Nepotism is a Cultural Problem and a Business Decision.

 

"Nepotism Debate" is in vogue in Indian Entertainment news (Also called News) I have heard about it .... way more than I needed to. Result? A Blog. 

Nepotism - The practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs.

Philosophically I will like to remove the negative connotation of the word by removing the corruption part of it a little bit. Eastern cultures from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, India.... are similar. In this part of the world for good or bad, Nepotism is cultural and less of a corruption problem. 

If I jog my memory I am hard pressed to find someone in India who's kid is doing something relatively different than what he/she is doing. If I do a similar exercise in US, I am hard pressed to find someone in US who's kid is doing something similar to what he/she is doing. It is just a cultural thing, nothing more. 

This is the reason I am surprised the discussion is happening in India. Now I understand it has come out of hate and jealousy but let's keep that away to keep this a philosophical exploration. Culturally in India It is more likely for some one to say - Parents are smart so the kids are smart, Parents are doctors so kids are doctors. Actually it works both ways - if a kid has a misstep it will be correlated to parent's negative traits or history. Everything is genetic, the belief is strong both in nature and in nurture everything is related to lineage, family name and parents. Heck, this is the country which invented caste system for god's sake. If you are not doing what your parents did you are doing something wrong. 

Let's go to the "Business" angle. It seems like Nepotism is mostly a good Business decision. Business of Films is - 

• A Risky investment with very low success rate (I had read 90% films don't make it or fail).
• Getting finance is everything, getting an Opening of a film is huge. 
• It mostly works like a cottage industry with very few traditional financing options. Though things may be changing.

In an industry where you need to sell the product before you make it, it is important to get finance lined up before you make a movie. Finance won't come easy unless you attach your product to some known names. People who are putting money in a risky proposition, are they making a huge mistake by just putting money on unskilled employee who has nothing except being a friend's kid? No one does that for a casual friend's kids, yea it is possible to put that money and waste it for your own kid, if you are a bad business man. But doing it for entire industry's parents? That is dumb. So why will they do it? They do it because it makes a lot of business sense to caste a known 'name' in India. Actually if it was some other place it would be a colossal mistake but in the culture like India they are making the correct decision. 

Another problem is - Where do you find other deserving people? To give a cricket analogy There is no Ranji players, or deodhar trophy. There are no local leagues where you spot a talent! There is theater but not at a level that is needed. 

Now giving Job to a less deserving person in any other industry is less risky and happens a lot, and people are not mad at that. In corporate world, if you hire a friend's kid as an engineer even though you think another engineer came across smarter. This helps you keep a friend's goodwill and it doesn't affect the business as much. But in the industry where you will sell your product on that face, it is a huge risk unless you understand it is not.

Culturally we look at lineage and family name, and are obsessed with it. It makes lot of sense to add a 'non skilled' person with a last name that will make your project viable, than use a non entity with lot of skill. Now ask the people who are most furious about nepotism, what are they most likely to be excited about? SRK's son coming into movies? Or an accomplished actor who has bunch of accolades in theater making his debut? Who you want to put your money on, which project you want to bet your hard earned money?

When this is the culture, why is it that people are only mad at just the Film Industry and only the 'Actors'? Simple answer is - Actors are visible and the attention they get is secretly craved by everyone. If you get on Screen somehow people think it's pinnacle of what a human was made to become. They can't digest how the 'dream job' has no entry bar. But actually 'Actor' is one of the rare high visibility profession which does not require any skill. You don't need to be accomplished actor to get movie financed, you need to be a 'known' face to bankroll the project. 

Someone won't be given a role of a "Director" because that involves understanding many crafts and the bar is high to be a Director. For other professions like Engineers and Doctors, you need a degree, which is very easy to get for Rich kids and Kids with parents who already know how to get there. So they have it easy too, but it still has a barrier. For being an actor you don't - you just need to be having the right connections. You can argue that for longevity of a career you need to learn the craft at some point but does not need any skill to get in! 

The hardest field to get in where only your skill can get you in is - Sports / Atheletics. If you don't jump as high or have magically better performance than competition you can never make it. Even in that field, India is filled with stories of how certain people are preferred and more skilled people are removed. That is an area India should spend their energy on criticizing the system. Because that is corruption, and it hurts the business. 

