Turning 40

I have never been big on marking birthdays, but this is a big one. So, I went back to previous posts about birthdays and it turns out that there are just two—for Nos 35 and 36. I turned 35 during the first year of Covid, and my post was mostly about how that year had been nothing like what I had thought or hoped for. I was surprisingly compassionate to myself, marvelling at how well I had coped with the pandemic and the various tribulations it had brought. It also expressed relief at having something to say when people would ask how I was celebrating. I am happy to report that having nothing to say to that question is no more a cause of embarrassment. Maybe its because I am older, maybe the pandemic has made social introversion more acceptable. But, a friend of mine who turned 40 last year told me to mark the occasion, else I might regret it. I bought a car a few months ago, and wrote about how it felt like something I needed to do before I turned 40.

Turning 40 is a time to reflect not just on the previous year but on the previous decade. My 30s were stormier than my 20s, which included the two best years of my life—journalism school in Chenna and the masters in Holland. It was also the decade that I discovered journalism, worked as a journalist for more than half a decade and eventually tired of it. My 30s were off to a turbulent start, being stricken with dengue in my 31^st year and the sleeping demons that it roused in me. But, I managed to life myself out of that morass and put my life back on track, which is, and may always be, my biggest achievement. And, then pandemic struck bang in the middle of my 30s. It make years to understand and reckon with the impact of the pandemic, even though neither I or my lived ones suffered grave misfortune. And, any scorecard must consider the fact that the world has become a far angrier place over the last decade or so. And, surviving in it and trying to thrive in it is no mean feat. And, while my 30s had some turbulent times, they were also a period of tremendous self-growth and accumulation of self-knowledge.

Planning for futures

The other day, I came cross a tweet that said "People are still planning for futures that are connected to a world that doesn't exist anymore". My first reaction was "My feelings exactly!" and my next reaction was "What are they supposed to do instead?". The Gramsci quote about the monster-filled interregnum between the dying old world and not-yet-born new world rings true, but until the new world is born one can only plan keeping the old world in mind. It is easy to slip into despair at the state of the world, and it is also easy to romanticize despair. One can continually come up more creative ways to express despair and feel very smart for doing it. I know because I have done quite a bit of it in the past. My favourite line, that I would trot out to anyone who would listen was “I am smart enough to realise that most social science research is bull-shit, but not smart enough to make original contributions. It has features in my blog here and here in the past. I felt smart saying it, and I felt that it conveyed humility, wit and self-awareness. On this blog, I have talked about it here and here. Now, I think it is time to retire that line. It serves no purpose now, if it ever did in the past. It is also a cop-out because it justifies inaction. If the world is uncertain, if you are not too smart or too dumb, maybe the best thing is to do nothing? I don’t mean to sound self-righteous. Expressing despair can be cathartic and sometimes one needs to take a brake from action. But those should be explicitly stated choices 

Cobalt Blue

For the longest time, I have had a mental block against novels written by Indian writers in English. One of my complaints was that Indians writing in English appeared to feel the need to prove that they knew the language well. The result was stilted and overwrought prose. This might be still true of some Indian writers writing in English. But, it is certainly not true of the best writing, if it ever was. Indians have made English their own and, as the protests against Hindi hegemony show, it is the only language that is widely spoken and acceptable to people across the length and breadth of India. I don’t want to paint an overly optimistic picture of English’s place in Indian society—fluency in English is a marker of class (and, hence, caste) status. But, that is a discussion for another blog post. Despite all this, I haven’t managed to overcome my reluctance towards reading Indian novels in English. The novels feel like they are set in a foreign land, and I struggle to conjure up the sights and sounds of the India I know from the writing. I say this as someone who is much more fluent in English than in the two Indian languages I know, so it’s a good thing I have no ambitions of writing a novel. Today, I just finished a novel titled Cobalt Blue, originally written in Marathi, which is the Indian language I am less fluent, even though it is my “mother tongue” (I am one of the few Indians of my generation who has a different mother and father tongue). I would have struggled to read the original, and I would have given up before I realized what an amazing novel it is. I read the English translation, and found myself translating some sentences back into imperfect Marathi.  It is a searing story about love, loneliness and loss set in Pune, my favourite Indian city. It spoke to me in a way that no book has in a long time, and I can’t recommend it enough, especially to people familiar with Pune and/or Maharashtrians. It has also spurred to seek out more translated works from India.

Professions for the end of world

Since I am at a professional crossroads, I spend a lot of time thinking (and fretting) about what I should do next. This is an interesting time to be at a professional crossroads, to say the least. I have nothing to add about the state of the job market due to economic headwinds, a rogue US presidency and the advent of AI. There is, of course, the question of whether one will be able to find a job of one’s liking, given these various problems. But, before that, there is the question of what types of jobs should one aim for that i) make a positive contribution to society and the environment ii) do not require you to be tight-lipped about genocide. iii) are unlikely to be gobbled up by AI. Jobs that are likely to be relevant right up to the fast-approaching end of the world. I can think of only three broad sectors: art, care and political organizing (food-, clothing- and housing-related professions have moved far beyond sustenance needs into wasteful and unequal consumption). I don’t think these need any further explanation. Much more brilliant and eloquent minds than me have written about why artistic expression is a human imperative. Care, in all its forms (medical, social, mental), is a noble profession; and even a cynic like me believes  that we need to strive for a better world right up to the end of the world. These are the only broad professions that feel meaningful to me to pursue at this moment. I wish I could add academia to this list, but I cannot, in good faith, do that. A lot of academic social science is vacuous, tediously self-referential and status-quoist. We cannot rely on academic social scientists to make sense of, much less foretell, the changes in our physical and social worlds.

