Tag: social compulsions

Colors through the Prism.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

We live in times, where the war of narratives simply refuses to die down and no sooner that one fire of warring narratives is doused we have some other narrative rising up some where else, given the connected global collective future that we all share as humanity, what more can be more important then to take a pause and try to understand how did and why did we arrive where we have today, and why have narratives become so driven, compelling and sacrosanct, that without a daily does of “breaking news” we simply refuse to recognize that a new day has arrived and there can be a day without a “breaking news”! Join me here as we explore this space and try to make sense of the gross nonsense floating around us and take a moment to think what is that we can do to stay on the right side- or should I say, the sane side, as much as we can! So here we go!

Never before have societies across the world, found themselves to be dodged and challenged each day on some or the other issue, whether that is a social problem confined to a limited area, society or a nation, or whether it is a global challenge which touches areas of international trade, commerce, public policy, diplomacy or the so-called space of the new-age climate change fanatics! All these arenas have one thing in common and that is the compelling urge for the whole of humanity to take a position on each and every issue that comes their way- either you are for something or against something, even when you think that you would like to stay neutral and not join the fools’ bandwagon for meaningless pursuits, you are soon labelled by both ends as being a coward, incompetent or still worse a human wreck!

Humanity, as it evolved always had to battle and put forth one new age thought over the other and that is what the essence of progress and development has always been and will always be, but never before was anyone compelled to take a position like each one of us are required to do so- call it social conformation bias, societal pressures or simply a social model, if you don’t belong to something or someone, you belong to no one, that is what the human race has sadly come to be! But how did we reach this place? Why has it become so necessary and qualifying to take stands and demonstrate ones’ likes’ dislikes’ ideological affiliations such a pronounced way? What is really unfolding in all this space? Read on!

Our disconnected world, was perhaps more unifying and collaborative in the sense of being able to bring together the finest of human minds across varying fields- arts, sciences, innovation and that is what has been the hallmark of the modern age renaissance across the world through the 16th century onwards! Unique thinking was debated, discussed and either adopted or left alone, but never was the beholder of that thought vilified and neither were the people who rallied around exponents of different thoughts were made to pledge their allegiance and choose one of the many or the choices that lay in front of them! This is what empowered the free spirited and unabashed, care free thinking and experimentation!- A foundation on which all human development and progress- even until this day stands on! The fact remains that, the fabric of stretched space and time and space between developments gave enough time for people to think through a much required calibrated pause and that further went on to enrich the original ideas and made them stick like nothing else ever has! In fact many of the modern day marvels of engineering, appliances, gadgetry are nothing but an example of in depth pursuit of an original idea, followed up by continuing improvisation as the changing times would have called for!

Paradoxically enough as this boom of ideas began to get more and more predictable and routine, through the 18th century and the earlier part of the 19th century and as humanity began to exhaust, the meaningful pursuit of ideation breakthrough’s for “need to have” aspects of our lives and began to move towards “good to have” spaces, things soon began to get complicated! This complication stemmed from “the rewards that were being offered to come up with a new way at looking towards old things!” Well, needless to say in no time, narratives, competing statements and ambiguity began to replace- simplicity and clarity and once this approach starts to take a strangle hold on the ways of working of societies, all your intellectual ammunition thrown at it to bring in some much needed sanity, is almost always misused and thrown back at you, further aggravating an already worsening problem and in no time- the ground is set to create two powerful sections and segments within a society “With” or “Against”. This is the very moment which gave birth to what we see manifest around us, every now and then with an ever increasing instance, this compelling greed of wanting to control, wanting to belong to “x’ or “y” or “z” and wanting to just rant off “it’s only mu way” all the time is what sets the tone to further drive the divide even more further and at times make it wide enough, so that no meaningful bridges can ever be built, even if someone later would want to!

It is this modern day, madness that urges people to see things in the binary, or of either being black or white, for or against them, and situations like these is what makes humanity really color blind in the real essence of the definition of being color blind! It is this modern day approach of wanting to push through a specific narrative, direction, way of life, way of existence, way of belief, way of going about is what really ends up creating a sharp divide among humans- within families, friends, societies and nations- add to this a layer of “intelligence gone berserk” and on a trajectory of “wanting to control” and you have a recipe for disaster- which is what our modern world is more or less all about!

This menace of wanting people to see the world around them in a “black or white”, “my way or your way” kind of binary set up is perhaps the most un serving aspect of humanity as it stands today! If the digital age has done something to this space, it ahs gone further to add to the chaos and ensured that the dumb become more dumber and the wise become more sly- enough to ensure that the ambiguity and confusion is spread and sustained more rapidly and with more driven intentions, to further shirt serve people, societies and humanity at large! The digital age has indeed become one potent weapon of mass destruction- which if harnessed meaningfully can add colors and vibrancy to the lives of millions around the world, but as the few strive to retain control over the many- needless to say- this magical digital world- often ends up being an extension of compelling narratives and a larger then life intellectual graveyard in its own sense! So what is the way forward, is there something that you and I can do about this? If yes, what is that we can do? Read on!

Sure enough, there is no one size fits all solution to this overhanging menace of our modern times, simply because all situations and contextual realities are almost always different even though they seem to be similar enough, they are never the same. Having said that, the only meaningful way to deal with this compelling pressure of living in a binary world is by allowing yourself to see your life through a prism! Just like the prism splits white light and leaves us awestruck with the array of the rainbow colors, we too can arrive at meaningful inferences, rejecting the compelling binaries that are thrown our way! There certainly will be times when binaries may be true and correct, but unless things around you are made to pass the test of the prism, you can never be certain about what colors are hidden in the plain light that is shining your way! Now you may be wondering, what is this magical prism all about!

Well that magical prism is the prism of your intelligence which is anchored on the pivots of wisdom, rationality and humanistic realities! You see, no matter who says what, unless science develops to a very advanced level, this third rock from the Sun is all that we have got and if you think escaping a situation was a great act, you will be gravely mistaken, for some other contextual settings may soon entrap you and compel you to solve some problem which is not even yours’ to begin with! This is the truth of our connected world, problems come from some odd pocket, created by few actors residing some where else and the consequences being faced by yet another society!

Unless you and I don’t make that extra effort to behold the sights and sounds of our fleeting world through the prism of discernment anchored on values and attributes that serve the greater good of the society that we are in, everything that you and I try to do will always be seen to be either “for” or “against” and we risk being entrapped into the binary world and end up being the unwitting contributors furthering a meaningless pursuit!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to bring in your prism to behold the life around you so that you see the colors hidden away in the ordinary looking light that comes your way! Life is certainly beyond binaries and the competing narratives that we are always left to play around with! The real essence of life and meaningful narratives only thrive once you are able to see beyond the binaries and are able to take a stand which does not necessarily mean a choice between “for” or “against”!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe and stay wise!

Obedient slaves and Bad masters.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The first time I cam across this concept was when I underwent a Health and Security training with a high profile organization around two decades back! The trainer was sure enough referring to various technical nuances of providing security detail to VVIPS that we may have to engage with, but as part of the training when he came to the vital part of dealing with “Fire” is when this statement (which I later understood is of foundational value!) came to the forefront! Since that day, it has remained stuck and continues to remain so for a simple reason that it is so fundamental and pivotal that everything around us and everyone around us knowingly or unknowingly is operating through these very attributes! Join me here as we explore this further and understand what is that we can do to make this space more meaningful and to begin with, why does it have to be so? So here we go!

Nature is perhaps the greatest and the eternal teacher. If you have been observant enough and ever had the opportunity to tame the elements of nature (if not all, perhaps a few) you will know what I am referring to! We all have known about the large massive dams that stand a testimony of humanity’s stamp of authority on wild and free flowing rivers, but every now and then when nature comes up with a trick up its’ sleeve, even the most seemingly formidable dams end up being just mere objects as they witness the massive amounts of water which they must allow to flow through and perhaps even flood downstream, simply to ensure that the dam doesn’t fail completely and collapse!

As with water, so with fire, wind and the earth itself- for when the elements on which we stand decide to take matters their way- humanity has almost always ended up paying the price for being reckless and disrespectful- remember the word “climate change” good! This is perhaps what is the simplest explanation for the whole construct of it! As humanity plays dangerously with the elements- what is manageable in no time becomes unmanageable and begins to create problems directly or indirectly of monstrous proportions! This is when the “bad” part of being a master begins to come alive and irrespective where in the world you live, sure enough you have got a taste of it in some or the other form! If you are wondering if this is all about nature and its ways, what does it have to do with us? Well, the truth is, no matter how much we would like to have nature out of our way, it seldom leaves us, and the way we behave with ourselves and people around us, is nothing but a reflection of nature itself!

Through ages, as humanity has learnt and emerged from the shadows of nature, it has learnt one skill and that is of being obedient when it is unsure/ vulnerable and being monstrous when its reeking with confidence/ certainty (more often then not, riding high on overconfidence and some times, arrogance!). This hardwired aspect of the human brain and way of connecting with fellow humans often manifests through the modern day dram that we see unfolding in homes, offices and across the social spaces! This is the reason why you see, overworked corporate slavery (because the vulnerability of being jobless is often too big a mountain to climb for the majority!), next to get around it, the usual tools and aides of sly and non-conforming approaches and behaviours, that is how the seed of corruption gets placed- because a way is found to get around and once you do it for one aspect, certainly you can and you will deploy that art for the next thing that seems to be an insurmountable wall! In case you happen to be the Master in the equation, you will be more aware of the sly ways of your corporate slaves (for Every Master some time has been a Salve!) and that ends up being the bedrock for you to deploy your monstrous approach to get work done!

Sure enough, I am not suggesting this is how everyone is, or everyone operates this way, but if you take a pause and reflect upon the behaviours that you have always seen around you and perhaps even your behaviour- you will always see that people are always oscillating between these two vivid extremes of being a dependable slave to being a ruthless master! The reality of our lives resides in between and as Individuals stack up societies tend to get a broader character of being either more obedient or rebellious both indicative a higher shade of one or the other manifestation!

The times that we are entrapped in, are reflective of this eternally conflict of “Wanting to control” and “Wanting to be controlled” as long as people are naturally aligned to what suits their innate and intrinsic nature, things are fine, but the moment you switch them into the wrong quadrant or they tend to outgrow their quadrant, chaos ensues and as that proportion increases, whether that be in our homes, offices or in the society in general! The compelling question here is, why do obedient slaves or why does obedience transform into brashness and harshness as one rises or work their way to become Masters at some or the other time?

Well part of an answer to that question resides in the space which is related to the nature of enslavement, quality and tenure! As long as that experience of being enslaved is within the flex and stretch of a thinking human mind and is rewarded and corrected within those meaningful limits, as people outgrow their learning and enslavement to become masters, they will retain their attributes and value systems to become meaningful and engaged masters, but when the enslavement space is riddled with conflict zones and confrontational narratives, as they grow and rise, they serve back the their distasteful experience in a more amplified manner and the story goes on! This is how individuals get entangled in never ending comparisons, jealousy, tactical slyness to derail the other, corporate bitching and back stabbing and societal unrest and mistrust, all of these are nothing else but a manifestation of enslavement gone wrong and obedience turned into anguish and aggression! So what’s next?

Well, the real essence is in the fact to accept these compelling realities of our lives and surrender to what comes your way and also ensure that all that is created by virtue of what you do remains meaningful! Perhaps the only way to sieve through this paradox within and around us is to remain rooted deeply within to the values and belief’s that are empowering and liberating! As we go about our lives, there will be times when we have to stay enslaved- perhaps not to anyone but perhaps to an idea, a thought, a belief and even as we do so, ensure we retain the character and flavour of who we are and don’t end up carrying the excesses of our entrapment through our journey of empowerment and liberation! The most dangerous way to emerge is ending up being a leader who is entrapped and enslaved within- in their beliefs, thoughts, fears and anxieties!

It is only when a moving fine, dynamic balance is reached as we go about living our lives between being a wishful slave and a leader by choice, will it empower us as Individuals who can then further go on to influence others sans the negativity of being a bad master and ensure that the enslavement or followership that emerges is not tied to something regressive but rather to some liberating thought which empowers even those who are enslaved to the cause of rising ahead and moving further!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to take some time to reflect the enslavement that you seek and the leader that you want to be when your time comes so that you stay an obedient slave to your liberated mind but never a bad master while driving your ambitions!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece, until then stay safe and stay wise!

Deciphering ” The Radical Thinking” mind.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If you are left wondering about what happened at the Capitol Hill on January the 6th and are feeling anguished, angry, dejected, proud or sad or perhaps little bit of everything, this piece is for you; simply because what happened at the Capitol Hill is not an isolated incident as it may seem and is played out across societies all over the world for one or the other reason and depending on which side you view what’s unfolding, either you will be elated or sad and either ways- what unfolds seldom serves you or the society in terms of moving it closer to the larger and greater good! So join me here, as we go further to understand what the so called, “radical thinking” is all about, from where does it emerge and what is that can be done about it- does it only harm or is it helpful too? So here we go!

The dynamism that human societies have witnessed in the last century have laid the foundation to what we witness and experience as our societies around us! Societies which have typically witnessed oppression, war, strife, struggle, more often than not tend to become more mellowed, humble and accommodative with time and as people in those societies begin to get equitable access to opportunities of growth and learning! On the other hand, societies which have always had a very intrinsic and unipolar view of the world and about everything and everyone around them tend to live and die in their own unwarranted over confidence or lack of it!

The challenge that societies have always faced and continue to is about being able to share the dividends of progress in a proportional manner- no one is suggesting socialism here, neither am I suggesting Capitalism is bad, what is relevant and contextually important is the fact that, unless the fruits of labour of progress are not shared in a proportionate manner (whatever that proportion is), societies will feel moving at different speeds within the sub-segments and thereby- you will witness people racing ahead and people being left behind and it is from these extreme scenarios of societies that radical thoughts begin to emerge- the ones’ who are racing ahead feel right about what they do because they are enjoying what the aspire and those who are being left behind, tend to feel right about what they do, thinking that is their way and approach to reach their unfulfilled aspirations! So you see in a sum total way, the essence of radical thinking emerges from the extreme ends of societies hinging on their association with their aspirations- at one end- being enjoyed and wanting more and at the other end wanting the basic ones’ first! Based on what society you live in, you will have different standards for aspirations and different levels of volumes at the extreme end and in the middle of the given society.

As long as societies have the majority of their constituents around the centre, the few on the extreme ends can be managed, but as polarization sets and more and more people start to feel compelled to take extreme stands (as part of the larger social conformation bias) the societal balance is thrown away and what you are left is with few people standing in between of two extremely polarized sections who have a large volume as well! This is what the story of many societies across the nations is today! The cause of that polarization could be anything from, political ideologies, personality worship, religious belief’s, genuine like or despise of available quality of leaders’ , whatever other hundred reasons that you can think about- the fact remains that no human is ever born with a polarized mind or heart and it is the society which goes on to indoctrinate that aspect and whether that helps or harms largely depends on what is injected into the impressionable minds of the people through their forming years and this is perhaps the on stage where societies can strive to check the run away polarization that only comes back to bite them at the end! But how and why do people get sold into extreme views or end up taking a radical stand?

As people begin to race ahead or begin to get left behind, despite and inspite of everything, the ones’ ahead are ready to do anything it takes to stay ahead and the ones’ left behind are ready to do anything that it takes to make that move ahead! For achieving this, whatever comes to their rescue works! This could be taking hardstands on political ideologies, personalities or perhaps even using matters of faith as deemed appropriate, all of this- just as tools or instruments to achieve something that is totally different and what’s worse is that, scoities which allow this to develop and get strong- do so with unwritten laws and incentivization based on how far to an extreme a person leans to! More often then not the heady cocktail of the political class and the people from the society and tool used for the hard-line stand ends up destroying and ripping away whatever would have been the unique identity of the society itself!

Before the rampant industrialization, societies had time and space and were more accommodative and allowing for people to pursue without the fear of getting left behind nagging anywhere around their minds! Today’s world is a different place altogether, trust me if Picasso or Gustav Eiffel or Einstein would have been present today, they would have at the most ended up leading the design or science lab at one of the large corporate houses and that would be their limited claim to fame! They too would have ended up being enslaved to fit into the social frame either as leaders racing ahead or as oddity left to struggle and sink in their own corner- which again are the same positions of the two extreme ends of todays’ world! It is almost easy to go on to a television debate show and claim that there should be no space for extreme thoughts in the society, well the problem with that statement is that all great discoveries and innovations have always had when extreme and radically different thinking was applied to something that can serve humanity and hence the problem is not with the space of radical thinking but rather the deployment of that ability for the serving or unnerving causes! So what’s the plan?

The plan is simple and straightforward, it is about creating enough space within societies to accommodate all the voices, feelings and thoughts that are there and try to resolve and address them the way it should be done! The maddening race to be ahead and the unwanted fear and anxiety of being left behind has to be done away with in totality- sure enough a tall and utopian order, but unless that happens, societies will keep drifting away from humanities foremost agenda of meaningful and purpose driven progress and end up sub-serving ourselves and the generations that rely upon us! If you though this is just a civic problem or the ones’ that politicians should be left to deal with it, think again!

The elements of societies are all of us, You and Me included, as we walk in and out of our offices, get driven in the cabs, are taking trains, buses, co-workers, vendors, clients, visiting stores and going about our social community engagement- we are knowingly and unknowingly touching and connecting with various segments of our society and the way we carry ourselves, behave and speak we are sending out a signal not only about the society around us but importantly also about who and what we have ended up becoming as Individuals while we have been either busy either racing ahead- to stay ahead or we have been striving and struggling to catch up as we have got left behind!

It is only when societies are able to create enough space for all constituents within its frame and enough scope for them to express and explore that we will see the beginning of the end of radical thinking and radicalization! may sound utopian, but that is the only way, human progress has been a story of the ingenious ability of the human mind to come up with new thinking and new solutions for perplexing problems at hand, with time sure enough, even this problem of radical thinking will be addressed- once the root causes that accelerate and provoke it are taken care of!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, not pushing you to either edges of your thinking mind, and just sharing a final thought with you that, the problem is not about the human mind that thinks, neither it is the problem of the mind that thinks radically, the real problems is about what is the contextual truth around that mind which makes it to think the way it does! Fix that and you have fixed all the minds around you -fixed for good!

Remember, average thinking always produces average results, great thinking produces great results and all great thinking happens at the very edge of the thinking process and that is what Radical Thinking is all about- use it wisely and humanity will be endowed with gifts and bliss unlike ever before!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe and stay wise!

The “Comparison pandemic”.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 1 Comment

We all have been at the receiving end and also at the origin of this comparison fallacy and needless to say, no matter how you or try to do something about it, we almost always end up creating another case for comparisons and comparative approaches! Join me here as we take a quick look into this space of what I call as “the comparison pandemic” and decipher when it is ok and when does it begin to slip away from being helpful to being outright harmful! So here we go!

Right from childhood, what individuals normally experience is the ongoing onslaught of comparisons! Irrespective of the fact whether those are valid or not – that is not the primary concern (though a concern, for sure!), the more compelling issue is, why do we do it, encourage it or even allow this bit to propagate- even as each one of us who has lived the life of a child despised it so much. The other aspect around this “comparison pandemic” is that it doesn’t stop with our childhood and this runs deep- at times subtly and at times loudly through our college days, professional lives and even to the moment right upto our graves- because even in that fleeting moment (perhaps a little short of it)- as a human- if you are able to communicate- you still will strive to make that comment which just wants to reinforce the space that you lived a better life than “abc” or “pqr”! Even as comical and harmless it may seem. this “comparison pandemic” plays havoc and has caused perhaps the greatest damage to humanity by stiffing away young innovator’s and humanists even before they could embark on their journey to make humanity a shade better! But why has this been allowed, how did this space of comparing take on these pandemic proportions? Well read on!

Human societies since the bygone ages have been an effort to make the life experienced by the society member better- better in the sense of ease of life- starting right from the primitive goals of being alive (not getting eaten by other predators), then moving on to a life of shifting settlers and further on to eventually be permanent settlers and then go on to develop rapidly into settlements, villages, kingdoms, empires and in today’s contest the nations that we know them as today! Through this journey of the ages- every inflection point (where something meaningful and great would have been achieved) has always been when the normal ways and practises have been reset, improvised or changed completely- at times this has world and yet few other times this has been detrimental for humanity and it is from these spaces of compelling change and transformation and the creativity and destruction that goes along with these period that a vast majority of the social set- felt the urge and need to stick to what was momentarily comfortable rather then wanting to dwell into the risk prone attitude and approach (especially when things didn’t work in the societies favour!) This is the space and context from where the baby steps of the art of “comparing ” perhaps have emerged- as a survival guide more than anything else!

You see, I see you clap your hands, and you are unharmed, I too will want to do that bit and experiment, I see you cut the vegetables and accidentally cut one of your fingers a bit, well, I sure will venture ahead to chop them, but with some caution- it is these kind of everyday observed and indoctrinated ways of life that go a long way to reinforce the comparative approach and once you have become comfortable around this, you have automatically enrolled for a life of mediocre pursuits for yourself and all those who rally around you- simply because you will not move beyond a set range and the reality of life is that all great and iconic stuff happens much beyond the threshold of comfortable range! This is why when you promote the comparative approach- you end up creating intellectual clones who are as smart or as worse as the next one around and then add to this the intrinsic incompetence (which only grows with time) you set up the individual and societies with such individuals for a downward journey and a mediocre approach for eternity!

As Individuals get compared and kind of get calibrated to what is acceptable and what is not, people around often tend to overlook the intrinsic construct of the Individuality of the person and thereby anything of value that can be there is simply walked over and done away with- so once you have someone’s core intrinsic value taken away- by suggesting that what they behold is not needed in the world- instead “be like that person” who does “this or that and there and how” well, you just end up creating a templated robot who is cloned as much as possible to the so called role model! You see, being Inspired or Motivated by people who have been successful or icons is not the problem, it is when these people and their achievements are presented as the only way and approach that an Individual should pursue as their life path, is where problems begin to manifest, simply because, no matter what you do or not, this person can simply be the Master for a thousand reasons- the most fundamental among them being the “contextual settings and truth of the time in which the people lived and worked!

You may want to argue, whatever happens to the whole space around Being Inspired and Being an Inspiration for someone, well, no one is discounting that bit, but if you begin to sell Inspiration with an intent to change a crow into an eagle- you will most probably end up having a very dumb crow which just gets beaten up by the other crows! What the whole “comparison pandemic” ends up doing, is just this, creating asymmetric and unqualified ways of relativity and expectations and when these strike a cord at the fundamental beliefs of individuals- either they become more rebellious to go ahead and assert their Individuality more strongly – a kind of statement which says, “You know what, this is who I am, live with it! or at times they simply crumble and accept a life that is being thrust upon them – like a never ending role play- and with every passing moment- ending up being more fake and disconnected from within and from who they really are- could be and aspired to be!

Well, you may but what about being ambitious, what about trying to be innovative- how can we do that without comparison? Well, no one is asking you, to give up your innovative spark and neither is anyone asking you not to be inspired or learn or observe from what is unfolding around you- what is important is that you don’t end up fooling yourself, thinking that you are being innovative even as you possibly end up copying or cloning some original idea! You see, the whole premise that innovation or iconic stuff needs some comparison is absurd and wrong! If that was the case- we would have all cars similar in design and all what you see around in the world- would have ended up being just copies of some or the other things around and we would have embraced a templated world! That is not the case, isn’t it?

You see, as long as we are able to have clarity about inspiration, contextual truths of the examples around us and are fundamentally aware about who we ourselves are as Individuals, we will be able to keep in check this innocent looking yet dangerous pandemic of comparison! The Human mind is fickle by the very construct of it and what it appreciates at one point in time will be easily junked away as something better comes to it’s purview- this is- believe it or not- the evolutionary safety valve of human thinking- thousands of years back- who would not want to run into an orchard of apples or some wild fruits which could promise an abundant supply to the group, than having to risk every day in and day out their own lives as they went out for a hunting spree!

Comparisons, aren’t all bad, but how they are done, for what and the contexts more often than not make them a nuisance holistically! Not going too back into human history, the recent Covdi19 pandemic was and is a glaring example- how governments after governments went on to copy what the others did and how that ended up screwing up one nation after the another in their won unique ways simply because all similarity with human kind ends with the fact that we are humans and beyond that point each one of is differentiated or levelled to the society that we have got to live around in and as diverse societies try to strike a common line of similarity- almost always the outcome will be disastrous!

Meaningful comparisons stand true in the test of science. The big corporate world- though having its own set of challenges has fared a shade better when it comes to do meaningful comparisons- You see when the corporate world is able to make meaningful comparisons based not on the intrinsic individuality of the people, but rather on the Authority, Position, Span of Control and Sphere of Influence, that is when magic happens and you are able to find it much earlier when teams and people are performing or perishing and the possible why around it becomes easy- as long as the study is on the process and not on the Individuality and Personalities of the Individuals!

Well, to put it simply, comparisons to work, they need to be meaningful and they need identical (not similar) contexts of time and space- everything done without this fundamental attribute under the garb of comparison is plain stupid and is actually meant to drive some or the other human agenda based on what the content of study is and what is being compared and why!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to shun the space around the “comparison pandemic” in your lives and around you and embrace Individuality of people around you, as much you would like them to reciprocate the same! Just remember- there is a reason why nature is asymmetric and why each one of us is unique- even if you happen to be that Identical Twin- that is how far your similarity will go- rest all is about the matter that the mind beholds within! The next time someone tells you, “You are not like , B or C”, just tell them who you are and possibly reintroduce yourself! Their feeble minds should start working from that point!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and yes- compare what is meaningful enough to compare; everything else, is best the way it is!

2021: Calling Leaders!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If you thought that 2020 is coming to an end, think again, the impacts that we have felt and observed and the developing residual effects are far more over and threaten to play mind-games with humanity for many more years to come then you would have thought! Join me here as we take a fleeting look at this space and appreciate why this becomes the perfect compelling case for more Leaders to emerge from the shadows and bear the torch once again so that humanity can break free from the shackles of disengagement and disconnected togetherness! So here we go!

Unlike the earlier years what 2020 has ended up doing (much to the amusement of many, who have still retained their sanity!) is that, it has created contradictory narratives for every sphere of human life, across societies, nations and every imaginable constituent of the society! It hasn’t been that there have never been competing or contradicting narratives earlier, they sure did exist- but they had one fail-safe valve and that valve was of moderation! This moderation was done by different elements of a society at different times and to varying degrees of efficacy. This ensured that no matter what happened narratives and contradictory spaces within a society always grew only to the extent and proportion that the society could cope with! Each time the narratives seemed to threaten to run away with something or fuel discord or anarchy the moderation mechanism would step -in ( most of the times) and save the day for everyone around! 2020 is the year, perhaps the first one, where the world was shown how the fail safe moderation system can be broken down, over-ridden and at places shredded away by the other vital pillars of a society- singularly or collectively! This sure enough is something that the world has been presented with for the first time and the worry is that this won’t be the last time!

You see, 2020, has provided alternative and confrontational narrative for every element that a society chooses to deal with! Whether it is about politics, it is about faith, its is about science, it is about upholding values or throwing them away- almost each and every of these aspects have been debated and discussed as always (which is what the way should be) but what 2020 ended up doing is largely, has made the whole issue of having a divergent or a different point of view a taboo and something that has not been welcomed by societies across the world in 2020. Humanity for long has dealt with perplexing issues and that has been the hallmark of what has made it successful yet turbulent. However, the new challenges presented by the recent developments have made a strong case for harnessing the pivotal power which can make amends and restore all that is broken and that power is Leadership!

The problems presented in 2020, were not all, necessarily something unthought of or not factored of, they were allowed to emerge (the way they did) a good deal simply because of the incompetence and incomprehensibility of the people who were dealing with what they had coming at them! Sure enough, you may argue that, any person (with the kind of crazy stuff that 2020 has been able to throw at societies) would have filed or faltered- perhaps you are right- but the point here is not that of “not failing” rather it is more to do with the ability to recover after failure and that is where real Leadership thrives! If there was one thing that was strongly felt and needed in 2020, it was the “Leadership Deficit”.

Much of what societies have had to endure and deal with was also a factor of having myopic leaders and their wayward ways of dealing with what came their way! Whether it is about the civil unrests, protests, social issues, the sections of societies contesting a point or the pandemic – whatever the cause would have been 2020 showed all the wrong ways to deal with people and their challenges and provided a masterclass on how leadership should not be! This I think should be among the most fundamental takeaways from 2020, a fact that as humanity we had through our agreed social construct possibly asked the most incompetent ones’ to lead us- to nowhere! Sure enough, it would be simply unfair to say, nothing worked and all were incompetent or lax, but that fact is that, as the majority tend to emulate what a few incompetent ones’ do, soon enough, the few good ones’ are sidelined and resigned to fighting their own existential battles! So if this is what it is, how can we expect 2021 to be different, is there anyway that change can be infused when incompetence and myopia is rampant at the leadership levels?

Well, “Leadership overhaul” begins from the top and when it comes to rewiring leadership in the societal plane it is almost always the case of nudging the leadership at the top from within and around! You see, when it comes to correcting and bringing in efficacy of leadership, that has to happen by setting up alternative leaders as proposed challengers to the existing system and that challenger needs to be supported by equally proactive and aligned base around the challenger! Unless societies agree and realize that there needs to be a fresh impetus to lead a new way, the urgency and push for this overhaul will only go on to delay what societies in general are rightly entitled to – Dignified Leadership which rises to protect and share equity among humanity the way it should be!

2021 provides an immense opportunity and rather makes a desperate appeal to have meaningful leaders and meaningful, purpose driven leadership to steer societies further and away from the chaos of 2020 and to create new pathways and ways of life to make 2021 and years beyond more sensible and humanistic! The breed of new age leaders for 2021 and beyond is not about having some magical new formula or theory at work, rather its is all about revisiting the basics and the most fundamental aspects of human society and getting attuned to the core values and essence of being human! The new leadership has to create enough sense and sensibility to let everyone know that even as humanity races ahead with automation and technology powered interventions, unless human intelligence is not automated and put to use as default to begin with every attempt to arrive at sane solutions to ever increasing complex challenges will come crashing down as they did in 2020, when AI models were used in the beginning to predict doomsday scenarios worldwide, while none of them was even sensible or enough meaningful!

The new leaders of 2021, require to harness the limitless power of common sense, science and rationality in that order and always understand the essence of deploying “just enough” as they go about dealing the problems of the day! You see, you don’t see a neurosurgeon for a headache pill, sure enough that can help, but that is not how it is supposed to be! The Leaders of 2021 will have to work hard to create enough space for competing narratives without having any of the narratives to be ridiculed and disregarded simply because they emerge from a certain pocket or section of a given society or social framework! More importantly as societies tend to get more and more vocal and local about how they feel, think and live their way and express to have their way- the leaders and their leadership will have to work overtime to ensure that this doesn’t end up trespassing into someone else’s pathway and way of life!

If 2020 was about, faltering and failing leadership across societies, the leadership stories that get written around 2021 will be the ones’ that are abe to turn the tide fast and take the hard turn safely enough to navigate the challenges coming to them without loosing the focus on what they wish to aspire and reach! The Leaders of 2021 will have to work extra hard to do away with the weight of humanity’s dumbness quotient and try to instill the much needed sense of being human the way we are supposed to be!

If you have been thinking this is all about the social space, well, this is also about our workplaces and it is also about how we lead ourselves- because it is only when the basic constituents within a social fabric begin to fail and falter is that societies begin to derail and this brings to another essence of the 2021 leadership challenge which is about, “Personal Leadership”. 2021 will also be all about Individuals- you and me and about how each one of us is able to and not able to display and deploy the leadership that we wish to demonstrate as individuals who we are! It is from these confines that the new age leaders of 2021 will emerge- to lead societies, business and themselves and the people who they wish to influence and share the story of progress with! The only real fundamental thing that has the power to create a big impact and bring about a wider influence across societies through 2021 and beyond will be the leaders and their amended and meaningful ways!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to take some time through this holiday season, and figure out your own defined space for the leadership that you want to deploy and the leader that you want to be! 2021 can might as well the moment that you have always been waiting for to take charge and lead the way- for yourself, for others or perhaps for the community that you come from!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, stay blessed and remember, every increment of progress is the promise of your leadership!

Social Divergence: A story of our times.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The wealth of nations’ must never be about and can never really be about how opulent the opulent have become- rather it has to be a story of how richer poverty has got and how much higher as it climbed up the ladder to sustainable quality of life and aspirational meaningful opulence! Join me here as take a fleeting look into this space and try to decipher what really drives nations’, who are the powerhouses and what is that is right and so wrong about this space! So here we go!

Irrespective which nation you live in, chances are that as soon as you cross, what I call as the “Circle of Opulence” you will be struck by abject contradictions and challenges that seem to land up in front of you from some bygone era! The holidays are around the corner, if you can move (if it is safe, and allowed to move around), do try to move away from your radius of opulence (I presume that’s where you are), and observe what greets you! This circle of opulence can mean different things across different societies and even the very definition of opulence can range from as simple as being alive to enjoying the latest eclectic wine or having that latest gadget or business jet to fly around in! So how does one come to know that they are within the circle of opulence and and how does one know as they move out of it?

Well, it’s really simple, if you have the five things that are “good to have” and already have access to “the need to have”, chances are you are living “the opulent life”. What these “good to have” and “need to have” are will vary from society to society, but importantly- they will help you know how deep within the Circle of Opulence you are in and how far the edge of that is. You see, when you hear people speaking about the “up’s and down’s of their financial fortunes they are basically getting moved around – still within the circle of opulence- the only thing being as their fortunes deplete they begin to drift towards the edge of that circle and as they begin to amass wealth they begin to re-assert and plant themselves firmly towards the center and sure enough, each society will have their own definition of the center and highest manifestation of opulence and so also about the edge! This is from where all struggle, strife emerges in a society, the ones’ outside the radius want to get in, the ones’ inside want to gravitate towards the center and amass the most for themselves- what is right and wrong, is all contextual, what is absolute within this frame is the fact that, each society has just so much space at the center of the circle, within it and around it and as struggles ensues, you witness the victors and the defeated strewn all across this landscape. This is the very essence of humanity’s existential paradox, where everyone wishes good for the other but seldom facilitates that bit! Think around it!

All this ends up creating divergence within the society and although having diversity within societal blocks may be a good thing, but add to that a dash of divergence and if your further allow that too run amok, you will start to see issues emerge! What this does is, it further reinforces thoughts and feelings (which may not be always be true) among different people within a given society the feeling of being left back, neglected, intentionally side tracked and so on and so forth and when that happens, the human mind begins to look for patterns and tries to develop reasoning for what it experiences and this is how false narratives and incorrect assumptions begin to take birth. If this was not enough, people at the center of the radius, within and around it do what they can do build narratives majorly to stop people getting into that radius and at at times to shed off the exceed within the radius and this is the playground of politicians and policy makers who do what they- at times to help and some other times to harm- but each time they do what they do- they almost always end up helping few and harming few- who gets helped and who gets harmed- well that again is a contextual story! So what next?

Well, as long as societies go about doing what they do, oblivious to what is really playing out, the why and the who, the daily struggle and strife that we witness, will remain, intensity may vary society to society- but this ongoing discontent and chaos will ensue. Sure enough, I am not urging you to believe in any utopian or hallucinatory concept of a perfect place, society or nation, simply because imperfection is the hallmark of humanity and nature alike! So as long as the struggle is to correct what must be and what needs to be- it’s I presume a fair game- but the society must too think alike and a majority of it- when that happens- you have what we call a revolution, the arriving of a new age! When there is a disconnect among the various elements and narratives end up being competing and conflicting rather than being unifying and reinforcing- you have a society which is stationary yet travelling in all directions at the same time with a net result of being regressive rather being progressive! So what’s the plan?

The onus of course correcting a society resides with each one of us, however small that effort may seem, it is only when every element within a society aligns itself for the larger belief and direction that societies will commence to move in a decided direction with commonality of vison and purpose, sure enough this is a tall order and that’s the reason why mass movements that usher in change are so few and far in between! Societies do take time to arrive at a consensus!

What we must not forget is the abject paradox of the lives of humans around us- it is not only the opulence of material wealth, but it also is about the opulence related to the creative expression of the human mind- because that too is a benchmark of humanities progress! What hampers human progress is this paradox, you see, like I said in my previous article, we all come from the same bucket and the more complicated the bucket gets, the more chaotic, yet colorful our lives end up becoming! The human dexterity and ability to prevail over this space and put it to some sane use, is what actually defines what we are, collectively and individually and that further spells out where we will be and as what in the times to come!

The next time, you come across someone less fortunate then yourself, know a few things well, you too are part responsible for allowing that to manifest around you,simply because you are all part of the same social framework- you may not have intended for that to play out- but whatever you did intend for has manifested what you see around! I have for long believed that charity is a way to reduce the burden of guilt to a limited extent and that is what unfortunately it seems to be; as we witness,the way things emerge across societies in the world today! I leave you with these thoughts for today, urging you to take some time to reflect and figure out where do you reside as far as the circle of opulence is concerned and where are you heading- towards the center or are you getting edged out!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece! Until then stay wise and stay anchored as you are meant to be!

Stand Singularly, Fall Collectively!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Well, if you are surprised by the title, so am I! Unlike the age old adage of Together we are stronger and by ourselves we are a lot weaker, this is not to contradict that bit by any way! Sure enough, strong societies and nations are always and will always be built on the concept of a unifying cohesion within the elements of the society, but if you are not into public service or politics and if you are one of those who have landed on the planet just to make enough sense of where you are and where you are heading to and where you actually head to, this piece is for you! Join me here as we try to understand, what makes a diametrically opposite idea work for us as Individuals and is this why our societies are almost always a conflicting picture of who we Individually are? So here we go!

Since times of folklore and ever since books have got written, humanity everywhere around the world has been directed into thinking around value of “Together is Better”, “All is Stronger than U and ME” so on and so forth! Well there is nothing right and wrong around it, for the simple reason that these statements and narratives are more contextual, take them out of context and quote them for something else, they loose their potency completely and instantly becoming meaningless all the way! Let me explain, say if you had a million dollars of amassed wealth and simply because “Together is Stronger”, will you be glad to just share that wealth and distribute simply because everyone should have access and there must be a socialist approach to share all the riches and all the problems equally? I am sure you will not ever want that to happen, not because you are a miser or you have some kind of insensitivity, simply because you would want to extend charity as ling as it remains so- you see, charity gone overboard increases dependency and instead of people looking at it as a gift, people begin to look at it as some kind of a right- wherein others slog day in and day out to earn and make some money only to give away- for ensuring they seem human enough within the social lens!

Now if you consider that a society is going to be hit by a natural incident or is threatened by an act of war- what do you think will happen- well, as expected every member will race ahead to help one another simply because they know unless that is done- their future- the short term and long term both are gone and they are heading to a existential crisis- because in times like these- the money of the rich is as equally useless as the poverty of the poor- it is only when elements of the society come ahead and offer what they can- whether that be excess wealth or offer of in-person service all of that eventually tides the situation and ensures that when the challenge is done and dusted the society has something to go back to commence re-building! This is where “Together” wins over “Being alone”, This is the space of existential challenges and inflection points in a society which ask the question, “You may have what you have- is it worth it- given the society that you are in- should “a” or “b” incident happen!”

This is what this piece is all about, given the times that we are in, what matters is the ability to realize and realize well enough that individuality matters over collective group think! Sure enough, you may not be successful all the time, but as long as you are aware about this simple fact, you will be just as fine! You may want to yet argue, but how can this be, when a group signifies strength, sure it does but only as long as the “purpose” of the group and the “objective” that it seeks is clear and etched for the members of the group to know and follow! When you observe your engagements around the social arena that you float around, what do you see? What is that you witness?

Possibly you work in a place where you aren’t even sure how the rewards work and you always hope and pray you get those 10 $ more than your peers for the same work, or perhaps if you are trying to sell your services or products in the market place, you will leave no stone unturned to get that big order, come what may- simply because your business is what make you who you are and these are the fundamental aspects that define your existence or end up throwing you into an existential crisis, should you not be careful enough and think about sharing your riches with everyone around for no real and meaningful reason- these riches could be wealth or the potency of your mind! How many times have you felt let down when your idea or thought was improvised and someone else got the credit, how did you feel when you got few dollars less despite and inspite of having recorded the very best of what you could have done- simply because the other person was “someone to someone”! Well it is precisely in scenarios like these which manifest so rapidly around us in todays’ world that standing up for who you are and what you believe in” becomes so compelling and that will help you, as long as you don’t end up wanting everyone else around you become like you!

This is not about taking a moral high ground and calling anyone to be self-serving or selfish, it is rather about realizing that you alone are responsible for what you achieve- whether that’s a million dollars or a hundred millions dollars, all of that will pivot only and only around your individualistic and original approach and as long as you believe and continue to tread that path, you will do just fine as long as the idea is sane enough; the moment you involve others- who have no potential to think- as you do- or comprehend – as you can (simply because the idea and the thought is yours’), you will actually end up complicating things for yourself as you begin to get weird inputs that really make no sense but you then end up into an obligation to listen to others, simply because you have invited them to the party- not defining well enough, what is and how much is their role there! So, what’s the plan?

Plain and simple, know very well what are the things where you want to be and require to be all by yourself- because not that your are selfish, self-serving or unkind or inhuman, but because others will simply not be able to embrace what you think and feel to the last details as you do and that will go on to ruin all that you would have planned as soon as you begin to pay heed to inputs from people who don’t know what you are aiming for to begin with! You see, you never learnt to swim from a coach who never was a swimmer! More importantly, as you walk through the path of your life, there will be moments when you will require to be a part of a larger group simply to propagate what you are and what you offer, or to amplify what has been achieved or just to be sure that in times of great crisis your existential crisis are managed and that you live the day to be sure that you will emerge on the other side of a storm, perhaps a little bruised, but you will be alive and that’s what is more important when times become what they do and will from time to time!

I leave you with these thoughts here, for you to reflect and think around what were the times of your life when you hit the targets being by yourself, how you ended up complicating when you got others’ around into that and what were those times when being with the larger group saved you enough to live and fight for another day, another dream!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece, until then stay wise and stay safe- by yourself and in the group that you choose!

The secret of resolutions that work.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 1 Comment

Finally we move closer to that time of the year, when all of us either by choice or by accident end up making resolutions, which hardly a few of us are ever able to stick through even the first month let alone the year! Join me here as we try to understand what makes some people realize what they set out for and why is that many of us get stuck, or hijacked into pursuing and doing things on the list which were never there even in the top 10 to begin with! So here we go!

If we were to assume, that each person always wants to be good, do good and share good and if that was to be the first line in everyone’s resolution- what a wonderful place the world would be! Isn’t it? But you and I know it very well that, this is something that never happens and whether you like it or hate it, in a way is good that things don’t go that way, else the world would be a hue of shades of one singular color or thought! Well coming back to why people falter and fail with resolutions, well one of the most fundamental things about this is the fact that, all of us are designed to fail, some sooner others later! You see, the whole aspect of success is not about never failing or faltering, it is always about that single instance which stands ahead of all your failing and faltering which goes on to become your definition of success. No one remembers, how many times a scientist failed (except the scientist), but all remember that one time when things went well and something amazing resulted out of it. So how does it go?

Simplicity: Most often people who are able to achieve anything meaningful in the context of the frame through resolutions always aim for simplicity. Simplicity of objective, or what they aspire to achieve. So you, see once you have a straightforward clarity around what is that you want to achieve- that thought itself helps you to de-clutter and stay focussed. The space around simplicity of goal or objective goes on to provide and empower and individual’s clarity of action and focus on the task. Don’t mistake these to be a easy goals, they could be as challenging as you may want them to be, but what remains at the foundation is the fact that they are always simple in the essence of the objective or what needs to be achieved.

Intrinsic Orientation: More often than not people who have achieved anything meaningful are the ones’ who have been self-driven, basically what that means is a mindset, an approach to life in general and all the things that matter, which is uplifting and propelling forward. This intrinsic orientation is vital, simply because you may have the most amazing thought around you, but unless you don’t defeat your inertia and make that first step, even the best of ideas will fade away with time as lost opportunities or missed chances!

Compelling Need: The human mind being what it is, only makes the effort when it is vital and to tell it that what you aspire or seek to achieve is vital , you need to either have a plain talk by tricking it with a gratification model, or incentivize the rewards staggered in proportion to the milestones achieved! Unless the mind doesn’t get the answer to “What am I to gain”? nothing will ever happen! You may argue, that isn’t the mind, the same very person? Well, sure enough, but this is what uplifting self-talk and wise mental conditioning is all about! It’s only when you reinforce your thought and belief systems and make them a natural default for your mind that you will be able to approach the whole space of wanting to complete your resolutions not because only you have to do them, but rather now you want to do them!

Influence: The chances of your resolutions’ success directly depends on what the area of influence will be! The more greater the influence you think, your achievement will have, higher are the chances that you will be able to deliver and succeed! You see, when you set up yourself for easy wins and easy gains and when no one’s watching or going to know about it, unless you are one those rare species of authors, philosophers or scientists, who keep doing what they do without caring a bit for anything or anyone else, I bet you will always want the world to know what you are upto and where have you reached on that journey! The primitive desire and hard wired human mind always seeks to show off what has been achieved, whether you hunted a wild boar five centuries back or achieved the sales target three years ago, you want to narrate stories and brag about what you achieved- same goes with resolutions, the more opportunity that your resolution provides you for bragging, greater are the chances that it will be pursued empathetically till you succeed, simply because that urge to narrate that story is simply too high tom let go off!

Challenge Level: Another factor which goes on to determine whether your resolution will come alive or not, is the challenge level. Each one of us sets up resolutions to the level where our competence trims off or our Incompetence begins to appear! Like everything is life, all of us are good to a point and there is a differential when it comes to do this. You see no two people can do the same thing exactly the same way, even if all things around are the same and this small incremental difference too plays a big role in determining how we will finish what we set out to achieve! As long as your resolutions make you stretch and flex your competence and abilities you will be just fine and you will be in all probability able to hit your goals! The moment you aim too low or aim too high, your resolutions soon begin to become meaningless either for the lack of challenge and the “x” factor that comes along with it or because it is simply too overwhelming and seems like a mountain simply impossible to get around, over or through! The damage is more severe and long lasting especially when resolutions are aimed at something which is completely utopian and even rationally impossible to attain!

