisfying. It makes us miserable especially when nothing seems to be making sense, it makes us frustrated when we can't seem to get a handle on situations and bend them to our wishes; but mostly it makes us feel helpless when we can seem to do nothing but resign to our mundane daily lives with no particular logical end in sight. The search for relevance is the quintessence of our lives, yet it is the single most frustrating characteristic of being human.

I believe that the answer to our search for relevance lies in the act of discovering the relevance of our lives daily, one step at a time. By extension of the same, we have the premise that in the absence of the process of discovery for our relevance daily, we stand little or no chance of ever finding the answer that our very existence begs of us. How could that even be true?

Think about it this way:- If you find yourself in a market wondering why you are waiting in queue to buy some meat, chances are that you are there because:

a. you wanted to eat the meat and drove yourself there to buy it

b. you are running an errand for somebody near home who told you to buy the meat for them

c. you are accompanying somebody to the market and they kept you in queue to get the meat, while they finished shopping for other stuff

or d. you are either sleep walking / raving mad and are in the queue in the market to just stand there for no apparent reason

If your answers are a or b or c, you arrived at those conclusions by ticking off the obvious fact in play and trying to discover the most relevant truth to you at that time. If you were to however skip the entire discovery process and not tick off the obvious and most relevant truth pertaining to situation, you are faced the response d and immediately begin to wonder if there is no better explanation; because regardless of your persuasion about philosophical thought and method, our brains seem hard-wired to seek eudaimonian balance in the reason for what we are doing. In essence our brains are hard-wired to walk through a serious of analytical questions to answer reasonably why we find ourselves in that market queue; in other words we discover our reason for being there.

Our lives are very much like that market queue we find ourselves in. We do not know why we are there but we certainly need to know. As we analyze all possible answers to the same, we start by eliminating the obvious and work our way to an answer one step at a time; in other words, we discover our true purpose. The important thing to remember though is that this discovery is a process that cannot be bypassed. The same way that Einstein didn't know when he was 15 that he would hailed the greatest mind of the 20th century, nor did Mother Teresa know that she would be hailed as the icon of humanitarian outreach when she was 10. We need to go through our lives, discovering each day who we are; else we only land up bitter and disillusioned.

In this context, frustrating though it is many a time to deal with the same; it is easy to understand the relevance of discovery in our lives. But there is another reason that discovery is important to us - it is the crux of what makes our lives relevant and makes us who we are. From the time we are born we are always discovering something about ourselves - our likes / dislikes, our palette, our facial impressions, clothes that bring us looking close to our own self-image, our values and what we truly believe in, etc. This process of discovery is what leads us to finding our perceived true selves. Discovery is the cornerstone of the Philosophy of Self; without it, we would never be able to define ourselves.

Now lets consider an alternate viewpoint - literally. In order to find relevance, we know we must discover our selves, our lives and our purpose; frustrating as it is. But it would be of great advantage if we could analyze our lives from a lens other than our own. An external lens that has not limitations of its own, nor possessing biases that would render its viewpoint just as skewed as ours, would give us great insight into our lives and its purpose. Such an objective picture though can be gained only from a viewpoint that is far removed from our own lives, yet intimately able to perceive and capture even the finest details. Very much like an aerial camera can provide a whole new perspective to a soccer game, all it takes is a glance from a viewpoint high up and removed to completely change our perspective on the way we perceive things. The question though is, does there exist such an objective viewpoint; so far removed that it is unaffected and unbiased, yet so intimately connected so as provide us insights into our lives?

For me that is the ultimate viewpoint. There is not a time when i have stood on a seashore looking at the vast ocean or looked at the fluffy clouds from the window seat aboard a flight that i have not wondered just how constrained i am. More importantly, i wondered whether i would ever be able to understand things from such an objective viewpoint; given how constrained i am.

Sources:

1. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/relevance

2. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/505050-the-two-most-important-days-in-your-life-are-the

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_self

Friday, March 14, 2014

The Search for Relevance - 1

1. THE NEED FOR RELEVANCE

Rel·e·vance [rel-uh-vuhns]

Noun

The condition of being relevant, or connected with the matter at hand

We are born, live for about 60, maybe 70 years and then die. That's it! What is the point of our lives? For in the grand scheme of things (the 13.8 billion year old universe for example) what do those 60 - 70 years of your life count for? Or what do all our human lives put together count, for that matter?