 

 

 

Work For The Sake of Working (or Bullshit Jobs)

//this is a post that I wrote in May 2015 when I was doing my Master's in Holland///

In another life, when I was gainfully employed, I often wondered whether it would make any difference to the rest of the world if my job profile simply disappeared. As a financial markets reporter, I spent a lot of time calling up traders and asking them why a particular bond, stock or currency pair had risen or fallen in price. Usually, they had no idea themselves and would trot out one of the many hackneyed market phrases that essentially say nothing—profit booking, value buying, various kinds of fears or expectations of investors. Often, a trader would read from a competing news publication’s story to give me a reason. (How did I know? Because every half-decent journalist keeps a close tab on the competition).

But, mine is hardly the only job of questionable social or economic value (how to define value is one of those grand questions that social scientists have been grappling with for ages, but bear with me if you can). As advances in technology have reduced the demand for employment in manufacturing, especially in the developed world, an overabundance of new jobs has emerged in the services sector. Not just internet-related jobs, such as GIF specialist or content curator, but also PR consultant, life coach, corporate lobbyist, telemarketer, many jobs in finance, administration and human resources etc. This is not just a rich-world phenomenon--it is also seen in developing country metropolises such as Mumbai, where I used to work.

How did this situation come about? In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the early 21^st century, gains in productivity due to technological advances would reduce the duration of the work week in advanced countries to 15 hours. But, instead of enjoying the fruits of automation, we have invented entire new categories of what anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs”. Peter Fleming, an economist, says most jobs in rich countries have moved away from “the baseline of biological self-preservation”.  He says it's “this growing disconnect between labour as a biological/social requirement versus work as a cultural artefact that has seen it take on a life of its own…”. In other words, work for the sake of working. Yes, many jobs have been outsourced to poor countries, but increased automation is reducing the total number of manufacturing jobs in the world, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek column citing the Boston Consulting Group. We are working far more hours than are required to produce the world’s total output of goods and useful services (assuming that all goods produced are useful).

As Graeber points out, the contradiction here is jarring. Capitalism thrives by cutting costs and trimming flab, not by adding layers upon layers of excess fat. Are bullshit jobs an innovative way of putting money in the hands of people so that they can buy the products manufactured by machines and keep the capitalist system running? Is this a variation of Keynes’ idea that governments should pay people to dig holes and fill them up again during downturns to stimulate demand? Since many of these jobs exist in or feed off the financial sector, is there a link between the growth of such jobs and the ascent of financial capital after the Gold Standard was abolished?

Whatever the reasons for the existence of bullshit jobs, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for them. Today, the biggest problem of the rich world is a lack of demand—most people are unable or unwilling to buy enough products to keep their economies growing. Wave upon wave of quantitative easing has done little else than inflate stocks and bond prices. The obvious solution is to raise government spending or to increase wages of workers so they have more money to spend, as some countries such as Germany, Japan and the U.S. are doing. But, will the number of bullshit jobs also increase in the process?

Choosing the Right Therapist

Is it a wonder that an overthinker would overthink the task of finding a therapist to help them with overthinking (among other things)? Before this year, I had had therapy on two occasions. On the more recent one, it was because it was free (though not particularly useful). The first time was when I was at the lowest I had ever been, a period I call the Watershed year. That therapist was the second one I tried after having swiftly rejected the first one for being like a shiny automaton. With the second therapist, I instantly knew she was the right one for me, and, indeed, she was. Call it chemistry, call it intuition, call it a sixth sense, but I have never had that feeling about any therapist I have met since. However, a lack of chemistry may be a good enough reason to turn down a potential romantic interest, but one has to be more concrete if rejecting a therapist. Not just because the therapist deserves a better explanation, but because you owe it to yourself to think your reasons through. I questioned the approach of looking for chemistry in a therapist, which I deconstructed (in my case) to mean someone who vows with me with their intelligence and who is very articulate. I had decided that such an approach was shallow. But, in the end, I decided to change therapists, even though during our last session, the therapist dropped some intriguing insights about me. I realise that there is no perfect therapist, and one simply needs to find someone who is competent and compatible. But, I can’t help thinking that whatever choice I made, I would feel like it was the wrong one.

Man Flu

 I have had a cold for the last week or so, and I suspect it is man flu. 'Man flu' is a derisive term for the phenomenon of men over-reacting to minor illness. Apparently, there may be physiological reasons for why men appear to exaggerate the symptoms of a minor illness like a cold or a flu. Apparently, men have weaker immune symptoms than women. I am certain that I am susceptible to man flu, because when I get a cold, it puts me in a horrible mood, much worse than the symptoms warrant. And, I have written before about how colds are particularly annoying because you are indisposed but well enough to feel the full weight of your symptoms. I have never had a cold and not thought, at least for a brief while, that it would never go away. On more than a few occasions, the cold was brought on by me doing vigorous exercise despite feeling under the weather. It has happened often enough that I should know better than to exercise when I am feeling a bit iffy. But, it is amazing what lengths people go to when faced with restlessness. And, the inevitable self-flagellation that follows the onset of sickness is par for the course.