The Art of Finishing: The chances that your resolutions will succeed increase as you begin to visualise and plan the finishing of the achievement. Basically as long as you are able to see how you are going to conclude and finish and it that bit seems doable and rational chances are you will complete them, but if the last mile seems fogged out, chances are you will want to abort your journey the moment that happens, either because you have lost the game plane or now that you don’t seem to know how the end will manifest, you want to simply move away! you may call this also as the “cold feet syndrome” but it happens, often people start with something to achieve and as they progress they begin to realize they have chewed off more than what they can swallow and well needless to say they have to decide either to force feed themselves to spit it out- eitehrways a not very helpful situation, especially when it comes to setting up business goals!

Meaningfulness: Well not to sound philosophical, but the chances of a resolution seeing the light of the day increase when they are meaningful in the context of not being rational or sane, but in the context of being able to add meaning and value to what you choose to do, are doing and what is that you will want to do as you achieve what you have set out for! You see, many resolutions simply fail because not the effort was lacking but rather the controlling factors which govern them to be manifested are almost always external and beyond the individual’s control! You see a goal or resolution of having less than 1% defect in deliveries done by you is meaningful, but if you add to that a clause that by doing so you will earn a 10% raise, the whole idea gets defeated simply because whether you get that 10% is something that you simply can’t control!

I leave you here with these thoughts, the list could have been longer or perhaps even could have been a book, but than each one has their won idea of heaven and hell so I leave you here to explore that part for yourself!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one soon! Make a resolution that is as meaningful as who you are!

Why perceptions win over truth.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The human mind is only as potent as you want it to be, decide to turn it off and like a obedient appliance, it will shut down! Join me here for this weekend article on deciphering why perceptions almost always have a strangle hold over reality- read truth- truths about us, about the people, the society, the universe around us! So here we go!

To begin with, one must understand the challenges of dealing with truth, one part of that is, truth is always contextual and the second part is that truth is always difficult. I am not going to write in further depth and give a class on the “philosophy of truth” but in simple layman’s terms, as I have always been saying, “Each person’s truth is true”. Chaos and ambiguity commences when the others around either refuse to see the truth alongside of the context of the person who owns it or they observe the part which suits them and race ahead to draw inferences around that small limited understand- mis-understanding! Perceptions on the other hand are fun to engage with, like some stimulating, hallucinatory medicine, they engage and play with the human mind to create imagery, narratives and motives (for subsequent disastrous actions). If you are wondering why it is easy to shake hands with perceptions- well it taxes the brain much much less and as I have been saying- the human brain only cares if you are going to be dead- all that does not kill you is fine for your brain and that is the truth about the human mind!

The fact remains though that truth is easy to engage with and deal with only and only if people are able to do so holistically while connecting with the beholder of the truth and the contexts around it in the same moment of time! This is what judiciary is all about! Analyzing and observing comprehensive contexts of facts and data that arrive in front of them- read -evidence. This is what takes time and even at a people to people level engagement- whether they are members of your family, friends, co-workers, the feared politicians, bureaucrats,who ever you can think about- each one of them can be engaged with and dealt with only when you begin to invest enough time and mind to understand the origins of the truth that they hold on to- and as you begin to do that- you will be surprised to know that many of the truth’s that people hang on dearly to are more often than not – reinforced powerful narratives based on perceptions constructed over time- days, weeks, months, years and in case of political arenas and running or ruining of nations and societies- these are developed and curated over generations and through decades!

The eternal battle between “truth” and “perceptions” (often held on to as the truth) has been another hallmark of human societies- only societies and nations that have been able to successfully and selectively engage with few truths and many perceptions have made progress! Societies which have over-indulged into wanting to decipher the “absolute truth” have always suffered on an ongoing basis, simply because the only real absolute truth in the world is “death”! Everything else around is contextual and set to a specific audience and social scenario! But why this whole obsession around with “truth” and what allows perception to emerge and race ahead!

Well, what I think would have been the case is that as human societies began to evolve, there would have been a need to share innovation and knowledge and hence the compelling need to be “truthful” because anything short would almost always mean someone not making it back from the wild! You see back then if you were a soldier on guard or a hunter in the woods or a farmer in the fields, the only way to improve your skills and competence would be “wise words” from the “masters” who are the modern day equivalent of quality research journals- albeit which stand the scrutiny of being peer reviewed. Hence this is one of the many other genesis of applying the “Gold standard” to the virtue of beholding “truth” – to share it for the greater good! But as times and centuries changed, over simplification of truth started to back fire- and societies soon began to have a cohort of people who were second to none and from there emerges the birth of the war of narratives and development of perception- to tell the world why “A’s truth (which may again be a perception) is better than B’s). To this day, if you carefully observe the world is stuck with this same crap! Whether it’s your relatives, friends, offices, societies, governments, groups, whatever you choose to observe- you will find that people are more often than not dealing with the long overgrown shadows of perception rather than dealing with what the truth really is and this mindless, endless loop goes on to consume the human mind which after a point simple maxes out and basically is telling you, “whatever, you deal with this shit, I am fine as long as you don’t get killed”! Importantly our modern societies have ended up incentivising the pursuit of perceptions over truths and that has further helped perceptions race ahead of the truth!

You see, truth is plain vanilla- it is almost always a binary- either something is or isn’t , there is nothing more to add to create drama and intensity- you see like you believe in God or you don’t, you don’t sometimes believe in God based on your convenience! So your truth is that you are either a believer or an atheist and that’s about it- but this becomes boring- so how do I make this exciting and more entertaining- well I say you are too simple to be true, your are too uncomplicated to be real, I say, your approach to your faith is cause driven and with these small sparks of ignition, when I begin to create and weave stories the real essence of who you are gets left far behind and what the building narrative begins to do is, it very much starts to portray your perception from the eyes of the people who essentially want you to be known “as what and how they perceive or rather want you to be perceived as” What makes this so potent- well, it is effortless as easy as that meaningless gossip and as easy as intentionally throwing a few odd pebbles to create the ripples and let the “perception aggregators” do the rest! If you wondered why politicians give a damn to the media, well this is the reason- for they know a tad too well how to deal with perceptions and under the belt blows when their contextual truths (if they have any) are served on a platter as perceptions for the masses ort lap it up! So what’s the way ahead? Can and do societies win the war of perceptions and allow truth to have it’s place?

The answer is YES and a NO; Yes societies can change the narrative but for that it calls for a much orchestrated effort which is directly in proportion to the ability of the collective minds to be able to discern and see “what is” and “what is being told it is”! For this to happen you need social frame work which incentives people who are able to present the “what is” narratives and allow people to make up their own views and inferences- simply because each one sees “what is” from the context of “who they are and where they stand ” in the social scheme of things, needless to say also what we need to factor in the ability of their minds to deal with the whole space of the taxing discerning exercise which is o vital to sieve away “the what is” from “what it is said to be”.

The NO emerges from the very YES of this space! Simply because bulk of human kind is so caught up with the effort to simply survive is that, they hardly ever are in the time and space which allows them to be so methodical and clinical to understand and decipher between the real and the apparent and for the few from the society who have that option more often than not it is the case of “who will throw stones at other glass castles, when have their own”! This is why functional societies tend to lap up perceptions more readily than realities as they serve as a pivot to get even. This is the reason why societies stay replete with struggle and strife for one or the other reason around the world, all the time, because that’s what keeps the perceptions ticking and as long as they keep floating, the truth is boxed-in, in a tight corner unable to come ahead, unless and until there is some large scale systemic dysfunction which collapses the society and a new order begins to emerge. If the new order banks on the selective elements of truth, there is much respite, change and stability, however if the new order too begins to go the old ways, it’s just a matter of time before societies end into the dysfunctional stage one more time and this cycle goes one with truth remaining pushed in a corner with no one wanting to care about it! So what’s the meaningful way ahead?

Functional and operational societies tread a balanced path between truth and perceptions and you can apply this thought to individuals as well! As long as there is a fine balance between devoting the just time and space to appreciate the contextual truths on things that matter and soaking in perceptions (to know the truth- not the served perception), things will be just fine and you can very well mark yourself and your society as “safe”. The moment this changes, for whatever reason it may be- things will begin to change (good or bad) depends on who you get caught up as in that space! Depending on which side the leaning is more- either you will end up with people and societies which are vanilla, plain, with “people for rules” kind of environment (when you choose more of truth) or you end up in a fast paced, narrative driven and loud society (when you give in to perceptions far more than the reality) and you often find that here you have “rules for people”. There is nothing right and wrong between what societies or individuals choose to be- whatever the choice may be- the movement of the society or the individual will always be striving for hat lost balance and as the effort inches towards that balance progress is achieved and as it moves away you witness regression- societal and individual!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, allowing you to pursue your sense of balance, because what your contextual truth is, is yours’ and there is noting that changes that- not even powerful narratives emerging from driven perceptions! Be comfortable in your truth, for that alone will allow you to counter the narratives of perceptions that come at you!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece, until than stay safe, stay wise and observe “what is” not “what seems to be”!

The endless journey between I & WE.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The story of our lives, each one of us, is nothing more then the endless trials, errors, success and failures that each one of us sets ourselves up either at individual levels or at a level of being part of some team.Join me here as we explore this space and try to understand what is the real essence of being in the “I” or the “WE” and when should we be where and what happens when that works for us or against us! So here we go!

When we are kids and going through our school lives- in the very early stages, even as we are still trying to make sense of what and who we are, we are told about the value of being assertive and being vocal and visible in different ways time and again! As you grow a little wiser and learn to flex and stretch you ability to self-assert through ways which are allowed and not, you soon start to get a dose on the relevance and value of “social care”, and how the “WE” is greater and stronger than the “I” kind of a parable and well sure enough, falling prey to the social conformation bias with the remining innocence that one may have- pretty soon you start to say “ok” to adjust play second or third or no fiddle at all simply to conform to the idea and belief that “WE” is more important than the “I”!

If you thought this piece of crap of being compelled to choose and adopt to either the “I” or the “WE” ends with your education, well sadly it doesn’t! The extent and the intensity with which the constant coercion continues goes on to permanently damage every bit of “I” and every attribute of the quality of collaboration that can be extended into the “WE”! even as people step into the corporate world to serve a business or step into the social arena to serve humanity! We actually end up in a world where damaged Individuals collaborate to collectively screw up the world further together and with time the world goes into that bit deeper rut and keeps getting nudged into spaces of being beyond repair in different areas at different times! This is not because there is a flaw with the “I” or the “WE” approach, the manifestations of all humankind problems are because the inability to know when is the time to allow the “I” and when to allow the “WE” to take charge!

At one stage of life you are told that “I” matters and soon enough you are told that “WE” matters, well the real thing is that both of these matter in the context of what the purpose is and what is at stake! There is no way of looking at life with an approach of either “I” or “WE”, it has to always be a blended approach of being “I” and “WE” in response to what stands in front of you to challenge and what is that you are supposed to create or offer to the world and the social context around you! Let me explain! As you embark to pursue your career in the initial days and years, sure enough you would be appreciated or reprimanded based on your performance more than the team;s performance, this is the space where your “I” approach is being evaluated and improved or rather you are made to improve so that business goals are met. Something similar to your primary schooling! As you grow and mature in the chosen job or vocation, soon enough, if your “I” has been empowering and meaningful, you will be given the responsibility to lead a few and soon enough you begin to get answerable not only for your standalone “I” but also for the collective “WE” that you represent and are accountable for! Unless you have understood and mastered your “I” you will fail and falter with the “WE” each and every time!

When it comes to the larger play of society- perhaps representing a community/society or a nation, the power of “WE” and the promise of “WE” over-rides whatever your “I” may be! The corporate world is pretty calibrated and metric driven, your “I” will only be given so many chances and as soon as you begin to falter and fail even the “WE” camouflage will not be able to rescue you from the eminent ejection- this is the space where CXOs begin to get fired and asked to leave! When it comes to the world where public support is garnered through competing narratives and promises and stories of hope, unless the people and sensitive elements do not see value in the collective “WE” they will not rally behind you, no matter how iconic the story of your “I” is and this is the real truth- the trial by fire when it comes to wanting to be a public figure- the constant scrutiny and evaluation is often too much then one can handle and with time those who can’t often fade away form public memory and the glitz simple because the “WE” did not accept or need the “I” or the “I” has already served it’s purpose and will be ejected like an idea whose time is bygone!

People often spend their whole life, trying to adjust their “I” to the “WE” and vice versa , not realizing ever that the real trick is to allow both of them to be there and evolve with the dynamism of the contexts around! The greatest fallacy is perhaps the idea to exchange or trade away your “I” for the “WE” or the other way around, simply because you need both of them at different times on an ongoing basis and the audience for both of them are almost always different and you then have a choice to choose which audience is more meaningful and valuable to you over the other and for what frame of time! It is only when you are able to apply this principle that you will find it easy to be self-asserting and open to ideas and wanting to lead others’ ideas with as much as ease as those of your own!

The real essence of life is about finding a progressive equilibrium with regards to applying the “I and the “WE” and knowing when to deploy which of these and for how long! History is replete with examples when Individuals have been iconic and when they have failed miserably, likewise there are examples of achieving greatness through group-think and precipitating disasters through it! The only real way to go about is to embrace the “I” and the “WE” at the right time to the right extent and ensuring you allow both of them to develop and thrive as the dynamic times around us constantly demand a new version and potent “I” and “WE” with every new sunrise!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to take a pause and reflect what is that you have been deploying more? The “I” or the “WE” and what has worked and what has not!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay in the now and use what you must, your “I” and “WE” are as unique as who you are!

Distributed Leadership through People.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The last few years have seen the rise and rise of something that I like to call as “Distributed Leadership”, other names to this space are “people movement”, “leaderless agitations”, “apolitical unrest” and so on and so forth! Depending on which part of the world you reside in and how allowing the government of the day is, you will come across the example of Distributed Leadership in varying degrees of intensity, aggression and intent. Join me here as we take a quick look into what this is all about, and how we can tap the energy of this attribute to work for us and when can it falter and how do we keep it under check? So here we go!

The past few years, in fact quite a few of them, the world has been a witness to unrest, agitation and rift among various sections of societies and more often than not the collective voice of people has been directed towards the people who govern (or should I say mis-govern), what has largely changed is, unlike earlier times, when these were lead and systematically planned by one political outfit or ideology to topple the other, this time around many of these agitations and unrest episodes have been the strong, uncensored, relentless and direct simply because these were the voices of people who were not engaging with a stronger opposition as individual members of a society, but rather as a collective team of individual leaders- this is the dawn of “Distributed Leadership”.

If you are wondering why would this happen, when societies most of the times have ideologies to voice out societal concerns and raise issues with those who govern; well it is precisely when these fail and when people have lost all faith and trust in them that they are not left with any other option but to take the things into their own hands and formulate and come up with virtually “leaderless collective” which goes on to play a pivotal role in the emerging fabric of a new reorganized social fabric!

When people begin to loose faith among the elected/ nominated leaders and their leadership, they are left with no other choice but to take things into their own hands- call it coercive empowerment if you like, but when this potent force is used well, timely and for a just cause, even the most seemingly unrelenting governing bodies seem to get ready to come to the table for discussions and finding a mid-way- this in social space is known as public face saving! Well we have witnessed this, union movement, union talks with governing bodies of large organization, in the more recent times, the ability of professional bodies and trade organizations to negotiate and arrive at solutions which are more workable all of these are nothing but an impact of the leaderless movements and stimulus which begin everything that finally reaches on a potent table to find the way ahead! The question here is, why would elected or nominated leaders not do what they have been elected/selected to do and perform? Why would they want things in society to reach these levels?