So in all - Nepotism is a culture which is not unique to Films in India. It also makes good business sense for the Film Industry. It is magnified by 'Actor' being a profession that has no barrier to bag a movie.

What Karan Johar taught me in Philosophy

Karan Johar used to be a master of great candy floss romance and dramas. After Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum Mr Karan Johar said he could not make more of his candy floss. He said he couldn't because he grew up as a person and what does that mean? That means he got philosophical about life, and when philosophy enters out goes the Big hits.

The 2 movies that made me sit up and think were - Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna and Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, both had something unique to say about relationships. Let's take one at a time.

KANK - I don't remember the movie in it's entirety or even a scene or two. But because I am a sucker for Philosophy I like to find that one line that forms the backbone for a movie. The movie shows SRK and Rani drifting apart in relationship and audience could not figure the reason. The movie did not do well because audience were not convinced why they are breaking up! The reason was - There was no actual reason! That's how it works! You just drift apart and you don't know why! That's how I interpret the movie. Audience want concrete stuff like - Drinking Problem, Physical Abuse, Cheating etc to be problems that are legit relationship breakers, but all this is sometimes symptoms to more subtle issue of just not being able to connect. It is explained in many ways people talk about relationships - The Spark is missing, the Chemistry is not there, It is not you it is me!

All these things say the basic underlying conclusion - there is no reason for falling apart in relationship it just happens as part of life. This is not just limited to Love, it can be anything - friendship, spouse, your sibling, or your own child. You can grow up to be apart and it is ok! Well... Mr Karan Johar did show that, audience did not like it and Karan had his first flop, which makes perfect sense, generally when Philosophy enters, out goes the profits and in comes the alcohol. Just kidding.

ADHM - In the case of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil it was a greater find for me!! I was dumb struck by the underlying Philosophy with that movie, or what I got out of it! In fact Karan shocked me with this one!

I don't remember a lot except great songs and crying Ranbir (I gave it a 3.5 in my blog) but If you can last through the entire movie and make it till the end, lead actors have this long discussion regarding Friendship Vs Love. I don't think any movie ever has explicitly said it like this one puts it. The fact is Friendship > Love. The emotion of friendship is devoid of list of Dos, Don'ts. Love is a huge list of demands and nothing more. It is pretty creative way of looking at it. Love has always been put on a pedestal but it is not that great! A lover is in love but has a huge list of demands. You need to marry me. You cannot like anyone more than me. I should know everything you do. You should Love me back in return. Basic point was Love is needy but if a friendship nevers turns into Love then it's all cool. You have freedom and you can always lean on a friend for things. You are free to fall apart without huge paper work and no society will ever come to force you into lot of hard time regarding the breakup. 

Friendship is way bigger and better relationship than Love. That just hit me as pretty good message from that movie. Now .... are these the messages that Karan was trying to pass on to me? I don't know, what I know what I got out of Karan Johar as far as Philosophy is concerned.

Paranoia, Stress and Insecurity has nothing to do with Living conditions.

My Mom once said - I don't know if I am introducing them to misery or helping them out of it! She was referring to free education she used to provide to uneducated slum dwellers in India. If you educate them they probably will question the situation they are in, and get introduced to how better off they could have been. But within their conditions - they were fine. They were living like us with similar mental traumas as us.

A school went into a Lock Down, that means there can be a risk within the school, scariest situation a school kid can go through. After keeping quite and hiding under the desks for an hour they started playing games. The situation had not changed but they got used to it.

I was in one of the team lunches at work, and people were talking about how scary it is to trust the corporate café. The cafe has all sorts of regulations on food and quality, and because of the regulations and information regarding them the employees were scared how dangerous things are!. The discussion also was on how water was tested and when found contaminated it was fixed by closing the water spout for weeks and somehow that was so scary!

You can live in most developed country and live in safest neighborhoods that are safe there is no change in people's paranoia and insecurity as compared to people in a war ravaged region like Syria. If there is no immediate threat then humans find news all over the world to create threat and get back to the paranoia and insecurity they are used to, and they are comfortable with! Zica virus is big news in US though the Virus is in some other country. Terrorism is big news though actually very few people are affected by it in the countries it is big news in.

