These things keep coming to me.
About 6 years ago, I was having chai with a friend from Palestine, Sayyed.
While talking about culture, I ended up saying: Roots and Wings
I have to admit I did not know what I was talking about. It was pure gut. In fact, even I was surprised. Just one day. I lived with hundreds of people and saw thousands from almost every possible cultural combination in the world. Petri dish of humanity. But what could one infer from this eccentric group of travellers?
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Today, after tens of thousands of data points, travelling through many cultures, living in polar opposite cultural configs, generating Values for 100s of people, and writing and thinking through Base Spectrums, I finally saw it in action.
My thesis (last 2 years) has been that there are 7-15 Base value spectrums that every human being falls on for a long time. And we got here. It is working pretty well—everyone who saw it confirmed it and was mind-blown.
I can’t stop staring at this picture. I can’t stop doing this analysis with everyone I know and/or observed for a while. It is so beautiful! A map of human psyche. An explanation for all their actions.
In a regular day, I can’t stop my mind from boiling every cultural data point to a Base Spectrum.
I’ve been doing it for so many years.
Now, I’ve actually made it tangible.
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Today, while Dharmi asked deep questions about culture in Ahmedabad, I realised that while there may be many spectrums, and while an academic mind might be tempted to create one more redundant framework, for all practical purposes, it boils down to only ONE spectrum: Roots and Wings.
I could discuss Individualism vs. Collectivism and map everyone and every culture in the most nuanced way.
But the practical frame for looking at anyone is: Roots and Wings.
Everything else is a derivative.
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Feeling today: