Entrepreneur, Poet, Cricketer, Father, Software Engineer, Brother…
… add as many roles as you would want. But one thing is sure. Not everyone finds a connect with everything on offer. As individuals, we are bound to feel attracted towards certain identities, while throw a blank expression with others.
‘Everyone is an Entrepreneur’
At a recent event, I came across this statement by an upcoming businessman. He was lecturing on the topic of how everyone can be (actually, is!) an entrepreneur, provided we are open to identify oppurtunities and take them head on.
This set me thinking. Can everyone be an entrepreneur? But I was more concerned about the underlying generalization he was perusing.
Can everyone be everything?
In spirit, yes. If everything is actually connected to everything else in this world, as is being stated in different spiritual practices, not to forget the concept of Superstring Theory & the likes, then everyone is actually everything, right?
No.
So often, when we refer to everyone, what we are actually referring to, is their identities. But when posit that anyone can be anything, we have inadvertently moved beyond the realm of identities, into that of self.
The ‘I’ conundrum
Our underlying assumption for taking such not-so-tall claim is the acceptance of the existence of self - the ‘I’. More commonly, the ego. For every role that we identify with, only corroborates the existence of us in the first place. But almost all of the spiritual practices that I’ve come across, accepts that this ‘I’ is an illusion so deep-rooted we have bluffed ourselves of its existence.
On the other hand, when this illusion disappears, then those entities that are coupled to this self, automatically disappear. But this is not so easy.
The Systemic Model
Consider a system governed by this basic equation: ax^2 + bx + c = 0
The stability of the system is determined by its weakest link, in this case, by putting the variable x = 0. We get the constant, c.
Thus, it is the non-varying factor that determines the stability of a system.
Applying Systemic Model to Human Universe
The human-equivalent of such a factor is self! For without providing for its existence, our world is undermined - destabilized. No wonder when the French Philosopher, René Descartes, pronounced his now-famous statement, Cogito ergo sum (’I think, therefore I am’), he was only referring to this phenomenon.
All of which reduces our understanding to this simple question:
Is the self real?
I leave this to you, dear reader…
Accept it. Writing daily is not your cup of tea. Mine neither. As much as I would want to ease into this practice of daily writing, I’m increasingly finding it difficult to come to terms with it, rather with what I can(not) do.
But I do…write daily regularly, almost once every 36 hours. I do. And here is the trick.
- I set myself so small a target everyday that it required no extra motivation from my side to do it. I started writing 100 words a day. And what it means is that I did not push myself for the 101st word.
- I enrolled myself on an online program to boost my morale. I came to realize that writing is a life-skill, and like other life-skills, it requires us to develop a discipline encompassing what we do on a daily basis NOT AS A WRITER, BUT AS A PERSON. I suggest budding writers try this, as well as subscribe to this. It helps, a lot.
As James Clear (If you don’t know him yet, you must do it now) says, and I ‘m paraphrasing it, that daily writing helps us purge all those mediocrity out of our minds, and subsequently, lingo. Only then would we be able to write better.
Excellence is visible only after purging the volume of mediocrity!
Hello sir,
While I have titled this as an ‘open letter,’ this is just a letter pregnant with my ideas to improve Twitter.
That I am tweeter is a foregone conclusion by now.
It’s been quite a while since Twitter took the world by storm through its ‘following people’ concept. Now I believe is the time to take this concept one step further. I call this new concept, ‘following ideas’.
As we look into a new era where converging concepts like Internet of Things would increasingly play a major role, it is high time we take information paradigm outside of human cognizance.
We need to impersonalize information!
Let me provide a use case of sorts to explain my concepts here.
Idea #1
I login to my Twitter account. My Twitter dashboard shows the ideas that I am following, say ‘Haiku Poetry’. My feed would then inundate with articles related to this idea. This would enable me to get information without following people.
How can we do this?
Here is my suggestion. Apart from the regular hashtag-ing, I believe something like introducing a placeholder in the user profile statement might help. An example:
My profile might read like this: “I am a writer who loves writing [Haiku Poetry]”
Then when another another user follows the idea of ‘Haiku Poetry,’ my tweets would automatically reach him, thus eliminating the need for him to follow me.
Or it could be just hashtag-ed tweets, rather than anything to do with a user profile.
My dashboard can then be made to display my interests and near-interests. Some like this.
X has written about ‘Haiku Poetry’ | Y has tweeted a new ‘Haiku Poetry’
Idea #2
This one is for business users. What if Twitter can become a virtual market - one that allows the buyer to meet the seller.
Here is my concept. Assume there is a scuba tank manufacturer who needs a retrofitted H-valve for new scuba tank prototype? He logs into Twitter, and updates something like this:
Looking for retrofitted H-valves for my new scuba tank prototype. needretroH-valve[
Now, as you might have noticed, I have introduced this new idea of open and closure brackets, along with a new parameter: need. Upon registering this, the Twitter engine should search for the ideal match. This could be anything with tags such as: ]haveretroH-valve or ]haveH-valve. Note again, the complementary parameter, have.
Unlike tweets, updates such as the one above should not appear in the public domain, i.e. user tweet feeds, and thus, not-searchable. I call this the box of business approach, through which those wants something can find those who has that thing. In other words, complete the box ‘[ ]’.
While rudimentary, I felt this concept, if developed, could be a potential one.
Thank you for taking time to read this article.
Regards,
Shriram S
A transitory look at the title - while time travelling through zillion other blog posts and articles - might make it sound silly.
Except, it isn’t. There is more to human scavenging than what meets the eye. And none of them are pleasant!
This is how Wikipedia defines it:
Manual scavenging refers to the removal of human waste/excreta (night soil) from unsanitary, “dry” toilets, “dry toilets”, i.e., toilets without the modern flush system. Manual scavenging involves the removal of human excreta using brooms and tin plates.
But the very word itself connotes another idea in usage: ‘occupational hazard’. Thanks to all those while-collared professionals who apply this term to everyone from those typing non-stop on a software program to those tweeting tirelessly 24x7, it has not lost its power to persuade, and the least, make people stop and think.
Because if you are a human scavenger, chances are your ‘occupational hazard’ is more hazardous than occupational!
It is sometimes strange how language can decorate such things with a sumptuous sounding word - Asphyxiation. Before we jump the gun & accuse people (like me who love this word) for acts of voyeurism, it is essential for us to give it a thought.
Because inhaling poisonous gases leads to fatal results - again an euphemism for death. While abolishing this practice is necessary, it still remains impractical in many countries where access to right technology (as well as the economies of scale involve in deploying it on a system-wide basis!) remains a challenge.
So out-thinking (a fancy term I have given it to the idea of out-of-box thinking) is not possible.
What is the next best thing we can do?
Re-thinking!
The most cost-effective way of dealing with situations like this is to consider an analogy to the incumbent situation (an analogous activity in this case) and find alternatives.
In this case, I came up with the analogy of scuba diving - that of entering an environment (water) not conducive for our normal breathing.
So here is my suggestion: why can’t we provide something like a scuba diving gear (of course, with the required modifications) for those working in human sanitation?
Surely, governments can at least do a feasibility study on it to calculate the veracity of my idea.