Poverty, Malnutrition, and Lack of Trust

I read an interesting article in a local newspaper a couple days back. Written by a social worker, it described the sad incidences of deaths of children in rural tribal belt in Western India.

What struck me from the article was one simple fact. A few blocks from the houses where some kids died of hunger, there lived a reasonably wealthy man who was a landowner and owned a couple of cars. This man vociferously joined the protests about how the government should have done something to save the hungry kids. But there are no records of him taking steps himself to make sure no children would die in his neighborhood.

As much dramatic the above fact is and as much it feeds right into our aching need of affirming our own moral superiority over others, for one moment we need to stop instantly jumping to judgement. We need to give that person a benefit of doubt and try to rationalize his decision without tracing it to a flaw in character. I think rarely people are bad enough to let a child die hungry if they are in a position to help without increasing risk in their life.

Most likely this person lives in a mindset, which not only a lot of Indians, but people from most of the poorer countries subscribe to. We live in a society where the assessment of risk by an average citizen is “high”. That’s why everyone makes it a high priority to cover up their ass first. They want to amass resources and keep it that way, so they and their kids have reduced risk in their life.

This heightened perception of risk is the root cause of corruption. Because you want to stack up as much money as possible, as soon as possible. This is why we have inflation. Because when everyone sees the prices rising, they increase the prices of the services they offer, contributing to a vicious cycle. This leads to a society where everyone is individually rich, but we all are collectively poor.

This gentleman, who owned two vehicles and lived right across from the dying kids, ignored present plight of others because he was more concerned about his own plight in future. For him, it was purely a risk mitigation strategy.

What people don’t realize is how badly they are harming the ecosystem they are living in. It’s like living in a shared house and taking wood and bricks from the walls and foundation to fortify your own room, just so that you will be protected from other occupants in the house. If you do it too much, the house will collapse you will have no place to live in.

Ironically at some level we all understand this. Yet the rational and logical part of the mind still tells us to focus on our own future risks. This is why we fail to create a society where people trust strangers. This is why we are failing to create strong neighborhood organizations.

If this cycle is to be broken, we have to cultivate social trust.

We have to begin by stopping the blame game. We have to begin by not blaming the person with two vehicles above. We must show him the social trust we are taking about. We must give him benefit of doubt and investigate his thought process rationally. What can we change, without asking people to change?  The biggest sign of lack of trust is an impulse to judge someone.

The child is victim of not lack of food, but lack of trust.

 

One Man’s Angel is Another One’s Demon

Time: Evening 7:00 ish. Place: An airport somewhere in the world.

I am waiting for my plane. I see a mom and a toddler sitting next to me. Then comes a stranger with a big laptop and some gadgets and sets up his shop in the seat next to the toddler. He slowly spread out his gadgets and started taking some extra space and occupying part of the chair where toddler was sitting. By no means his stuff was touching the toddler.

But when the toddler’s mom saw this, she lashed out at the stranger. In her mind, her toddler deserved the full seat. Instead of backing off, the man started arguing with the mother. Soon she became furious and called cops. The laptop wielding stranger left the area heavily embarrassed.

I have had this feeling often, that more harm is done in this world by people who mean well. It just got reinforced. I think more harm is done by overprotective mothers and controlling fathers who just want to ensure safety of their kids, than it is done by remorseless psychopaths or criminal masterminds. In the process of ensuring happiness of kids, the parents often inflict more damage on rest of the world.

And this does not seem to be about a person. I have seen women transformed when they have a baby. In fact this is not even just true about humans. I have read it in hunter stories how the most feared animals in the jungle is a female trying to protect her cubs rather than a male trying to protect his territory. Because the male will back off of the opponent seems to strong. But the female will just not back off and will take insane risks including attempt to attack and fight animals much larger than her.

Is our civil mind developed to control the natural, instinctual response? Or are we just programmed biologically so hard that we use our civilized minds to justify the call of the instinct?

The Control Issue – II

Read a good self help book recently.  ”Fear Of The Abyss“. It is about perfectionism and control issues. Written by a psychotherapist, it is very easy to read and insightful.

