Infollectual and post-truth

What is an Infollectual? Well to understand this we need to understand the term intellectual first, because that is the word from which infollectual has been adapted. Intellectual, though not a very standard term in general usage, has now found place in Dictionaries. It is a term related to a person’s ability to think and understand, especially complicated ideas. It is also used to denote a person who is involved in activities that involve careful thinking and mental effort. By the same token, we can derive the meaning of infollectual. Infollectual is a person who is involved, rather obsessed with information. Technically speaking it is someone who is crazy about data which is not exactly information. Whatever, but the key issue is the infomania. Hence there is a problem. It is said, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information.” This quote is attributed to noted Poet T.S. Eliot. But that is not the point. The point is what this deluge of information is doing to human intellect. In this era of post-truth, there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation being floated as information. So, the mind is getting crammed with such data. Silly data, fictitious data, malicious data, even salacious data. It is these that contaminate the mind of humans these days. So, all sorts of funny and idiotic things are happening. And they are bound to. The reason being that human mind works best when it is open, like the parachute. Since all this data has filled the entire mental space, there is no room for knowledge to enter. Interestingly, there is more and more craving for data creating a log jam-like situation. The mind in such situations cannot work. It is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled, as Plutarch had said. As there is no space, there is little room for maneuverability. So, in the process, let us see what is happening. As human ability to think is gradually losing its unique ability to arrange and rearrange, or rather manipulate information, algorithm based technologies are fast replacing human intellect. Creativity, which was largely a human cutting edge ability, is getting blunted. So, Watson-like creation is now supposed to replace human ability. Industry 4.0 is the fanciful imagination of the people who think they matter. The various nomenclatures that seem to blunt human thinking are cyber-physical system, the internet of things and cognitive computing promising to create the smart factory. But fanciful jargons notwithstanding, they are still grappling with the idea how to replace human imagination and creativity, collectively called insight. While insight learning experiments were carried out by experimental psychologists as early as the 1950s, and on rhesus monkeys, the cyber bigwigs have created machines whose cognitive abilities are still equivalent to midgets. So, Deep Blues and Watsons to Siri and Alexa have still a very long way to go. Those advocating AI replacing HI seem to miss the basic point that God created the Human Machine and human machine created the intelligent machine. Motivated campaigns may generate much heat but when it comes to light God certainly has an upper hand, as He has proved. Smartphones and smart machines are still poor substitutes for smart humans. But a word of caution — we need to give plenty of exercise to our mind. No amount of design thinking can replace human thinking design.

Ethics for administrators

The need for ethics is felt in all walks of life. More so, in the administration which is responsible for good governance. Needless to say that the governance in our country leaves much to be desired. The onus is certainly on the administrative machinery headed by the civil servants, particularly the officers of the coveted Indian Administrative Services, the kingpins of India’s Administration. Perhaps for this reason there is a complete paper on Ethics, Integrity and Attitude that has been included in the recent past as General Studies Paper-IV for the Civil Services Main examination. The objective of this paper is to test the candidate’s attitude and aptitude towards issues related to integrity and probity in public life, and his ability to handle ethical dilemmas that arise during the course of the career of the civil servant. Ethics is certainly a major issue in the present days and challenges in the form of allurement and sometimes threats to career and even personal well-being do arise in public life. Ethics, it must be understood, is a multifaceted concept which often involves grey areas where the decision maker does not find simple right or wrong answers. It is these areas that offer the greatest challenge to the career bureaucrat and the ability to discriminate is often put to test. Ethics is too wide and complex an issue to be understood and evaluated as consistency is often found missing. The issue of ethics is an issue of attitude, even aptitude but largely character. To ensure that anybody entering the coveted ranks of Indian Civil Services remains ethical in his dealings all through his career is difficult. Ethics is that uncanny ability to exercise the right choices when distraction in the form of rewards are too alluring to ignore. But this is the real test of character. Though this one paper may be of some use in finding out the orientation of the candidate appearing for the examination to some extent, the larger issue is the predictive validity of such examination. What is more crucial is the continuous training and personality development of the incumbent once he joins the services as that is where situations fashion changes in attitudes. One paper then may serve to be some kind of an indicator and, that too, not a very strong one. But the important issue is maintaining integrity all through. Important because the Indian Civil Services is supposed to be the steel fame of Indian Administration. It is, therefore, imperative to ensure that this steel frame does not rust. Unfortunately the rusting is being evidenced as occasional incidents would point out. The big question is training for ethics. How an administrator has to be sensitised. For an effective training regimen the key areas that need to be focused are empathy, non- partisanship, tolerance, humility and compassion. The periodicity of such training is also a consideration. How long and how often? With changes in job requirements the role of the civil servant calls for a systematic change but the intriguing aspect is that the basic model has more or less remained the same. Hence it is important to reinvent the services with emphasis on emotional quotient and morality quotient. The loyalty must shift to the people and the nation rather than the powers that be. The loyalty to the crown was the hallmark of the British rule. Post-independence this seems to have shifted to the party in power in many cases.