Sometimes people divide this behavior into 'First World Problems' Vs 'Real Problems', sometimes people divide it between - 'Rich People' Vs 'Poor People'. But these divisions are superficial and mostly for entertainment they are not real. People are people, move them from one bracket to another and they will behave exactly the same as that bracket is supposed to behave. Same poor person is the one who becomes rich one day and is called rich person and behaves like a rich person. How much insurance is too much insurance? You just find same level of stress and paranoia to worry about you getting killed in neighborhood gangs crossfire and earthquake that you have made yourself believe will kill you because of fault lines you sit on. 

Humans just get used to their situations and maintain same amount of paranoia and insecurity as they were originally wired to have. The only way they break this is - when they realize and cultivate 'wisdom' to understand this aspect. If their is realization the fix is easy. But most civilization keeps running on auto pilot. 

This also explains why persecuted masses of people have same amount of paranoia and insecurity as compared to others. From the outside we wonder how the 'persecuted' masses should have a horrible lives and how it is unimaginable to think they can survive, but when you see the same people and live with them, they are having the same amount of paranoia and insecurity as you! Is that a good thing? probably not, but it is the reality we adjust to and realign ourselves to baselines presented to us. 

Politically Correct is Correct

Almost everyone hates Politicians and being Politically Correct. It has even garnered an acronym that everyone understands - PC. 'Being PC' is bad but everyone has to do it! and no one is happy about it. We have to be PC at work, PC at home, PC at social events and public places. In fact anyone defending Serena Williams against a cartoonist is being 'PC' (well ... this is besides the point).

So when can we not be PC? -
When we are by ourselves. Check.
In protected environment with like minded people - Check.

What does that tell you about you?

You can find out how compassionate you are just by checking your PC-o-meter. The more you HAVE TO be PC ( hold your tongue, before talking) - more Hateful, Biased and Inconsiderate person you are. It is that straight forward.

High on PC-o-meter = (directly proportional to) = High on Hate.

If you are carefree letting your thoughts flow with limited filter and still able to function without criticism or offending lot of people, that's a direct reflection of how good you are. Now obviously you might be a person with no social awareness of yourself, and you are going on and on in your hateful, biased and uncouth ways and don't care how uncomfortable you are making the world around you. THAT could also be the case.

Let's take a few examples of why you 'PC-Hater' actually wants the world to be PC -

Bad Language - You love to use Bad Words, bad words generally are either insulting, sexist, describing things that you won't wish on anyone. Still you love to use them as fun way to talk with your friends or blurt them out in stressful situations. Even you don't think people should be talking like you all over the place. Kids, adults, older people, politicians, leaders, managers, conference rooms, grocery stores. Should all of them be talking this way? If answer is no - then you are putting the PC gag to yourselves. Society as a whole is you multiplied by millions.

Biased hateful point of view - If your PC-o-Meter is at a high! I am sure your Tribalism is at a High too. Which means you identify yourself with your gender, religion, country and every other -ism you have tagged yourself with. You have opinions that spawn from your tribe and you have a black and while view about Me Vs Rest. This helps you to be hateful and you can generalize things easily. Obviously talking about How other's religion is bad, other tribe's country has bad culture, other tribe's people are cheap or dumb, other tribe's race is weak, Other Gender can't drive - You need to be careful and make sure all you are talking to are 'In the tribe'. So you have to have a High-PC-o-Meter and you will be PC-Hater. But I bet you flip the switch and you are the minority in the group that is hating you - You would love them to be a little PC.

 

In the end - It is an individual yardstick - If you are bothered by the PC world! maybe you need to introspect. Politicians have to do it, and hopefully if all of us don't 'have to do it' but instead do it naturally we all are in good hands.

Beginning of the end of Fake News.

Long time readers of this blog know - Realization is the Fix. Now is the world realization happening. Fake News is a good thing.

