Our Society

During the COVID-19 lockdown, our house maid was unable to come to our house. We were forced to do all the household chores ourselves. For anyone who is unfamiliar with Indian society, it is quite common for middle- and upper-middle-class households to employ domestic help. Since we had to do everything ourselves, my sister and I were assigned duties. One of them was sweeping the entire house. We took turns doing it. If I did it today, my sister would do it tomorrow. That was the rule we had established between us. One day, however, it was my sister’s turn to sweep the house, but she wasn’t ready on time. My mother asked me, “Why haven’t you swept the house yet?” I replied, “Why should I do it? It’s her turn today.” My mother simply picked up the broom and started sweeping herself. This eventually led to a fight between my sister and me, and my mother scolded both of us. ...

What is money? Money is a piece of paper or coin with specific markings on it, or it can also be defined as a number displayed on the smartphone. This is the raw experience of money and this is how babies would define money (if they could speak). Let’s ask the question again, what is money? Money is something we give to get things. I give money, I get chocolate. I give money, I get groceries. This is how children and a few adults would define money. Let’s ask the question one more time, what is money? Money is a medium of exchange, a store of value, a unit of account. It allows people to trade without bartering. It allows millions of people to co-ordinate without knowing each other. Let’s say you buy coffee from Starbucks in Mumbai, the coffee farmer in Brazil doesn’t know you. The truck driver who transported the coffee beans to the port, the manager of the port, the manager of the shipping company, the manager of the roasting company, the manager of the Starbucks in Mumbai, the cashier at the Starbucks, none of them know you. Yet, you were able to get the coffee. This is perhaps how an economist would define money. Let’s ask the question again, what is money? Money is nothing real, it is just a story that humans collectively believe in. It is a shared fiction sustained by collective trust. This might be how a sociologist answers the question. A philosopher might go even deeper, they might ask something like, “If money is a symbolic representation for value, what even is value?” ...

When I was around 13-14 years old, I remember having this very strong belief that money is the root of all evil. I also remember having very strong reasons for it. I used to often think, why don’t we ban money? Clearly, movies where rich people with a lot of black money were criminals had a lot of impact on me 😄. But that was not just the reason. I saw that people committed heinous crimes for money. I saw that rich people had no morality left in them. I had very valid reasons to hold that belief. But I don’t need to tell you how naive that was. ...

We see a lot of debate around AI these days. The reason for many of these debates is the multiple studies of people outsourcing more and more of their thinking to AI and their decline in cognitive skills. Another completely unrelated trending topic these days is the miracle weight loss drug Ozempic, which was originally created for patients with type II diabetes and is exploding in popularity and is being marketed as an easy weight loss drug. I am no expert on Ozempic, but based on what I have read, it suppresses hunger leading to less food consumption and drastic weight loss. These seemingly unrelated trending topics highlight something very core in human experience, and they are much more related to each other than they might seem at first glance. So let’s discuss these issues in a generalized way in much more detail. ...

All of us have heard statements like “love marriage is better than arranged marriage”, or “living in Europe is better than living in India”, or “X religion is better than Y religion”, or “science is better than religion” and vice versa. We also know a lot of people who strongly believe these statements. These are blanket statements. These are generalizations that people believe in. I have some thoughts on these. ...

Imagine this, you are living in a time where slavery is very common, let’s say sometime between 15th to 17th century. You see that a lot of people believe that slaves are a different “species” of sorts and they deserve the treatment they are getting. You see that a lot of people treat slaves inhumanely. What do you think your reaction will be? Will you believe that there is nothing wrong with slavery? Will you believe that slaves are so dumb that they themselves can’t find any other job and so they deserve to be slaves and their masters are actually helping them by doing that? ...

Judgement is a skill that is very necessary to have in certain situations in life. Our judgements affect a lot of things in our life. There are three levels on which we judge people. As you might have already guessed from the title, they are - action, intent and context. In today’s blog, let’s explore how we use these incorrectly and how we should actually use them to correctly judge people (and ourselves). ...

The phrase “my life, my rules” has been very popular. People just randomly throw this phrase around these days. Let’s dissect this today. When somebody says “my life, my rules”, they usually mean, “I own myself, I can do whatever I want with myself”. This reaction is usually triggered when they are stopped from doing something, their freedom is hampered. For example, if an orthodox father tells his daughter to come back home early and not wear short clothes, this is the reaction the daughter will have. We can all see where this reaction comes from. The daughter feels that her father is restricting her and that she has the freedom to wear whatever she wants and go out with anyone she wants, she owns herself. ...