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Archives for April 2022

#76: Systems of -isms

April 18, 2022

Like -ing, -ation, -fy, or -itis, -ism is a suffix appended to the end of a word to form a derivative. Suffixes have meanings so -itis indicates inflammatory disease say dermatitis, -fy forms verbs that denote producing like amplify, and -ism indicates a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy. All -isms are preconceived and widely held ideas that are often fixed and oversimplified, they create unjust treatment of different categories of people or things, and are harmful to those on the receiving end. When this prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination is based on race, we call it racism; when based on age, we name it age-ism; and when due to sex, we refer to it as sexism. Capitalism and authoritarianism are -isms too.

As mentioned above, an -ism is a system. A system is a cohesive group of interrelated, interdependent parts that can be natural or human-made. Systems are bound by space and time, influenced by their environment, defined by their structure and purpose, and expressed through their functioning. A system is more than the sum of its parts if it expresses synergy or emergent behavior. Our economies are systems, so is the garden in our backyard, as is our work culture.

I’d like to dissect sexism like a specimen as it’s one of the -isms I’ve faced countless times. I’ll take one very specific example to explore how the -isms we repeatedly navigate are both out there and in here. Even if we are unwilling participants, we live within these systems and they infiltrate us in subtle ways.

I strive to wake up early in the mornings, to have silent time for reflection and writing. I prefer to do all of this before my workday begins and when I don’t, I’m not able to get to it later in the day. My husband in tandem has a packed work schedule that’s typical of big consulting firms; with early mornings and late nights, back-to-back meetings, high-pressure and high-visibility deliverables, and often zero breaks for food. It’s been particularly relentless recently. Because I’m more adept at cooking and I love him, I ensure he doesn’t go hungry. He’s a wonderful partner and puts in his share of work in his limited free time (laundry, gardening and home maintenance are his domains). When his work takes over though, it takes over my life, routine and mind-space too.

Then rather than writing right after my contemplative practices like I prefer, I make breakfast. By the time I get to my desk, my internal silence (which I appreciate for writing) has dissipated. I’d rather just make my tea and start writing but if I don’t first make breakfast, he won’t get a chance to eat…and I feel guilty when he hasn’t eaten. Similarly, when I heat a quick lunch, desperately wanting to get back to work, I worry he hasn’t eaten. When I see his empty water bottle sitting on the kitchen counter, I know he must have been in such a rush that he forgot so I fill it and poke my head in his office inconspicuously to prevent dehydration and headaches. By the time I get back to my work, its often taken far longer than I would have liked and my focus has already dissipated, replaced by self-scolding.

Most modern men will say they respect women and treat them as equals but what we all don’t see is that -isms aren’t as simple. In the scenarios above, where does my guilt and emotional weight come from? Why am I more adept at cooking and he at home maintenance? How is he able to care for me with tenderness and respect but without guilt? Could I just do my work like he does his without worrying about him? (This is why I miss being in an office environment by the way). I couldn’t tell you even if I tried where my love ends and the ingrained gender-normative patterns begin. I’m quite independent and free by all Indian cultural standards. I have a marriage of equals but I can’t shake some of my behaviors because of my cultural exposure, where the fierce strength of women and their subservience is on equal display.

In our trigger-happy social-media fueled world, it’s easy to have an angry knee-jerk reaction when someone brings up the -isms they struggle with. We’re tempted to find someone to blame or to deflect responsibility altogether. But these are very messy, entangled threads that weave invisible webs all around and through us. My husband’s employer, for instance, is as much a part of this system; because there is an underlying assumption that overworked employees are able to ensure their own wellbeing. This is where capitalism meets sexism, an example of -isms intersecting and weighing down certain people in unseen ways. He’s able to work like he does because I stay on top of our nutrition, cleaning, groceries etc. Employers most certainly don’t see their part in feeding our gender-normative behaviors at home.

The first step when navigating an -ism is to see it as a system and do our small part in untangling our own complex and interconnected threads. I’d like to be more like my husband– tender yet boundaried; but I don’t think I will ever be able to just walk by with food and dive right back into focused work when he is clearly hungry. My personal task then is to create some healthy boundaries with his employer and not let them encroach into my work, to erase the guilt and infuse my care only with love. We can work on our -isms only if we first become aware of the patterns.

“Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once.”— Audrey Hepburn, actress and humanitarian.

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#75: What is attention?

April 11, 2022

Is it intense pin-pointed focus on something or is it open awareness of the present, regardless of the object?

Does it come and go or is there an attentive part of us always waiting to be called upon?

Does it live in the body, like in the case of professional dancers or athletes? Where, over time, it takes the shape of muscle memory and mental interruptions are the last thing we need. Or does it live in the mind, like that of a scientist or a writer, deep in focus?

Is it in the achievement of the flow-state, where attention just courses through us without any sense of time? Or is it in the attentive preparation and effort that enables the sought-after flow state?

Is it better for attention to be unmediated by technology, like when we stare at the night sky and dream? Or can technology help us see what we couldn’t without, like a telescope that helps us see the contours of the night sky?