Te amo The power of love

Te Amo is a popular phrase that is used in many languages to express the feeling of passionate love to somebody. “I love you” in English is Te Amo in three languages namely Italian, Spanish and Mexican. Incidentally, Te Amo is a popular Italian song, too, that was released in 1977. And yes, Te Amo is also part of a Hindi song from the film Dum Maro Dum. Te Amo or I love you is then a universal feeling in some form or the other. But why Te Amo? That is the question. We often wonder what is the power that drives the world. It is this issue that often stirs the human mind that tries to find the answer in God, Nature or even Boson or the Bose particle as probable forces that seem to drive this world. But is that so? Famous Physicist and the man who gave the Principle of Lever, Archimedes is supposed to have once said — give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth. Maybe, he could have if he had found the place to stand. But why in the first place will someone want to move the earth. There has to be some very strong reason, some intense motive powerful enough to drive someone to that level of craziness. It is this motive that drives this world. And this motive is love. Passionate love. It is the power of the love that made Adam defy God’s diktat to please Eve. It was this love that pushed Lord Rama to run behind the Golden deer to fulfill Sita’s desire. It is this love that we find magnified in the legend of Radha and Krishna. It is this love that gives someone a reason to do all those things that are seemingly impossible. The story of the Mountain Man, Dashrath Manjhi of Bihar in India, is that great saga of love that drove an individual to single-handedly to create a passage through a mountain with only a hammer and a chisel. From Psychologists to Management Gurus have all tried to find answers to the basic question what motivates. Yet, they have failed to realize this basic truth that Love is the greatest motivator. The power that drives human beings to action. Little wonder mystic Indian Saint Kabir had said that the world has not been able to acquire knowledge despite reading volumes of thick texts. Only those who understand the language of love can become knowledgeable. Love gives compassion and compassion gives power to sustain. If someone wants to understand the force that drives this world he needs to understand love. And the best explanation is given, again by Kabir, in the famous couplet that says that love is not grown in the farm lands, not is it sold in the market place. Anyone who wants it, be it the king or the pauper, has to offer his head to obtain it. The meaning is that whosoever wants love must shun his ego. Love is spiritual and not a material thing. It is driven by the heart not the head. Philosopher J Krishnamurthy says that love is the only force that can end insanity, hatred and violence from this world. Love always seeks to give. It never desires to take.The world runs on the wheels of love. Rightly did Mozart, the famous music composer, say: “Love is the soul of the genius.”

Why’s nobody listening?

