Brilliant But Awful People

I was going to write about my experience shopping for clothes, but I realized that that pet peeve has already been chronicled. So, let me talk about something I was just reading: an article on the debates in University College London about whether scientists who held controversial political (read racist and sometimes misogynistic) views should be honored. Arguments in favour of honouring them are that they have made significant contributions to science and so, while their views should be acknowledged as controversial, they should be honoured. It is the height of presumption to assume that we have scaled the heights of progressivism and none of our views would be considered beyond the pale 50 years from now. It is one thing to honor philanthropists whose fortunes stemmed from the slave trade, but quite another to honor scientists whose views might not be known to most people. On the other hand, honoring such figures whitewashes the controversial bits. It feeds the idea that if you are brilliant you are allowed to be a horrible person, and the more brilliant you are the more horridness you can get away with. I don't know where I stand on this one. But, at least, tolerance for brilliant but awful people is receding. Maybe we are realizing that we wouldn't have so many catastrophic problems in our world today if the brilliant people that we lauded were indeed as brilliant as we thought. So if they haven't contributed to solving the world's problems the least they can do is behave decently. Maybe a day will come when rich and powerful people will also face a reckoning, like some brilliant people are. 

Writer's Block

I haven't had writer's block in ages. The past few days have not been terribly productive, but today it felt like I hit a wall. I couldn't write more than a few sentences in the whole day, and decided to come back home from uni early. I can't remember the last time I did that. Yes, some days are more productive than others but I rarely throw in the towel before 5 pm. I am trying not to read too much it. Seeing it as a personal failure or a sign that I am losing interest in my research. Everyone has off days and some of days are more off than others. I am coming back from a holiday to what is to be the start of the final year of my PhD. This is the year when I will have to work harder than I ever have. It is exciting but also intimidating. I don't feel like I was lazy for the first two years of my PhD. While I haven't been super-productive I like to think that my accomplishments have been reasonable. But, personal growth is about eclipsing your own prior achievements, pushing yourself further than you ever thought possible without running yourself into the ground. The challenge is to do both. I have learned a lot about myself in the past two years, particularly on the personal front but also on the professional front. I feel like I am equal to the task before me and I have the tools to cope with the stresses that the task, as enjoyable as it is, will generate. 

Pride and Ignorance

Pride breeds complacence and stems from ignorance. If you are feeling too smart, chances are you not fishing in the right waters or at least not deep enough. Feeling a little dumb is a motor for research, because if you already know most things worth knowing, research becomes a performance for the sake of your vanity.
This morning, I found myself absorbed in a topic that was fascinating and bewildering in equal measure. It is essential to feel both emotions towards a research  topic. I am bewildered by quantum theory but not fascinated by it. I am fascinated by yoga but not bewildered by it. Which is why I don't research quantum physics or yoga. I am extremely fortunate that I am both fascinated and bewildered by my current research interests. The fascination pushes me towards the topic, the bewilderment encourages me to explore it deeper. Where does pride come in? Nowhere, because pride encourages performance and stunts the spirit of inquiry. 

Multiple Sclerosis

Over the past few weeks, I have come across two people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis--one in the real world and one in the virtual world. The first is a friend of a friend and the second is an Indian journalist whose column I read today. In the first case, the woman woke up one morning and couldn't move her legs. She now moves around in a wheelchair. 

The news had a special poignancy for me because I remember that in one of my health anxiety phases about nine years ago, I feared that I had MS, which is an  auto-immune disease, where the body attacks itself. At the time, to my anxiety-addled mind it seemed like a slow-death sentence. Now, it turns out it doesn't have a huge effect on life expectancy, except in severe cases. None of which is to say that it is not a horrible life-changing disease. Our bodies are our abodes, our sanctuaries, and we take them for granted, just as we take home for granted. So having your abode become a stranger to you is a profoundly disquieting experience. Even though I have had demons dance in my head, I fear physical conditions more than mental ones even if such a mind-body distinction is possible to make in practice.

Structure Vs Agency In The Climate Debate

So many contemporary debates in politics can be boiled down to the structure-agency dichotomy. Is human action primarily the result of institutional structures an individual finds herself in or is it a result of her exerting her free will? A Twitter exchange I chanced upon today flagged the same issue. If corporations are the biggest polluters, does the behaviour of individual consumers, such as cutting down on unnecessary consumption, matter? I tend to think that it does. We can rail against capitalist structures all we can (and we definitely should) but we are all complicit in the structures. That is barely a revealation, but my point is we are complicit in it to differing extents. Middle-class Westerners are extremely complicit in it, and the more complicit we are, the more our power and responsibility to change it. It is unimaginable that our planet will be able to support Western middle-class living standards for all, or even most, of its population. Whether capitalism survives or perishes, we in the West will have to accept a drastic  change in our living standards. The issues of climate justice and social justice are intertwined here. Trying to tamp down on excessive consumption is often dismissed as victim-blaming, and I have been witness to the uncomfortable spectacle of solidly middle-class protesters thumbing their noses at people who shop at Primark, who presumably come from a lower social class. But, can't we do both--go after corporations AND mobilize to change consumer  behaviour? What could be more subversive than attacking the premise of this economic system, which is boundless consumption. Companies directly and indirectly produce goods for consumers. To pretend that they can continue to do so in similar volumes and quality but with substantially lower bio-physical footprints is fanciful. 

Sugar Bore

I am fast acquiring the reputation of being a Sugar Bore among friends and family because I have the annoying habit of reading out loud labels on food packages for their sugar content. At first, it was out of amazement at how much sugar certain foodstuffs contain, including food that is not seen as 'sweet' such as ketchup, or mayonnaise or cola. Now, it has become something of a habit. I try to eat healthy, but sugar is the only thing I really take care to avoid. I have noticed that the less sugar you eat, the more you become sensitive to it. For example, a bar of KitKat feels intolerably sweet to me now. 

While I care about the health of friends and family, it is easy to descend into moralizing and virtue-signalling. My behavious might even be perceived as fat-shaming since I am of lean build, so I  am careful to only dispense advice to close family and friends. Ultimately, what adults put into their bodies is their own choice. It is easier for some people to resist some foodstuffs and more difficult for others not necessarily because they have weaker wills but also possibly because their bodies are different. Listening to your body is more prudent than doggedly starving yourself of a particular foodstuff. And  on days when I am feeling especially drained after a heavy workout, sugar is what comes to the rescue and possibly staves off illness. 

Back to Blogging

I'm back after a short holiday with family. Technically, I am still on holiday but back from a trip on which I hadn't taken my laptop. While I have realized I am generally more content when I am blogging and doing yoga, some days without either can be good too. The days leading up to the trip were intense on both the personal and professional front. While my first instinct would be to write about it, maybe it was good that I couldn't while I was on the trip. I have a tendency to over-analyze and over-reflect, which leads me to sometimes make mountains out of molehills. Now that I am back from my trip, the mountain before my  eyes seems more like a molehill.
 While blogging and therapy writing are an indispensable part of my life they are not my whole life. Anything pushed to an extreme can be counterproductive, and navel-gazing more than other things. In recent years, I have seen writing as a healthy outlet for my tendency to overthink and over-analyze, but it can become addictive. If one must overthink, one is better off putting it down on paper instead of having a whirlpool in one's head.
But, having something to write about can push me to overthink. Which is why I thin maybe it is a good idea to have a time limit for how much time I spend on an individual post. I am also aware that one writes and learns, and one's relationship with writing changes over time. A style or frequency of writing that might be useful at one point of time, may not be at another.