Roam it

Daily:

  • Whom did I meet today
  • What conversations I had
  • How was I feeling meeting someone or in some situation
  • What did I read today
  • What work did I do
  • What relationships did I tap or tapped me?
  • Key thoughts of the day
  • People’s commitments: To me and to themselves

Whenever:

  • Literature notes
  • Key associations / nodes

Want to do:

  • Start noting habits, pre-designed checklists
  • Income and expenditure with attribution

Sanity is success

I am convinced and been telling some of my close friends, “Forget about money, status, fame, creativity, everything. For our generation, it will be a miracle to be sane when are are 60.”

There is so much external pressure and the world is changing so fast, most of us prefer to bury our heads in the sand, which opens us up for leveraged rigging.

We are also making ourselves more numb than conscious.

Pleasure and hedonism instead of connection, contentment and love.


We have also reached a stage where we want to be able to work numb, have pleasure while working, and we think that is our right. That is such a load of bullshit. There is work and there is pleasure, separate from each other.

Externally focused generation

At least for the last 50 years, we’ve been telling kids stuff even before they encounter a problem. We’re told what to eat, how many times to chew, when to sleep, right into adulthood. 

This makes us forget how it feels to eat a fruit versus grains, what kind of indigestion is caused by gobbling food without chewing, and how beautiful it is to wake up early in the morning.

This applies to every physical, psychological, and spiritual level.

But, these things have internal indicators in our body and mind. We are teaching generations to ignore these internal signals to follow a mom or even a random Keto stranger on the internet.

An entire generation of externally focussed people will inevitably feel lost, disconnected, stress, and depressed.

The Social Dilemma – Thoughts and notes

Saw it with a few friends who have no clue about startups and tech. It was an interesting experience to see the contrast in reactions.

While the Netflix film surprised me with its simpler explainers for this alien and complex phenomenon, I knew most of it. It was not surprising to me. It just put together the different trends that I had been reading about.

For my friends though, it was a mind-blowing experience. Although the explanation was simple and intriguing enough for them to understand it intellectually, I could sense their disbelief.

My thoughts about the film:

  • It put forth a compelling argument to stop this juggernaut
  • It was really unbiased and made no villains out of anyone. It would have been a hack to blame some social media executive for embodying the heartlessness of an AI bot. But they took the difficult path and the right way
  • It made my understanding about this phenomenon holistic, filled in a few gaps, answered a few answered arguments
  • Small but significant thing is to give this phenomenon a name
  • Now when

The larger problem here is that there is no action that everyone can take to make it a mass movement. So when folks read and watch such disturbing reality, the reaction is to tune it out.

They become numb. It is just a passing thought that ends with ‘big brother is watching’.

Only a jolt could wake people up from this comfortable slumber induced by micro-doses of dopamine.

Cribbers, blamers, and complainers

For a lack of better word at the moment, let’s call them Cribbers (PS: I wish this was Roam)

These are the people who will find something wrong with people, situations, systems, culture, anything really.

If. I was to box them in one line, these are the people who are always on the losing side because of something external.

Symptoms of a cribber:

  • Excuses
  • Talking about other people more than themselves, their purpose, or about ideas
  • Big Imposter syndrome

Opposite end of spectrum is:

  • People with a high sense of agency

Of course, that needs to be balanced too. But, generally, having a high sense of agency is better than being a Cribber.

Spectrum: Check if complainers are doing something about it. Is the complain about a person, place, thing, situation or a systemic complaint? Nelson Mandela was a complainer. So was Gandhi. Can’t say that about most complainers around me right now. They just want some other person to change so that their life will be easier.

Why you shouldn’t be complaining? Put together well by Andrew Kirby

They will sell you cocaine for profit

Not gangsters, not druglords. Some of the most trusted pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals.

When I say advertising and consumerism is ruining us, we do not have to postulate a future. We can look at the past and see how reckless they were.

Companies funded these programs out of greed, “scientists” gave people poison, got themselves addicted, and an entire industry revered an addict for his theories for a better part of a century.