Somebody at some point of time coined the word multitasking. And everyone fell for it, believing that it was quickest route to productivity. Multitasking means doing multiple things at the same time. The result, however, is that you either end up doing nothing, or mess up everything. To use a fancy popular US slang, it is like dividing one’s mental resources between multiple tasks till the STHF (shit hits the fan). The result can be imagined. Multitasking has been portrayed as the ‘in’ thing in many business models and even management literature had to create scope for the jargon to be experimented with as a practice. But the fact is that multitasking leads to division of attention between too many things. The keyword is attention. Human brain is fashioned in such a way that allows you to attend to one stimuli at one time. A very simple yet appropriate analogy given by psychologists few decades ago entailed a mechanical model of attention that explained the process as a Y-shaped tube in which two separate channels of ping-pong balls merge in a central channel protected by a filter that allows only one ball to enter. This was also explained by dichotic listening experiments carried out much earlier in which people were asked to retain information upon listening to two different messages given through the two ears. It was a typical attention-distraction model highlighting the importance of attention in perceiving the external stimuli. Against this backdrop, we need to understand why in the present times no one is listening and the result is chaos. There is too much information bombarding the human senses from too many directions. Pieces of information are practically competing with one another for capturing the attention of the recipient. This competition has in itself become a distraction hampering the learning and understanding process. Information is impinging the human senses but is not being received. The human mind has become wayward  almost like the movement of the molecules which is explained in Physics as Brownian motion. It is erratic, random and continuous. While big data is the topic of discussion, big confusion is the state of the mind. With a laptop screen in front of the eyes and Android phone in the hand — one is not even trying to listen but simply feigning to listen. If a CEO-like creature wants to give instructions under such circumstance, can he speak sense? He cannot. But this is what is happening. Meeting after meeting consumes hours but produces nothing. The problem is that people are not ready to believe it. To make matters worse, this is becoming the norm. Everyone is trying to ape this form of multitasking that is some kind of a fashion statement. Naturally, those who want to be somebody have to prove that they are busy even if there is no need for that. This model has percolated down to all levels. People claim to be in meetings, adding value and attending to emails at the same time. For those who are not in business and are not in a position to schedule and conduct meetings, Facebook and WhatsApp come in handy to help them seem busy. Just a glance at the posts that are written and posted would prove that all is not well on the thinking front. While Psychologists had proved long back that you can’t do two things at the same time, recent findings suggest that the mere presence of a competing stimulus affects the ability to attend and concentrate. But the modern day workplace and even home is witnessing competing interferences from different stimuli resulting in an inability to connect.

For Gandhi’s India

The nation will be celebrating the 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2 this year. It is needless to say that given his stature and the contribution he has made to this country, his birthday calls for a grand tribute. Gandhi is a leader who is paid rich tributes not just in India, but across the world. But is showering his bust with marigold garlands and bouquets of fresh flowers year after year enough to celebrate Gandhi? Is it really a fitting tribute to the man he was? We need to revisit his ideas, his ideals and of course his very own model of India. Just like he taught people to, there is a need for the men and women of his nation to look around and analyse the situation for themselves. Screaming headlines and scary news stories portraying the goings on of the present times in our seven-decade old democracy suggest that such diabolic things are happening on the ground which, if not contained, will have very serious consequences. These are the signs of a society that has become lopsided. Sometime back, three little girls died of hunger in the nation’s capital. And that too when there is so much of clamour over right to food security. Families are committing mass suicide as the burden of poverty becomes unbearable for them. Farmers resort to death as the final alternative. These are just a few recent pointers to the already grim scenario that is heart-rending. The fact, though, is that we are gradually drifting towards utter chaos as mobs lynch people on the flimsiest of the pretext in broad daylight. And worse still is the fact that those perpetrating the crime are glorified by the people who matter. Shelter homes are turning out to be nightmares for those who were seeking succour in those four walls. But we are more concerned with signing deals with the likes of Walmart for glitzy malls where vulgar consumerism is at display. As we boast of GDP numbers and economy’s growing size we turn a blind eye to what Gandhi had tried to convey through his talisman — “Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]”. The question is that after whatever we are witnessing, is there any room for doubt? Financial jugglery notwithstanding, the fact is that statistics hardly reassure one when the state of the teeming millions is a saga of duress and tragedy. The rise in number of millionaires may be phenomenal and the fast growth in billionaire count may appear glamourous. But the question is: How is that going to help the majority who are still struggling to make both ends meet? The increasing gap between the haves and the have nots continues to mount. And logic may not provide the answer. What matters is the life of a large section of the people. People who are weak, people who are vulnerable, people who are slogging without as much as a little hope that their struggle will end. How long will it take for us as individuals to change the situation? Economic theories of growth and distribution may fetch Nobel Prizes but they are hardly of any use to the suffering masses. It’s time to revisit Gandhian logic and Gandhian economics in which the poor and the destitute are at the centre of gravity.