Leaders are human too and they will fail for sure, the question is never about, “If they will fail; it is always about “When will they fail” and life being what it is, sooner or later even the best of leaders that you may have will be presented with a challenge which simply ends up being beyond their capacity to resolve- either there is limitation through Incompetence- Intrinsic or by virtue of the wrong people who have been allowed to rally around the Leader. Whether you consider a small organization having 100 people or large corporate houses or even perhaps the running of a nation- the failure of leadership is only possible when leadership Incompetence begins to precipitate and once that happens it is only a matter of time that as alternatives within the working frame collapse one after the other- society gets more and more restless and eventually you have these mass protests and voices on the street communicating what matters the most- as long as they are heeded and understood, there is still time to salvage the leader and the leadership, but for some real insane reason if leaders get advised to embark on the confrontational route- well total collapse of the leader and the leadership is eminent – sooner or later- because instances like those are never forgotten neither forgiven from the public memory once they are etched!

Another great blessing in disguise emerging from the space of people movement is the promise of a whole new breed of leaders, who are driven by set of values, principles and believe in the cause that they stand up for and are ready to brave what comes their way- sending out important signals to the community that they now have alternatives, which are importantly connected with how the society feels- which by itself is so vital to bring about any meaningful change or transformation that governing bodies may want to embark upon- whether they are community services of the government’s of the day or large organisation with considerable community foot-print in a given area.

If you think that people movement is always about those protests on the roads- well think again- it happens all the time- that blog you follow, that writer who inspires, that Ministry which motivates you, the fellow worker who makes you want to join the team, the stories you want to let your kids and the future generations know, factors like these and many other go on to ensure that when the times get tough, people will rise, slowly but surely and in whatever limited way they can- If they can’t be on the street they will through their thoughts or actions, no matter how small they seem to be- collaborate, communicate and engage to keep the momentum going on, like the ashed out cinders in a fireplace- always warm enough to provide that spark and rekindle a new fire- that is what the essence of distributed leadership through people really is!

Nominated or Elected Leaders are comprehensively powerless until and unless they have this loyal base which goes on to work all the time promoting and striving to live up to the promise of what has been communicated from the very top! Say the leader of a nation appeals to their citizens to make that nation great again! Well unless citizens don’t add to the equation and do what each one of them can do in their own small or big way- the dream will always end up being a dream and if you really begin to experience change and an impact- then you surely know that there is this huge army of nameless leaders who are slowly but effectively contributing to the cause and ensuring that dream gets to see the light of the day!

If you are wondering can this space of People led Leadership movement be kept under check, well the answer is YES and NO, Yes, if it seems to threaten the fundamental fabric of a society or nation or tends to bring about great danger to humanity, the the nominated and elected class will clamp down- hard and fast and NO if the incompetence levels have been so terrible that they are actually putting the society and nation at risk to a point from where recovery seems impossible! As with a nation, likewise with other facets, as long as the threats are low to moderate and not a severe threat people movements will come and go- with limited impacts, but when the the threats seems to be severe, they sustain, linger, and tend to keep coming back for one or the other reason on an ongoing basis and to make matters complicated- the more effort that is made to clamp them down- the more resurgent they seem to become! There is never an absolute right and wrong when it comes to humanity and the truth always lingers somewhere between the extreme options that a society is always presented with!

I will leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to witness the next people movement/protest/agitation/ rift through the lens of leadership incompetence and social rewiring- for that is what it really always is and will be! Sometimes it happens dramatically on the streets and other times it is happenings in quiet corridors of power and the shop floors of factories when people assume Individual Leadership- no title- no designation- Leadership by Action to support and further the cause that they have aligned themselves to! This is the real secret about how human societies make progress even through the most challenging and daunting times and every time we miss to see this, rest assured we miss out on vital cues to decipher and decode what’s unfolding in the future- both the short term and the long term of it!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, stay safe and be the Leader that you can be and always remembers Leaders don’t need labels- they earn them as they do what they set out to do!

Embracing Incompetence.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 1 Comment

I would have with ease chosen the word competence over incompetence, but this one is all about Incompetence and if 2020 was nightmare owing to a pandemic, the next one 2021- will be another pandemic, a pandemic of failing leaders and faltering competence! Join me here as we take a quick look around this bit and try to understand the what is likely to unfold and what is that we can do or not do about it. So here we go!

No matter where you stay and what you do, chances are that either you have been at the receiving end of the societal incompetence issues or you have unwittingly contributed to manifest and accelerate them- only to come back to bite you! Whether it is the problems that you are facing with the meaningless barrage of rules through the pandemic- some of them being absolutely stupid and dumb! or it is about the new found and ever increasing challenges of engaging with more and more dumb people reporting into you and you reporting into- all of this is nothing more but the curtain raiser to the new age of human incompetence that all of us are going to end up embracing in the times ahead! For a few of us that will be a choice to deal with,but for the majority of human kind this is going to be an inescapable nightmare to deal with day in and day out and well, I have not yet added that incompetence creeping into your inner circle of family and friends for as and when that manifests- you will really have no place to hide or run! The only blessing being at least you have a choice to decide on your inner circle and if you end up making the insane choices- it will only go on to speak more about you rather then the people that you have ended up adding to your life!

The plain and simple fact remains that human incompetence is neither rare nor uncommon, in fact it is perhaps the singular trait that binds humanity like none other! Surprised? Well don’t have to be! Each one of us is always working at our levels of acquired incompetence, sure enough none of that is static and levels of incompetence will keep altering based on the dumbness and intelligence that people garner along the way! So how does it all begins and where does this all start? Well read on!

Incompetence is a societal phenomenon- for the simple reason that incompetence doesn’t work or show up in isolation! It is only when there are some agreed and given metrics to which things don’t measure up, is that the whole concept begins to get noticed!Societies too on their part don’t necessarily promote incompetence, but the established norms and agreed way of life and work contribute to a great extent in ensuring that there is a systemic replacement of intelligence with dumbness over a period of time and this is what really acts as a fuel to the fodder of incompetence and believe it or not all of this begins in our homes and schools!

Incompetence is systematically drilled down through schooling and parenting and later on through the so-called work culture to ensure that every valid bit of sanity and intelligence is done away with and people learn to settle for mediocre experiences in all that they get to do! This is why, people settle for the whole “ok” and “will work” or “will do for now” maxim even as they end up paying for a service which is supposed to be “best in class” each and every time! remember the last time you picked up your favorite handset and as it crashed when you rushed to the service centre what that experience was like? Well, chances are you would have received a far different learning about humanity and the whole concept of “smart marketing” would have left you wonder-struck!

You see, the incompetence that you get to witness play out all around you is not a factor of the dumbness of the individual or the collective group think (which again resides on the individual dumbness of people in the group), but rather is a factor of the success rate to which the minds of these people have been numbed to such a point that for everything in the world- they have to and need to only reach out for their favorite web browser and whatever garbage that throws up is the divine gospel of their life! But why does this happen, aren’t people with working minds suppose to be suave and wise? Well, certainly they are supposed to be, but when these very minds are systematically hacked and programmed to think and relate in a templated pattern of recurring and recycled thought patterns, they are never able to see anything original and every attempt to present these blinded minds with meaningful context goes for a toss, simply because these blinded minds are simply unable to latch onto anything original and they are automatically driven towards templated patterns and programmed thoughts. This goes on and on, and over a period of time our very potent minds, ends up just being an execution device rather than being a thinking powerhouse with a substantial loss of the ability to discern ,debate and think the way they should!

As societies strive to create more and more artificial intelligence, the natural intelligence is all but going to be surely wasted and that wasting intelligence often manifests and plays out as incompetence. Competent Leaders often struggle as they get incompetent team members to work along with and often competent workers get walked over when they have incompetent bosses to deal with, and if you are among those lucky yet unfortunate mid-level souls and should be sandwiched between two layers of incompetence above and below- well your life soon enough starts to look like a lunatic asylum from the Hollywood movies and that nightmare is strong enough to shake up even the most resolute and determined people around! Incompetence, as I said earlier need not necessarily mean the absence of intelligence or wit, it simply means the presence of overwhelming inertia to take that effort to do away with the cobwebs of the mind, stand up and question what is being presented and seek alternative pathways! The human mind- being the ardent follower of conservation of energy- relishes on the idea of rest- as long as it does not threaten your existence in the world and that innate hardwired animal brain- has a front row seat to the dumbness and stupidity of your life! This is one reason, why once you grow incrementally wiser, and as you look back at your poor life- you at some point will really stop and wonder- “wtf”, “how could I really do that”, “did I really do that” and so on and so forth!

Incompetence, if you ask me is a lifestyle disease- a dis-ease emerging out of the compelling need of not wanting to use one’s brain and rely on what an online search throws up or what the neighbor’s cat whispers! It is within these alleys that humanity is ending up doing great dis-service to it’s potential- both the individual and collective potential and as the equilibrium of the society keeps moving further and further into the space of being incompetent from being sporadically incompetent to consistently incompetent- societies begin to witness the exodus of the few remaining wise people around- for they realise there’s no medicine to this illness and the only remedy resides in the ability to safeguard their remaining intelligence and wit and apply it in societies and contexts where that would be welcome and rewarded the way to should be!

Societies the world over are progressive or regressive in proportion to their incompetence! As long as societies are able to check the growth and pace of incompetence by staying valid and competent, things are fine and these societies are needless to say innovative and leaders, if and when the equilibrium is altered and incompetence takes a grip, societies begin to experience regression and before that a puzzling stall as far as its directions and aspiration is concerned! So what’s the way forward?

The plain truth remains that the story of human incompetence is a social problem and it is something that we have allowed (willingly/ unwillingly) to grow and manifest both individually or collectively in different areas and spheres of our lives and needless to say this very incompetence then comes back to bite back at us through accidents, mishaps, errors, mistakes and what you have and then there are these two words to describe that space, “human error”. Incompetence is not a factor of someone being un-intelligent or dumb, rather it is a telling sign of intelligence not being used or rather being abused – using what you must for reasons other then what you must use for! You see, technically you can make a potato pickle, but we don’t do that!

To conclude for now, the only thing that we need to always remember is that Incompetence is not the absence of intelligence or with but rather the non-application of it for reasons that could be intrinsic or external. The way to defeat this, is to compel people to think and force thinking to arrive at alternative routes, innovative solutions and only when this approach becomes a new pattern, is that people will be able to stall the onward march of incompetence and ensure that solutions and approaches delivered and applied are always a product of applied intelligence and wit and not artificial intelligence driven by the inertia of incompetence! Sure enough, the times ahead will be more and more cluttered with examples and manifestations of incompetence all around, the only reassuring fact that will prevail within that space will be the beacons of intellect and wisdom shining in between those dim lit areas of humanity where incompetence seems to rule the minds!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to think for a moment, what is that is driving you- is it your inertial incompetence or is it your directed intellect and wit!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article, until then stay wise and stay safe!

The fallacy of festive celebrations!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If you ever wondered why you wait for the whole year for that one big festival ( whatever that you want to choose and define as one for your sake!) and then ended up being more miserable towards the end of it, well this quick piece is just for you, to help you know why after the highs get higher, the lows are simply unfathomable! So join me here as we unravel this space of humanity and try to know why and when do celebrations fail and what is that we can do about that bit, if we want them to linger on as something to look forward to in the real essence of it!

Humanity is perhaps the only other thing alongside wine that tends to get exciting with time! to know the fallacy of festivals, we need to take a step back, in fact, quite a few steps to try un and understand how the whole concept of festivals perhaps evolved- no I am not an anthropologist, just plain uncomplicated stuff based on common sense and science and sure enough you can read about this in more details by going through the favorite books of your choice of human geographers or anthropologists- whatever comes easy to you!

So the story starts right at the very beginning, when humans were able to form the very first types of ordered societies – the very first time! to monitor and create order within those- coupled with the existing and evolving belief systems/ values (which were developed over time), the dawn of festivals was ushered in! Back then festivals were more of a method to mind societies so that the element of cohesiveness and divergence was visible and was always within the allowable limits as set by those who ruled those societies! One way of doing that effectively was to align these festivals to the broader belief systems/ value systems and make them as a bench mark for social conformation! So typically, if you were part of society that broadly believes in the belief or faith type”A” then alongside with the duties and responsibilities of following that faith/belief the rewards would be these much sought after festivities which would further more work to reinforce the ongoing prevailing value/ belief systems (as they have been rewarded with the festive spirit!) All is well until this point as societies are still fragmented not much inter connected among each other and there is a more or less a steady space as far as the mix of the value systems/ faith/ belief followership within the social frames that exist. This ensures that festivities are held orderly with a purpose with an intent and with a solemn reaffirmation of realignment to the broader cause of the established belief/ value system of the said society!

Now if you were to move ahead in time, say the more evolved societies the age of the Kingdoms around the world, what you witness is a racemic mix of belief systems and value definitions leading to multiple approaches to festivities, the definition of the whole concept of a festival and this is the time in history where festivities begin to compete among each other as a mark of opulence and progress by one set of value/ belief system over the other in a given social construct! This is that point of inflection where, societies which failed to manage and keep these competing ideologies and their assertion through festivals in balance that problems have begun and festivities rapidly began to drift away from the ancient path of being aligned to the puritan belief system/ value system to something altogether new- the embracing of the narrative of the rulers/ governing establishments on how and what the festival must be and when and how it is defined as successful, a grand one so on and so forth! This is how festivals and the celebrations around them stepped into the modern age- already skewed away from what they really stood for to begin with!

Irrespective where you live and what you believe or not, if you take that fabled pause and ask yourself how much of value addition have the festive celebrations done to your own personal life through the years of your life- chances are that you would have too felt the diminishing value of their impact, sense and sensibility like the diminishing value of money! This is nothing to suggest that the value of the festivals or their celebration would have diminished with time, but rather the method, the way and the impact of the conduct has certainly undergone a sea change which has furthermore added to skew festivities and their associated celebrations more further away from even the fundamental belief systems/ values to which they would have been rooted! It’s a classic case of enjoying a party not knowing for what it is and by whom it is! This singular aspect then further easily destroys the remaining core of the celebration and then what we are eventually left with are shadows which are larger than what the festival would have earlier been and more irrelevant then ever! How does this all pay out and manifest? Well read on!

Choose a value systems/ belief system/ faith whatever you may want to refer it as , and seek one festival associated to that system and check for yourself how the values of that festival have eroded with time! You will be surprised when you take a pause to reflect to see that how even you have ended up unwittingly contributed if not accelerated to making those celebrations more and more irrelevant each time that you celebrated more and more! No, the problem is not the celebration of the festival, it is the problem with the changing narrative and the method that has been implemented to define celebration which has created more problems then anything else!

I have intentionally not mentioned any names for the faith systems or the value systems, simply because that sets in prejudice and then one things will lead to another and the whole essence of the subject will go astray! You see, there was never, nor is neither will ever be a problem with the celebration of festivals aligned to belief systems/value systems that’s fine, the challenge starts as the way and method of these celebrations begins to slip away with each passing year and more importantly at times takes or manifests exactly the opposite forms of what the original intent would have been! The result? More and more shopping competitions around every festival, more and more of “display”, “senseless consumerism” and “needless unwanted one upmanship in one way or the other” the result, more fractured societies and and more confused individuals, who know they are celebrating, they know what but sadly none one ever knows what is the right way and what is that should be celebrated!

This is why the moment the “New year” is ushered in come January 2nd and it is aback to to the same old grind of whatever you have grinding upon or been ground into! The moment that instance, the moment those high days of the festivities are over, there is this bounce back to the routine norms of sharing “displayed celebration” over social media handles (which has now assumed sort of compulsive obsessive disorder space now!), those senseless bithcihng around with friends (well that’s a whole new definition now a days!) and family and that non-stop gauging and comparisons of opulence and gaps in the furniture which just go on and on until the next big festival hits home, calling for another celebration and this mad circus goes on with no end and no real rhyme or purpose! All simply because, the original ethos and the connect around them have been forgotten and lost, some intentionally, some accidentally and overall this leads to depleting value and belief systems and that downwards spiral leads one thing to another which eventually leads to societies- where some or the other segment is always celebrating something or the other- whether that makes sense or not! You think you know some society like this? Well! Stay Blessed! and Stay Safe then! So what’s that we can do?