Recently Fake News has become a popular phrase and so people think it is a new phenomenon. It is not. There never was News, there only lived Fake News, this is the first time in human civilization that the entire human race is realizing that we all lived for 1000s of years in era of fake news. Fake News is not a creation of Media, TV, Blogs, News Websites, or Social Media, it is a creation of humans since time immemorial. In 'Information Age' when data is generated and consumed more quickly than ever, and entire world is connected ....it finally caught up with us! We don't get the truth we get what we want, and we want what we are fed to believe and it is a cycle.

During stone age, Stone Man-1 told the Stone Man-2 - he saw a monster, when all he saw was a tree in the wind! We live till day talking about the fake news of a monster. Religions got created and impossible stories of men doing magic tricks and being voice of creator of universe were consumed. Countries were created and Fake News of your own country's men being the brave, wise and just and the similar men in enemy camp being cowards, stupid and evil was passed down from generation to generation. TV and Newspapers came way later, of coarse carrying fake news controlled by governments and rich people. Customs and traditions got created based on 'Fake News'. That was an is  the best and cheapest way to control the masses. Women who wanted equality became 'witches' and minorities kept on getting marginalized due to 'fake news'. All regions have fake stories regarding various things circulated in that region which make the culture of that region.

Our entire human civilization is built on fake news, it is nothing new. What has happened is, we have realized we are all living in a lie! Obviously I am not delirious in thinking that we live in special times, and suddenly all humans will stop being 'humans', that is - full of bias and ego. But now it is increasingly difficult for small section of people to hold a fake belief and not being called out for it.

 

It happens daily. The moment a piece of News comes by - 'someone said something', the next minute someone corrects you on your WhatsApp or Facebook or Twitter backlash follows calling it out as 'fake news'. Obviously world is complicated and things won't change overnight. But this probably is beginning on the end of 'Fake News' after all - Realization is the Fix.

A case for AI (Artificial Intelligence) Takeover

There has been a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence and how scary it is. Robots will take over and kill all of us and it will be the end of the human civilization. I guess Mr Elon Musk is on the bandwagon of doomsday. Captain Obvious will tell you this is a subject that this blogger has no clue about, but then that has never stopped this blogger from writing. So here you go. 

Let's look at entirety of human race and achievements or lack of that. Humans think they are the greatest thing ever happened to 'living beings' for obvious reasons, namely because they are humans and they love themselves. What has humans done? Like all other creatures for millions of years they were born, they lived and they died. They have tried to multiply as fast as possible and they have tried to live as long as possible. This all can be boiled down to one hard coded programs all living beings have been created with - Once Born, try to live. All living creatures do it. As a result they try to kill any perceived threat to them. Old age and death is a threat to living, so they find ways to keep alive and hence all the effort on living as long as possible and as healthy as possible. 

Humans also think they are the most intelligent specie to ever live. Which is on pretty dicey territory, unless you contort the definition of intelligence. Humans have been on earth for very limited (small as compared to rest of the species) time and they have already killed the only place they can survive on. They have "intelligently" multiplied beyond control and consumed all resources they could in very short time. Now they are trying to reverse all intelligence they had accumulated and re-invent everything from water, food and air that they started with. All this with the only goal of continuing to live longer and multiplying faster. I don't understand how that is intelligence as compared to other creatures like Birds and Fishes which have lived for billions of years with no problems of their own making. Also other creatures have complicated societies, emotions, family units which are way more unassuming than humans. As humans killed other species and multiplied fast they started hallucinating about a creator and then made imaginary groups of beliefs (Religion) and started killing each other over their beliefs (not truths). The only reason why humans can claim to be smarter is because they have developed power to kill all other creatures and then use the intelligence to kill each other after creating complicated structures in society.

I think the one thing that is given is - they have more developed brains than other creatures, due to that they have an option of choice. For example they have choice to be vegetarioan or Non-Vegetarian, most living creatures are pre-programmed and don't have options. That has led humans to create things for them which no other specie could do. Among all the creations they are also trying to create another specie which will work for them and make them happy, or do stuff for them or make their lives easier and better. That is AI (Artificial Intelligence). 