In a conversation from that book, the client is describing their struggle to protect someone else from emotional pain. And the psychotherapist asks “How do you know that the pain, the crisis, is not good for them?”

This is a sort of light-bulb moment. Several times I have done things just to protect someone from knowing the truth, just because I thought the truth will hurt them. But almost never I thought that the truth might have brought an adjustment in their thoughts and beliefs and might have made them a better person. I was content playing God, protecting others. Sometimes the issue of concern would  just fed away as time passed. Sometimes the issue kept popping its head and made it difficult to keep the lie, and protection intact.

This desire to control, and desire to play god is at the heart of perfectionism. Calling a task complete is equivalent to giving up your control over that task. That’s why I don’t like to complete things. That’s why I keep procrastinating, because I want to be able to control. Often times I don’t write blog posts for months even though there are several ideas ringing in my head. Writing about them and publishing the post means giving up the control.

And then there is another question in my head. What is ‘Value’ of something? As a rational human being, we are  programmed to seek value in positive, beneficial things. We like to food and we are willing to pay for it. We are convinced about value of education and we are willing to pay for it. We appreciate the comfort and shelter a house provides and we are willing to pay for it. We also appreciate the value in control. If I decide to rent an apartment instead of buying a house, it allows me to live there without committment. Because committing to something is giving up control. So I am willing to pay a little extra to avoid committing and keeping my control.

We live in a society that appreciates and rewards positive things. But are we willing to pay for a crisis that will teach us? Are we willing to pay for bad experiences, inconvenient truths, moral dilemmas, just for the character building aspect?

I don’t have an answer yet. But it’s time to click “Publish” on this post and give up control.

The Control Issue

A few months back, I finished one of my long chats with my parents and hung up the phone. (This “hanging up the phone phrase” is kind of old in this era, because where do you hang your cell phone?)

I had just spoken to them about how they need to take better care of themselves, do Yoga and exercise regularly and stuff. For a few minutes I reflected on my sermon. And I realized one thing. The reason I really wanted them to do Yoga had only so much to do with them. It had to do a lot with me. I knew that I would have to be primary caretaker for them if they had health issues and I was making sure their health remains good, so I won’t have too much trouble. Was it in their interest as well? Yes. But I was protecting myself and just because it was in their interest, I was trying to force it on them.

There are many things that are in my interest, but I don’t do it if I enjoy it. I don’t like if they are forced on me. So why should they?

This subtle observation, that I was controlling others because I assumed their responsibility and I was trying to keep my work minimum, lead me to examine other areas of my life. Do I do this to others? Do I do this at workplace?

And I saw this behavior so much around me. Parents do this all the time. Forcing the kids to learn things they don’t want. Bosses do it all the time. Forcing employees to perform tasks that solely focus on this assumed infinite responsibility of bosses.

Over the time, this builds up resentment, anger, aversion. This goes against something very basic inside us. Free will. And any attempt to suppress free will backfires sooner or later. After all, we are all in this world not because we want to be protected, not because we want to be controlled, but because we want to live out our free will.

The secret of leadership, parenting, and reverse-parenting as in my case, is one and the same, and is stated aptly by Lao Tzu in Tao De Jing,

“The secret of cooking the smallest fish, is same as secret of governing the largest empire. With a gentle touch.”

 

Story: Liked by God

I will share one more story today.

Long long ago there was a great king. One night he was sleeping and in his dreams he saw a monk writing something down.
“Who are you? And what are you writing?” the king asked
“I am making a list of people who love god. In this list there are kings who built many temples, there are rich people who offered great gifts to god, there are monks who prayed to god all their life.”
“Does my name appear in that list?”
“I am afraid not.”
“Thats alright. I understand. I mostly spend of my time delivering justice, building school and universities, and managing state affairs. I don’t belong to that list.” the king said. The monk disappeared and the dream ended.

The next night the same thing happened and the king saw the monk making a list.
“Would you like to know what is this list about?” the monk asked smiling.
The king nodded.
“Well, I am making the list of people liked by god. And o king, your name is at the top.”

To me this story represents Karma Yoga. God is best served by doing our everyday duties. People who entirely focus on rituals to please the God reduce him/her to the level of narcissist.