Simple, get back to the basics! That’s the only way to salvage any remaining sanity that a society can possibly do, especially when it comes to aligning festival celebrations to what they ought to be- celebrate a festival- a path way of thought, ideology, belief, value system and you know what the best part is, all of that can be done without needing to have a shopping festival , a discount sale, a selfie contest, posting on social media, none of that is anytime needed and that is perhaps the only way to take your time away from these non productive and senseless pursuits and align your self to the more pressing and more real matters pertaining to the festival and the values/ beliefs that it brings forth and do what you can, to spread the warmth through those timeless values and that, if you ask me is the real essence of the festive spirit and anything and everything to do with celebrating festivals!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to connect with your value systems/ beliefs in a more authentic way so that once you are plugged in right, you can reflect all that matters right and importantly in the way it is meant to be! Festivals and celebrations are no doubt the hallmark of humanity in terms of the civilizational and societal progress, but all that only makes sense only and only when there is meaning to those celebrations and there is a definite method to the madness! Life by itself is no less then a celebration! Celebration of moments form one unto the next and the only meaningful way to celebrate is to utilize the fleeting golden moments as wisely as one can and create values around which outlast the time in which they were created! Think again the next time you head on to celebrate something, take that pause and see if you are living the ethos of that festival by the way you choose to celebrate it!

Ciao for now, Will be back soon with another one, until then keep the festivities on and if nothing else practise the art and science of celebrating life for what it is and what it can be!

Wading through a storm.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If there’s anything that the current political drama of the US elections has brought to my mind apart from the many other things, is this space around what makes Leaders stand out and why the greatest and finest leaders almost always emerge from conflicting contexts, which at times are allowed to emerge so that the result gets amplified against a bleak contrast! Join me here as we take a quick look into this space and try to read through all that has unfolded and what may develop in the coming days and months ahead! So here we go!

Regardless of your political affiliation, for a minute take a pause and try to reflect what is really been played out! Do you really think the President of the United States of America would not have had enough ground intelligence all the way to let him know what was unfolding! Likewise do you really think that the pursuit of power would end up making the opposition so reckless and desperate so as to leave their tell take signs and signatures all over the place- only to get caught (even if we were to assume they were involved in any wrong doing!) The fact is that the “truth” not the “contextual reality” is in between those two extremes!

The whole fabric of political thought and social construct has evolved as nations have. With time, these different thoughts and approaches to the societal challenges have been dealt with varying level of success and failures and this has what in turn reinforced political ideologies- one over the other! Few societies have always sought to find solutions using limited routes (these are nations with the fabled two party system), while there are few others who present a myriad of complicated network of political outfits/ thoughts and affiliations and then there are a few still where there is only one chosen way and anything else, is a dream! Irrespective of which type of society you inherit, as long as there remains a respectful dynamic balance between the ideologies in the given society and their focus remains aligned to the greater good, these societies tend to make rapid and visible progress, but as human greed and self-serving narratives begin to come in- you have the whole destabilizing narrative getting built up all over the place and how does that look, well like a club sandwich- where the alternate layers of opposing ideologies tend to govern different layers of the governance model! The result- well you have a filled stomach with no nutrients! A society with more of noise and no music! It is within these contexts that you have leaders walking their path! As long as they are aligned to the whole concept of serving the greater good and doing the right bargain at each step, like a trapeze artist, they seem skilled, elegant, graceful and purpose driven, the moment there is even a slightest deviation from that rigor- you have the great visible fall with the real reasons never really known! So how do leaders really manage to walk through this fog? How do they keep moving despite and inspite of all the noise around?

Focus is the key, a laser sharp focus on what the purpose is for the journey that they have undertaken and a flawless ability to define what is that is negotiable and what is not- this is perhaps what keeps real leaders and real visionaries on the chosen path irrespective of what’s unfolding around! Alongside this what you do need- (whether you lead a nation or lead a small group) is that critical inner circle- which rallies around their leader and believe in the aspirational goals as set and envisioned by them! This, I believe is the most fundamental bed rock on which all stories of success after wading through a storm rest upon! Everything else goes over this fundamental foundation- talent, competence, opportunity, social construct and any other parameter that you may choose all of them or rather any of them will only be able to play their part and show some impact only and only if the foundational requirements are met! The foundation is what goes on to determine how high and how farther the ideology of the group as led by the leader will reach and what is the approach that one will take as they wade through the compelling situations and storms around them! But how does this approach really help?

Well, pretty simple! You see once you have a leader (who essentially has clarity of purpose and direction) a powerful inner circle ( who are as committed as the leader in every aspect of the game) then everything boils down to the space of timing things and event right and the more apt that timing, greater and desirable is the impact of what manifests and needless to say it goes in the direction of the desired outcomes with minimal resistance and even if there is resistance, like a well oiled machine- different layers of the inner circle wage the battle and the leader is empowered and free to stay focused only on battles that matter, for he knows very well that for everything else there is a team that is watching his back, just as the leader provides an every vigilant watch over the shoulder of the inner circle.

Unlike the much hyped movies that we often look upto for leadership masterclasses, real life leaders are almost often quite the opposite especially at a time when they are navigating a storm, among some significant traits is a hallmark radio silence- dignified silence! This one attribute is often more then enough to confuse and irritate nay sayer’s and critics alike! Silence often becomes the most potent weapon of choice especially when it is used in the context of leading the masses! This is the stuff where great leaders show the world, when silence is golden and why it is so!

Walking through the storm was and never has been or will ever be, anyone’s cup of tea! It takes the select few to arrive at the scene to show the ones’ around how it is done; needless to say there are many leaders who end up drowned and torn apart by the force of the storm when and if they end up miscalculating the whole science and art of knowing it well enough to tame it and overpower it! Silence is the first step to know the storm and that alone sets apart the icons from the amateurs!

Unknown to the people who rally around, the leaders’ too are vulnerable and even as they don’t allow their vulnerabilities to be known to the many around (for obvious reasons) the inner circle knows them too well and that’s hwy they are called as the inner circle, because it is when the leader becomes vulnerable in that moment of the ongoing war, that the inner circle steps in and lifts up the leader so that an empowered leader is then ready to taken upon that challenge even more resolutely!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, even as there are many more facets to the wading through the storm, as long as you know this basic approach and foundation around it, you will be able to read through further into the evolving facets depending upon who the leader is and what the real context around that leader is! Think around and look for yourself what are the leaders around you and what are the storms you see them taming around! As a Leader what is that you are wading through? What is your storm right now!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe and stay wise!

Embrace “Minimalistic Opulence”.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

This quick one is to share with you thoughts on what I call as, “minimalistic opulence” ; which in turn can bring welcome changes to your life and even in the lives the people around you! Join me here as we try to unravel and decipher what this is all about and how it manifests and what are the tell tale signs of minimalism with opulence. As we skim through this, we also understand why this matters and how this can empower individuals to do what is possible in their own realm! So here we go!

The challenges that we see around the world have fundamentally to do a lot with the natural (yes natural) tendency of humans to hoard and hold! You see, as we evolved, through the ages, human settlements have flourished and perished on account of having and not having- now what those elements were changed from time to time- in the earlier days, historic times it was as simple as sustainable and on going food shelter and safety (from the wild and fellow humans in a minor way) but as we progressed and settlements began to change into civilizations and rules and regulations of societies began to come in- everything else changed, but the problem of the people on the fringe- the people who in these societies still have to wage a war to just ensure they have a shelter over and food on the plate! But within these same societies you have people who have all what they would ever need and continue to hold on and hoard on still more and more and this is the setting which makes a compelling case for embracing “minimalistic opulence”

I am not asking you to be opulent in a minimalist way, rather I am urging you to stay a minimalist and stay opulent ( not being miserly or frugal) and this is perhaps the only way that society can accelerate resource re-distribution, re-allocation and re-prioritize what the society needs and how much of it! Sure enough, you don’t have to be a billionaire to do this, but every action that you take, just by being who you are, you will end up transforming the ways that billionaires probably want to sun or ruin the societies as the case may be and just one intervention from you- will set the clock in motion to create enough ripples to bring about changes that you want in the society that you are in! It certainly will depend on what’s been held up and what’s been hoarded in a society, but rest assured a slight nudge from your end and walking away from that party- will soon enough destabilize the social frameworks as you begin to embrace this route of “minimalistic opulence”. Don’t be mistaken this not any socialist rant, it rather is a way to empower individuals so that they can keep shifting the balance of a society in a dynamic manner which discourages hoarding and promotes the idea of “minimalist opulence”. So what is this really? How can we practise it? How can we see it manifest around us? Is it viable enough? Read on!

Since this is a blog, I am going to keep it short and to the point! Whichever society you live in if there’s any way to stop the skewing of opportunities and resources within the context of the frame- it will have to start by knowing when “enough is enough” about everything and anything that we do and is around us! How many clothes are enough, how much travel is enough, how much money is enough? Well you see, you can come with different answers and don’t mistake there’s nothing wrong in wanting more or less- that all depends on who You are and what your aspirations and chosen path of life is- the real issue is- is the society ready and able to give you what you choose? Because if the social frame doesn’t allow you to (by making or promoting conditions so), nothing will matter, whether it is the extra dollar you want to make or those millions of dollars that you aspire for! This is where Minimalistic Opulence again comes to your rescue! How? Read on!

To begin with, as I said earlier, it is not about frugality or being a miser or being a Robin Hood to equally reallocate wealth to everyone! No, that’s not how it works! It all starts at the very foundation of everything, and that foundation is “You”. Once you are able to know yourself well enough-then you know what is that you need and what is that you aspire for! These are two different and fundamentally important things! When you don’t get what you need- you have an existential crisis- but when you don’t get what you aspire for- you still exist but don’t get to live the way you aspired for! The whole process of “minimalism with opulence” gets played out in the space of your needs!

It all starts by you getting to know who “you” are and once you have done that, then the only thing remains is to arrange all that you “need” on the canvas of your life. These needs can be big or small , easy or challenging , possible in your social frame or may be not- what matters is this is what you “need” to have and this is what will make “you” complete and this is the essence of social opulence! Once you reach this space, decisions as trivial as, “how many clothes in your closet”, to “which car” to “what profession” or “which vacation” all of these begin to get answered and go a long way to de-clutter your life and thereby ensure that at all times your inner circle of life is always filled and complete with(as much as possible) things and people that go on to make your “needs” and this is what “minimalist opulence” is all about! It is about knowing yourself, your needs and then living a life pursuing what matters and is critical to your existence! So what about aspirations?

Aspirations are important, no one is asking you to do away with your ambition or aspirational attitude to be better and ahead than where you are right now! What is important is that these aspirations have to be allowing your need horizon to expand naturally and in a congruent way so that even as you grow and thrive in the times ahead, you do not succumb to the hoarding or holding mentality and get drawn into the mad race of wanting beyond your needs- immediate and long term both! Let me explain this, say you are a doctor and doing well and everything that you ever wanted is there around and in your life- one fine morning you get an offer to own a hospital- your own hospital and with a little stretch you know you will be able to own it- Now the question is how natural will that step be to expand the horizons of your need and how much of that will manifest in an non-divergent way! You see owning the hospital is one thing and being able to run it like a business is a different ball game altogether- that’s why not all Doctor’s make great surgeons and neither are all of them great administrators! There are very few and rarest of the rare who are able to blend in the best of the both worlds and it is eventually these set of doctors who end up running the biggest and the best medical and healthcare facilities- simply because their aspirations melted into being their needs with the passage of time and they allowed that to manifest and evolve slowly and in way that allowed them to practise and embrace the change!

As long as your aspirations are aligned to your current needs and hold the ability to be transformed into the needs of tomorrow, you are all set to live your aspirations; provided the social frame permits that! The moment your aspirations are synced out of your need, you will begin to get consumed in the war of wanting more and holding to what you have (simply because you will find it difficult to understand how long what you have will remain!). This is what leads to never ending strife, chaos and ambiguity and often people end up spending entire life time trying to pursue aspirations that are in direct conflict of their needs and which perhaps never have the potential of transforming themselves into becoming needs in the times ahead! This is why “minimalism with opulence” helps, it helps to significantly de-clutter all that will not serve you now or in the times ahead and hence leaving you with more time and energy to pursue what matters, whether it is related to the realm of your needs or your aligned aspirations so that the journey stays congruent and converges to present you with empowering frames through the moments of your journey on an ongoing basis!

The word “opulence” you may be wondering why is it here, well opulence is all about being suave to know what really matters and how does that serve you in the now and in the times ahead! This frame of opulence alongside minimalism creates magic to help de-clutter in a rapid and aggressive manner all that one must!

The moment you start to want less, aspire less ( in line with what your trim level is) you will find you start to do a great service by buying less, wanting less, spending less and thereby no more holding back, unwanted hoarding of resources (whatever type they may be) and importantly you live a life- moment to moment- with greater focus and depth which again brings amazing clarity to build empowering moments which serve you in your now and in your oncoming tomorrow!

I leave you with thoughts, urging you to think around this space and embrace the frame of practicing “minimalistic opulence” to have an empowering now and a resilient tomorrow!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then Stay Safe and be in the now!

Designed to Fail.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 1 Comment

As surprising it may seem, the fact is that all of us, each one of us are designed to fail and fail as spectacularly and proportionally as our success is and this is one thing that doesn’t change, whether you like it or not, it is only the ability to change and translate that failure into something meaningful is what can ensure that you retain your sanity and keep moving ahead! Join me here as we try to decipher the why and what that makes us designed to fail and how all of that plays out and if there’s anything that can we do, to make all of those unfolding events to play out to our advantage!

When we see the world around us, what you see is that every product, every service and every aspect that touches our lives comes in with an intrinsic notification of failure! In case of some products (and what you can perhaps easily relate to) will the Expiry Date on the product- it does not mean that the product dies- rather what it implies is the fact that beyond that date- the product will not be able to function as it should and deliver the promise what it holds- that is – it has commenced to fail to it’s own standards of efficacy and value! If you thought this is limited to only food products, medicines or things that we consume, think again! Heard about accidents owing to mechanical fatigue/ mechanical failures, engine failures so on and so forth, accidental fires because of fail-safe mechanisms failing! Well, the whole universe around us is sprinkled with cases of accidents, disasters and what not, each of them having the same underlying reason- the instance when the accident or the disaster unfolds it the moment when the design fails or rather the failure of design begins to manifest!

You see every object that has been ever created has been forged by crafting multiple elements to make them what they are so that they can work and provide the service that they are supposed to- in fact almost every machine that we use, whether its the laptop on which you are reading this, your car, that plane you fly or the humble pen that you use to write your memoirs, each of them come with a service manual- some have written elaborate technical literature- which can be out rightly spooky requiring a qualified and technically competent person to decipher the language and apply method to that madness and yet at other times a generous use of common sense can help resolve and arrest developing failures! Consider this, you have that Cessna Aircraft as part of your private aircraft fleet and it comes with an elaborate maintenance manual and even if you would not be perhaps more knowledgeable about the aircraft of the need and urgency of a timely maintenance of the equipment, each time you reach out to a pilot to fly you out of that place and get you back, the first question and the first document that the pilot will be requesting you is going to be it’s maintenance records! Not because the pilot is an aeronautical engineer, but simply because, glancing through the records the pilot knows which parameter needs to be watched over which other- which is perhaps more likely to fail than the other and that’s what helps to take split second decisions, if the shit indeed hits the roof! There are innumerable such examples strewn all around us all the time and when those fabled accidents do strike, more often than not it has an element of one component that did not work the way it is designed to- be it the Human or the Machine! So now the big question- Why do things and people fail? What is failure?