Do we create the world with our attention or is what we give attention to defined by the world we live in?

Is attention scarce or do we have enough of it and the struggle is really about where to apply this attention?

Could all of this be true?

“Before our minds create our world, the world creates our minds.” — Gabor Mate,  Hungarian-Canadian physician and author specializing in treatment of addiction

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#74: Why do we create what we create? Answer: silent values and incentives

April 4, 2022

Billions of diverse people live, work and intermingle on the planet like never before. All of this coexists, mostly with grace and without imploding, because of the useful and powerful systems we’ve created to orient our thinking and actions. Two overarching ones being the economic and political systems that determine which ideas we accept without question and which are open to debate and molding. I’ll focus on the economic system here because that is what answers the question above, i.e. why do we create what we create?

By create, I mean both the “what” (the output) and the “how”, which includes countless actions at every step of the creation value chain. Actions that accumulate to create our work culture, then spill out into our lives and societies. The “how” also includes unforeseen byproducts of our economic activity.

Simply put, our economic system is the way we make choices about how to use resources to produce and distribute goods and services. Below are some economic fundamentals to reorient ourselves.

The economic system asks 3 questions:

  1. What to produce
  2. How to produce it
  3. Who gets the benefit

There are 3 main components that flow through it:

  1. Flows of materials
  2. Flows of energy
  3. Flows of information (particularly money)

There are two sides to the system:

  1. Producers that are also providers of capital. We call them firms.
  2. Consumers that are also providers of labor. We call them households.

Money flows between the two sides in the form of wages, that are used to buy goods and that money flows back to the producers as income.

We also have support infrastructures:

  1. Government, which levy taxes and provide regulation, public goods and services.
  2. Banks, which supply capital. They also help convert savings into investment as capital back into the economy.

All this appears in Economics 101 classes as baseline; indisputable facts and foundational concepts upon which all further understanding rests. What’s never clearly stated though are the assumptions underlying this framework.

Some of these assumptions:

  • There is scarcity. We have unlimited wants but limited resources, so we need to make choices in what we produce, how we produce and who gets the benefit.
  • The free market system sorts everything out. The supply and demand curves intersect at a point of equilibrium and those that are willing and able to pay the price of a product or service will do so.
  • Households are consumers.

Our current economic system has elevated our lives in endless ways through an abundance of ideas, services and products. Most of us have better chances of access to these things compared to our ancestors. But we’ve paid dearly for these assumptions that don’t just underpin the economic system, they now underpin how we operate as individuals and societies.

Assumptions drive actions: 

  • Scarcity and competition. When we think everything is scarce and we have to compete to survive, what kind of companies and societies will we create? Will it be easy for us to think long-term as stewards of the environment and people or might it be easier to extract, create, sell and move on?
  • Free market is the engine of economic growth and regulation gets in the way. Combine free market with a scarcity-driven competitive mindset and what will we get? Will we orient ourselves towards meaningful long-term contribution for everyone’s wellbeing or towards the largest short-term gains possible?
  • The purpose of households is to provide consumers and labor. Households are the building blocks of society. They drive our individual and communal wellbeing. They support all the work and innovation under the sun. The nourishment we get at home propels our work and stands between us and burnout and yet, it’s rarely respected and celebrated at work as a driver of impact.
  • Communities can’t take care of their commons. So we privatize and extract every inch of our commons physical and attentional commons leaving no space for calm and unmonetized interactions.

Are we then surprised when:

  • We create a transactional relationship with the environment: Our businesses create flashy and new goods that become defunct only after a couple of years and go into landfills. The repair shops of past are nowhere to be found and it’s cheaper to replace electronics, furniture, shoes and clothes than trying to fix them.
  • We consume more than we need: We live in massive houses with massive refrigerators to accommodate the massive sized food items that we can’t easily carry on a walk home from the store, and we have to get in the massive car (atleast in the United States) to burn gas.
  • We get trapped by efficiency: It’s easier to expend little effort and efficiently “connect” on social media vs. getting to know our neighbors. Easier to buy cheaper on Amazon than support the local main street.
  • We cover every piece of our public commons in advertising: Leaving no space to decompress physically, mentally and emotionally.

We say the free market is neutral and value-free. Every system we’ve created is initially framed and then executed by humans. People whose thinking has been shaped by social, cultural, historic and moral contexts and it’s very hard to transcend these. Being practical, efficient or profit-driven are values.

No rational endeavor is ever without values.  And what we value and deem worthy, we incentivize. Our economic systems have values and incentives embedded in them and these define not just what and how we create, they silently define what we aspire to.

“If we haven’t specified where we want to go, it is hard to set our compass, to muster enthusiasm, or to measure progress. But vision is not only missing almost entirely from policy discussions; it is missing from our culture. We talk easily and endlessly about our frustrations, doubts, and complaints, but we speak only rarely, and sometimes with embarrassment, about our dreams and values.” ― Donella Meadows: environmental scientist, educator, and writer. 

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