The search for relevance is quintessential of the human experience. After all, to know the relevance of our lives is to know why it matters or how it is important. It is to understand why we are alive, where we fit in; it explains the reason for our existence. The search for relevance drives our lives, making us strive hard to find our niche. It is the reason for everything we have done, do or ever want to do. We spend our lives in such search; yet have no clue why we need to find the relevance of our lives in the 1st place. How are we to understand this need for relevance in our lives? Better still, we could start by asking do we need to understand it at all? After all, as Arthur Clarke is known to have said, "If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live - or to play."

My wife and me have a 4 year old. Over the last year there has been one question he asks more than others - Why? He wants us to explain to him why were telling him to do / not do something, why some events played out a particular way, etc. In essence he keeps asking us the reason for things that concern / affect him in some way. It is part of our human nature to be curious. Curiosity is the only reason the human race has progressed so far. Edmund Burke would say, "The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity." To not try and address our deep seated need to find relevance in our lives would be to kill our most fundamental emotion. Colorado State University's Psychology Professor Michael Steger studies meaning, how people find it in their lives and whether it matters. He found that people in general who find some overarching meaning or foundational purpose supporting the things they do and their beliefs - tend to better withstand the things life throws at them. It is therefore that i believe we need to understand it; for Socrates couldn't put it better when he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

The need for relevance in our lives stems right from our childhood where we feel the need to identify why we are doing / not doing a particular set of things. Robin Sharma said about the same, "The purpose of life is a life of purpose." This deep seated need for relevance doesn't come from a life altering event alone as much as from within ourselves. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian existential psychologist surmised that our dominant driving force is to find meaning in life; as he put it, "He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how." It was Baumeister who suggested that the search for relevance in our lives is in order to address the need for self-worth. Steger's research showed a direct correlation between one's sense of self worth and the perception that their life had meaning. As my wife and me watched our son grow, there was a phase where he loved looking at himself in the mirror and admiring himself. Child psychologists will tell you that this is how children get accustomed to their reflection and find a sense of worth as a distinct human being. It is at precisely that moment (usually when a child is around 15 months old) that we find the beginnings of the need for relevance in our lives. So closely knit is this imagery of self-worth to our being that as we continue to grow (and explore the world around us), this search for relevance grows to become a need for relevance; the need to be us!

The need for relevance more or less peaks by the end of our (exploratory) teen years which having been spent trying to define and express ourselves so that others would take notice; moves on (in most) to settle down into a more passive form of 'this is me and this is my life' mode. When questioned, most people tend to look back at this mindset of their 20's sculpted look, as the basis of the relevance of the remainder of their lives. However the truth is, most people in their 60's would have a good laugh about what they thought their lives would be in their 20's. Goes to prove that our need for relevance is not a milestone reached; rather is a process of exploration and discovery over the period of our lives. This is because our need for relevance is not in one action or thought that lasts a lifetime; rather it manifests itself in short and widely spaced quantum leap growth patterns of learning and developing. This never ending search for relevance as long as we live, is what defines our lives and edges us on to achieve. For ultimately it is this same relevance that defines our human experience and sets us apart from other the species on earth.

Make no mistake, this quest for relevance is a frightening one. Yet, the truth is we as humans only fear meaninglessness more. It is probably this fear that drives me to write. But if you are somebody who takes literally the satirical writings of Kurt Vonnegut when he said, "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different;" well this series is not for you. Curiosity did kill Schrodinger's cat; but there is much we can achieve if we do not limit our curiosity. A case to the fact is everything the human race has achieved. So, if you are anything like me - a normal thinking human being wondering about our search for relevance, i ask that you embark on this journey of discovery with me.

Even as we begin this journey, ask yourself - "Am I relevant?" May it be that we find more answers than questions along this journey. I also sincerely hope that we will be wiser (and therefore happier) by the end of this literary journey to discover relevance in our lives.