Everything and Everyone by the virtue of their construct is designed to fail; just as all of us who are born, eventually end up being dead one fine day! Some fail early, some delay that, and it all boils down to a singular facet of how well does one manage and work over their failures to move from one to the next- this inversion of failure is often also referred as success in the world and how frequently and how well one is able to carry out this inversion is what sets apart a few from the others! Now if this is what failure is really all about, why do people fail? You see, failing and bouncing back is a very natural process (although it doesn’t seem so, because we have ended up planting negative social dogmas and references around it) and the reasons why things or people fail are broadly one of the two- There could be Intrinsic reasons- that is things and people fail because who they are and how they are or Extrinsic reasons- the context in which people and things are put into or operated within which ensures that they fail each time as they try to perform! This is something akin to stepping on the accelerator pedal with the hand brakes on! You may say now, so can we do something around this or are we just fated to fail?

We may be fated to fail owing to one of the attributes and depending on which one is more or less of the two adjustments on those fronts can ensure that you are able to incrementally nudge the contexts in your favour and that simple effort is more often than not enough to ensure that you move ahead and din’t remain stuck or get dragged back! Once individuals are able to determine what is contributing to their failure and what type of failure they are experiencing, it’s just a matter of time that adjustments can be done and executed to change the tide and turn failures inside out into success! So how do we go about this and if this is so simple, then why isn’t everyone successful using this technique?

Well, the trick to turn failure into success relies on two fundamental things; firstly the ability to know yourself- what is that you are or the thing that you are dealing with is and second is consistency. It is only when purpose and consistency meet that magic happens, because purpose keeps people and things moving ahead in the direction to achieve a set goal or reach a set destination and every time there is an obstacle or a hurdle in that process (read failure), the consistent approach to decipher the causes, correct them and keep moving on is the only way and perhaps the simplest approaches to take! Why is not everyone able to do this then, well, patience is perhaps the most rare of all virtues that we come across and without the sprinkling of patience around, consistency does not stand a chance!

Before I leave you on this piece, a few final words- Believe it or not the compelling fact of life is that we are all designed to fail and everything that humanity has every forged will also fail at a point in time- the only question is whether that will be an intrinsic failure or an extrinsic one and that goes on to determine the timing of that failure! This is the crux and this is what paradoxically empowers an individual to take a path to fail fast, forward and walk ahead or plan and delay that failure, either ways aligning themselves for an early or late success story!

I wanted to keep this piece intentionally a short and breezy one, so that you can have more time at hand, thinking and contemplating about the failures that you have experienced and how that unfolded then and were you able to turn that failure inside out to be a success story or was it something altogether different that walked into your life from that moment on and was that “success”?

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then Stay Safe and Stay Wise!

Through the eye of the needle.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Whether it has been for recreation or for some serious purpose, if you have ever held a needle and used it for the right purpose, then this short piece is for you! Join me here as we unravel what all unfold as we try to navigate through the eye of the needle and why this matters- or should I say how this sums up all that you and I are often engaging with as we go through our blessed lives- whatever way they are being blessed! So here we go!

The first interaction with the needle and it’s eye would have been in most cases on account of that crazy soft toy which either you would have seen your parents create for your or perhaps a little older you would have wanted to create one for your class assignment on middle school or for your little sibling or a friend, whatever that reason would have been, that interaction would have provided you with few valuable simple lessons of life- Attention to detail, Choosing the right thread and having a steady pair of hands to work with and an eyesight which is able to focus and stay! All of this or any of this for that matter is simply a good enough reason for one to be grateful and have a heart filled with gratitude, because there are a few who simply can’t even accomplish this, owing to some challenges that life would have placed in their way! Alongside this feeling of gratitude, is the valuable lesson, “the prick of the needle” well whether that happens owing to a prank or while you are working- it reinforces the point of “attention to detail”, focus and also tells one fundamental truth of life- All that is useful has a context, spin that out of context and the most useful facet can come down bearing upon you as a dreaded adversary! In this case, it is the needle- a tool which promises to help you personify and craft your creative expression, but at the same time, a moment’s slip and it has the power to pain you- so what if it’s momentary- the pain is intense and then you always continue to remember the value of your creation by virtue of the pain that came by! The needle is but one facet of this story and the other important one is the thread!

You see, you may be able to garner impeccable control over the needle and perhaps also develop tolerance to pain as well, through the trials and tribulations of life, however if the thread that goes through the needle is not calibrated, the whole effort is sure to be a waste of time and it becomes a perplexing dilemma especially when the thread goes through initially and then begins to play truant and behave in it’s own whimsical ways by literally getting “thread bare”. The whole effort of ensuring that the thread goes through the needle also depends a lot on the thread that is either chosen or the one that is given to you (when you don’t have a choice to select one!) Think about the times when you lived through this, when the thread was easy to work with and when it played the spoil sport, making you go back and re-start everything all over again, simply because it began to come into its real elements!

If you thought, that these are the only elements that impact the whole journey of travelling through the eye of the needle, there is one more omnipresent factor, the light around us- the presence or absence of it and how we engage with it! As trivial it may seem, ask a young grandmother or a old youngster, what the the struggle is to drive a thread through a needle when the contrasting or adequate background is missing especially when the eye of the needle is fine and the thread is even finer! This is where the real test of skill unfolds! The skill to hold the needle, have the right thread, have that safe pair of hands and fingers alongside the environment which empowers that act to be completed as desired by you- timely, smoothly and efficiently! This is where the real fun begins for we all know that like real life, even when it comes to the humble act of pushing a thread through the eye of the needle- perfect situations are far from true and more often than not it is the ability of an individual to know which element is working for and which is working against, is what makes that attempt successful or a struggle! So you may now want to know, fine, understood all this, so what’s the big deal?

Well, the big deal comes from these small facets! Like the needle, the thread, our fingers, our ambiance, so in life, We, our resources, abilities, skills and qualities and the surroundings that we move about in go a long way to determine whether we are ever able to hit our trim levels or whether we end up flattening out even before we realize our fullest potential in whatever we choose to do so! As long as you ensure that you will be rock steady and get to a task that you have set out for yourself, know well what will enable you to reach and get there, and also develop ample skills and qualities to execute that effort, with an environment which supports and further accelerates your seeking, you will be well on your way to achieve your trim levels- because you have a fine needle, a great eye to see the thread through it, an enabling environment and a rehearsed skill which ensures you keep moving ahead more and more as you keep practicing and pursuing what you have set out for- what your needle is! The thread and the supporting environs are the valuable resources which one must choose carefully, and if thats not possible, then must on the way learn to make the most of what is been provided, for the only thing that is within your control is the needle (the construct of you) and the safe fingers that you have with a discerning mind which knows how to harvest the environs to empower the slide of the thread through the eye of the needle! This indeed is the simplified story of our lives, we are the needles that we are and empowered or held back by what we hold within and what we bring out to play and offer to the world around us! As long as we uphold the value to serve the greater good of the many around, we are enabled by all that is around, and the moment we try to sabotage that and bow down to the arena of self serving thoughts and efforts, sooner or later, that very simple effort of going through the eye of the needle begins to seem herculean and impossible! So how do we ensure that we don’t go astray? Read on!

The trick is to know who you are to begin with i.e. what type of a needle are you, what thread are you going to allow to get through and what is that can be created by doing that! You see, many stories of human struggle are simply wasted potential in the wrong areas of life; at times owing to lack of guidance, few times un-supportive contexts and yet other times, plain stupid bravado! Knowing who you are (the needle) is the most fundamental tasks and often humans tend to rush through this very vital aspect! Unless you don’t really know what you are, you will simply be unable to make any use of the available resources around you and may end up thinking worthless things as important and vice versa and the story then is of endless trials and errors and for the lucky few, they live to see the light of success during their life time and for many others’ it is a story of going to the grave not knowing what they did with their lives and why!

Once you know who you are, you are able to know what exactly you need in terms of resources (the thread) and once that is done, you know very well, the craft that you want to come up with and the creation that you want to go ahead with to be known as your legacy! What’s more, once you know who you are and what resources you have around, you can then harness the powers within you to even turn a unfavorable context work for you by adjusting yourself accordingly and if the contextual settings are favorable, needless to say, the coming together of all the elements will propel you on the path to success and empower you to create a lasting legacy in proportion to who you are and what resources you have deployed (the needle and the thread going through it’s eye!)

I leave you here with these thoughts! Grab that coffee and try to think what is that you are, what type of a needle you are, what’s your thread and what is that you are creating or will create going ahead! Whatever that is, make sure, it ends up being a signature statement of who you are and have been and will be!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until than Stay safe and stay wise!

Be the person you seek!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

One fundamental challenge with books that are written all over the world, classified as “Self-Help” which by itself is a little ambiguous section is the fact that, these books more often than not pick up stories of success- either failure overcome to script a success or a the story of toil that eventually ends up manifesting as success, there is noting beyond this! Then you have the few titles which go on to bring in the elements of the network, social parameters and the essence of timing things and actions, well so far so good! What all of these end up doing importantly (which is real of great essence) is that they simply tend to overlook the most critical aspect and the crucial person in all this haste to narrate stories that appeal to them- they simply forget about the reader- “You” who is reading that book, who really is seeking an answer from within and couldn’t really care enough how “x” became a billionaire after doing “abc”! Join me here as we take a quick look into this core space and understand why seeking the person you want to be from within is so vital and life changing and why this is the only thing that will even appeal to you or make sense to you! So here we go!

Right from the beginning, even as we are toddlers, we begin to undergo social conditioning which is really all flawed and dangerous as it tries to dampen our core identity (of who we really are and what we can thereby achieve). Let me explain!Have you ever experienced that family get together over the holiday’s when you were in school or in college and how every relative that walked into the room had an opinion about what you should do with your life -academics, profession, settling down and all that? It was painful right? To the point you felt like asking the person to just f**k off and get a life! Well and if that was not enough you see these behavioral intrusions continuing all the time , your work place, your friends, your colleagues, even that odd stranger who met you on the last flight or that train ride! So what’s really happening here? Why do “educated” people behave in such a condescending and intrusive way when it comes to others, even as the reality and chances are they themselves would have achieved much less that what they would have set out for, when they started to walk on the road to their aspirations? Read on!

We humans are really one of a kind! You see, within us we have that fundamental sense of being belonging to a community or a group or an identity and that’s never going to move away! This is an evolutionary mechanism that is meant to protect us if ever as a species we feel threatened- this is the emergency button – when activated ensures that humans are able to keep their individual and community based differences at bay and rally behind defending the larger community- haven’t we seen this unfold the world over as we deal with the pandemic! How effective this is or not and what is the effective way to harness this space is a different matter! So this habit of continually looking out for the other person subconsciously with time has changed into looking into the lives’ of the other person- warranted or not! This slight change has ended up us collectively wasting valuable human talent and resources the world over- doesn’t matter what society, what ethnicity or how much access one has to resources or not- this behavioral intrusion has led to the failing of many dreams and aspirations even before they saw the light of the day!

In the wild too, very often you find animal parents guiding their offspring to varying levels of intelligence as necessary for the species to survive, likewise in humans too this intrinsic value persist and is all meant to ensure that kids survive and emerge as “successful”, things begin to get complicated as the perception and reality between the definition of “success” as seen by the kid or the person in question and the others start to deviate ans this is the point from where all human hustle of life and for the aspirational life commences! So is this good or bad? Well, depends, on whether it empowers you or robs you off the very essence of who you are!

Human Intelligence is the only parameter that continues to bring about the changes that we see around, that constant urge to have something new, better and more efficient to be created to empower humanity is perhaps the singular frame from where all innovation, invention and development is pursued! The flip side of this has been that, expectations of humans among themselves have gone to take a hit!Parents expect intelligent children, when their own intelligence could be hardly average! You have bosses who want great juniors, when they themselves have been great corporate disasters! You have that company who want’s to be number 1 and knows that they are not even in the consideration set of the competition! It is this kind of distorted and hallucinatory approach that ends up shattering whatever remaining intelligence an individual may have and more often than not what you come across is human zombies- all around you- people who are doing things, because they have been told to, asked to, instructed to without batting an eyelid- for they know (sometimes) it is futile to wrestle with dumbness and at times peace is more valuable than an unintelligent and unending conflict! But why does all this play out like this?

It all starts with what is being done with an individual- Are the people entrusted with the development and progress of this individual (and in that way of humanity) empowering this person or taking away the empowerment and creating dependent zombies for the future? What is that frame that is being applied to usher in progress and growth? If you take a quick look into the the recent human history and try and find streaks of geniuses of human intelligence, chances are that many of them and most of them have been in the period between 1700 and 1950. These 250 years have witnessed advancements in human societies the world over unlike ever before and laid down the foundation of what the societies have ended up becoming today! The flaws and challenges of “followership modelling” which gained wide momentum in the last 40-50 years has systematically wiped off any and all of original thinking that a human being can be capable of and the onslaught of requiring to be complaint to social biases continues to haunt advancements of our lives across spheres to this day! So how does one escape this trap and seek originality of thought and practise?

The simple trick to stay authentic is by being the person who you always want to be, by trying to become the future self that you seek for yourself- it’s be modelling your life on the future version of yourself that you want to be rather than anyone else! This is critical because, your frame of context is unique to you and the ability to apply intelligence in that frame is what makes you who you are! This is where the magic happens and this also the reason why “self-help” books don’t help- the only people that they help are the publishers! Unfortunately the social biases and the belief systems more often than not shun the propagation of original thought and space- at times because the social context is too risky and yet at other times the challenges- financial and personal are simply too much- at times this is valid, but many a times, this fleeting judgement erodes away a possible magical future for the person in question and in a way not only robs the individual of a great future but also does great dis-service to humanity as a whole! Even as we celebrate the new gadgets, innovations, inventions and discoveries and breakthroughs, rarely we know about the people and the experiments which were crucial and meaningful, but simply were not taken ahead- because they don’t make profitable sense! Who knows what great dis-service we have already done to humanity until now, by this one simple narrowed approach to thinking!

Staying original and contextually relevant is perhaps the most important thing that humanity requires today! It is this paucity of original thinking that ends up killing innovation, invention and creative thinking which can go a long way to empower individuals and people around by simplifying the complexities of the life that they have either created for themselves or have inherited! As Individuals start to shun leadership worship and pay attention to the latent leader within them and align themselves to the purpose that they can sense within- magic will manifest and as long as that purpose holds the promise for serving the greater good for people- in no time- the results of that original approach will be rewarded! Want proof? Think about the best book you ever read, think about the medicine that helped you overcome common cold faster, think about that car which gave you better mileage or more ease of driving through automation! This is how original thinking manifests- it simplifies lives for others and for the owner of that thought as well! For all and any of this to start, the first step is to decide to pursue a future/purpose by seeking your won future self! There is nothing wrong to be inspired, by others and appreciate what they have done, what is wrong is allowing inertia to build within and begin to think that someone else will solve something that you are thinking about! It simply doesn’t happen that way- even if thoughts are the same, approaches are unique and it is within these unique approaches that the stories of success and failures get written and it all starts by getting aligned to the leader within you- who can lead you to be the person that you seek within other around and ensure that you are able to be the future self of what you want to become by pursuing what you must! Think around this! There must be a reason why you are, who you are in the frame that you are in, seek that by connecting with the leader within and empower yourself by becoming the person that you always sought to be!

I leave you with these thoughts, here, take a pause and try connecting to the leader within you and sense where that leader wants to lead you to and what is that definitive purpose that you can get aligned to, so that you end up being in the times ahead the person you always sought to be! Your greatest powers come from within- contemplate and execute!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then think and think and sure enough, apply that thinking!