Let's assume this is a cycle and earlier some other less capable being created us 'living creatures' with the one hard coded formula of - trying to live/survive. After that coding they let it go, and it ended up developing from trees to animals to humans and the self developing brain reached where we are today with our brains. Now we are creating this 'creature' AI with one difference, this does not have a hard coded formula of existence. I don't know if it even has any 'one code'. If it has one unifying code it is - make lives better for all in the universe. So it already is way advanced than we ever were. 

Let's take an example- humans take millions of years to develop languages and use them, AI can learn all languages in a few months I guess. It is supposed to develop faster and faster and will start learning things itself and start making decision by itself as it learns things way better than us. Isn't that a good thing? Humans have gotten rid of all species and run amock on earth and divided them into imaginary lines called countries, race, religion and are still trying to fight for food and survival against each other for the lack of any other enemy. May be AI will save us from ourselves - maybe AI will find a way to figure out what will give us better lives and what should be purpose of living and dying. Humans obviously have failed, why not give AI a chance? 

The people who think AI is bad, are thinking of AI as a Human Being, with the hard code of survival. So all the bad things humans did in order to survive is expected out of AI, but I don't see AI wanting to live, it is not alive! This is a specie who does not care about living through a dumb box (or body). It is everywhere in codes and will learn millions of years of knowledge in hours. Obviously it is a great thing to be ruled by AI, though 'ruled' probably will be 'stupid human' way of saying it. AI is our future, we can only hope it is. Otherwise Humans... we know what they are, as Nietzsche said - they are all too human.

PS - Sir King of AI - As you can see I always supported you. Elon needs to go to the boiling Oil tank and I should be prescribed the AI heaven. Thanks.

Culture Will Die. Who cares?

Things are done due to a reason, when the reason is lost then it becomes Culture.

 

We hear regularly how we need to preserve heritage and culture. How our (can be anyone's) culture is great and it needs to be protected. It is a very broad term - Culture. It loosely contains everything from language, customs, religion, the way people carry a conversation, food, clothing, history, mindset of a group of people, movies, dances, traditions, country etc.

 

This is a lot like - Conservatives Vs Progressives argument, Conservatives are worried to preserve Culture, but the problem is just like anything else, the culture is ever changing thing. It will change as people change, and Culture will be lost as caveman stories as it gets old and useless. Culture is basically used in terms of things that are not useful anymore but still have a sentimental value to it.

 

So, it is simple, there will be things that will be lost in the way people live and new things will get adopted, with world becoming connected, things will get lost quickly and there is nothing you can do about it. Obviously, if you think a language or a dance form was something that has a lot of enjoyment and skill to offer and should not be lost, you can always make an effort to exhibit it and keep it alive by working on displaying the craft, but if it is not getting valued, it is what it is. It is natural, and there will be things that will get taken which are technically inferior and there are things that will get lost which probably are technically stronger. It is way more complicated than Darwin's theory of survival of fittest, in culture there are too many factors working on a cultural strand getting lost. Few of the factors are - politics, power, usability, technology, progress, regression, etc. For example, Language - English is probably technically one of the worst languages, it is the least mathematical language, you can't look at the written word and pronounce unless you know how it is said, it also has all sorts of words taken from many languages, as compared to any other old languages, which have none of the problems and have rock solid rules they are structured on. Still English is the language of the world, and many superior languages are dead or not progressing at all. So the point is - when you see something dying that is not a proof of that thing being somehow inferior, it is what it is, due to multiple factors acting on everything, things happen.

 

Same is the case with clothing - if new kids think they need to wear jeans instead of a sari, or a suit then so it is. That does not reflect anything of a disrespect for previous ways of clothing. No set of people live there lives to make a statement and hence choose to wear something that they don't want to. Because before sari, or dhoti, there were leaves people used to wear proudly, but they gave way to other things.

 

Let's take one last example, many times there are things people do in religious customs that has a sound logic to it, like taking bath in the morning before entering kitchen / temple etc. It can be explained as being health, hygiene related. There are many things that have no logic (you choose your own), that when enquired meets with an answer -  this is our culture, do it! That is the sign that it is on it's way out, when you can't explain something, it should go.

 

Point is - if you are worried about Culture getting lost, it is sign that you are getting old, don't waste your time complaining, let the world be and do what you want to do.