Climate Change: Fact or Fiction.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 1 Comment

Before even you try to begin thinking what makes me an authority to write on Climate Change, a few facts- firstly you don’t have to be an “authority” because those labels are dangerously misleading! and secondly I have my Master of Science in the subject, if that helps to quell any fears that I may have lost my mind, so If you think , it will be fun reading and simplifying the big elephant in the room, join me here as we try to make sense of all the clutter that is dished out at us under the garb of climate change- the next thing you will hear is the Earth’s change is the reason why people are reaching office late (as and when they start to commute- post the pandemic that all of us are still up against as yet!).

For starters, if you have studied Geography or some science- whether be maths, physics, chemistry, biology or botany or anything that got you connected with the planet Earth as a planet- well then you are well qualified enough to take a stand , have an opinion and be vocal about climate, the planet’s today and tomorrow! The only catch being your voice must be based on facts and facts alone which confirm to what science and scientific principles say- not simulated statistician models built on some crazy AI modelling and those fuzzy corporate presentations by “experts” that want to tell you why, “their approach” to do “a” over “b” saves the planet form “x, y and z”- that is all glorified bullshit and the fact is whether you do something or not- Mother Earth has her plans and together with the other cousins in the Solar System- each cycle around the Earth and each tug of gravity of other planetary objects within the solar system and the interplay of the energies of the Universe- ensure one thing- dynamic equilibrium- the balance that is just incrementally enough to keep going in the intended direction- any less- there would be chaos- wiping off life, any greater same result- so well you may say then should we disregard all the “experts” warnings? Well, yes, disregard all the “experts” who come in double quotes; but pay heed to common sense and what science and your observation tells you! Let me explain!

Each one of us no matter where we live- our lives are all under 70 years , most of us- who are reading this blog and the sensible reference to anything and everything that we can learn, have learnt and are learning is from the last 200-300 years, sure enough we know more about ancient history back and beyond BCE, but when it comes to the space of Geography, Climatology, Meteorology, Geology, these sciences have developed with us in the last 100 odd years in a way that they can be trusted, explained and shared! The whole understanding of the Earth’s climate dynamics was a big learning as we entered the age of the satellites, planes that could fly though storms and advanced precipitation radars so on and so forth! At any time, we have over 150 satellites, just keeping an eye from heavens above to let us know if the Earth has some trick up it’s sleeve and if we need to brace for the next storm, cyclone, typhoon, hurricane or whatever it is planing to throw at us! You may say, we all know this, what has all this to do with understanding and decoding Climate Change? Well it has everything to do with it!

We have seasons and each season we experience extreme weather formation, whether that’s extreme heat, rain, snow, scantier rainfall- whatever way you want to look at, now my point here is simple, first, for how long are you studying that data for that area under study- 5 years, 10, 20, 30, 50, 100, 200? How old is the area (that you know about) as being part of a geographical land mass of the Earth in the same place and in the same climate? 10,000 years, 20,000, 100,000 years? So what are your really measuring? How and Why?

Ask any true planetary scientist and they will tell you, how and why the Earth that came to life 4.5 billion years ago has a finite life of perhaps an equal amount left and until then the thermodynamic process and the physics that governs the planet will play its role and dominate the spaces around determining the planetary climate and all that comes through it! Change is the essential and fundamental process of our Planet and being part of the Universal arrangement, everything is in a constant flux and change is the only thing that is really ever constant! So now you may ask what about “Climate Change” why is it such a big thing if change has been the planetary normal for millions of years all through? Well part of your answer lies in the question itself! Let me explain!

You see the whole “Business” of “Climate Change” has evolved in the last two or three decades! Early 19th century rapid industrialization was hailed as the way to uplift people from poverty and empower their lives, as that theory began to stall, the next narrative moved to enhancing production, automation and so on and so forth and for every inch of progress, there had to be a reason to be sold- and what could be a better reason to sell than “Climate Change”! Let me explain! consider this you had 5000 workers in your automobile plant and wanted to bring about automation and we are now in 1950s, what do you do? With strong unions and lobby groups, what’s the easy way out? Well, simple take government support, build a narrative on climate, state that access to clean air and water is a fundamental right (which even after all that has been claimed to be done or not done- still is a myth!) and then show your 5000 workers the changed law of the land and express helplessness and get moving ahead! This is the simple uncluttered truth and pattern that gets played all over the world over and over again disguised as something new- the proverbial old wine in never ending new bottles of changing narratives!

Sure enough you can argue how planting trees and having forests develop around, brought down the temperature in a local area, made the stream more regular and allow flora and fauna flourish- but what has that to do with Climate Change- this is simple habitat management- conservation and development of forests or foliage in scientific terms and the impact that it has will be local because thats how ecosystems get built, it is only when ecosystems connect and start a relationship of inter dependency over a larger area, is that we see a larger broader weather pattern, seasonal pattern evolve and when that again gets hooked onto the planetary weather systems, is then that anything will ever qualify for Global Planetary Climate patterns- not change! Simply because Change is a given in the life of Earth, whether humanity does it proactively or passively, that stays, what has changed in the last few decades is the mad obsession to measure all that can be measured, not realizing whether that measurement really makes any scientific sense and loop it back to whatever one can and then declare a theory! It is like seeing a yellow butterfly and then declaring all butterflies are yellow! But then we people lives’ destroyed by storms, wild fires , earthquakes what is that all about? Well read on!

As Humanity made advancements in technology and science, it has become ignorant and dumb in an proportional to how much knowledgeable it has become! In the mad haste to sell cities, get international funding in the millions, societies have out-competed each other in being dumb and unscientific and then what follows is utter chaos! Pick up any case study of a natural disaster of your liking study it and then go back 25 years, 50 years and check if those natural events happened or not and what impact it had on humans then- chances are impact would be nil because there were no human settlements there! This is the holy grail which no sellers and peddlers of Climate Change want you to know and understand, the simple truth that human settlements and activities have crossed the line and ventured into a territory where the Earth breathes and is more than active, it is similar to walk on the rail track and expect a train to stop- because you are there! Doesn’t work that way and thats why humanity gets slammed every time they err on that side of the line!

Humanity in the last 50 years has ended up building cities over swamps, emptied lakes to build commercial complexes, allowed settlements on fringes of wild forests, come up buildings in seismically active zones and that never ending craze to have that french window by the beach- not realizing that house is been undercut from below, even as you take the views from the balcony every moment! This is not climate change- this is changing dumbness of humanity! Like the fact remains, there is no cure for dumbness and the show continues! But you may want to still argue, sea levels are rising, the corals are dying, habitats are changing, sure they are and that is how it is meant to be! For humans who have been on this planet for just around a few millions years,(we still are digging for older references) of the 4.5 billion years that the Earth has been around- if we get into the space of divine intelligence that we know all about this stuff called Earth! Well have fun, and keep going on with that route till you hit the wall! So what’s the point!

The point is simple and clear, don’t get sold into unwarranted, unscientific bullshit of climate change, you planting that one tree is equivalent of applying color to few streaks on your head and hoping everyone will get the same color! Doesn’t work! The simple rule of engagement with Earth is “Have Mutual Respect”! Steer clear off areas where nature dominates and learn to listen, not come up with the next technology and still insist to live around a swamp or a zone where you know the next big earthquake is about to come, or buy that ranch on the fringes of a forest, don’t do that! Next use what you need and ensure you do your bit to follow the social norms of mindful living that your society may have, if it doesn’t have one for yourself! get into a mindset of “minimalism with opulence”. This is the long and short about dealing with so called “Climate Change”!

There is no point getting sold into false narratives which are more often than not agenda driven and trying to sell you something by instilling fear, confusion or both! Respect nature, be kind and stay where you must using the resources that the planet has provided- trust me they are more than enough to last your life time! Problems will begin the moment you start to think you Know All and You Can Manage All, well this is the biggest problem with Humanity and this is from where the whole misplaced fear mongering and oversell of Climate Change begins! As long as human activities continue in zones which are not supposed to be made habitable- floods, earthquakes, fires, smogs, ill health will run amok and yes, don’t blame the Earth for your dumbness and bravado of wanting to be where you shouldn’t be! The whole narrative of “Climate Change” is a Socio-Politico-Economic” one which goes the way, each one of those elements want to drive it at different point sin time to suit their agendas and establish new norms of social behaviour!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you think about it, apply the science that you have known and think! Is it really Climate Change or is it more about Changing attitudes of Humanity towards the resources that we have an access to! The key is “Minimalism with Opulence”

Ciao for now, will be back with another one soon, until than stay safe, respect the planet and be where you are supposed to be unless you are in one of those coveted jobs of being a planetary scientist in the real essence of it, sans the fear mongering and agenda selling!

Why News Channels go rogue.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 1 Comment

News evolved as the wise person’s genie to ensure that people who matter and what mattered reached to people who could do something about it, so that in time the greater good to serve the society could be done! In our present times, this seems to be a fairy tale, and this is why we are here for- to know and try to possibly see why and what makes news channels turn rogue, especially when they too have risen from the cradle of the same society where they keep barking, shouting and yelling every few hours, never realizing that they are in a way- doing it to a mirror for every time a finger is raised, three go back to them! Join me here as we try to unravel this space and figure out what really is possibly happening!

Right now, in 2020, even as the pandemic ended up killing thousands across the world,if you take a moment to analyze what the news has been all about- more often than not it has been about a political rhetoric around the pandemic, rather than covering and real picture and helping policy makers and government by being that extra ear or eye to the ground to possibly cover what has slipped! The political rhetoric is importantly more damaging, especially when it goes on and on and starts to follow the same formula at international, national and even at local or community levels- what than unfolds is chaos and division- people who lived like extended families for generations or more overnight in the span of few months end up believing there are groups in the society and as the socio psychological aspects start to play out- social confirmation bias takes precedence and the urge to belong to one group or identity over the other and being vocal and loud about it starts to take precedence over anything and everything else! What’s more worrisome is this rogue approach by news channels has not now remained limited to only the ideological battles of the political theater, now it’s coming after every thread tat goes on to weave the intricate social fabric and the last mistake that anyone can do is to think that it’s not happening around you or you have not knowingly or unknowingly erred and moved beyond the side of caution at some or the other time!

If political theatrics by news channels was not bad enough, which in yesteryear’s had the potential to cause greater rift and confusion among nations (who are adversaries or possibly wanting to amicably settle something and then step back because some channel sends out a “breaking news” which basically ends up breaking the only hope and ends up creating more damage than anything else!); in today’s times, these very rogue channels can pick and choose establishments that run a nation, bureaucracy, law enforcement, judiciary, social sectors, private organisations, celebrities, public representatives, you and me, if they perceive any of these sets as a threat which can scuttle their agenda of peddling what they have! So now the million dollar question? How did we reach this place? How did we allow this to go so far beyond repair? Well read on!

If you see the genesis of human growth and progress the world over- irrespective whether the social set up was aligned to democracy or autocracy or whatever political style you want to call it, the singular fact has been that every and any social set across the planet has always been the case of a few leading the many and it always has been the quality of these few which has either accelerated the growth and development of the societies in question or has regressed and finished them off, sending them back by years and decades! As I said earlier, as long as the news channels stuck to their oath and delivered what they were supposed to all was fine, the decay and regression began as the news channels decided to cross that line of vintage journalism and get into selective game hunting under the garb of investigative journalism- which by the very own genesis of the word “journalism” has no place! Once news channels realized the vulnerabilities and the voids in the systems as they worked or began to get dysfunctional, soon their stance changed from being journalism and society driven to proactive exploitative approaches aimed to facilitate agendas of the “other” bosses especially as they are aligned to their own! But why would this happen?

You see, societies have been always governed by the “few”. These “few” could be anyone or all of these- kings, President’s, Prime Minister’s Rulers, Few Private business houses (the real original blue eyed tycoons!), visit any of the 196 nations on this planet and the chances are you will see only one or multiple of these core pillars playing the pivotal role in shaping or sizing the today and the tomorrow of the millions that rely on them! As long as these elements of the “few” agree to disagree on a few things and pledge to work collaboratively with mutual respect and defined boundaries, the news channels have no role, except for covering the occasional announcements, reading out the press releases and those odd accidents that happen in any society, but as confrontation and greed sets up in these governing elements either as a cause and effect of each other or independent of each other, the news channels get the small break in the fabric of governance and once they latch onto it, instead of the good old vintage days of journalism instead of stitching the wound up, they take devilish pride and pleasure in accelerating the depth and degree of the break and simply allow the society to bleed even as the founding elements end up coming up with narratives in an vain attempt to course correct- for by now- the drama is already playing out and the audience who anyways are suffering (as the society begins to hemorrhage) have nothing else to do but get sold into one narrative over the other and it is this space where the war of the narratives are born which threaten to rip off all remaining values, functioning elements and systems of governance. So what’s the plan you may want to ask? Well read on!

News Channels and their rogue behaviour can be only allowed and go on as long as the governing elements of a society allow that to happen and why they would or any of them would allow it to happen is a direct relation to the amount of greed, power play and ego warfare among the elite- these egos are not the usual ones’ these egos ride high, real high of millions of dollars of business awarded/rejected and plum positions offered to taken away! This is what is the real root why news channels go rogue! Fix this one aspect and you will see the good old value based vintage journalism making a come back even before Christmas rings in!

At the end of it, the news channels, the “few” who (mis)govern the “many” all are a product of the same social bucket and once in a century, there comes a time when that bucket does get punctured and then the onus lies on the “few” then to create a new bucket- hopefully learning from the lessons why the old one failed! Human greed and the aspiration and desire for power has been the core to our evolution, the only problem is that now, in a few pockets this aspiration and greed is crossing the lines of morality like never before, sure enough one person’s moral grandstand could be not of the other’s liking, but when it comes to the very existence of the other person, there will be competing and conflicting narratives coming up and with that you will also see the coming to rise of the rogue news channels- who know only one thing- profit- profit from chaos, profit from division, profit from hate and profit from turbulent times, knowing well that the very society that they are operating within is being exposed and becomes even more vulnerable with each histrionic show that is allowed to be played out by the rogue channels and the society then not only gets expose to vulnerabilities internally but as a nation too external agents then proactively begin to seek weakened organs to penetrate and damage- these organs then could be the people, sections of the society or the very establishments themselves! So the solution?

Well to begin with as individuals just log off the rogue news network! Stop unverified circulation of things that you may not be sure off, have opinions on logic and science and propagate a rationalist mindset! Political alignment has nothing to do with common-sense and being scientific, you may be extreme right or extreme left- for both the cases the Sun still rises in the East and rivers still flow into the oceans, the only difference is what these two ideologies do, when they get eggs, one goes on to make poached eggs, the other may go ahead an make an egg sandwich- that’s the simple singular truth of life! Give common-sense and science a chance! Once at the individual level this unwarranted and unwanted intellectual garbage consumption is halted, the “few” who (mis)govern will be left with no choice at all then to begin to govern and redraw the lines of agreement to disagree and once that is done, it will be he final nail in the coffin of the rogue news network and in no time, they will vapourise as if they never existed in the first place!

It is the collective effort of the gifted and talented “few” of each society alone that can put an end to the rogue news network, locally, nationally and internationally and for that to take effect, individually we need to switch off from what doesn’t seem right! The easiest way to do that is, use your rationality, go by facts and figures and always remember Great Leaders and Great Nations are not the ones’ who never fail, but rather are the ones’ who fail, accept it and make amends to move ahead and overcome their setbacks over and over again! Rogue News Channels are like insects; the first ray of Sunlight and they are dusted!

I leave you here, take your time, reflect upon the society that you are in, wherever you are, see who are the “few” that make decisions for your life, identify the real news channels who still are standing there and weathering the storms for you-align to them and as soon as you the see the “rogues” among the news network, well by now you possibly know quite well what you need to do!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, stay informed and stay safe!